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If you have jailbroken your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and have downloaded pirated tweaks from pirated repositories, then you may be infected by "AdThief" malware, a Chinese malware that is now installed on more than 75,000 iPhone devices. According to a recent research paper published on Virus Bulletin by the Security Researcher Axelle Apvrille , the malware, also known as " spad ," was first discovered by security researcher Claud Xiao in March this year. Till now, AdThief aka Spad malware has hijacked an estimated 22 million advertisements and stealing revenue from developers on the iOS jailbreak community, Axelle Apvrille says. The malware allegedly infects iOS jailbroken devices by disguising itself as Cydia Substrate extension, presents only on jailbroken Apple devices, when a malware infected Cydia package is downloaded and installed by the unsuspecting user. Once installed, the malware modifies certain advertisements displayed on your iOS devi

The prolific China-linked nation-state actor known as APT41 has been linked to two previously undocumented strains of Android spyware called WyrmSpy and DragonEgg. "Known for its exploitation of web-facing applications and infiltration of traditional endpoint devices, an established threat actor like APT 41 including mobile in its arsenal of malware shows how mobile endpoints are high-value targets with coveted corporate and personal data," Lookout  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. APT41, also tracked under the names Axiom, Blackfly, Brass Typhoon (formerly Barium), Bronze Atlas, HOODOO, Wicked Panda, and Winnti, is known to be operational since at least 2007, targeting a wide range of industries to conduct intellectual property theft. Recent attacks mounted by the adversarial collective have  leveraged  an open-source red teaming tool known as Google Command and Control (GC2) as part of attacks aimed at media and job platforms in Taiwan and Italy. The init

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

F-Secure : Chinese Government Launching Online Attacks According to F-Secure Chinese military documentary shows footage of gov't systems launching attacks against US target. China is often blamed for launching online attacks, but the evidence is almost always circumstantial. Many of the targeted espionage Trojans seem to come from China, but we can't actually prove it. However, some new evidence has just surfaced. On 17th of July, a military documentary program titled "Military Technology: Internet Storm is Coming" was published on the Government-run TV channel CCTV 7, Millitary and Agriculture (at military.cntv.cn ). The program seems to be a fairly standard 20-minute TV documentary about the potential and risks of cyber warfare. However, while they are speaking about theory, they actually show camera footage of Chinese government systems launching attacks against a U.S. target. This is highly unusual. The most likely explanation is that this footage ended up in

China 's Cyber Hackers Target Western Firms ! Sky News has learnt of the growing threat Western governments and corporations are under from hackers based in China. Cyber crime costs the UK tens of billions of pounds every year. The attacks cannot be traced but I have gained access to some of the country's growing number of hackers to discover just how big a risk they pose: The man I meet is 21, he has no technical training and has moved to Beijing from a small town in southern China. But within minutes of our meeting, he's shown me how he can hack into my email account. A few more clicks of his mouse, and he's stolen my credit card details as I make an online purchase. He says he's a "cyber security expert" - not a hacker - but we can't use his name and he refuses to show his face. I ask him whether he could successfully hack into more carefully guarded computer systems: those of government officials and top companies in the West. "Even

The United States division of Samsung has been charged with deceiving the US government into believing that several of its products met the necessary US government policies, resulting in the US government buying unauthorised Chinese-made electronics . The South Korean electronics giant has agreed to pay the Government $2.3 million in fines to settle the charges of violating trade agreements, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Under federal contracting rules, Government agencies are only required to purchase products made in the United States or in countries that have a trade agreement with the United States. Federal agencies purchased products from Samsung through authorised resellers, believing they were manufactured in South Korea or Mexico, comply with government procurement rules — namely the US trade agreement act. SAMSUNG LIED TO U.S GOVERNMENT Despite complying with the terms of the contract, Samsung was found to have breached the US government bet

China beats its own record with the World's fastest supercomputer. Sunway TaihuLight , a newly built supercomputer from China, now ranks as the world's most powerful machine. During the International Supercomputer Conference in Germany on Monday, Top500 declared China's 10.65 Million-core Sunway TaihuLight as the world's fastest supercomputer. Moreover, the supercomputer is leading by a wide margin, too. With 93 petaflops of processing power, Sunway TaihuLight is nearly three times more powerful than the world's previous fastest supercomputer, Tianhe-2 , which had been the world's fastest computer for last 3 years with speeds of 33.9 petaflops per second. That's 93 quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOP), which means the supercomputer can perform around 93,000 trillion calculations per second, at its peak. The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer is installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi. "Sunway TaihuLight, with

An advanced persistent threat (APT) group operating with objectives aligned with the Chinese government has been linked to an organized supply chain attack on Taiwan's financial sector. The attacks are said to have first commenced at the end of November 2021, with the intrusions attributed to a threat actor tracked as  APT10 , also known as Stone Panda, the MenuPass group, and Bronze Riverside, and known to be active since at least 2009. The second wave of attacks hit a peak between February 10 and 13, 2022, according to a  new report  published by Taiwanese cybersecurity firm CyCraft, which said the wide-ranging supply chain compromise specifically targeted the software systems of financial institutions, resulting in "abnormal cases of placing orders." The infiltration activity, codenamed " Operation Cache Panda ," exploited a vulnerability in the web management interface of the unnamed securities software that has a market share of over 80% in Taiwan, usi

A Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group tracked as  RedGolf  has been  attributed  to the use of a custom Windows and Linux backdoor called KEYPLUG. "RedGolf is a particularly prolific Chinese state-sponsored threat actor group that has likely been active for many years against a wide range of industries globally," Recorded Future told The Hacker News. "The group has shown the ability to rapidly weaponize  newly reported vulnerabilities (e.g. Log4Shell and  ProxyLogon ) and has a history of developing and using a large range of custom malware families." The use of KEYPLUG by Chinese threat actors was  first disclosed  by Google-owned Mandiant in March 2022 in attacks targeting multiple U.S. state government networks between May 2021 and February 2022. Then in October 2022, Malwarebytes  detailed  a separate set of attacks targeting government entities in Sri Lanka in early August that leveraged a novel implant dubbed DBoxAgent to deploy KEYPLUG. Bot

A pair of reports from cybersecurity firms  SEKOIA  and  Trend Micro  sheds light on a new campaign undertaken by a Chinese threat actor named Lucky Mouse that involves leveraging a trojanized version of a cross-platform messaging app to backdoor systems. Infection chains leverage a chat application called MiMi, with its installer files compromised to download and install HyperBro samples for the Windows operating system and rshell artifacts for Linux and macOS. As many as 13 different entities located in Taiwan and the Philippines have been at the receiving end of the attacks, eight of whom have been hit with rshell. The first victim of rshell was reported in mid-July 2021. Lucky Mouse, also called  APT27 , Bronze Union, Emissary Panda, and Iron Tiger, is known to be active since 2013 and has a history of gaining access to targeted networks in pursuit of its political and military intelligence-collection objectives aligned with China. The advanced persistent threat actor (APT)

China-linked adversaries have been attributed to an ongoing onslaught against Indian power grid organizations, one year after a  concerted campaign  targeting critical infrastructure in the country came to light. Most of the intrusions involved a modular backdoor named  ShadowPad , according to Recorded Future's Insikt Group, a sophisticated remote access trojan which has been  dubbed  a "masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage." "ShadowPad continues to be employed by an ever-increasing number of People's Liberation Army (PLA) and Ministry of State Security (MSS)-linked groups, with its origins linked to known MSS contractors first using the tool in their own operations and later likely acting as a digital quartermaster," the researchers  said . The goal of the sustained campaign, the cybersecurity company said, is to facilitate intelligence gathering pertaining to critical infrastructure systems in preparation for future contingency

The Chinese nation-state group dubbed  Alloy Taurus  is using a Linux variant of a backdoor called PingPull as well as a new undocumented tool codenamed Sword2033. That's according to findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which  discovered  recent malicious cyber activity carried out by the group targeting South Africa and Nepal. Alloy Taurus is the constellation-themed moniker assigned to a threat actor that's known for its attacks targeting telecom companies since at least 2012. It's also tracked by Microsoft as Granite Typhoon (previously Gallium). Last month, the adversary was attributed to a campaign called  Tainted Love  targeting telecommunication providers in the Middle East as part of a broader operation referred to as Soft Cell. Recent cyber espionage attacks mounted by Alloy Taurus have also broadened their victimology footprint to include financial institutions and government entities. PingPull,  first documented  by Unit 42 in June 2022, is a remote

Once again NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the truth, that the NSA hacks into China's mobile operators to steal millions of text messages.  Every month Washington come up with new reports  and accuse other nations, particularly China, for cyber hacking , but the biggest culprit of such crime is in fact the United States. All of this appeared to go relatively well for Washington until revelations emerged of the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance program . According to Snowden, U.S. spies had hacked 3 major mobile phone companies in China and a core network to steal text messages of millions of Chinese citizens. Fang Binxing, a President at Beijing University who is considered the chief pioneer of China's Great Firewall Internet filtering system, has warned in the past that telecom equipment from international companies like Cisco is a threat to China's national security. As such, it could have allowed NSA operatives to access int

A Chinese malware campaign called ' Beebus ' specifically targeting the aerospace and defense industries has been uncovered by FireEye security researchers. Beebus is designed to steal information, and begins its infiltration, as so many attacks do, with spear-phishing emails. Operation Beebus very related to Operation Shady RAT and was first detected in April 2011. The attacks carried out by  spear phishing attack and drive-by downloads as a means of infecting end users. malicious Whitepapers or PDFs were mailed to targets and by using known flaws, malware was able install Trojan backdoors on vulnerable systems. The malware communicates with a remote command and control (CnC) server. FireEye discovered the attacks on some of its customers in the aerospace and defence last March and the Vulnerability in the Windows OS known as DLL search order hijacking was used to drops a DLL called ntshrui.DLL in the C:\Windows directory.  It has modules to capture system information l

A widely used Chinese language input app for Windows and Android has been found vulnerable to serious security flaws that could allow a malicious interloper to decipher the text typed by users. The findings from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which carried out an analysis of the encryption mechanism used in Tencent's Sogou Input Method , an app that has over 455 million monthly active users across Windows, Android, and iOS. The vulnerabilities are rooted in EncryptWall, the service's custom encryption system, allowing network eavesdroppers to extract the textual content and access sensitive data. "The Windows and Android versions of Sogou Input Method contain vulnerabilities in this encryption system, including a vulnerability to a CBC  padding oracle attack , which allow network eavesdroppers to recover the plaintext of encrypted network transmissions, revealing sensitive information including what users have typed," the researchers  said . CBC, s

Chinese spied on NATO officials using Facebook Friends An online scam has been exposed in which senior British military and government officials were tricked into becoming Facebook friends with someone masquerading as U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander and lead officer on the Libyan mission, thereby exposing their own personal information to unknown hackers. Late last year, senior British military officers, Defense Ministry officials, and other government officials were tricked into becoming Facebook friends with someone masquerading as United States Navy admiral James Stavridis. Nato will not officially say who was behind the cyber-fraud or who accepted friend requests but it is understood that evidence points to Chinese state-sponsored hackers. NATO has advised senior officers and officials, including Admiral Stirvis to open their own social networking pages to prevent a repeat of such incident. the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Shape), c

ShadowPad, an infamous Windows backdoor that allows attackers to download further malicious modules or steal data, has been put to use by five different Chinese threat clusters since 2017. "The adoption of ShadowPad significantly reduces the costs of development and maintenance for threat actors," SentinelOne researchers Yi-Jhen Hsieh and Joey Chen  said  in a detailed overview of the malware, adding "some threat groups stopped developing their own backdoors after they gained access to ShadowPad." The American cybersecurity firm dubbed ShadowPad a "masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage." A successor to PlugX and a modular malware platform since 2015,  ShadowPad  catapulted to widespread attention in the wake of supply chain incidents targeting  NetSarang ,  CCleaner , and  ASUS , leading the operators to shift tactics and update their defensive measures with advanced anti-detection and persistence techniques. More recently, atta

A previously undocumented Chinese-speaking advanced persistent threat (APT) actor dubbed  Aoqin Dragon  has been linked to a string of espionage-oriented attacks aimed at government, education, and telecom entities chiefly in Southeast Asia and Australia dating as far back as 2013. "Aoqin Dragon seeks initial access primarily through document exploits and the use of fake removable devices," SentinelOne researcher Joey Chen  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Other techniques the attacker has been observed using include DLL hijacking,  Themida-packed files , and DNS tunneling to evade post-compromise detection." The group is said to have some level of tactical association with another threat actor known as  Naikon  (aka Override Panda), with the campaigns primarily directed against targets in Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam. Infections chains mounted by Aoqin Dragon have banked on Asia-Pacific political affairs and pornographi

Threat activity clusters affiliated with the Chinese and Russian cybercriminal ecosystems have been observed using a new piece of malware that's designed to load Cobalt Strike onto infected machines. Dubbed  SILKLOADER  by Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, the malware leverages  DLL side-loading techniques  to deliver the commercial adversary simulation software. The development comes as  improved detection capabilities  against Cobalt Strike, a legitimate post-exploitation tool used for red team operations, is forcing threat actors to  seek alternative options  or concoct new ways to propagate the framework to evade detection. "The most common of these include adding complexity to the auto-generated beacon or stager payloads via the utilization of packers, crypters, loaders, or similar techniques," WithSecure researchers  said . SILKLOADER joins other loaders such as KoboldLoader, MagnetLoader, and LithiumLoader that have been  recently discovered  incorpora

Security experts are confident that the Chinese hackers group known as Comment Crew is still operating under cover. " The Comment Crew is back again " this is the rumor within Intelligence community, researchers suspect the involvement of the group of hackers in the recent cyber dispute between U.S. and China. Let's make a step back, last February Mandiant Intelligence firm released an interesting report that revealed an enterprise-scale computer espionage campaign dubbed APT1. Mandiant linked the APT1 attacks, that compromised 141 organizations in seven years, to Chinese military unit called " 61398 ". The is very interesting is that the security firm identified a common pattern for the attacks conducted by Chinese hackers group, it was also able to define a series of key indicators for identifying ongoing APT attacks. Mandiant security firm had monitored the group during last years and report details its operations, it wasn't the only one FireEye is anoth