The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sanctioned Hydra, the same day German law enforcement authorities  disrupted  the world's largest and longest-running dark web marketplace following a coordinated operation in partnership with U.S. officials. The sanctions are part of an "international effort to disrupt proliferation of malicious cybercrime services, dangerous drugs, and other illegal offerings available through the Russia-based site," the Treasury Department  said  in a statement. Along with the sanctions, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) disclosed a list of  more than 100 virtual currency addresses  that have been identified as associated with the entity's operations to conduct illicit transactions. The sanctions come as Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office shut down the online criminal marketplace that it said specialized in narcotics trade, seizing its servers and 543 bitcoins worth 23 million euros ($25.3 million). Hydra was ...

The notorious cybercrime group known as FIN7 has diversified its initial access vectors to incorporate software supply chain compromise and the use of stolen credentials, new research has revealed. "Data theft extortion or ransomware deployment following FIN7-attributed activity at multiple organizations, as well as technical overlaps, suggests that FIN7 actors have been associated with various ransomware operations over time," incident response firm Mandiant  said  in a Monday analysis. The cybercriminal group, since its emergence in the mid-2010s, has gained notoriety for large-scale malware campaigns targeting the point-of-sale (POS) systems aimed at restaurant, gambling, and hospitality industries with credit card-stealing malware. FIN7's shift in monetization strategy towards ransomware follows an October 2021 report from Recorded Future's Gemini Advisory unit, which  found  the adversary setting up a fake front company named Bastion Secure to recruit unwit...

Between a series of recent high-profile cybersecurity incidents and the heightened geopolitical tensions, there's rarely been a more dangerous cybersecurity environment. It's a danger that affects every organization – automated attack campaigns don't discriminate between targets. The situation is driven in large part due to a relentless rise in vulnerabilities, with tens of thousands of brand-new vulnerabilities discovered every year. For tech teams that are probably already under-resourced, guarding against this rising tide of threats is an impossible task. Yet, in the battle against cybercrime, some of the most effective and most sensible mitigations are sometimes neglected. In this article, we'll outline why cybersecurity risks have escalated so dramatically – and which easy wins your organization can make for a significant difference in your cybersecurity posture, right now. Recent major cyberattacks point to the danger Cyber security has arguably never been mo...

While phishing and ransomware dominate headlines, another critical risk quietly persists across most enterprises: exposed Git repositories leaking sensitive data. A risk that silently creates shadow access into core systems Git is the backbone of modern software development, hosting millions of repositories and serving thousands of organizations worldwide. Yet, amid the daily hustle of shipping code, developers may inadvertently leave behind API keys, tokens, or passwords in configuration files and code files, effectively handing attackers the keys to the kingdom. This isn't just about poor hygiene; it's a systemic and growing supply chain risk. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, so do compliance requirements. Security frameworks like NIS2, SOC2, and ISO 27001 now demand proof that software delivery pipelines are hardened and third-party risk is controlled. The message is clear: securing your Git repositories is no longer optional, it's essential. Below, we look at the ris...

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), on Tuesday announced the official takedown of Hydra, the world's largest illegal dark web marketplace that has cumulatively facilitated over $5 billion in Bitcoin transactions to date. "Bitcoins amounting to currently the equivalent of approximately €23 million were seized, which are attributed to the marketplace," the BKA said in a press release. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic confirmed that the seizure occurred on April 5, 2022 in a series of 88 transactions totaling 543.3 BTC. The agency attributed the shutdown of Hydra to an extensive investigation operation conducted by its Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) in partnership with U.S. law enforcement authorities that it said had been underway since August 2021. Launched in 2015, Hydra was a Russian-language darknet marketplace that opened as a competitor to the now-defunct Russian Anonymous Marketplace (aka RAMP), primarily...

A Chinese state-backed advanced persistent threat (APT) group known for singling out Japanese entities has been attributed to a new long-running espionage campaign targeting new geographies, suggesting a "widening" of the threat actor's targeting. The widespread intrusions, which are believed to have commenced at the earliest in mid-2021 and continued as recently as February 2022, have been tied to a group tracked as Cicada , which is also known as APT10, Stone Panda, Potassium, Bronze Riverside, or MenuPass Team. "Victims in this Cicada (aka APT10) campaign include government, legal, religious, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in multiple countries around the world, including in Europe, Asia, and North America," researchers from the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom Software,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "There is a strong focus on victims in the government and NGO sectors, with some of these organizations worki...

With the growth in digital transformation, the API management market is set to grow  by more than 30%   by the year 2025 as more businesses build web APIs and consumers grow to rely on them for everything from mobile apps to customized digital services. As part of strategic business planning, an API helps generate revenue by allowing customers access to the functionality of a website or computer program through custom applications. As more and more businesses are implementing APIs, the risk of API attacks increases. By 2022, Gartner predicted that API (Application Programming Interface) attacks would become the most common attack vector for enterprise web applications. Cybercriminals are targeting APIs more aggressively than ever before, and businesses must take a proactive approach to  API security  to combat this new aggression. API and The Business World With integrating APIs into modern IT environments, businesses are becoming increasingly data-driven...

Email marketing service Mailchimp on Monday revealed a data breach that resulted in the compromise of an internal tool to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts and stage phishing attacks.  The development was first  reported  by Bleeping Computer. The company, which was acquired by financial software firm Intuit in September 2021, told the publication that it became aware of the incident on March 26 when it became aware of a malicious party accessing the customer support tool. "The incident was propagated by an external actor who conducted a successful social engineering attack on Mailchimp employees, resulting in employee credentials being compromised," Siobhan Smyth, Mailchimp's chief information security officer, was quoted as saying. Although Mailchimp stated it acted quickly to terminate access to the breached employee account, the siphoned credentials were used to access 319 MailChimp accounts and further export the mailing lists pertaining to 102 acc...