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Phishing campaigns involving the  Qakbot malware  are using Scalable Vector Graphics ( SVG ) images embedded in HTML email attachments. The new distribution method was spotted by Cisco Talos, which  said  it identified fraudulent email messages featuring HTML attachments with encoded SVG images that incorporate  HTML script tags . HTML smuggling is a  technique  that relies on using legitimate features of HTML and JavaScript to run encoded malicious code contained within the lure attachment and assemble the payload on a victim's machine as opposed to making an HTTP request to fetch the malware from a remote server. In other words, the idea is to evade email gateways by storing a binary in the form of a JavaScript code that's decoded and downloaded when opened via a web browser. The attack chain spotted by the cybersecurity company concerns a JavaScript that's smuggled inside of the SVG image and executed when the unsuspecting email recipient laun...

A new Go-based botnet has been spotted scanning and brute-forcing self-hosted websites using the WordPress content management system (CMS) to seize control of targeted systems. "This new brute forcer is part of a new campaign we have named GoTrim because it was written in Go and uses ':::trim:::' to split data communicated to and from the C2 server," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researchers Eduardo Altares, Joie Salvio, and Roy Tay  said . The active campaign, observed since September 2022, utilizes a bot network to perform distributed brute-force attacks in an attempt to login to the targeted web server. A successful break-in is followed by the operator installing a downloader PHP script in the newly compromised host that, in turn, is designed to deploy the "bot client" from a hard-coded URL, effectively adding the machine to the growing network. In its present form, GoTrim does not have self-propagation capabilities of its own, nor can it distribute oth...

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed it took steps to implement blocking protections and suspend accounts that were used to publish malicious drivers that were certified by its Windows Hardware Developer Program . The tech giant said its investigation revealed the activity was restricted to a number of developer program accounts and that no further compromise was detected. Cryptographically signing malware is concerning not least because it not only undermines a key security mechanism but also allows threat actors to subvert traditional detection methods and infiltrate target networks to perform highly privileged operations. The probe, Redmond stated, was initiated after it was notified of rogue drivers being used in post-exploitation efforts, including deploying ransomware, by cybersecurity firms Mandiant, SentinelOne, and Sophos on October 19, 2022. One notable aspect of these attacks was that the adversary had already obtained administrative privileges on compromised systems before ...

Protecting customer data is critical for any business accepting online payment information. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), created by leading credit card companies, establishes best practices for protecting consumers' information. By adhering to these standards, businesses can ensure that their customer's personal and financial information is secure.  The PCI DSS security standards apply to any business that processes, stores, or transmits credit card information. Failure to comply with the PCI DSS can result in costly fines and penalties from credit card companies. It can also lead to a loss of customer trust, which can be devastating for any business. PCI DSS 4.0 was released in March 2022 and will replace the current PCI DSS 3.2.1 standard in March 2025. That provides a three-year transition period for organizations to be compliant with 4.0. The latest version of the standard will bring a new focus to an overlooked yet critically important ar...

Tech giant Microsoft released its last set of monthly security updates for 2022 with  fixes for 49 vulnerabilities  across its software products. Of the 49 bugs, six are rated Critical, 40 are rated Important, and three are rated Moderate in severity. The updates are in addition to  24 vulnerabilities  that have been addressed in the Chromium-based Edge browser since the start of the month. December's Patch Tuesday plugs two zero-day vulnerabilities, one that's actively exploited and another issue that's listed as publicly disclosed at the time of release. The former relates to  CVE-2022-44698  (CVSS score: 5.4), one of the  three security bypass issues  in Windows SmartScreen that could be exploited by a malicious actor to evade mark of the web (MotW) protections. It's worth noting that this issue, in conjunction with  CVE-2022-41091  (CVSS score: 5.4), has been observed being exploited by Magniber ransomware actors to deliver rogu...

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) on Tuesday  said  a threat actor tracked as APT5 has been actively exploiting a zero-day flaw in Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway to take over affected systems. The critical remote code execution vulnerability, identified as  CVE-2022-27518 , could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute commands remotely on vulnerable devices and seize control. Successful exploitation, however, requires that the Citrix ADC or Citrix Gateway appliance is configured as a SAML service provider (SP) or a SAML identity provider (IdP). The following supported versions of Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway are affected by the vulnerability - Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway 13.0 before 13.0-58.32 Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway 12.1 before 12.1-65.25 Citrix ADC 12.1-FIPS before 12.1-55.291 Citrix ADC 12.1-NDcPP before 12.1-55.291 Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway versions 13.1 are not impacted. The company also said there are no...

Apple on Tuesday rolled out security updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and Safari web browser to address a new zero-day vulnerability that could result in the execution of malicious code. Tracked as  CVE-2022-42856 , the issue has been described by the tech giant as a type confusion issue in the WebKit browser engine that could be triggered when processing specially crafted content, leading to arbitrary code execution. The company said it's "aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1." While details surrounding the exact nature of the attacks are unknown as yet, it's likely that it involved a case of social engineering or a watering hole to infect the devices when visiting a rogue or legitimate-but-compromised domain via the browser. It's worth noting that every third-party web browser that's available for iOS and iPadOS, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edg...

Google on Tuesday announced the open source availability of  OSV-Scanner , a scanner that aims to offer easy access to vulnerability information about various projects. The  Go-based tool , powered by the Open Source Vulnerabilities ( OSV ) database, is designed to connect "a project's list of dependencies with the vulnerabilities that affect them," Google software engineer Rex Pan in a post shared with The Hacker News. "The OSV-Scanner generates reliable, high-quality vulnerability information that closes the gap between a developer's list of packages and the information in vulnerability databases," Pan added. The idea is to identify all the transitive dependencies of a project and highlight relevant vulnerabilities using data pulled from OSV.dev database. Google further stated that the open source platform supports 16 ecosystems, counting all major languages, Linux distributions (Debian and Alpine), as well as Android, Linux Kernel, and  OSS-Fuzz . ...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) Public Gallery that could have been potentially exploited to stage a multitude of attacks, according to cloud security firm Lightspin. "By exploiting this vulnerability, a malicious actor could delete all images in the Amazon ECR Public Gallery or update the image contents to inject malicious code," Gafnit Amiga, director of security research at Lightspin, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This malicious code is executed on any machine that pulls and runs the image, whether on user's local machines, Kubernetes clusters or cloud environments." ECR is a  container image registry service  managed by Amazon Web Services, enabling users to package code as Docker images and deploy the artifacts in a scalable manner. Public repositories hosted on ECR are displayed in what's called the  ECR Public Gallery . "By default, your account has read and write acce...