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...

FrodoPIR: New Privacy-Focused Database Querying System

The developers behind the Brave open-source web browser have revealed a new privacy-preserving data querying and retrieval system called FrodoPIR. The idea, the company said, is to use the technology to build out a wide range of use cases such as safe browsing, scanning passwords against breached...

Researchers Warn of Kavach 2FA Phishing Attacks Targeting Indian Govt. Officials

A new targeted phishing campaign has zoomed in on a two-factor authentication solution called Kavach that's used by Indian government officials. Cybersecurity firm Securonix dubbed the activity STEPPYKAVACH, attributing it to a threat actor known as SideCopy based on tactical overlaps with prior...

Accelerate Your Incident Response

Tis the season for security and IT teams to send out that company-wide email: "No, our CEO does NOT want you to buy gift cards." As much of the workforce signs off for the holidays, hackers are stepping up their game. We'll no doubt see an increase in activity as hackers continue to unleash...

Vice Society Ransomware Attackers Adopt Robust Encryption Methods

The Vice Society ransomware actors have switched to yet another custom ransomware payload in their recent attacks aimed at a variety of sectors. "This ransomware variant, dubbed 'PolyVice,' implements a robust encryption scheme, using NTRUEncrypt and ChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithms," SentinelOne...

France Fines Microsoft €60 Million for Using Advertising Cookies Without User Consent

France's privacy watchdog has imposed a €60 million $63.88 million fine against Microsoft's Ireland subsidiary for dropping advertising cookies in users' computers without their explicit consent in violation of data protection laws in the European Union. The Commission nationale de l'informatique...

LastPass Admits to Severe Data Breach, Encrypted Password Vaults Stolen

The August 2022 security breach of LastPass may have been more severe than previously disclosed by the company. The popular password management service on Thursday revealed that malicious actors obtained a trove of personal information belonging to its customers that include their encrypted...

FIN7 Cybercrime Syndicate Emerges as a Major Player in Ransomware Landscape

An exhaustive analysis of FIN7 has unmasked the cybercrime syndicate's organizational hierarchy, alongside unraveling its role as an affiliate for mounting ransomware attacks. It has also exposed deeper associations between the group and the larger threat ecosystem comprising the now-defunct...

The Era of Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing

We spent forty years defending ourselves as individuals. Trying to outsmart cybercriminals, outpower them, and when all our efforts failed, only then we considered banding together with our peers to outnumber them. Cybercriminals don't reinvent themselves each time. Their resources are limited, a...

Critical Security Flaw Reported in Passwordstate Enterprise Password Manager

Multiple high-severity vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Passwordstate password management solution that could be exploited by an unauthenticated remote adversary to obtain a user's plaintext passwords. "Successful exploitation allows an unauthenticated attacker to exfiltrate passwords from ...

Two New Security Flaws Reported in Ghost CMS Blogging Software

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed two security flaws in the JavaScript-based blogging platform known as Ghost, one of which could be abused to elevate privileges via specially crafted HTTP requests. Ghost is an open source blogging platform that's used in more than 52,600 live websites, mos...

Zerobot Botnet Emerges as a Growing Threat with New Exploits and Capabilities

The Zerobot DDoS botnet has received substantial updates that expand on its ability to target more internet-connected devices and scale its network. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC is tracking the ongoing threat under the moniker DEV-1061, its designation for unknown, emerging, or...

Hackers Breach Okta's GitHub Repositories, Steal Source Code

Okta, a company that provides identity and access management services, disclosed on Wednesday that some of its source code repositories were accessed in an unauthorized manner earlier this month. "There is no impact to any customers, including any HIPAA, FedRAMP, or DoD customers," the company sa...

Raspberry Robin Worm Strikes Again, Targeting Telecom and Government Systems

The Raspberry Robin worm has been used in attacks against telecommunications and government office systems across Latin America, Australia, and Europe since at least September 2022. "The main payload itself is packed with more than 10 layers for obfuscation and is capable of delivering a fake...