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Israeli spyware maker NSO Group deployed at least three novel "zero-click" exploits against iPhones in 2022 to infiltrate defenses erected by Apple and deploy Pegasus, according to the latest findings from Citizen Lab. "NSO Group customers widely deployed at least three iOS 15 and iOS 16 zero-click exploit chains against civil society targets around the world," the interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto  said . NSO Group is the manufacturer of  Pegasus , a sophisticated cyber weapon that's capable of extracting sensitive information stored in a device – e.g., messages, locations, photos, and call logs, among others — in real-time. It's typically delivered to targeted iPhones using zero-click and/or zero-day exploits. While it has been pitched as a tool for law enforcement agencies to combat serious crimes such as child sexual abuse and terrorism, it has also been deployed illegally by authoritarian governments to spy on human rig

Israeli spyware vendor QuaDream is allegedly shutting down its operations in the coming days, less than a week after its hacking toolset was exposed by Citizen Lab and Microsoft. The development was reported by the Israeli business newspaper  Calcalist , citing unnamed sources, adding the company "hasn't been fully active for a while" and that it "has been in a difficult situation for several months." The company's board of directors are looking to sell off its intellectual property, the report further added. QuaDream, which specializes in hacking Apple devices that don't require any action on the part of the victim, is also said to have fired all its employees, with the firm undergoing significant downsizing, according to Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post . News of the purported shutdown comes as the firm's spyware framework – dubbed REIGN – was outed as  having been used  against journalists, political opposition figures, and NGO workers across

Threat actors using hacking tools from an Israeli surveillanceware vendor named QuaDream targeted at least five members of civil society in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. According to findings from a group of researchers from the Citizen Lab, the spyware campaign was directed against journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker in 2021. The names of the victims were not disclosed. It's also suspected that the company abused a zero-click exploit dubbed  ENDOFDAYS  in iOS 14 to deploy spyware as a zero-day in version 14.4 and 14.4.2. There is no evidence that the exploit has been used after November 2021. ENDOFDAYS "appears to make use of invisible iCloud calendar invitations sent from the spyware's operator to victims," the researchers said , adding the .ics files contain invites to two backdated and overlapping events so as to not alert the users.  The attacks are suspected to have leveraged a quirk in iO

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday  signed an executive order  that restricts the use of commercial spyware by federal government agencies. The order said the spyware ecosystem "poses significant counterintelligence or security risks to the United States Government or significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or foreign person." It also seeks to ensure that the government's use of such tools is done in a manner that's "consistent with respect for the rule of law, human rights, and democratic norms and values." To that end, the order lays out the various criteria under which commercial spyware could be disqualified for use by U.S. government agencies. They include - The purchase of commercial spyware by a foreign government or person to target the U.S. government, A commercial spyware vendor that uses or discloses sensitive data obtained from the cyber surveillance tool without authorization and operates under the control of a foreign g

A suspected Pakistan-aligned advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as  Transparent Tribe  has been linked to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting Indian and Pakistani Android users with a backdoor called  CapraRAT . "Transparent Tribe distributed the Android CapraRAT backdoor via trojanized secure messaging and calling apps branded as MeetsApp and MeetUp," ESET  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. As many as 150 victims, likely with military or political leanings, are estimated to have been targeted, with the malware (APK package name " com.meetup.chat ") available to download from fake websites that masquerade as the official distribution centers of these apps. It's being suspected that the targets are lured through a honeytrap romance scam wherein the threat actor approaches the victims via another platform and persuades them to install the malware-laced apps under the pretext of "secure" messaging and calling. Howeve

Samsung has announced a new feature called Message Guard that comes with safeguards to protect users from malware and spyware via what's referred to as zero-click attacks . The South Korean chaebol said the solution "preemptively" secures users' devices by "limiting exposure to invisible threats disguised as image attachments." The security feature, available on Samsung Messages and Google Messages, is currently limited to the Samsung Galaxy S23 series, with plans to expand it to other Galaxy smartphones and tablets later this year that are running on One UI 5.1 or higher. It's also the latest security guardrail erected by Samsung, which also includes the Knox security platform that the company said already offers protection from attacks using video and audio formats. Zero-click attacks are highly-targeted and sophisticated attacks that exploit previously unknown flaws (i.e., zero-days) in software to trigger execution of malicious code without re

Tainted VPN installers are being used to deliver a piece of surveillanceware dubbed  EyeSpy  as part of a malware campaign that started in May 2022. It uses "components of SecondEye – a legitimate monitoring application – to spy on users of 20Speed VPN, an Iranian-based VPN service, via trojanized installers," Bitdefender  said  in an analysis. A majority of the infections are said to originate in Iran, with smaller detections in Germany and the U.S., the Romanian cybersecurity firm added. SecondEye, according to  snapshots  captured via the Internet Archive, claims to be a commercial monitoring software that can work as a "parental control system or as an online watchdog." As of November 2021, it's offered for sale anywhere between $99 to $200. It comes with a wide range of features that allows it to take screenshots, record microphone, log keystrokes, gather files and saved passwords from web browsers, and remotely control the machines to run arbitrary c

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 actors, made the source code public," ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This has helped other actors [in] developing and distributing the spyware, often also targeting banking institutions." Some of the notable institutions that are impersonated by the malware include Deutsche Bank, HSBC U.K., Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Nubank. SpyNote (aka SpyMax) is feature-rich and comes with a plethora of capabilities that allows it to install arbitrary; gather SMS messages, calls, videos, and audio recordings; track GPS locations; and even hinder efforts to uninstall the app. It also follows the modus operandi of other  banking   malware  by requesting for p

Meta Platforms disclosed that it took down no less than 200 covert influence operations since 2017 spanning roughly 70 countries across 42 languages. The social media conglomerate also took steps to disable accounts and block infrastructure operated by spyware vendors, including in China, Russia, Israel, the U.S. and India, that targeted individuals in about 200 countries. "The global surveillance-for-hire industry continues to grow and indiscriminately target people – including journalists, activists, litigants, and political opposition – to collect intelligence, manipulate and compromise their devices and accounts across the internet," the company  noted  in a report published last week. The networks that were found to engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior ( CIB ) originated from 68 countries. More than 100 nations are said to have been targeted by at least one such network, either foreign or domestic. With 34 operations, the U.S. emerged as the most frequently ta

A Barcelona-based surveillanceware vendor named Variston IT is said to have surreptitiously planted spyware on targeted devices by exploiting several zero-day flaws in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Windows, some of which date back to December 2018. "Their Heliconia framework exploits n-day vulnerabilities in Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Defender, and provides all the tools necessary to deploy a payload to a target device," Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) researchers Clement Lecigne and Benoit Sevens  said  in a write-up. Variston, which has a  bare-bones website , claims to "offer tailor made Information Security Solutions to our customers," "design custom security patches for any kind of proprietary system," and support the "the discovery of digital information by [law enforcement agencies]," among other services. The vulnerabilities, which have been patched by Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla in 2021 and early 2022, are believed to

Two long-running surveillance campaigns have been found targeting the Uyghur community in China and elsewhere with Android spyware tools designed to harvest sensitive information and track their whereabouts. This encompasses a previously undocumented malware strain called BadBazaar and updated variants of an espionage artifact dubbed  MOONSHINE  by researchers from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab in September 2019. "Mobile surveillance tools like BadBazaar and MOONSHINE can be used to track many of the 'pre-criminal' activities, actions considered indicative of religious extremism or separatism by the authorities in Xinjiang," Lookout  said  in a detailed write-up of the operations. The BadBazaar campaign, according to the security firm, is said to date as far back as late 2018 and comprise 111 unique apps that masquerade as benign video players, messengers, religious apps, and even TikTok. While these samples were distributed through Uyghur-language

A previously undocumented Android spyware campaign has been found striking Persian-speaking individuals by masquerading as a seemingly harmless VPN application. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky is tracking the campaign under the moniker  SandStrike . It has not been attributed to any particular threat group. "SandStrike is distributed as a means to access resources about the  Bahá'í religion  that are banned in Iran," the company noted in its  APT trends report  for the third quarter of 2022. While the app is ostensibly designed to provide victims with a VPN connection to bypass the ban, it's also configured to covertly siphon data from the victims' devices, such as call logs, contacts, and even connect to a remote server to fetch additional commands. The booby-trapped VPN service, while fully functional, is said to be distributed via a Telegram channel controlled by the adversary. Links to the channel are also advertised on fabricated social media acco

A new wave of a mobile surveillance campaign has been observed targeting the Uyghur community as part of a long-standing spyware operation active since at least 2015, cybersecurity researchers disclosed Thursday. The intrusions, originally attributed to a threat actor named  Scarlet Mimic  back in January 2016, is said to have encompassed 20 different variants of the Android malware, which were disguised as books, pictures, and an audio version of the Quran. The malware, while relatively unsophisticated from a technical standpoint, comes with extensive capabilities to steal sensitive data from an infected device, send SMS messages on the victim's behalf, make phone calls, and track their locations. Additionally, it allows the recording of incoming and outgoing phone calls as well as surrounding audio. "All this makes it a powerful and dangerous surveillance tool," Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point  said  in a technical deepdive, calling the spyware  MobileOrder

A previously undocumented strain of Android spyware with extensive information gathering capabilities has been found disguised as a book likely designed to target the  Uyghur community  in China. The malware comes under the guise of a book titled " The China Freedom Trap ," a biography written by the exiled Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa. "In light of the ongoing conflict between the Government of the People's Republic of China and the Uyghur community, the malware disguised as the book is a lucrative bait employed by threat actors (TAs) to spread malicious infection in the targeted community," cybersecurity firm Cyble  said  in a report published Monday. The existence of the malware samples, which come with the package name " com.emc.pdf ," was first disclosed by researchers from the  MalwareHunterTeam  late last month. Distributed outside of the official Google Play Store, the app, once installed and opened, displays a few pages of the book, includi

The actively exploited but now-fixed Google Chrome zero-day flaw that came to light at the start of this month was weaponized by an Israeli spyware company and used in attacks targeting journalists in the Middle East. Czech cybersecurity firm Avast linked the exploitation to  Candiru  (aka Saito Tech), which has a history of  leveraging previously unknown flaws  to deploy a Windows malware dubbed DevilsTongue , a modular implant with  Pegasus -like capabilities. Candiru, along with NSO Group, Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE. LTD., and Positive Technologies, were  added to the entity list  by the U.S. Commerce Department in November 2021 for engaging in "malicious cyber activities." "Specifically, a large portion of the attacks took place in Lebanon, where journalists were among the targeted parties," security researcher Jan Vojtěšek, who reported the discovery of the flaw,  said  in a write-up. "We believe the attacks were highly targeted."

Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a previously undocumented spyware targeting the Apple macOS operating system. The malware, codenamed  CloudMensis  by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, is said to exclusively use public cloud storage services such as pCloud, Yandex Disk, and Dropbox for receiving attacker commands and exfiltrating files. "Its capabilities clearly show that the intent of its operators is to gather information from the victims' Macs by exfiltrating documents, keystrokes, and screen captures," ESET researcher Marc-Etienne M.Léveillé  said  in a report published today. CloudMensis, written in Objective-C, was first discovered in April 2022 and is designed to strike both Intel and Apple silicon architectures. The initial infection vector for the attacks and the targets remain unknown as yet. But its very limited distribution is an indication that the malware is being used as part of a highly targeted operation directed against entities of i

Thai activists involved in the country's pro-democracy protests have had their smartphones infected with NSO Group's infamous Pegasus government-sponsored spyware. At least 30 individuals, spanning activists, academics, lawyers, and NGO workers, are believed to have been targeted between October 2020 and November 2021, many of whom have been previously detained, arrested and imprisoned for their political activities or criticism of the government. "The timing of the infections is highly relevant to specific political events in Thailand, as well as specific actions by the Thai justice system," the Citizen Lab  said  in a Sunday report. "In many cases, for example, infections occurred slightly before protests and other political activities by the victims." The findings are the result of  threat notifications  sent by Apple last November to alert users it believes have been targeted by state-sponsored attackers. The attacks entailed the use of two zero-cl