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We analyzed 2,5 million vulnerabilities we discovered in our customer's assets. This is what we found. Digging into the data The dataset we analyze here is representative of a subset of clients that subscribe to our vulnerability scanning services. Assets scanned include those reachable across the Internet, as well as those present on internal networks. The data includes findings for network equipment, desktops, web servers, database servers, and even the odd document printer or scanning device. The number of organizations in this dataset is smaller (3 less) than the previous dataset used in last year's Security Navigator 2023 and some organizations were replaced by new additions. With the change of organizations comes a different mix of assets, which leaves comparing the previous results akin to comparing apples to oranges (we might be biased), but it's still worth noting similar patterns where possible. This year, we revisit the menacing vulnerability theme with an eye on ...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Java-based "sophisticated" information stealer that uses a Discord bot to exfiltrate sensitive data from compromised hosts. The malware, named  NS-STEALER , is propagated via ZIP archives masquerading as cracked software, Trellix security researcher Gurumoorthi Ramanathan  said  in an analysis published last week. The ZIP file contains within it a rogue Windows shortcut file ("Loader GAYve"), which acts as a conduit to deploy a malicious JAR file that first creates a folder called "NS-<11-digit_random_number>" to store the harvested data. To this folder, the malware subsequently saves screenshots, cookies, credentials, and autofill data stolen from over two dozen web browsers, system information, a list of installed programs, Discord tokens, Steam and Telegram session data. The captured information is then exfiltrated to a Discord Bot channel. "Considering the highly sophisticated functio...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is continuing to clamp down on data brokers by prohibiting InMarket Media from selling or licensing precise location data. The settlement is part of allegations that the Texas-based company did not inform or seek consent from consumers before using their location information for advertising and marketing purposes. "InMarket will also be prohibited from selling, licensing, transferring, or sharing any product or service that categorizes or targets consumers based on sensitive location data," the FTC  said  last week. In addition, it has been ordered to destroy all the location data it previously collected subject to users' assent, as well as provide a mechanism for consumers to withdraw their consent and request for deletion of the information previously collected. The development makes InMarket the second data aggregator to face a ban in as many weeks after Outlogic (formerly X-Mode Social), which  faced accusations  tha...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "notable increase" in threat actor activity actively exploiting a now-patched flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to deliver the Godzilla web shell on compromised hosts. "The web shells are concealed within an unknown binary format and are designed to evade security and signature-based scanners," Trustwave  said . "Notably, despite the binary's unknown file format, ActiveMQ's JSP engine continues to compile and execute the web shell." CVE-2023-46604 (CVSS score: 10.0) refers to a  severe vulnerability  in Apache ActiveMQ that enables remote code execution. Since its public disclosure in late October 2023, it has come under active exploitation by multiple adversaries to deploy  ransomware ,  rootkits, cryptocurrency miners , and  DDoS botnets . In the latest intrusion set observed by Trustwave, susceptible instances have been targeted by JSP-based web shells that are planted within the "admin" folder ...

An advanced China-nexus cyber espionage group previously linked to the exploitation of security flaws in VMware and Fortinet appliances has been attributed to the abuse of a critical vulnerability in VMware vCenter Server as a zero-day since late 2021. "UNC3886 has a track record of utilizing zero-day vulnerabilities to complete their mission without being detected, and this latest example further demonstrates their capabilities," Google-owned Mandiant said in a Friday report. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2023-34048 (CVSS score: 9.8), an out-of-bounds write that could be put to use by a malicious actor with network access to vCenter Server to achieve remote code execution. It was fixed by the Broadcom-owned company on October 24, 2023. The virtualization services provider, earlier this week, updated its advisory to acknowledge that "exploitation of CVE-2023-34048 has occurred in the wild." UNC3886 first came to light in September 2022 when it was ...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday issued an  emergency directive  urging Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to implement mitigations against two actively exploited zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (IPS) products. The development arrives as the  vulnerabilities  – an authentication bypass (CVE-2023-46805) and a code injection bug (CVE-2024-21887) – have come under widespread exploitation by multiple threat actors. The flaws allow a malicious actor to craft malicious requests and execute arbitrary commands on the system. The U.S. company  acknowledged  in an advisory that it has witnessed a "sharp increase in threat actor activity" starting on January 11, 2024, after the shortcomings were publicly disclosed. "Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities in these affected products allows a malicious threat actor to move laterally, perform data exfiltration, and...

Microsoft on Friday revealed that it was the target of a nation-state attack on its corporate systems that resulted in the theft of emails and attachments from senior executives and other individuals in the company's cybersecurity and legal departments. The Windows maker attributed the attack to a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as  Midnight Blizzard  (formerly Nobelium), which is also known as APT29, BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes. It further said that it immediately took steps to investigate, disrupt, and mitigate the malicious activity upon discovery on January 12, 2024. The campaign is estimated to have commenced in late November 2023. "The threat actor used a  password spray attack  to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold, and then used the account's permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership ...

The threat actor tracked as  TA866  has resurfaced after a nine-month hiatus with a new large-volume phishing campaign to deliver known malware families such as WasabiSeed and Screenshotter. The campaign, observed earlier this month and blocked by Proofpoint on January 11, 2024, involved sending thousands of invoice-themed emails targeting North America bearing decoy PDF files. "The PDFs contained OneDrive URLs that, if clicked, initiated a multi-step infection chain eventually leading to the malware payload, a variant of the WasabiSeed and Screenshotter custom toolset," the enterprise security firm  said . TA866 was  first documented  by the company in February 2023, attributing it to a campaign named Screentime that distributed WasabiSeed, a Visual Basic script dropper that's used to download Screenshotter, which is capable of taking screenshots of the victim's desktop at regular intervals of time and exfiltrating that data to an actor-controlled domain. ...

Pirated applications targeting Apple macOS users have been observed containing a backdoor capable of granting attackers remote control to infected machines. "These applications are being hosted on Chinese pirating websites in order to gain victims," Jamf Threat Labs researchers Ferdous Saljooki and Jaron Bradley  said . "Once detonated, the malware will download and execute multiple payloads in the background in order to secretly compromise the victim's machine." The backdoored disk image (DMG) files, which have been modified to establish communications with actor-controlled infrastructure, include legitimate software like Navicat Premium, UltraEdit, FinalShell, SecureCRT, and Microsoft Remote Desktop. The unsigned applications, besides being hosted on a Chinese website named macyy[.]cn, incorporate a dropper component called "dylib" that's executed every time the application is opened. The dropper then acts as a conduit to fetch a backdoor ...