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Chinese-language speakers have been increasingly targeted as part of multiple email phishing campaigns that aim to distribute various malware families such as Sainbox RAT, Purple Fox, and a new trojan called ValleyRAT. "Campaigns include Chinese-language lures and malware typically associated with Chinese cybercrime activity," enterprise security firm Proofpoint  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The activity, observed since early 2023, entails sending email messages containing URLs pointing to compressed executables that are responsible for installing the malware. Other infection chains have been found to leverage Microsoft Excel and PDF attachments that embed these URLs to trigger malicious activity. These campaigns demonstrate variation in the use of infrastructure, sender domains, email content, targeting, and payloads, indicating that different threat clusters are mounting the attacks. Over 30 such campaigns have been detected in 2023 that employ malwa

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has  released  patches and hotfixes to address a critical security flaw in Apex One and Worry-Free Business Security solutions for Windows that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Tracked as  CVE-2023-41179  (CVSS score: 9.1), it relates to a third-party antivirus uninstaller module that's bundled along with the software. The complete list of impacted products is as follows - Apex One - version 2019 (on-premise), fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) Apex One as a Service - fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) and Agent version 14.0.12637 Worry-Free Business Security - version 10.0 SP1, fixed in 10.0 SP1 Patch 2495 Worry-Free Business Security Services - fixed in July 31, 2023, Monthly Maintenance Release Trend Micro said that a successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to manipulate the component to execute arbitrary commands on an affected installation. However, it requires that the adversary already has administrative

Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are the target of a new intrusion set dubbed  ShroudedSnooper  that employs a stealthy backdoor called HTTPSnoop. "HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to listen to incoming requests for specific HTTP(S) URLs and execute that content on the infected endpoint," Cisco Talos  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Also part of the threat actor's arsenal is a sister implant codenamed PipeSnoop that can accept arbitrary shellcode from a  named pipe  and execute it on the infected endpoint. It's suspected that ShroudedSnooper exploits internet-facing servers and deploys HTTPSnoop to gain initial access to target environments, with both the malware strains impersonating components of Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XDR application (" CyveraConsole.exe ") to fly under the radar. Three different HTTP

When you roll out a security product, you assume it will fulfill its purpose. Unfortunately, however, this often turns out not to be the case. A new report, produced by Osterman Research and commissioned by Silverfort, reveals that MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and PAM (Privileged Access Management) solutions are almost never deployed comprehensively enough to provide resilience to identity threats. As well, service accounts – which are typically beyond the scope of protection of these controls – are alarmingly exposed to malicious compromise. These findings and many more can be found in  "The State of the Identity Attack Surface: Insights Into Critical Protection Gaps ,"  the first report that analyzes organizational resilience to identity threats.  What is the "Identity Attack Surface"?  The identity attack surface is any organizational resource that can be accessed via username and password. The main way that attackers target this attack surface is through the use of compromi

There is a new battlefield. It is global and challenging to defend. What began with a high-profile incident back in 2007, when Estonia was hit by hackers targeting its government and commercial sector, has evolved into cyber warfare that is being waged constantly worldwide. Today, cyberattacks have become the norm, transforming how we think about war and international conflict as a whole.  From the 2009 South Korea DDoS attacks to the 2010 attacks on Burma and the 2016 US election interference attacks on the Democratic National Committee, the list of historical cyberwarfare incidents continues to expand. The main players? Nation-state-supported cybercriminal groups and organizations linked to Russia, North Korea, China, and several countries in the Middle East. This report dives into three top cyberwarfare trends in an effort to understand their impact. Russia: The Cyber Invasion of Ukraine  On August 31, 2023, Five Eyes Agency — an intelligence alliance network composed of agencie

The Iranian threat actor known as  Charming Kitten  has been linked to a new wave of attacks targeting different entities in Brazil, Israel, and the U.A.E. using a previously undocumented backdoor named Sponsor. Slovak cybersecurity firm is tracking the cluster under the name  Ballistic Bobcat . Victimology patterns suggest that the group primarily singles out education, government, and healthcare organizations, as well as human rights activists and journalists. At least 34 victims of Sponsor have been detected to date, with the earliest instances of deployment dating back to September 2021. "The Sponsor backdoor uses configuration files stored on disk," ESET researcher Adam Burgher  said  in a new report published today. "These files are discreetly deployed by batch files and deliberately designed to appear innocuous, thereby attempting to evade detection by scanning engines." The campaign, dubbed Sponsoring Access, involves obtaining initial access by opport

Threat actors associated with North Korea are  continuing  to  target  the cybersecurity community using a zero-day bug in an unspecified software over the past several weeks to infiltrate their machines. The findings come from Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which found the adversary setting up fake accounts on social media platforms like  X  (formerly Twitter) and  Mastodon  to forge relationships with potential targets and build trust. "In one case, they carried on a months-long conversation, attempting to collaborate with a security researcher on topics of mutual interest," security researchers Clement Lecigne and Maddie Stone  said . "After initial contact via X, they moved to an encrypted messaging app such as Signal, WhatsApp, or Wire." The social engineering exercise ultimately paved the way for a malicious file containing at least one zero-day in a popular software package. The vulnerability is currently in the process of being fixed. The payload, for its part, perf

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday warned that multiple nation-state actors are exploiting security flaws in Fortinet FortiOS SSL-VPN and Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus to gain unauthorized access and establish persistence on compromised systems. "Nation-state advanced persistent threat (APT) actors exploited CVE-2022-47966 to gain unauthorized access to a public-facing application (Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus), establish persistence, and move laterally through the network," according to a  joint alert  published by the agency, alongside Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF). The identities of the threat groups behind the attacks have not been disclosed, although the U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)  hinted  at the involvement of Iranian nation-state crews. The findings are based on an incident response engagement conducted by CISA at an unnamed aeronautical sector organization from Februar

By the end of 2024, the number of MSPs and MSSPs offering vCISO services is expected to grow by almost 5 fold, as can be seen in figure 1. This incredible surge reflects the growing business demand for specialized cybersecurity expertise and the lucrative opportunities for MSPs and MSSPs in vCISO services. Figure 1: Timeline for offering vCISO services The State of the Virtual CISO Survey Report  by Global Surveyz, an independent survey company, which was commissioned by Cynomi, provides a deep understanding of the challenges facing MSPs and MSSPs today. The report shares insights from 200 security and IT leaders in MSPs and MSSPs of all sizes, all of which are security-focused. It shines a light on the growing trend of the vCISO offering, including the reasons behind this trend, potential blockers for MSPs/MSSPs and how to overcome them. 480% Expected Increase in vCISO Service Offerings Currently, only 19% of MSPs and MSSPs are offering vCISO services. This relatively low percent

In today's digital age, it's not just about being online but how securely your organization operates online. Regardless of size or industry, every organization heavily depends on digital assets. The digital realm is where business takes place, from financial transactions to confidential data storage. While organizations have quickly adopted tools like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), and service account protection, a pressing question remains: Are these measures truly sufficient? With the rise of identity threats, the real battleground has shifted. It's no longer just about firewalls or encryptions but the very identities that access these digital assets. Every day, attackers devise new strategies to compromise user identities to find that weak link to gain malicious access. The tools we've come to rely on might not be as foolproof as we once believed. Many organizations remain unaware of vast security gaps, exposing them to pot

An unknown threat actor has been observed weaponizing high-severity security flaws in the MinIO high-performance object storage system to achieve unauthorized code execution on affected servers. Cybersecurity and incident response firm Security Joes said the intrusion leveraged a publicly available exploit chain to backdoor the MinIO instance. The comprises  CVE-2023-28432  (CVSS score: 7.5) and  CVE-2023-28434  (CVSS score: 8.8), the former of which was  added  to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog on April 21, 2023. The two vulnerabilities "possess the potential to expose sensitive information present within the compromised installation and facilitate remote code execution (RCE) on the host where the MinIO application is operational," Security Joes  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. In the attack chain investigated by the company, the flaws are said to have been weaponized b

Cybersecurity researchers have called attention to a new antivirus evasion technique that involves embedding a malicious Microsoft Word file into a PDF file. The sneaky method, dubbed  MalDoc in PDF  by JPCERT/CC, is said to have been employed in an in-the-wild attack in July 2023. "A file created with MalDoc in PDF can be opened in Word even though it has magic numbers and file structure of PDF," researchers Yuma Masubuchi and Kota Kino  said . "If the file has a configured macro, by opening it in Word, VBS runs and performs malicious behaviors." Such specially crafted files are called  polyglots  as they are a legitimate form of multiple different file types, in this case, both PDF and Word (DOC). This entails adding an MHT file created in Word and with a macro attached after the PDF file object. The end result is a valid PDF file that can also be opened in the Word application. Put differently; the PDF document embeds within itself a Word document with a VB

Ask any security professional and they'll tell you that remediating risks from various siloed security scanning tools requires a tedious and labor-intensive series of steps focused on deduplication, prioritization, and routing of issues to an appropriate "fixer" somewhere in the organization. This burden on already resource-strapped security teams is an efficiency killer.  A new study , commissioned by Seemplicity and conducted by Dark Reading, provides fresh insight into how security pros handle the challenging remediation life cycle from discovery to resolution. The research reveals the obstacles security professionals face when coordinating remediation activities. The data exposes the outcomes — in increased workload and diminished risk posture — that arise from lengthy remediation times, inefficient and uncontrolled manual processes, the lack of managerial visibility and oversight across the risk life cycle.  Remediation Process Broken Down to Steps and Time Spent on Each Step

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a case of privilege escalation associated with a Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) application by taking advantage of an abandoned reply URL. "An attacker could leverage this abandoned URL to redirect authorization codes to themselves, exchanging the ill-gotten authorization codes for access tokens," Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU)  said  in a technical report published last week. "The threat actor could then call Power Platform API via a middle-tier service and obtain elevated privileges." Following responsible disclosure on April 5, 2023, the issue was addressed by Microsoft via an update released a day later. Secureworks has also made available an  open-source tool  that other organizations can use to scan for abandoned reply URLs. Reply URL , also called redirect URI, refers to the location where the authorization server sends the user once the app has been successfully authorized and grant

A recently patched security flaw in the popular WinRAR archiving software has been exploited as a zero-day since April 2023, new findings from Group-IB reveal. The vulnerability, cataloged as  CVE-2023-38831 , allows threat actors to spoof file extensions, thereby making it possible to launch malicious scripts contained within an archive that masquerades as seemingly innocuous image or text files. It was addressed in  version 6.23  released on August 2, 2023, alongside CVE-2023-40477. In attacks discovered by the Singapore-based firm in July 2023, specially crafted ZIP or RAR archive files distributed via trading-related forums such as Forex Station have been used to deliver a variety of malware families such as DarkMe,  GuLoader , and  Remcos RAT . "After infecting devices, the cybercriminals withdraw money from broker accounts," Group-IB malware analyst Andrey Polovinkin  said , adding as many as 130 traders' devices have been compromised as part of the campaign. T