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Microsoft is calling attention to a Morocco-based cybercrime group dubbed  Storm-0539  that's behind gift card fraud and theft through highly sophisticated email and SMS phishing attacks. "Their primary motivation is to steal gift cards and profit by selling them online at a discounted rate," the company  said  in its latest Cyber Signals report. "We've seen some examples where the threat actor has stolen up to $100,000 a day at certain companies." Storm-0539 was  first spotlighted  by Microsoft in mid-December 2023, linking it to social engineering campaigns ahead of the year-end holiday season to steal victims' credentials and session tokens via adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) phishing pages. The gang, also called Atlas Lion and active since at least late 2021, is known to then abuse the initial access to register their own devices to bypass authentication and obtain persistent access, gain elevated privileges, and compromise gift card-related ser...

The transition to the cloud, poor password hygiene and the evolution in webpage technologies have all enabled the rise in phishing attacks. But despite sincere efforts by security stakeholders to mitigate them - through email protection, firewall rules and employee education - phishing attacks are still a very risky attack vector. A new report by LayerX explores the state of phishing attacks today and analyzes the protections organizations have in place to protect against them. This report, "The Dark Side of Phishing Protection: Are You as Protected as You Should Be?" ( Download here ), can be leveraged by security and IT professionals across organizations in their security efforts. They can use it to pinpoint any internal security blind spots they have and identify controls and practices that can help them gain visibility into those blind spots. Understanding the Threat: Phishing Stats Phishing is on the rise. Based on a number of sources, the report d...

The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture.  The solution is more complex. For this article, we'll focus on the device threat vector. The risk they pose is significant, which is why device management tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) are essential components of an organization's security infrastructure. However, relying solely on these tools to manage device risk actually creates a false sense of security. Instead of the blunt tools of device management, organizations are looking for solutions that deliver device trust . Device trust provides a comprehensive, risk-based approach to device security enforcement, closing the large gaps left behind by traditional device management solutions. Here are 5 of those limitations and how to ov...

Cybersecurity researchers are alerting of phishing campaigns that abuse  Cloudflare Workers  to serve phishing sites that are used to harvest users' credentials associated with Microsoft, Gmail, Yahoo!, and cPanel Webmail. The attack method, called transparent phishing or adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) phishing, "uses Cloudflare Workers to act as a reverse proxy server for a legitimate login page, intercepting traffic between the victim and the login page to capture credentials, cookies, and tokens," Netskope researcher Jan Michael Alcantara  said  in a report. A majority of phishing campaigns hosted on Cloudflare Workers over the past 30 days have targeted victims in Asia, North America, and Southern Europe, spanning technology, financial services, and banking sectors. The cybersecurity firm said that an increase in traffic to Cloudflare Workers-hosted phishing pages was first registered in Q2 2023, noting it observed a spike in the total number of d...

The Pakistan-nexus  Transparent Tribe  actor has been linked to a new set of attacks targeting Indian government, defense, and aerospace sectors using cross-platform malware written in Python, Golang, and Rust. "This cluster of activity spanned from late 2023 to April 2024 and is anticipated to persist," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team  said  in a technical report published early last week. The spear-phishing campaign is also notable for its abuse of popular online services such as Discord, Google Drive, Slack, and Telegram, once again underscoring how threat actors are  adopting legitimate programs  into their attack flows. According to BlackBerry, the targets of the email-based attacks included three companies that are crucial stakeholders and clients of the Department of Defense Production ( DDP ). All the three companies targeted are headquartered in the Indian city of Bengaluru. While the names of the firms were not disclosed, i...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a critical security flaw in an artificial intelligence (AI)-as-a-service provider  Replicate  that could have allowed threat actors to gain access to proprietary AI models and sensitive information. "Exploitation of this vulnerability would have allowed unauthorized access to the AI prompts and results of all Replicate's platform customers," cloud security firm Wiz  said  in a report published this week. The issue stems from the fact that AI models are typically packaged in formats that allow arbitrary code execution, which an attacker could weaponize to perform cross-tenant attacks by means of a malicious model. Replicate makes use of an open-source tool called  Cog  to containerize and package machine learning models that could then be deployed either in a self-hosted environment or to Replicate. Wiz said that it created a rogue Cog container and uploaded it to Replicate, ultimately employing it to...

The MITRE Corporation has revealed that the cyber attack targeting the not-for-profit company towards late December 2023 by exploiting zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) involved the threat actor creating rogue virtual machines (VMs) within its VMware environment. "The adversary created their own rogue VMs within the VMware environment, leveraging compromised vCenter Server access," MITRE researchers Lex Crumpton and Charles Clancy  said . "They wrote and deployed a JSP web shell (BEEFLUSH) under the vCenter Server's Tomcat server to execute a Python-based tunneling tool, facilitating SSH connections between adversary-created VMs and the ESXi hypervisor infrastructure." The motive behind such a move is to sidestep detection by obscuring their malicious activities from centralized management interfaces like vCenter and maintain persistent access while reducing the risk of being discovered. Details of the attack  emerged  last month when MITRE rev...

Threat actors have been observed making use of fake websites masquerading as legitimate antivirus solutions from Avast, Bitdefender, and Malwarebytes to propagate malware capable of stealing sensitive information from Android and Windows devices. "Hosting malicious software through sites which look legitimate is predatory to general consumers, especially those who look to protect their devices from cyber attacks," Trellix security researcher Gurumoorthi Ramanathan  said . The list of websites is below - avast-securedownload[.]com, which is used to deliver the  SpyNote trojan  in the form of an Android package file ("Avast.apk") that, once installed, requests for intrusive permissions to read SMS messages and call logs, install and delete apps, take screenshot, track location, and even mine cryptocurrency bitdefender-app[.]com, which is used to deliver a ZIP archive file ("setup-win-x86-x64.exe.zip") that deploys the  Lumma  information stealer malw...

Don't be fooled into thinking that cyber threats are only a problem for large organizations. The truth is that cybercriminals are increasingly targeting smaller businesses, and they're getting smarter every day. Join our FREE webinar " Navigating the SMB Threat Landscape: Key Insights from Huntress' Threat Report ," in which Jamie Levy — Director of Adversary Tactics at Huntress, a renowned cybersecurity expert with extensive experience in combating cyber threats — breaks down the latest cyber threats to SMBs like yours and explains what you can do about them. Here's a sneak peek of what you'll learn: Attackers are Blending In: Cyber attackers are getting smarter. They are increasingly using legitimate tools to disguise their activities, making it harder for traditional security measures to detect them. Learn how these techniques work and what you can do to detect these hidden threats. Ransomware on the Rise:  Following the takedown of Qakbot, there ...

Introduction The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack (2021) and SolarWinds supply chain attack (2020) were pivotal moments in cybersecurity, starting a new challenge for Chief Information Security Officers ( CISOs ). These attacks highlighted the importance of collaboration between CISOs and DevOps teams to ensure proper cloud security configurations. In this article, we will outline the 6-step approach to fostering strong partnerships between CISOs, DevOps teams, IT management, and organizations that can help to drive innovation while maintaining a robust security posture. You will learn how a CISO can effectively communicate with IT leadership and what methods to try. Our narrative will emphasize the most crucial aspect of an organization's security - growing your strong security team and moving to a proactive approach.  Understanding such breaches, such as the Capital One data breach (2019), Epsilon data breach (2019), Magecart compromises (ongoing), and MongoDB breaches (2...