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H0lyGh0st, Magecart, and a slew of state-sponsored hacker groups are diversifying their tactics and shifting their focus to… You. That is, if you're in charge of cybersecurity for a small-to-midsize enterprise (SME). Why? Bad actors know that SMEs typically have a smaller security budget, less infosec manpower, and possibly weak or missing security controls to protect their data and infrastructure. So, how can you prepare for the imminent onslaught from new and emerging threat groups?  You need a plan. Start with the NIST Cyber Security Framework The good news is you don't have to create your security strategy from scratch. The National Institute of Standards and Technology Cyber Security Framework (NIST CSF) is one of the most respected and widely used standards in the world. While originally designed for critical infrastructure industries, the NIST CSF is flexible enough for organizations of all sizes, sectors, and maturities to use in large part because the framewor

As many as 55 zero-day vulnerabilities were exploited in the wild in 2022, with most of the flaws discovered in software from Microsoft, Google, and Apple. While this figure represents a decrease from the year before, when a staggering 81 zero-days were weaponized, it still represents a significant uptick in recent years of threat actors leveraging unknown security flaws to their advantage. The  findings  come from threat intelligence firm Mandiant, which noted that desktop operating systems (19), web browsers (11), IT and network management products (10), and mobile operating systems (six) accounted for the most exploited product types. Of the 55 zero-day bugs, 13 are estimated to have been abused by cyber espionage groups, with four others exploited by financially motivated threat actors for ransomware-related operations. Commercial spyware vendors were linked to the exploitation of three zero-days. Among state-sponsored groups, those attributed to China have emerged as the most

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Bitcoin ATM maker General Bytes disclosed that unidentified threat actors stole cryptocurrency from hot wallets by exploiting a zero-day security flaw in its software. "The attacker was able to upload his own java application remotely via the master service interface used by terminals to upload videos and run it using 'batm' user privileges," the company  said  in an advisory published over the weekend. "The attacker scanned the Digital Ocean cloud hosting IP address space and identified running CAS services on ports 7741, including the General Bytes Cloud service and other GB ATM operators running their servers on Digital Ocean," it further added. The company said that the server to which the malicious Java application was uploaded was by default configured to start applications present in the deployment folder ("/batm/app/admin/standalone/deployments/"). In doing so, the attack allowed the threat actor to access the database; read and decry

A new piece of malware dubbed  dotRunpeX  is being used to distribute numerous known malware families such as  Agent Tesla ,  Ave Maria ,  BitRAT ,  FormBook ,  LokiBot ,  NetWire ,  Raccoon Stealer ,  RedLine Stealer ,  Remcos ,  Rhadamanthys , and  Vidar . "DotRunpeX is a new injector written in .NET using the Process Hollowing technique and used to infect systems with a variety of known malware families," Check Point  said  in a report published last week. Said to be in active development, dotRunpeX arrives as a second-stage malware in the infection chain, often deployed via a downloader (aka loader) that's transmitted through phishing emails as malicious attachments. Alternatively, it's known to leverage malicious Google Ads on search result pages to direct unsuspecting users searching for popular software such as AnyDesk and LastPass to copycat sites hosting trojanized installers. The latest DotRunpeX artifacts, first spotted in October 2022, add an extra o

A banking trojan dubbed  Mispadu  has been linked to multiple spam campaigns targeting countries like Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Portugal with the goal of stealing credentials and delivering other payloads. The activity, which commenced in August 2022, is currently ongoing, the Ocelot Team from Latin American cybersecurity firm Metabase Q said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Mispadu  (aka URSA) was  first documented  by ESET in November 2019, describing its ability to perpetrate monetary and credential theft and act as a backdoor by taking screenshots and capturing keystrokes. "One of their main strategies is to compromise legitimate websites, searching for vulnerable versions of WordPress, to turn them into their command-and-control server to spread malware from there, filtering out countries they do not wish to infect, dropping different type of malware based on the country being infected," researchers Fernando García and Dan Regalado said. It's a

2022 was the year when inflation hit world economies, except in one corner of the global marketplace – stolen data. Ransomware payments fell by over 40% in 2022 compared to 2021. More organisations chose not to pay ransom demands, according to findings by blockchain firm Chainalysis. Nonetheless, stolen data has value beyond a price tag, and in risky ways you may not expect. Evaluating stolen records is what  Lab 1, a new cyber monitoring platform , believes will make a big difference for long-term cybersecurity resilience. Think of data value this way:  Stolen credentials can become future phishing attacks Logins for adult websites are potential extortion attempts Travel and location data are a risk to VIPs and senior leadership, And so on… Hackers could retaliate for non-payment by simply posting their loot to forums where the data will be available for further enrichment and exploitation.  Shining a light on dark places Even though your company may not have suffered a di

The threat actors behind the CatB ransomware operation have been observed using a technique called  DLL search order hijacking  to evade detection and launch the payload. CatB, also referred to as CatB99 and Baxtoy, emerged late last year and is said to be an "evolution or direct rebrand" of another ransomware strain known as Pandora based on code-level similarities. It's worth noting that the use of Pandora has been attributed to  Bronze Starlight  (aka DEV-0401 or Emperor Dragonfly), a China-based threat actor that's known to employ  short-lived ransomware families  as a ruse to likely conceal its true objectives.  One of the key defining characteristics of CatB is its reliance on DLL hijacking via a legitimate service called Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator ( MSDTC ) to extract and launch the ransomware payload. "Upon execution, CatB payloads rely on DLL search order hijacking to drop and load the malicious payload," SentinelOne researc

The notorious Emotet malware, in its  return after a short hiatus , is now being distributed via  Microsoft OneNote email attachments  in an attempt to bypass macro-based security restrictions and compromise systems. Emotet , linked to a threat actor tracked as Gold Crestwood, Mummy Spider, or TA542, continues to be a potent and resilient threat despite attempts by law enforcement to take it down. A  derivative  of the  Cridex   banking worm  – which was  subsequently   replaced  by  Dridex  around the same time GameOver Zeus was disrupted in 2014 – Emotet has  evolved  into a "monetized platform for other threat actors to run malicious campaigns on a pay-per-install (PPI) model, allowing theft of sensitive data and ransom extortion." While Emotet infections have acted as a  conduit  to deliver Cobalt Strike, IcedID, Qakbot, Quantum ransomware, and TrickBot, its return in late 2021 was  facilitated  by means of TrickBot. "Emotet is known for extended periods of ina

The zero-day exploitation of a now-patched medium-severity security flaw in the Fortinet  FortiOS  operating system has been linked to a suspected Chinese hacking group. American cybersecurity company Mandiant, which made the attribution, said the activity cluster is part of a broader campaign designed to deploy backdoors onto Fortinet and VMware solutions and maintain persistent access to victim environments. The Google-owned threat intelligence and incident response firm is tracking the malicious operation under its uncategorized moniker UNC3886 , describing it as a China-nexus threat actor. "UNC3886 is an advanced cyber espionage group with unique capabilities in how they operate on-network as well as the tools they utilize in their campaigns," Mandiant researchers  said  in a technical analysis. "UNC3886 has been observed targeting firewall and virtualization technologies which lack EDR support. Their ability to manipulate firewall firmware and exploit a zero-da