Talos takes home top research honors at Virus Bulletin conference

By Jon Munshaw Researchers from Cisco Talos brought up the top award at this year’s Virus Bulletin conference. Talos received the Péter Ször Award — named for the prolific security researcher who was a longtime contributor to Virus Bulletin and passed away in 2013 — for our research into several...

China Chopper still active 9 years later

By Paul Rascagneres and Vanja Svajcer. Introduction Threats will commonly fade away over time as they're discovered, reported on, and detected. But China Chopper has found a way to stay relevant, active and effective nine years after its initial discovery. China Chopper is a web shell that allows...

A week in security (August 19 – 25)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we reported on the presence of Magecart on a type of poker software; outlined how the Key Negotiation of Bluetooth KNOB attack works; followed the money on a Bitcoin sextortion campaign; looked back at DEF CON 27; and reported on continuing ransomware attacks on...

QxSearch hijacker fakes failed installs

Recently, one of the more dominant search hijacker families on our radar has started to display some curious behavior. The family in question is delivered by various Chrome extensions and classified as PUP.Optional.QxSearch because of its description in listings of installed extensions, which tel...

5 Years of Fighting DDoS with the Power of Akamai

Additional analysis and research provided by Principal Architect, Tom Emmons Earlier this year, Akamai celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Prolexic acquisition. The merger was officially completed in February of 2014, and a lot has happened since then. In this post, we want to spend a moment...

One year later: The VPNFilter catastrophe that wasn't

Cisco Talos first disclosed the existence of VPNFilter on May 23, 2018. The malware made headlines across the globe, as it was a sophisticated piece of malware developed by a nation state, infecting half a million devices, and poised to cause havoc. Yet the attack was averted. The attacker’s...

TeamViewer was Targeted by Chinese Hackers in 2016

By Ryan De Souza TeamViewer has only confirmed now that Chinese state-sponsored hackers targeted the company in 2016. The Germany-based company behind the world-famous remote desktop software TeamViewer has confirmed that in 2016 TeamViewer software was compromised. The confirmation comes right...

Chinese Hackers Used NSA Hacking Tools Before Shadow Brokers Leaked Them

In a shocking revelation, it turns out that a hacking group believed to be sponsored by Chinese intelligence had been using some of the zero-day exploits linked to the NSA's Equation Group almost a year before the mysterious Shadow Brokers group leaked them. According to a new report published by...

DNS Hijacking Abuses Trust In Core Internet Service

Authors: Danny Adamitis, David Maynor, Warren Mercer, Matthew Olney and Paul Rascagneres. Update 4/18: A correction has been made to our research based on feedback from Packet Clearing House, we thank them for their assistance Preface This blog post discusses the technical details of a...

State-Sponsored DNS Hijacking Infiltrates 40 Firms Globally

A newly-discovered state-sponsored campaign is targeting national security organizations across the Middle East and North Africa MENA – and elsewhere – with domain name system DNS hijacking attacks, used to scoop up credentials. The campaign, dubbed “Sea Turtle” by the Cisco Talos researchers who...

CVE-2019-7609

Kibana versions before 5.6.15 and 6.6.1 contain an arbitrary code execution flaw in the Timelion visualizer. An attacker with access to the Timelion application could send a request that will attempt to execute javascript code. This could possibly lead to an attacker executing arbitrary commands...

Hackers steal 6TB of data from enterprise software developer Citrix

By Waqas Enterprise software developer Citrix becomes a victim of state-sponsored hack attack after hackers steal the company's secrets. One of the most popular enterprise software and networking and remote access technology provider firm Citrix affirmed that its internal network was compromised ...

Check your VPN DNS test tool legitimacy: Is it “good” or deceptive

By Zehra Ali Does your VPN leaks DNS data? Does the DNS testing tool you're using shows real results or shows sponsored results for affiliate marketing? Virtual private network VPN users are increasing at a great pace due to growing privacy concerns and numerous VPN options, including both, the...

The Advanced Persistent Threat files: APT10

We've heard a lot about Advanced Persistent Threats APTs over the past few years. As a refresher, APTs are prolonged, aimed attacks on specific targets with the intention to compromise their systems and gain information from or about that target. While the targets may be anyone or anything—a...

The Worst Hacks of 2018: Marriott, Atlanta, Quora, and More

From the Marriott and Facebook meltdowns to state-sponsored assaults, 2018 was an eventful year for cybercrime...

US Indicts Two Chinese Government Hackers Over Global Hacking Campaign

The US Department of Justice on Thursday charged two Chinese hackers associated with the Chinese government for hacking numerous companies and government agencies in a dozen countries. The Chinese nationals, Zhu Hua known online as Afwar, CVNX, Alayos and Godkiller and Zhang Shilong known online ...

Twitter Discloses Suspected State-Sponsored Attack After Minor Data Breach

Twitter has been hit with a minor data breach incident that the social networking site believes linked to a suspected state-sponsored attack. In a blog post published on Monday, Twitter revealed that while investigating a vulnerability affecting one of its support forms, the company discovered...

Twitter Draws Data Privacy Concerns with Two New Bugs

Two recently-patched flaws in Twitter’s platform have reignited concerns about user data-privacy issues. On Monday, the social-media giant revealed a hole that accidentally enabled bad actors to pull the country codes of accounts’ phone numbers – and revealed that several IP addresses located in...

Hackers bypassed Gmail & Yahoo’s 2FA to target US officials

By Waqas The attack was carried out by Iran-backed charming kitten hackers and victims include dozens of US government officials. Private emails of US sanctions officials and nuclear scientists have been breached by Iranian state-sponsored hackers. As per the data obtained by Certfa, a...

Marriott Hack Reported as Chinese State-Sponsored

The New York Times and Reuters are reporting that China was behind the recent hack of Marriott Hotels. Note that this is still uncomfirmed, but interesting if it is true. Reuters: Private investigators looking into the breach have found hacking tools, techniques and procedures previously used in...