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The China-linked threat actor known as Sharp Panda has expanded their targeting to include governmental organizations in Africa and the Caribbean as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. "The campaign adopts Cobalt Strike Beacon as the payload, enabling backdoor functionalities like C2 communication and command execution while minimizing the exposure of their custom tools," Check Point said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This refined approach suggests a deeper understanding of their targets." The Israeli cybersecurity firm is tracking the activity under a new name  Sharp Dragon , describing the adversary as careful in its targeting, while at the same time broadening its reconnaissance efforts. The adversary  first came to light  in June 2021, when it was detected targeting a Southeast Asian government to deploy a backdoor on Windows systems dubbed VictoryDLL. Subsequent attacks mounted by Sharp Dragon have set their sights on high-profile gov...

Governmental entities in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are the target of a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign dubbed  Operation Diplomatic Specter  since at least late 2022. "An analysis of this threat actor's activity reveals long-term espionage operations against at least seven governmental entities," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Lior Rochberger and Daniel Frank  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The threat actor performed intelligence collection efforts at a large scale, leveraging rare email exfiltration techniques against compromised servers." The cybersecurity firm, which previously tracked the activity cluster under the name CL-STA-0043, said it's graduating it to a temporary actor group codenamed TGR-STA-0043 owing to its assessment that the intrusion set is the work of a single actor operating on behalf of Chinese state-aligned interests. Targets of the attacks i...

Conversations about data security tend to diverge into three main threads: How can we protect the data we store on our on-premises or cloud infrastructure? What strategies and tools or platforms can reliably backup and restore data? What would losing all this data cost us, and how quickly could we get it back? All are valid and necessary conversations for technology organizations of all shapes and sizes. Still, the average company uses  400+ SaaS applications . The same report also uncovered that 56% of IT professionals aren't aware of their data backup responsibilities. This is alarming, given that 84% of survey respondents said at least 30% of their business-critical data lives inside SaaS applications.  SaaS data isn't like on-premises or cloud data because you have no ownership over the operating environment and far less ownership of the data itself. Due to those restrictions, creating automated backups, storing them in secure environments, and owning the restorati...

Ivanti on Tuesday rolled out fixes to address multiple critical security flaws in Endpoint Manager (EPM) that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution under certain circumstances. Six of the 10 vulnerabilities – from  CVE-2024-29822 through CVE-2024-29827  (CVSS scores: 9.6) – relate to SQL injection flaws that allow an unauthenticated attacker within the same network to execute arbitrary code. The remaining four bugs -- CVE-2024-29828, CVE-2024-29829, CVE-2024-29830, and CVE-2024-29846 (CVSS scores: 8.4) -- also fall under the same category with the only change being that they require the attacker to be authenticated. The shortcomings impact the Core server of Ivanti EPM versions 2022 SU5 and prior. The company has also  addressed  a high-severity security flaw in Avalanche version 6.4.3.602 (CVE-2024-29848, CVSS score: 7.2) that could permit an attacker to achieve remote code execution by uploading a specially crafted file. In addition, patches ha...

Microsoft on Wednesday outlined its plans to deprecate Visual Basic Script (VBScript) in the second half of 2024 in favor of more advanced alternatives such as JavaScript and PowerShell. "Technology has advanced over the years, giving rise to more powerful and versatile scripting languages such as JavaScript and PowerShell," Microsoft Program Manager Naveen Shankar  said . "These languages offer broader capabilities and are better suited for modern web development and automation tasks." The tech giant originally  announced  its plans to gradually sunset VBScript in October 2023. The scripting language, also called Visual Basic Scripting Edition, was first introduced by Microsoft in 1996 as a Windows system component, offering users the ability to automate tasks and develop interactive web pages using Internet Explorer and Edge (in  Internet Explorer mode ). The announced deprecation plan consists of three phases, with the first phase kicking off in the second h...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented threat group called  Unfading Sea Haze  that's believed to have been active since 2018. The intrusion singled out high-level organizations in South China Sea countries, particularly military and government targets, Bitdefender said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The investigation revealed a troubling trend beyond the historical context," Martin Zugec, technical solutions director at Bitdefender,  said , adding it identified a total of eight victims to date. "Notably, the attackers repeatedly regained access to compromised systems. This exploitation highlights a critical vulnerability: poor credential hygiene and inadequate patching practices on exposed devices and web services." There are some indications that the threat actor behind the attacks is operating with goals that are aligned with Chinese interests despite the fact that the attack signatures do not overlap wit...

Rockwell Automation is urging its customers to disconnect all industrial control systems (ICSs) not meant to be connected to the public-facing internet to mitigate unauthorized or malicious cyber activity. The company  said  it's issuing the advisory due to "heightened geopolitical tensions and adversarial cyber activity globally." To that end, customers are required to take immediate action to determine whether they have devices that are accessible over the internet and, if so, cut off connectivity for those that are not meant to be left exposed. "Users should never configure their assets to be directly connected to the public-facing internet," Rockwell Automation further added. "Removing that connectivity as a proactive step reduces attack surface and can immediately reduce exposure to unauthorized and malicious cyber activity from external threat actors." On top of that, organizations are required to ensure that they have adopted the necessar...