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A China-based advanced persistent threat (APT) group is possibly deploying short-lived ransomware families as a decoy to cover up the true operational and tactical objectives behind its campaigns. The activity cluster, attributed to a hacking group dubbed  Bronze Starlight  by Secureworks, involves the deployment of post-intrusion ransomware such as LockFile, Atom Silo, Rook, Night Sky, Pandora, and LockBit 2.0. "The ransomware could distract incident responders from identifying the threat actors' true intent and reduce the likelihood of attributing the malicious activity to a government-sponsored Chinese threat group," the researchers  said  in a new report. "In each case, the ransomware targets a small number of victims over a relatively brief period of time before it ceases operations, apparently permanently." Bronze Starlight, active since mid-2021, is also tracked by Microsoft under the emerging threat cluster moniker DEV-0401, with the tech giant empha...

A new malware tool that enables cybercriminal actors to build malicious Windows shortcut ( .LNK ) files has been spotted for sale on cybercrime forums. Dubbed Quantum Lnk Builder , the software makes it possible to spoof any extension and choose from over 300 icons, not to mention support  UAC  and  Windows SmartScreen  bypass as well as "multiple payloads per .LNK" file. Also offered are capabilities to generate .HTA and disk image (.ISO) payloads. Quantum Builder is available for lease at different price points: €189 a month, €355 for two months, €899 for six months, or as a one-off lifetime purchase for €1,500. ".LNK files are shortcut files that reference other files, folders, or applications to open them," Cyble researchers  said  in a report. "The [threat actor] leverages the .LNK files and drops malicious payloads using  LOLBins  [living-off-the-land binaries]." Early evidence of malware samples using Quantum Builder in the wild is s...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the Coast Guard Cyber Command (CGCYBER), on Thursday released a joint advisory warning of continued attempts on the part of threat actors to exploit the Log4Shell flaw in VMware Horizon servers to breach target networks. "Since December 2021, multiple threat actor groups have exploited Log4Shell on unpatched, public-facing VMware Horizon and [Unified Access Gateway] servers," the agencies  said . "As part of this exploitation, suspected APT actors implanted loader malware on compromised systems with embedded executables enabling remote command-and-control (C2)." In one instance, the adversary is said to have been able to move laterally inside the victim network, obtain access to a disaster recovery network, and collect and exfiltrate sensitive law enforcement data. Log4Shell , tracked as  CVE-2021-44228  (CVSS score: 10.0), is a remote code execution vulnerability affecting the Apache ...

The beleaguered Israeli surveillanceware vendor NSO Group this week admitted to the European Union lawmakers that its Pegasus tool was used by at least five countries in the region. "We're trying to do the right thing and that's more than other companies working in the industry," Chaim Gelfand, the company's general counsel and chief compliance officer, said, according to a  report  from Politico. Acknowledging that it had "made mistakes," the company also stressed on the need for an international standard to regulate the government use of spyware. The disclosure comes as a special inquiry committee was  launched in April 2022  to investigate alleged breaches of E.U. law following revelations that the company's Pegasus spyware is being used to snoop on phones belonging to politicians, diplomats, and civil society members. "The committee is going to look into existing national laws regulating surveillance, and whether Pegasus spyware was us...

When it comes to keeping SaaS stacks secure, IT and security teams need to be able to streamline the detection and remediation of misconfigurations in order to best protect their SaaS stack from threats. However, while companies adopt more and more apps, their increase in SaaS security tools and staff has lagged behind, as found in the  2022 SaaS Security Survey Report.  The survey report, completed by Adaptive Shield in conjunction with Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), dives into how CISOs today are managing the growing SaaS app attack surface and the steps they are taking to secure their organizations.  The report finds that at least 43% of organizations have experienced a security incident as a result of a SaaS misconfiguration; however, with another 20% being "unsure," the real number could be  as high as 63% . These numbers are particularly striking when compared to the 17% of organizations experiencing security incidents due to an IaaS misconfiguration.  ...

A threat cluster with ties to a hacking group called Tropic Trooper has been spotted using a previously undocumented malware coded in Nim language to strike targets as part of a newly discovered campaign. The novel loader, dubbed Nimbda, is "bundled with a Chinese language greyware 'SMS Bomber' tool that is most likely illegally distributed in the Chinese-speaking web," Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point  said  in a report. "Whoever crafted the Nim loader took special care to give it the same executable icon as the SMS Bomber that it drops and executes," the researchers said. "Therefore the entire bundle works as a trojanized binary." SMS Bomber, as the name indicates, allows a user to input a phone number (not their own) so as to flood the victim's device with messages and potentially render it unusable in what's a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. The fact that the binary doubles up as SMS Bomber and a backdoor suggests that t...

QNAP, Taiwanese maker of network-attached storage (NAS) devices, on Wednesday said it's in the process of fixing a critical three-year-old PHP vulnerability that could be abused to achieve remote code execution. "A vulnerability has been reported to affect PHP versions 7.1.x below 7.1.33, 7.2.x below 7.2.24, and 7.3.x below 7.3.11 with improper nginx config," the hardware vendor  said  in an advisory. "If exploited, the vulnerability allows attackers to gain remote code execution." The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2019-11043 , is rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system. That said, it's required that Nginx and php-fpm are running in appliances using the following QNAP operating system versions - QTS 5.0.x and later QTS 4.5.x and later QuTS hero h5.0.x and later QuTS hero h4.5.x and later QuTScloud c5.0.x and later "As QTS, QuTS hero or QuTScloud does not have nginx installed by default, QNAP NAS are not aff...