Search results for spear phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In the digital world, it just takes one click to get the keys to the kingdom. Do you know spear-phishing was the only secret weapon behind the biggest data breach in the history? It's true, as one of the Yahoo employees fell victim to a simple phishing attack and clicked one wrong link that let the hackers gain a foothold in the company's internal networks. You may be familiar with phishing attacks — an attempt to steal user credentials or financial data — while, Spear-phishing is a targeted form of phishing in which attackers trick employees or vendors into providing remote-access credentials or opening a malicious attachment containing an exploit or payload. Here's how the Yahoo's massive data breach was traced back to human error and who were the alleged masterminds behind this hack. On Wednesday, the US government charged two Russian spies (Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin) and two criminal hackers (Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov) in connection with the 20...

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) last week disclosed that it had taken legal proceedings against an Iranian threat actor dubbed  Bohrium  in connection with a spear-phishing operation. The adversarial collective is said to have targeted entities in tech, transportation, government, and education sectors located in the U.S., Middle East, and India. "Bohrium actors create fake social media profiles, often posing as recruiters," Amy Hogan-Burney of the DCU  said  in a tweet. "Once personal information was obtained from the victims, Bohrium sent malicious emails with links that ultimately infected their target's computers with malware." According to an  ex parte order  shared by the tech giant, the goal of the intrusions was to steal and exfiltrate sensitive information, take control over the infected machines, and carry out remote reconnaissance. To halt the malicious activities of Bohrium, Microsoft said it took down 41 ".com," ".info...

Pro-Tibetan activists become victim of Spear Phishing Hackers are ramping up their attacks against Tibetan activists and are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to deliver malware An interesting example of such a malicious email has recently been spotted by FireEye researcher Alex Lanstein, who is currently monitoring these spam campaigns. In the last few of months, several security vendors have reported targeted attacks that distributed malware designed to steal confidential information from people or organizations supporting the Tibetan cause. This tactic recently re-surfaced during our monitoring of Tibetan-leveraging malware campaigns. It came in the form of BKDR_RILER.SVR, a backdoor that arrives infected by PE_SALITY.AC. A simple Spear Phishing technique was used recently to trick Tibetan activists into opening malicious PDF email attachments, by quoting a legitimate email message sent by FireEye's Lanstein to people who submitted Tibet-related malware sampl...

The Iranian nation-state actor known as  MuddyWater  has been linked to a new spear-phishing campaign targeting two Israeli entities to ultimately deploy a legitimate remote administration tool from N-able called  Advanced Monitoring Agent . Cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct, which disclosed details of the attacks,  said  the campaign "exhibits updated TTPs to previously reported MuddyWater activity," which has, in the past, used similar attack chains to distribute other remote access tools like  ScreenConnect, RemoteUtilities, Syncro , and  SimpleHelp . While the latest development marks the first time MuddyWater has been observed using N-able's remote monitoring software, it also underscores the fact that the largely unchanged modus operandi continues to yield some level of success for the threat actor. The findings have also been separately confirmed by cybersecurity company Group-IB in a post shared on X (formerly Twitter). The state-sponsore...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday unsealed an indictment against an Iranian national for his alleged involvement in a multi-year cyber-enabled campaign designed to compromise U.S. governmental and private entities. More than a dozen entities are said to have been targeted, including the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and State, defense contractors that support U.S. Department of Defense programs, and an accounting firm and a hospitality company, both based in New York. Alireza Shafie Nasab, 39, claimed to be a cybersecurity specialist for a company named Mahak Rayan Afraz while participating in a persistent campaign targeting the U.S. from at least in or about 2016 through or about April 2021. "As alleged, Alireza Shafie Nasab participated in a cyber campaign using spear-phishing and other hacking techniques to infect more than 200,000 victim devices, many of which contained sensitive or classified defense information,"  said  U.S. Attorney Damian Williams f...

Microsoft is calling attention to an emerging threat cluster it calls Storm-2372 that has been attributed to a new set of cyber attacks aimed at a variety of sectors since August 2024. The attacks have targeted government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), information technology (IT) services and technology, defense, telecommunications, health, higher education, and energy/oil and gas sectors in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Middle East.  The threat actor, assessed with medium confidence to be aligned with Russian interests, victimology, and tradecraft, has been observed targeting users via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Microsoft Teams by falsely claiming to be a prominent person relevant to the target in an attempt to build trust. "The attacks use a specific phishing technique called 'device code phishing' that tricks users to log into productivity apps while Storm-2372 actors capture the information from the log in (tokens) that they can us...

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds immense potential for optimizing internal processes within businesses. However, it also comes with legitimate concerns regarding unauthorized use, including data loss risks and legal consequences. In this article, we will explore the risks associated with AI implementation and discuss measures to minimize damages. Additionally, we will examine regulatory initiatives by countries and ethical frameworks adopted by companies to regulate AI. Security risks  AI phishing attacks Cybercriminals can leverage AI in various ways to enhance their phishing attacks and increase their chances of success. Here are some ways AI can be exploited for phishing: -  Automated Phishing Campaigns:  AI-powered tools can automate the creation and dissemination of phishing emails on a large scale. These tools can generate convincing email content, craft personalized messages, and mimic the writing style of a specific individual, making phishing attempts app...

The Russia-linked threat actor known as COLDRIVER has been observed evolving its tradecraft to go beyond credential harvesting to deliver its first-ever custom malware written in the Rust programming language. Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which shared details of the latest activity, said the attack chains leverage PDFs as decoy documents to trigger the infection sequence. The lures are sent from impersonation accounts. COLDRIVER, also known by the names Blue Callisto, BlueCharlie (or TAG-53), Calisto (alternately spelled Callisto), Dancing Salome, Gossamer Bear, Star Blizzard (formerly SEABORGIUM), TA446, and UNC4057, is known to be active since 2019, targeting a wide range of sectors. This includes academia, defense, governmental organizations, NGOs, think tanks, political outfits, and, recently, defense-industrial targets and energy facilities. "Targets in the U.K. and U.S. appear to have been most affected by Star Blizzard activity, however activity has al...

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in email phishing campaigns that are weaponizing the Google Cloud Run service to deliver various banking trojans such as  Astaroth  (aka Guildma),  Mekotio , and  Ousaban  (aka Javali) to targets across Latin America (LATAM) and Europe. "The infection chains associated with these malware families feature the use of malicious Microsoft Installers (MSIs) that function as droppers or downloaders for the final malware payload(s)," Cisco Talos researchers  disclosed  last week. The high-volume malware distribution campaigns, observed since September 2023, have employed the same storage bucket within Google Cloud for propagation, suggesting potential links between the threat actors behind the distribution campaigns. Google Cloud Run is a  managed compute platform  that enables users to run frontend and backend services, batch jobs, deploy websites and applications, and queue processing workloa...

The Iranian nation-state actor known as MuddyWater has been observed using a never-before-seen backdoor as part of a recent attack campaign, shifting away from its well-known tactic of deploying legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software for maintaining persistent access. That's according to independent findings from cybersecurity firms Check Point and Sekoia, which have codenamed the malware strain BugSleep and MuddyRot , respectively. "Compared to previous campaigns, this time MuddyWater changed their infection chain and did not rely on the legitimate Atera remote monitoring and management tool (RMM) as a validator," Sekoia said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Instead, we observed that they used a new and undocumented implant." Some elements of the campaign were first shared by Israeli cybersecurity company ClearSky on June 9, 2024. Targets include countries like Turkey, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Portugal. ...

A Belarusian threat actor known as Ghostwriter (aka UNC1151) has been spotted leveraging the recently disclosed browser-in-the-browser (BitB) technique as part of their credential phishing campaigns exploiting the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The method, which  masquerades  as a legitimate domain by simulating a browser window within the browser, makes it possible to mount convincing social engineering campaigns. "Ghostwriter actors have quickly adopted this new technique, combining it with a previously observed technique, hosting credential phishing landing pages on compromised sites," Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG)  said  in a new report, using it to siphon credentials entered by unsuspected victims to a remote server. Among other groups  using the war as a lure  in phishing and malware campaigns to deceive targets into opening fraudulent emails or links include  Mustang Panda  and  Scarab  as well as nation-state actors...

Graphic for illustration Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday  disclosed details  about an address bar spoofing vulnerability affecting multiple mobile browsers, such as Apple Safari and Opera Touch, leaving the door open for spear-phishing attacks and delivering malware. Other impacted browsers include UCWeb, Yandex Browser, Bolt Browser, and RITS Browser. The flaws were discovered by Pakistani security researcher Rafay Baloch in the summer of 2020 and jointly reported by Baloch and cybersecurity firm  Rapid7  in August before they were addressed by the browser makers over the past few weeks. UCWeb and Bolt Browser remain unpatched as yet, while Opera Mini is expected to receive a fix on November 11, 2020. The issue stems from using malicious executable JavaScript code in an arbitrary website to force the browser to update the address bar while the page is still loading to another address of the attacker's choice. Original PoC demo "The vulnerability occurs ...

U.S. federal prosecutors on Friday unsealed criminal charges against three Iranian nationals who are allegedly employed with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their targeting of current and former officials to steal sensitive data. The Department of Justice (DoJ) accused Masoud Jalili, 36, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, 34, and Yasar (Yaser) Balaghi, 37, of participating in a conspiracy with other known and unknown actors to undermine the U.S. electoral process . They are alleged to have hacked into accounts of current and former U.S. officials, members of the media, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns. None of the three operatives, said to be members of the Basij Resistance Force, have been arrested. "The activity was part of Iran's continuing efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process, and unlawfully acquire information relating to current and former U.S. officials that could be us...

When it comes to cyber security, even big organizations lack the basic knowledge of how to protect company's data from the outside. Everyday businesses are facing the threat of phishing, ransomware , data breaches and malware attacks that not only results in millions of dollars losses, but also damaged the reputations. A new study shows that five out of six of the most serious IT security threats directly relate to phishing or the aftermath of a successful phishing attack . SEA, short for Syrian Electronic Army , is famous for its advanced phishing attack capabilities and with the help of the same technique they fooled many popular organizations, social media and news media, including Twitter, Microsoft, Skype, Forbes, eBay and Paypal. Where do we lack? According to the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations report, about 58% of cyber security incidents were caused by employees, either due to failure in handling data or approving malicious data. So, in...

The foundations for social engineering attacks – manipulating humans – might not have changed much over the years. It's the vectors – how these techniques are deployed – that are evolving. And like most industries these days, AI is accelerating its evolution.  This article explores how these changes are impacting business, and how cybersecurity leaders can respond. Impersonation attacks: using a trusted identity Traditional forms of defense were already struggling to solve social engineering, the 'cause of most data breaches' according to Thomson Reuters. The next generation of AI-powered cyber attacks and threat actors can now launch these attacks with unprecedented speed, scale, and realism.  The old way: Silicone masks By impersonating a French government minister, two fraudsters were able to extract over €55 million from multiple victims. During video calls, one would wear a silicone mask of Jean-Yves Le Drian. To add a layer of believability, they also sat in a rec...