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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has disclosed that it's in possession of more than 7,000 decryption keys associated with the LockBit ransomware operation to help victims get their data back at no cost. "We are reaching out to known LockBit victims and encouraging anyone who suspects they were a victim to visit our Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov," FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran said in a keynote address at the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security (BCCS). LockBit, which was once a prolific ransomware gang, has been linked to over 2,400 attacks globally, with no less than 1,800 impacting entities in the U.S. Earlier this February, an international law enforcement operation dubbed Cronos led by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) dismantled its online infrastructure. Last month, a 31-year-old Russian national named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev was outed by authorities as the group's administrator and developer, a ...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of cyber attacks targeting defense forces in the country with a malware called SPECTR as part of an espionage campaign dubbed SickSync. The agency attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the moniker UAC-0020, which is also called Vermin and is assessed to be associated with security agencies of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). LPR was declared a sovereign state by Russia days prior to its military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Attack chains commence with spear-phishing emails containing a RAR self-extracting archive file containing a decoy PDF file, a trojanized version of the SyncThing application that incorporates the SPECTR payload, and a batch script that activates the infection by launching the executable. SPECTR serves as an information stealer by grabbing screenshots every 10 seconds, harvesting files, gathering data from removable USB drives, and stealing credentials and ...

The threat actor known as Commando Cat has been linked to an ongoing cryptojacking attack campaign that leverages poorly secured Docker instances to deploy cryptocurrency miners for financial gain. "The attackers used the cmd.cat/chattr docker image container that retrieves the payload from their own command-and-control (C&C) infrastructure," Trend Micro researchers Sunil Bharti and Shubham Singh said in a Thursday analysis. Commando Cat, so named for its use of the open-source Commando project to generate a benign container, was first documented earlier this year by Cado Security. The attacks are characterized by the targeting of misconfigured Docker remote API servers to deploy a Docker image named cmd.cat/chattr, which is then used as a basis to instantiate a container and break out of its confines using the chroot command, and gain access to the host operating system. The final step entails retrieving the malicious miner binary using a curl or wget command fr...

Security operations centers (SOCs) are under pressure from both sides: threats are growing more complex and frequent, while security budgets are no longer keeping pace. Today's security leaders are expected to reduce risk and deliver results without relying on larger teams or increased spending. At the same time, SOC inefficiencies are draining resources. Studies show that up to half of all alerts are false positives, with some reports citing false positive rates as high as 99 percent . This means highly trained analysts spend a disproportionate amount of time chasing down harmless activity, wasting effort, increasing fatigue, and raising the chance of missing real threats. In this environment, the business imperative is clear: maximize the impact of every analyst and every dollar by making security operations faster, smarter, and more focused. Enter the Agentic AI SOC Analyst The agentic AI SOC Analyst is a force multiplier that enables organizations to do more with the team an...

Muhstik botnet exploits a critical Apache RocketMQ flaw (CVE-2023-33246) for remote code execution , targeting Linux servers and IoT devices for DDoS attacks and cryptocurrency mining . Infection involves executing a shell script from a remote IP, downloading the Muhstik malware binary ("pty3") , and ensuring persistence by copying to multiple directories and editing system files. With over 5,000 vulnerable Apache RocketMQ instances still exposed, organizations must update to the latest version to mitigate risks, while securing MS-SQL servers against brute-force attacks and ensuring regular password changes. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet known as Muhstik has been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw impacting Apache RocketMQ to co-opt susceptible servers and expand its scale. "Muhstik is a well-known threat targeting IoT devices and Linux-based servers, notorious for its ability to infect devices and utilize the...

Learn about critical threats that can impact your organization and the bad actors behind them from Cybersixgill's threat experts. Each story shines a light on underground activities, the threat actors involved, and why you should care, along with what you can do to mitigate risk.  In an increasingly interconnected world, supply chain attacks have emerged as a formidable threat, compromising not just individual organizations but the broader digital ecosystem. The web of interdependencies among businesses, especially for software and IT vendors, provides fertile ground for cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities. By targeting one weak link in the supply chain, threat actors can gain unauthorized access to sensitive information and can conduct malicious activities with severe consequences on multiple organizations, from data breaches and financial losses to widespread disruption and reputational damage. Understanding the nature, impact, and mitigation strategies of supply chain...

Tom works for a reputable financial institution. He has a long, complex password that would be near-impossible to guess. He's memorized it by heart, so he started using it for his social media accounts and on his personal devices too. Unbeknownst to Tom, one of these sites has had its password database compromised by hackers and put it up for sale on the dark web. Now threat actors are working hard to link these leaked credentials back to real-life individuals and their places of work. Before long, a threat actor will use Tom's legitimate email account to send a spear-phishing link to his CEO. This is a common account takeover scenario where malicious attackers gain unauthorized access to the organization's systems, putting critical information and operations at risk. It usually starts with compromised credentials. We'll run through why account takeover is so hard to stop once it starts and why strong password security is the best prevention.  Why are account takeover attacks so...

Threat actors are increasingly abusing legitimate and commercially available packer software such as BoxedApp to evade detection and distribute malware such as remote access trojans and information stealers. "The majority of the attributed malicious samples targeted financial institutions and government industries," Check Point security researcher Jiri Vinopal said in an analysis. The volume of samples packed with BoxedApp and submitted to the Google-owned VirusTotal malware scanning platform witnessed a spike around May 2023, the Israeli cybersecurity firm added, with the artifact submissions mainly originating from Turkey, the U.S., Germany, France, and Russia. Among the malware families distributed in this manner are Agent Tesla, AsyncRAT, LockBit, LodaRAT, NanoCore, Neshta, NjRAT, Quasar RAT, Ramnit, RedLine, Remcos, RevengeRAT, XWorm, and ZXShell. Packers are self-extracting archives that are often used to bundle software and make them smaller. But over the year...

Google has announced plans to store Maps Timeline data locally on users' devices instead of their Google account effective December 1, 2024. The changes were originally announced by the tech giant in December 2023, alongside updates to the auto-delete control when enabling Location History by setting it to three months by default, down from the previous limit of 18 months. Google Maps Timeline , as the name implies, helps users track routes, trips, and places they have been to over time, assuming Location History and Web & App Activity settings are enabled. But with the latest change to host the data on users' devices, the company has also said that it's removing the ability to view them on the web. "Since the data shown on your Timeline comes directly from your device, Timeline won't be available on Maps on your computer after your data is moved to your phone," Google noted in a support document. The updates, it added, are gradually rolling out to...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious Python package uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that's designed to deliver an information stealer called Lumma (aka LummaC2). The package in question is crytic-compilers, a typosquatted version of a legitimate library named crytic-compile . The rogue package was downloaded 441 times before it was taken down by PyPI maintainers. "The counterfeit library is interesting in that, in addition [to] being named after the legitimate Python utility, 'crytic-compile,' it aligns its version numbers with the real library," Sonatype security researcher Ax Sharma said . "Whereas the real library's latest version stops at 0.3.7, the counterfeit 'crytic-compilers' version picks up right here, and ends at 0.3.11 — giving off the impression that this is a newer version of the component." In a further attempt to keep up the ruse, some versions of crytic-compilers (e.g., 0.3.9) we...