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Cybersecurity researchers today unveiled a complex and targeted espionage attack on potential government sector victims in South East Asia that they believe was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese APT group at least since 2018. "The attack has a complex and complete arsenal of droppers, backdoors and other tools involving Chinoxy backdoor, PcShare RAT and FunnyDream backdoor binaries, with forensic artefacts pointing towards a sophisticated Chinese actor," Bitdefender said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News. It's worth noting that the  FunnyDream  campaign has been previously linked to high-profile government entities in Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines, with a majority of victims located in Vietnam. According to the researchers, not only around 200 machines exhibited attack indicators associated with the campaign, evidence points to the fact the threat actor may have compromised  domain controllers  on the victim's network, allowing them to m...

Cisco has published multiple security advisories concerning critical flaws in Cisco Security Manager (CSM) a week after the networking equipment maker quietly released patches with version 4.22 of the platform. The development comes after Code White researcher Florian Hauser (frycos) yesterday publicly disclosed proof-of-concept ( PoC ) code for as many as 12 security vulnerabilities affecting the  web interface of CSM  that makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution (RCE) attacks. The flaws were responsibly reported to Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) three months ago, on July 13. "Since Cisco PSIRT became unresponsive and the published release 4.22 still doesn't mention any of the vulnerabilities,"  claimed frycos  in a tweet, citing the reasons for going public with the PoCs yesterday. Cisco Security Manager  is an end-to-end enterprise solution that allows organizations to enforce access po...

Cybersecurity researchers took the wraps off a novel supply chain attack in South Korea that abuses legitimate security software and stolen digital certificates to distribute remote administration tools (RATs) on target systems. Attributing the operation to the Lazarus Group, also known as Hidden Cobra , Slovak internet security company ESET said the state-sponsored threat actor leveraged the mandatory requirement that internet users in the country must install additional security software in order to avail Internet banking and essential government services. The attack, while limited in scope, exploits WIZVERA VeraPort, which is billed as a "program designed to integrate and manage internet banking-related installation programs," such as digital certificates issued by the banks to individuals and businesses to secure all transactions and process payments. The development is the latest in a long history of espionage attacks against victims in South Korea, including Opera...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Complexity is the bane of effective cybersecurity. The need to maintain an increasing array of cybersecurity tools to protect organizations from an expanding set of cyber threats is leading to runaway costs, staff inefficiencies, and suboptimal threat response. Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited budgets and staff are significantly impacted. On average, SMEs manage more than a dozen different security tools, making it very difficult for security teams to manage and orchestrate. SMEs are, understandably, looking to consolidate their security tools to make cybersecurity more manageable and cost-effective. The challenge for these companies is to figure out how to consolidate cybersecurity tools without losing needed protections safely. An upcoming webinar is set to help SMEs with this very issue ( sign up here ). The Cybersecurity Complexity Problem Cannot Be Overemphasized Over the past decade (at least), CISOs have continuously lobbied for increased cybersecurity ...

A group of academics from the University of California and Tsinghua University has uncovered a series of critical security flaws that could lead to a revival of DNS cache poisoning attacks. Dubbed " SAD DNS attack " (short for Side-channel AttackeD DNS), the technique makes it possible for a malicious actor to carry out an off-path attack, rerouting any traffic originally destined to a specific domain to a server under their control, thereby allowing them to eavesdrop and tamper with the communications. "This represents an important milestone — the first weaponizable network side channel attack that has serious security impacts," the researchers said. "The attack allows an off-path attacker to inject a malicious DNS record into a DNS cache." Tracked as CVE-2020-25705, the findings were presented at the ACM Conference on Computer, and Communications Security (CCS '20) held this week. The flaw affects operating systems Linux 3.18-5.10, Windows Serv...

A hackers-for-hire operation has been discovered using a strain of previously undocumented malware to target South Asian financial institutions and global entertainment companies. Dubbed " CostaRicto " by Blackberry researchers, the campaign appears to be the handiwork of APT mercenaries who possess bespoke malware tooling and complex VPN proxy and SSH tunneling capabilities. "CostaRicto targets are scattered across different countries in Europe, Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa, but the biggest concentration appears to be in South Asia (especially India, Bangladesh and Singapore and China), suggesting that the threat actor could be based in that region, but working on a wide range of commissions from diverse clients," the researchers said. The modus operandi in itself is quite straight-forward. Upon gaining an initial foothold in the target's environment via stolen credentials, the attacker proceeds to set up an SSH tunnel to download a backdoor and a p...

Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed a new kind of modular backdoor that targets point-of-sale (POS) restaurant management software from Oracle in an attempt to pilfer sensitive payment information stored in the devices. The backdoor — dubbed "ModPipe" — impacts Oracle MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Series (RES) 3700 POS systems, a widely used software suite in restaurants and hospitality establishments to efficiently handle POS, inventory, and labor management. A majority of the identified targets are primarily located in the US. "What makes the backdoor distinctive are its downloadable modules and their capabilities, as it contains a custom algorithm designed to gather RES 3700 POS database passwords by decrypting them from Windows registry values," ESET researchers said in an analysis . "Exfiltrated credentials allow ModPipe's operators access to database contents, including various definitions and configuration, status tables and information ab...

If organizations want to get serious about software security, they need to empower their engineers to play a defensive role against cyberattacks as they craft their code. The problem is, developers haven't had the most inspiring introduction to security training over the years, and anything that can be done to make their experience more engaging, productive, and fun is going to be a powerful motivator in helping them gain valuable secure coding skills. And after dedicating precious time to mastering new abilities that can help beat attackers at their own game, the opportunity to test these new powers is not easily found in a safe environment. So, what is a battle-hardened, security-aware engineer to do? A new feature released on the Secure Code Warrior platform, named ' Missions ,' is a challenge category that elevates users from the recall of learned security knowledge to the application of it in a real-world simulation environment. This scaffolded, microlearning app...