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A threat actor by the name of LeakBase has shared a database containing personal information allegedly affecting 16 million users of Swachh City, an Indian complaint redressal platform. Leaked details include usernames, email addresses, password hashes, mobile numbers, one-time passwords, last logged-in times, and IP addresses, among others, according to a report shared by security firm CloudSEK with The Hacker News. The  website  is currently inaccessible. The Swachhata Platform is part of the Indian government's  Swachh Bharat Mission  (translated as Clean India Mission) nationwide initiative to "achieve universal sanitation coverage." According to  Cyble , the database comprises 101,718 unique email addresses and 15,835,111 unique mobile numbers, putting users at risk of phishing, smishing, social engineering, and identity theft. The cybersecurity firm said that the breach possibly leveraged compromised credentials belonging to administrator and no...

Several hacktivist groups are using Telegram and other tools to aid anti-government protests in Iran to bypass regime censorship restrictions amid  ongoing unrest  in the country following the death of Mahsa Amini in custody. "Key activities are data leaking and selling, including officials' phone numbers and emails, and maps of sensitive locations," Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point  said  in a new report. The company said it has also witnessed sharing of proxies and open VPN servers to get around censorship and reports on the internet status in the country, with one group helping the anti-government demonstrators access social media sites. Chief among them is a Telegram channel called Official Atlas Intelligence Group (AIG) that's primarily focused on publishing data associated with government officials as well as maps of prominent locations. Calling itself the "CyberArmy," the group is said to have commenced its operations in May and has also ...

A new, multi-functional Go-based malware dubbed  Chaos  has been rapidly growing in volume in recent months to ensnare a wide range of Windows, Linux, small office/home office (SOHO) routers, and enterprise servers into its botnet. "Chaos functionality includes the ability to enumerate the host environment, run remote shell commands, load additional modules, automatically propagate through stealing and brute-forcing SSH private keys, as well as launch DDoS attacks," researchers from Lumen's Black Lotus Labs  said  in a write-up shared with The Hacker News. A majority of the bots are located in Europe, specifically Italy, with other infections reported in China and the U.S., collectively representing "hundreds of unique IP addresses" over a one-month time period from mid-June through mid-July 2022. Written in Chinese and leveraging China-based infrastructure for command-and-control, the botnet joins a long list of malware that are designed to establish persi...

A recently discovered malware builder called Quantum Builder is being used to deliver the Agent Tesla remote access trojan (RAT). "This campaign features enhancements and a shift toward LNK (Windows shortcut) files when compared to similar attacks in the past," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Avinash Kumar  said  in a Tuesday write-up. Sold on the dark web for €189 a month,  Quantum Builder  is a customizable tool for generating malicious shortcut files as well as HTA, ISO, and PowerShell payloads to deliver next-stage malware on the targeted machines, in this case  Agent Tesla . The multi-stage attack chain starts with a spear-phishing email containing a GZIP archive attachment that includes a shortcut designed to execute PowerShell code responsible for launching a remote HTML application (HTA) using  MSHTA . The phishing emails purport to be an order confirmation message from a Chinese supplier of lump and rock sugar, with the L...

Organizations struggle to find ways to keep a good security posture. This is because it is difficult to create secure system policies and find the right tools that help achieve a good posture. In many cases, organizations work with tools that do not integrate with each other and are expensive to purchase and maintain. Security posture management is a term used to describe the process of identifying and mitigating security misconfigurations and compliance risks in an organization. To maintain a good security posture, organizations should at least do the following: Maintain inventory:  Asset inventory is considered first because it provides a comprehensive list of all IT assets that should be protected. This includes the hardware devices, applications, and services that are being used. Perform vulnerability assessment:  The next step is to perform a vulnerability assessment to identify weaknesses in applications and services. Knowledge of the vulnerabilities help to priorit...

The Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as  APT28  has been found leveraging a new code execution method that makes use of mouse movement in decoy Microsoft PowerPoint documents to deploy malware. The technique "is designed to be triggered when the user starts the presentation mode and moves the mouse," cybersecurity firm Cluster25  said  in a technical report. "The code execution runs a PowerShell script that downloads and executes a dropper from OneDrive." The dropper, a seemingly harmless image file, functions as a pathway for a follow-on payload, a variant of a malware known as Graphite, which uses the Microsoft Graph API and OneDrive for command-and-control (C2) communications to retrieve additional payloads. The attack employs a lure document that makes use of a template potentially linked to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ), a Paris-based intergovernmental entity. Cluster25 noted the attacks may be ongoing, con...

Meta Platforms on Tuesday disclosed it took steps to dismantle two covert influence operations originating from China and Russia for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) so as to manipulate public debate. While the Chinese operation sets its sights on the U.S. and the Czech Republic, the Russian network primarily targeted Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and the U.K. with themes surrounding the ongoing war in Ukraine. "The largest and most complex Russian operation we've disrupted since the war in Ukraine began, it ran a sprawling network of over 60 websites impersonating news organizations, as well as accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, Twitter, Change.org and Avaaz, and even LiveJournal," the social media behemoth  said . The sophisticated Russian activity, which commenced in May 2022, impersonated mainstream European news outlets like Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and Bild, not to mention build credibility by creating fake accounts across...