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The threat actor known as Blind Eagle has been attributed with high confidence to the use of the Russian bulletproof hosting service Proton66 . Trustwave SpiderLabs, in a report published last week, said it was able to make this connection by pivoting from Proton66-linked digital assets, leading to the discovery of an active threat cluster that leverages Visual Basic Script (VBS) files as its initial attack vector and installs off-the-shelf remote access trojans (RATS). Many threat actors rely on bulletpro While Visual Basic Script (VBS) might seem outdated, it's still a of hosting providers like Proton66 because these services intentionally ignore abuse reports and legal takedown requests. This makes it easier for attackers to run phishing sites, command-and-control servers, and malware delivery systems without interruption. The cybersecurity company said it identified a set of domains with a similar naming pattern (e.g., gfast.duckdns[.]org, njfast.duckdns[.]org) beginning i...

A new attack technique could be used to bypass Microsoft's Driver Signature Enforcement (DSE) on fully patched Windows systems, leading to operating system (OS) downgrade attacks. "This bypass allows loading unsigned kernel drivers, enabling attackers to deploy custom rootkits that can neutralize security controls, hide processes and network activity, maintain stealth, and much more," SafeBreach researcher Alon Leviev said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The latest findings build on an earlier analysis that uncovered two privilege escalation flaws in the Windows update process ( CVE-2024-21302 and CVE-2024-38202 ) that could be weaponized to rollback an up-to-date Windows software to an older version containing unpatched security vulnerabilities. The exploit materialized in the form of a tool dubbed Windows Downdate, which, per Leviev, could be used to hijack the Windows Update process to craft fully undetectable, persistent, and irreversible downgrades on...

Microsoft said it is developing security updates to address two loopholes that it said could be abused to stage downgrade attacks against the Windows update architecture and replace current versions of the operating system files with older versions. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-38202 (CVSS score: 7.3) - Windows Update Stack Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2024-21302 (CVSS score: 6.7) - Windows Secure Kernel Mode Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Credited with discovering and reporting the flaws is SafeBreach Labs researcher Alon Leviev, who presented the findings at Black Hat USA 2024 and DEF CON 32 . CVE-2024-38202, which is rooted in the Windows Backup component, allows an "attacker with basic user privileges to reintroduce previously mitigated vulnerabilities or circumvent some features of Virtualization Based Security (VBS)," the tech giant said. It, however, noted that an attacker attempting to leverage the flaw would have to c...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign that combines ClickFix -style fake CAPTCHAs with a signed Microsoft Application Virtualization ( App-V ) script to distribute an information stealer called Amatera . "Instead of launching PowerShell directly, the attacker uses this script to control how execution begins and to avoid more common, easily recognized execution paths," Blackpoint researchers Jack Patrick and Sam Decker said in a report published last week. In doing so, the idea is to transform the App-V script into a living-off-the-land (LotL) binary that proxies the execution of PowerShell through a trusted Microsoft component to conceal the malicious activity. The starting point of the attack is a fake CAPTCHA verification prompt that seeks to trick users into pasting and executing a malicious command on the Windows Run dialog. But here is where the attack diverges from traditional ClickFix attacks. The supplied command, rather than invokin...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has revealed that no less than three cyber attacks were recorded against state administration bodies and critical infrastructure facilities in the country with an aim to steal sensitive data. The campaign, the agency said , involved the use of compromised email accounts to send phishing messages containing links pointing to legitimate services like DropMeFiles and Google Drive. In some instances, the links are embedded within PDF attachments. The digital missives sought to induce a false sense of urgency by claiming that a Ukrainian government agency planned to cut salaries, urging the recipient to click on the link to view the list of affected employees. Visiting these links leads to the download of a Visual Basic Script (VBS) loader that's designed to fetch and execute a PowerShell script capable of harvesting files matching a specific set of extensions and capturing screenshots. The activity, attributed to a threat ...

Security researchers have discovered two separate malware campaigns, one of which is distributing the Ursnif data-stealing trojan and the GandCrab ransomware in the wild, whereas the second one is only infecting victims with Ursnif malware. Though both malware campaigns appear to be a work of two separate cybercriminal groups, we find many similarities in them. Both attacks start from phishing emails containing an attached Microsoft Word document embedded with malicious macros and then uses Powershell to deliver fileless malware. Ursnif is a data-stealing malware that typically steals sensitive information from compromised computers with an ability to harvest banking credentials, browsing activities, collect keystrokes, system and process information, and deploy additional backdoors. Discovered earlier last year, GandCrab is a widespread ransomware threat that, like every other ransomware in the market, encrypts files on an infected system and insists victims to pay a ransom ...

A Türkiye-affiliated threat actor exploited a zero-day security flaw in an Indian enterprise communication platform called Output Messenger as part of a cyber espionage attack campaign since April 2024. "These exploits have resulted in a collection of related user data from targets in Iraq," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said . "The targets of the attack are associated with the Kurdish military operating in Iraq, consistent with previously observed Marbled Dust targeting priorities." The activity has been attributed to a threat group it tracks as Marbled Dust (formerly Silicon), which is also known as Cosmic Wolf, Sea Turtle, Teal Kurma, and UNC1326. The hacking crew is believed to have been active since at least 2017, although it wasn't until two years later that Cisco Talos documented attacks targeting public and private entities in the Middle East and North Africa. Early last year, it was also identified as targeting telecommunication, media, in...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new campaign dubbed SHADOW#REACTOR that employs an evasive multi-stage attack chain to deliver a commercially available remote administration tool called Remcos RAT and establish persistent, covert remote access. "The infection chain follows a tightly orchestrated execution path: an obfuscated VBS launcher executed via wscript.exe invokes a PowerShell downloader, which retrieves fragmented, text-based payloads from a remote host," Securonix researchers Akshay Gaikwad, Shikha Sangwan, and Aaron Beardslee said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "These fragments are reconstructed into encoded loaders, decoded in memory by a .NET Reactor–protected assembly, and used to fetch and apply a remote Remcos configuration. The final stage leverages MSBuild.exe as a living-off-the-land binary (LOLBin) to complete execution, after which the Remcos RAT backdoor is fully deployed and takes control of the comprom...

Microsoft is calling attention to a new campaign that has leveraged WhatsApp messages to distribute malicious Visual Basic Script (VBS) files. The activity, beginning in late February 2026, leverages these scripts to initiate a multi-stage infection chain for establishing persistence and enabling remote access. It's currently not known what lures the threat actors use to trick users into executing the scripts. "The campaign relies on a combination of social engineering and living-off-the-land techniques," the Microsoft Defender Security Research Team said . "It uses renamed Windows utilities to blend into normal system activity, retrieves payloads from trusted cloud services such as AWS, Tencent Cloud, and Backblaze B2, and installs malicious Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages to maintain control of the system." The use of legitimate tools and trusted platforms is a deadly combination, as it allows threat actors to blend in normal network activity and incre...

Government, diplomatic entities, military organizations, law firms, and financial institutions primarily located in the Middle East have been targeted as part of a stealthy malware campaign as early as 2019 by making use of malicious Microsoft Excel and Word documents. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky attributed the attacks with high confidence to a threat actor named WIRTE, adding the intrusions involved "MS Excel droppers that use hidden spreadsheets and VBA macros to drop their first stage implant," which is a Visual Basic Script (VBS) with functionality to amass system information and execute arbitrary code sent by the attackers on the infected machine. An analysis of the campaign as well as the toolset and methods employed by the adversary has also led the researchers to conclude with low confidence that the  WIRTE group  has connections to another politically motivated collective called the  Gaza Cybergang . The affected entities are spread across Armenia,...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a short-lived DarkGate malware campaign that leveraged Samba file shares to initiate the infections. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said the activity spanned the months of March and April 2024, with the infection chains using servers running public-facing Samba file shares hosting Visual Basic Script (VBS) and JavaScript files. Targets included North America, Europe, and parts of Asia. "This was a relatively short-lived campaign that illustrates how threat actors can creatively abuse legitimate tools and services to distribute their malware," security researchers Vishwa Thothathri, Yijie Sui, Anmol Maurya, Uday Pratap Singh, and Brad Duncan said . DarkGate, which first emerged in 2018, has evolved into a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) offering used by a tightly controlled number of customers. It comes with capabilities to remotely control compromised hosts, execute code, mine cryptocurrency, launch reverse shells, and drop addit...

The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting "several dozen users" in 2024. "Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and execute malware code," Kaspersky researcher Oleg Kupreev said in an analysis published this week. More than 80% of the targets were located in Russia. A lesser number of victims have been reported from Belarus, Canada, Moldova, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Vietnam. Also referred to as Clean Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Red October, Cloud Atlas is an unattributed threat activity cluster that has been active since 2014. In December 2022, the group was linked to cyber attacks aimed at Russia, Belarus, and Transnistria that deployed a PowerShell-based backdoor called PowerShower. Then exactly a year later, Russian cy...

Inside the most innocent-looking image, a breathtaking landscape, or a funny meme, something dangerous could be hiding, waiting for its moment to strike. No strange file names. No antivirus warnings. Just a harmless picture, secretly concealing a payload that can steal data, execute malware, and take over your system without a trace. This is steganography, a cybercriminal’s secret weapon for concealing malicious code inside harmless-looking files. By embedding data within images, attackers evade detection, relying on separate scripts or processes to extract and execute the hidden payload. Let’s break down how this works, why it’s so dangerous, and most importantly, how to stop it before it’s too late. What is Steganography in Cybersecurity? Steganography is the practice of concealing data within another file or medium. Unlike encryption, which scrambles data to make it unreadable, steganography disguises malicious code inside harmless-looking images, videos, or audio files, makin...

An ongoing phishing campaign is targeting French-speaking corporate environments with fake resumes that lead to the deployment of cryptocurrency miners and information stealers. "The campaign uses highly obfuscated VBScript files disguised as resume/CV documents, delivered through phishing emails," Securonix researchers Shikha Sangwan, Akshay Gaikwad, and Aaron Beardslee said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Once executed, the malware deploys a multi-purpose toolkit that combines credential theft, data exfiltration, and Monero cryptocurrency mining for maximum monetization." The activity has been codenamed FAUX#ELEVATE by the cybersecurity company. The campaign is noteworthy for the abuse of legitimate services and infrastructure, such as Dropbox for staging payloads, Moroccan WordPress sites for hosting command-and-control (C2) configuration, and mail[.]ru SMTP infrastructure for exfiltrating stolen browser credentials and desktop files. This is an ...

A new attack campaign dubbed  CLOUD#REVERSER  has been observed leveraging legitimate cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox to stage malicious payloads. "The VBScript and PowerShell scripts in the CLOUD#REVERSER inherently involves command-and-control-like activities by using Google Drive and Dropbox as staging platforms to manage file uploads and downloads," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The scripts are designed to fetch files that match specific patterns, suggesting they are waiting for commands or scripts placed in Google Drive or Dropbox." The starting point of the attack chain is a phishing email bearing a ZIP archive file, which contains an executable that masquerades as a Microsoft Excel file. In an interesting twist, the filename makes use of the hidden right-to-left override ( RLO ) Unicode character (U+202E) to reverse the order of the characters that co...