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A WordPress plugin with over one million installs has been found to contain a critical vulnerability that could result in the execution of arbitrary code on compromised websites. The plugin in question is  Essential Addons for Elementor , which provides WordPress site owners with a library of over 80 elements and extensions to help design and customize pages and posts. "This vulnerability allows any user, regardless of their authentication or authorization status, to perform a local file inclusion attack," Patchstack  said  in a report. "This attack can be used to include local files on the filesystem of the website, such as /etc/passwd. This can also be used to perform RCE by including a file with malicious PHP code that normally cannot be executed." That said, the vulnerability only exists if widgets like dynamic gallery and product gallery are used, which utilize the vulnerable function, resulting in local file inclusion – an attack technique in which a web ...

In a sign that threat actors continuously shift tactics and update their defensive measures, the operators of the SolarMarker information stealer and backdoor have been found leveraging stealthy Windows Registry tricks to establish long-term persistence on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Sophos, which spotted the new behavior, said that the remote access implants are still being detected on targeted networks despite the campaign witnessing a decline in November 2021. Boasting of information harvesting and backdoor capabilities, the .NET-based malware has been linked to at least three different attack waves in 2021. The first set,  reported in April , took advantage of search engine poisoning techniques to trick business professionals into visiting sketchy Google sites that installed SolarMarker on the victim's machines. Then in August, the malware was  observed  targeting healthcare and education sectors with the goal of gathering credentials and sensitive in...

An advanced persistent threat group with links to Iran has updated its malware toolset to include a novel PowerShell-based implant called PowerLess Backdoor , according to new research published by Cybereason. The Boston-headquartered cybersecurity company attributed the malware to a hacking group known as Charming Kitten (aka Phosphorous, APT35, or  TA453 ), while also calling out the backdoor's evasive PowerShell execution. "The PowerShell code runs in the context of a .NET application, thus not launching 'powershell.exe' which enables it to evade security products," Daniel Frank, senior malware researcher at Cybereason,  said . "The toolset analyzed includes extremely modular, multi-staged malware that decrypts and deploys additional payloads in several stages for the sake of both stealth and efficacy." The threat actor, which is active since at least 2017, has been behind a series of campaigns in recent years, including those wherein the adversa...

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...

Cybersecurity researchers on Monday said they uncovered evidence of attempted attacks by a Russia-linked hacking operation targeting a Ukrainian entity in July 2021. Broadcom-owned Symantec, in a new report published Monday, attributed the attacks to an actor tracked as Gamaredon (aka Shuckworm or Armageddon), a cyber-espionage collective known to be active since at least 2013. In November 2021, Ukrainian intelligence agencies  branded  the group as a "special project" of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), in addition to pointing fingers at it for carrying out over 5,000 cyberattacks against public authorities and critical infrastructure located in the country. Gamaredon attacks typically originate with phishing emails that trick the recipients into installing a custom remote access trojan called Pterodo. Symantec disclosed that, between July 14, 2021 and August 18, 2021, the actor installed several variants of the backdoor as well as deployed additional scripts...

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are making headlines almost every day.  2021 saw a 434%  upsurge in DDoS attacks, 5.5 times higher than 2020.  Q3 2021 saw a 24%  increase in the number of DDoS attacks in comparison to Q3 2020.  Advanced DDoS attacks that are typically targeted, known as smart attacks, rose by 31% in the same period. Further,  73% of DDoS attacks  in Q3 2021 were multi-vector attacks that combined multiple techniques to attack the targeted systems. The largest percentage of DDoS targets (40.8%) was in the US Banks, and financial institutions were the biggest DDoS and DoS attack targets in the past couple of years.  Does this mean businesses and organizations that aren't in the banking and financial services sector are safe from  DDoS attacks ? Most definitely not! Every business is a potential DDoS target. Read on to know why and what measures to take to keep your business effectively protected.  Common D...

Details have emerged about a previously undocumented malware campaign undertaken by the Iranian MuddyWater advanced persistent threat (APT) group targeting Turkish private organizations and governmental institutions. "This campaign utilizes malicious PDFs, XLS files and Windows executables to deploy malicious PowerShell-based downloaders acting as initial footholds into the target's enterprise," Cisco Talos researchers Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura  said  in a newly published report. The  development  comes as the U.S. Cyber Command, earlier this month,  linked the APT  to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The intrusions, which are believed to have been orchestrated as recently as November 2021, were directed against Turkish government entities, including the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey ( TÜBİTAK ), using weaponized Excel documents and PDF files hosted on attacker-controlled or media-sharing websit...

A number of security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in 42 Gears' SureMDM device management solution that could be weaponized by attackers to perform a supply chain compromise against affected organizations. Cybersecurity firm Immersive Labs, in a  technical write-up  detailing the findings, said that 42Gears released a series of updates between November 2021 and January 2022 to close out multiple flaws affecting both the platform's Linux agent and the web console. The India-based company's  SureMDM  is a cross-platform mobile device management service that allows enterprises to remotely monitor, manage, and secure a fleet of company-owned systems for dedicated-use and employee-owned devices. 42Gears  claims  that SureMDM is used by over 10,000 companies worldwide. The issues identified in the web dashboard are also of critical in nature, potentially allowing an attacker to gain code execution over individual devices, desktops, or servers. Further...

Samba has issued  software updates  to address multiple security vulnerabilities that, if successfully exploited, could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code with the highest privileges on affected installations. Chief among them is  CVE-2021-44142 , which  impacts  all versions of Samba before 4.13.17 and concerns an  out-of-bounds  heap read/write vulnerability in the VFS module " vfs_fruit " that provides compatibility with Apple SMB clients. Samba  is a popular freeware implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol that allows users to access files, printers, and other commonly shared resources over a network. "All versions of Samba prior to 4.13.17 are vulnerable to an out-of-bounds heap read write vulnerability that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code as root on affected Samba installations that use the VFS module vfs_fruit," the maintainers said in an advisory published on January 31. According to ...