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An Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability was actively exploited by a North Korean threat actor to target South Korean users by capitalizing on the recent  Itaewon Halloween crowd crush  to trick users into downloading malware. The discovery, reported by Google Threat Analysis Group researchers Benoît Sevens and Clément Lecigne, is the latest set of attacks perpetrated by  ScarCruft , which is also called APT37, InkySquid, Reaper, and Ricochet Chollima. "The group has historically focused their targeting on South Korean users, North Korean defectors, policy makers, journalists, and human rights activists," TAG  said  in a Thursday analysis. The new findings illustrate the threat actor's continued abuse of Internet Explorer flaws such as CVE-2020-1380 and CVE-2021-26411 to drop backdoors like  BLUELIGHT and Dolphin , the latter of which was disclosed by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET late last month. Another key tool in its arsenal is  RokRat , ...

An Iranian advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as  Agrius  has been attributed as behind a set of data wiper attacks aimed at diamond industries in South Africa, Israel, and Hong Kong. The wiper, referred to as Fantasy by ESET, is believed to have been delivered via a supply-chain attack targeting an Israeli software suite developer as part of a campaign that began in February 2022. Victims include HR firms, IT consulting companies, and a diamond wholesaler in Israel; a South African entity working in the diamond industry; and a jeweler based in Hong Kong. "The Fantasy wiper is built on the foundations of the previously reported Apostle wiper but does not attempt to masquerade as ransomware, as Apostle originally did," ESET researcher Adam Burgher  disclosed  in a Wednesday analysis. "Instead, it goes right to work wiping data." Apostle was  first documented  by SentinelOne in May 2021 as a wiper-turned-ransomware that was deployed in destruct...

The Vice Society cybercrime group has disproportionately targeted educational institutions, accounting for 33 victims in 2022 and surpassing other ransomware families like LockBit, BlackCat, BianLian, and Hive. Other prominent industry verticals targeted include healthcare, governments, manufacturing, retail, and legal services, according to an  analysis of leak site data  by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. The cybersecurity company called Vice Society one of the "most impactful ransomware gangs of 2022." Of the 100 organizations affected in total, 35 cases have been reported from the U.S., followed by 18 in the U.K., seven in Spain, six each in Brazil and France, four each in Germany and Italy, and three cases in Australia. Active since May 2021, Vice Society stands apart from other ransomware crews in that it does not use a ransomware variant of its own, rather relying on pre-existing ransomware binaries such as HelloKitty and Zeppelin that are sold on underground forums....

Critical infrastructure is important for societal existence, growth, and development. Societies are reliant on the services provided by critical infrastructure sectors like telecommunication, energy, healthcare, transportation, and information technology. Safety and security are necessary for the optimal operation of these critical infrastructures. Critical infrastructure is made up of digital and non-digital assets. Organizations must stay ahead of cybersecurity threats to prevent failures caused by cyber attacks on critical infrastructure. Finding ways to protect digital assets in an ever-changing landscape filled with threats is a continuous activity. Organizations must also employ efficient security solutions and best practices to stay protected and reduce the chances of compromise. Security solutions help secure and improve the visibility of an organization's threat landscape. Different solutions use different concepts and approaches. An important concept that has risen recently...

The China-linked nation-state hacking group referred to as  Mustang Panda  is using lures related to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War to attack entities in Europe and the Asia Pacific. That's according to the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team, which  analyzed  a RAR archive file titled "Political Guidance for the new EU approach towards Russia.rar." Some of the targeted countries include Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Turkey, Italy, and Brazil. Mustang Panda is a prolific cyber-espionage group from China that's also tracked under the names Bronze President, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, and Red Lich. It's believed to be active since at least July 2018, per Secureworks'  threat profile , although indications are that the threat actor has been targeting entities worldwide as early as 2012. Mustang Panda is known to heavily rely on sending weaponized attachments via phishing emails to achieve initial infection, with the intrusions eventually le...

A state-sponsored hacking group with links to Russia has been linked to attack infrastructure that spoofs the Microsoft login page of Global Ordnance, a legitimate U.S.-based military weapons and hardware supplier. Recorded Future attributed the new infrastructure to a threat activity group it tracks under the name  TAG-53 , and is broadly known by the cybersecurity community as Blue Callisto , Callisto, COLDRIVER, SEABORGIUM, and TA446. "Based on historical public reporting on overlapping TAG-53 campaigns, it is likely that this credential harvesting activity is enabled in part through phishing," Recorded Future's Insikt Group  said  in a report published this week. The cybersecurity firm said it discovered 38 domains, nine of which contained references to companies like UMO Poland, Sangrail LTD, DTGruelle, Blue Sky Network, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. It's suspected that the t...

Cryptocurrency investment companies are the target of a developing threat cluster that uses Telegram groups to seek out potential victims. Microsoft's Security Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is tracking the activity under the name  DEV-0139 , and builds upon a recent report from Volexity that attributed the same set of attacks to North Korea's  Lazarus Group . "DEV-0139 joined Telegram groups used to facilitate communication between VIP clients and cryptocurrency exchange platforms and identified their target from among the members," the tech giant  said . The adversary subsequently impersonated another cryptocurrency investment company and invited the victim to join a different Telegram chat group under the pretext of asking for feedback on the trading fee structure used by exchange platforms across VIP tiers. It's worth pointing out that the  VIP program  is  designed  to  reward   high-volume traders  with exclusive trading ...

NOTE: In this blog, Zerobot refers to a botnet that spreads primarily through IoT and web application vulnerabilities. It is not associated with the chatbot ZeroBot.ai. A novel Go-based botnet called  Zerobot  has been observed in the wild proliferating by taking advantage of nearly two dozen security vulnerabilities in the internet of things (IoT) devices and other software. The botnet "contains several modules, including self-replication, attacks for different protocols, and self-propagation," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . "It also communicates with its command-and-control server using the WebSocket protocol." The campaign, which is said to have commenced after November 18, 2022, primarily singles out Windows and Linux operating systems to gain control of vulnerable devices. Zerobot gets its name from a propagation script that's used to retrieve the malicious payload after gaining access to a host depending on its microarchitecture ...

A malicious campaign targeting the Middle East is likely linked to  BackdoorDiplomacy , an advanced persistent threat (APT) group with ties to China. The espionage activity, directed against a telecom company in the region, is said to have commenced on August 19, 2021 through the successful exploitation of  ProxyShell flaws  in the Microsoft Exchange Server. Initial compromise leveraged binaries vulnerable to side-loading techniques, followed by using a mix of legitimate and bespoke tools to conduct reconnaissance, harvest data, move laterally across the environment, and evade detection. "File attributes of the malicious tools showed that the first tools deployed by the threat actors were the NPS proxy tool and IRAFAU backdoor," Bitdefender researchers Victor Vrabie and Adrian Schipor said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Starting in February 2022, the threat actors used another tool – [the] Quarian backdoor, along with many other scanners and proxy/tunnel...