The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

⚠️ Imagine this: the very tools you trust to protect you online—your two-factor authentication, your car's tech system, even your security software—turned into silent allies for hackers. Sounds like a scene from a thriller, right? Yet, in 2024, this isn't fiction; it's the new cyber reality. Today's attackers have become so sophisticated that they're using our trusted tools as secret pathways, slipping past defenses without a 🔍 trace. For banks 🏦, this is especially alarming. Today's malware doesn't just steal codes; it targets the very trust that digital banking relies on. These threats are more advanced and smarter than ever, often staying a step ahead of defenses. And it doesn't stop there. Critical systems that power our cities are at risk too. Hackers are hiding within the very tools that run these essential services, making them harder to detect and harder to stop. It's a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek, where each move raises the risk. As these threats grow, let's dive ...

In an unusually specific campaign, users searching about the legality of Bengal Cats in Australia are being targeted with the GootLoader malware. "In this case, we found the GootLoader actors using search results for information about a particular cat and a particular geography being used to deliver the payload: 'Are Bengal Cats legal in Australia?,'" Sophos researchers Trang Tang, Hikaru Koike, Asha Castle, and Sean Gallagher said in a report published last week. GootLoader , as the name implies, is a malware loader that's typically distributed using search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics for initial access. Specifically, the malware is deployed onto victim machines when searching for certain terms like legal documents and agreements on search engines like Google surface booby-trapped links pointing to compromised websites that host a ZIP archive containing a JavaScript payload. Once installed, it makes way for a second-stage malware, often an...

Cyber threats are intensifying, and cybersecurity has become critical to business operations. As security budgets grow, CEOs and boardrooms are demanding concrete evidence that cybersecurity initiatives deliver value beyond regulation compliance. Just like you wouldn't buy a car without knowing it was first put through a crash test, security systems must also be validated to confirm their value. There is an increasing shift towards security validation as it allows cyber practitioners to safely use real exploits in production environments to accurately assess the efficiency of their security systems and identify critical areas of exposure, at scale. We met with Shawn Baird, Associate Director of Offensive Security & Red Teaming at DTCC, to discuss how to effectively communicate the business value of his Security Validation practices and tools to his upper management. Here is a drill down into how Shawn made room for security validation platforms within his already tight budget an...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered nearly two dozen security flaws spanning 15 different machine learning (ML) related open-source projects. These comprise vulnerabilities discovered both on the server- and client-side, software supply chain security firm JFrog said in an analysis published last week. The server-side weaknesses "allow attackers to hijack important servers in the organization such as ML model registries, ML databases and ML pipelines," it said . The vulnerabilities, discovered in Weave, ZenML, Deep Lake, Vanna.AI, and Mage AI, have been broken down into broader sub-categories that allow for remotely hijacking model registries, ML database frameworks, and taking over ML Pipelines. A brief description of the identified flaws is below - CVE-2024-7340 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A directory traversal vulnerability in the Weave ML toolkit that allows for reading files across the whole filesystem, effectively allowing a low-privileged authenticated user to es...

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has released security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities impacting Aruba Networking Access Point products, including two critical bugs that could result in unauthenticated command execution. The flaws affect Access Points running Instant AOS-8 and AOS-10 - AOS-10.4.x.x: 10.4.1.4 and below Instant AOS-8.12.x.x: 8.12.0.2 and below Instant AOS-8.10.x.x: 8.10.0.13 and below The most severe among the six newly patched vulnerabilities are CVE-2024-42509 (CVSS score: 9.8) and CVE-2024-47460 (CVSS score: 9.0), two critical unauthenticated command injection flaws in the CLI Service that could result in the execution of arbitrary code. "Command injection vulnerability in the underlying CLI service could lead to unauthenticated remote code execution by sending specially crafted packets destined to the PAPI (Aruba's Access Point management protocol) UDP port (8211)," HPE said in an advisory for both the flaws. "Successful exp...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new phishing campaign that spreads a new fileless variant of known commercial malware called Remcos RAT . Remcos RAT "provides purchases with a wide range of advanced features to remotely control computers belonging to the buyer," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Xiaopeng Zhang said in an analysis published last week. "However, threat actors have abused Remcos to collect sensitive information from victims and remotely control their computers to perform further malicious acts." The starting point of the attack is a phishing email that uses purchase order-themed lures to convince recipients to open a Microsoft Excel attachment. The malicious Excel document is designed to exploit a known remote code execution flaw in Office ( CVE-2017-0199 , CVSS score: 7.8) to download an HTML Application (HTA) file ("cookienetbookinetcahce.hta") from a remote server ("192.3.220[.]22") and launch it using mshta.e...

Palo Alto Networks on Friday issued an informational advisory urging customers to ensure that access to the PAN-OS management interface is secured because of a potential remote code execution vulnerability. "Palo Alto Networks is aware of a claim of a remote code execution vulnerability via the PAN-OS management interface," the company said . "At this time, we do not know the specifics of the claimed vulnerability. We are actively monitoring for signs of any exploitation." In the interim, the network security vendor has recommended that users correctly configure the management interface in line with the best practices, and make sure that access to it is possible only via trusted internal IPs to limit the attack surface. It goes without saying that the management interface should not be exposed to the Internet. Some of the other guidelines to reduce exposure are listed below - Isolate the management interface on a dedicated management VLAN Use jump servers...

The 36-year-old founder of the Bitcoin Fog cryptocurrency mixer has been sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison for facilitating money laundering activities between 2011 and 2021. Roman Sterlingov, a dual Russian-Swedish national, pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business earlier this March. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) described Bitcoin Fog as the darknet's longest-running cryptocurrency mixer , allowing cybercriminals to conceal the source of their cryptocurrency proceeds. "Over the course of its decade-long operation, Bitcoin Fog gained notoriety as a go-to money laundering service for criminals seeking to hide their illicit proceeds from law enforcement and processed transactions involving over 1.2 million bitcoin, valued at approximately $400 million at the time the transactions occurred," the DoJ said . "The bulk of this cryptocurrency came from darknet marketplaces and was tied ...

Let's face it—traditional security training can feel as thrilling as reading the fine print on a software update. It's routine, predictable, and, let's be honest, often forgotten the moment it's over. Now, imagine cybersecurity training that's as unforgettable as your favorite show. Remember how "Hamilton" made history come alive, or how "The Office" taught us CPR (Staying Alive beat, anyone?)? That's the transformative power of storytelling—and it's exactly what Huntress Managed Security Awareness Training (SAT) is bringing to cybersecurity. Why Storytelling is the Secret Weapon in Security Training: Human brains are wired for stories; it's how we process complex information and retain it. Stories give lessons meaning and make concepts stick, so why not apply this to something as vital as cybersecurity awareness? In our upcoming webinar, " Storytime with Huntress Managed Security Awareness Training ," we're diving into why storytelling isn't just ...