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A Russian state-sponsored threat actor has been observed targeting diplomatic and government entities as part of a series of phishing campaigns commencing on January 17, 2022. Threat intelligence and incident response firm Mandiant attributed the attacks to a hacking group tracked as APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), with some set of the activities associated with the crew assigned the moniker  Nobelium  (aka UNC2452/2652). "This latest wave of spear phishing showcases APT29's enduring interests in obtaining diplomatic and foreign policy information from governments around the world," Mandiant  said  in a report published last week. The initial access is said to have been aided through spear-phishing emails masquerading as administrative notices, using legitimate but compromised email addresses from other diplomatic entities. These emails contain an HTML dropper attachment called ROOTSAW (aka  EnvyScout ) that, when opened, triggers an infection sequence that delivers and exec

Organizations in the Spanish-speaking nations of Mexico and Spain are in the crosshairs of a new campaign designed to deliver the  Grandoreiro  banking trojan.  "In this campaign, the threat actors impersonate government officials from the Attorney General's Office of Mexico City and from the Public Ministry in the form of spear-phishing emails in order to lure victims to download and execute 'Grandoreiro,' a prolific banking trojan that has been active since at least 2016, and that specifically targets users in Latin America," Zscaler  said  in a report. The ongoing attacks, which commenced in June 2022, have been observed to target automotive, civil and industrial construction, logistics, and machinery sectors via multiple infection chains in Mexico and chemicals manufacturing industries in Spain. Attack chains entail leveraging spear-phishing emails written in Spanish to trick potential victims into clicking on an embedded link that retrieves a ZIP archive

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

A notorious advanced persistent threat actor known as  Mustang Panda  has been linked to a spate of spear-phishing attacks targeting government, education, and research sectors across the world. The primary targets of the intrusions from May to October 2022 included counties in the Asia Pacific region such as Myanmar, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro  said  in a Friday report.  Mustang Panda, also called Bronze President, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, and Red Lich, is a China-based espionage actor believed to be active since at least July 2018. The group is known for its use of malware such as China Chopper and PlugX to collect data from compromised environments. Activities of the group chronicled by  ESET ,  Google, Proofpoint ,  Cisco Talos , and  Secureworks  this year have revealed the threat actor's pattern of using PlugX (and its variant called Hodur) to infect a wide range of entities in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Ameri

A Chinese state-sponsored espionage group known as Override Panda has resurfaced in recent weeks with a new phishing attack with the goal of stealing sensitive information. "The Chinese APT used a spear-phishing email to deliver a beacon of a Red Team framework known as 'Viper,'" Cluster25  said  in a report published last week. "The target of this attack is currently unknown but with high probability, given the previous history of the attack perpetrated by the group, it might be a government institution from a South Asian country." Override Panda, also called  Naikon , Hellsing, and Bronze Geneva, is known to operate on behalf of Chinese interests since at least 2005 to conduct intelligence-gathering operations targeting  ASEAN countries . Attack chains unleashed by the threat actor have involved the use of decoy documents attached to spear-phishing emails that are designed to entice the intended victims to open and compromise themselves with malware

The threat actors behind the RomCom RAT have been suspected of phishing attacks targeting the  upcoming NATO Summit  in Vilnius as well as an identified organization supporting Ukraine abroad. The findings come from the BlackBerry Threat Research and Intelligence team, which  found  two malicious documents submitted from a Hungarian IP address on July 4, 2023. RomCom, also tracked under the names Tropical Scorpius, UNC2596, and Void Rabisu, was recently observed staging cyber attacks against politicians in Ukraine who are working closely with Western countries and a U.S.-based healthcare organization involved with aiding refugees fleeing the war-torn country. Attack chains mounted by the group are geopolitically motivated and have employed spear-phishing emails to point victims to cloned websites hosting trojanized versions of popular software. Targets include militaries, food supply chains, and IT companies. The latest lure documents identified by BlackBerry impersonate Ukraini

An adversary known for targeting the fintech sector at least since 2018 has switched up its tactics to include a new Python-based remote access Trojan (RAT) that can steal passwords, documents, browser cookies, email credentials, and other sensitive information. In an analysis published by Cybereason researchers yesterday, the Evilnum group has not only tweaked its infection chain but has also deployed a Python RAT called "PyVil RAT," which possesses abilities to gather information, take screenshots, capture keystrokes data, open an SSH shell and deploy new tools. "Since the first reports in 2018 through today, the group's TTPs have evolved with different tools while the group has continued to focus on fintech targets," the cybersecurity firm said . "These variations include a change in the chain of infection and persistence, new infrastructure that is expanding over time, and the use of a new Python-scripted Remote Access Trojan (RAT)" to spy

Security researchers have tracked down activities of a new group of financially-motivated hackers that are targeting several businesses and organizations in Germany, Italy, and the United States in an attempt to infect them with backdoor, banking Trojan, or ransomware malware. Though the new malware campaigns are not customized for each organization, the threat actors appear to be more interested in businesses, IT services, manufacturing, and healthcare industries who possess critical data and can likely afford high ransom payouts. According to a report ProofPoint shared with The Hacker News, the newly discovered threat actors are sending out low-volume emails impersonating finance-related government entities with tax assessment and refund lured emails to targeted organizations. "Tax-themed Email Campaigns Target 2019 Filers, finance-related lures have been used seasonally with upticks in tax-related malware and phishing campaigns leading up to the annual tax filing deadlines in

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 steal users' credenti

Cybersecurity researchers have unearthed previously undocumented attack infrastructure used by the prolific state-sponsored group  SideWinder  to strike entities located in Pakistan and China. This comprises a network of 55 domains and IP addresses used by the threat actor, cybersecurity companies Group-IB and Bridewell said in a joint report shared with The Hacker News. "The identified phishing domains mimic various organizations in the news, government, telecommunications, and financial sectors," researchers Nikita Rostovtsev, Joshua Penny, and Yashraj Solanki  said . SideWinder has been known to be active since at least 2012, with attack chains primarily leveraging spear-phishing as an intrusion mechanism to obtain a foothold into targeted environments. The target range of the group is widely believed to be associated with Indian espionage interests. The most frequently attacked nations include Pakistan, China, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Philippi

Two China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) groups have been observed targeting entities and member countries affiliated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as part of a cyber espionage campaign over the past three months. This includes the threat actor known as  Mustang Panda , which has been recently linked to  cyber attacks against Myanmar  as well as other Asian countries with a variant of the PlugX (aka Korplug) backdoor dubbed  DOPLUGS . Mustang Panda, also called Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, and Stately Taurus, is believed to have targeted entities in Myanmar, the Philippines, Japan and Singapore, targeting them with phishing emails designed to deliver two malware packages. "Threat actors created malware for these packages on March 4-5, 2024, coinciding with the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit (March 4-6, 2024)," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. One of the malware package is a ZIP file that contains

A governmental entity in Guyana has been targeted as part of a cyber espionage campaign dubbed  Operation Jacana . The  activity , which was detected by ESET in February 2023, entailed a spear-phishing attack that led to the deployment of a hitherto undocumented implant written in C++ called DinodasRAT. The Slovak cybersecurity firm said it could link the intrusion to a known threat actor or group, but attributed with medium confidence to a China-nexus adversary owing to the use of  PlugX  (aka Korplug), a remote access trojan common to Chinese hacking crews. "This campaign was targeted, as the threat actors crafted their emails specifically to entice their chosen victim organization," ESET  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "After successfully compromising an initial but limited set of machines with DinodasRAT, the operators proceeded to move inside and breach the target's internal network, where they again deployed this backdoor." The infec

An updated version of a sophisticated backdoor framework called  MATA  has been used in attacks aimed at over a dozen Eastern European companies in the oil and gas sector and defense industry as part of a cyber espionage operation that took place between August 2022 and May 2023. "The actors behind the attack used spear-phishing mails to target several victims, some were infected with Windows executable malware by downloading files through an internet browser," Kaspersky  said  in a new exhaustive report published this week. "Each phishing document contains an external link to fetch a remote page containing a  CVE-2021-26411  exploit." CVE-2021-26411 (CVSS score: 8.8) refers to a  memory corruption vulnerability  in Internet Explorer that could be triggered to execute arbitrary code by tricking a victim into visiting a specially crafted site. It was previously exploited by the Lazarus Group in early 2021 to target security researchers. The cross-platform MATA f

The US government on Monday formally charged six Russian intelligence officers for carrying out destructive malware attacks with an aim to disrupt and destabilize other nations and cause monetary losses. The individuals, who work for Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), have been accused of perpetrating the "most disruptive and destructive series of computer attacks ever attributed to a single group," according to the Justice Department ( DoJ ). All the six men — Yuriy Sergeyevich Andrienko, Sergey Vladimirovich Detistov, Pavel Valeryevich Frolov, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, Artem Valeryevich Ochichenko, and Petr Nikolayevich Pliskin — have been charged with seven counts of conspiracy to conduct computer fraud and abuse, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, damaging protected computers, and aggravated identity theft. "The object of the conspiracy was to deploy destructive malware and take other disruptive actions, for the strateg

In a new joint advisory, cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from the U.S. and other countries are urging users of Ubiquiti EdgeRouter to take protective measures, weeks after a botnet comprising infected routers was  felled by law enforcement  as part of an operation codenamed Dying Ember. The botnet, named MooBot, is said to have been used by a Russia-linked threat actor known as APT28 to facilitate covert cyber operations and drop custom malware for follow-on exploitation. APT28, affiliated with Russia's Main Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), is known to be active since at least 2007. APT28 actors have "used compromised EdgeRouters globally to harvest credentials, collect NTLMv2 digests, proxy network traffic, and host spear-phishing landing pages and custom tools," the authorities  said  [PDF]. The adversary's use of EdgeRouters dates back to 2022, with the attacks targeting aerospace and defense, education, energy and utilities, governments, hospita

A threat actor believed to be working on behalf of Chinese state-sponsored interests was recently observed targeting a Russia-based defense contractor involved in designing nuclear submarines for the naval arm of the Russian Armed Forces. The phishing attack, which singled out a general director working at the Rubin Design Bureau, leveraged the infamous "Royal Road" Rich Text Format (RTF) weaponizer to deliver a previously undocumented Windows backdoor dubbed " PortDoor ," according to Cybereason's Nocturnus threat intelligence team. "Portdoor has multiple functionalities, including the ability to do reconnaissance, target profiling, delivery of additional payloads, privilege escalation, process manipulation static detection antivirus evasion, one-byte XOR encryption, AES-encrypted data exfiltration and more," the researchers  said  in a write-up on Friday. Rubin Design Bureau is a submarine design center located in Saint Petersburg, accounting fo

The infamous cybercrime syndicate known as FIN7 has been linked to a spear-phishing campaign targeting the U.S. automotive industry to deliver a known backdoor called Carbanak (aka Anunak). "FIN7 identified employees at the company who worked in the IT department and had higher levels of administrative rights," the BlackBerry research and intelligence team  said  in a new write-up. "They used the lure of a free IP scanning tool to run their well-known Anunak backdoor and gain an initial foothold utilizing living off the land binaries, scripts, and libraries ( LOLBAS )." FIN7, also known as Carbon Spider, Elbrus, Gold Niagara, ITG14, and Sangria Tempest, is a well-known  financially motivated e-crime group  that has a track record of striking a wide range of industry verticals to deliver malware capable of stealing information from point-of-sale (PoS) systems since 2012. In recent years, the threat actor has  transitioned  to  conducting ransomware operations ,

Preying on public fears, the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is proving to be a goldmine of opportunity for attackers to stage a variety of malware attacks, phishing campaigns, and create scam sites and malicious tracker apps. Now in a fresh twist, third-party Android app developers too have begun to take advantage of the situation to use coronavirus-related keywords in their app names, descriptions, or in the package names so as to drop malware, perpetrate financial theft and rank higher in Google Play Store searches related to the topic. "Most malicious apps found are bundle threats that range from ransomware to SMS-sending malware, and even spyware designed to clean out the contents of victims' devices for personal or financial data," Bitdefender researchers said in a telemetry analysis report shared with The Hacker News. The find by Bitdefender is the latest in an avalanche of digital threats piggybacking on the coronavirus pandemic. Using Coronavirus-Relat