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Cybercriminals Abusing Cloudflare R2 for Hosting Phishing Pages, Experts Warn

Cybercriminals Abusing Cloudflare R2 for Hosting Phishing Pages, Experts Warn

Aug 15, 2023 Hosting / Phishing
Threat actors' use of Cloudflare R2 to host phishing pages has witnessed a 61-fold increase over the past six months. "The majority of the phishing campaigns target Microsoft login credentials, although there are some pages targeting Adobe, Dropbox, and other cloud apps," Netskope security researcher Jan Michael  said . Cloudflare R2 , analogous to Amazon Web Service S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob Storage, is a data storage service for the cloud. The development comes as the total number of cloud apps from which malware downloads originate has  increased to 167 , with Microsoft OneDrive, Squarespace, GitHub, SharePoint, and Weebly taking the top five spots. The phishing campaigns identified by Netskope not only abuse Cloudflare R2 to distribute static phishing pages, but also leverage the company's  Turnstile  offering, a CAPTCHA replacement, to place such pages behind anti-bot barriers to evade detection. In doing so, it prevents online scanners like
Memcached Servers Abused for Massive Amplification DDoS Attacks

Memcached Servers Abused for Massive Amplification DDoS Attacks

Feb 28, 2018
Cybercriminals have figured out a way to abuse widely-used Memcached servers to launch over 51,000 times powerful DDoS attacks than their original strength, which could result in knocking down of major websites and Internet infrastructure. In recent days, security researchers at Cloudflare , Arbor Networks , and Chinese security firm Qihoo 360 noticed that hackers are now abusing "Memcached" to amplify their DDoS attacks by an unprecedented factor of 51,200. Memcached is a popular open-source and easily deployable distributed caching system that allows objects to be stored in memory and has been designed to work with a large number of open connections. Memcached server runs over TCP or UDP port 11211. The Memcached application has been designed to speed up dynamic web applications by reducing stress on the database that helps administrators to increase performance and scale web applications. It's widely used by thousands of websites, including Facebook, Flickr,
How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

Mar 21, 2024SaaS Security / Endpoint Security
In today's digital-first business environment dominated by SaaS applications, organizations increasingly depend on third-party vendors for essential cloud services and software solutions. As more vendors and services are added to the mix, the complexity and potential vulnerabilities within the  SaaS supply chain  snowball quickly. That's why effective vendor risk management (VRM) is a critical strategy in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to protect organizational assets and data integrity. Meanwhile, common approaches to vendor risk assessments are too slow and static for the modern world of SaaS. Most organizations have simply adapted their legacy evaluation techniques for on-premise software to apply to SaaS providers. This not only creates massive bottlenecks, but also causes organizations to inadvertently accept far too much risk. To effectively adapt to the realities of modern work, two major aspects need to change: the timeline of initial assessment must shorte
Cloudflare Saw Record-Breaking DDoS Attack Peaking at 26 Million Request Per Second

Cloudflare Saw Record-Breaking DDoS Attack Peaking at 26 Million Request Per Second

Jun 15, 2022
Cloudflare on Tuesday disclosed that it had acted to prevent a record-setting 26 million request per second (RPS) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack last week, making it the largest HTTPS DDoS attack detected to date. The web performance and security company said the attack was directed against an unnamed customer website using its Free plan and emanated from a "powerful" botnet of 5,067 devices, with each node generating approximately 5,200 RPS at peak. The botnet is said to have created a flood of more than 212 million HTTPS requests within less than 30 seconds from over 1,500 networks in 121 countries, including Indonesia, the U.S., Brazil, Russia, and India. Roughly 3% of the attack came through Tor nodes. The attack "originated mostly from Cloud Service Providers as opposed to Residential Internet Service Providers, indicating the use of hijacked virtual machines and powerful servers to generate the attack — as opposed to much weaker Internet of Things
cyber security

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
Hacker Hijacks CoinHive's DNS to Mine Cryptocurrency Using Thousands of Websites

Hacker Hijacks CoinHive's DNS to Mine Cryptocurrency Using Thousands of Websites

Oct 25, 2017
When yesterday I was reporting about the sudden outbreak of another global ransomware attack ' Bad Rabbit ,' I thought what could be worse than this? Then late last night I got my answer with a notification that Coinhive has been hacked — a popular browser-based service that offers website owners to embed a JavaScript to utilise their site visitors' CPUs power to mine the Monero cryptocurrency for monetisation. Reportedly an unknown hacker managed to hijack Coinhive's CloudFlare account that allowed him/her to modify its DNS servers and replace Coinhive's official JavaScript code embedded into thousands of websites with a malicious version. https://coin-hive[.]com/lib/coinhive.min.js Hacker Reused Leaked Password from 2014 Data Breach Apparently, hacker reused an old password to access Coinhive's CloudFlare account that was leaked in the Kickstarter data breach in 2014. "Tonight, Oct. 23th at around 22:00 GMT our account for our DNS provi
Malicious PyPI Packages Using Cloudflare Tunnels to Sneak Through Firewalls

Malicious PyPI Packages Using Cloudflare Tunnels to Sneak Through Firewalls

Jan 09, 2023 Network Security / Supply Chain
In yet another campaign targeting the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository, six malicious packages have been found deploying information stealers on developer systems. The now-removed packages, which were  discovered  by Phylum between December 22 and December 31, 2022, include pyrologin, easytimestamp, discorder, discord-dev, style.py, and pythonstyles. The malicious code, as is  increasingly the case , is concealed in the setup script (setup.py) of these libraries, meaning running a "pip install" command is enough to activate the malware deployment process. The malware is designed to launch a PowerShell script that retrieves a ZIP archive file, install invasive dependencies such as pynput, pydirectinput, and pyscreenshot, and run a Visual Basic Script extracted from the archive to execute more PowerShell code. "These libraries allow one to control and monitor mouse and keyboard input and capture screen contents," Phylum said in a technical report published
HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Zero-Day Vulnerability Exploited to Launch Record DDoS Attacks

HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Zero-Day Vulnerability Exploited to Launch Record DDoS Attacks

Oct 10, 2023 Server Security / Vulnerability
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloudflare, and Google on Tuesday said they took steps to mitigate record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that relied on a novel technique called HTTP/2 Rapid Reset. The  layer 7 attacks  were detected in late August 2023, the companies said in a coordinated disclosure. The cumulative susceptibility to this attack is being tracked as  CVE-2023-44487 , and carries a CVSS score of 7.5 out of a maximum of 10. While the attacks aimed at Google's cloud infrastructure peaked at  398 million requests per second  (RPS), the ones that struck AWS and Cloudflare exceeded a volume of 155 million and 201 million RPS, respectively. HTTP/2 Rapid Reset refers to a zero-day flaw in the HTTP/2 protocol that can be exploited to carry out DDoS attacks. A significant feature of HTTP/2 is multiplexing requests over a single TCP connection, which manifests in the form of concurrent streams. What's more, a client that wants to abort a request can
CloudFlare CDNJS Bug Could Have Led to Widespread Supply-Chain Attacks

CloudFlare CDNJS Bug Could Have Led to Widespread Supply-Chain Attacks

Jul 17, 2021
Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare last month fixed a critical vulnerability in its CDNJS library that's  used by 12.7% of all websites  on the internet. CDNJS is a free and open-source content delivery network (CDN) that serves about  4,041 JavaScript and CSS libraries , making it the  second most popular  CDN for JavaScript after Google Hosted Libraries. The weakness concerned an issue in the CDNJS library update server that could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands, leading to a complete compromise. The vulnerability was discovered and reported by security researcher RyotaK on April 6, 2021. There is no evidence of in-the-wild attacks abusing this flaw. Specifically, the vulnerability works by publishing packages to Cloudflare's CDNJS using GitHub and npm, using it to trigger a  path traversal vulnerability , and ultimately trick the server into executing arbitrary code, thus achieving remote code execution. It's wor
Firefox enables DNS-over-HTTPS by default (with Cloudflare) for all U.S. users

Firefox enables DNS-over-HTTPS by default (with Cloudflare) for all U.S. users

Feb 25, 2020
If you use the Firefox web browser, here's an important update that you need to be aware of. Starting today, Mozilla is activating the DNS-over-HTTPS security feature by default for all Firefox users in the U.S. by automatically changing their DNS server configuration in the settings. That means, from now onwards, Firefox will send all your DNS queries to the Cloudflare DNS servers instead of the default DNS servers set by your operating system, router, or network provider. As you may know, DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol performs DNS lookups — i.e., finding the server I.P. address of a certain domain name — over an encrypted connection to a DNS server rather than sending queries in the plaintext. This privacy-focused technology makes it harder for man-in-the-middle attackers, including your ISPs, to manipulate DNS queries, eavesdrop on your Internet connection, or learning what sites you visit. "This helps hide your browsing history from attackers on the network,
Mirai Botnet Hits Wynncraft Minecraft Server with 2.5 Tbps DDoS Attack

Mirai Botnet Hits Wynncraft Minecraft Server with 2.5 Tbps DDoS Attack

Oct 14, 2022
Web infrastructure and security company Cloudflare disclosed this week that it halted a 2.5 Tbps distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack launched by a Mirai botnet. Characterizing it as a "multi-vector attack consisting of UDP and TCP floods," researcher Omer Yoachimik said the DDoS attack targeted the Minecraft server Wynncraft in Q3 2022. "The entire 2.5 Tbps attack lasted about 2 minutes, and the peak of the 26 million rps attack [was] only 15 seconds," Yoachimik  noted . "This is the largest attack we've ever seen from the bitrate perspective." Cloudflare also pointed to a surge in multi-terabit DDoS attacks as well as longer-lasting volumetric attacks during the time period, not to mention an uptick in attacks targeting Taiwan and Japan. The disclosure comes almost 10 months after Microsoft said it thwarted a  record-breaking 3.47 Tbps DDoS attack  in November 2021 directed against an unnamed Azure customer in Asia. Other  DDoS attacks
World's biggest DDoS attack that Almost Broke the Internet

World's biggest DDoS attack that Almost Broke the Internet

Mar 29, 2013
The last week has seen probably the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever. A massive 300Gbps was thrown against Internet blacklist maintainer Spamhaus' website but the anti-spam organisation , CloudFlare was able to recover from the attack and get its core services back up and running.  Spamhaus, a group based in both London and Geneva, is a non-profit organisation that aims to help email providers filter out spam and other unwanted content. Spamhaus is pretty resilient, as its own network is distributed across many countries, but the attack was still enough to knock its site offline on March 18. Five national cyber-police-forces are investigating the attacks.  A group calling itself STOPhaus,  an alliance of hactivists and cyber criminals is believed to responsible for bombarding Spamhaus with up to 300Gbps. The attacks on Spamhaus illustrate a larger problem with the vulnerability of systems fundamental to the architecture of the Internet, the D
Hackers Targeting Myanmar Use Domain Fronting to Hide Malicious Activities

Hackers Targeting Myanmar Use Domain Fronting to Hide Malicious Activities

Nov 17, 2021
A malicious campaign has been found leveraging a technique called domain fronting to hide command-and-control traffic by leveraging a legitimate domain owned by the Myanmar government to route communications to an attacker-controlled server with the goal of evading detection. The threat, which was observed in September 2021, deployed Cobalt Strike payloads as a stepping stone for launching further attacks, with the adversary using a domain associated with the Myanmar Digital News network, a state-owned digital newspaper, as a front for their Beacons. "When the Beacon is launched, it will submit a DNS request for a legitimate high-reputation domain hosted behind Cloudflare infrastructure and modify the subsequent HTTPs requests header to instruct the CDN to direct the traffic to an attacker-controlled host," Cisco Talos researchers Chetan Raghuprasad, Vanja Svajcer, and Asheer Malhotra  said  in a technical analysis published Tuesday. Originally released in 2012 to addres
DDoS Attacks on the Environmental Services Industry Surge by 61,839% in 2023

DDoS Attacks on the Environmental Services Industry Surge by 61,839% in 2023

Jan 15, 2024 Server Security / Cyber Attack
The environmental services industry witnessed an "unprecedented surge" in HTTP-based distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, accounting for half of all its HTTP traffic. This marks a 61,839% increase in DDoS attack traffic year-over-year, web infrastructure and security company Cloudflare said in its DDoS threat report for 2023 Q4 published last week. "This surge in cyber attacks coincided with  COP 28 , which ran from November 30th to December 12th, 2023," security researchers Omer Yoachimik and Jorge Pacheco  said , describing it as a "disturbing trend in the cyber threat landscape." The uptick in HTTP attacks targeting environmental services websites is part of a larger trend observed annually over the past few years, specifically during COP 26 and COP 27, as well as other United Nations environment-related resolutions or announcements. "This recurring pattern underscores the growing intersection between environmental issues and cyber security, a nexus that is increasingl
Mantis Botnet Behind the Largest HTTPS DDoS Attack Targeting Cloudflare Customers

Mantis Botnet Behind the Largest HTTPS DDoS Attack Targeting Cloudflare Customers

Jul 15, 2022
The botnet behind the largest HTTPS distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in June 2022 has been linked to a spate of attacks aimed at nearly 1,000 Cloudflare customers. Calling the powerful botnet  Mantis , the web performance and security company attributed it to more than 3,000 HTTP DDoS attacks against its users. The most attacked industry verticals include internet and telecom, media, gaming, finance, business, and shopping, of which over 20% of the attacks targeted U.S.-based companies, followed by Russia, Turkey, France, Poland, Ukraine, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada. Last month, the company said it  mitigated  a record-breaking DDoS attack aimed at an unnamed customer website using its Free plan that peaked at 26 million requests per second (RPS), with each node generating approximately 5,200 RPS. The tsunami of junk traffic lasted less than 30 seconds and generated more than 212 million HTTPS requests from more than 1,500 networks in 121 countries,
Here's How to Find if WhatsApp Web Code on Your Browser Has Been Hacked

Here's How to Find if WhatsApp Web Code on Your Browser Has Been Hacked

Mar 11, 2022
Meta Platforms' WhatsApp and Cloudflare have banded together for a new initiative called Code Verify to validate the authenticity of the messaging service's web app on desktop computers. Available in the form of a Chrome and Edge  browser extension , the  open-source add-on  is designed to "automatically verif[y] the authenticity of the WhatsApp Web code being served to your browser," Facebook  said  in a statement. The goal with Code Verify is to confirm the integrity of the web application and ensure that it hasn't been tampered with to inject malicious code. The social media company is also planning to release Firefox and Safari plugins to achieve the same level of security across browsers. The system works with Cloudflare acting as a third-party audit to compare the cryptographic hash of WhatsApp Web's JavaScript code that's shared by Meta with that of a locally computed hash of the code running on the browser client. Code Verify is also meant t
Massive HTTP DDoS Attack Hits Record High of 71 Million Requests/Second

Massive HTTP DDoS Attack Hits Record High of 71 Million Requests/Second

Feb 14, 2023
Web infrastructure company Cloudflare on Monday disclosed that it thwarted a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that peaked at over 71 million requests per second (RPS). "The majority of attacks peaked in the ballpark of 50-70 million requests per second (RPS) with the largest exceeding 71 million," the company  said , calling it a "hyper-volumetric" DDoS attack. It's also the largest HTTP DDoS attack reported to date, more than 35% higher than the previous 46 million RPS DDoS attack that  Google Cloud mitigated in June 2022 . Cloudflare said the attacks singled out websites secured by its platform and that they emanated from a botnet comprising more than 30,000 IP addresses that belonged to "numerous" cloud providers. Targeted websites included a popular gaming provider, cryptocurrency companies, hosting providers, and cloud computing platforms. HTTP attacks of this kind are designed to send a tsunami of HTTP requests t
⚡Top Cybersecurity News Stories This Week — Cybersecurity Newsletter

⚡Top Cybersecurity News Stories This Week — Cybersecurity Newsletter

Feb 17, 2023 Weekly Cybersecurity Newsletter
Hey 👋 there, cyber friends! Welcome to  this week's cybersecurity newsletter , where we aim to keep you informed and empowered in the ever-changing world of cyber threats. In today's edition, we will cover some interesting developments in the cybersecurity landscape and share some insightful analysis of each to help you protect yourself against potential attacks. 1. Apple 📱 Devices Hacked with New Zero-Day Bug - Update ASAP! Have you updated your Apple devices lately? If not, it's time to do so, as the tech giant just released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Safari. The update is to fix a zero-day vulnerability that hackers have been exploiting. This vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-23529, is related to a type confusion bug in the WebKit browser engine. What does this mean? Well, it means that if you visit a website with malicious code, the bug can be activated, leading to arbitrary code execution. In other words, hackers can take control of your devi
Experts Identify Fully-Featured Info Stealer and Trojan in Python Package on PyPI

Experts Identify Fully-Featured Info Stealer and Trojan in Python Package on PyPI

Mar 02, 2023 Software Security / CodingSec
A malicious Python package uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) has been found to contain a fully-featured information stealer and remote access trojan. The package, named  colourfool , was identified by Kroll's Cyber Threat Intelligence team, with the company calling the malware  Colour-Blind . "The 'Colour-Blind' malware points to the democratization of cybercrime that could lead to an intensified threat landscape, as multiple variants can be spawned from code sourced from others," Kroll researchers Dave Truman and George Glass  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. colourfool, like  other rogue Python modules  discovered in recent months, conceals its malicious code in the setup script, which points to a ZIP archive payload hosted on Discord. The file contains a Python script (code.py) that comes with different modules designed to log keystrokes, steal cookies, and even disable security software. The malware, besides performing defense ev
Web Hosting software WHMCS vulnerable to SQL Injection; emergency security update released

Web Hosting software WHMCS vulnerable to SQL Injection; emergency security update released

Oct 06, 2013
WHMCS, a popular client management, billing and support application for Web hosting providers, released an emergency security update for the 5.2 and 5.1 minor releases, to patch a critical vulnerability that was publicly disclosed. The vulnerability was publicly posted by a user named as ' localhost ' on October 3rd, 2013 and also reported by several users on various Hosting related Forums . He also released a  proof-of-concept exploit code  for this SQL injection vulnerability in WHMCS. WHMCS says , as the updates have " critical security impacts .", enables attackers to execute SQL injection attacks against WHMCS deployments in order to extract or modify sensitive information from their databases i.e. Including information about existing accounts, their hashed passwords, which can result in the compromise of the administrator account. Yesterday a group of Palestinian hackers , named as KDMS Team  possibly used the same vulnerability against one of the largest Host
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