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The Iranian threat actor tracked as APT34 has been linked to a new phishing attack that leads to the deployment of a variant of a backdoor called  SideTwist . "APT34 has a high level of attack technology, can design different intrusion methods for different types of targets, and has supply chain attack capability," NSFOCUS Security Labs  said  in a report published last week. APT34, also known by the names Cobalt Gypsy, Hazel Sandstorm (formerly Europium), Helix Kitten, and OilRig, has a  track record  of targeting telecommunications, government, defense, oil and financial services verticals in the Middle East since at least 2014 via spear-phishing lures that culminate in the deployment of various backdoors. One of the key traits of the hacking outfit is its ability to create new and updated tools to minimize the odds of detection and gain a foothold on compromised hosts for extended periods of time. SideTwist was  first documented  as used by AP...

The role of the CISO keeps taking center stage as a business enabler: CISOs need to navigate the complex landscape of digital threats while fostering innovation and ensuring business continuity. Three CISOs; Troy Wilkinson, CISO at IPG; Rob Geurtsen, former Deputy CISO at Nike; and Tammy Moskites, Founder of CyAlliance and former CISO at companies like Time Warner and Home Depot – shared their perspectives on how to run an effective SOC in 2023. 1) Prioritize Cost Efficiency While Remaining 'Secure' As a world-renowned speaker, a co-author of an Amazon Best Seller, and a trusted commentator on prominent news networks such as NBC, CBS, and Fox, Troy Wilkinson, knows a thing or two about cybersecurity. When adopting new technologies, Troy reinforces that CISOs don't have the luxury of waiting months or years to see the value of new investments; "Time to Value is critical. New solutions need to deliver value quickly." Rob Geurtsen, former Deputy CISO at Nike,  jo...

Nine security flaws have been disclosed in electric power management products made by Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL). "The most severe of those nine vulnerabilities would allow a threat actor to facilitate remote code execution (RCE) on an engineering workstation," Nozomi Networks  said  in a report published last week. The issues, tracked as CVE-2023-34392 and from CVE-2023-31168 through CVE-2023-31175, have CVSS severity scores ranging from 4.8 to 8.8 and impact SEL-5030 acSELeratorQuickSet and SEL-5037 GridConfigurator, which are used to commission, configure, and monitor the devices. Exploitation of CVE-2023-31171 could be achieved by sending a phishing email that tricks a victim engineer into importing a specially crafted configuration file to achieve arbitrary code execution on the engineering workstation running the SEL software. What's more, the shortcoming can be chained with CVE-2023-31175 to obtain administrative privileges on the target workstation...

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.

A previously undocumented "phishing empire" has been linked to cyber attacks aimed at compromising Microsoft 365 business email accounts over the past six years. "The threat actor created a hidden underground market, named W3LL Store, that served a closed community of at least 500 threat actors who could purchase a custom phishing kit called W3LL Panel, designed to bypass MFA, as well as 16 other fully customized tools for business email compromise (BEC) attacks," Group-IB  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The phishing infrastructure is estimated to have targeted more than 56,000 corporate Microsoft 365 accounts and compromised at least 8,000 of them, primarily in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Germany, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy between October 2022 and July 2023, netting its operators $500,000 in illicit profits. Some of the prominent sectors infiltrated using the phishing solution include manufacturing, IT, consultin...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) on Tuesday said it thwarted a cyber attack against an unnamed critical energy infrastructure facility in the country. The intrusion, per the agency, started with a phishing email containing a link to a malicious ZIP archive that activates the infection chain. "Visiting the link will download a ZIP archive containing three JPG images (decoys) and a BAT file 'weblinks.cmd' to the victim's computer," CERT-UA  said , attributing it to the Russian threat actor known as  APT28  (aka BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, or FROZENLAKE). "When a CMD file is run, several decoy web pages will be opened, .bat and .vbs files will be created, and a VBS file will be launched, which in turn will execute the BAT file." The next phase of the attack involves running the "whoami" command on the compromised host and exfiltrating the information, alongside downloading the TOR hidden service to route malicious traffic. Persiste...

An updated version of a malware loader known as BLISTER is being used as part of SocGholish infection chains to distribute an open-source command-and-control (C2) framework called  Mythic . "New BLISTER update includes keying feature that allows for precise targeting of victim networks and lowers exposure within VM/sandbox environments," Elastic Security Labs researchers Salim Bitam and Daniel Stepanic  said  in a technical report published late last month. BLISTER was  first uncovered  by the company in December 2021 acting as a conduit to distribute Cobalt Strike and BitRAT payloads on compromised systems. The use of the malware alongside  SocGholish  (aka FakeUpdates), a JavaScript-based downloader malware, to deliver Mythic was  previously disclosed  by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in July 2023. In these attacks, BLISTER is embedded within a legitimate VLC Media Player library in an attempt to get around security software and infiltrat...

Banking and logistics industries are under the onslaught of a reworked variant of a malware called  Chaes . "It has undergone major overhauls: from being rewritten entirely in Python, which resulted in lower detection rates by traditional defense systems, to a comprehensive redesign and an enhanced communication protocol," Morphisec said in a new detailed technical write-up shared with The Hacker News. Chaes, which first emerged in 2020, is known to target e-commerce customers in Latin America, particularly Brazil, to steal sensitive financial information. A subsequent analysis from Avast in early 2022  found  that the threat actors behind the operation, who call themselves Lucifer, had breached more than 800 WordPress websites to deliver Chaes to users of Banco do Brasil, Loja Integrada, Mercado Bitcoin, Mercado Livre, and Mercado Pago. Further updates were detected in December 2022, when Brazilian cybersecurity company Tempest Security Intelligence  uncovered...

In today's digital age, it's not just about being online but how securely your organization operates online. Regardless of size or industry, every organization heavily depends on digital assets. The digital realm is where business takes place, from financial transactions to confidential data storage. While organizations have quickly adopted tools like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), and service account protection, a pressing question remains: Are these measures truly sufficient? With the rise of identity threats, the real battleground has shifted. It's no longer just about firewalls or encryptions but the very identities that access these digital assets. Every day, attackers devise new strategies to compromise user identities to find that weak link to gain malicious access. The tools we've come to rely on might not be as foolproof as we once believed. Many organizations remain unaware of vast security gaps, exposing them to pot...

IBM's 2023 installment of their annual " Cost of a Breach " report has thrown up some interesting trends. Of course, breaches being costly is no longer news at this stage! What's interesting is the difference in how organizations respond to threats and which technologies are helping reduce the costs associated with every IT team's nightmare scenario.  The average cost of a breach rose once again to $4.45 million, increasing 15% over the last three years. Costs associated with escalation and detection have rocketed up 42% during the same period. With that in mind, I was surprised to learn that only 51% of the breached entities surveyed by IBM decided to bolster their security investments, despite the rising financial consequences of dealing with a breach. Headline stats around breach costs are interesting – but can digging into these trends actually help you save money? Organizations want to know where to invest their security budget and which technologies offer the bes...