Search results for Storm Website | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft is calling attention to a Morocco-based cybercrime group dubbed  Storm-0539  that's behind gift card fraud and theft through highly sophisticated email and SMS phishing attacks. "Their primary motivation is to steal gift cards and profit by selling them online at a discounted rate," the company  said  in its latest Cyber Signals report. "We've seen some examples where the threat actor has stolen up to $100,000 a day at certain companies." Storm-0539 was  first spotlighted  by Microsoft in mid-December 2023, linking it to social engineering campaigns ahead of the year-end holiday season to steal victims' credentials and session tokens via adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) phishing pages. The gang, also called Atlas Lion and active since at least late 2021, is known to then abuse the initial access to register their own devices to bypass authentication and obtain persistent access, gain elevated privileges, and compromise gift card-related ser...

Microsoft on Thursday unmasked four of the individuals that it said were behind an Azure Abuse Enterprise scheme that involves leveraging unauthorized access to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) services in order to produce offensive and harmful content. The campaign, called LLMjacking, has targeted various AI offerings, including Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service. The tech giant is tracking the cybercrime network as Storm-2139. The individuals named are - Arian Yadegarnia aka "Fiz" of Iran, Alan Krysiak aka "Drago" of United Kingdom, Ricky Yuen aka "cg-dot" of Hong Kong, China, and Phát Phùng Tấn aka "Asakuri" of Vietnam "Members of Storm-2139 exploited exposed customer credentials scraped from public sources to unlawfully access accounts with certain generative AI services," Steven Masada, assistant general counsel for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), said . "They then altered the capabilities of ...

Cybersecurity today is less about single attacks and more about chains of small weaknesses that connect into big risks. One overlooked update, one misused account, or one hidden tool in the wrong hands can be enough to open the door. The news this week shows how attackers are mixing methods—combining stolen access, unpatched software, and clever tricks to move from small entry points to large consequences.  For defenders, the lesson is clear: the real danger often comes not from one major flaw, but from how different small flaws interact together. ⚡ Threat of the Week WhatsApp Patches Actively Exploited Flaw — WhatsApp addressed a security vulnerability in its messaging apps for Apple iOS and macOS that it said may have been exploited in the wild in conjunction with a recently disclosed Apple flaw in targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-55177 relates to a case of insufficient authorization of linked device synchronization messages. The Meta-owned company ...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world's first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. In the following story, FortiGuard Labs looks at the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years and explains their historical significance. 1971: Creeper: catch me if you can While theories on self-replicating automatas were developed by genius mathematician Von Neumann in the early 50s, the first real computer virus was released "in lab" in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the ...

#SOPA - The Hacker News say " NO WAY " Get mad and take action as you read how your internet privacy and freedoms are about to be taken away in our editor Patti Galle 's article on SOPA…….coming to your personal rights soon. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced on October 26, 2011 in the United States House of Representatives, by right-wing Texas Republican, Representative Lamar Smith and twelve initial co-sponsors. The Stop Online Piracy Act dramatically broadens the capacity of United States law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Proponents of bill H.R. 3261 state SOPA protects the intellectual property market and related industry, jobs and revenue, and is essential to reinforce and strengthen enforcement of copyright laws particularly against foreign websites. Opponents of the bill forcefully deem that the bill infringes on First Amendment rights, is e...

When it comes to access security, one recommendation stands out above the rest: multi-factor authentication (MFA). With passwords alone being simple work for hackers, MFA provides an essential layer of protection against breaches. However, it's important to remember that MFA isn't foolproof. It can be bypassed, and it often is.  If a password is compromised, there are several options available to hackers looking to circumvent the added protection of MFA. We'll explore four social engineering tactics hackers successfully use to breach MFA and emphasize the importance of having a strong password as part of a layered defense.  1. Adversary-in-the-middle (AITM) attacks AITM attacks involve deceiving users into believing they're logging into a genuine network, application, or website. But really, they're giving up their information to a fraudulent lookalike. This lets hackers intercept passwords and manipulate security measures, including MFA prompts. For instance, a spear-phis...

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged two Sudanese brothers with running a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet for hire that conducted a record 35,000 DDoS attacks in a single year, including those that targeted Microsoft's services in June 2023. The attacks, which were facilitated by Anonymous Sudan's "powerful DDoS tool," singled out critical infrastructure, corporate networks, and government agencies in the United States and around the world, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, have been charged with one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed Salah has also been charged with three counts of damaging protected computers. If convicted on all charges, Ahmed Salah faces a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison, while Alaa Salah faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. The DDoS tool is said to have been disabled in March 2024, the same...

The Drupal vulnerability (CVE-2018-7600), dubbed Drupalgeddon2 that could allow attackers to completely take over vulnerable websites has now been exploited in the wild to deliver malware backdoors and cryptocurrency miners. Drupalgeddon2, a highly critical remote code execution vulnerability discovered two weeks ago in Drupal content management system software, was recently patched by the company without releasing its technical details. However, just a day after security researchers at Check Point and Dofinity published complete details, a Drupalgeddon2 proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code was made widely available, and large-scale Internet scanning and exploitation attempts followed. At the time, no incident of targets being hacked was reported, but over the weekend, several security firms noticed that attackers have now started exploiting the vulnerability to install cryptocurrency miner and other malware on vulnerable websites. The SANS Internet Storm Center spotted so...

A malware campaign has been found targeting iOS devices linked to a wide range of entities, including European defense organizations, governments, and media sectors with dangerous espionage spyware capable of breaching non-jailbroken devices, a recent report claims. The spyware campaign, dubbed " Operation Pawn Storm " by security experts, was first detected on Windows computers late last year, but has now made its way to iOS devices , a report by security researchers at TrendLabs noted. The researchers linked the campaign to the Russian government. XAGENT SPYWARE APP One of the two spywares used in the campaign is actually an application, the firm dubbed the app XAgent, that attempts to install and run on iOS devices. " The XAgent app is fully functional malware ," the researchers noted . " The exact methods of installing these malware is unknown; however, we do know that the iOS device doesn't have to be jailbroken ... We have seen one in...

European Union military personnel and political leaders working on gender equality initiatives have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an updated version of RomCom RAT called  PEAPOD . Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the name  Void Rabisu , which is also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, and UNC2596, and is also believed to be associated with Cuba ransomware. The adversarial collective is something of an unusual group in that it conducts both financial motivated and espionage attacks, blurring the line between their modes of operation. It's also exclusively linked to the use of RomCom RAT. Attacks  involving the use of the backdoor  have singled out Ukraine and countries that support Ukraine in its war against Russia over the past year. Earlier this July, Microsoft implicated Void Rabisu to the exploitation of  CVE-2023-36884 , a remote code execution flaw in Office and Window...

Israeli organizations were targeted as part of two different campaigns orchestrated by the Iranian nation-state actor known as  OilRig  in 2021 and 2022. The campaigns, dubbed Outer Space and Juicy Mix, entailed the use of two previously undocumented first-stage backdoors called Solar and Mango, which were deployed to collect sensitive information from major browsers and the Windows Credential Manager. "Both backdoors were deployed by VBS droppers, presumably spread via spear-phishing emails," ESET security researcher Zuzana Hromcová  said  in a Thursday analysis. OilRig (aka APT34, Cobalt Gypsy, Hazel Sandstorm, and Helix Kitten) is the name assigned to an  intrusion set  affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Active since 2014, the threat actor has used a wide range of tools at its disposal to carry out information theft. Earlier this February, Trend Micro  discovered  OilRig's use of a simple backdoor to stea...

Google has revealed that it observed 75 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild in 2024, down from 98 in 2023 but an increase from 63 the year before. Of the 75 zero-days, 44% of them targeted enterprise products. As many as 20 flaws were identified in security software and appliances. "Zero-day exploitation of browsers and mobile devices fell drastically, decreasing by about a third for browsers and by about half for mobile devices compared to what we observed last year," the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a report shared with The Hacker news. "Exploit chains made up of multiple zero-day vulnerabilities continue to be almost exclusively (~90%) used to target mobile devices." While Microsoft Windows accounted for 22 of the zero-day flaws exploited in 2024, Apple's Safari had three, iOS had two, Android had seven, Chrome had seven, and Mozilla Firefox had one flaw that were abused during the same period. Three of the seven zero-days ...

The Russia-aligned threat actor known as RomCom has been linked to the zero-day exploitation of two security flaws, one in Mozilla Firefox and the other in Microsoft Windows, as part of attacks designed to deliver the eponymous backdoor on victim systems. "In a successful attack, if a victim browses a web page containing the exploit, an adversary can run arbitrary code – without any user interaction required (zero click) – which in this case led to the installation of RomCom's backdoor on the victim's computer," ESET said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2024-9680 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A use-after-free vulnerability in Firefox's Animation component (Patched by Mozilla in October 2024)  CVE-2024-49039 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows Task Scheduler (Patched by Microsoft in November 2024) RomCom , also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, UAC-0180, UNC2596, and...

A gambling company in the Philippines was the target of a China-aligned threat actor as part of a campaign that has been ongoing since October 2021. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET is tracking the series of attacks against Southeast Asian gambling companies under the name  Operation ChattyGoblin . "These attacks use a specific tactic: targeting the victim companies' support agents via chat applications – in particular, the Comm100 and LiveHelp100 apps," ESET  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The use of a trojanized Comm100 installer to deliver malware was  first documented  by CrowdStrike in October 2022. The company attributed the supply chain compromise to a threat actor likely with associations to China. The attack chains leverage the aforementioned chat apps to distribute a C# dropper that, in turn, deploys another C# executable, which ultimately serves as a conduit to drop a Cobalt Strike beacon on hacked workstations. Also highlighted in...