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Iranian state-sponsored actors are continuing to engage in social engineering campaigns targeting researchers by impersonating a U.S. think tank. "Notably the targets in this instance were all women who are actively involved in political affairs and human rights in the Middle East region," Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU)  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company attributed the activity to a hacking group it tracks as  Cobalt Illusion , and which is also known by the names APT35, Charming Kitten, ITG18, Phosphorus, TA453, and Yellow Garuda. The targeting of academics, activists, diplomats, journalists, politicians, and researchers by the threat actor  has been   well-documented   over  the  years . The group is suspected to be operating on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and has exhibited a pattern of using fake personas to establish contact with individuals who are of strategic ...

The infamous cryptocurrency miner group called 8220 Gang has been observed using a new crypter called ScrubCrypt to carry out cryptojacking operations. According to Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, the attack chain commences with the successful exploitation of susceptible Oracle WebLogic servers to download a PowerShell script that contains ScrubCrypt. Crypters are a type of software that can encrypt, obfuscate, and manipulate malware with the goal of evading detection by security programs. ScrubCrypt, which is advertised for sale by its author, comes with features to bypass Windows Defender protections as well as check for the presence of debugging and virtual machine environments. "ScrubCrypt is a crypter used to secure applications with a unique BAT packing method," security researcher Cara Lin  said  in a technical report. "The encrypted data at the top can be split into four parts using backslash '\.'" The crypter, in the final stage, decodes and loads...

Fortinet has released fixes to  address 15 security flaws , including one critical vulnerability impacting FortiOS and FortiProxy that could enable a threat actor to take control of affected systems. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-25610 , is rated 9.3 out of 10 for severity and was internally discovered and reported by its security teams. "A buffer underwrite ('buffer underflow') vulnerability in FortiOS and FortiProxy administrative interface may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the device and/or perform a DoS on the GUI, via specifically crafted requests," Fortinet  said  in an advisory. Underflow bugs , also called  buffer underruns , occur when the input data is shorter than the reserved space, causing unpredictable behavior or leakage of sensitive data from memory. Other possible consequences include memory corruption that could either be weaponized to induce a crash or execute arbitrary code. Fortinet said it's n...

A pair of severe security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the Jenkins open source automation server that could lead to code execution on targeted systems. The flaws, tracked as  CVE-2023-27898  and  CVE-2023-27905 , impact the Jenkins server and Update Center, and have been collectively christened  CorePlague  by cloud security firm Aqua. All versions of Jenkins versions prior to 2.319.2 are vulnerable and exploitable. "Exploiting these vulnerabilities could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the victim's Jenkins server, potentially leading to a complete compromise of the Jenkins server," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The shortcomings are the result of how Jenkins processes plugins available from the  Update Center , thereby potentially enabling a threat actor to upload a plugin with a malicious payload and trigger a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack. "Once the victim opens the ' Availabl...

As threats grow and attack surfaces get more complex, companies continue to struggle with the multitude of tools they utilize to handle endpoint security and management. This can leave gaps in an enterprise's ability to identify devices that are accessing the network and in ensuring that those devices are compliant with security policies. These gaps are often seen in outdated spreadsheets that are used to track and manage asset inventory, configurations, vulnerabilities, and more. Ultimately, this increases organizational risk while stifling efficiency and productivity. That's why unified security and endpoint management has gained ground, as noted in  Gartner's Hype Cycle for Endpoint Security, 2022 . As part of the market's need to gain a clearer, real-time picture of their devices and security posture, Syxsense launched its Enterprise platform last year to address the three key elements of endpoint management and security: vulnerabilities, patch, and compliance. Ac...

The North Korea-linked  Lazarus Group  has been observed weaponizing flaws in an undisclosed software to breach a financial business entity in South Korea twice within a span of a year. While the first attack in May 2022 entailed the use of a vulnerable version of a certificate software that's widely used by public institutions and universities, the re-infiltration in October 2022 involved the exploitation of a zero-day in the same program. Cybersecurity firm AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC)  said  it's refraining from divulging more specifics owing to the fact that "the vulnerability has not been fully verified yet and a software patch has not been released." The adversarial collective, after obtaining an initial foothold by an unknown method, abused the zero-day bug to perform lateral movement, shortly after which the AhnLab V3 anti-malware engine was disabled via a  BYOVD attack . It's worth noting here that the Bring Your Own Vulnerable...

High-profile government entities in Southeast Asia are the target of a cyber espionage campaign undertaken by a Chinese threat actor known as Sharp Panda since late last year. The intrusions are characterized by the use of a new version of the Soul modular framework, marking a departure from the group's attack chains observed in 2021. Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point  said  the "long-running" activities have historically singled out countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Sharp Panda was  first documented  by the firm in June 2021, describing it as a "highly-organized operation that placed significant effort into remaining under the radar." The use of the Soul backdoor in real-world attacks was first  detailed  by Broadcom's Symantec in October 2021 in connection to an unattributed espionage operation targeting defense, healthcare, and ICT sectors in Southeast Asia. The implant's origins, according to  research  publishe...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  three security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The list of vulnerabilities is below - CVE-2022-35914  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Teclib GLPI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2022-33891  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Apache Spark Command Injection Vulnerability CVE-2022-28810  (CVSS score: 6.8) - Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus Remote Code Execution Vulnerability The most critical of the three is  CVE-2022-35914 , which concerns a remote code execution vulnerability in the third-party library htmlawed present in  Teclib GLPI , an open source asset and IT management software package. The exact specifics surrounding the nature of attacks are unknown, but the Shadowserver Foundation in October 2022  noted  that it has seen exploitation attempts against its honeypots. Since then, a cURL-based one...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new information stealer dubbed SYS01stealer targeting critical government infrastructure employees, manufacturing companies, and other sectors since November 2022. "The threat actors behind the campaign are targeting Facebook business accounts by using Google ads and fake Facebook profiles that promote things like games, adult content, and cracked software, etc. to lure victims into downloading a malicious file," Morphisec said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The attack is designed to steal sensitive information, including login data, cookies, and Facebook ad and business account information." The Israeli cybersecurity company said the campaign was initially tied to a financially motivated cybercriminal operation  dubbed Ducktail  by Zscaler. However, WithSecure, which  first documented  the Ducktail activity cluster in July 2022, said the  two intrusion sets  are different from one another, indi...