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The threat actors behind RedLine and Vidar information stealers have been observed pivoting to ransomware through phishing campaigns that spread initial payloads signed with Extended Validation ( EV ) code signing certificates. "This suggests that the threat actors are streamlining operations by making their techniques multipurpose," Trend Micro researchers  said  in a new analysis published this week. In the incident investigated by the cybersecurity company, an unnamed victim is said to have first received a piece of info stealer malware with EV code signing certificates, followed by ransomware using the same delivery technique. In the past,  QakBot infections  have leveraged  samples signed with valid code signing certificates  to bypass security protections. The attacks start with phishing emails that employ well-worn lures to trick victims into running malicious attachments that masquerade as PDF or JPG images but are actually executables that jum...

Iranian nation-state actors have been conducting password spray attacks against thousands of organizations globally between February and July 2023, new findings from Microsoft reveal. The tech giant, which is tracking the activity under the name  Peach Sandstorm  (formerly Holmium), said the adversary pursued organizations in the satellite, defense, and pharmaceutical sectors to likely facilitate intelligence collection in support of Iranian state interests. Should the authentication to an account be successful, the threat actor has been observed using a combination of publicly available and custom tools for discovery, persistence, and lateral movement, followed by data exfiltration in limited cases. Peach Sandstorm , also known by the names APT33, Elfin, and Refined Kitten, has been linked to spear-phishing attacks against aerospace and energy sectors in the past, some of which have entailed the use of the  SHAPESHIFT  wiper malware. It's said to be active since...

Google Workspace has quickly become the productivity backbone for businesses worldwide, offering an all-in-one suite with email, cloud storage and collaboration tools. This single-platform approach makes it easy for teams to connect and work efficiently, no matter where they are, enabling seamless digital transformation that's both scalable and adaptable. As companies shift from traditional, on-premises setups focused on device security, to more user-centered, hybrid models, Google Workspace is perfectly positioned to support this evolution. Now, the user account itself is the central hub, allowing access from any device or location — a game changer in today's remote and distributed work environments. However, with all this connectivity and flexibility comes a challenge. Google Workspace connects to countless apps and touches every user in the organization, making it an appealing target for cybercriminals. The platform's internet accessibility opens up additional entry points, raisi...

A set of memory corruption flaws have been discovered in the  ncurses  (short for  new curses ) programming library that could be exploited by threat actors to run malicious code on vulnerable Linux and macOS systems. "Using environment variable poisoning, attackers could chain these vulnerabilities to elevate privileges and run code in the targeted program's context or perform other malicious actions," Microsoft Threat Intelligence researchers Jonathan Bar Or, Emanuele Cozzi, and Michael Pearse  said  in a technical report published today. The vulnerabilities, collectively tracked as  CVE-2023-29491  (CVSS score of 7.8), have been  addressed  as of April 2023. Microsoft said it also worked with Apple on remediating the macOS-specific issues related to these flaws. Environment variables are user-defined values that can be used by multiple programs on a system and can affect the manner in which they behave on the system. Manipulating t...

A download manager site served Linux users malware that stealthily stole passwords and other sensitive information for more than three years as part of a supply chain attack. The modus operandi entailed establishing a reverse shell to an actor-controlled server and installing a Bash stealer on the compromised system. The campaign, which took place between 2020 and 2022, is no longer active. "This stealer collects data such as system information, browsing history, saved passwords, cryptocurrency wallet files, as well as credentials for cloud services (AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Azure)," Kaspersky researchers Georgy Kucherin and Leonid Bezvershenko  said . The website in question is freedownloadmanager[.]org, which, according to the Russian cybersecurity firm, offers a legitimate Linux software called "Free Download Manager," but starting in January 2020, began redirecting some users who attempted to download it to another domain deb.fdmpkg[.]...

Employee offboarding is no one's favorite task, yet it is a critical IT process that needs to be executed diligently and efficiently. That's easier said than done, especially considering that IT organizations have less visibility and control over employees' IT use than ever. Today, employees can easily adopt new cloud and SaaS applications whenever and wherever they want, and the old IT offboarding playbook of "disable AD account, forward email, recover and wipe device, and call it a day" is no longer enough.  Here, we'll cover five of the most common pitfalls of  IT offboarding  in a SaaS-first world, along with advice on how to navigate around them. ‍ Pitfall #1: Suspending or deleting the email account before completing other critical steps It may seem logical to suspend or delete the employees' Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account as the first step in the offboarding process. However, this will make the account inaccessible to everyone, even admins, which cou...

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in N-Able's Take Control Agent that could be exploited by a local unprivileged attacker to gain SYSTEM privileges. Tracked as  CVE-2023-27470  (CVSS score: 8.8), the  issue  relates to a Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use ( TOCTOU ) race condition vulnerability, which, when successfully exploited, could be leveraged to delete arbitrary files on a Windows system. The security shortcoming, which impacts versions 7.0.41.1141 and prior, has been addressed in version 7.0.43 released on March 15, 2023, following responsible disclosure by Mandiant on February 27, 2023. Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use falls under a category of software flaws wherein a program checks the state of a resource for a specific value, but that value changes before it's actually used, effectively invalidating the results of the check. An exploitation of such a flaw can result in a loss of integrity and trick the program into performing actions that it sh...

The iPhone belonging to Galina Timchenko, a prominent Russian journalist and critic of the government, was compromised with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, a new collaborative investigation from  Access Now  and the  Citizen Lab  has revealed. The infiltration is said to have happened on or around February 10, 2023. Timchenko is the executive editor and owner of  Meduza , an independent news publication based in Latvia. It's currently not clear who deployed the malware on the device. The Washington Post  reported  that the Russian government is not a client of NSO Group, citing an unnamed person familiar with the company's operations. "During the infection her device was localized to the GMT+1 timezone, and she reports being in Berlin, Germany," the Citizen Lab said. "The day following the infection she was scheduled to attend a private meeting with other heads of Russian independent media exiled in Europe to discuss how to manage threats and censorsh...

Three interrelated high-severity security flaws discovered in Kubernetes could be exploited to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges on Windows endpoints within a cluster. The  issues , tracked as CVE-2023-3676, CVE-2023-3893, and CVE-2023-3955, carry CVSS scores of 8.8 and impact all Kubernetes environments with Windows nodes. Fixes for the vulnerabilities were  released  on August 23, 2023, following responsible disclosure by Akamai on July 13, 2023. "The vulnerability allows remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges on all Windows endpoints within a Kubernetes cluster," Akamai security researcher Tomer Peled said in a technical write-up shared with The Hacker News. "To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker needs to apply a malicious YAML file on the cluster." Amazon Web Services  (AWS),  Google Cloud , and  Microsoft Azure  have all released advisories for the bugs, which affect the following versions of Kubelet - kube...

More details have emerged about a set of now-patched cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws in the  Microsoft Azure HDInsight  open-source analytics service that could be weaponized by a threat actor to carry out malicious activities. "The identified vulnerabilities consisted of six stored XSS and two reflected XSS vulnerabilities, each of which could be exploited to perform unauthorized actions, varying from data access to session hijacking and delivering malicious payloads," Orca security researcher Lidor Ben Shitrit  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The issues were addressed by Microsoft as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates  for August 2023. The disclosure comes three months after similar shortcomings were reported in the  Azure Bastion and Azure Container Registry  that could have been exploited for unauthorized data access and modifications. The list of flaws is as follows - CVE-2023-35393  (CVSS score: 4.5) - Azure Apac...

In today's digital age, SaaS applications have become the backbone of modern businesses. They streamline operations, enhance productivity, and foster innovation. But with great power comes great responsibility. As organizations integrate more SaaS applications into their workflows, they inadvertently open the door to a new era of security threats. The stakes? Your invaluable data and the trust of your stakeholders. Historically, SaaS security was about managing misconfigurations. But the landscape has evolved. Now, it's not just about securing the software; it's about safeguarding the very essence of digital identity.  Identity is the new endpoint . If you're not focusing on securing user identity, you're leaving a gaping hole in your security strategy. Traditional threat detection and identity management methods? They're just the tip of the iceberg. To truly fortify your SaaS ecosystem, you need to delve deeper. Enter Maor Bin, the visionary CEO of Adaptive...

A new ransomware family called  3AM  has emerged in the wild after it was detected in a single incident in which an unidentified affiliate deployed the strain following an unsuccessful attempt to deliver LockBit (attributed to Bitwise Spider  or  Syrphid ) in the target network. "3AM is written in Rust and appears to be a completely new malware family," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The ransomware attempts to stop multiple services on the infected computer before it begins encrypting files. Once encryption is complete, it attempts to delete Volume Shadow (VSS) copies." 3AM gets its name from the fact that it's referenced in the ransom note. It also appends encrypted files with the extension .threeamtime. That said, it's currently not known if the malware authors have any connections with known e-crime groups. In the attack spotted by Symantec, the adversary is said to have managed t...