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Introduction In today’s interconnected digital ecosystem, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) play a pivotal role in enabling seamless communication and data exchange between various software applications and systems. APIs act as bridges, facilitating the sharing of information and functionalities. However, as the use of APIs continues to rise, they have become an increasingly attractive target for

Sep 30, 2023THNCyber Espionage / Malware Sophisticated cyber actors backed by Iran known as OilRig have been linked to a spear-phishing campaign that infects victims with a new strain of malware called Menorah. “The malware was designed for cyberespionage, capable of identifying the machine, reading and uploading files from the machine, and downloading another file

Sep 30, 2023THNRansomware / Cyber Threat The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning of a new trend of dual ransomware attacks targeting the same victims, at least since July 2023. “During these attacks, cyber threat actors deployed two different ransomware variants against victim companies from the following variants: AvosLocker, Diamond, Hive, Karakurt, LockBit,

Threat actors are selling a new crypter and loader called ASMCrypt, which has been described as an “evolved version” of another loader malware known as DoubleFinger. “The idea behind this type of malware is to load the final payload without the loading process or the payload itself being detected by AV/EDR, etc.,” Kaspersky said in

Sep 28, 2023THNSupply Chain / Malware A new malicious campaign has been observed hijacking GitHub accounts and committing malicious code disguised as Dependabot contributions with an aim to steal passwords from developers. “The malicious code exfiltrates the GitHub project’s defined secrets to a malicious C2 server and modify any existing javascript files in the attacked

Sep 27, 2023THNMalware / Cyber Attack A new threat actor known as AtlasCross has been observed leveraging Red Cross-themed phishing lures to deliver two previously undocumented backdoors named DangerAds and AtlasAgent. NSFOCUS Security Labs described the adversary as having a “high technical level and cautious attack attitude,” adding that “the phishing attack activity captured this

Sep 26, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Password Microsoft is officially rolling out support for passkeys in Windows 11 today as part of a major update to the desktop operating system. The feature allows users to login to websites and applications without having to provide a username and password, instead relying on their device PIN or biometric

Sep 25, 2023THNCyber Attack / Phishing Ukrainian military entities are the target of a phishing campaign that leverages drone manuals as lures to deliver a Go-based open-source post-exploitation toolkit called Merlin. “Since drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been an integral tool used by the Ukrainian military, malware-laced lure files themed as UAVs service

The three zero-day flaws addressed by Apple on September 21, 2023, were leveraged as part of an iPhone exploit chain in an attempt to deliver a spyware strain called Predator targeting former Egyptian member of parliament Ahmed Eltantawy between May and September 2023. “The targeting took place after Eltantawy publicly stated his plans to run

Sep 23, 2023THNCyber Espionage / Malware Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously undocumented advanced backdoor dubbed Deadglyph employed by a threat actor known as Stealth Falcon as part of a cyber espionage campaign. “Deadglyph’s architecture is unusual as it consists of cooperating components – one a native x64 binary, the other a .NET assembly,” ESET

Sep 22, 2023THNMalware / Cyber Threat An active malware campaign targeting Latin America is dispensing a new variant of a banking trojan called BBTok, particularly users in Brazil and Mexico. “The BBTok banker has a dedicated functionality that replicates the interfaces of more than 40 Mexican and Brazilian banks, and tricks the victims into entering

Sep 21, 2023THNTelecom Security / Cyber Attack A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed Sandman has been attributed to a set of cyber attacks targeting telecommunic koation providers in the Middle East, Western Europe, and the South Asian subcontinent. Notably, the intrusions leverage a just-in-time (JIT) compiler for the Lua programming language known as LuaJIT as

Sep 20, 2023THNCyber Crime / Dark Web 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

Sep 19, 2023THNMalware / Cyber Threat Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are the target of a new intrusion set dubbed ShroudedSnooper that employs a stealthy backdoor called HTTPSnoop. “HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to listen to incoming

Sep 18, 2023THNCloud Security / Cryptocurrecy A novel cloud-native cryptojacking operation has set its eyes on uncommon Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings such as AWS Amplify, AWS Fargate, and Amazon SageMaker to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. The malicious cyber activity has been codenamed AMBERSQUID by cloud and container security firm Sysdig. “The AMBERSQUID operation was able

Sep 17, 2023THNCryptocurrency / Cyber Attack The North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group has stolen nearly $240 million in cryptocurrency since June 2023, marking a significant escalation of its hacks. According to multiple reports from Certik, Elliptic, and ZachXBT, the infamous hacking group is said to be suspected behind the theft of $31 million in digital assets

Sep 16, 2023THNPrivacy / Technology The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped TikTok with a €345 million (about $368 million) fine for violating the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in relation to its handling of children’s data. The investigation, initiated in September 2021, examined how the popular short-form video platform processed personal data

The volume of cybersecurity vulnerabilities is rising, with close to 30% more vulnerabilities found in 2022 vs. 2018. Costs are also rising, with a data breach in 2023 costing $4.45M on average vs. $3.62M in 2017. In Q2 2023, a total of 1386 victims were claimed by ransomware attacks compared with just 831 in Q1

Sep 14, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Vulnerability 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

Sep 13, 2023THNKubernetes / Cloud Security 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

Sep 12, 2023THNSoftware Security / Vulnerability A new vulnerability disclosed in GitHub could have exposed thousands of repositories at risk of repojacking attacks, new findings show. The flaw “could allow an attacker to exploit a race condition within GitHub’s repository creation and username renaming operations,” Checkmarx security researcher Elad Rapoport said in a technical report

Sep 11, 2023THNMalware / Social Media A new phishing attack is leveraging Facebook Messenger to propagate messages with malicious attachments from a “swarm of fake and hijacked personal accounts” with the ultimate goal of taking over the targets’ accounts. “Originating yet again from a Vietnamese-based group, this campaign uses a tiny compressed file attachment that

Sep 09, 2023THNMalware / Hacking A legitimate Windows tool used for creating software packages called Advanced Installer is being abused by threat actors to drop cryptocurrency-mining malware on infected machines since at least November 2021. “The attacker uses Advanced Installer to package other legitimate software installers, such as Adobe Illustrator, Autodesk 3ds Max, and SketchUp

Sep 09, 2023THNMobile Security / Spyware Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that’s designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with nefarious features to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and

Sep 08, 2023THNCybercrime / Malware The U.K. and U.S. governments on Thursday sanctioned 11 individuals who are alleged to be part of the notorious Russia-based TrickBot cybercrime gang. “Russia has long been a safe haven for cybercriminals, including the TrickBot group,” the U.S. Treasury Department said, adding it has “ties to Russian intelligence services and

Sep 07, 2023THNMalvertising / Endpoint Security A new malvertising campaign has been observed distributing an updated version of a macOS stealer malware called Atomic Stealer (or AMOS), indicating that it’s being actively maintained by its author. An off-the-shelf Golang malware available for $1,000 per month, Atomic Stealer first came to light in April 2023. Shortly

Sep 06, 2023THNZero Day / Mobile Security Google has rolled out monthly security patches for Android to address a number of flaws, including a zero-day bug that it said may have been exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2023-35674, the high-severity vulnerability is described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the Android Framework. “There

Sep 05, 2023THNCyber Threat / Malware An updated version of a malware loader known as BLISTER is being used as part of SocGholish infection chains to distribute an open-source command-and-control (C2) framework called Mythic. “New BLISTER update includes keying feature that allows for precise targeting of victim networks and lowers exposure within VM/sandbox environments,” Elastic

Sep 04, 2023THNVulnerability / Server Security An unknown threat actor has been observed weaponizing high-severity security flaws in the MinIO high-performance object storage system to achieve unauthorized code execution on affected servers. Cybersecurity and incident response firm Security Joes said the intrusion leveraged a publicly available exploit chain to backdoor the MinIO instance. The comprises

Sep 03, 2023THNNetwork Security / Vulnerability Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code has been made available for a recently disclosed and patched critical flaw impacting VMware Aria Operations for Networks (formerly vRealize Network Insight). The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-34039, is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 for severity and has been described as a case