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A new variant of  AsyncRAT  malware dubbed  HotRat  is being distributed via free, pirated versions of popular software and utilities such as video games, image and sound editing software, and Microsoft Office. "HotRat malware equips attackers with a wide array of capabilities, such as stealing login credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, screen capturing, keylogging, installing more malware, and gaining access to or altering clipboard data," Avast security researcher Martin a Milánek  said . The Czech cybersecurity firm said the trojan has been prevalent in the wild since at least in October 2022, with a majority of the infections concentrated in Thailand, Guyana, Libya, Suriname, Mali, Pakistan, Cambodia, South Africa, and India. The attacks entail bundling the cracked software available online via torrent sites with a malicious AutoHotkey ( AHK ) script that initiates an infection chain designed to deactivate antivirus solutions on the compromised host and...

A new malware strain known as BundleBot has been stealthily operating under the radar by taking advantage of  .NET single-file deployment techniques , enabling threat actors to capture sensitive information from compromised hosts. "BundleBot is abusing the dotnet bundle (single-file), self-contained format that results in very low or no static detection at all," Check Point  said  in a report published this week, adding it is "commonly distributed via Facebook Ads and compromised accounts leading to websites masquerading as regular program utilities, AI tools, and games." Some of these websites aim to mimic Google Bard, the company's conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot, enticing victims into downloading a bogus RAR archive ("Google_AI.rar") hosted on legitimate cloud storage services such as Dropbox. The archive file, when unpacked, contains an executable file ("GoogleAI.exe"), which is the .NET single-file, self-con...

Regardless of the country, local government is essential in most citizens' lives. It provides many day-to-day services and handles various issues. Therefore, their effects can be far-reaching and deeply felt when security failures occur. In early 2023, Oakland, California,  fell victim to a ransomware attack . Although city officials have not disclosed how the attack occurred, experts suspect a phishing email is the most likely cause. As a result, city officials brought down their servers to contain the attack. Governments have been the target to many ransomware attacks  and breaches. As most local governments maintain a small IT staff, there is potential for shared passwords, reused credentials, and a lack of multi-factor authentication security, exposing vulnerabilities for a breach.  Oakland is Breached It was first noticed on a Wednesday evening in early February; when Oakland, California city officials quickly took most services' backend servers offline and post...

Several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets have been observed exploiting a critical flaw in Zyxel devices that came to light in April 2023 to gain remote control of vulnerable systems. "Through the capture of exploit traffic, the attacker's IP address was identified, and it was determined that the attacks were occurring in multiple regions, including Central America, North America, East Asia, and South Asia," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-28771 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a command injection bug affecting multiple firewall models that could potentially allow an unauthorized actor to execute arbitrary code by sending a specifically crafted packet to the targeted appliance. Last month, the Shadowserver Foundation  warned  that the flaw was being "actively exploited to build a Mirai-like botnet" at least since May 26, 2023, an indication of how abuse of  servers running unpatched software  is on the rise....

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory on Thursday warning that the newly disclosed critical security flaw in Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway devices is being abused to drop web shells on vulnerable systems. "In June 2023, threat actors exploited this vulnerability as a zero-day to drop a web shell on a critical infrastructure organization's non-production environment NetScaler ADC appliance," the agency  said . "The web shell enabled the actors to perform discovery on the victim's active directory (AD) and collect and exfiltrate AD data. The actors attempted to move laterally to a domain controller but network segmentation controls for the appliance blocked movement." The shortcoming in question is  CVE-2023-3519  (CVSS score: 9.8), a code injection bug that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. Citrix, earlier this week, released patches for the issue and ...

Two more security flaws have been disclosed in AMI MegaRAC Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) software that, if successfully exploited, could allow threat actors to remotely commandeer vulnerable servers and deploy malware. "These new vulnerabilities range in severity from High to Critical, including unauthenticated remote code execution and unauthorized device access with superuser permissions," Eclypsium researchers Vlad Babkin and Scott Scheferman said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "They can be exploited by remote attackers having access to Redfish remote management interfaces, or from a compromised host operating system." To make matters worse, the shortcomings could also be weaponized to drop persistent firmware implants that are immune to operating system reinstalls and hard drive replacements, brick motherboard components, cause physical damage through overvolting attacks, and induce indefinite reboot loops. "As attackers shift their...

Mallox ransomware activities in 2023 have witnessed a 174% increase when compared to the previous year, new findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 reveal. "Mallox ransomware, like many other ransomware threat actors, follows the double extortion trend: stealing data before encrypting an organization's files, and then threatening to publish the stolen data on a leak site as leverage to convince victims to pay the ransom fee," security researchers Lior Rochberger and Shimi Cohen  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. Mallox is linked to a threat actor that's also linked to  other ransomware strains , such as TargetCompany, Tohnichi, Fargo, and, most recently, Xollam. It first burst onto the scene in June 2021. Some of the prominent sectors targeted by Mallox are manufacturing, professional and legal services, and wholesale and retail. A notable aspect of the group is its pattern of exploiting poorly secured MS-SQL servers via  dictionary attacks ...

Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in Apache OpenMeetings, a web conferencing solution, that could be potentially exploited by malicious actors to seize control of admin accounts and run malicious code on susceptible servers. "Attackers can bring the application into an unexpected state, which allows them to take over any user account, including the admin account," Sonar vulnerability researcher Stefan Schiller  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The acquired admin privileges can further be leveraged to exploit another vulnerability allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code on the Apache OpenMeetings server." Following responsible disclosure on March 20, 2023, the vulnerabilities were addressed with the release of  Openmeetings version 7.1.0  that was released on May 9, 2023. The list of three flaws is as follows - CVE-2023-28936  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Insufficient check of invitation hash CVE-2023-29032  (CVSS score: 8.1) - An...

An analysis of the indicators of compromise ( IoCs ) associated with the JumpCloud hack has uncovered evidence pointing to the involvement of North Korean state-sponsored groups, in a style that's reminiscent of the  supply chain attack targeting 3CX . The findings come from SentinelOne, which  mapped out  the infrastructure pertaining to the intrusion to uncover underlying patterns. It's worth noting that JumpCloud, last week,  attributed  the attack to an unnamed "sophisticated nation-state sponsored threat actor." "The North Korean threat actors demonstrate a high level of creativity and strategic awareness in their targeting strategies," SentinelOne security researcher Tom Hegel told The Hacker News. "The research findings reveal a successful and multifaceted approach employed by these actors to infiltrate developer environments." "They actively seek access to tools and networks that can serve as gateways to more extensive opportunitie...