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The peer-to-peer (P2) worm known as  P2PInfect  has witnessed a surge in activity since late August 2023, witnessing a 600x jump between September 12 and 19, 2023. "This increase in P2PInfect traffic has coincided with a growing number of variants seen in the wild, suggesting that the malware's developers are operating at an extremely high development cadence," Cado Security researcher Matt Muir said in a report published Wednesday. A majority of the compromises have been reported in China, the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. P2PInfect first came to light in July 2023 for its ability to breach poorly secured Redis instances. The threat actors behind the campaign have since resorted to different approaches for initial access, including the abuse of the database's replication feature to deliver the malware. Cado Security said it has observed an increase in initial access events attributable to P2PInfect in which the Redis SLAVEOF command...

Security teams are familiar with threats emanating from third-party applications that employees add to improve their productivity. These apps are inherently designed to deliver functionality to users by connecting to a "hub" app, such as Salesforce, Google Workspace, or Microsoft 365. Security concerns center on the permission scopes that are granted to the third party apps, and the potential for a threat actor to take over the core apps and abuse those permissions. There's no real concern that the app, on its own, will start deleting files or sharing data. As such, SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solutions are able to identify integrated third party applications and present their permission scopes. The security team then makes a risk assessment, balancing the benefits the app offers with its permission scopes before deciding whether to keep or decouple the applications. However, threat actors have changed the playing field with the introduction of malicious apps. These appl...

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...

China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) has accused the U.S. of breaking into Huawei's servers, stealing critical data, and implanting backdoors since 2009, amid mounting geopolitical tensions between the two countries. In a  message  posted on WeChat, the government authority said U.S. intelligence agencies have "done everything possible" to conduct surveillance, secret theft, and intrusions on many countries around the world, including China, using a "powerful cyber attack arsenal." Specifics about the alleged hacks were not shared. It explicitly singled out the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) Computer Network Operations (formerly the Office of Tailored Access Operations or TAO) as having "repeatedly carried out systematic and platform-based attacks" against the country to plunder its "important data resources." The post went on to claim that the cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit hacked Huawei's servers in 200...

A financially motivated threat actor has been outed as an initial access broker (IAB) that sells access to compromised organizations for other adversaries to conduct follow-on attacks such as ransomware. SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) has dubbed the e-crime group  Gold Melody , which is also known by the names Prophet Spider (CrowdStrike) and UNC961 (Mandiant). "This financially motivated group has been active since at least 2017, compromising organizations by exploiting vulnerabilities in unpatched internet-facing servers," the cybersecurity company  said . "The victimology suggests opportunistic attacks for financial gain rather than a targeted campaign conducted by a state-sponsored threat group for espionage, destruction, or disruption." Gold Melody has been  previously   linked  to  attacks  exploiting security flaws in JBoss Messaging (CVE-2017-7504), Citrix ADC (CVE-2019-19781), Oracle WebLogic (CVE-2020-14750 and CVE-2020-14882), ...

The maintainers of Free Download Manager (FDM) have acknowledged a security incident dating back to 2020 that led to its website being used to distribute malicious Linux software. "It appears that a specific web page on our site was compromised by a Ukrainian hacker group, exploiting it to distribute malicious software," it  said  in an alert last week. "Only a small subset of users, specifically those who attempted to download FDM for Linux between 2020 and 2022, were potentially exposed." Less than 0.1% of its visitors are estimated to have encountered the issue, adding it may have been why the problem went undetected until now. The disclosure comes as Kaspersky  revealed  that the project's website was infiltrated at some point in 2020 to redirect select Linux users who attempted to download the software to a malicious site hosting a Debian package. The package was further configured to deploy a DNS-based backdoor and ultimately serve a Bash stealer mal...

A malicious actor released a fake proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a recently disclosed WinRAR vulnerability on GitHub with an aim to infect users who downloaded the code with Venom RAT malware. "The fake PoC meant to exploit this WinRAR vulnerability was based on a publicly available PoC script that exploited a SQL injection vulnerability in an application called GeoServer, which is tracked as  CVE-2023-25157 ," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Robert Falcone  said . While  bogus PoCs  have become a  well-documented gambit  for targeting the  research community , the cybersecurity firm suspected that the threat actors are opportunistically targeting other crooks who may be adopting the latest vulnerabilities into their arsenal. whalersplonk, the  GitHub account  that hosted the repository, is no longer accessible. The PoC is said to have been committed on August 21, 2023, four days after the vulnerability was publicly announced. ...

Finnish law enforcement authorities have announced the takedown of PIILOPUOTI, a dark web marketplace that specialized in illegal narcotics trade since May 2022. "The site operated as a hidden service in the encrypted TOR network," the Finnish Customs (aka Tulli)  said  in a brief announcement on Tuesday. "The site has been used in anonymous criminal activities such as narcotics trade." The agency said that the drugs sold on the site were smuggled to Finland from abroad, adding a criminal investigation is underway in coordination with international partners from Germany and Lithuania, along with Europol and Eurojust. It's not immediately clear if any arrests were made. Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender said it provided additional support that helped with the seizure of PIILOPUOTI. "We are extremely pleased that PIILOPUOTI has been seized and would like to congratulate law enforcement, Finnish Customs, and everyone involved," Alexandru Catal...

Multiple security flaws have been disclosed in the Nagios XI network monitoring software that could result in privilege escalation and information disclosure. The four security vulnerabilities, tracked from CVE-2023-40931 through CVE-2023-40934, impact Nagios XI versions 5.11.1 and lower. Following responsible disclosure on August 4, 2023, They have been  patched  as of September 11, 2023, with the release of version 5.11.2. "Three of these vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-40931, CVE-2023-40933 and CVE-2023-40934) allow users, with various levels of privileges, to access database fields via SQL Injections," Outpost24 researcher Astrid Tedenbrant  said . "The data obtained from these vulnerabilities may be used to further escalate privileges in the product and obtain sensitive user data such as password hashes and API tokens." CVE-2023-40932, on the other hand, relates to a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in the Custom Logo component that could be used to read sensiti...

Well, you shouldn't. It may already be hiding vulnerabilities. It's the modular nature of modern web applications that has made them so effective. They can call on dozens of third-party web components, JS frameworks, and open-source tools to deliver all the different functionalities that keep their customers happy, but this chain of dependencies is also what makes them so vulnerable. Many of those components in the web application supply chain are controlled by a third party—the company that created them. This means that no matter how rigorous you were with your own static code analysis, code reviews, penetration testing, and other SSDLC processes, most of your supply chain's security is in the hands of whoever built its third-party components. With their huge potential for weak spots, and their widespread use in the lucrative ecommerce, financial and medical industries, web application supply chains present a juicy target for cyber attackers. They can target any one of the doz...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a fresh batch of malicious packages in the npm package registry that are designed to exfiltrate Kubernetes configurations and SSH keys from compromised machines to a remote server. Sonatype said it has discovered 14 different npm packages so far: @am-fe/hooks, @am-fe/provider, @am-fe/request, @am-fe/utils, @am-fe/watermark, @am-fe/watermark-core, @dynamic-form-components/mui, @dynamic-form-components/shineout, @expue/app, @fixedwidthtable/fixedwidthtable, @soc-fe/use, @spgy/eslint-plugin-spgy-fe, @virtualsearchtable/virtualsearchtable, and shineouts. "These packages [...] attempt to impersonate JavaScript libraries and components, such as ESLint plugins and TypeScript SDK tools," the software supply chain security firm  said . "But, upon installation, multiple versions of the packages were seen running obfuscated code to collect and siphon sensitive files from the target machine." Along with Kubernetes config and SSH ke...

Chinese-language speakers have been increasingly targeted as part of multiple email phishing campaigns that aim to distribute various malware families such as Sainbox RAT, Purple Fox, and a new trojan called ValleyRAT. "Campaigns include Chinese-language lures and malware typically associated with Chinese cybercrime activity," enterprise security firm Proofpoint  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity, observed since early 2023, entails sending email messages containing URLs pointing to compressed executables that are responsible for installing the malware. Other infection chains have been found to leverage Microsoft Excel and PDF attachments that embed these URLs to trigger malicious activity. These campaigns demonstrate variation in the use of infrastructure, sender domains, email content, targeting, and payloads, indicating that different threat clusters are mounting the attacks. Over 30 such campaigns have been detected in 2023 that employ malwa...