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Chinese-language speakers have been increasingly targeted as part of multiple email phishing campaigns that aim to distribute various malware families such as Sainbox RAT, Purple Fox, and a new trojan called ValleyRAT. "Campaigns include Chinese-language lures and malware typically associated with Chinese cybercrime activity," enterprise security firm Proofpoint  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity, observed since early 2023, entails sending email messages containing URLs pointing to compressed executables that are responsible for installing the malware. Other infection chains have been found to leverage Microsoft Excel and PDF attachments that embed these URLs to trigger malicious activity. These campaigns demonstrate variation in the use of infrastructure, sender domains, email content, targeting, and payloads, indicating that different threat clusters are mounting the attacks. Over 30 such campaigns have been detected in 2023 that employ malwa...

Encrypted messaging app Signal has announced an update to the Signal Protocol to add support for quantum resistance by upgrading the Extended Triple Diffie-Hellman ( X3DH ) specification to Post-Quantum Extended Diffie-Hellman ( PQXDH ). "With this upgrade, we are adding a layer of protection against the threat of a quantum computer being built in the future that is powerful enough to break current encryption standards," Signal's Ehren Kret  said . The development comes weeks after Google added support for  quantum-resistant encryption algorithms  in its Chrome web browser and announced a  quantum-resilient FIDO2 security key implementation  as part of its OpenSK security keys initiative last month. The  Signal Protocol  is a set of cryptographic specifications that provides end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for private text and voice communications. It's used in various messaging apps like WhatsApp and Google's encrypted RCS messages for Android. Whi...

GitLab has shipped security patches to resolve a critical flaw that allows an attacker to run pipelines as another user. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-5009  (CVSS score: 9.6), impacts all versions of GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) starting from 13.12 and prior to 16.2.7 as well as from 16.3 and before 16.3.4. "It was possible for an attacker to  run pipelines  as an arbitrary user via scheduled security scan policies," GitLab  said  in an advisory. "This was a bypass of  CVE-2023-3932  showing additional impact." Successful exploitation of CVE-2023-5009 could allow a threat actor to access sensitive information or leverage the elevated permissions of the impersonated user to modify source code or run arbitrary code on the system, leading to severe consequences. Security researcher Johan Carlsson (aka joaxcar) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. CVE-2023-3932 was addressed by GitLab in early August 2023. The new vulne...

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has  released  patches and hotfixes to address a critical security flaw in Apex One and Worry-Free Business Security solutions for Windows that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Tracked as  CVE-2023-41179  (CVSS score: 9.1), it relates to a third-party antivirus uninstaller module that's bundled along with the software. The complete list of impacted products is as follows - Apex One - version 2019 (on-premise), fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) Apex One as a Service - fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) and Agent version 14.0.12637 Worry-Free Business Security - version 10.0 SP1, fixed in 10.0 SP1 Patch 2495 Worry-Free Business Security Services - fixed in July 31, 2023, Monthly Maintenance Release Trend Micro said that a successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to manipulate the component to execute arbitrary commands on an affected installation. However, it requires that the adversary already has ...

Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are the target of a new intrusion set dubbed  ShroudedSnooper  that employs a stealthy backdoor called HTTPSnoop. "HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to listen to incoming requests for specific HTTP(S) URLs and execute that content on the infected endpoint," Cisco Talos  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Also part of the threat actor's arsenal is a sister implant codenamed PipeSnoop that can accept arbitrary shellcode from a  named pipe  and execute it on the infected endpoint. It's suspected that ShroudedSnooper exploits internet-facing servers and deploys HTTPSnoop to gain initial access to target environments, with both the malware strains impersonating components of Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XDR application (" CyveraConsole.exe ") to fly under the radar. Three different HTTP...

Targets located in Azerbaijan have been singled out as part of a new campaign that's designed to deploy Rust-based malware on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct is tracking the operation under the name Operation Rusty Flag. It has not been associated with any known threat actor or group. "The operation has at least two different initial access vectors," security researchers Simon Kenin, Ron Ben Yizhak, and Mark Vaitzman  said  in an analysis published last week. "One of the lures used in the operation is a modified document that was used by the Storm-0978 group. This could be a deliberate 'false flag.'" The attack chain leverages an LNK file named 1.KARABAKH.jpg.lnk as a launchpad to retrieve a second-stage payload, an MSI installer, hosted on Dropbox. The installer file, for its part, drops an implant written in Rust, an XML file for a scheduled task to execute the implant, and a decoy image file that features watermarks of the ...

XWorm is a relatively new representative of the remote access trojan cohort that has already earned its spot among the most persistent threats across the globe.  Since 2022, when it was first observed by researchers, it has undergone a number of major updates that have significantly enhanced its functionality and solidified its staying power.  The analyst team at  ANY.RUN  came across the newest version of the malware and could not refuse the opportunity of taking it apart to examine XWorm mechanics configurations. Here is how they did it and what they found.  The XWorm sample's source  The sample in question was discovered in ANY. RUN's database of malware, a repository containing detailed analysis reports on all files and links that have been uploaded by users of the sandbox in public mode.  A quick look at the results of the analysis revealed that the sample was initially distributed via MediaFire, a file-hosting service. The malware was packa...

The China-linked threat actor known as  Earth Lusca  has been observed targeting government entities using a never-before-seen Linux backdoor called SprySOCKS. Earth Lusca was  first documented  by Trend Micro in January 2022, detailing the adversary's attacks against public and private sector entities across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America. Active since 2021, the group has relied on spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to pull off its cyber espionage schemes. Some activities of the group overlap with another threat cluster tracked by Recorded Future under the name  RedHotel . The latest findings from the cybersecurity firm show that Earth Lusca continues to be an active group, even expanding its operations to target organizations across the world during the first half of 2023. Primary targets include government departments that are involved in foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. The attacks are concentrated in Southeast Asia, Ce...

As the adoption of generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, continues to surge, so does the risk of data exposure. According to Gartner's "Emerging Tech: Top 4 Security Risks of GenAI" report, privacy and data security is one of the four major emerging risks within generative AI.  A new webinar  featuring a multi-time Fortune 100 CISO and the CEO of LayerX, a browser extension solution, delves into this critical risk. Throughout the webinar, the speakers will explain why data security is a risk and explore the ability of DLP solutions to protect against them, or lack thereof. Then, they will delineate the capabilities required by DLP solutions to ensure businesses benefit from the productivity GenAI applications have to offer without compromising security.  The Business and Security Risks of Generative AI Applications GenAI security risks occur when employees insert sensitive texts into these applications. These actions warrant careful consideration, because the inserted da...