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A team of security researchers has discovered a new malware evasion technique that could help malware authors defeat most of the modern antivirus solutions and forensic tools. Dubbed Process Doppelgänging , the new fileless code injection technique takes advantage of a built-in Windows function and an undocumented implementation of Windows process loader. Ensilo security researchers Tal Liberman and Eugene Kogan, who discovered the Process Doppelgänging attack, presented their findings today at Black Hat 2017 Security conference held in London. Process Doppelgänging Works on All Windows Versions Apparently, Process Doppelgänging attack works on all modern versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, starting from Windows Vista to the latest version of Windows 10. Tal Liberman, the head of the research team at enSilo, told The Hacker New that this malware evasion technique is similar to Process Hollowing—a method first introduced years ago by attackers to defeat the m...

WikiLeaks has published a new batch of the ongoing Vault 7 leak , detailing a spyware framework – which "provides remote beacon and loader capabilities on target computers" – allegedly being used by the CIA that works against every version of Microsoft's Windows operating systems, from Windows XP to Windows 10. Dubbed Athena/Hera , the spyware has been designed to take full control over the infected Windows PCs remotely, allowing the agency to perform all sorts of things on the target machine, including deleting data or uploading malicious software, and stealing data and send them to CIA server. The leak, which includes a user manual of Athena, overview of the technology, and demonstration on how to use this spyware, reveals that the program has two implications: Primary: Athena for XP to Windows 10  Secondary: Hera for Windows 8 through Windows 10 According to the whistleblower organization, Athena has the ability to allow the CIA agents to modify its co...

Here we are with our weekly roundup, briefing this week's top cybersecurity threats, incidents, and challenges, just in case you missed any of them. Last week has been very short with big news from the theft of over 4,700 Bitcoins from the largest cryptocurrency mining marketplace to the discovery of a new malware evasion technique that works on all versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system. Besides this, the newly discovered Janus vulnerability in the Android operating system and a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Malware Protection Engine (MPE) for which Microsoft released an emergency patch made their places in our weekly roundup. I recommend you to read the entire news (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well). So, here we go with the list of this Week's Top Stories: Process Doppelgänging: New Malware Evasion Technique A team of researchers, who previously discovered AtomBombing...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a "simple but efficient" persistence mechanism adopted by a relatively nascent malware loader called Colibri , which has been observed deploying a Windows information stealer known as Vidar as part of a new campaign. "The attack starts with a malicious Word document deploying a Colibri bot that then delivers the Vidar Stealer," Malwarebytes Labs  said  in an analysis. "The document contacts a remote server at (securetunnel[.]co) to load a remote template named 'trkal0.dot' that contacts a malicious macro," the researchers added. First documented by  FR3D.HK  and Indian cybersecurity company CloudSEK earlier this year, Colibri is a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform that's engineered to drop additional payloads onto compromised systems. Early signs of the loader appeared on Russian underground forums in August 2021. "This loader has multiple techniques that help avoid detection," CloudSEK r...

WikiLeaks has published a new batch of the ongoing Vault 7 leak , this time detailing an alleged CIA project that allowed the agency to turn Windows file servers into covert attack machines that can silently infect other computers of interest inside a targeted network. Codenamed Pandemic , the tool is a persistent implant for Microsoft Windows machines that share files with remote users on a local network. The documents leaked by the whistleblower organisation date from April 2014 to January 2015. According to WikiLeaks, Pandemic infect networks of Windows computers through the Server Message Block (SMB) file sharing protocol by replacing application code on-the-fly with a trojanized version of the software. "Pandemic is a tool which is run as kernel shellcode to install a file system filter driver," a leaked CIA manual reads. "The filter will 'replace' a target file with the given payload file when a remote user accesses the file via SMB (read-only, not w...

WikiLeaks has today published the 15th batch of its ongoing Vault 7 leak , this time detailing two alleged CIA implants that allowed the agency to intercept and exfiltrate SSH (Secure Shell) credentials from targeted Windows and Linux operating systems using different attack vectors. Secure Shell or SSH is a cryptographic network protocol used for remote login to machines and servers securely over an unsecured network. Dubbed BothanSpy — implant for Microsoft Windows Xshell client, and Gyrfalcon — targets the OpenSSH client on various distributions of Linux OS, including CentOS, Debian, RHEL (Red Hat), openSUSE and Ubuntu. Both implants steal user credentials for all active SSH sessions and then sends them to a CIA-controlled server. BothanSpy — Implant for Windows OS BothanSpy is installed as a Shellterm 3.x extension on the target machine and only works if Xshell is running on it with active sessions. Xshell is a powerful terminal emulator that supports SSH, SFTP, ...

After disclosing CIA's strategies to hijack and manipulate webcams and microphones to corrupt or delete recordings, WikiLeaks has now published another Vault 7 leak , revealing CIA's ability to spy on video streams remotely in real-time. Dubbed ' CouchPotato ,' document leaked from the CIA details how the CIA agents use a remote tool to stealthy collect RTSP/H.264 video streams. Real Time Streaming Protocol, or RTSP, is a network control protocol designed for use in entertainment and communication systems for controlling streaming media servers. CouchPotato gives CIA hackers ability to "collect either the stream as a video file (AVI) or capture still images (JPG) of frames from the stream that are of significant change from a previously captured frame," a leaked CIA manual reads. The tool utilises FFmpeg for video and image encoding and decoding and Real Time Streaming Protocol connectivity. The CouchPotato tool works stealthily without leaving...

A new malware campaign has been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus software to distribute backdoors and cryptocurrency miners like XMRig through a long-standing threat codenamed GuptiMiner targeting large corporate networks. Cybersecurity firm Avast said the activity is the work of a threat actor with possible connections to a North Korean hacking group dubbed  Kimsuky , which is also known as Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, and TA427. "GuptiMiner is a highly sophisticated threat that uses an interesting infection chain along with a couple of techniques that include performing DNS requests to the attacker's DNS servers, performing sideloading, extracting payloads from innocent-looking images, signing its payloads with a custom trusted root anchor certification authority, among others," Avast  said . The intricate and elaborate infection chain, at its core, leverages a security shortcoming in the update mechanism of Indian antivi...

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed it took steps to implement blocking protections and suspend accounts that were used to publish malicious drivers that were certified by its Windows Hardware Developer Program . The tech giant said its investigation revealed the activity was restricted to a number of developer program accounts and that no further compromise was detected. Cryptographically signing malware is concerning not least because it not only undermines a key security mechanism but also allows threat actors to subvert traditional detection methods and infiltrate target networks to perform highly privileged operations. The probe, Redmond stated, was initiated after it was notified of rogue drivers being used in post-exploitation efforts, including deploying ransomware, by cybersecurity firms Mandiant, SentinelOne, and Sophos on October 19, 2022. One notable aspect of these attacks was that the adversary had already obtained administrative privileges on compromised systems before ...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new evasive malware loader named SquidLoader that spreads via phishing campaigns targeting Chinese organizations. AT&T LevelBlue Labs, which first observed the malware in late April 2024, said it incorporates features that are designed to thwart static and dynamic analysis and ultimately evade detection. Attack chains leverage phishing emails that come with attachments that masquerade as Microsoft Word documents, but, in reality, are binaries that pave the way for the execution of the malware, which is then used to fetch second-stage shellcode payloads from a remote server, including Cobalt Strike. "These loaders feature heavy evasion and decoy mechanisms which help them remain undetected while also hindering analysis," security researcher Fernando Dominguez said . "The shellcode that is delivered is also loaded in the same loader process, likely to avoid writing the payload to disk and thus risk being detected." ...

The North Korean threat actors linked to the Contagious Interview campaign have been observed publishing another set of 67 malicious packages to the npm registry, underscoring ongoing attempts to poison the open-source ecosystem via software supply chain attacks. The packages, per Socket, have attracted more than 17,000 downloads, and incorporate a previously undocumented version of a malware loader codenamed XORIndex . The activity is an expansion of an attack wave spotted last month that involved the distribution of 35 npm packages that deployed another loader referred to as HexEval. "The Contagious Interview operation continues to follow a whack-a-mole dynamic, where defenders detect and report malicious packages, and North Korean threat actors quickly respond by uploading new variants using the same, similar, or slightly evolved playbooks," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said . Contagious Interview is the name assigned to a long-running campaign that seeks to en...

Security researchers have spotted the first-ever ransomware exploiting Process Doppelgänging , a new fileless code injection technique that could help malware evade detection. The Process Doppelgänging attack takes advantage of a built-in Windows function, i.e., NTFS Transactions, and an outdated implementation of Windows process loader, and works on all modern versions of Microsoft Windows OS, including Windows 10. Process Doppelgänging attack works by using NTFS transactions to launch a malicious process by replacing the memory of a legitimate process, tricking process monitoring tools and antivirus into believing that the legitimate process is running. If you want to know more about how Process Doppelgänging attack works in detail, you should read this article  I published late last year. Shortly after the Process Doppelgänging attack details went public, several threat actors were found abusing it in an attempt to bypass modern security solutions. Security researc...

A serious vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft-owned most popular free web messaging and voice calling service Skype that could potentially allow attackers to gain full control of the host machine by granting system-level privileges to a local, unprivileged user. The worst part is that this vulnerability will not be patched by Microsoft anytime soon. It's not because the flaw is unpatchable, but because fixing the vulnerability requires a significant software rewrite, which indicates that the company will need to issue an all-new version of Skype rather than just a patch. The vulnerability has been discovered and reported to Microsoft by security researcher Stefan Kanthak and resides in Skype's update installer, which is susceptible to Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) hijacking. According to the researcher, a potential attacker could exploit the "functionality of the Windows DLL loader where the process loading the DLL searches for the DLL to be loaded fi...

Windows 8 PCs contain a new technology called Secure Boot that only boots devices that have been verified by Microsoft. Also Microsoft's own Offline Defender won't boot on Windows 8 PCs with Secure Boot on. Neither will Norton's Bootable Recovery Tool. We asked the guys at FixMeStick how their external hardware-based anti-malware device can boot on brand new Windows 8 hardware with Secure boot on, as well as 10 year old PCs with 32 processors running XP. Here's their answer: 1. It got a Master Boot Record. : In other words, it boots on BIOS-based PCs, essentially all PCs prior to Windows 8. 2. and it got UEFI boot partition : It also got a UEFI boot partition, so it will boot on PCs with the latest UEFI firmware too. 3. It's 32 bit : There's a 32 bit operating system on the stick so it will work with 32 bit microprocessors. Most rescue ISOs\disks are 32 bit only, so by default they work on 32 bit processors and 64 bit processors. 4. and it's 64...