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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

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

GitLab has shipped security patches to resolve a critical flaw that allows an attacker to run pipelines as another user. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-5009  (CVSS score: 9.6), impacts all versions of GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) starting from 13.12 and prior to 16.2.7 as well as from 16.3 and before 16.3.4. "It was possible for an attacker to  run pipelines  as an arbitrary user via scheduled security scan policies," GitLab  said  in an advisory. "This was a bypass of  CVE-2023-3932  showing additional impact." Successful exploitation of CVE-2023-5009 could allow a threat actor to access sensitive information or leverage the elevated permissions of the impersonated user to modify source code or run arbitrary code on the system, leading to severe consequences. Security researcher Johan Carlsson (aka joaxcar) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. CVE-2023-3932 was addressed by GitLab in early August 2023. The new vulnerability has been r

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

The China-linked threat actor known as  Earth Lusca  has been observed targeting government entities using a never-before-seen Linux backdoor called SprySOCKS. Earth Lusca was  first documented  by Trend Micro in January 2022, detailing the adversary's attacks against public and private sector entities across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America. Active since 2021, the group has relied on spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to pull off its cyber espionage schemes. Some activities of the group overlap with another threat cluster tracked by Recorded Future under the name  RedHotel . The latest findings from the cybersecurity firm show that Earth Lusca continues to be an active group, even expanding its operations to target organizations across the world during the first half of 2023. Primary targets include government departments that are involved in foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. The attacks are concentrated in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the

A hacking outfit nicknamed  Earth Estries  has been attributed to a new, ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting government and technology industries based in the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Africa, Germany, and the U.S. "The threat actors behind Earth Estries are working with high-level resources and functioning with sophisticated skills and experience in cyber espionage and illicit activities," Trend Micro researchers Ted Lee, Lenart Bermejo, Hara Hiroaki, Leon M Chang, and Gilbert Sison  said . Active since at least 2020, Earth Estries is said to share tactical overlaps with another nation-state group tracked as  FamousSparrow , which was first exposed by ESET in 2021 as exploiting ProxyLogon flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server to penetrate hospitality, government, engineering, and legal sectors. It's worth pointing out that commonalities have also been unearthed between FamousSparrow and  UNC4841 , an uncategorized activity cluster held responsible for

A new Android malware strain called  CherryBlos  has been observed making use of optical character recognition (OCR) techniques to gather sensitive data stored in pictures. CherryBlos, per  Trend Micro , is distributed via bogus posts on social media platforms and comes with capabilities to steal cryptocurrency wallet-related credentials and act as a  clipper  to substitute wallet addresses when a victim copies a string matching a predefined format is copied to the clipboard. Once installed, the apps seek users' permissions to grant it accessibility permissions, which allows it to automatically grant itself additional permissions as required. As a defense evasion measure, users attempting to kill or uninstall the app by entering the Settings app are redirected back to the home screen. Besides displaying fake overlays on top of legitimate crypto wallet apps to steal credentials and make fraudulent fund transfers to an attacker-controlled address, CherryBlos utilizes OCR to recog

Cybersecurity researchers have unearthed a novel rootkit signed by Microsoft that's engineered to communicate with an actor-controlled attack infrastructure. Trend Micro has attributed the activity cluster to the same actor that was previously identified as behind the  FiveSys rootkit , which came to light in October 2021. "This malicious actor originates from China and their main victims are the gaming sector in China," Trend Micro's Mahmoud Zohdy, Sherif Magdy, and Mohamed Fahmy  said . "Their malware seems to have passed through the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) process for getting a valid signature." Multiple variants of the rootkit spanning eight different clusters have been discovered, with 75 such drivers signed using Microsoft's WHQL program in 2022 and 2023. Trend Micro's analysis of some of the samples has revealed the presence of debug messages in the source code, indicating that the operation is still in the development and te

A developing piece of ransomware called  Big Head  is being distributed as part of a malvertising campaign that takes the form of bogus Microsoft Windows updates and Word installers. Big Head was  first documented  by Fortinet FortiGuard Labs last month, when it discovered multiple variants of the ransomware that are designed to encrypt files on victims' machines in exchange for a cryptocurrency payment. "One Big Head ransomware variant displays a fake Windows Update, potentially indicating that the ransomware was also distributed as a fake Windows Update," Fortinet researchers said at the time. "One of the variants has a Microsoft Word icon and was likely distributed as counterfeit software." A majority of the Big Head samples have been submitted so far from the U.S., Spain, France, and Turkey. In a new analysis of the .NET-based ransomware, Trend Micro detailed its inner workings, calling out its ability to deploy three encrypted binaries: 1.exe to propag

The threat actors behind  RomCom RAT  are leveraging a network of fake websites advertising rogue versions of popular software at least since July 2022 to infiltrate targets. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro is tracking the activity cluster under the name Void Rabisu, which is also known as Tropical Scorpius (Unit 42) and UNC2596 (Mandiant). "These lure sites are most likely only meant for a small number of targets, thus making discovery and analysis more difficult," security researchers Feike Hacquebord, Stephen Hilt, Fernando Merces, and Lord Alfred Remorin  said . Some of the impersonated apps spotted so far include AstraChat, Devolutions' Remote Desktop Manager, Gimp, GoTo Meeting, KeePass, OpenAI ChatGPT, Signal, Veeam Backup & Replication, and WinDirStat. RomCom RAT was  first chronicled  by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in August 2022, linking it to a financially motivated group deploying  Cuba Ransomware  (aka COLDDRAW). It's worth noting that there is no

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about CAPTCHA-breaking services that are being offered for sale to bypass systems designed to distinguish legitimate users from bot traffic. "Because cybercriminals are keen on breaking CAPTCHAs accurately, several services that are primarily geared toward this market demand have been created," Trend Micro  said  in a report published last week. "These CAPTCHA-solving services don't use [optical character recognition] techniques or advanced machine learning methods; instead, they break CAPTCHAs by farming out CAPTCHA-breaking tasks to actual human solvers." CAPTCHA  – short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – is a tool for differentiating real human users from automated users with the goal of combating spam and restricting fake account creation. While CAPTCHA mechanisms can be a  disruptive user experience , they are seen as an effective means to counter attacks from bot-ori

A Chinese state-sponsored hacking outfit has resurfaced with a new campaign targeting government, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing entities based in Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Fiji after more than six months of no activity. Trend Micro  attributed  the intrusion set to a cyber espionage group it tracks under the name  Earth Longzhi , which is a subgroup within  APT41  (aka HOODOO or Winnti) and shares overlaps with various other clusters known as Earth Baku, SparklingGoblin, and GroupCC. Earth Longzhi was  first documented  by the cybersecurity firm in November 2022, detailing its attacks against various organizations located in East and Southeast Asia as well as Ukraine. Attack chains mounted by the threat actor leverage vulnerable public-facing applications as entry points to deploy the  BEHINDER web shell , and then leverage that access to drop additional payloads, including a new variant of a Cobalt Strike loader called CroxLoader. "This recent campa

A piece of new information-stealing malware called  OpcJacker  has been spotted in the wild since the second half of 2022 as part of a malvertising campaign. "OpcJacker's main functions include keylogging, taking screenshots, stealing sensitive data from browsers, loading additional modules, and replacing cryptocurrency addresses in the clipboard for hijacking purposes," Trend Micro researchers Jaromir Horejsi and Joseph C. Chen  said . The initial vector of the campaign involves a network of fake websites advertising seemingly innocuous software and cryptocurrency-related applications. The February 2023 campaign specifically singled out users in Iran under the pretext of offering a VPN service. The installer files act as a conduit to deploy OpcJacker, which is also capable of delivering next-stage payloads such as  NetSupport RAT  and a hidden virtual network computing ( hVNC ) variant for remote access. OpcJacker is concealed using a  crypter  known as Babadeda an

New research has found that it is possible for threat actors to abuse a legitimate feature in GitHub Codespaces to deliver malware to victim systems. GitHub Codespaces  is a cloud-based configurable development environment that allows users to debug, maintain, and commit changes to a given codebase from a web browser or via an integration in Visual Studio Code. It also comes with a port forwarding feature that makes it possible to access a web application that's running on a particular port within the codespace directly from the browser on a local machine for testing and debugging purposes. "You can also forward a port manually, label forwarded ports, share forwarded ports with members of your organization, share forwarded ports publicly, and add forwarded ports to the codespace configuration," GitHub  explains  in its documentation. It's  important  to note here that any forwarded port that's made public will also permit any party with knowledge of the URL

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 payload once it detects sandboxing and security analytics tools," Trend Micro researcher Christopher So  said  in a technical analysis published Tuesday. A majority of the infections have been detected in Argentina, followed by Australia, Mexico, Croatia, Italy, Brazil, France, India, and Colombia. Raspberry Robin, attributed to an activity cluster tracked by Microsoft as  DEV-0856 , is being increasingly  leveraged by multiple threat actors  as an initial access mechanism to deliver payloads such as  LockBit  and  Clop  ransomware. The malware is known for relying on infected USB drives as a distribution vector to download a rogue MSI installer file that deploys the main payload

High-severity security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in different endpoint detection and response (EDR) and antivirus (AV) products that could be exploited to turn them into data wipers. "This wiper runs with the permissions of an unprivileged user yet has the ability to wipe almost any file on a system, including system files, and make a computer completely unbootable," SafeBreach Labs researcher Or Yair  said . "It does all that without implementing code that touches the target files, making it fully undetectable." EDR software, by design, are capable of continually scanning a machine for potentially suspicious and malicious files, and taking appropriate action, such as deleting or quarantining them. The idea, in a nutshell, is to trick vulnerable security products into deleting legitimate files and directories on the system and render the machine inoperable by making use of specially crafted paths. This is achieved by taking advantage of what's ca

Companies based in the U.S. have been at the receiving end of an "aggressive" Qakbot malware campaign that leads to Black Basta ransomware infections on compromised networks. "In this latest campaign, the Black Basta ransomware gang is using QakBot malware to create an initial point of entry and move laterally within an organization's network," Cybereason researchers Joakim Kandefelt and Danielle Frankel  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Black Basta, which emerged in April 2022, follows the tried-and-tested approach of double extortion to steal sensitive data from targeted companies and use it as a leverage to extort cryptocurrency payments by threatening to release the stolen information. This is not the first time the ransomware crew has been observed using Qakbot (aka QBot, QuackBot, or Pinkslipbot). Last month, Trend Micro  disclosed  similar attacks that entailed the use of Qakbot to deliver the  Brute Ratel C4  framework, which, in turn,