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Cyber espionage groups associated with China have been linked to a long-running campaign that has infiltrated several telecom operators located in a single Asian country at least since 2021. "The attackers placed backdoors on the networks of targeted companies and also attempted to steal credentials," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm did not reveal the country that was targeted, but said it found evidence to suggest that the malicious cyber activity may have started as far back as 2020. The attacks also targeted an unnamed services company that catered to the telecoms sector and a university in another Asian country, it added. The choice of tools used in this campaign overlaps with other missions conducted by Chinese espionage groups like Mustang Panda (aka Earth Preta and Fireant), RedFoxtrot (aka Neeedleminer and Nomad Panda), and Naikon (aka Firefly) in recent years. This incl...

A new Rust-based information stealer malware called Fickle Stealer has been observed being delivered via multiple attack chains with the goal of harvesting sensitive information from compromised hosts. Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said it's aware of four different distribution methods -- namely VBA dropper, VBA downloader, link downloader, and executable downloader -- with some of them using a PowerShell script to bypass User Account Control (UAC) and execute Fickle Stealer. The PowerShell script ("bypass.ps1" or "u.ps1") is also designed to periodically send information about the victim, including country, city, IP address, operating system version, computer name, and username to a Telegram bot controlled by the attacker. The stealer payload, which is protected using a packer, runs a series of anti-analysis checks to determine if it's running in a sandbox or a virtual machine environment, following which it beacons out to a remote server to exfiltrate da...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new evasive malware loader named SquidLoader that spreads via phishing campaigns targeting Chinese organizations. AT&T LevelBlue Labs, which first observed the malware in late April 2024, said it incorporates features that are designed to thwart static and dynamic analysis and ultimately evade detection. Attack chains leverage phishing emails that come with attachments that masquerade as Microsoft Word documents, but, in reality, are binaries that pave the way for the execution of the malware, which is then used to fetch second-stage shellcode payloads from a remote server, including Cobalt Strike. "These loaders feature heavy evasion and decoy mechanisms which help them remain undetected while also hindering analysis," security researcher Fernando Dominguez said . "The shellcode that is delivered is also loaded in the same loader process, likely to avoid writing the payload to disk and thus risk being detected." ...

I had the honor of hosting the first episode of the Xposure Podcast live from Xposure Summit 2025. And I couldn't have asked for a better kickoff panel: three cybersecurity leaders who don't just talk security, they live it. Let me introduce them. Alex Delay , CISO at IDB Bank, knows what it means to defend a highly regulated environment. Ben Mead , Director of Cybersecurity at Avidity Biosciences, brings a forward-thinking security perspective that reflects the innovation behind Avidity's targeted RNA therapeutics. Last but not least, Michael Francess , Director of Cybersecurity Advanced Threat at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, leads the charge in protecting the franchise. Each brought a unique vantage point to a common challenge: applying Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to complex production environments. Gartner made waves in 2023 with a bold prediction: organizations that prioritize CTEM will be three times less likely to be breached by 2026. But here's the kicker -...

Crypto exchange Kraken revealed that an unnamed security researcher exploited an "extremely critical" zero-day flaw in its platform to steal $3 million in digital assets and refused to return them. Details of the incident were shared by Kraken's Chief Security Officer, Nick Percoco, on X (formerly Twitter), stating it received a Bug Bounty program alert from the researcher about a bug that "allowed them to artificially inflate their balance on our platform" without sharing any other details Within minutes of receiving the alert, the company said it identified a security issue that essentially permitted an attacker to "initiate a deposit onto our platform and receive funds in their account without fully completing the deposit." While Kraken emphasized that no client assets were at risk due to the issue, it could have enabled a threat actor to print assets in their accounts. The problem was addressed within 47 minutes, it said. It also said the fl...

The China-nexus cyber espionage actor linked to the zero-day exploitation of security flaws in Fortinet , Ivanti , and VMware devices has been observed utilizing multiple persistence mechanisms in order to maintain unfettered access to compromised environments. "Persistence mechanisms encompassed network devices, hypervisors, and virtual machines, ensuring alternative channels remain available even if the primary layer is detected and eliminated," Mandiant researchers said in a new report. The threat actor in question is UNC3886 , which the Google-owned threat intelligence company branded as "sophisticated, cautious, and evasive." Attacks orchestrated by the adversary have leveraged zero-day flaws such as CVE-2022-41328 (Fortinet FortiOS), CVE-2022-22948 (VMware vCenter), and CVE-2023-20867 (VMware Tools) to perform various malicious actions, ranging from deploying backdoors to obtaining credentials for deeper access. It has also been observed exploiting ...

Are your tags really safe with Google Tag Manager? If you've been thinking that using GTM means that your tracking tags and pixels are safely managed , then it might be time to think again. In this article we look at how a big-ticket seller that does business on every continent came unstuck when it forgot that you can't afford to allow tags to go unmanaged or become misconfigured.  Read the full case study here . Google Tag Manager saves website owners time and money. Its visual interface lets them attach tracking tags to their sites and then modify them as needed without the need to call a developer every time. Such tags gather the marketing and analytics data that power growth, and GTM makes them easier to manage, but with strict rules around data privacy to consider, you can't trust it completely; it needs active oversight. The ticket seller A case in point that we recently became aware of involves a global company that sells tickets to live events. With global operations i...

Chinese-speaking users are the target of a never-before-seen threat activity cluster codenamed Void Arachne that employs malicious Windows Installer (MSI) files for virtual private networks (VPNs) to deliver a command-and-control (C&C) framework called Winos 4.0. "The campaign also promotes compromised MSI files embedded with nudifiers and deepfake pornography-generating software, as well as AI voice and facial technologies," Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim said in a technical report published today. "The campaign uses [Search Engine Optimization] poisoning tactics and social media and messaging platforms to distribute malware." The security vendor, which discovered the new threat actor group in early April 2024, said the attacks entail advertising popular software such as Google Chrome, LetsVPN, QuickVPN, and a Telegram language pack for the Simplified Chinese language to distribute Winos. Alternate attack...