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At least three alleged hacktivist groups working in support of Russian interests are likely doing so in collaboration with state-sponsored cyber threat actors, according to Mandiant. The Google-owned threat intelligence and incident response firm  said  with moderate confidence that "moderators of the purported hacktivist Telegram channels 'XakNet Team,' 'Infoccentr,' and 'CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn' are coordinating their operations with Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)-sponsored cyber threat actors." Mandiant's assessment is based on evidence that the leakage of data stolen from Ukrainian organizations occurred within 24 hours of  malicious wiper incidents  undertaken by the Russian nation-state group tracked as  APT28  (aka Fancy Bear, Sofacy, or Strontium). To that end, four of the 16 data leaks from these groups coincided with  disk wiping malware attacks  by APT28 that involved the use of a strain dubbed  CaddyWiper . APT28 , a

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges for offering services used to evade economic restrictions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. This includes Bitpapa IC FZC LLC, Crypto Explorer DMCC (AWEX), and Obshchestvo S Ogranichennoy Otvetstvennostyu Tsentr Obrabotki Elektronnykh Platezhey (TOEP). In all, the designations cover thirteen entities and two individuals operating in the Russian financial services and technology sectors. "Many of the individuals and entities designated today facilitated transactions or offered other services that helped OFAC-designated entities evade sanctions," the Treasury  said , adding the action seeks to "target companies servicing Russia's core financial infrastructure and curtail Russia's use of the international financial system to further its war against Ukraine." Bitpapa, which offers virtual currency excha

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,

The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions against a 37-year-old Russian woman for taking part in the laundering of virtual currency for the country's elites and cybercriminal crews, including the Ryuk ransomware group. Ekaterina Zhdanova, per the department, is said to have facilitated large cross border transactions to assist Russian individuals to gain access to Western financial markets and circumvent international sanctions. "Zhdanova utilizes entities that lack Anti-Money Laundering/Combatting the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) controls, such as OFAC-designated Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex Europe OU (Garantex)," the treasury department  said  last week.  "Zhdanova relies on multiple methods of value transfer to move funds internationally. This includes the use of cash and leveraging connections to other international money laundering associates and organizations." It's worth noting that Garantex was  previously sanctioned

Czechia and Germany on Friday revealed that they were the target of a long-term cyber espionage campaign conducted by the Russia-linked nation-state actor known as  APT28 , drawing condemnation from the European Union (E.U.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the U.K., and the U.S. The Czech Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), in a statement, said some unnamed entities in the country have been attacked using a security flaw in Microsoft Outlook that came to light early last year. "Cyber attacks targeting political entities, state institutions and critical infrastructure are not only a threat to national security, but also disrupt the democratic processes on which our free society is based," the MFA  said . The security flaw in question is  CVE-2023-23397 , a now-patched critical privilege escalation bug in Outlook that could allow an adversary to access Net-NTLMv2 hashes and then use them to authenticate themselves by means of a relay attack. G

The Continuous Growth of spyware, their existence, and the criminals who produce & spread them are increasing tremendously. It's difficult to recognize spyware as it is becoming more complex and sophisticated with time, so is spreading most rapidly as an Internet threat. Recently, The security researchers have unearthed a very complex and sophisticated piece of malware that was designed to steal confidential data and has ability able to capture network traffic. The Researchers at the German security company G Data Software , refer the malware as Uroburos , named after an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, and in correspondence with a string ( Ur0bUr()sGotyOu# ) lurking deep in the malware's code.  The researchers claimed that the malware may have been active for as long as three years before being discovered and appears to have been created by Russian developers. Uroburos is a rootkit designed to steal data from secure facilit

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

Cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. on Thursday disclosed details of a mobile malware strain targeting Android devices used by the Ukrainian military. The malicious software, dubbed  Infamous Chisel  and attributed to a Russian state-sponsored actor called Sandworm, has  capabilities  to "enable unauthorized access to compromised devices, scan files, monitor traffic, and periodically steal sensitive information." Some aspects of the malware were  uncovered  by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) earlier in August, highlighting unsuccessful attempts on part of the adversary to penetrate Ukrainian military networks and gather valuable intelligence. It's said that Russian forces captured tablets used by Ukraine on the battlefield, using them as a foothold to remotely disseminate the malware to other devices by using the Android Debug Bridge ( ADB ) command-line tool. Sandworm, also known by the names FROZENBARENTS, Ir

A Russian-speaking ransomware group dubbed OldGremlin has been attributed to 16 malicious campaigns aimed at entities operating in the transcontinental Eurasian nation over the course of two and a half years. "The group's victims include companies in sectors such as logistics, industry, insurance, retail, real estate, software development, and banking," Group-IB  said  in an exhaustive report shared with The Hacker News. "In 2020, the group even targeted an arms manufacturer." In what's a rarity in the ransomware landscape, OldGremlin (aka TinyScouts) is one of the very few financially motivated cybercrime gangs that primarily focuses on Russian companies. Other notable groups consist of Dharma, Crylock, and Thanos, contributing to an uptick in ransomware attacks targeting businesses in the country by over 200% in 2021. OldGremlin first came to light in September 2020 when the Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company  disclosed  nine campaigns orch

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new piece of mobile surveillance malware believed to be developed by a Russian defense contractor that has been sanctioned for interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Dubbed Monokle , the mobile remote-access trojan has been actively targeting Android phones since at least March 2016 and is primarily being used in highly targeted attacks on a limited number of people. According to security researchers at Lookout, Monokle possesses a wide range of spying functionalities and uses advanced data exfiltration techniques, even without requiring root access to a targeted device. How Bad is Monokle Surveillance Malware In particular, the malware abuses Android accessibility services to exfiltrate data from a large number of popular third-party applications, including Google Docs, Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, WeChat, and Snapchat, by reading text displayed on a device's screen at any point in time. The malware also extracts

Google, the FBI, ad-fraud fighting company WhiteOps and a collection of cyber security companies worked together to shut down one of the largest and most sophisticated digital ad-fraud schemes that infected over 1.7 million computers to generate fake clicks used to defraud online advertisers for years and made tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Dubbed 3ve (pronounced "Eve"), the online ad-fraud campaign is believed to have been active since at least 2014, but its fraudulent activity grew last year, turning it into a large-scale business and earning their operators more than $30 million in profit. Meanwhile, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) also unsealed Tuesday a 13-count indictment against 8 people from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine who allegedly ran this massive online advertising scheme. The 3ve botnet scheme deployed different tactics, such as creating their own botnets, creating fake versions of both websites and visitors, selling fraudulent

' Russia Today ', Moscow based Russia's biggest news channel website ( RT.com ) has been hacked and defaced by an unknown group of hackers. Hackers have replaced " Russia " or " Russians " with " Nazi " or " Nazis "  word from the headlines, as shown. " RT website has been hacked, we are working to resolve the problem, "  Russia Today tweeted from  the official Twitter account. Modified headline, i.e. i.e.   Russian Senators Vote To Use Stabilizing Nazi Forces on Ukrainian territory. Another modified headline stated: " Up to 143,000 Nazis requested asylum in Russia in two weeks ,"   The changes to the ' Russia Today '  website remained in place for nearly 30 minutes and  at the time of reporting, the hack was restored.  " Hackers deface https://RT.com website, crack admin access, place "Nazi" in every headline. Back to normal now. "  RT acknowledged the issue. Recently the   Anonymous group has also announced '

Russian cyber espionage actors affiliated with the Federal Security Service (FSB) have been observed using a USB propagating worm called  LitterDrifter  in attacks targeting Ukrainian entities. Check Point, which  detailed  Gamaredon's (aka Aqua Blizzard, Iron Tilden, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm, and Winterflounder) latest tactics, branded the group as engaging in large-scale campaigns that are followed by "data collection efforts aimed at specific targets, whose selection is likely motivated by espionage goals." The LitterDrifter worm packs in two main features: automatically spreading the malware via connected USB drives as well as communicating with the threat actor's command-and-control (C&C) servers. It's also suspected to be an evolution of a PowerShell-based USB worm that was previously  disclosed  by Symantec in June 2023. Written in VBS, the spreader module is responsible for distributing the worm as a hidden file in a USB drive together with a deco