Better Together: XDR, SOAR, Vulnerability Management, and External Threat Intelligence

One of the biggest challenges with both incident response and vulnerability management is not just the raw number of incidents and vulnerabilities organizations need to triage and manage, but the fact that it's often difficult to separate the critical incidents and vulnerabilities from the minor...

Hackers Increasingly Using HTML Smuggling in Malware and Phishing Attacks

Threat actors are increasingly banking on the technique of HTML smuggling in phishing campaigns as a means to gain initial access and deploy an array of threats, including banking malware, remote administration trojans RATs, and ransomware payloads. Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team...

Operationalizing Threat Intelligence with User-Driven Automation

Security operations centers SOCs and threat analysts are struggling with ever-increasing and growing cyberthreats. Massive volumes of data created every second lead to new vulnerabilities and attack vectors. How do SOCs and incident response teams keep up with the threats happening across the...

Over 1 Million Sites Impacted by Vulnerability in Starter Templates Plugin

On October 4, 2021, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team initiated the responsible disclosure process for the Starter Templates plugin, which is installed on over 1 Million WordPress websites. The full name of the WordPress plugin is “Starter Templates — Elementor, Gutenberg & Beaver Builder...

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...

Security Researchers Reveal Activity Targeting ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus

On September 16, CISA released a joint alert on exploitation of a vulnerability CVE-2021-40539 in ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus. On November 8, security researchers from Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC released separate reports on targeted attacks against...

CVE-2017-16651

creationtimestamp| type| source ---|---|--- 2021-11-08 08:58:19+00:00| seen| MISP/f5030aca-7d5a-43a4-ae03-8f4ac8e85422 2021-11-20 09:53:52+00:00| seen| MISP/3c19819c-1dac-4ef2-bfed-be5efa7e0123 2023-09-06 14:59:44+00:00| seen|...

WordPress Plugin Bug Lets Subscribers Wipe Sites

Researchers have discovered a homicidal WordPress plugin that allows subscribers to wipe sites clean of content. The high-severity security flaw is found in Hashthemes Demo Importer, a plugin that’s used in more than 8,000 active installations. According to security researchers at Wordfence, the...

Protect your business from password sprays with Microsoft DART recommendations

Over the past year, the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART, along with Microsoft’s threat intelligence teams, have observed an uptick in the use of password sprays as an attack vector. This threat is a moving target with techniques and tools always changing, and Microsoft continues to fin...

New Microsoft Sysmon report in VirusTotal improves security

Today, following the 25th year anniversary of Microsoft Sysinternals, we are announcing the general availability of a new Microsoft Sysmon report in VirusTotal. Whether you’re an IT professional or a developer, you’re probably already using Microsoft Sysinternals utilities to help you manage,...

A Guide to Doing Cyberintelligence on a Restricted Budget

For those in the industry, it comes as no surprise that many cybersecurity programs have been impacted by loss of revenue during the pandemic. From cutting tooling and feed budgets to reduction in staff, it’s been challenging at best. In a recent SANS 2021 survey, “Threat Hunting In Uncertain...

Podcast: Could the Zoho Flaw Trigger SolarWinds 2.0?

A month ago, the FBI, CISA and the U.S. Coast Guard Cyber Command CGCYBER warned that state-backed advanced persistent threat APT actors are likely among those who’d been actively exploiting a critical flaw in a Zoho-owned single sign-on and password management tool since early August. At issue w...

Microsoft achieves a Leader placement in Forrester Wave for XDR

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester New Wave: Extended Detection and Response XDR, Q4, 2021,1 receiving one of the highest scores in the strategy category. Microsoft 365 Defender was rated as “differentiated” in seven criteria including detection,...

4 Simple Steps for an Effective Threat Intelligence Program

Threat intelligence is a critical part of an organization's cybersecurity strategy, but given how quickly the state of cybersecurity evolves, is the traditional model still relevant? Whether you're a cybersecurity expert or someone who's looking to build a threat intelligence program from the...

Iran-linked DEV-0343 targeting defense, GIS, and maritime sectors

DEV-0343 is a new activity cluster that the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC first observed and began tracking in late July 2021. MSTIC has observed DEV-0343 conducting extensive password spraying against more than 250 Office 365 tenants, with a focus on US and Israeli defense technolog...

What's New in InsightIDR: Q3 2021 in Review

This post offers a closer look at some of the recent updates and releases in InsightIDR, our extended detection and response solution, from Q3 2021. Welcome IntSights to the Rapid7 Insight Platform family! As you may have seen in recent communications, Rapid7 acquired IntSights, a leading provide...

How nation-state attackers like NOBELIUM are changing cybersecurity

This is the first post in a four-part series on the NOBELIUM nation-state cyberattack. Microsoft started telling the industry about this extremely advanced cyberattack in December 2020. The NOBELIUM blog series—which mirrors Microsoft’s four-part video series “Decoding NOBELIUM”—will pull the...

How nation-state attackers like NOBELIUM are changing cybersecurity

This is the first post in a four-part series on the NOBELIUM nation-state cyberattack. Microsoft started telling the industry about this extremely advanced cyberattack in December 2020. The NOBELIUM blog series—which mirrors Microsoft’s four-part video series “Decoding NOBELIUM”—will pull the...

5 Tips for Achieving Better Cybersecurity Risk Management

When thinking about cybersecurity risk management, think about the last time you were comparing health-insurance policies. Each policy offers a means to protect yourself and your family from financial losses e.g. from hospital coverage, and many policies include things that are designed to reduce...

Microsoft Warns of a Wide-Scale Phishing-as-a-Service Operation

Microsoft has opened the lid on a large-scale phishing-as-a-service PHaaS operation that's involved in selling phishing kits and email templates as well as providing hosting and automated services at a low cost, thus enabling cyber actors to purchase phishing campaigns and deploy them with minima...