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An e-crime actor of Mexican provenance has been linked to an Android mobile malware campaign targeting financial institutions globally, but with a specific focus on Spanish and Chilean banks, from June 2021 to April 2023. The activity is being attributed to an actor codenamed  Neo_Net , according to security researcher Pol Thill. The findings were published by SentinelOne following a Malware Research Challenge in collaboration with vx-underground. "Despite using relatively unsophisticated tools, Neo_Net has achieved a high success rate by tailoring their infrastructure to specific targets, resulting in the theft of over 350,000 EUR from victims' bank accounts and compromising Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of thousands of victims," Thill  said . Some of the major targets include banks such as Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole, and ING. Neo_Net, linked to a Spanish-speaking actor residing in Mexico, has established themselves as a ...

No less than 330,000 FortiGate firewalls are still unpatched and vulnerable to CVE-2023-27997, a critical security flaw affecting Fortinet devices that has come under active exploitation in the wild. Cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox, in a  report  published last week, said that out of nearly 490,000 Fortinet SSL-VPN interfaces exposed on the internet, about 69 percent remain unpatched. CVE-2023-27997  (CVSS score: 9.8), also called XORtigate, is a critical vulnerability impacting Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy SSL-VPN appliances that could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code or commands via specifically crafted requests. Patches were released by Fortinet last month in versions 6.0.17, 6.2.15, 6.4.13, 7.0.12, and 7.2.5, although the company  acknowledged  that the flaw may have been "exploited in a limited number of cases" in attacks targeting government, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure sectors. Bishop Fox's analysis further found th...

A Chinese nation-state group has been observed targeting Foreign Affairs ministries and embassies in Europe using  HTML smuggling techniques  to deliver the PlugX remote access trojan on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Check Point said the activity, dubbed  SmugX , has been ongoing since at least December 2022, adding it's part of a broader trend of Chinese adversaries shifting their focus to Europe. "The campaign uses new delivery methods to deploy (most notably – HTML Smuggling) a new variant of PlugX, an implant commonly associated with a wide variety of Chinese threat actors," Check Point  said . "Although the payload itself remains similar to the one found in older PlugX variants, its delivery methods result in low detection rates, which until recently helped the campaign fly under the radar." The exact identity of the threat actor behind the operation is a little hazy, although existing clues point in the direction of  Mustang Panda , which a...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  placed  a set of eight flaws to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. This includes six shortcomings affecting Samsung smartphones and two vulnerabilities impacting D-Link devices. All the flaws have been patched as of 2021. CVE-2021-25394  (CVSS score: 6.4) - Samsung mobile devices race condition vulnerability CVE-2021-25395  (CVSS score: 6.4) - Samsung mobile devices race condition vulnerability CVE-2021-25371  (CVSS score: 6.7) - An unspecified vulnerability in the DSP driver used in Samsung mobile devices that allows loading of arbitrary ELF libraries CVE-2021-25372  (CVSS score: 6.7) - Samsung mobile devices improper boundary check within the DSP driver in Samsung mobile devices CVE-2021-25487  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Samsung mobile devices out-of-bounds read vulnerability leading to arbitrary code execution CVE-2021-...

In yet another sign of a lucrative crimeware-as-a-service ( CaaS ) ecosystem, cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Windows-based information stealer called  Meduza Stealer  that's actively being developed by its author to evade detection by software solutions. "The Meduza Stealer has a singular objective: comprehensive data theft," Uptycs  said  in a new report. "It pilfers users' browsing activities, extracting a wide array of browser-related data." "From critical login credentials to the valuable record of browsing history and meticulously curated bookmarks, no digital artifact is safe. Even crypto wallet extensions, password managers, and 2FA extensions are vulnerable." Despite the similarity in features, Meduza boasts of a "crafty" operational design that eschews the use of obfuscation techniques and promptly terminates its execution on compromised hosts should a connection to the attacker's server fail. It's ...

Threat actors associated with the  BlackCat ransomware  have been observed employing malvertising tricks to distribute rogue installers of the WinSCP file transfer application. "Malicious actors used malvertising to distribute a piece of malware via cloned webpages of legitimate organizations," Trend Micro researchers  said  in an analysis published last week. "In this case, the distribution involved a webpage of the well-known application WinSCP, an open-source Windows application for file transfer." Malvertising   refers  to the use of  SEO poisoning techniques  to spread malware via online advertising. It typically involves hijacking a chosen set of keywords (e.g., "WinSCP Download") to display bogus ads on Bing and Google search results pages with the goal of redirecting unsuspecting users to sketchy pages. The idea is to trick users searching for applications like WinSCP into downloading malware, in this instance, a backdoor that contains...

As many as 200,000 WordPress websites are at risk of ongoing attacks exploiting a critical unpatched security vulnerability in the Ultimate Member plugin. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-3460 (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts all versions of the Ultimate Member plugin, including the latest version (2.6.6) that was released on June 29, 2023. Ultimate Member is a  popular plugin  that facilitates the creation of user-profiles and communities on WordPress sites. It also provides account management features. "This is a very serious issue: unauthenticated attackers may exploit this vulnerability to create new user accounts with administrative privileges, giving them the power to take complete control of affected sites," WordPress security firm WPScan  said  in an alert. Although details about the flaw have been withheld due to active abuse, it stems from an inadequate blocklist logic that allows attackers to alter the wp_capabilities user meta value of a new user to that of ...

Researchers have pulled back the curtain on an updated version of an Apple macOS malware called RustBucket that comes with improved capabilities to establish persistence and avoid detection by security software. "This variant of RustBucket, a malware family that targets macOS systems, adds persistence capabilities not previously observed," Elastic Security Labs researchers  said  in a report published this week, adding it's "leveraging a dynamic network infrastructure methodology for command-and-control." RustBucket is the work of a North Korean threat actor known as BlueNoroff, which is part of a larger intrusion set tracked under the name  Lazarus Group , an elite hacking unit supervised by the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), the country's primary intelligence agency. The malware came to light in April 2023, when Jamf Threat Labs  described  it as an AppleScript-based backdoor capable of retrieving a second-stage payload from a remote server. Ela...

Charming Kitten, the nation-state actor affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been attributed to a bespoke spear-phishing campaign that delivers an updated version of a fully-featured PowerShell backdoor called POWERSTAR . "There have been improved operational security measures placed in the malware to make it more difficult to analyze and collect intelligence," Volexity researchers Ankur Saini and Charlie Gardner said in a report published this week. The threat actor is something of an expert when it comes to employing social engineering to lure targets, often crafting tailored fake personas on social media platforms and engaging in sustained conversations to build rapport before sending a malicious link. It's also tracked under the names APT35, Cobalt Illusion, Mint Sandstorm (formerly Phosphorus), and Yellow Garuda. Recent intrusions orchestrated by Charming Kitten have made use of other implants such as PowerLess and BellaCiao...