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LockBit ransomware attacks are constantly evolving by making use of a wide range of techniques to infect targets while also taking steps to disable endpoint security solutions. "The affiliates that use LockBit's services conduct their attacks according to their preference and use different tools and techniques to achieve their goal," Cybereason security analysts Loïc Castel and Gal Romano  said . "As the attack progresses further along the kill chain, the activities from different cases tend to converge to similar activities." LockBit, which operates on a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model like most groups, was first observed in September 2019 and has since emerged as the most dominant ransomware strain this year, surpassing other well-known groups like  Conti ,  Hive , and  BlackCat . This involves the malware authors licensing access to affiliates, who execute the attacks in exchange for using their tools and infrastructure and earn as much as 80% of ea...

Five months after announcing plans to disable Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default in the Office productivity suite, Microsoft appears to have rolled back its plans. "Based on feedback received, a rollback has started," Microsoft employee Angela Robertson  said  in a July 6 comment. "An update about the rollback is in progress. I apologize for any inconvenience of the rollback starting before the update about the change was made available." When reached by The Hacker News, Redmond said its decision to reverse course was temporary and that it's working to incorporate further usability improvements. "Following user feedback, we have rolled back this change temporarily while we make some additional changes to enhance usability," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "This is a temporary change, and we are fully committed to making the default change for all users. Regardless of the default setting, customers can block internet macros th...

Progress powers technology forward. But progress also has a cost: by adding new capabilities and features, the developer community is constantly adjusting the building blocks. That includes the fundamental languages used to code technology solutions. When the building blocks change, the code behind the technology solution must change too. It's a challenging and time-consuming exercise that drains resources. But what if there's an alternative? The problem: reading code someone else wrote Let's take a step back and take a look at one of the fundamental challenges in development: editing someone else's code. Editing code you just wrote, or wrote a couple of weeks ago, is just fine. But editing your own code written years ago – never mind someone else's code - that's a different story. In-house code style rules can help but there are always odd naming conventions for variables and functions, or unusual choices for algorithms. Arguably, a programmer's abilit...

A malicious browser extension with 350 variants is masquerading as a Google Translate add-on as part of an adware campaign targeting Russian users of Google Chrome, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox browsers. Mobile security firm Zimperium dubbed the malware family  ABCsoup , stating the "extensions are installed onto a victim's machine via a Windows-based executable, bypassing most endpoint security solutions, along with the security controls found in the official extension stores." The rogue browser add-ons come with the same extension ID as that of Google Translate — " aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb " — in an attempt to trick users into believing that they have installed a legitimate extension. The extensions are not available on the official browser web stores themselves. Rather they are delivered through different Windows executables that install the add-on on the victim's web browser. In the event the targeted user already has the Google Translate ext...

In what's being described as an "unprecedented" twist, the operators of the TrickBot malware have resorted to systematically targeting Ukraine since the onset of the war in late February 2022. The group is believed to have orchestrated at least six phishing campaigns aimed at targets that align with Russian state interests, with the emails acting as lures for delivering malicious software such as IcedID, CobaltStrike, AnchorMail, and  Meterpreter . Tracked under the names ITG23,  Gold Blackburn , and Wizard Spider, the  financially motivated cybercrime gang  is known for its development of the TrickBot banking trojan and was  subsumed  into the now-discontinued  Conti ransomware cartel  earlier this year. But merely weeks later, the actors associated with the group resurfaced with a revamped version of the  AnchorDNS  backdoor called  AnchorMail  that uses SMTPS and IMAP protocols for command-and-control communications. "...

In a new joint cybersecurity advisory, U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have warned about the use of Maui ransomware by North Korean government-backed hackers to target the healthcare sector since at least May 2021. "North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors used Maui ransomware in these incidents to encrypt servers responsible for healthcare services—including electronic health records services, diagnostics services, imaging services, and intranet services," the authorities  noted . The  alert  comes courtesy of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of the Treasury. Cybersecurity firm Stairwell, whose findings formed the basis of the advisory, said the lesser-known ransomware family stands out because of a lack of several key features commonly associated with ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups. This includes the absence of "embedded ransom note to provide recov...

Researchers have disclosed what they say could be an attempt to kick-off a new large-scale cryptocurrency mining campaign targeting the NPM JavaScript package repository. The malicious activity, attributed to a software supply chain threat actor dubbed  CuteBoi , involves an array of 1,283 rogue modules that were published in an automated fashion from over 1,000 different user accounts. "This was done using automation which includes the ability to pass the NPM 2FA challenge," Israeli application security testing company Checkmarx  said . "This cluster of packages seems to be a part of an attacker experimenting at this point." All the released packages in question are said to harbor near-identical source code from an already existing package named eazyminer that's used to mine Monero by means of utilizing unused resources on web servers. One notable modification entails the URL to which the mined cryptocurrency should be sent, although installing the rogue ...