CL-STA-0969 Installs Covert Malware in Telecom Networks During 10-Month Espionage Campaign

Telecommunications organizations in Southeast Asia have been targeted by a state-sponsored threat actor known as CL-STA-0969 to facilitate remote control over compromised networks. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said it observed multiple incidents in the region, including one aimed at critical...

Chinese Hackers Use CloudScout Toolset to Steal Session Cookies from Cloud Services

A government entity and a religious organization in Taiwan were the target of a China-linked threat actor known as Evasive Panda that infected them with a previously undocumented post-compromise toolset codenamed CloudScout. "The CloudScout toolset is capable of retrieving data from various cloud...

Cyber Threats Targeting the US Government During the Democratic National Convention

Cyber Threats Targeting the US Government During the Democratic National Convention By Anne An · October 2, 2024 Introduction Trellix global sensors detected increased threat activities during the days that the Democratic National Convention DNC was held in August 2024, culminating into a massive...

China-Backed Hackers Exploit Fortinet Flaw, Infecting 20,000 Systems Globally

State-sponsored threat actors backed by China gained access to 20,000 Fortinet FortiGate systems worldwide by exploiting a known critical security flaw between 2022 and 2023, indicating that the operation had a broader impact than previously known. "The state actor behind this campaign was alread...

Cyber Signals: Inside the growing risk of gift card fraud

In the ever-evolving landscape of cyberthreats, staying ahead of malicious actors is a constant challenge. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed that gift cards are attractive targets for fraud and social engineering practices. Unlike credit or debit cards, there’s no customer name or bank...

The Japanese Automotive Industry Attack Landscape

Recently, we released a major report analyzing the threat landscape of Japan, the globe’s third largest economy. In that report we looked at the ways in which threat actors infiltrate Japanese companies spoiler alert: it is often through foreign subsidiaries and affiliates and some of the most...

The Japanese Threat Landscape: A Report on Cyber Threats in the Third Largest Economy on Earth

The Japanese economy is massive, global, and varied. It is also a major target for cyber threat actors. As a hub for automotive, manufacturing, technology, and financial services, Japanese companies and organizations face significant cyber risk. There is nonetheless relatively little...

Bl00dy Ransomware Gang Strikes Education Sector with Critical PaperCut Vulnerability

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have warned of attacks carried out by a threat actor known as the Bl00dy Ransomware Gang that attempt to exploit vulnerable PaperCut servers against the education facilities sector in the country. The attacks took place in early May 2023, the Federal...

CERT-UA Alerts Ukrainian State Authorities of Remcos Software-Fueled Cyber Attacks

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine CERT-UA has issued an alert warning of cyber attacks against state authorities in the country that deploy a legitimate remote access software named Remcos. The mass phishing campaign has been attributed to a threat actor it tracks as UAC-0050, with...

CVE-2022-42475

A heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability CWE-122 in FortiOS SSL-VPN 7.2.0 through 7.2.2, 7.0.0 through 7.0.8, 6.4.0 through 6.4.10, 6.2.0 through 6.2.11, 6.0.15 and earlier and FortiProxy SSL-VPN 7.2.0 through 7.2.1, 7.0.7 and earlier may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute...

Mitigation for Exchange Zero-Days Bypassed! Microsoft Issues New Workarounds

Microsoft has revised its mitigation measures for the newly disclosed and actively exploited zero-day flaws in Exchange Server after it was found that they could be trivially bypassed. The two vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082, have been codenamed ProxyNotShell due to...

Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Affiliated Cyber Actors Exploiting Vulnerabilities for Data Extortion and Disk Encryption for Ransom Operations

CISA, Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, National Security Agency NSA, U.S. Cyber Command USCC - Cyber National Mission Force CNMF, Department of the Treasury, Australian Cyber Security Centre ACSC, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security CCCS, and United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre NCS...

Researcher Spotlight: You should have been listening to Lurene Grenier years ago

The exploit researcher recently rejoined Talos after starting her career with the company’s predecessor By Jonathan Munshaw. Lurene Grenier says state-sponsored threat actors keep her up at night, even after years of studying and following them. She’s spent her security career warning people why...

China-linked APT Flew Under Radar for Decade

Researchers have identified a small yet potent China-linked APT that has flown under the radar for nearly a decade running campaigns against government, education and telecommunication organizations in Southeast Asia and Australia. Researchers from SentinelLabs said the APT, which they dubbed Aoq...

Iranian Hackers Targeting Turkey and Arabian Peninsula in New Malware Campaign

The Iranian state-sponsored threat actor known as MuddyWater has been attributed to a new swarm of attacks targeting Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula with the goal of deploying remote access trojans RATs on compromised systems. "The MuddyWater supergroup is highly motivated and can use unauthoriz...

Iran's Lyceum Hackers Target Telecoms, ISPs in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Africa

A state-sponsored threat actor allegedly affiliated with Iran has been linked to a series of targeted attacks aimed at internet service providers ISPs and telecommunication operators in Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia, as well as a ministry of foreign affairs MFA in Africa, new finding...

North Korea Exploited VPN Flaw to Hack South's Nuclear Research Institute

South Korea's state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute KAERI on Friday disclosed that its internal network was infiltrated by suspected attackers operating out of its northern counterpart. The intrusion is said to have taken place on May 14 through a vulnerability in an unnamed virtual...

Cobalt Strike, a penetration testing tool abused by criminals

If you were to compose a list of tools and software developed by security and privacy defenders that ended up being abused by the bad guys, then Cobalt Strike would unfortunately be near the top of the list. Maybe only Metasploit could give it a run for the first place ranking. Metasploit—probabl...

NCSC-NZ Releases Annual Cyber Threat Report

The New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre NCSC-NZ has released their annual report detailing cyber threats and incidents affecting New Zealand from July 2018 to June 2019. During this period, NCSC-NZ recorded an increase in the severity of cybersecurity incidents—particularly from...

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...