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Suspected Russian threat actors have been targeting Eastern European users in the crypto industry with fake job opportunities as bait to install information-stealing malware on compromised hosts. The attackers "use several highly obfuscated and under-development custom loaders in order to infect those involved in the cryptocurrency industry with Enigma stealer," Trend Micro researchers Aliakbar Zahravi and Peter Girnus  said  in a report this week. Enigma is said to be an altered version of Stealerium, an open source C#-based malware that acts as a stealer, clipper, and keylogger. The intricate infection journey starts with a rogue RAR archive file that's distributed via phishing or social media platforms. It contains two documents, one of which is a .TXT file that includes a set of sample interview questions related to cryptocurrency. The second file is a Microsoft Word document that, while serving as a decoy, is tasked with launching the first-stage Enigma loader, ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday  added  three flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active abuse in the wild. Included among the three is  CVE-2022-24990 , a bug affecting TerraMaster network-attached storage (TNAS) devices that could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution with the highest privileges. Details about the flaw were  disclosed  by Ethiopian cyber security research firm Octagon Networks in March 2022. The vulnerability, according to a  joint advisory  released by U.S. and South Korean government authorities, is said to have been weaponized by North Korean nation-state hackers to strike healthcare and critical infrastructure entities with ransomware. The second shortcoming to be added to KEV catalog is  CVE-2015-2291 , an unspecified flaw in the Intel ethernet diagnostics driver for Windows (IQVW32.sys and IQVW64.sys) that could throw an a...

Four different rogue packages in the Python Package Index ( PyPI ) have been found to carry out a number of malicious actions, including dropping malware, deleting the netstat utility, and manipulating the SSH authorized_keys file. The packages in question are  aptx ,  bingchilling2 ,  httops , and  tkint3rs , all of which were collectively downloaded about 450 times before they were taken down. While aptx is an attempt to impersonate Qualcomm's  highly popular audio codec  of the same name, httops and tkint3rs are typosquats of https and tkinter, respectively. "Most of these packages had well thought out names, to purposely confuse people," security researcher and journalist Ax Sharma  said . An analysis of the malicious code injected in the setup script reveals the presence of an obfuscated  Meterpreter payload  that's disguised as " pip ," a legitimate package installer for Python, and which can be leveraged to gain shell access to the...

State-backed hackers from North Korea are conducting ransomware attacks against healthcare and critical infrastructure facilities to fund illicit activities, U.S. and South Korean cybersecurity and intelligence agencies warned in a joint advisory. The attacks, which demand cryptocurrency ransoms in exchange for recovering access to encrypted files, are designed to support North Korea's national-level priorities and objectives. This includes "cyber operations targeting the United States and South Korea governments — specific targets include Department of Defense Information Networks and Defense Industrial Base member networks," the authorities  said . Threat actors with North Korea have been  linked  to  espionage ,  financial theft , and cryptojacking operations for years, including the infamous  WannaCry ransomware attacks  of 2017 that infected hundreds of thousands of machines located in over 150 countries. Since then, North Korean nation-stat...

Here are three of the worst breaches, attacker tactics and techniques of 2022, and the security controls that can provide effective, enterprise security protection for them. #1: 2 RaaS Attacks in 13 Months Ransomware as a service is a type of attack in which the ransomware software and infrastructure are leased out to the attackers. These ransomware services can be purchased on the dark web from other threat actors and ransomware gangs. Common purchasing plans include buying the entire tool, using the existing infrastructure while paying per infection, or letting other attackers perform the service while sharing revenue with them. In this attack, the threat actor consists of one of the most prevalent ransomware groups, specializing in access via third parties, while the targeted company is a medium-sized retailer with dozens of sites in the United States. The threat actors used ransomware as a service to breach the victim's network. They were able to exploit third-party creden...

In a first-of-its-kind coordinated action, the U.K. and U.S. governments on Thursday levied sanctions against seven Russian nationals for their affiliation to the TrickBot, Ryuk, and Conti cybercrime operation. The individuals  designated  under sanctions are Vitaly Kovalev (aka Alex Konor, Bentley, or Bergen), Maksim Mikhailov (aka Baget), Valentin Karyagin (aka Globus), Mikhail Iskritskiy (aka Tropa), Dmitry Pleshevskiy (aka Iseldor), Ivan Vakhromeyev (aka Mushroom), and Valery Sedletski (aka Strix). "Current members of the TrickBot group are associated with Russian Intelligence Services," the U.S. Treasury Department  noted . "The TrickBot group's preparations in 2020 aligned them to Russian state objectives and targeting previously conducted by Russian Intelligence Services." TrickBot, which is attributed to a threat actor named ITG23, Gold Blackburn, and Wizard Spider, emerged in 2016 as a derivative of the Dyre banking trojan and evolved into a  highly...

Popular social news aggregation platform Reddit has disclosed that it was the victim of a security incident that enabled unidentified threat actors to gain unauthorized access to internal documents, code, and some unspecified business systems. The company blamed it on a "sophisticated and highly-targeted phishing attack" that took place on February 5, 2023, aimed at its employees. The attack entailed sending out "plausible-sounding prompts" that redirected to a website masquerading as Reddit's intranet portal in an attempt to steal credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) tokens. A single employee's credentials is said to have been phished in this manner, enabling the threat actor to access Reddit's internal systems. The affected employee self-reported the hack, it further added. The company, however, stressed that there is no evidence to suggest that its production systems were breached or that users' non-public data had been compromise...

A set of 38 security vulnerabilities has been uncovered in wireless industrial internet of things (IIoT) devices from four different vendors that could pose a significant attack surface for threat actors looking to exploit operational technology (OT) environments. "Threat actors can exploit vulnerabilities in Wireless IIoT devices to gain initial access to internal OT networks," Israeli industrial cybersecurity company Otorio  said . "They can use these vulnerabilities to bypass security layers and infiltrate target networks, putting critical infrastructure at risk or interrupting manufacturing." The flaws, in a nutshell, offer a remote entry point for attack, enabling unauthenticated adversaries to gain a foothold and subsequently use it as leverage to spread to other hosts, thereby causing serious damage. Some of the identified shortcomings could be chained to give an external actor direct access to thousands of internal OT networks over the internet, security...

Have you ever stopped to think about the potential consequences of a cyberattack on your organization? It's getting more intense and destructive every day, and organizations are feeling the heat. That's why more and more businesses are turning to  cyber insurance  to find some much-needed peace of mind. Imagine, in the unfortunate event of a successful security breach or ransomware attack, the right policy can help minimize liability and contain losses. However, skyrocketing claims in 2020 sent shockwaves through the insurance industry, forcing insurance providers to reinvent the criteria for acquiring or renewing cyber insurance. As a result, businesses are now navigating a dramatically altered terrain where they must prove their ability to defend against ransomware attacks. This includes implementing a wide range of robust security measures, particularly around identity protection requirements such as MFA coverage and service account protection. The new identity protecti...