Router Roulette: Cybercriminals and Nation-States Sharing Compromised Networks

This blog entry aims to highlight the dangers of internet-facing routers and elaborate on Pawn Storm's exploitation of EdgeRouters, complementing the FBI's advisory from February 27, 2024...

Attackers Exploit VMware’s Aria Operations for Logs Vulnerability

Threat Level Vulnerability Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary A critical authentication bypass vulnerability CVE-2023-34051 in VMware Aria Operations for Logs allows remote code execution with root privileges under certain conditions, raising concerns for...

Solar monitoring systems exposed: Secure your devices

Researchers who go looking for devices exposed to the Internet report "tens of thousands" of solar photovoltaic PV monitoring and diagnostic systems can be found on the web. The systems are used for everything from system optimization to performance monitoring and troubleshooting. No fewer than...

INTERPOL Nabs Hacking Crew OPERA1ER's Leader Behind $11 Million Cybercrime

A suspected senior member of a French-speaking hacking crew known as OPERA1ER has been arrested as part of an international law enforcement operation codenamed Nervone, Interpol has announced. "The group is believed to have stolen an estimated USD 11 million -- potentially as much as 30 million -...

DEV-0832 (Vice Society) opportunistic ransomware campaigns impacting US education sector

In recent months, Microsoft has detected active ransomware and extortion campaigns impacting the global education sector, particularly in the US, by a threat actor we track as DEV-0832, also known as Vice Society. Shifting ransomware payloads over time from BlackCat, QuantumLocker, and Zeppelin,...

Dridex Malware Deploying Entropy Ransomware on Hacked Computers

Similarities have been unearthed between the Dridex general-purpose malware and a little-known ransomware strain called Entropy, suggesting that the operators are continuing to rebrand their extortion operations under a different name. "The similarities are in the software packer used to conceal...

Warning: Yet Another Zoho ManageEngine Product Found Under Active Attacks

Enterprise software provider Zoho on Friday warned that a newly patched critical flaw in its Desktop Central and Desktop Central MSP is being actively exploited by malicious actors, marking the third security vulnerability in its products to be abused in the wild in a span of four months. The...

FBI shuts down malware on hundreds of Exchange servers, opens Pandora’s box

A rather remarkable story has emerged, setting the scene for lively debates about permissible system access. A press release from the US Department of Justice Judge has revealed that the FBI were granted permission to perform some tech support backdoor removal. Bizarrely, they did this without...

GoldMax, GoldFinder, and Sibot: Analyzing NOBELIUM’s layered persistence

Microsoft continues to work with partners and customers to expand our knowledge of the threat actor behind the nation-state cyberattacks that compromised the supply chain of SolarWinds and impacted multiple other organizations. As we have shared previously, we have observed the threat actor using...

Threat actor leverages coin miner techniques to stay under the radar – here’s how to spot them

Cryptocurrency miners are typically associated with cybercriminal operations, not sophisticated nation state actor activity. They are not the most sophisticated type of threats, which also means that they are not among the most critical security issues that defenders address with urgency. Recent...

Threat actor leverages coin miner techniques to stay under the radar – here’s how to spot them

Cryptocurrency miners are typically associated with cybercriminal operations, not sophisticated nation state actor activity. They are not the most sophisticated type of threats, which also means that they are not among the most critical security issues that defenders address with urgency. Recent...

Pioneer Kitten APT Sells Corporate Network Access

An APT group known as Pioneer Kitten, linked to Iran, has been spotted selling corporate-network credentials on hacker forums. The credentials would let other cybercriminal groups and APTs perform cyberespionage and other nefarious cyber-activity. Pioneer Kitten is a hacker group that specializes...

Ransomware groups continue to target healthcare, critical services; here’s how to reduce risk

At a time when remote work is becoming universal and the strain on SecOps, especially in healthcare and critical industries, has never been higher, ransomware actors are unrelenting, continuing their normal operations. Multiple ransomware groups that have been accumulating access and maintaining...

Smominru Botnet Indiscriminately Hacked Over 90,000 Computers Just Last Month

Insecure Internet-connected devices have aided different types of cybercrime for years, most common being DDoS and spam campaigns. But cybercriminals have now shifted toward a profitable scheme where botnets do not just launch DDoS or spam—they mine cryptocurrencies as well. Smominru, an infamous...

16-year old compromised Apple networks to steal GBs of sensitive data

By Waqas Generally, Apple Inc. is believed to be very strict and reliable in matters pertaining to cyber-security. Its servers are regarded as virtually unhackable. Perhaps, this reputation is a result of the fact that Apple Inc. hasn’t suffered massive data breaches to date. But, the image of...

Points of Sale Poorly Secured, Facing Sophisticated Attacks

The point-of-sale PoS systems on which financial transactions are conducted at nearly every physical retail location in the U.S. and and beyond are fast becoming a favorite target for sophisticated criminal organizations as well as standalone attackers. The emergence of this trend is unsurprising...

Researcher Owns Internal Network after Victim Opens Email

Security researcher Bogdan Calin found that he could remotely compromise the internal networks of users with default or weak router passwords merely by compelling them to open a legitimate looking email on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Writing for the Acunetix blog, Calin explains that he has found...

Report: Service Offers Cheap Access to Hacked Servers

An online service that sells fairly cheap access to compromised corporate machines creates a pay-to-play scenario for criminals seeking access to the networks of high-profile organizations, according to a Krebs on Security report. Brian Krebs writes that Dedicatexpress.com currently has access to...