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The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Moonstone Sleet has continued to push malicious npm packages to the JavaScript package registry with the aim of infecting Windows systems, underscoring the persistent nature of their campaigns. The packages in question, harthat-api and harthat-hash , were published on July 7, 2024, according to Datadog Security Labs. Both the libraries did not attract any downloads and were shortly pulled after a brief period of time. The security arm of the cloud monitoring firm is tracking the threat actor under the name Stressed Pungsan, which exhibits overlaps with a newly discovered North Korean malicious activity cluster dubbed Moonstone Sleet. "While the name resembles the Hardhat npm package (an Ethereum development utility), its content does not indicate any intention to typosquat it," Datadog researchers Sebastian Obregoso and Zack Allen said . "The malicious package reuses code from a well-known GitHub repository called node-...

Everyone loves the double-agent plot twist in a spy movie, but it's a different story when it comes to securing company data. Whether intentional or unintentional, insider threats are a legitimate concern. According to CSA research , 26% of companies who reported a SaaS security incident were struck by an insider.  The challenge for many is detecting those threats before they lead to full breaches. Many security professionals assume there is nothing they can do to protect themselves from a legitimate managed user who logs in with valid credentials using a company MFA method. Insiders can log in during regular business hours, and can easily justify their access within the application.  Cue the plot twist: With the right tools in place, businesses can protect themselves from the enemy from within (and without).  Learn how to secure your entire SaaS stack from both internal and external threats Subduing Identity-Centric Threats with ITDR  In SaaS security, an Ide...

Users in Russia have been the target of a previously undocumented Android post-compromise spyware called LianSpy since at least 2021. Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky, which discovered the malware in March 2024, noted its use of Yandex Cloud, a Russian cloud service, for command-and-control (C2) communications as a way to avoid having a dedicated infrastructure and evade detection. "This threat is equipped to capture screencasts, exfiltrate user files, and harvest call logs and app lists," security researcher Dmitry Kalinin said in a new technical report published Monday. It's currently not clear how the spyware is distributed, but the Russian company said it's likely deployed through either an unknown security flaw or direct physical access to the target phone. The malware-laced apps are disguised as Alipay or an Android system service. LianSpy, once activated, determines if it's running as a system app to operate in the background using administrator privi...

If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...

Google has addressed a high-severity security flaw impacting the Android kernel that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-36971, has been described as a case of remote code execution impacting the kernel. "There are indications that CVE-2024-36971 may be under limited, targeted exploitation," the tech giant noted in its monthly Android security bulletin for August 2024. As is typically the case, the company did not share any additional specifics on the nature of the cyber attacks exploiting the flaw or attribute the activity to a particular threat actor or group. Google's own Pixel line is also impacted by the bug, according to its Pixel update bulletin . That said, Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with reporting the flaw, suggesting that it's likely being exploited by commercial spyware vendors to infiltrate Android devices in narrowly targeted attacks. The Augus...

A new zero-day pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability has been disclosed in the Apache OFBiz open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could allow threat actors to achieve remote code execution on affected instances. Tracked as CVE-2024-38856 , the flaw has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. It affects Apache OFBiz versions prior to 18.12.15. "The root cause of the vulnerability lies in a flaw in the authentication mechanism," SonicWall, which discovered and reported the shortcoming, said in a statement. "This flaw allows an unauthenticated user to access functionalities that generally require the user to be logged in, paving the way for remote code execution." CVE-2024-38856 is also a patch bypass for CVE-2024-36104 , a path traversal vulnerability that was addressed in early June with the release of 18.12.14. SonicWall described the flaw as residing in the override view functionality that exposes critical endpoi...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered design weaknesses in Microsoft's Windows Smart App Control and SmartScreen that could enable threat actors to gain initial access to target environments without raising any warnings. Smart App Control ( SAC ) is a cloud-powered security feature introduced by Microsoft in Windows 11 to block malicious, untrusted, and potentially unwanted apps from being run on the system. In cases where the service is unable to make a prediction about the app, it checks if it's signed or has a valid signature so as to be executed. SmartScreen, which was released alongside Windows 10, is a similar security feature that determines whether a site or a downloaded app is potentially malicious. It also leverages a reputation-based approach for URL and app protection. "Microsoft Defender SmartScreen evaluates a website's URLs to determine if they're known to distribute or host unsafe content," Redmond notes in its documentation. "I...

Organizations in Kazakhstan are the target of a threat activity cluster dubbed Bloody Wolf that delivers a commodity malware called STRRAT (aka Strigoi Master). "The program selling for as little as $80 on underground resources allows the adversaries to take control of corporate computers and hijack restricted data," cybersecurity vendor BI.ZONE said in a new analysis. The cyber attacks employ phishing emails as an initial access vector, impersonating the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan and other agencies to trick recipients into opening PDF attachments. The file purports to be a non-compliance notice and contains links to a malicious Java archive (JAR) file as well as an installation guide for the Java interpreter necessary for the malware to function. In an attempt to lend legitimacy to the attack, the second link points to a web page associated with the country's government website that urges visitors to install Java in order to ensure that th...

The Loper Bright decision has yielded impactful results: the Supreme Court has overturned forty years of administrative law, leading to potential litigation over the interpretation of ambiguous laws previously decided by federal agencies. This article explores key questions for cybersecurity professionals and leaders as we enter a more contentious period of cybersecurity law. Background What is the Loper Bright Decision? The Loper Bright decision by the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the Chevron deference , stating that courts, not agencies, will decide all relevant questions of law arising on review of agency action. The Court held that because the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)'s text is clear, agency interpretations of statutes are not entitled to deference. The ruling emphasized that courts must exercise independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority. This decision shifts the power of statutory interpretation from federal agencies ...

Incident response is a structured approach to managing and addressing security breaches or cyber-attacks. Security teams must overcome challenges such as timely detection, comprehensive data collection, and coordinated actions to enhance readiness. Improving these areas ensures a swift and effective response, minimizing damage and restoring normal operations quickly. Challenges in incident response Incident response presents several challenges that must be addressed to ensure a swift and effective recovery from cyber attacks. The following section lists some of these challenges. Timeliness : One of the primary challenges in incident response is addressing incidents quickly enough to minimize damage. Delays in response can lead to more compromises and increased recovery costs. Information correlation : Security teams often struggle to effectively collect and correlate relevant data. Without a comprehensive view, understanding the full scope and impact of the incident becomes difficu...