News

Microsoft on Friday shared more of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the Russia-based Gamaredon hacking group to facilitate a barrage of cyber espionage attacks aimed at several entities in Ukraine over the past six months. The attacks are said to have singled out government, military, non-government organizations (NGO), judiciary, law enforcement, and

A now-patched security vulnerability in Apple iOS that was previously found to be exploited by Israeli company NSO Group was also separately weaponized by a different surveillance vendor named QuaDream to hack into the company’s devices. The development was reported by Reuters, citing unnamed sources, noting that “the two rival businesses gained the same ability

An ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning attack campaign has been observed abusing trust in legitimate software utilities to trick users into downloading BATLOADER malware on compromised machines. “The threat actor used ‘free productivity apps installation’ or ‘free software development tools installation’ themes as SEO keywords to lure victims to a compromised website and to

We hear about the need for better visibility in the cybersecurity space – detecting threats earlier and more accurately. We often hear about the dwell time and the time to identify and contain a data breach. Many of us are familiar with IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report that has been tracking this statistic

An advanced persistent threat group with links to Iran has updated its malware toolset to include a novel PowerShell-based implant called PowerLess Backdoor, according to new research published by Cybereason. The Boston-headquartered cybersecurity company attributed the malware to a hacking group known as Charming Kitten (aka Phosphorous, APT35, or TA453), while also calling out the

A regional court in the German city of Munich has ordered a website operator to pay €100 in damages for transferring a user’s personal data — i.e., IP address — to Google via the search giant’s Fonts library without the individual’s consent. The unauthorized disclosure of the plaintiff’s IP address by the unnamed website to

2021 was a year peppered by cyberattacks, with numerous data breaches happening. Not only that, but ransomware has also become a prominent player in the hackers’ world. Now, more than ever, it’s important for enterprises to step up cybersecurity measures. They can do this through several pieces of technology, such as an open-source security platform

Microsoft has disclosed details of a large-scale, multi-phase phishing campaign that uses stolen credentials to register devices on a victim’s network to further propagate spam emails and widen the infection pool. The tech giant said the attacks manifested through accounts that were not secured using multi-factor authentication (MFA), thereby making it possible for the adversary

The notorious Lazarus Group actor has been observed mounting a new campaign that makes use of the Windows Update service to execute its malicious payload, expanding the arsenal of living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques leveraged by the APT group to further its objectives. The Lazarus Group, also known as APT38, Hidden Cobra, Whois Hacking Team, and Zinc,

Researchers from the Bitdefender Mobile Threats team said they have intercepted more than 100,000 malicious SMS messages attempting to distribute Flubot malware since the beginning of December. “Findings indicate attackers are modifying their subject lines and using older yet proven scams to entice users to click,” the Romanian cybersecurity firm detailed in a report published

Google on Tuesday announced that it is abandoning its controversial plans for replacing third-party cookies in favor of a new Privacy Sandbox proposal called Topics, which categorizes users’ browsing habits into approximately 350 topics. Thee new framework, which takes the place of FLoC (short for Federated Learning of Cohorts), slots users’ browsing history for a

The Android malware tracked as BRATA has been updated with new features that grants it the ability to track device locations and even perform a factory reset in an apparent bid to cover up fraudulent wire transfers. The latest variants, detected late last year, are said to be distributed through a downloader to avoid being

Social engineering campaigns involving the deployment of the Emotet malware botnet have been observed using “unconventional” IP address formats for the first time in a bid to sidestep detection by security solutions. This involves the use of hexadecimal and octal representations of the IP address that, when processed by the underlying operating systems, get automatically

Latest analysis into the wiper malware that targeted dozens of Ukrainian agencies earlier this month has revealed “strategic similarities” to NotPetya malware that was unleashed against the country’s infrastructure and elsewhere in 2017. The malware, dubbed WhisperGate, was discovered by Microsoft last week, which said it observed the destructive cyber campaign targeting government, non-profit, and

In yet another instance of software supply chain attack, dozens of WordPress themes and plugins hosted on a developer’s website were backdoored with malicious code in the first half of September 2021 with the goal of infecting further sites. The backdoor gave the attackers full administrative control over websites that used 40 themes and 53

Cisco Systems has rolled out fixes for a critical security flaw affecting Redundancy Configuration Manager (RCM) for Cisco StarOS Software that could be weaponized by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and take over vulnerable machines. Tracked as CVE-2022-20649 (CVSS score: 9.0), the vulnerability stems from the fact that the debug mode has

A threat actor with potential links to an Indian cybersecurity company has been nothing if remarkably persistent in its attacks against military organizations based in South Asia, including Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, since at least September 2020 by deploying different variants of its bespoke malware framework. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET attributed the highly targeted

An IRC (Internet Relay Chat) bot strain programmed in GoLang is being used to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting users in Korea. “The malware is being distributed under the guise of adult games,” researchers from AhnLab’s Security Emergency-response Center (ASEC) said in a new report published on Wednesday. “Additionally, the DDoS malware was installed

An elusive threat actor called Earth Lusca has been observed striking organizations across the world as part of what appears to be simultaneously an espionage campaign and an attempt to reap monetary profits. “The list of its victims includes high-value targets such as government and educational institutions, religious movements, pro-democracy and human rights organizations in

UniCC, the biggest dark web marketplace of stolen credit and debit cards, has announced that it’s shuttering its operations after earning $358 million in purchases since 2013 using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, and Dash. “Don’t build any conspiracy theories about us leaving,” the anonymous operators of UniCC said in a farewell posted on

Cybersecurity teams from Microsoft on Saturday disclosed they identified evidence of a new destructive malware operation targeting government, non-profit, and information technology entities in Ukraine amid brewing geopolitical tensions between the country and Russia. “The malware is disguised as ransomware but, if activated by the attacker, would render the infected computer system inoperable,” Tom Burt,

In an unprecedented move, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the country’s principal security agency, on Friday disclosed that it arrested several members belonging to the notorious REvil ransomware gang and neutralized its operations. The surprise operation, which it said was carried out at the request of the U.S. authorities, saw the law enforcement agency conduct

A man from the U.K. city of Nottingham has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for illegally breaking into the phones and computers of a number of victims, including women and children, to spy on them and amass a collection of indecent images. Robert Davies, 32, is said to have purchased an

An Iranian state-sponsored actor has been observed scanning and attempting to abuse the Log4Shell flaw in publicly-exposed Java applications to deploy a hitherto undocumented PowerShell-based modular backdoor dubbed “CharmPower” for follow-on post-exploitation. “The actor’s attack setup was obviously rushed, as they used the basic open-source tool for the exploitation and based their operations on previous

Microsoft on Tuesday kicked off its first set of updates for 2022 by plugging 96 security holes across its software ecosystem, while urging customers to prioritize patching for what it calls a critical “wormable” vulnerability. Of the 96 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical and 89 are rated Important in severity, with six zero-day publicly known

Microsoft on Monday disclosed details of a recently patched security vulnerability in Apple’s macOS operating system that could be weaponized by a threat actor to expose users’ personal information. Tracked as CVE-2021-30970, the flaw concerns a logic issue in the Transparency, Consent and Control (TCC) security framework, which enables users to configure the privacy settings

Threat hunters have shed light on the tactics, techniques, and procedures embraced by an Indian-origin hacking group called Patchwork as part of a renewed campaign that commenced in late November 2021, targeting Pakistani government entities and individuals with a research focus on molecular medicine and biological science. “Ironically, all the information we gathered was possible

The digital security team at the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) has raised the alarm on active exploitation of Log4Shell vulnerabilities in unpatched VMware Horizon servers by an unknown threat actor to drop malicious web shells and establish persistence on affected networks for follow-on attacks. “The attack likely consists of a reconnaissance phase, where the

Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, on Friday announced the launch of a centralized Privacy Center that aims to “educate people” about its approach with regards to how it collects and processes personal information across its family of social media apps. “Privacy Center provides helpful information about five common privacy topics: sharing, security,

The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), France’s data protection watchdog, has slapped Facebook (now Meta Platforms) and Google with fines of €150 million ($170 million) and €60 million ($68 million) for violating E.U. privacy rules by failing to provide users with an easy option to reject cookie tracking technology. “The websites facebook.com,