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Mandiant , a FireEye sister concern has been involved in researches related to cyber defense. In their recent findings, a backdoor malware named SYNful Knock identified as the one compromising the principles of Cisco routers with features such as... ...Having an everlasting effect, i.e. Serious Persistence. What?- The malicious program is implanted in the router illicitly through the device's firmware (regardless of the vendor). The goal is achieved by modifying the router's firmware image, which exists even after the device gets a reboot. How?- installing SYNful Knock in Cisco 1841 router, Cisco 2811 router, and Cisco 3825 router. Affected areas- 14 instances in 4 countries including India, Mexico, Ukraine, and the Philippines. Impact- the backdoor is backed up with such abilities that can compromise the availability of other hosts and access to sensitive data in an organization. " The theoretical nature of router-focused attacks created a minds

It is no secret that cybercriminals are becoming dramatically more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day. While new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional activities seem to be shifting towards more clandestine techniques that involve the exploitation of standard system tools and protocols, which are not always monitored. The latest example of such attack is DNSMessenger – a new Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that uses DNS queries to conduct malicious PowerShell commands on compromised computers – a technique that makes the RAT difficult to detect onto targeted systems. The Trojan came to the attention of Cisco's Talos threat research group by a security researcher named Simpo, who highlighted a tweet that encoded text in a PowerShell script that said 'SourceFireSux.' SourceFire is one of Cisco's corporate security products. DNSMessenger Attack Is Completely Fileless Further analysis of the malware ultimately led Talos researchers to

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A new sophisticated and stealthy Apache backdoor meant to drive traffic to malicious websites serving Blackhole exploit kit widely has been detected by  Sucuri recently. Researchers claimed that this backdoor affecting hundreds of web servers right now. Dubbed Linux/Cdorked.A , one of the most sophisticated Apache backdoors we have seen so far. The backdoor leaves no traces of compromised hosts on the hard drive other than its modified httpd binary, thereby complicating forensics analysis. All of the information related to the backdoor is stored in shared memory.  The configuration is pushed by the attacker through obfuscated HTTP requests that aren't logged in normal Apache logs. The HTTP server is equipped with a reverse connect backdoor that can be triggered via a special HTTP GET request. This means that no command and control information is stored anywhere on the system. ESET researchers  analyzed the binary and discovered a nasty hidden backdoor. In the Li

A newly observed phishing campaign is leveraging the recently disclosed Follina security vulnerability to distribute a previously undocumented backdoor on Windows systems. "Rozena is a backdoor malware that is capable of injecting a remote shell connection back to the attacker's machine," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said  in a report this week. Tracked as  CVE-2022-30190 , the now-patched Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) remote code execution vulnerability has come under heavy exploitation in recent weeks ever since it came to light in late May 2022. The starting point for the latest attack chain observed by Fortinet is a weaponized  Office document  that, when opened, connects to a  Discord CDN URL  to retrieve an HTML file (" index.htm ") that, in turn, invokes the diagnostic utility using a PowerShell command to download next-stage payloads from the same CDN attachment space. This includes the Rozena implant ("Word

A threat actor tracked as Polonium has been linked to over a dozen highly targeted attacks aimed at Israelian entities with seven different custom backdoors since at least September 2021. The intrusions were aimed at organizations in various verticals, such as engineering, information technology, law, communications, branding and marketing, media, insurance, and social services, cybersecurity firm ESET said. Polonium  is the chemical element-themed moniker given by Microsoft to a sophisticated operational group that's believed to be based in Lebanon and is known to exclusively strike Israeli targets. Activities undertaken by the group first came to light earlier this June when the Windows maker disclosed it suspended more than 20 malicious OneDrive accounts created by the adversary for command-and-control (C2) purposes. Core to the attacks has been the use of implants coined CreepyDrive and CreepyBox for their ability to exfiltrate sensitive data to actor-controlled OneDrive

Bad actors with suspected ties to China have been behind a wide-ranging cyberespionage campaign targeting military organizations in Southeast Asia for nearly two years, according to new research. Attributing the attacks to a threat actor dubbed " Naikon APT ," cybersecurity firm Bitdefender laid out the ever-changing tactics, techniques, and procedures adopted by the group, including weaving new backdoors named "Nebulae" and "RainyDay" into their data-stealing missions. The malicious activity is said to have been conducted between June 2019 and March 2021. "In the beginning of the operation the threat actors used Aria-Body loader and Nebulae as the first stage of the attack," the researchers  said . "Starting with September 2020, the threat actors included the RainyDay backdoor in their toolkit. The purpose of this operation was cyberespionage and data theft." Naikon (aka Override Panda, Lotus Panda, or Hellsing) has a track recor

Refuting allegations that its anti-virus product helped Russian spies steal classified files from an NSA employee's laptop, Kaspersky Lab has released more findings that suggest the computer in question may have been infected with malware. Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab on Thursday published the results of its own internal investigation claiming the NSA worker who took classified documents home had a personal home computer overwhelmed with malware. According to the latest Kaspersky report, the telemetry data its antivirus collected from the NSA staffer's home computer contained large amounts of malware files which acted as a backdoor to the PC. The report also provided more details about the malicious backdoor that infected the NSA worker's computer when he installed a pirated version of Microsoft Office 2013 .ISO containing the Mokes backdoor, also known as Smoke Loader. Backdoor On NSA Worker's PC May Have Helped Other Hackers Steal Classi

Do you own an Android smartphone? You could be one of those 700 Million users whose phone is secretly sending text messages to China every 72 hours. You heard that right. Over 700 Million Android smartphones contain a secret 'backdoor' that surreptitiously sends all your text messages, call log, contact list, location history, and app data to China every 72 hours. Security researchers from Kryptowire discovered the alleged backdoor hidden in the firmware of many budget Android smartphones sold in the United States, which covertly gathers data on phone owners and sends it to a Chinese server without users knowing. First reported on by the New York Times on Tuesday, the backdoored firmware software is developed by China-based company Shanghai AdUps Technology, which claims that its software runs updates for more than 700 Million devices worldwide. Infected Android Smartphone WorldWide Moreover, it is worth noting that AdUps provides its software to much larger ha

An advanced group of Chinese hackers has recently been spotted to be behind a sustained cyber espionage campaign targeting government entities in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Brunei—which went undetected for at least five years and is still an ongoing threat. The group, named 'Naikon APT,' once known as one of the most active APTs in Asia until 2015, carried out a string of cyberattacks in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in search of geopolitical intelligence. According to the latest investigation report Check Point researchers shared with The Hacker News, the Naikon APT group had not gone silent for the last 5 years, as initially suspected; instead, it was using a new backdoor, called " Aria-body ," to operate stealthily. "Given the characteristics of the victims and capabilities presented by the group, it is evident that the group's purpose is to gather intelligence and spy on the countries whose governments it

Mac trojan poses as PDF to open botnet backdoor There's another Mac OS X Trojan out in the wild, and it might be heading your way.If you open the file, which could appear as an emailed attachment or as a Web link, the document, written in traditional Chinese ideograms, does indeed display. But a Trojan silently installs itself in the background as you try to sort out centuries-old territorial claims.The Trojan doesn't really do anything yet. But F-Secure, the Finnish security firm that discovered it, notes that it lays the groundwork for much more sophisticated attacks against Macs. The malware in question has been identified as Trojan-Dropper:OSX/Revir.A, which installs a backdoor, Backdoor:OSX/Imuler.A, onto the user's Mac. Currently, however, the backdoor doesn't communicate with anything. The command-and-control center for this particular malware is apparently a bare Apache installation, which has been sitting at its current domain since May of this year. Beca

Last month, we reported about a group of hackers exploiting SambaCry —a 7-year-old critical remote code execution vulnerability in Samba networking software—to hack Linux computers and install malware to mine cryptocurrencies. The same group of hackers is now targeting Windows machines with a new backdoor, which is a QT-based re-compiled version of the same malware used to target Linux. Dubbed CowerSnail , detected by security researchers at Kaspersky Labs as Backdoor.Win32.CowerSnail, is a fully-featured windows backdoor that allows its creators to remotely execute any commands on the infected systems. Wondering how these two separate campaigns are connected? Interestingly, the CowerSnail backdoor uses the same command and control (C&C) server as the malware that was used to infect Linux machines to mine cryptocurrency last month by exploiting the then-recently exposed SambaCry vulnerability. Common C&C Server Location — cl.ezreal.space:20480 SambaCry vulnerabi

Threat actors have been observed leveraging a legitimate but outdated WordPress plugin to surreptitiously backdoor websites as part of an ongoing campaign, Sucuri  revealed  in a report published last week. The plugin in question is Eval PHP, released by a developer named flashpixx. It allows users to insert PHP code pages and posts of WordPress sites that's then executed every time the posts are opened in a web browser. While  Eval PHP  has never received an update in 11 years, statistics gathered by WordPress show that it's installed on over 8,000 websites, with the number of downloads skyrocketing from one or two on average since September 2022 to 6,988 on March 30, 2023. On April 23, 2023, alone, it was downloaded 2,140 times. The plugin has racked up 23,110 downloads over the past seven days. GoDaddy-owned Sucuri said it observed some infected websites' databases injected with malicious code into the  "wp_posts" table , which stores a site's  posts,

Routers manufactured and sold by Chinese security vendor have a hard-coded password that leaves users with a wide-open backdoor that could easily be exploited by attackers to monitor the Internet traffic. The routers are sold under the brand name Netcore in China, and Netis in other parts of the world , including South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and United States. According to Trend Micro , the backdoor — a semi-secret way to access the device — allows cybercriminals the possibility to bypass device security and to easily run malicious code on routers and change settings. Netis routers are known for providing the best wireless transfer speed up to 300Mbps, offering a better performance on online gaming, video streaming, and VoIP phone calling. The Netcore and Netis routers have an open UDP port listening at port 53413 , which can be accessed from the Internet side of the router . The password needed to open up this backdoor is hardcoded into the router's firmware.

FireEye and Microsoft on Thursday said they discovered three more malware strains in connection with the SolarWinds supply-chain attack, including a "sophisticated second-stage backdoor," as the investigation into the  sprawling espionage campaign  continues to yield fresh clues about the threat actor's tactics and techniques.  Dubbed GoldMax (aka SUNSHUTTLE), GoldFinder, and Sibot, the new set of malware adds to a growing list of malicious tools such as  Sunspot ,  Sunburst  (or Solorigate),  Teardrop , and  Raindrop  that were stealthily delivered to enterprise networks by  alleged Russian operatives . "These tools are new pieces of malware that are unique to this actor," Microsoft  said . "They are tailor-made for specific networks and are assessed to be introduced after the actor has gained access through compromised credentials or the SolarWinds binary and after moving laterally with Teardrop and other hands-on-keyboard actions." Microsoft al

Security researchers at ESET have discovered a new malware campaign targeting consulates, ministries and embassies worldwide to spy on governments and diplomats. Active since 2016, the malware campaign is leveraging a new backdoor, dubbed Gazer , and is believed to be carried out by Turla advanced persistent threat (APT) hacking group that's been previously linked to Russian intelligence. Gazer, written in C++, the backdoor delivers via spear phishing emails and hijacks targeted computers in two steps—first, the malware drops Skipper backdoor, which has previously been linked to Turla and then installs Gazer components. In previous cyber espionage campaigns, the Turla hacking group used Carbon and Kazuar backdoors as its second-stage malware, which also has many similarities with Gazer, according to research [ PDF ] published by ESET. Gazer receives encrypted commands from a remote command-and-control server and evades detection by using compromised, legitimate website

How to Hack Facebook? That's the most commonly asked question during this decade. It's a hacker dream to hack Facebook website for earning bug bounty or for any malicious purpose. Facebook security team recently found that someone, probably a blackhat hacker with malicious intent, has breached into its server and installed a backdoor that was configured to steal Facebook employees' login credentials. Since the backdoor discovered in the Facebook's corporate server, not on its main server, Facebook user accounts are not affected by this incident. Though the company would have never known about the backdoor if a whitehat hacker had never spotted the backdoor script while hunting for vulnerabilities. Also Read: Ever Wondered How Facebook Decides, How much Bounty Should be Paid? Security researcher Orange Tsai of Taiwanese security vendor DEVCORE accidentally came across a backdoor script on one of Facebook's corporate servers while finding bugs to earn cash reward fr

A North Korean threat actor active since 2012 has been behind a new espionage campaign targeting high-profile government officials associated with its southern counterpart to install an Android and Windows backdoor for collecting sensitive information. Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes attributed the activity to a threat actor tracked as Kimsuky, with the targeted entities comprising of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador of the Embassy of Sri Lanka to the State, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Nuclear Security Officer, and the Deputy Consul General at Korean Consulate General in Hong Kong. The attacks also involved collecting information about other organizations and universities in the country, including the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA), Seoul National University, and Daishin Securities. Malwarebytes, however, noted that there is no evidence of active targeting or compromise by the adversary. The development is only the latest in a series of surveil

The popular copy and paste website ' Pastebin ' created a decade ago for software developers and even by hackers groups to share source code, dumps and stolen data, has more recently been leveraged by cyber criminals to target millions of users. Compromising a website and then hosting malware on it has become an old tactic for hackers, and now they are trying their hands in compromising vast majority of users in a single stroke. Researchers have discovered that hackers are now using Pastebin to spread malicious backdoor code. According to a blog post published yesterday by a senior malware researcher at Sucuri , Denis Sinegubko, the hackers are leveraging the weakness in older versions of the RevSlider , a popular and a premium WordPress plugin. The plugin comes packaged and bundled into the websites' themes in such a way that many website owners don't even know they have it. In order to exploit the vulnerability, first hackers look for a RevSlider plugin i

The China-aligned Mustang Panda actor has been observed using a hitherto unseen custom backdoor called  MQsTTang  as part of an ongoing social engineering campaign that commenced in January 2023. "Unlike most of the group's malware, MQsTTang doesn't seem to be based on existing families or publicly available projects," ESET researcher Alexandre Côté Cyr  said  in a new report. Attack chains orchestrated by the group have stepped up targeting of European entities in the wake of  Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine  last year. The victimology of the current activity is unclear, but the Slovak cybersecurity company said the decoy filenames are in line with the group's previous campaigns that target European political organizations. That said, ESET also observed attacks against unknown entities in Bulgaria and Australia, as well as a governmental institution in Taiwan, indicating a broader focus on Europe and Asia. Mustang Panda has a  history  of using