Malware | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Android banking trojan known as  SpyNote  has been dissected to reveal its diverse information-gathering features. Typically spread via SMS phishing campaigns, attack chains involving the spyware trick potential victims into installing the app by clicking on the embedded link, according to F-Secure. Besides requesting invasive permissions to access call logs, camera, SMS messages, and external storage, SpyNote is known for hiding its presence from the Android home screen and the  Recents screen  in a bid to make it difficult to avoid detection. "The SpyNote malware app can be launched via an external trigger," F-Secure researcher Amit Tambe  said  in an analysis published last week. "Upon receiving the intent, the malware app launches the main activity." But most importantly, it seeks accessibility permissions, subsequently leveraging it to grant itself additional permissions to record audio and phone calls, log keystrokes, as well as capture screenshots o

European Union military personnel and political leaders working on gender equality initiatives have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an updated version of RomCom RAT called  PEAPOD . Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the name  Void Rabisu , which is also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, and UNC2596, and is also believed to be associated with Cuba ransomware. The adversarial collective is something of an unusual group in that it conducts both financial motivated and espionage attacks, blurring the line between their modes of operation. It's also exclusively linked to the use of RomCom RAT. Attacks  involving the use of the backdoor  have singled out Ukraine and countries that support Ukraine in its war against Russia over the past year. Earlier this July, Microsoft implicated Void Rabisu to the exploitation of  CVE-2023-36884 , a remote code execution flaw in Office and Windows HTML, by using spe

The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as  ToddyCat  has been linked to a new set of malicious tools that are designed for data exfiltration, offering a deeper insight into the hacking crew's tactics and capabilities. The  findings  come from Kaspersky, which  first shed light  on the adversary last year, linking it to attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia for nearly three years. While the group's arsenal prominently features Ninja Trojan and a backdoor called Samurai, further investigation has uncovered a whole new set of malicious software developed and maintained by the actor to achieve persistence, conduct file operations, and load additional payloads at runtime. This comprises a collection of loaders that comes with capabilities to launch the Ninja Trojan as a second stage, a tool called LoFiSe to find and collect files of interest, a DropBox uploader to save stolen data to Dropbox, and Pcexter to exfiltrate archive files to Microsoft OneDr

Ransomware attacks have only increased in sophistication and capabilities over the past year. From new evasion and anti-analysis techniques to stealthier variants coded in new languages, ransomware groups have adapted their tactics to effectively bypass common defense strategies.  Cyble, a renowned cyber threat intelligence company recognized for its research and findings, recently released its  Q3 Ransomware Report . This article delves into the significant developments from the third quarter of 2023, as detailed in the Q3 Ransomware Report, and offers predictions for upcoming quarters. The primary objective is to provide a comprehensive recap of the major targets, both sector-wise and by nation and region. Additionally, the article will highlight new techniques used, emphasizing major incidents and developments that potential targets should be aware of. We will also discuss anticipated trends in the future evolution of ransomware. The increased weaponization of Vulnerabilities to

A piece of malware known as  DarkGate  has been observed being spread via instant messaging platforms such as Skype and Microsoft Teams. In these attacks, the messaging apps are used to deliver a Visual Basic for Applications ( VBA ) loader script that masquerades as a PDF document, which, when opened, triggers the download and execution of an AutoIt script designed to launch the malware. "It's unclear how the originating accounts of the instant messaging applications were compromised, however it is hypothesized to be either through leaked credentials available through underground forums or the previous compromise of the parent organization," Trend Micro  said  in a new analysis published Thursday. DarkGate, first documented by Fortinet in November 2018, is a  commodity malware  that incorporates a wide range of features to harvest sensitive data from web browsers, conduct cryptocurrency mining, and allow its operators to remotely control the infected hosts. It also

The AvosLocker ransomware gang has been linked to attacks against critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S., with some of them detected as recently as May 2023. That's according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory released by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailing the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). "AvosLocker affiliates compromise organizations' networks by using legitimate software and open-source remote system administration tools," the agencies  said . "AvosLocker affiliates then use exfiltration-based data extortion tactics with threats of leaking and/or publishing stolen data." The ransomware strain  first emerged  on the scene in mid-2021, and has since leveraged sophisticated techniques to disable antivirus protection as a detection evasion measure. It affects Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi environment

A malicious package hosted on the NuGet package manager for the .NET Framework has been found to deliver a remote access trojan called SeroXen RAT. The package, named Pathoschild.Stardew.Mod.Build.Config and published by a user named  Disti , is a typosquat of a legitimate package called  Pathoschild.Stardew.ModBuildConfig , software supply chain security firm Phylum  said  in a report today. While the real package has received nearly 79,000 downloads to date, the malicious variant is said to have artificially inflated its download count after being published on October 6, 2023, to surpass 100,000 downloads. The profile behind the package has published six other packages that have attracted no less than 2.1 million downloads cumulatively, four of which masquerade as libraries for various crypto services like Kraken, KuCoin, Solana, and Monero, but are also designed to deploy SeroXen RAT. The attack chain is initiated during installation of the package by means of a tools/init.ps1

The threat actors behind ShellBot are leveraging IP addresses transformed into their hexadecimal notation to infiltrate poorly managed Linux SSH servers and deploy the DDoS malware. "The overall flow remains the same, but the download URL used by the threat actor to install ShellBot has changed from a regular IP address to a hexadecimal value," the AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC) said in a new report published today. ShellBot, also known by the name PerlBot, is known to breach servers that have weak SSH credentials by means of a dictionary attack , with the malware used as a conduit to stage DDoS attacks and deliver cryptocurrency miners . Developed in Perl, the malware uses the IRC protocol to communicate with a command-and-control (C2) server. The latest set of observed attacks involving ShellBot has been found to install the malware using hexadecimal IP addresses – hxxp://0x2763da4e/ which corresponds to 39.99.218[.]78 – in what's seen as an a

Microsoft on Wednesday said that a user containment feature in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint helped thwart a "large-scale remote encryption attempt" made by  Akira ransomware actors  targeting an unknown industrial organization in early June 2023. The tech giant's threat intelligence team is tracking the operator as Storm-1567. The attack leveraged devices that were not onboarded to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint as a defense evasion tactic, while also conducting a series of reconnaissance and lateral movement activities prior to encrypting the devices using a compromised user account. But the new  automatic attack disruption capability  meant that the breached accounts are prevented from "accessing endpoints and other resources in the network, limiting attackers' ability to move laterally regardless of the account's Active Directory state or privilege level." In other words, the idea is to cut off all inbound and outbound communication and proh

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new sophisticated strain of malware that masquerades as a WordPress plugin to stealthily create administrator accounts and remotely control a compromised site. "Complete with a professional looking opening comment implying it is a caching plugin, this rogue code contains numerous functions, adds filters to prevent itself from being included in the list of activated plugins, and has pinging functionality that allows a malicious actor to check if the script is still operational, as well as file modification capabilities," Wordfence  said . The plugin also offers the ability to activate and deactivate arbitrary plugins on the site remotely as well as create rogue admin accounts with the username superadmin and a hard-coded password. In what's seen as an attempt to erase traces of compromise, it features a function named "_pln_cmd_hide" that's designed to remove the superadmin account when it's no longer req

A previously undocumented threat actor of unknown provenance has been linked to a number of attacks targeting organizations in the manufacturing, IT, and biomedical sectors in Taiwan. The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, attributed the attacks to an advanced persistent threat (APT) it tracks under the name  Grayling . Evidence shows that the campaign began in February 2023 and continued until at least May 2023. Also likely targeted as part of the activity is a government agency located in the Pacific Islands, as well as entities in Vietnam and the U.S. "This activity stood out due to the use by Grayling of a distinctive DLL side-loading technique that uses a custom decryptor to deploy payloads," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The motivation driving this activity appears to be intelligence gathering." The initial foothold to victim environments is said to have been achieved by exploiting public-facing infrastructure,

An ad fraud botnet dubbed  PEACHPIT  leveraged an army of hundreds of thousands of Android and iOS devices to generate illicit profits for the threat actors behind the scheme. The botnet is part of a larger China-based operation codenamed  BADBOX , which also entails selling off-brand mobile and connected TV (CTV) devices on popular online retailers and resale sites that are backdoored with an  Android malware strain  called  Triada . "The PEACHPIT botnet's conglomerate of associated apps were found in 227 countries and territories, with an estimated peak of 121,000 devices a day on Android and 159,000 devices a day on iOS," HUMAN  said . The infections are said to have been realized through a collection of 39 apps that were installed more than 15 million times. Devices fitted with the BADBOX malware allowed the operators to steal sensitive data, create residential proxy exit peers, and commit ad fraud through the bogus apps. It's currently not clear how the And

Despite the disruption to its infrastructure, the threat actors behind the QakBot malware have been linked to an ongoing phishing campaign since early August 2023 that led to the delivery of Ransom Knight (aka Cyclops) ransomware and Remcos RAT. This indicates that "the law enforcement operation may not have impacted Qakbot operators' spam delivery infrastructure but rather only their command-and-control (C2) servers," Cisco Talos researcher Guilherme Venere  said  in a new report published today. The activity has been attributed with moderate confidence by the cybersecurity firm to QakBot affiliates. There is no evidence to date that the threat actors have resumed distributing the malware loader itself post-infrastructure takedown. QakBot, also called QBot and Pinkslipbot, originated as a Windows-based banking trojan in 2007 and subsequently developed capabilities to deliver additional payloads, including ransomware. In late August 2023, the notorious malware operation was dealt

Nowadays, more malware developers are using unconventional programming languages to bypass advanced detection systems. The Node.js malware Lu0Bot is a testament to this trend. By targeting a platform-agnostic runtime environment common in modern web apps and employing multi-layer obfuscation, Lu0Bot is a serious threat to organizations and individuals. Although currently, the malware has low activity, the attackers are likely waiting for the right moment to strike.  To be prepared for any future scenario, a team of analysts conducted an in-depth technical analysis of one of the recent samples of Lu0Bot and  published an article  documenting their process. Here's an overview of their research. Static analysis of the Lu0Bot sample  The  sample  under investigation used an SFX packer, a self-extracting archive that can be opened with any archive utility. Its contents were explored individually. Archive contents 1. BAT-file The content of the BAT file The first line in the