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A previously unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) is targeting iOS devices as part of a sophisticated and long-running mobile campaign dubbed  Operation Triangulation  that began in 2019. "The targets are infected using zero-click exploits via the iMessage platform, and the malware runs with root privileges, gaining complete control over the device and user data," Kaspersky  said . The Russian cybersecurity company said it discovered traces of compromise after creating offline backups of the targeted devices. The attack chain begins with the iOS device receiving a message via iMessage that contains an attachment bearing the exploit. The exploit is said to be  zero-click , meaning the receipt of the message triggers the vulnerability without requiring any user interaction in order to achieve code execution. It's also configured to retrieve additional payloads for privilege escalation and drop a final stage malware from a remote server that Kaspersky described as

Cybersecurity researchers have unmasked the identity of one of the individuals who is believed to be associated with the e-crime actor known as  XE Group . According to  Menlo Security , which pieced together the information from different online sources, "Nguyen Huu Tai, who also goes by the names Joe Nguyen and Thanh Nguyen, has the strongest likelihood of being involved with the XE Group." XE Group (aka XeThanh), previously documented by  Malwarebytes  and  Volexity , has a history of carrying out cyber criminal activities since at least 2013. It's suspected to be a threat actor of Vietnamese origin. Some of the entities targeted by the threat actor span government agencies, construction organizations, and healthcare sectors. It's known to compromise internet-exposed servers with known exploits and monetize the intrusions by installing password theft or  credit card skimming code  for online services. "As far back as 2014, the threat actor was seen crea

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,

Researchers have discovered a novel attack on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that employs compiled Python code to sidestep detection by application security tools. "It may be the first supply chain attack to take advantage of the fact that Python bytecode (PYC) files can be directly executed," ReversingLabs analyst Karlo Zanki  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The package in question is  fshec2 , which was removed from the third-party software registry on April 17, 2023, following responsible disclosure on the same day. PYC files are compiled bytecode files that are generated by the Python interpreter when a Python program is executed. "When a module is imported for the first time (or when the source file has changed since the current compiled file was created) a .pyc file containing the compiled code should be created in a __pycache__ subdirectory of the directory containing the .py file,"  explains  the Python documentation. The pa

IT hygiene  is a security best practice that ensures that digital assets in an organization's environment are secure and running properly. Good IT hygiene includes vulnerability management, security configuration assessments, maintaining asset and system inventories, and comprehensive visibility into the activities occurring in an environment. As technology advances and the tools used by cybercriminals and cybersecurity professionals evolve, the strategies used to carry out cyber attacks differ based on their complexity and uniqueness. Threat actors continuously target organizations practicing poor IT hygiene to exploit known security weaknesses and human error. Security administrators can defend against cyberattacks by implementing good  IT hygiene  practices like whitelisting programs, keeping systems up to date, and more. Gaining complete visibility into the IT assets is fundamental to developing an effective security strategy. The emergence of shadow IT, like rogue assets, s

The threat actors behind BlackCat ransomware have come up with an improved variant that prioritizes speed and stealth in an attempt to bypass security guardrails and achieve their goals. The new version, dubbed  Sphynx  and announced in February 2023, packs a "number of updated capabilities that strengthen the group's efforts to evade detection," IBM Security X-Force said in a new analysis. The "product" update was  first highlighted  by vx-underground in April 2023. Trend Micro, last month,  detailed  a Linux version of Sphynx that's "focused primarily on its encryption routine." BlackCat , also called ALPHV and Noberus, is the first Rust-language-based ransomware strain spotted in the wild. Active since November 2021, it has emerged as a formidable ransomware actor, victimizing  more than 350 targets  as of May 2023. The group, like other ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) offerings, is  known  to operate a double extortion scheme, deploying

Cybersecurity researchers have offered a closer look at the RokRAT remote access trojan that's employed by the North Korean state-sponsored actor known as  ScarCruft . "RokRAT is a sophisticated remote access trojan (RAT) that has been observed as a critical component within the attack chain, enabling the threat actors to gain unauthorized access, exfiltrate sensitive information, and potentially maintain persistent control over compromised systems," ThreatMon  said . ScarCruft , active since at least 2012, is a  cyber espionage group  that operates on behalf of the North Korean government, exclusively focusing on targets in its southern counterpart. The group is believed to be a subordinate element within North Korea's Ministry of State Security (MSS). Attack chains mounted by the group have leaned heavily on social engineering to spear-phish victims and deliver payloads onto target networks. This includes exploiting vulnerabilities in Hancom's Hangul Word

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  a recently patched critical security flaw in Zyxel gear to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as  CVE-2023-28771  (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to a  command injection flaw  impacting different firewall models that could enable an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code by sending a specially crafted packet to the device. Zyxel addressed the security defect as part of updates released on April 25, 2023. The list of impacted devices is below - ATP (versions ZLD V4.60 to V5.35, patched in ZLD V5.36) USG FLEX (versions ZLD V4.60 to V5.35, patched in ZLD V5.36) VPN (versions ZLD V4.60 to V5.35, patched in ZLD V5.36), and ZyWALL/USG (versions ZLD V4.60 to V4.73, patched in ZLD V4.73 Patch 1) The Shadowserver Foundation, in a  recent tweet , said the flaw is "being actively exploited to build a  Mirai-like botnet " since M

WordPress has issued an automatic update to address a critical flaw in the  Jetpack plugin  that's installed on over five million sites. The vulnerability, which was unearthed during an internal security audit, resides in an API present in the plugin since  version 2.0 , which was released in November 2012. "This vulnerability could be used by authors on a site to manipulate any files in the WordPress installation," Jetpack  said  in an advisory. 102 new versions of Jetpack have been released to remediate the bug. While there is no evidence the issue has been exploited in the wild, it's not uncommon for flaws in popular WordPress plugins to be leveraged by threat actors looking to take over the sites for malicious ends. This is not the first time severe security weaknesses in Jetpack have prompted WordPress to force install the patches. In November 2019, Jetpack released  version 7.9.1  to fix a defect in the way the plugin handled embed code that had existed since July 2017 (ve

A financially motivated threat actor is actively scouring the internet for unprotected  Apache NiFi instances  to covertly install a cryptocurrency miner and facilitate lateral movement. The findings come from the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC), which detected a spike in HTTP requests for "/nifi" on May 19, 2023. "Persistence is achieved via timed processors or entries to cron,"  said  Dr. Johannes Ullrich, dean of research for SANS Technology Institute. "The attack script is not saved to the system. The attack scripts are kept in memory only." A honeypot setup allowed the ISC to determine that the initial foothold is weaponized to drop a shell script that removes the "/var/log/syslog" file, disables the firewall, and terminates competing crypto-mining tools, before downloading and launching the Kinsing malware from a remote server. It's worth pointing out that  Kinsing  has a  track record  of  leveraging  publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in publicly accessible web applicati

Cybersecurity researchers have found "backdoor-like behavior" within Gigabyte systems, which they say enables the  UEFI firmware  of the devices to drop a Windows executable and retrieve updates in an unsecure format. Firmware security firm Eclypsium  said  it first detected the anomaly in April 2023. Gigabyte has since acknowledged and addressed the issue. "Most Gigabyte firmware includes a Windows Native Binary executable embedded inside of the UEFI firmware," John Loucaides, senior vice president of strategy at Eclypsium, told The Hacker News. "The detected Windows executable is dropped to disk and executed as part of the Windows startup process, similar to the  LoJack double agent attack . This executable then downloads and runs additional binaries via insecure methods." "Only the intention of the author can distinguish this sort of vulnerability from a malicious backdoor," Loucaides added. The executable, per Eclypsium, is embedded in

Improperly deactivated and abandoned Salesforce  Sites  and  Communities  (aka Experience Cloud) could pose severe risks to organizations, leading to unauthorized access to sensitive data. Data security firm Varonis dubbed the abandoned, unprotected, and unmonitored resources " ghost sites ." "When these Communities are no longer needed, though, they are often set aside but not deactivated," Varonis Threat Labs researchers  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. "Because these unused sites are not maintained, they aren't tested against vulnerabilities, and Admins fail to update the site's security measures according to newer guidelines." Varonis said it found many of these deactivated (but still active) sites still fetching new data, thereby allowing threat actors to extract data by manipulating the  host header  in the HTTP request. Identifying the complete internal URLs associated with the sites is challenging but not impossible, as an adversary could leverage too

Microsoft has shared details of a now-patched flaw in Apple macOS that could be abused by threat actors with root access to bypass security enforcements and perform arbitrary actions on affected devices. Specifically, the flaw – dubbed  Migraine  and tracked as CVE-2023-32369 – could be abused to get around a key security measure called System Integrity Protection ( SIP ), or "rootless," which limits the actions the root user can perform on protected files and folders. "The most straight-forward implication of a SIP bypass is that [...] an attacker can create files that are protected by SIP and therefore undeletable by ordinary means," Microsoft researchers Jonathan Bar Or, Michael Pearse, and Anurag Bohra  said . Even worse, it could be exploited to gain arbitrary kernel code execution and even access sensitive data by replacing databases that manage Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) policies. The bypass is made possible by leveraging a built-in macOS tool called  Migrat

Finding threat actors before they find you is key to beefing up your cyber defenses. How to do that efficiently and effectively is no small task – but with a small investment of time, you can master threat hunting and save your organization millions of dollars. Consider this staggering statistic. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that cybercrime will take a $10.5 trillion toll on the global economy by 2025. Measuring this amount as a country, the cost of cybercrime equals the world's third-largest economy after the U.S. and China. But with effective threat hunting, you can keep bad actors from wreaking havoc on your organization. This article offers a detailed explanation of threat hunting – what it is, how to do it thoroughly and effectively, and how cyber threat intelligence (CTI) can bolster your threat-hunting efforts. What is threat hunting? Cyber threat hunting is gathering evidence that a threat is materializing. It's a continuous process that helps you find the threats that

The threat actor known as  Dark Pink  has been linked to five new attacks aimed at various entities in Belgium, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam between February 2022 and April 2023. This includes educational institutions, government agencies, military bodies, and non-profit organizations, indicating the adversarial crew's continued focus on high-value targets. Dark Pink, also called Saaiwc Group, is an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor believed to be of Asia-Pacific origin, with  attacks   targeting  entities primarily located in East Asia and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. The group employs a set of custom malware tools such as TelePowerBot and KamiKakaBot that provide various functions to exfiltrate sensitive data from compromised hosts. "The group uses a range of sophisticated custom tools, deploys multiple kill chains relying on spear-phishing emails," Group-IB security researcher Andrey Polovinkin  said  in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Onc

The threat actors behind  RomCom RAT  are leveraging a network of fake websites advertising rogue versions of popular software at least since July 2022 to infiltrate targets. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro is tracking the activity cluster under the name Void Rabisu, which is also known as Tropical Scorpius (Unit 42) and UNC2596 (Mandiant). "These lure sites are most likely only meant for a small number of targets, thus making discovery and analysis more difficult," security researchers Feike Hacquebord, Stephen Hilt, Fernando Merces, and Lord Alfred Remorin  said . Some of the impersonated apps spotted so far include AstraChat, Devolutions' Remote Desktop Manager, Gimp, GoTo Meeting, KeePass, OpenAI ChatGPT, Signal, Veeam Backup & Replication, and WinDirStat. RomCom RAT was  first chronicled  by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in August 2022, linking it to a financially motivated group deploying  Cuba Ransomware  (aka COLDDRAW). It's worth noting that there is no

Enterprise security firm Barracuda on Tuesday disclosed that a recently patched zero-day flaw in its Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances had been abused by threat actors since October 2022 to backdoor the devices. The latest  findings  show that the  critical vulnerability , tracked as  CVE-2023-2868  (CVSS score: N/A), has been actively exploited for at least seven months prior to its discovery. The flaw, which Barracuda identified on May 19, 2023, affects versions 5.1.3.001 through 9.2.0.006 and could allow a remote attacker to achieve code execution on susceptible installations. Patches were released by Barracuda on May 20 and May 21. "CVE-2023-2868 was utilized to obtain unauthorized access to a subset of ESG appliances," the network and email security company  said  in an updated advisory. "Malware was identified on a subset of appliances allowing for persistent backdoor access. Evidence of data exfiltration was identified on a subset of impacted appliance

Multiple security flaws uncovered in Sonos One wireless speakers could be potentially exploited to achieve information disclosure and remote code execution, the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI)  said  in a report published last week. The vulnerabilities were demonstrated by three different teams from Qrious Secure, STAR Labs, and DEVCORE at the Pwn2Own hacking contest held in Toronto late last year, netting them $105,000 in monetary rewards. The list of four flaws, which impact Sonos One Speaker 70.3-35220, is below - CVE-2023-27352  and  CVE-2023-27355  (CVSS scores: 8.8)  - Unauthenticated flaws that allow network-adjacent attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations. CVE-2023-27353  and  CVE-2023-27354  (CVSS score: 6.5)  - Unauthenticated flaws that allow network-adjacent attackers to disclose sensitive information on affected installations. While CVE-2023-27352 stems from when processing SMB directory query commands, CVE-2023-27355 exists within the MPEG-TS pars

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