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The Cyber Police of Ukraine has announced the arrest of a local man who is suspected to have offered their services to LockBit and Conti ransomware groups. The unnamed 28-year-old native of the Kharkiv region allegedly specialized in the development of crypters to encrypt and obfuscate malicious payloads in order to evade detection by security programs. The product is believed to have been offered to the Conti and LockBit ransomware syndicates that then used the crypter to disguise the file-encrypting malware and launch successful attacks. "And at the end of 2021, members of the [Conti] group infected the computer networks of enterprises in the Netherlands and Belgium with hidden malware," according to a translated version of the statement released by the agency. As part of the investigation, authorities conducted searches in Kyiv and Kharkiv, and seized computer equipment, mobile phones, and notebooks. If found guilty, the defendant is expected to face up to 15 years ...

Google has warned that a security flaw impacting Pixel Firmware has been exploited in the wild as a zero-day. The high-severity vulnerability, tagged as CVE-2024-32896 , has been described as an elevation of privilege issue in Pixel Firmware. The company did not share any additional details related to the nature of attacks exploiting it, but noted "there are indications that CVE-2024-32896 may be under limited, targeted exploitation." The June 2024 security update addresses a total of 50 security vulnerabilities, five of which relate to various components in Qualcomm chipsets. Some of the notable issues patched include denial-of-service (DoS) issue impacting Modem, and numerous information disclosure flaws affecting GsmSs, ACPM, and Trusty.  The updates are available for supported Pixel devices , such as Pixel 5a with 5G, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7a, Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 8a, and Pixel Fold. Earlier this April, Google resolved...

A previously undocumented cross-platform malware codenamed Noodle RAT has been put to use by Chinese-speaking threat actors either for espionage or cybercrime for years. While this backdoor was previously categorized as a variant of Gh0st RAT and Rekoobe , Trend Micro security researcher Hara Hiroaki said "this backdoor is not merely a variant of existing malware, but is a new type altogether." Noodle RAT, which also goes by the monikers ANGRYREBEL and Nood RAT , comes in both Windows and Linux flavors, and is believed to have been put to use since at least July 2016. The remote access trojan Gh0st RAT first surfaced in 2008 when a China threat group called the C. Rufus Security Team made its source code publicly available. Over the years, the malware – alongside other tools like PlugX and ShadowPad – has become a hallmark of Chinese government hackers, who have used it in numerous campaigns and attacks. The Windows version of Noodle RAT, an in-memory modular backd...

A newly released report by cybersecurity firm CTM360 reveals a large-scale scam operation utilizing fake news websites—known as Baiting News Sites (BNS)—to deceive users into online investment fraud across 50 countries. These BNS pages are made to look like real news outlets: CNN, BBC, CNBC, or regional media. They publish fake stories that feature public figures, central banks, or financial brands, all claiming to back new ways to earn passive income. The goal? Build trust quickly and steer readers toward professional-looking scam platforms like Trap10, Solara Vynex, or Eclipse Earn. Scammers use sponsored ads on Google, Meta, and blog networks to push traffic to these sites. Ads often carry clickbait headlines—"You won't believe what a prominent public figure just revealed"—paired with official photos or national flags to make them feel legit. Clicking the ad directs users to a fake article, which then redirects them to a fraudulent trading platform. Many of these scams follow a...

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of an ongoing cryptojacking campaign targeting misconfigured Kubernetes clusters to mine Dero cryptocurrency. Cloud security firm Wiz, which shed light on the activity, said it's an updated variant of a financially motivated operation that was first documented by CrowdStrike in March 2023. "In this incident, the threat actor abused anonymous access to an Internet-facing cluster to launch malicious container images hosted at Docker Hub, some of which have more than 10,000 pulls," Wiz researchers Avigayil Mechtinger, Shay Berkovich, and Gili Tikochinski said . "These docker images contain a UPX-packed DERO miner named 'pause.'" Initial access is accomplished by targeting externally accessible Kubernetes API servers with anonymous authentication enabled to deliver the miner payloads. Unlike the 2023 version that deployed a Kubernetes DaemonSet named "proxy-api," the latest flavor makes use of seemingly b...

Last week, the notorious hacker gang, ShinyHunters, sent shockwaves across the globe by allegedly plundering 1.3 terabytes of data from 560 million users. This colossal breach, with a price tag of $500,000, could expose the personal information of a massive swath of a live event company's clientele, igniting a firestorm of concern and outrage.  Let's review the facts: two large organizations announced that they suffered a data breach, identifying unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment. The accessed business records contained critical information on some employees, a large number of customers and other key business data.  The cloud connection  What might link these two breaches is the cloud data company Snowflake, which counts among its users both organizations. Snowflake did publish a warning with CISA , indicating a "recent increase in cyber threat activity targeting customer accounts on its cloud data platform." Snowflake issued a reco...

Threat actors linked to the Black Basta ransomware may have exploited a recently disclosed privilege escalation flaw in the Microsoft Windows Error Reporting Service as a zero-day, according to new findings from Symantec. The security flaw in question is CVE-2024-26169 (CVSS score: 7.8), an elevation of privilege bug in the Windows Error Reporting Service that could be exploited to achieve SYSTEM privileges. It was patched by Microsoft in March 2024. "Analysis of an exploit tool deployed in recent attacks revealed evidence that it could have been compiled prior to patching, meaning at least one group may have been exploiting the vulnerability as a zero-day," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The financially motivated threat cluster is being tracked by the company under the name Cardinal. It's also monitored by the cybersecurity community under the names Storm-1811 and UNC4393 . It's known to mon...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an ongoing phishing campaign that leverages recruiting- and job-themed lures to deliver a Windows-based backdoor named WARMCOOKIE. "WARMCOOKIE appears to be an initial backdoor tool used to scout out victim networks and deploy additional payloads," Elastic Security Labs researcher Daniel Stepanic said in a new analysis. "Each sample is compiled with a hard-coded [command-and-control] IP address and RC4 key." The backdoor comes with capabilities to fingerprint infected machines, capture screenshots, and drop more malicious programs. The company is tracking the activity under the name REF6127. The attack chains observed since late April involve the use of email messages purporting to be from recruitment firms like Hays, Michael Page, and PageGroup, urging recipients to click on an embedded link to view details about a job opportunity. Users who end up clicking on the link are then prompted to download a docume...