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An Iranian threat actor has unleashed a new cyberespionage campaign against a possible Lebanese target with a backdoor capable of exfiltrating sensitive information from compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Check Point attributed the operation to APT34, citing similarities with previous techniques used by the threat actor as well as based on its pattern of victimology. APT34  (aka OilRig) is known for its reconnaissance campaigns aligned with the strategic interests of Iran, primarily hitting financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications industries in the Middle East. The group typically resorts to targeting individuals through the use of booby-trapped job offer documents, delivered directly to the victims via LinkedIn messages. Although the latest campaign bears some of the same hallmarks, the exact mode of delivery remains unclear as yet. The Word document analyzed by Check Point — which was  uploaded  to VirusTotal from Lebanon on January 10 — claims to of

Unpatched Fortinet VPN devices are being targeted in a series of attacks against industrial enterprises in Europe to deploy a new strain of ransomware called "Cring" inside corporate networks. At least one of the hacking incidents led to the temporary shutdown of a production site, said cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in a report published on Wednesday, without publicly naming the victim. The attacks happened in the first quarter of 2021, between January and March. "Various details of the attack indicate that the attackers had carefully analyzed the infrastructure of the targeted organization and prepared their own infrastructure and toolset based on the information collected at the reconnaissance stage,"  said  Vyacheslav Kopeytsev, a security researcher at Kaspersky ICS CERT. The disclosure comes days after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  warned  of advanced persistent threat (APT) actor

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

When dealing with user data, it's essential that we design our password policies around compliance. These policies are defined both internally and externally. While companies uphold their own password standards, outside forces like HIPAA and NIST have a heavy influence. Impacts are defined by industry and one's unique infrastructure. How do IT departments maintain compliance with NIST and HIPAA? We'll discuss each compliance measure and its importance in this article. What is NIST compliance? Defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST compliance aims to harden federal systems against cyber-attacks. While the agency is non-regulatory, it  is  part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which has plenty of influence over government agencies and their contractors. For example, NIST guidelines help agencies  satisfy the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act  (FISMA). NIST is instrumental in creating Federal Information Proce

The maintainers of the PHP programming language have issued an update regarding the security incident that came to light late last month, stating that the actors may have gotten hold of a user database containing their passwords to make unauthorized changes to the repository. "We no longer believe the git.php.net server has been compromised. However, it is possible that the master.php.net user database leaked," Nikita Popov  said  in a message posted on its mailing list on April 6. On March 28, unidentified actors used the names of Rasmus Lerdorf and Popov to  push malicious commits  to the "php-src" repository hosted on the git.php.net server that involved adding a backdoor to the PHP source code in an instance of a software supply chain attack. While this was initially treated as a compromise of the git.php.net server, further investigation into the incident has revealed that the commits were a result of pushing them using HTTPS and password-based authentica

Google on Tuesday announced that its open source version of the Android operating system will add support for Rust programming language in a bid to prevent memory safety bugs. To that end, the company has been building parts of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with Rust for the past 18 months, with plans in the pipeline to scale this initiative to cover more aspects of the operating system. "Managed languages like Java and Kotlin are the best option for Android app development," Google  said . "The Android OS uses Java extensively, effectively protecting large portions of the Android platform from memory bugs. Unfortunately, for the lower layers of the OS, Java and Kotlin are not an option." Stating that code written in C and C++ languages requires robust isolation when parsing untrustworthy input, Google said the technique of containing such code within a tightly constrained and unprivileged sandbox can be expensive, causing latency issues and additional

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered yet another piece of wormable Android malware—but this time downloadable directly from the official Google Play Store—that's capable of propagating via WhatsApp messages. Disguised as a rogue Netflix app under the name of "FlixOnline," the malware comes with features that allow it to automatically reply to a victim's incoming WhatsApp messages with a payload received from a command-and-control (C&C) server.  "The application is actually designed to monitor the user's WhatsApp notifications, and to send automatic replies to the user's incoming messages using content that it receives from a remote C&C server," Check Point researchers said in an analysis published today. Besides masquerading as a Netflix app, the malicious "FlixOnline" app also requests intrusive permissions that allow it to create fake Login screens for other apps, with the goal of stealing credentials and gain access to

Want to take advantage of excellent cloud services? Amazon Web Services may be the perfect solution, but don't forget about AWS security. Whether you want to use AWS for a few things or everything, you need to protect access to it. Then you can make sure your business can run smoothly. Read on to learn some important AWS security tips. Use Multi-Factor authentication When setting up your AWS security settings or adding new users, you should implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA relies on more than one login factor to grant you access to your account. For example, when you log in to your account, the program might send a code to your mobile phone. Then you must verify that you have that phone and enter the code to access your account. MFA is an excellent way to protect your data if someone figures out your username and password. This way, you can still have a layer of protection against the hacker. Create strong passwords Even with MFA, you should use strong, uni

A critical vulnerability in the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance could be exploited to bypass authentication and take control of vulnerable systems. Tracked as CVE-2021-21982, the flaw is rated 9.1 out of a maximum of 10 in the CVSS scoring system and affects all versions of the product prior to 1.0.1.  Carbon Black Cloud Workload is a data center security product from VMware that aims to protect critical servers and workloads hosted on vSphere, the company's cloud-computing virtualization platform. "A URL on the administrative interface of the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance can be manipulated to bypass authentication," VMware  said  in its advisory, thereby allowing an adversary with network access to the interface to gain access to the administration API of the appliance. Armed with the access, a malicious actor can then view and alter  administrative configuration settings , the company added. In addition to releasing a fix for CVE-2021

In what appears to be a fresh twist in Android malware, users of Gigaset mobile devices are encountering unwanted apps that are being downloaded and installed through a pre-installed system update app. "The culprit installing these malware apps is the Update app, package name  com.redstone.ota.ui , which is a pre-installed system app," Malwarebytes researcher Nathan Collier  said . "This app is not only the mobile device's system updater, but also an auto installer known as Android/PUP.Riskware.Autoins.Redstone." The development was  first reported  by German author and blogger Günter Born last week. While the issue seems to be mainly affecting Gigaset phones, devices from a handful of other manufacturers appear to be impacted as well. The full list of devices that come with the pre-installed auto-installer includes Gigaset GS270, Gigaset GS160, Siemens GS270, Siemens GS160, Alps P40pro, and Alps S20pro+. According to Malwarebytes, the Update app installs