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In a world where more & more organizations are adopting open-source components as foundational blocks in their application's infrastructure, it's difficult to consider traditional SCAs as complete protection mechanisms against open-source threats. Using open-source libraries saves tons of coding and debugging time, and by that - shortens the time to deliver our applications. But, as codebases become increasingly composed of open-source software, it's time to respect the entire attack surface - including attacks on the supply chain itself - when choosing an  SCA platform  to depend upon. The Impact of One Dependency When a company adds an open-source library, they are probably adding not just the library they intended to, but also many other libraries as well. This is due to the way open-source libraries are built: just like every other application on the planet, they aim for a speed of delivery and development and, as such, rely on code other people built - i.e., ot...

Governments from Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. have imposed financial sanctions on a Russian national for his alleged role in the 2022 ransomware attack against health insurance provider Medibank. Alexander Ermakov (aka blade_runner, GistaveDore, GustaveDore, or JimJones), 33, has been tied to the breach of the Medibank network as well as the theft and release of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) belonging to the Australian company. The ransomware attack, which  took place in late October 2022  and attributed to the  now-defunct REvil ransomware crew , led to the unauthorized access of approximately 9.7 million of its current and former customers. The stolen information included names, dates of birth, Medicare numbers, and sensitive medical information, including records on mental health, sexual health and drug use. Some of these records were leaked on the dark web. As part of the trilateral action, the sanctions  make  it a criminal offense t...

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in Fortra's GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) software that could be abused to create a new administrator user. Tracked as  CVE-2024-0204 , the issue carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10. "Authentication bypass in Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT prior to 7.4.1 allows an unauthorized user to create an admin user via the administration portal," Fortra  said  in an advisory released on January 22, 2024. Users who cannot upgrade to version 7.4.1 can apply temporary workarounds in non-container deployments by deleting the InitialAccountSetup.xhtml file in the install directory and restarting the services. For container-deployed instances, it's recommended to replace the file with an empty file and restart. Mohammed Eldeeb and Islam Elrfai of Cairo-based Spark Engineering Consultants have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw in December 2023. Cybersecurity firm Horizon3.ai, which published a  proof-of-co...

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 threat actors behind ClearFake, SocGholish, and dozens of other e-crime outfits have established partnerships with another entity known as  VexTrio  as part of a massive "criminal affiliate program," new findings from Infoblox reveal. The latest development demonstrates the "breadth of their activities and depth of their connections within the cybercrime industry," the company said , describing VexTrio as the "single largest malicious traffic broker described in security literature." VexTrio, which is believed to be have been active since at least 2017, has been attributed to  malicious campaigns  that use domains generated by a dictionary domain generation algorithm ( DDGA ) to propagate scams, riskware, spyware, adware, potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), and pornographic content. This includes a 2022 activity cluster that  distributed the Glupteba malware  following an earlier attempt by Google to take down a significant chunk of its infrastru...

Two malicious packages discovered on the npm package registry have been found to leverage GitHub to store Base64-encrypted SSH keys stolen from developer systems on which they were installed. The modules named  warbeast2000  and  kodiak2k  were published at the start of the month, attracting  412  and  1,281 downloads  before they were taken down by the npm maintainers. The most recent downloads occurred on January 21, 2024. Software supply chain security firm ReversingLabs, which made the discovery, said there were eight different versions of warbeast2000 and more than 30 versions of kodiak2k. Both the modules are designed to run a postinstall script after installation, each capable of retrieving and executing a different JavaScript file. While warbeast2000 attempts to access the private SSH key, kodiak2k is designed to look for a key named "meow," raising the possibility that the threat actor likely used a placeholder name during the early...

Cracked software have been observed infecting Apple macOS users with a previously undocumented stealer malware capable of harvesting system information and cryptocurrency wallet data. Kaspersky, which identified the artifacts in the wild,  said  they are designed to target machines running macOS Ventura 13.6 and later, indicating the malware's ability to infect Macs on both Intel and Apple silicon processor architectures. The attack chains leverage booby-trapped disk image (DMG) files that include a program named "Activator" and a pirated version of legitimate software such as xScope. Users who end up opening the DMG files are urged to move both files to the Applications folder and run the Activator component to apply a supposed patch and run the xScope app. Launching Activator, however, displays a prompt asking the victim to enter the system administrator password, thereby allowing it to execute a Mach-O binary with elevated permissions in order to launch the modif...

As we enter 2024, Gcore has released its latest Gcore Radar report, a twice-annual publication in which the company releases internal analytics to track DDoS attacks. Gcore's broad, internationally distributed network of scrubbing centers allows them to follow attack trends over time. Read on to learn about DDoS attack trends for Q3–Q4 of 2023, and what they mean for developing a robust protection strategy in 2024. Gcore's Key Findings DDoS attack trends for the second half of 2023 reveal alarming developments in the scale and sophistication of cyberthreats. Unprecedented Attack Power The past three years have brought about a >100% annual increase in DDoS peak (registered maximum) attack volume: In 2021, the peak capacity of DDoS attacks was  300 Gbps In 2022, it increased to  650 Gbps In Q1–Q2 of 2023, it increased again to  800 Gbps In Q3–Q4 of 2023, it surged to  1600 Gbps  (1.6 Tbps) Notably, the jump in H2 of 2023 means the cybersecurity indu...

Conor Brian Fitzpatrick has been sentenced to time served and 20 years of supervised release for his role as the creator and administrator of BreachForums. Fitzpatrick, who went by the online alias "pompompurin," was arrested in March 2023 in New York and was subsequently charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud and possession of child pornography. He was later released on a $300,000 bond, and in July 2023, he pleaded guilty to the charges. BreachForums was a major cyber crime marketplace that facilitated the trafficking of stolen data since March 2022. Prior to its shutdown exactly a year later, the website boasted of over 340,000 members. Among the stolen items commonly sold on the platform were bank account information, Social Security numbers, personally identifying information (PII), hacking tools, breached databases, and account login information for compromised online accounts with service providers and merchants. BreachForums also advertised servic...

Malicious actors have begun to actively exploit a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Confluence Server, within three days of public disclosure. Tracked as CVE-2023-22527 (CVSS score: 10.0), the vulnerability impacts out-of-date versions of the software, allowing unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution on susceptible installations. The shortcoming affects Confluence Data Center and Server 8 versions released before December 5, 2023, as well as 8.4.5. But merely days after the flaw became public knowledge, nearly 40,000 exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2023-22527 have been recorded in the wild as early as January 19 from more than 600 unique IP addresses, according to both the Shadowserver Foundation and the DFIR Report . The activity is currently limited "testing callback attempts and 'whoami' execution," suggesting that threat actors are opportunistically scanning for vulnerable servers...