The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Site — Index Page

The notorious Emotet malware has returned with renewed vigor as part of a high-volume malspam campaign designed to drop payloads like  IcedID  and  Bumblebee . "Hundreds of thousands of emails per day" have been sent since early November 2022, enterprise security company Proofpoint  said  last week, adding, "the new activity suggests Emotet is returning to its full functionality acting as a delivery network for major malware families." Among the primary countries targeted are the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil. The Emotet-related activity was last observed in July 2022, although  sporadic   infections  have been  reported  since then. In mid-October, ESET  revealed  that Emotet may be readying for a new wave of attacks, pointing out updates to its "systeminfo" module. The malware, which is attributed to a threat actor known as Mummy Spider (aka Gold Crestwood or TA542), staged a revival of sorts late last yea

As IT professionals, we all reach a certain point in our IT career where we realize that some of our everyday tasks are done the same way year after year without anyone questioning why it's done that way. Despite the constant change and improvement in technology, some things just get done the same ineffective way without any real thought behind it because "that's the way it's always been done." A typical example: patching Month in, month out, a day comes along that is dedicated to patching.  Patching may be more automated than before because you no longer need to log into each system to patch and reboot tediously. It's a step forward, but the patching process remains the same.  Patching is disruptive, slow, error-prone, and rarely fast enough to keep up with new vulnerabilities. Why disruptive? We all know that every time a maintenance window comes along, Bob from accounting will remind everyone how "the company's IT is going to mess up our week

Over the past two years, a shocking  51% of organizations surveyed in a leading industry report have been compromised by a cyberattack.  Yes, over half.  And this, in a world where enterprises deploy  an average of 53 different security solutions  to safeguard their digital domain.  Alarming? Absolutely. A recent survey of CISOs and CIOs, commissioned by Pentera and conducted by Global Surveyz Research, offers a quantifiable glimpse into this evolving battlefield, revealing a stark contrast between the growing risks and the tightening budget constraints under which cybersecurity professionals operate. With this report, Pentera has once again taken a magnifying glass to the state of pentesting to release its annual report about today's pentesting practices. Engaging with 450 security executives from North America, LATAM, APAC, and EMEA—all in VP or C-level positions at organizations with over 1,000 employees—the report paints a current picture of modern security validation prac

Google has won a lawsuit filed against two Russian nationals in connection with the operation of a botnet called Glupteba , the company  said  last week. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York imposed monetary sanctions against the defendants and their U.S.-based legal counsel. The defendants have also been asked to pay Google's attorney fees. The defendants' move to press sanctions against Google was denied. The development comes nearly a year after the tech giant  took down  the malware's command-and-control infrastructure and initiated legal proceedings against Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov , who are said to have been in charge of running the illegal botnet. The defendants, along with 15 others, have also been accused of using the malware to create a hacked network of devices to mine cryptocurrencies, harvest victims' personal and financial data, and place disruptive ads. Gluteba is distinguished from its botnet counterparts b

Google Cloud last week disclosed that it identified 34 different hacked release versions of the Cobalt Strike tool in the wild, the earliest of which  shipped  in November 2012. The versions, spanning 1.44 to 4.7, add up to a total of 275 unique JAR files, according to findings from the Google Cloud Threat Intelligence (GCTI) team. The  latest version  of Cobalt Strike is version 4.7.2. Cobalt Strike, developed by  Fortra  (née HelpSystems), is a popular adversarial framework used by red teams to simulate attack scenarios and test the resilience of their cyber defenses. It comprises a Team Server that acts as the command-and-control (C2) hub to remotely commandeer infected devices and a stager that's designed to deliver a next-stage payload called the Beacon, a fully-featured implant that reports back to the C2 server. Given its wide-ranging suite of features, unauthorized versions of the software have been  increasingly   weaponized  by  many  a  threat   actor  to  advance

The Indian government on Friday released a draft version of the much-awaited data protection regulation, making it the fourth such effort since it was first proposed in July 2018. The  Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 , as it's called,  aims  to secure personal data, while also seeking users' consent in what the draft claims is "clear and plain language" describing the exact kinds of information that will be collected and for what purpose. The draft is open for public consultation until December 17, 2022. India has over 760 million active internet users, necessitating that data generated and used by online platforms are subject to privacy rules to prevent abuse and increase accountability and trust. "The Bill will establish the comprehensive legal framework governing digital personal data protection in India," the government  said . "The Bill provides for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognizes the right of in

A developing threat activity cluster has been found using Google Ads in one of its campaigns to distribute various post-compromise payloads, including the recently discovered  Royal ransomware . Microsoft, which spotted the updated malware delivery method in late October 2022, is tracking the group under the name  DEV-0569 . "Observed DEV-0569 attacks show a pattern of continuous innovation, with regular incorporation of new discovery techniques, defense evasion, and various post-compromise payloads, alongside increasing ransomware facilitation," the Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence team  said  in an analysis. The threat actor is known to rely on malvertising to point unsuspecting victims to malware downloader links that pose as software installers for legitimate apps like Adobe Flash Player, AnyDesk, LogMeIn, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. The malware downloader, a strain referred to as  BATLOADER , is a dropper that functions as a conduit to distribute next-stage pa

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

Australian software company Atlassian has rolled out security updates to address  two critical flaws  affecting Bitbucket Server, Data Center, and Crowd products. The issues, tracked as  CVE-2022-43781  and  CVE-2022-43782 , are both rated 9 out of 10 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system. CVE-2022-43781, which Atlassian said was introduced in version 7.0.0 of Bitbucket Server and Data Center, affects versions 7.0 to 7.21 and 8.0 to 8.4 (only if mesh.enabled is set to false in bitbucket.properties). The weakness has been described as a case of command injection using environment variables in the software, which could allow an adversary with permission to control their username to gain code execution on the affected system. As a temporary workaround, the company is recommending users turn off the "Public Signup" option (Administration > Authentication). "Disabling public signup would change the attack vector from an unauthenticated attack to an authenticated

Meta Platforms is said to have fired or disciplined over two dozen employees and contractors over the past year for allegedly compromising and taking over user accounts, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Some of these cases involved bribery, the publication said, citing sources and documents. Included among those fired were contractors who worked as security guards at the social media firm's facilities and were given access to an internal tool that allowed employees to help "users they know" gain access to accounts after forgetting their passwords, or had their accounts locked out. The system, called "Oops" and short for Online Operations, is off limits to a vast majority of the platform's users, leading to the rise of a "cottage industry of intermediaries" who charge users thousands of dollars and reach out to insiders who are willing to reset the accounts. "You really have to have someone on the inside who will actually do it