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A 32-year-old Ukrainian national has been  sentenced to five years in prison  in the U.S. for the individual's criminal work as a "high-level hacker" in the financially motivated group FIN7. Denys Iarmak, who worked as a penetration tester for the cartel from November 2016 through November 2018, had been previously arrested in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2019, before being extradited to the U.S. in May 2020. In November 2021, Iarmak had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking. FIN7 has been attributed to a number of attacks that have led to the theft of more than 20 million customer card records from over 6,500 individual point-of-sale terminals at more than 3,600 separate business locations in the U.S, costing the victims $1 billion in losses. The criminal gang, also known as Carbanak Group and the Navigator Group, has a track record of hitting restaurant, gambling, and hospitality indu...

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that it obtained a court order to take control of seven domains used by APT28, a state-sponsored group operated by Russia's military intelligence service, with the goal of neutralizing its attacks on Ukraine. "We have since re-directed these domains to a sinkhole controlled by Microsoft, enabling us to mitigate Strontium's current use of these domains and enable victim notifications," Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president of customer security and trust,  said . APT28, also known by the names Sofacy, Sednit, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, Iron Twilight, and Strontium, is a  cyber espionage group  and an advanced persistent threat that's known to be active since 2009, striking media, governments, military, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that often have a security focus. The tech giant noted that the sinkholed infrastructure was used by the threat actor to target Ukrainian institutions as well as gov...

A number of rogue Android apps that have been cumulatively installed from the official Google Play Store more than 50,000 times are being used to target banks and other financial entities. The rental banking trojan, dubbed  Octo , is said to be a rebrand of another Android malware called ExobotCompact, which, in turn, is a "lite" replacement for its Exobot predecessor, Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Exobot is also likely said to have paved the way for a separate descendant called Coper, that was initially  discovered  targeting Colombian users around July 2021, with newer infections targeting Android users in different European Countries. "Coper malware apps are modular in design and include a multi-stage infection method and many defensive tactics to survive removal attempts," Cybersecurity company Cyble  noted  in an analysis of the malware last month. Like other Android banking trojans, ...

AI agents promise to automate everything from financial reconciliations to incident response. Yet every time an AI agent spins up a workflow, it has to authenticate somewhere; often with a high-privilege API key, OAuth token, or service account that defenders can't easily see. These "invisible" non-human identities (NHIs) now outnumber human accounts in most cloud environments, and they have become one of the ripest targets for attackers. Astrix's Field CTO Jonathan Sander put it bluntly in a recent Hacker News webinar : "One dangerous habit we've had for a long time is trusting application logic to act as the guardrails. That doesn't work when your AI agent is powered by LLMs that don't stop and think when they're about to do something wrong. They just do it." Why AI Agents Redefine Identity Risk Autonomy changes everything: An AI agent can chain multiple API calls and modify data without a human in the loop. If the underlying credential is exposed or overprivileged, each addit...

A first-of-its-kind malware targeting Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Lambda serverless computing platform has been discovered in the wild. Dubbed "Denonia" after the name of the domain it communicates with, "the malware uses newer address resolution techniques for command and control traffic to evade typical detection measures and virtual network access controls," Cado Labs researcher Matt Muir  said . The  artifact  analyzed by the cybersecurity company was uploaded to the VirusTotal database on February 25, 2022, sporting the name "python" and packaged as a 64-bit  ELF  executable. However, the filename is a misnomer, as Denonia is programmed in Go and harbors a customized variant of the XMRig cryptocurrency mining software. That said, the mode of initial access is unknown, although it's suspected it may have involved the compromise of AWS Access and Secret Keys. Another notable feature of the malware is its use of DNS over HTTPS ( DoH ) for c...

A threat actor with affiliations to the cyber warfare division of Hamas has been linked to an "elaborate campaign" targeting high-profile Israeli individuals employed in sensitive defense, law enforcement, and emergency services organizations. "The campaign operators use sophisticated social engineering techniques, ultimately aimed to deliver previously undocumented backdoors for Windows and Android devices," cybersecurity company Cybereason  said  in a Wednesday report. "The goal behind the attack was to extract sensitive information from the victims' devices for espionage purposes." The monthslong intrusions, codenamed " Operation Bearded Barbie ," have been attributed to an Arabic-speaking and politically-motivated group called Arid Viper, which operates out of the Middle East and is also known by the monikers APT-C-23 and Desert Falcon. Most recently, the threat actor was  held responsible  for attacks aimed at Palestinian activists...

During the last week of March, three major tech companies - Microsoft, Okta, and HubSpot - reported significant data breaches. DEV-0537, also known as LAPSUS$, performed the first two. This highly sophisticated group utilizes state-of-the-art attack vectors to great success. Meanwhile, the group behind the HubSpot breach was not disclosed. This blog will review the three breaches based on publicly disclosed information and suggest best practices to minimize the risk of such attacks succeeding against your organization.  HubSpot - Employee Access On March 21, 2022,  HubSpot reported the breach  which happened on March 18. Malicious actors compromised a HubSpot employee account that the employee used for customer support. This allowed malicious actors the ability to access and export contact data using the employee's access to several HubSpot accounts.  With little information regarding this breach, defending against an attack is challenging, but a key configuratio...

As many as seven malicious Android apps discovered on the Google Play Store masqueraded as antivirus solutions to deploy a banking trojan called SharkBot . "SharkBot steals credentials and banking information," Check Point researchers Alex Shamshur and Raman Ladutska  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This malware implements a geofencing feature and evasion techniques, which makes it stand out from the rest of malwares." Particularly, the malware is designed to ignore users from China, India, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The rogue apps are said to have been installed more than 15,000 times prior to their removal, with most of the victims located in Italy and the U.K. The report complements  previous findings  from NCC Group, which found the bankbot posing as antivirus apps to carry out unauthorized transactions via Automatic Transfer Systems (ATS). SharkBot takes advantage of Android's Accessibility Services permissions to present ...