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Managing vulnerabilities in the constantly evolving technological landscape is a difficult task. Although vulnerabilities emerge regularly, not all vulnerabilities present the same level of risk. Traditional metrics such as CVSS score or the number of vulnerabilities are insufficient for effective vulnerability management as they lack business context, prioritization, and understanding of attackers' opportunities. Vulnerabilities only represent a small part of the attack surface that attackers can leverage. Initially, organizations used manual methods to address known security weaknesses, but as technology and cyber threats evolved, a more automated and comprehensive approach became necessary. However, legacy vulnerability management tools were designed primarily for compliance and modern tools still face challenges in prioritization and limited resources, especially in dynamic and agile cloud environments. Modern vulnerability management integrates security tools such as scanne...

A financially-motivated North Korean threat actor is suspected to be behind a new Apple macOS malware strain called  RustBucket . "[RustBucket] communicates with command and control (C2) servers to download and execute various payloads," Jamf Threat Labs researchers Ferdous Saljooki and Jaron Bradley  said  in a technical report published last week.  The Apple device management company attributed it to a threat actor known as BlueNoroff, a subgroup within the infamous Lazarus cluster that's also tracked under the monikers APT38, Nickel Gladstone, Sapphire Sleet, Stardust Chollima, and TA444. The connections stem from tactical and infrastructure overlaps with a  prior campaign  exposed by Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky in late December 2022 likely aimed at Japanese financial entities using fake domains impersonating venture capital firms. BlueNoroff, unlike other constituent entities of the Lazarus Group, is known for its  sophisticated ...

Google's cloud division is following in the  footsteps of Microsoft  with the launch of  Security AI Workbench  that leverages generative AI models to gain better visibility into the threat landscape.  Powering the cybersecurity suite is Sec-PaLM, a specialized large language model ( LLM ) that's "fine-tuned for security use cases." The idea is to take advantage of the latest advances in AI to augment point-in-time incident analysis, threat detection, and analytics to counter and prevent new infections by delivering intelligence that's  trusted, relevant, and actionable . To that end, the Security AI Workbench spans a wide range of new AI-powered tools, including  VirusTotal Code Insight  and  Mandiant Breach Analytics for Chronicle , to analyze potentially malicious scripts and alert customers of active breaches in their environments. Users, like with Microsoft's GPT-4-based  Security Copilot , can "conversationally search, analyz...

Python supply chain attacks are surging in 2025. Join our webinar to learn how to secure your code, dependencies, and runtime with modern tools and strategies.

Search giant Google on Monday unveiled a major update to its  12-year-old  Authenticator app for Android and iOS with an account synchronization option that allows users to back up their time-based one-time passwords ( TOTPs ) to the cloud. "This change means users are better protected from lockout and that services can rely on users retaining access, increasing both convenience and security," Google's Christiaan Brand  said . The update, which also brings a new icon to the two-factor authenticator (2FA) app, finally brings it in line with Apple's  iCloud Keychain  and addresses a long-standing complaint that it's tied to the device on which it's installed, making it a hassle when switching between phones. Even worse, as Google puts it, users who lose access to their devices completely "lost their ability to sign in to any service on which they'd set up 2FA using Authenticator." The cloud sync feature is optional, meaning users can opt to u...

The Russian-speaking threat actor behind a backdoor known as Tomiris is primarily focused on gathering intelligence in Central Asia, fresh findings from Kaspersky reveal. "Tomiris's endgame consistently appears to be the regular theft of internal documents," security researchers Pierre Delcher and Ivan Kwiatkowski  said  in an analysis published today. "The threat actor targets government and diplomatic entities in the CIS." The Russian cybersecurity firm's latest assessment is based on three new attack campaigns mounted by the hacking crew between 2021 and 2023. Tomiris first came to light in September 2021 when Kaspersky  highlighted  its potential connections to  Nobelium  (aka APT29, Cozy Bear, or Midnight Blizzard), the Russian nation-state group behind the SolarWinds supply chain attack. Similarities have also been unearthed between the backdoor and another malware strain dubbed  Kazuar , which is attributed to the Turla group (aka Krypton,...

Threat actors are employing a previously undocumented "defense evasion tool" dubbed AuKill that's designed to disable endpoint detection and response (EDR) software by means of a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver ( BYOVD ) attack. "The AuKill tool abuses an outdated version of the  driver  used by version 16.32 of the Microsoft utility,  Process Explorer , to disable EDR processes before deploying either a backdoor or ransomware on the target system," Sophos researcher Andreas Klopsch  said  in a report published last week. Incidents analyzed by the cybersecurity firm show the use of AuKill since the start of 2023 to deploy various ransomware strains such as Medusa Locker and LockBit. Six different versions of the malware have been identified to date. The oldest AuKill sample features a November 2022 compilation timestamp. The  BYOVD technique  relies on threat actors misusing a legitimate, but out-of-date and exploitable, driver signed by Microsof...

A recent review by Wing Security, a SaaS security company that analyzed the data of over 500 companies,  revealed some worrisome information . According to this review, 84% of the companies had employees using an average of 3.5 SaaS applications that were breached in the previous 3 months. While this is concerning, it isn't much of a surprise. The exponential growth in SaaS usage has security and IT teams struggling to keep up with which SaaS applications are being used and how. This isn't to say that SaaS should be avoided or blocked; on the contrary, SaaS applications must be used to ensure business growth. But using them has to be done with some level of caution. Determining which SaaS applications are risky The most intuitive risk factor to determining whether an application is risky is looking it up and seeing if it has been breached. SaaS applications are clearly a target as we see more and more SaaS related attacks. A breach is a clear indication to stay away, at leas...

Threat actors have been observed leveraging a legitimate but outdated WordPress plugin to surreptitiously backdoor websites as part of an ongoing campaign, Sucuri  revealed  in a report published last week. The plugin in question is Eval PHP, released by a developer named flashpixx. It allows users to insert PHP code pages and posts of WordPress sites that's then executed every time the posts are opened in a web browser. While  Eval PHP  has never received an update in 11 years, statistics gathered by WordPress show that it's installed on over 8,000 websites, with the number of downloads skyrocketing from one or two on average since September 2022 to 6,988 on March 30, 2023. On April 23, 2023, alone, it was downloaded 2,140 times. The plugin has racked up 23,110 downloads over the past seven days. GoDaddy-owned Sucuri said it observed some infected websites' databases injected with malicious code into the  "wp_posts" table , which stores a site's  pos...

A new "all-in-one" stealer malware named  EvilExtractor  (also spelled Evil Extractor) is being marketed for sale for other threat actors to steal data and files from Windows systems. "It includes several modules that all work via an FTP service," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . "It also contains environment checking and Anti-VM functions. Its primary purpose seems to be to steal browser data and information from compromised endpoints and then upload it to the attacker's FTP server." The network security company said it observed a surge in attacks spreading the malware in the wild in March 2023, with a majority of the victims located in Europe and the U.S. While marketed as an educational tool, EvilExtractor has been adopted by threat actors for use as an information stealer. The attack tool is being sold by an actor named Kodex on cybercrime forums like Cracked dating back to October 22, 2022. It's continually updated and ...