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An "extremely sophisticated" Chinese-speaking advanced persistent threat (APT) actor dubbed  LuoYu  has been observed using a malicious Windows tool called WinDealer that's delivered by means of man-on-the-side attacks. "This groundbreaking development allows the actor to modify network traffic in-transit to insert malicious payloads," Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky  said  in a new report. "Such attacks are especially dangerous and devastating because they do not require any interaction with the target to lead to a successful infection." Known to be active since 2008, organizations targeted by LuoYu are predominantly foreign diplomatic organizations established in China and members of the academic community as well as financial, defense, logistics, and telecommunications companies. LuoYu's use of  WinDealer  was first documented by Taiwanese cybersecurity firm  TeamT5  at the Japan Security Analyst Conference (JSAC) in January 2021. ...

The Parrot traffic direction system (TDS) that came to light earlier this year has had a larger impact than previously thought, according to new research. Sucuri, which has been tracking the same campaign since February 2019 under the name "NDSW/NDSX," said that "the malware was one of the top infections" detected in 2021, accounting for more than 61,000 websites. Parrot TDS was  documented  in April 2022 by Czech cybersecurity company Avast, noting that the PHP script had ensnared web servers hosting more than 16,500 websites to act as a gateway for further attack campaigns. This involves appending a piece of malicious code to all JavaScript files on compromised web servers hosting content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress that are in turn said to be breached by taking advantage of weak login credentials and vulnerable plugins. Besides using different obfuscation tactics to conceal the code, the "injected JavaScript may also be found well indent...

Microsoft on Thursday said it took steps to disable malicious activity stemming from abuse of OneDrive by a previously undocumented threat actor it tracks under the chemical element-themed moniker Polonium. In addition to removing the offending accounts created by the Lebanon-based activity group, the tech giant's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said it suspended over 20 malicious OneDrive applications created by Polonium andd that it notified affected organizations. "The observed activity was coordinated with other actors affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), based primarily on victim overlap and commonality of tools and techniques," MSTIC  assessed  with "moderate confidence." The adversarial collective is believed to have breached more than 20 organizations based in Israel and one intergovernmental organization with operations in Lebanon since February 2022. Targets of interest included entities in the manufacturing...

Atlassian has warned of a critical unpatched remote code execution vulnerability impacting Confluence Server and Data Center products that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. The Australian software company credited cybersecurity firm Volexity for identifying the flaw, which is being tracked as  CVE-2022-26134 . "Atlassian has been made aware of current active exploitation of a critical severity unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence Data Center and Server," it  said  in an advisory. "There are currently no fixed versions of Confluence Server and Data Center available. Atlassian is working with the highest priority to issue a fix." Specifics of the security flaw have been withheld until a software patch is available. All supported versions of Confluence Server and Data Center are affected, although it's expected that all versions of the enterprise solution are potentially vulnerable. The earliest impacted version is ...

As the threat landscape evolves and multiplies with more advanced attacks than ever, defending against these modern cyber threats is a monumental challenge for almost any organization.  Threat detection is about an organization's ability to accurately identify threats, be it to the network, an endpoint, another asset or an application – including cloud infrastructure and assets. At scale, threat detection analyzes the entire security infrastructure to identify malicious activity that could compromise the ecosystem. Countless solutions support threat detection, but the key is to have as much data as possible available to bolster your security visibility. If you don't know what is happening on your systems, threat detection is impossible.  Deploying the right security software is critical for protecting you from threats. What do we mean by threat detection software? In the early days of threat detection, software was deployed to protect against different forms of malware. ...

An analysis of  leaked chats  from the notorious  Conti ransomware group  earlier this year has revealed that the syndicate has been working on a set of firmware attack techniques that could offer a path to accessing privileged code on compromised devices. "Control over firmware gives attackers virtually unmatched powers both to directly cause damage and to enable other long-term strategic goals," firmware and hardware security firm Eclypsium  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Such level of access would allow an adversary to cause irreparable damage to a system or to establish ongoing persistence that is virtually invisible to the operating system." Specifically, this includes attacks aimed at embedded microcontrollers such as the Intel  Management Engine  ( ME ), a privileged component that's part of the company's processor chipsets and which can completely bypass the operating system. It's worth noting that the reason for thi...

As ransomware infections have evolved from purely encrypting data to schemes such as double and triple extortion, a new attack vector is likely to set the stage for future campaigns. Called Ransomware for IoT or  R4IoT  by Forescout, it's a "novel, proof-of-concept ransomware that exploits an IoT device to gain access and move laterally in an IT [information technology] network and impact the OT [operational technology] network." This potential pivot is based on the rapid growth in the number of IoT devices as well as the convergence of IT and OT networks in organizations. The ultimate goal of R4IoT is to leverage exposed and vulnerable IoT devices such as IP cameras to gain an initial foothold, followed by deploying ransomware in the IT network and taking advantage of poor operational security practices to hold mission-critical processes hostage. "By compromising IoT, IT, and OT assets, R4IoT goes beyond the usual encryption and data exfiltration to cause phys...