New Study Uncovers Text-to-SQL Model Vulnerabilities Allowing Data Theft and DoS Attacks

A group of academics has demonstrated novel attacks that leverage Text-to-SQL models to produce malicious code that could enable adversaries to glean sensitive information and stage denial-of-service DoS attacks. "To better interact with users, a wide range of database applications employ AI...

Why Do User Permissions Matter for SaaS Security?

Earlier this year, threat actors infiltrated Mailchimp, the popular SaaS email marketing platform. They viewed over 300 Mailchimp customer accounts and exported audience data from 102 of them. The breach was preceded by a successful phishing attempt and led to malicious attacks against Mailchimp'...

Why Do User Permissions Matter for SaaS Security?

Earlier this year, threat actors infiltrated Mailchimp, the popular SaaS email marketing platform. They viewed over 300 Mailchimp customer accounts and exported audience data from 102 of them. The breach was preceded by a successful phishing attempt and led to malicious attacks against Mailchimp'...

Millions of Vehicles at Risk: API Vulnerabilities Uncovered in 16 Major Car Brands

Multiple bugs affecting millions of vehicles from 16 different manufacturers could be abused to unlock, start, and track cars, plus impact the privacy of car owners. The security vulnerabilities were found in the automotive APIs powering Acura, BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infinit...

Millions of Vehicles at Risk: API Vulnerabilities Uncovered in 16 Major Car Brands

Multiple bugs affecting millions of vehicles from 16 different manufacturers could be abused to unlock, start, and track cars, plus impact the privacy of car owners. The security vulnerabilities were found in the automotive APIs powering Acura, BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infinit...

Malicious PyPI Packages Using Cloudflare Tunnels to Sneak Through Firewalls

In yet another campaign targeting the Python Package Index PyPI repository, six malicious packages have been found deploying information stealers on developer systems. The now-removed packages, which were discovered by Phylum between December 22 and December 31, 2022, include pyrologin,...

Malicious PyPI Packages Using Cloudflare Tunnels to Sneak Through Firewalls

In yet another campaign targeting the Python Package Index PyPI repository, six malicious packages have been found deploying information stealers on developer systems. The now-removed packages, which were discovered by Phylum between December 22 and December 31, 2022, include pyrologin,...

Top SaaS Cybersecurity Threats in 2023: Are You Ready?

Cybercriminals will be as busy as ever this year. Stay safe and protect your systems and data by focusing on these 4 key areas to secure your environment and ensure success in 2023, and make sure your business is only in the headlines when you WANT it to be. 1 — Web application weaknesses Web...

Top SaaS Cybersecurity Threats in 2023: Are You Ready?

Cybercriminals will be as busy as ever this year. Stay safe and protect your systems and data by focusing on these 4 key areas to secure your environment and ensure success in 2023, and make sure your business is only in the headlines when you WANT it to be. 1 — Web application weaknesses Web...

Hackers Can Abuse Visual Studio Marketplace to Target Developers with Malicious Extensions

A new attack vector targeting the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be leveraged to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts with the goal of mounting supply chain attacks. The technique "could act as an entry point for an attack on many organizations,"...

Hackers Can Abuse Visual Studio Marketplace to Target Developers with Malicious Extensions

A new attack vector targeting the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be leveraged to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts with the goal of mounting supply chain attacks. The technique "could act as an entry point for an attack on many organizations,"...

Russian Turla Hackers Hijack Decade-Old Malware Infrastructure to Deploy New Backdoors

The Russian cyberespionage group known as Turla has been observed piggybacking on attack infrastructure used by a decade-old malware to deliver its own reconnaissance and backdoor tools to targets in Ukraine. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the operation under the uncategorized cluster...

Russian Turla Hackers Hijack Decade-Old Malware Infrastructure to Deploy New Backdoors

The Russian cyberespionage group known as Turla has been observed piggybacking on attack infrastructure used by a decade-old malware to deliver its own reconnaissance and backdoor tools to targets in Ukraine. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the operation under the uncategorized cluster...

Hackers Using CAPTCHA Bypass Tactics in Freejacking Campaign on GitHub

A South Africa-based threat actor known as Automated Libra has been observed employing CAPTCHA bypass techniques to create GitHub accounts in a programmatic fashion as part of a freejacking campaign dubbed PURPLEURCHIN. The group "primarily targets cloud platforms offering limited-time trials of...

Hackers Using CAPTCHA Bypass Tactics in Freejacking Campaign on GitHub

A South Africa-based threat actor known as Automated Libra has been observed employing CAPTCHA bypass techniques to create GitHub accounts in a programmatic fashion as part of a freejacking campaign dubbed PURPLEURCHIN. The group "primarily targets cloud platforms offering limited-time trials of...

Microsoft Reveals Tactics Used by 4 Ransomware Families Targeting macOS

Microsoft has shed light on four different ransomware families – KeRanger, FileCoder, MacRansom, and EvilQuest – that are known to impact Apple macOS systems. "While these malware families are old, they exemplify the range of capabilities and malicious behavior possible on the platform," the tech...

Dridex Malware Now Attacking macOS Systems with Novel Infection Method

A variant of the infamous Dridex banking malware has set its sights on Apple's macOS operating system using a previously undocumented infection method, according to latest research. It has "adopted a new technique to deliver documents embedded with malicious macros to users without having to...

Rackspace Confirms Play Ransomware Gang Responsible for Recent Breach

Cloud services provider Rackspace on Thursday confirmed that the ransomware gang known as Play was responsible for last month's breach. The security incident, which took place on December 2, 2022, leveraged a previously unknown security exploit to gain initial access to the Rackspace Hosted...

WhatsApp Introduces Proxy Support to Help Users Bypass Internet Censorship

Popular instant messaging service WhatsApp has launched support for proxy servers in the latest version of its Android and iOS apps, letting users circumvent government-imposed censorship and internet shutdowns. "Choosing a proxy enables you to connect to WhatsApp through servers set up by...

Blind Eagle Hackers Return with Refined Tools and Sophisticated Infection Chain

A financially motivated threat actor tracked as Blind Eagle has resurfaced with a refined toolset and an elaborate infection chain as part of its attacks targeting organizations in Colombia and Ecuador. Check Point's latest research offers new insights into the Spanish-speaking group's tactics an...

Bluebottle Cybercrime Group Preys on Financial Sector in French-Speaking African Nations

A cybercrime group dubbed Bluebottle has been linked to a set of targeted attacks against the financial sector in Francophone countries located in Africa from at least July 2022 to September 2022. "The group makes extensive use of living-off-the-land, dual use tools, and commodity malware, with n...

SpyNote Strikes Again: Android Spyware Targeting Financial Institutions

Financial institutions are being targeted by a new version of Android malware called SpyNote at least since October 2022 that combines both spyware and banking trojan characteristics. "The reason behind this increase is that the developer of the spyware, who was previously selling it to other...

Mitigate the LastPass Attack Surface in Your Environment with this Free Tool

The latest breach announced by LastPass is a major cause for concern to security stakeholders. As often occurs, we are at a security limbo – on the one hand, as LastPass has noted, users who followed LastPass best practices would be exposed to practically zero to extremely low risk. However, to s...

CircleCI Urges Customers to Rotate Secrets Following Security Incident

DevOps platform CircleCI on Wednesday urged its customers to rotate all their secrets following an unspecified security incident. The company said an investigation is currently ongoing, but emphasized that "there are no unauthorized actors active in our systems." Additional details are expected t...

The Evolving Tactics of Vidar Stealer: From Phishing Emails to Social Media

The notorious information-stealer known as Vidar is continuing to leverage popular social media services such as TikTok, Telegram, Steam, and Mastodon as an intermediate command-and-control C2 server. "When a user creates an account on an online platform, a unique account page that can be accesse...

Fortinet and Zoho Urge Customers to Patch Enterprise Software Vulnerabilities

Fortinet has warned of a high-severity flaw affecting multiple versions of FortiADC application delivery controller that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. "An improper neutralization of special elements used in an OS command vulnerability in FortiADC may allow an authenticated attack...

Irish Regulators Fine Facebook $414 Million for Forcing Users to Accept Targeted Ads

The Irish Data Protection Commission DPC has fined Meta Platforms €390 million roughly $414 million over its handling of user data for serving personalized ads in what could be a major blow to its ad-fueled business model. To that end, the privacy regulator has ordered Meta Ireland to pay two fin...

Qualcomm Chipsets and Lenovo BIOS Get Security Updates to Fix Multiple Flaws

Qualcomm on Tuesday released patches to address multiple security flaws in its chipsets, some of which could be exploited to cause information disclosure and memory corruption. The five vulnerabilities -- tracked from CVE-2022-40516 through CVE-2022-40520 -- also impact Lenovo ThinkPad X13s...

The FBI's Perspective on Ransomware

Ransomware: contemporary threats, how to prevent them and how the FBI can help In April 2021, Dutch supermarkets faced a food shortage. The cause wasn't a drought or a sudden surge in the demand for avocados. Rather, the reason was a ransomware attack. In the past years, companies, universities,...

New shc-based Linux Malware Targeting Systems with Cryptocurrency Miner

A new Linux malware developed using the shell script compiler shc has been observed deploying a cryptocurrency miner on compromised systems. "It is presumed that after successful authentication through a dictionary attack on inadequately managed Linux SSH servers, various malware were installed o...

Synology Releases Patch for Critical RCE Vulnerability Affecting VPN Plus Servers

Synology has released security updates to address a critical flaw impacting VPN Plus Server that could be exploited to take over affected systems. Tracked as CVE-2022-43931, the vulnerability carries a maximum severity rating of 10 on the CVSS scale and has been described as an out-of-bounds writ...

Enforcement vs. Enrollment-based Security: How to Balance Security and Employee Trust

Challenges with an enforcement-based approach An enforcement-based approach to security begins with a security policy backed by security controls, often heavy-handed and designed to prevent employees from engaging in risky behavior or inadvertently expanding the potential attack surface of an...

Hackers Using Stolen Bank Information to Trick Victims into Downloading BitRAT Malware

A new malware campaign has been observed using sensitive information stolen from a bank as a lure in phishing emails to drop a remote access trojan called BitRAT. The unknown adversary is believed to have hijacked the IT infrastructure of a Colombian cooperative bank, using the information to cra...

Raspberry Robin Worm Evolves to Attack Financial and Insurance Sectors in Europe

Financial and insurance sectors in Europe have been targeted by the Raspberry Robin worm, as the malware continues to evolve its post-exploitation capabilities while remaining under the radar. "What is unique about the malware is that it is heavily obfuscated and highly complex to statically...

RedZei Chinese Scammers Targeting Chinese Students in the U.K.

Chinese international students in the U.K. have been targeted by persistent Chinese-speaking scammers for over a year as part of an activity dubbed RedZei aka RedThief. "The RedZei fraudsters have chosen their targets carefully, researched them and realized it was a rich victim group that is ripe...

PyTorch Machine Learning Framework Compromised with Malicious Dependency

The maintainers of the PyTorch package have warned users who have installed the nightly builds of the library between December 25, 2022, and December 30, 2022, to uninstall and download the latest versions following a dependency confusion attack. "PyTorch-nightly Linux packages installed via pip...

WordPress Security Alert: New Linux Malware Exploiting Over Two Dozen CMS Flaws

WordPress sites are being targeted by a previously unknown strain of Linux malware that exploits flaws in over two dozen plugins and themes to compromise vulnerable systems. "If sites use outdated versions of such add-ons, lacking crucial fixes, the targeted web pages are injected with malicious...

Google to Pay $29.5 Million to Settle Lawsuits Over User Location Tracking

Google has agreed to pay a total of $29.5 million to settle two different lawsuits brought by Indiana and Washington, D.C., over its "deceptive" location tracking practices. The search and advertising giant is required to pay $9.5 million to D.C. and $20 million to Indiana after the states sued t...

Researcher Uncovers Potential Wiretapping Bugs in Google Home Smart Speakers

A security researcher was awarded a bug bounty of $107,500 for identifying security issues in Google Home smart speakers that could be exploited to install backdoors and turn them into wiretapping devices. The flaws "allowed an attacker within wireless proximity to install a 'backdoor' account on...

CISA Warns of Active exploitation of JasperReports Vulnerabilities

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has added two years-old security flaws impacting TIBCO Software's JasperReports product to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities KEV catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2018-5430 CVSS score: 7.7 an...

Thousands of Citrix Servers Still Unpatched for Critical Vulnerabilities

Thousands of Citrix Application Delivery Controller ADC and Gateway endpoints remain vulnerable to two critical security flaws disclosed by the company over the last few months. The issues in question are CVE-2022-27510 and CVE-2022-27518 CVSS scores: 9.8, which were addressed by the virtualizati...

New Malvertising Campaign via Google Ads Targets Users Searching for Popular Software

Users searching for popular software are being targeted by a new malvertising campaign that abuses Google Ads to serve trojanized variants that deploy malware, such as Raccoon Stealer and Vidar. The activity makes use of seemingly credible websites with typosquatted domain names that are surfaced...

BitKeep Confirms Cyber Attack, Loses Over $9 Million in Digital Currencies

Decentralized multi-chain crypto wallet BitKeep on Wednesday confirmed a cyber attack that allowed threat actors to distribute fraudulent versions of its Android app with the goal of stealing users' digital currencies. "With maliciously implanted code, the altered APK led to the leak of user's...

APT Hackers Turn to Malicious Excel Add-ins as Initial Intrusion Vector

Microsoft's decision to block Visual Basic for Applications VBA macros by default for Office files downloaded from the internet has led many threat actors to improvise their attack chains in recent months. Now according to Cisco Talos, advanced persistent threat APT actors and commodity malware...

BlueNoroff APT Hackers Using New Ways to Bypass Windows MotW Protection

BlueNoroff, a subcluster of the notorious Lazarus Group, has been observed adopting new techniques into its playbook that enable it to bypass Windows Mark of the Web MotW protections. This includes the use of optical disk image .ISO extension and virtual hard disk .VHD extension file formats as...

Facebook to Pay $725 Million to settle Lawsuit Over Cambridge Analytica Data Leak

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit filed in 2018. The legal dispute sprang up in response to revelations that the social media giant allowed third-party apps such as those used by...

GuLoader Malware Utilizing New Techniques to Evade Security Software

Cybersecurity researchers have exposed a wide variety of techniques adopted by an advanced malware downloader called GuLoader to evade security software. "New shellcode anti-analysis technique attempts to thwart researchers and hostile environments by scanning entire process memory for any virtua...

2022 Top Five Immediate Threats in Geopolitical Context

As we are nearing the end of 2022, looking at the most concerning threats of this turbulent year in terms of testing numbers offers a threat-based perspective on what triggers cybersecurity teams to check how vulnerable they are to specific threats. These are the threats that were most tested to...

PrivateLoader PPI Service Found Distributing Info-Stealing RisePro Malware

The pay-per-install PPI malware downloader service known as PrivateLoader is being used to distribute a previously documented information-stealing malware dubbed RisePro. Flashpoint spotted the newly identified stealer on December 13, 2022, after it discovered "several sets of logs" exfiltrated...

W4SP Stealer Discovered in Multiple PyPI Packages Under Various Names

Threat actors have published yet another round of malicious packages to Python Package Index PyPI with the goal of delivering information-stealing malware on compromised developer machines. Interestingly, while the malware goes by a variety of names like ANGEL Stealer, Celestial Stealer, Fade...