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The threat actors associated with the Gootkit malware have made "notable changes" to their toolset, adding new components and obfuscations to their infection chains. Google-owned Mandiant is  monitoring  the activity cluster under the moniker  UNC2565 , noting that the usage of the malware is "exclusive to this group." Gootkit , also called Gootloader, is spread through compromised websites that victims are tricked into visiting when searching for business-related documents like agreements and contracts via a technique called search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning. The purported documents take the form of ZIP archives that harbor the JavaScript malware, which, when launched, paves the way for additional payloads such as  Cobalt Strike Beacon , FONELAUNCH, and SNOWCONE. FONELAUNCH is a .NET-based loader designed to load an encoded payload into memory, whereas SNOWCONE is a downloader that's tasked with retrieving next-stage payloads, typically  IcedID ,...

Microsoft is urging customers to keep their Exchange servers updated as well as take steps to bolster the environment, such as enabling  Windows Extended Protection  and configuring  certificate-based signing  of PowerShell serialization payloads. "Attackers looking to exploit unpatched Exchange servers are not going to go away," the tech giant's Exchange Team  said  in a post. "There are too many aspects of unpatched on-premises Exchange environments that are valuable to bad actors looking to exfiltrate data or commit other malicious acts." Microsoft also emphasized mitigations issued by the company are only a stopgap solution and that they can "become insufficient to protect against all variations of an attack," necessitating that users install necessary security updates to secure the servers. Exchange Server has been proven to be a lucrative attack vector in recent years, what with a number of security flaws in the software weaponized as zero-d...

The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) has released patches to address multiple security vulnerabilities in the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) 9 Domain Name System (DNS) software suite that could lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. "A remote attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to potentially cause denial-of-service conditions and system failures," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  said  in an advisory released Friday. The open source software is used by major financial firms, national and international carriers, internet service providers (ISPs), retailers, manufacturers, educational institutions, and government entities, according to its  website . All four flaws reside in  named , a  BIND9 service  that functions as an authoritative nameserver for a fixed set of DNS zones or as a recursive resolver for clients on a local network. The list of the bugs, which are rated 7.5 on the CVSS scoring syst...

AI agents promise to automate everything from financial reconciliations to incident response. Yet every time an AI agent spins up a workflow, it has to authenticate somewhere; often with a high-privilege API key, OAuth token, or service account that defenders can't easily see. These "invisible" non-human identities (NHIs) now outnumber human accounts in most cloud environments, and they have become one of the ripest targets for attackers. Astrix's Field CTO Jonathan Sander put it bluntly in a recent Hacker News webinar : "One dangerous habit we've had for a long time is trusting application logic to act as the guardrails. That doesn't work when your AI agent is powered by LLMs that don't stop and think when they're about to do something wrong. They just do it." Why AI Agents Redefine Identity Risk Autonomy changes everything: An AI agent can chain multiple API calls and modify data without a human in the loop. If the underlying credential is exposed or overprivileged, each addit...

Ukraine has come under a fresh cyber onslaught from Russia that involved the deployment of a previously undocumented Golang-based data wiper dubbed  SwiftSlicer . ESET attributed the attack to Sandworm, a nation-state group linked to Military Unit 74455 of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU). "Once executed it deletes shadow copies, recursively overwrites files located in %CSIDL_SYSTEM%\drivers, %CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE%\Windows\NTDS and other non-system drives and then reboots computer," ESET  disclosed  in a series of tweets. The overwrites are achieved by using randomly generated byte sequences to fill 4,096 byte-length blocks. The intrusion was discovered on January 25, 2023, the Slovak cybersecurity company added. "Attackers deployed the SwiftSlicer wiper using Group Policy of Active Directory," Robert Lipovsky, senior malware researcher for ESET, told The Hacker News. "Once SwiftSlicer...

The use of software as a service (SaaS) is experiencing rapid growth and shows no signs of slowing down. Its decentralized and easy-to-use nature is beneficial for increasing employee productivity, but it also poses many security and IT challenges. Keeping track of all the SaaS applications that have been granted access to an organization's data is a difficult task. Understanding the risks that SaaS applications pose is just as important, but it can be challenging to secure what cannot be seen. Many organizations have implemented access management solutions, but these are limited in visibility to only pre-approved applications. The average medium-sized organization has hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of SaaS applications that have been adopted by employees who needed a quick and easy solution or found a free version, completely bypassing IT and security. This leads to a significant risk as many of these applications do not have the necessary security and/or compliance standard...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered the real-world identity of the threat actor behind  Golden Chickens  malware-as-a-service, who goes by the online persona "badbullzvenom." eSentire's Threat Response Unit (TRU), in an exhaustive report published following a 16-month-long investigation,  said  it "found multiple mentions of the badbullzvenom account being shared between two people." The threat actor, known online as Frapstar and badbullzvenom, is said to identify themselves as "Chuck from Montreal," enabling the cybersecurity firm to piece together the criminal actor's digital footprint. This includes his real name, pictures, home address, the names of his parents, siblings, and friends, along with his social media accounts and his interests. He is also said to be the sole proprietor of a small business that's run from his own home. Golden Chickens, also known as  Venom Spider , is a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) provider that's ...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a PlugX sample that employs sneaky methods to infect attached removable USB media devices in order to propagate the malware to additional systems. "This PlugX variant is wormable and infects USB devices in such a way that it conceals itself from the Windows operating file system," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Mike Harbison and Jen Miller-Osborn  said . "A user would not know their USB device is infected or possibly used to exfiltrate data out of their networks." The cybersecurity company said it uncovered the artifact during an incident response effort following a Black Basta ransomware attack against an unnamed victim. Among other tools discovered in the compromised environment include the  Gootkit  malware loader and the  Brute Ratel C4  red team framework. The use of Brute Ratel by the Black Basta group was previously  highlighted  by Trend Micro in October 2022, with the software delivered as a...

Orcus  is a Remote Access Trojan with some distinctive characteristics. The RAT allows attackers to create plugins and offers a robust core feature set that makes it quite a dangerous malicious program in its class. RAT is quite a stable type that always makes it to the top. ANY.RUN's top malware types in 2022 That's why you'll definitely come across this type in your practice, and the Orcus family specifically. To simplify your analysis, we have collected 3 lifehacks you should take advantage of. Here we go. What is Orcus RAT?  Definition . Orcus RAT is a type of malicious software program that enables remote access and control of computers and networks. It is a type of Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that has been used by attackers to gain access to and control computers and networks. Capabilities . Once downloaded onto a computer or network, it begins to execute its malicious code, allowing the attacker to gain access and control. It is capable of stealing data, conducti...

The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on Thursday warned of spear-phishing attacks mounted by Russian and Iranian state-sponsored actors for information-gathering operations. "The attacks are not aimed at the general public but targets in specified sectors, including academia, defense, government organizations, NGOs, think tanks, as well as politicians, journalists, and activists," the NCSC  said . The agency attributed the intrusions to  SEABORGIUM  (aka Callisto, COLDRIVER, and TA446) and  APT42  (aka ITG18, TA453, and Yellow Garuda). The similarities in the modus operandi aside, there is no evidence the two groups are collaborating with each other. The activity is typical of spear-phishing campaigns, where the threat actors send messages tailored to the targets, while also taking enough time to research their interests and identify their social and professional circles. The initial contact is designed to appear innocuous in an attempt to gain th...