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Cybersecurity researchers are warning about CAPTCHA-breaking services that are being offered for sale to bypass systems designed to distinguish legitimate users from bot traffic. "Because cybercriminals are keen on breaking CAPTCHAs accurately, several services that are primarily geared toward this market demand have been created," Trend Micro  said  in a report published last week. "These CAPTCHA-solving services don't use [optical character recognition] techniques or advanced machine learning methods; instead, they break CAPTCHAs by farming out CAPTCHA-breaking tasks to actual human solvers." CAPTCHA  – short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – is a tool for differentiating real human users from automated users with the goal of combating spam and restricting fake account creation. While CAPTCHA mechanisms can be a  disruptive user experience , they are seen as an effective means to counter attacks from bot-ori...

In this day and age, vulnerabilities in software and systems pose a considerable danger to businesses, which is why it is essential to have an efficient vulnerability management program in place. To stay one step ahead of possible breaches and reduce the damage they may cause, it is crucial to automate the process of finding and fixing vulnerabilities depending on the level of danger they pose. This post will discuss the fundamental approaches and tools to implement and automate risk-based vulnerability management. To make this process easier, consider using an  all-in-one cloud-based solution  right from the start. Implementing a risk-based vulnerability management program A risk-based vulnerability management program is a complex preventative approach used for swiftly detecting and ranking vulnerabilities based on their potential threat to a business. By implementing a risk-based vulnerability management approach, organizations can improve their security posture and reduc...

A new open source remote access trojan (RAT) called  DogeRAT  targets Android users primarily located in India as part of a sophisticated malware campaign. The malware is distributed via social media and messaging platforms under the guise of legitimate applications like Opera Mini, OpenAI ChatGPT, and Premium versions of YouTube, Netflix, and Instagram. "Once installed on a victim's device, the malware gains unauthorized access to sensitive data, including contacts, messages, and banking credentials," cybersecurity firm CloudSEK  said  in a Monday report. "It can also take control of the infected device, enabling malicious actions such as sending spam messages, making unauthorized payments, modifying files, and even remotely capturing photos through the device's cameras." DogeRAT, like many other malware-as-a-service ( MaaS ) offerings, is promoted by its India-based developer through a Telegram channel that has more than 2,100 subscribers since it wa...

Researchers have discovered an inexpensive attack technique that could be leveraged to brute-force fingerprints on smartphones to bypass user authentication and seize control of the devices. The approach, dubbed  BrutePrint , bypasses limits put in place to counter failed biometric authentication attempts by weaponizing two zero-day vulnerabilities in the smartphone fingerprint authentication (SFA) framework. The flaws, Cancel-After-Match-Fail (CAMF) and Match-After-Lock (MAL), leverage logical defects in the authentication framework, which arises due to insufficient protection of fingerprint data on the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) of fingerprint sensors. The result is a "hardware approach to do man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks for fingerprint image hijacking," researchers Yu Chen and Yiling He  said  in a research paper. "BrutePrint acts as a middleman between fingerprint sensor and  TEE  [Trusted Execution Environment]." The goal, at its core, is to...

A crypter (alternatively spelled cryptor) malware dubbed  AceCryptor  has been used to pack numerous strains of malware since 2016. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET  said  it identified over 240,000 detections of the crypter in its telemetry in 2021 and 2022. This amounts to more than 10,000 hits per month. Some of the prominent malware families contained within AceCryptor are SmokeLoader, RedLine Stealer, RanumBot, Raccoon Stealer, Stop ransomware, and Amadey, among others. The countries with the most detections include Peru, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Poland, and India. AceCryptor was  first highlighted  by Avast in August 2022, detailing the use of the malware to distribute Stop ransomware and RedLine Stealer on Discord in the form of 7-Zip files. Crypters  are similar to packers, but instead of using compression, they are known to obfuscate the malware code with encryption to make detection and reverse en...

If you're a cybersecurity professional, you're likely familiar with the sea of acronyms our industry is obsessed with. From CNAPP, to CWPP, to CIEM and all of the myriad others, there seems to be a new initialism born each day. In this article, we'll look at another trending acronym – CTEM, which stands for Continuous Threat Exposure Management – and the often-surprising challenges that come along with seeing a CTEM program through to maturity. While the concept of CTEM isn't brand spanking new, having made its in-print debut in July of 2022, we are now at the point where many organizations are starting to try to operationalize the programs that they've been setting into motion over the last few months. And as organizations start to execute their carefully designed plans, they may find themselves bumping up against some unexpected challenges which can lead to setbacks.  What is Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)? But first, to backtrack, let's just...

Linux routers in Japan are the target of a new Golang remote access trojan (RAT) called  GobRAT . "Initially, the attacker targets a router whose WEBUI is open to the public, executes scripts possibly by using vulnerabilities, and finally infects the GobRAT," the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC)  said  in a report published today. The compromise of an internet-exposed router is followed by the deployment of a loader script that acts as a conduit for delivering GobRAT, which, when launched, masquerades as the Apache daemon process (apached) to evade detection. The loader is also equipped to disable firewalls, establish persistence using the cron job scheduler, and register an SSH public key in the  .ssh/authorized_keys file  for remote access. GobRAT, for its part, communicates with a remote server via the Transport Layer Security ( TLS ) protocol to receive as many as 22 different encrypted commands for execution. Some of the major commands are as f...

A new phishing technique called "file archiver in the browser" can be leveraged to "emulate" a file archiver software in a web browser when a victim visits a .ZIP domain. "With this phishing attack, you simulate a file archiver software (e.g., WinRAR) in the browser and use a .zip domain to make it appear more legitimate," security researcher mr.d0x  disclosed  last week. Threat actors, in a nutshell, could create a realistic-looking  phishing landing page  using HTML and CSS that mimics legitimate file archive software, and host it on a .zip domain, thus elevating  social engineering campaigns . In a potential attack scenario, a miscreant could resort to such trickery to redirect users to a credential harvesting page when a file "contained" within the fake ZIP archive is clicked. "Another interesting use case is listing a non-executable file and when the user clicks to initiate a download, it downloads an executable file," mr.d0x ...

The Python Package Index (PyPI) announced last week that every account that maintains a project on the official third-party software repository will be required to turn on two-factor authentication ( 2FA ) by the end of the year. "Between now and the end of the year, PyPI will begin gating access to certain site functionality based on 2FA usage," PyPI administrator Donald Stufft said. "In addition, we may begin selecting certain users or projects for early enforcement." The enforcement also includes  organization maintainers , but does not extend to every single user of the service. The goal is to neutralize the threats posed by account takeover attacks, which an attacker can leverage to distribute trojanized versions of popular packages to poison the software supply chain and deploy malware on a large scale. PyPI, like other open source repositories such as npm, has  witnessed  innumerable instances of malware and package impersonation. Earlier this month, F...