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A security flaw in the Windows Print Spooler component that was patched by Microsoft in February is being actively exploited in the wild, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned . To that end, the agency has added the shortcoming to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog , requiring Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to address the issues by May 10, 2022. Tracked as CVE-2022-22718 (CVSS score: 7.8), the security vulnerability is one among the four privilege escalation flaws in the Print Spooler that Microsoft resolved as part of its Patch Tuesday updates on February 8, 2022. It's worth noting that the Redmond-based tech giant has remediated a number of Print Spooler flaws since the critical PrintNightmare remote code execution vulnerability came to light last year, including 15 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in April 2022. Specifics about the nature of the attacks and the identity of the threat actors that m...

Three high-impact Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) security vulnerabilities have been discovered impacting various Lenovo consumer laptop models, enabling malicious actors to deploy and execute firmware implants on the affected devices. Tracked as CVE-2021-3970, CVE-2021-3971, and CVE-2021-3972, the latter two "affect firmware drivers originally meant to be used only during the manufacturing process of Lenovo consumer notebooks," ESET researcher Martin Smolár  said  in a report published today. "Unfortunately, they were mistakenly included also in the production BIOS images without being properly deactivated," Smolár added. Successful exploitation of the flaws could permit an attacker to disable SPI flash protections or Secure Boot, effectively granting the adversary the ability to install persistent malware that can survive system reboots. CVE-2021-3970, on the other hand, relates to a case of memory corruption in the System Management Mode ( SMM...

A previously unknown zero-click exploit in Apple's iMessage was used to install mercenary spyware from  NSO Group  and  Candiru  against at least 65 individuals as part of a "multi-year clandestine operation." "Victims included Members of the European Parliament, Catalan Presidents, legislators, jurists, and members of civil society organizations," the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab  said  in a new report. "Family members were also infected in some cases." Of the 65 individuals, 63 were targeted with Pegasus and four others were infected with Candiru, with iPhones belonging to at least two compromised with both. The incidents are said to have mostly occurred between 2017 and 2020. The attacks involved the weaponization of an iOS exploit dubbed HOMAGE that made it possible to penetrate the devices running versions prior to iOS 13.2, which was released on October 28, 2019. It's worth noting that the latest version of iOS is iOS 15.4.1. ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Treasury Department, warned of a new set of ongoing cyber attacks carried out by the Lazarus Group targeting blockchain companies. Calling the activity cluster  TraderTraitor , the infiltrations involve the North Korean state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor striking entities operating in the Web3.0 industry since at least 2020. Targeted organizations include cryptocurrency exchanges, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, play-to-earn cryptocurrency video games, cryptocurrency trading companies, venture capital funds investing in cryptocurrency, and individual holders of large amounts of cryptocurrency or valuable non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The attack chains commence with the threat actor reaching out to victims via different communication platforms to lure them into downloading weaponized cryptocurrency apps for Windows and macOS, s...

GitHub on Monday noted that it had notified all victims of an attack campaign, which involved an unauthorized party downloading private repository contents by taking advantage of third-party OAuth user tokens maintained by Heroku and Travis CI. "Customers should also continue to monitor Heroku and Travis CI for updates on their own investigations into the affected OAuth applications," the company  said  in an updated post. The  incident  originally came to light on April 12 when GitHub uncovered signs that a malicious actor had leveraged the stolen OAuth user tokens issued to Heroku and Travis CI to download data from dozens of organizations, including NPM. The Microsoft-owned platform also said that it will alert customers promptly should the ongoing investigation identify additional victims. Furthermore, it cautioned that the adversary may also be digging into the repositories for secrets that could be used in other attacks. Heroku, which has pulled supp...

An 18-month-long analysis of the PYSA ransomware operation has revealed that the cybercrime cartel followed a five-stage software development cycle from August 2020, with the malware authors prioritizing features to improve the efficiency of its workflows. This included a user-friendly tool like a full-text search engine to facilitate the extraction of metadata and enable the threat actors to find and access victim information quickly. "The group is known to carefully research high-value targets before launching its attacks, compromising enterprise systems and forcing organizations to pay large ransoms to restore their data," Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT  said  in an exhaustive report published last week. PYSA, short for "Protect Your System, Amigo" and a successor to the Mespinoza ransomware, was first observed in December 2019 and has emerged as the third most prevalent ransomware strain detected during the fourth quarter of 2021. Since September 2020,...

How well do your Linux security practices stack up in today's challenging operating environment? Are you following the correct processes to keep systems up-to-date and protected against the latest threats? Now you can find out thanks to research independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The research sponsored by  TuxCare  sought to understand better how organizations are currently managing the security and stability of their Linux-based systems. The results allow all organizations operating Linux-based systems to benchmark their processes against their peers and best practices. You can get a copy of the complete report  HERE  if you can't wait to see the findings, but we've highlighted the key takeaways below if you'd like a preview. Research Goals  Understanding the current State of Enterprise Linux Security Management has never been more imperative. The number of high and critical vulnerabilities continues to grow each year significantly, and expl...