FBI Dismantles QakBot Malware, Frees 700,000 Computers, Seizes $8.6 Million

A coordinated law enforcement effort codenamed Operation Duck Hunt has felled QakBot, a notorious Windows malware family that's estimated to have compromised over 700,000 computers globally and facilitated financial fraud as well as ransomware. To that end, the U.S. Justice Department DoJ said th...

LockBit 3.0 Ransomware Builder Leak Gives Rise to Hundreds of New Variants

The leak of the LockBit 3.0 ransomware builder last year has led to threat actors abusing the tool to spawn new variants. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it detected a ransomware intrusion that deployed a version of LockBit but with a markedly different ransom demand procedure. "The...

Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun. Secrets, Secrets (Stored in Plain Text Files) Hurt Someone

Secrets are meant to be hidden or, at the very least, only known to a specific and limited set of individuals or systems. Otherwise, they aren't really secrets. In personal life, a secret revealed can damage relationships, lead to social stigma, or, at the very least, be embarrassing. In a...

Critical SQL Injection Flaws Expose Gentoo Soko to Remote Code Execution

Multiple SQL injection vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Gentoo Soko that could lead to remote code execution RCE on vulnerable systems. "These SQL injections happened despite the use of an Object-Relational Mapping ORM library and prepared statements," SonarSource researcher Thomas...

New Cryptocurrency Mining Campaign Targets Linux Systems and IoT Devices

Internet-facing Linux systems and Internet of Things IoT devices are being targeted as part of a new campaign designed to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. "The threat actors behind the attack use a backdoor that deploys a wide array of tools and components such as rootkits and an IRC bot to steal...

Vidar Malware Using New Tactics to Evade Detection and Anonymize Activities

The threat actors behind the Vidar malware have made changes to their backend infrastructure, indicating attempts to retool and conceal their online trail in response to public disclosures about their modus operandi. "Vidar threat actors continue to rotate their backend IP infrastructure, favorin...

Stealth Soldier: A New Custom Backdoor Targets North Africa with Espionage Attacks

A new custom backdoor dubbed Stealth Soldier has been deployed as part of a set of highly-targeted espionage attacks in North Africa. "Stealth Soldier malware is an undocumented backdoor that primarily operates surveillance functions such as file exfiltration, screen and microphone recording,...

Camaro Dragon Strikes with New TinyNote Backdoor for Intelligence Gathering

The Chinese nation-state group known as Camaro Dragon has been linked to yet another backdoor that's designed to meet its intelligence-gathering goals. Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point, which dubbed the Go-based malware TinyNote, said it functions as a first-stage payload capable of "basic...

Urgent WordPress Update Fixes Critical Flaw in Jetpack Plugin on Million of Sites

WordPress has issued an automatic update to address a critical flaw in the Jetpack plugin that's installed on over five million sites. The vulnerability, which was unearthed during an internal security audit, resides in an API present in the plugin since version 2.0, which was released in Novembe...

Critical Firmware Vulnerability in Gigabyte Systems Exposes ~7 Million Devices

Cybersecurity researchers have found "backdoor-like behavior" within Gigabyte systems, which they say enables the UEFI firmware of the devices to drop a Windows executable and retrieve updates in an unsecure format. Firmware security firm Eclypsium said it first detected the anomaly in April 2023...

Researchers Uncover Powerful Backdoor and Custom Implant in Year-Long Cyber Campaign

Government, aviation, education, and telecom sectors located in South and Southeast Asia have come under the radar of a new hacking group as part of a highly-targeted campaign that commenced in mid-2022 and continued into the first quarter of 2023. Symantec, by Broadcom Software, is tracking the...

New Ransomware Strain 'CACTUS' Exploits VPN Flaws to Infiltrate Networks

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new ransomware strain called CACTUS that has been found to leverage known flaws in VPN appliances to obtain initial access to targeted networks. "Once inside the network, CACTUS actors attempt to enumerate local and network user accounts in addition ...

New Atomic macOS Malware Steals Keychain Passwords and Crypto Wallets

Threat actors are advertising a new information stealer for the Apple macOS operating system called Atomic macOS Stealer or AMOS on Telegram for $1,000 per month, joining the likes of MacStealer. "The Atomic macOS Stealer can steal various types of information from the victim's machine, including...

Protecting your business with Wazuh: The open source security platform

Today, businesses face a variety of security challenges like cyber attacks, compliance requirements, and endpoint security administration. The threat landscape constantly evolves, and it can be overwhelming for businesses to keep up with the latest security trends. Security teams use processes an...

4 Steps to Creating a Powerful Research Lab for Reverse Engineering

However, manual lab setup and configuration can prove to be a laborious and time-consuming process. In this article, we'll look at 4 ways to create a reverse engineering lab, discuss how to save time, and, potentially, improve the detection rate using a sandbox-as-a-service, and a recommended lis...

North Korean UNC2970 Hackers Expands Operations with New Malware Families

A North Korean espionage group tracked as UNC2970 has been observed employing previously undocumented malware families as part of a spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. and European media and technology organizations since June 2022. Google-owned Mandiant said the threat cluster shares "multipl...

Prilex PoS Malware Evolves to Block Contactless Payments to Steal from NFC Cards

The Brazilian threat actors behind an advanced and modular point-of-sale PoS malware known as Prilex have reared their head once again with new updates that allow it to block contactless payment transactions. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said it detected three versions of Prilex 06.03.808...

Multiple High-Severity Flaws Affect Widely Used OpenLiteSpeed Web Server Software

Multiple high-severity flaws have been uncovered in the open source OpenLiteSpeed Web Server as well as its enterprise variant that could be weaponized to achieve remote code execution. "By chaining and exploiting the vulnerabilities, adversaries could compromise the web server and gain fully...

OPERA1ER APT Hackers Targeted Dozens of Financial Organizations in Africa

A French-speaking threat actor dubbed OPERA1ER has been linked to a series of more than 30 successful cyber attacks aimed at banks, financial services, and telecom companies across Africa, Asia, and Latin America between 2018 and 2022. According to Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity company...

GitHub Repojacking Bug Could've Allowed Attackers to Takeover Other Users' Repositories

Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub has addressed a high-severity security flaw that could have been exploited to create malicious repositories and mount supply chain attacks. The RepoJacking technique, disclosed by Checkmarx, entails a bypass of a protection mechanism called popular...

These 16 Clicker Malware Infected Android Apps Were Downloaded Over 20 Million Times

As many as 16 malicious apps with over 20 million cumulative downloads have been taken down from the Google Play Store after they were caught committing mobile ad fraud. The Clicker malware masqueraded as seemingly harmless utilities like cameras, currency/unit converters, QR code readers,...

Hackers Can Use 'App Mode' in Chromium Browsers' for Stealth Phishing Attacks

In what's a new phishing technique, it has been demonstrated that the Application Mode feature in Chromium-based web browsers can be abused to create "realistic desktop phishing applications." Application Mode is designed to offer native-like experiences in a manner that causes the website to be...

Google Launches New Open Source Bug Bounty to Tackle Supply Chain Attacks

Google on Monday introduced a new bug bounty program for its open source projects, offering payouts anywhere from $100 to $31,337 a reference to eleet or leet to secure the ecosystem from supply chain attacks. Called the Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program OSS VRP, the offering is...

Crypto Miners Using Tox P2P Messenger as Command and Control Server

Threat actors have begun to use the Tox peer-to-peer instant messaging service as a command-and-control method, marking a shift from its earlier role as a contact method for ransomware negotiations. The findings from Uptycs, which analyzed an Executable and Linkable Format ELF artifact "72client"...

Researchers Uncover New Attempts by Qakbot Malware to Evade Detection

The operators behind the Qakbot malware are transforming their delivery vectors in an attempt to sidestep detection. "Most recently, threat actors have transformed their techniques to evade detection by using ZIP file extensions, enticing file names with common formats, and Excel XLM 4.0 to trick...

Amazon Quietly Patches 'High Severity' Vulnerability in Android Photos App

Amazon, in December 2021, patched a high severity vulnerability affecting its Photos app for Android that could have been exploited to steal a user's access tokens. "The Amazon access token is used to authenticate the user across multiple Amazon APIs, some of which contain personal data such as...

Researchers Warn of 'Matanbuchus' Malware Campaign Dropping Cobalt Strike Beacons

A malware-as-a-service Maas dubbed Matanbuchus has been observed spreading through phishing campaigns, ultimately dropping the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation framework on compromised machines. Matanbuchus, like other malware loaders such as BazarLoader, Bumblebee, and Colibri, is engineered to...

Critical Flaw in Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager Lets Attackers Bypass Authentication

Cisco on Wednesday rolled out fixes to address a critical security flaw affecting Email Security Appliance ESA and Secure Email and Web Manager that could be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to sidestep authentication. Assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2022-20798, the bypass...

CISA Warns of Critical Vulnerabilities Discovered in Airspan Networks Mimosa

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA on Thursday published an Industrial Controls Systems Advisory ICSA warning of multiple vulnerabilities in the Airspan Networks Mimosa equipment that could be abused to gain remote code execution, create a denial-of-service DoS...

4-Year-Old Bug in Azure App Service Exposed Hundreds of Source Code Repositories

A security flaw has been unearthed in Microsoft's Azure App Service that resulted in the exposure of source code of customer applications written in Java, Node, PHP, Python, and Ruby for at least four years since September 2017. The vulnerability, codenamed "NotLegit," was reported to the tech...

BlackCat: A New Rust-based Ransomware Malware Spotted in the Wild

Details have emerged about what's the first Rust-language-based ransomware strain spotted in the wild that has already amassed "some victims from different countries" since its launch last month. The ransomware, dubbed BlackCat, was disclosed by MalwareHunterTeam. "Victims can pay with Bitcoin or...

Linphone SIP Stack Bug Could Let Attackers Remotely Crash Client Devices

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed details about a zero-click security vulnerability in the Linphone Session Initiation Protocol SIP stack that could be remotely exploited without any action from a victim to crash the SIP client and cause a denial-of-service DoS condition. Tracked as...

Dutch Police Arrest Two Hackers Tied to "Fraud Family" Cybercrime Ring

Law enforcement authorities in the Netherlands have arrested two alleged individuals belonging to a Dutch cybercriminal collective who were involved in developing, selling, and renting sophisticated phishing frameworks to other threat actors in what's known as a "Fraud-as-a-Service" operation. Th...

Antivirus Pioneer John McAfee Found Dead in Spanish Jail

Controversial mogul and antivirus pioneer John McAfee on Wednesday died by suicide in a jail cell in Barcelona, hours after reports that he would be extradited to face federal charges in the U.S. McAfee was 75. He is said to have died by hanging "as his nine months in prison brought him to...

Mozilla Says Google's New Ad Tech—FLoC—Doesn't Protect User Privacy

Google's upcoming plans to replace third-party cookies with a less invasive ad targeted mechanism have a number of issues that could defeat its privacy objectives and allow for significant linkability of user behavior, possibly even identifying individual users. "FLoC is premised on a compelling...

How Apple Gave Chinese Government Access to iCloud Data and Censored Apps

In July 2018, when Guizhou-Cloud Big Data GCBD agreed to a deal with state-owned telco China Telecom to move iCloud data belonging to Apple's China-based users to the latter's servers, the shift raised concerns that it could make user data vulnerable to state surveillance. Now, according to a...

Over 40 Apps With More Than 100 Million Installs Found Leaking AWS Keys

Most mobile app users tend to blindly trust that the apps they download from app stores are safe and secure. But that isn't always the case. To demonstrate the pitfalls and identify vulnerabilities on a large scale, cybersecurity and machine intelligence company CloudSEK recently provided a...

Facebook Busts Palestinian Hackers' Operation Spreading Mobile Spyware

Facebook on Wednesday said it took steps to dismantle malicious activities perpetrated by two state-sponsored hacking groups operating out of Palestine that abused its platform to distribute malware. The social media giant attributed the attacks to a network connected to the Preventive Security...

Chinese Hackers Used Facebook to Hack Uighur Muslims Living Abroad

Facebook may be banned in China, but the company on Wednesday said it has disrupted a network of bad actors using its platform to target the Uyghur community and lure them into downloading malicious software that would allow surveillance of their devices. "They targeted activists, journalists and...

Hackers Exploiting Critical Zero-Day Bug in SonicWall SMA 100 Devices

SonicWall on Monday warned of active exploitation attempts against a zero-day vulnerability in its Secure Mobile Access SMA 100 series devices. The flaw, which affects both physical and virtual SMA 100 10.x devices SMA 200, SMA 210, SMA 400, SMA 410, SMA 500v, came to light after the NCC Group on...

Report: 97% of Cybersecurity Companies Have Leaked Data on the Dark Web

In a new report into the global cybersecurity industry's exposure on the Dark Web this year, global application security company, ImmuniWeb, uncovered that 97% of leading cybersecurity companies have data leaks or other security incidents exposed on the Dark Web, while on average, there are over...

[Guide] Finding Best Security Outsourcing Alternative for Your Organization

As cyberattacks continue to proliferate in volume and increase in sophistication, many organizations acknowledge that some part of their breach protection must be outsourced, introducing a million-dollar question of what type of service to choose form. Today, Cynet releases the Security Outsourci...

You Can Now Run Android on an iPhone With 'Project Sandcastle'

Not happy with your expensive iPhone and wondered if it's possible to run any other operating system on your iPhone, maybe, how to install Android on an iPhone or Linux for iPhones? Android phones can be rooted, and iPhones can be jailbroken to unlock new features, but so far, it's been close to...

Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers Using Screen Brightness

It may sound creepy and unreal, but hackers can also exfiltrate sensitive data from your computer by simply changing the brightness of the screen, new cybersecurity research shared with The Hacker News revealed. In recent years, several cybersecurity researchers demonstrated innovative ways to...

Evaluating Your Security Controls? Be Sure to Ask the Right Questions

Testing security controls is the only way to know if they are truly defending your organization. With many different testing frameworks and tools to choose from, you have lots of options. But what do you specifically want to know? And how are the findings relevant to the threat landscape you face...

New Zeppelin Ransomware Targeting Tech and Health Companies

A new variant of Vega ransomware family, dubbed Zeppelin, has recently been spotted in the wild targeting technology and healthcare companies across Europe, the United States, and Canada. However, if you reside in Russia or some other ex-USSR countries like Ukraine, Belorussia, and Kazakhstan,...

New Group of Hackers Targeting Businesses with Financially Motivated Cyber Attacks

Security researchers have tracked down activities of a new group of financially-motivated hackers that are targeting several businesses and organizations in Germany, Italy, and the United States in an attempt to infect them with backdoor, banking Trojan, or ransomware malware. Though the new...

'Highly Critical' Unpatched Zero-Day Flaw Discovered In Oracle WebLogic

A team of cybersecurity researchers today published a post warning enterprises of an unpatched, highly critical zero-day vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic server application that some attackers might have already started exploiting in the wild. Oracle WebLogic is a scalable, Java-based multi-tier...

Beware! Unpatched Safari Browser Hack Lets Attackers Spoof URLs

A security researcher has discovered a serious vulnerability that could allow attackers to spoof website addresses in the Microsoft Edge web browser for Windows and Apple Safari for iOS. While Microsoft fixed the address bar URL spoofing vulnerability last month as part of its monthly security...

Malicious Software Packages Found On Arch Linux User Repository

Yet another incident that shows why you should never blindly trust packages from user-controlled software repositories. Arch Linux , one of the most popular independently developed Linux distributions, has removed three packages from its community-driven Arch User Repository AUR after they were...