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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details about a new watering hole attack targeting the Korean diaspora that exploits vulnerabilities in web browsers such as Google Chrome and Internet Explorer to deploy malware for espionage purposes. Dubbed " Operation Earth Kitsune " by Trend Micro, the campaign involves the use of SLUB (for SLack and githUB) malware and two new backdoors —  dneSpy and agfSpy  — to exfiltrate system information and gain additional control of the compromised machine. The attacks were observed during the months of March, May, and September, according to the cybersecurity firm. Watering hole attacks allow a bad actor to compromise a targeted business by compromising a carefully selected website by inserting an exploit with an intention to gain access to the victim's device and infect it with malware. Operation Earth Kitsune is said to have deployed the spyware samples on websites associated with North Korea, although access to these websites

An active botnet comprising hundreds of thousands of hijacked systems spread across 30 countries is exploiting "dozens of known vulnerabilities" to target widely-used content management systems (CMS). The "KashmirBlack" campaign, which is believed to have started around November 2019, aims for popular CMS platforms such as WordPress, Joomla!, PrestaShop, Magneto, Drupal, Vbulletin, OsCommerence, OpenCart, and Yeager. "Its well-designed infrastructure makes it easy to expand and add new exploits or payloads without much effort, and it uses sophisticated methods to camouflage itself, stay undetected, and protect its operation," Imperva researchers said in a  two-part   analysis . The cybersecurity firm's six-month-long investigation into the botnet reveals a complex operation managed by one command-and-control (C2) server and more than 60 surrogate servers that communicate with the bots to send new targets, allowing it to expand the size of the botn

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,

You've probably run into a major problem when trying to scrape Google search results. Web scraping tools allow you to extract information from a web page. Companies and coders from across the world use them to download Google's SERP data. And they work well – for a little while. After several scrapes, Google's automated security system kicks in. Then it kicks you out. The standard was to bypass the block is to use a proxy. However, each proxy only allows a limited number of scrapes. That's why Google SERP APIs are the perfect tool to overcome these limitations. This article examines how to overcome Google web scraping issues without changing proxy servers. Read on to learn more about web scraping. Discover the types of data you can extract. And how API web scraping tools can make your life a  lot  easier. What Is Web Scraping? Think of a website that you want to copy information from. How can you extract that data without entering the site on your browser and dow

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Departments of Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a joint alert Wednesday warning of an "imminent" increase in ransomware and other cyberattacks against hospitals and healthcare providers. "Malicious cyber actors are targeting the [Healthcare and Public Health] Sector with TrickBot malware, often leading to ransomware attacks, data theft, and the disruption of healthcare services," the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency  said  in its advisory. The infamous botnet typically spreads via malicious spam email to unsuspecting recipients and can steal financial and personal data and drop other software, such as ransomware, onto infected systems. It's worth noting that cybercriminals have already used TrickBot against a major healthcare provider,  Universal Health Services , whose systems were crippled by Ryuk ransomware late last month. TrickBot has also seen a severe  disrupt

Many companies rely on Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions as their primary security tool to protect their organizations against cyber threats. EDR was introduced around eight years ago, and analysts now peg the EDR market size as $1.5 to $2.0 billion in annual revenue globally, expecting it to quadruple over the next five years. The recent introduction of Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions, however, will certainly cut into a significant portion of that spend. A new provocative eBook: " 5 Questions to Determine: Is Your EDR Providing the Best Bang for Your Buck?"  ( Download here ) helps security executives who currently use an EDR solution determine if they're continuing to get their "bang for the buck" from their EDR provider when compared to newer, equally-priced technologies as XDR. It's also an excellent resource for companies who are in the steps of choosing an EDR solution to deploy. A live webinar around the same topic wi

Efforts to disrupt TrickBot may have  shut down  most of its critical infrastructure, but the operators behind the notorious malware aren't sitting idle. According to new findings shared by cybersecurity firm  Netscout , TrickBot's authors have moved portions of their code to Linux in an attempt to widen the scope of victims that could be targeted. TrickBot, a financial Trojan first detected in 2016, has been traditionally a Windows-based crimeware solution, employing different modules to perform a wide range of malicious activities on target networks, including credential theft and perpetrate ransomware attacks. But over the past few weeks, twin efforts led by the US Cyber Command and Microsoft have helped to  eliminate 94%  of TrickBot's command-and-control (C2) servers that were in use and the new infrastructure the criminals operating TrickBot attempted to bring online to replace the previously disabled servers. Despite the steps taken to impede TrickBot, Microsof

Google has stepped in to remove several Android applications from the official Play Store following the disclosure that the apps in question were found to serve intrusive ads. The findings were  reported  by the Czech cybersecurity firm Avast on Monday, which said the 21 malicious apps (list  here ) were downloaded nearly eight million times from Google's app marketplace. The apps masqueraded as harmless gaming apps and came packed with  HiddenAds  malware, a notorious Trojan known for its capabilities to serve intrusive ads outside of the app. The group behind the operation relies on social media channels to lure users into downloading the apps. Earlier this June, Avast discovered a  similar HiddenAds campaign  involving 47 gaming apps with over 15 million downloads that were leveraged to display device-wide intrusive ads. "Developers of adware are increasingly using social media channels, like regular marketers would," Avast's Jakub Vávra said. "This time

Cybersecurity researchers over the weekend disclosed new security risks associated with link previews in popular messaging apps that cause the services to leak IP addresses, expose links sent via end-to-end encrypted chats, and even unnecessarily download gigabytes of data stealthily in the background. "Links shared in chats may contain private information intended only for the recipients," researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk  said . "This could be bills, contracts, medical records, or anything that may be confidential." "Apps that rely on servers to generate link previews may be violating the privacy of their users by sending links shared in a private chat to their servers." Generating Link Previews at the Sender/Receiver Side Link previews are a common feature in most chat apps, making it easy to display a visual preview and a brief description of the shared link. Although apps like  Signal  and  Wire  give users the option to turn on/off l