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A new strain of JavaScript dropper has been observed delivering next-stage payloads like Bumblebee and IcedID. Cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct is tracking the malware as  PindOS , which contains the name in its " User-Agent " string. Both  Bumblebee  and IcedID serve as loaders, acting as a vector for other malware on compromised hosts, including ransomware. A recent report from Proofpoint  highlighted  IcedID's abandoning of banking fraud features to solely focus on malware delivery. Bumblebee , notably, is a replacement for another loader called  BazarLoader , which has been attributed to the now-defunct TrickBot and Conti groups. A report from Secureworks in April 2022  found  evidence of collaboration between several actors in the Russian cybercrime ecosystem, including that of  Conti ,  Emotet , and IcedID. Deep Instinct's source code analysis of PindOS shows that it contains comments in Russian, raising the possibility of a...

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) on Thursday released guidance to help organizations detect and prevent infections of a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ) bootkit called  BlackLotus . To that end, the agency is  recommending  that "infrastructure owners take action by hardening user executable policies and monitoring the integrity of the boot partition." BlackLotus is an  advanced  crimeware solution that was first spotlighted in October 2022 by Kaspersky. A UEFI bootkit capable of bypassing Windows Secure Boot protections, samples of the malware have since emerged in the wild. This is accomplished by taking advantage of a known Windows flaw called Baton Drop ( CVE-2022-21894 , CVSS score: 4.4) discovered in vulnerable  boot loaders  not added into the  Secure Boot DBX revocation list . The vulnerability was addressed by Microsoft in January 2022. This loophole could be exploited by threat actors to replace fully patched b...

Internet-facing Linux systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are being targeted as part of a new campaign designed to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. "The threat actors behind the attack use a backdoor that deploys a wide array of tools and components such as rootkits and an IRC bot to steal device resources for mining operations," Microsoft threat intelligence researcher Rotem Sde-Or  said . "The backdoor also installs a patched version of OpenSSH on affected devices, allowing threat actors to hijack SSH credentials, move laterally within the network, and conceal malicious SSH connections." To pull off the scheme, misconfigured Linux hosts are brute-forced to gain initial access, following which the threat actors move to disable shell history and fetch a trojanized version of OpenSSH from a remote server. The rogue OpenSSH package is configured to install and launch the backdoor, a shell script that allows the attackers to distribute additional payloads a...

A new phishing campaign codenamed  MULTI#STORM  has set its sights on India and the U.S. by leveraging JavaScript files to deliver remote access trojans on compromised systems. "The attack chain ends with the victim machine infected with multiple unique RAT (remote access trojan) malware instances, such as Warzone RAT and Quasar RAT," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov  said . "Both are used for command-and-control during different stages of the infection chain." The multi-stage attack chain commences when an email recipient clicks the embedded link pointing to a password-protected ZIP file ("REQUEST.zip") hosted on Microsoft OneDrive with the password "12345." Extracting the archive file reveals a heavily obfuscated JavaScript file ("REQUEST.js") that, when double clicked, activates the infection by executing two PowerShell commands that are responsible for retrieving two separate payloads from OneDri...

Losing sleep over Generative-AI apps? You're not alone or wrong. According to the Astrix Security Research Group, mid size organizations already have, on average, 54 Generative-AI integrations to core systems like Slack, GitHub and Google Workspace and this number is only expected to grow. Continue reading to understand the potential risks and how to minimize them.  Book a Generative-AI Discovery session with Astrix Security's experts (free - no strings attached - agentless & zero friction) "Hey ChatGPT, review and optimize our source code"  "Hey Jasper.ai, generate a summary email of all our net new customers from this quarter"  "Hey Otter.ai, summarize our Zoom board meeting" In this era of financial turmoil, businesses and employees alike are constantly looking for tools to automate work processes and increase efficiency and productivity by connecting third party apps to core business systems such as Google workspace, Slack and GitHub ...

Millions of software repositories on GitHub are likely vulnerable to an attack called RepoJacking , a new study has revealed. This includes repositories from organizations such as Google, Lyft, and several others, Massachusetts-based cloud-native security firm Aqua  said  in a Wednesday report. The supply chain vulnerability, also known as dependency repository hijacking, is a  class of attacks  that makes it possible to take over retired organization or user names and publish trojanized versions of repositories to run malicious code. "When a repository owner changes their username, a link is created between the old name and the new name for anyone who downloads dependencies from the old repository," researchers Ilay Goldman and Yakir Kadkoda said. "However, it is possible for anyone to create the old username and break this link." Alternatively, a similar scenario could arise when a repository ownership is transferred to another user and the original acco...

The Chinese cyber espionage actor known as  Camaro Dragon  has been observed leveraging a new strain of self-propagating malware that spreads through compromised USB drives. "While their primary focus has traditionally been Southeast Asian countries, this latest discovery reveals their global reach and highlights the alarming role USB drives play in spreading malware," Check Point said in new research shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company, which found evidence of USB malware infections in Myanmar, South Korea, Great Britain, India, and Russia, said the findings are the result of a cyber incident that it investigated at an unnamed European hospital in early 2023. The probe found that the entity was not directly targeted by the adversary but rather suffered a breach via an employee's USB drive, which became infected when it was plugged into a colleague's computer at a conference in Asia. "Consequently, upon returning to the healthcare institu...