Credential Theft | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the seizure of 107 internet domains used by state-sponsored threat actors with ties to Russia to facilitate computer fraud and abuse in the country. "The Russian government ran this scheme to steal Americans' sensitive information, using seemingly legitimate email accounts to trick victims into revealing account credentials," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. The activity has been attributed to a threat actor called COLDRIVER , which is also known by the names Blue Callisto, BlueCharlie (or TAG-53), Calisto (alternately spelled Callisto), Dancing Salome, Gossamer Bear, Iron Frontier, Star Blizzard (formerly SEABORGIUM), TA446, and UNC4057. Active since at least 2012, the group is assessed to be an operational unit within Center 18 of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). In December 2023, the U.K. and U.S. governments sanctioned two members of the group – Aleksandrovich Peretyat

More than 140,000 phishing websites have been found linked to a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform named Sniper Dz over the past year, indicating that it's being used by a large number of cybercriminals to conduct credential theft. "For prospective phishers, Sniper Dz offers an online admin panel with a catalog of phishing pages," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Shehroze Farooqi, Howard Tong, and Alex Starov said in a technical report. "Phishers can either host these phishing pages on Sniper Dz-owned infrastructure or download Sniper Dz phishing templates to host on their own servers." Perhaps what makes it even more lucrative is that these services are provided for free. That said, the credentials harvested using the phishing sites are also exfiltrated to the operators of the PhaaS platform, a technique that Microsoft calls double theft . PhaaS platforms have become an increasingly common way for aspiring threat actors to enter the world of cy

For years, securing a company's systems was synonymous with securing its "perimeter." There was what was safe "inside" and the unsafe outside world. We built sturdy firewalls and deployed sophisticated detection systems, confident that keeping the barbarians outside the walls kept our data and systems safe. The problem is that we no longer operate within the confines of physical on-prem installations and controlled networks. Data and applications now reside in distributed cloud environments and data centers, accessed by users and devices connecting from anywhere on the planet. The walls have crumbled, and the perimeter has dissolved, opening the door to a new battlefield: identity . Identity is at the center of what the industry has praised as the new gold standard of enterprise security: "zero trust." In this paradigm, explicit trust becomes mandatory for any interactions between systems, and no implicit trust shall subsist. Every access request, regardless of its origin,

Cybersecurity researchers have warned of ongoing phishing campaigns that abuse refresh entries in HTTP headers to deliver spoofed email login pages that are designed to harvest users' credentials. "Unlike other phishing webpage distribution behavior through HTML content, these attacks use the response header sent by a server, which occurs before the processing of the HTML content," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Yu Zhang, Zeyu You, and Wei Wang said . "Malicious links direct the browser to automatically refresh or reload a web page immediately, without requiring user interaction." Targets of the large-scale activity, observed between May and July 2024, include large corporations in South Korea, as well as government agencies and schools in the U.S. As many as 2,000 malicious URLs have been associated with the campaigns. Over 36% of the attacks have singled out the business-and-economy sector, followed by financial services (12.9%), government (6.9%)

The threat actors behind a recently observed Qilin ransomware attack have stolen credentials stored in Google Chrome browsers on a small set of compromised endpoints. The use of credential harvesting in connection with a ransomware infection marks an unusual twist, and one that could have cascading consequences, cybersecurity firm Sophos said in a Thursday report. The attack, detected in July 2024, involved infiltrating the target network via compromised credentials for a VPN portal that lacked multi-factor authentication (MFA), with the threat actors conducting post-exploitation actions 18 days after initial access took place. "Once the attacker reached the domain controller in question, they edited the default domain policy to introduce a logon-based Group Policy Object (GPO) containing two items," researchers Lee Kirkpatrick, Paul Jacobs, Harshal Gosalia, and Robert Weiland said . The first of them is a PowerShell script named "IPScanner.ps1" that's desi

A large-scale extortion campaign has compromised various organizations by taking advantage of publicly accessible environment variable files (.env) that contain credentials associated with cloud and social media applications. "Multiple security missteps were present in the course of this campaign, including the following: Exposing environment variables, using long-lived credentials, and absence of least privilege architecture," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a Thursday report. The campaign is notable for setting up its attack infrastructure within the infected organizations' Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments and using them as a launchpad for scanning more than 230 million unique targets for sensitive data. With 110,000 domains targeted, the malicious activity is said to have netted over 90,000 unique variables in the .env files, out of which 7,000 belonged to organizations' cloud services and 1,500 variables are linked to social media accounts. "T

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that targets Apple macOS systems with the goal of stealing users' Google Cloud credentials from a narrow pool of victims. The package, named "lr-utils-lib," attracted a total of 59 downloads before it was taken down. It was uploaded to the registry in early June 2024. "The malware uses a list of predefined hashes to target specific macOS machines and attempts to harvest Google Cloud authentication data," Checkmarx researcher Yehuda Gelb said in a Friday report. "The harvested credentials are sent to a remote server." An important aspect of the package is that it first checks if it has been installed on a macOS system, and only then proceeds to compare the system's Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) against a hard-coded list of 64 hashes. If the compromised machine is among those specified in the predefined set, it attempts to access

A threat actor that was previously observed using an open-source network mapping tool has greatly expanded their operations to infect over 1,500 victims. Sysdig, which is tracking the cluster under the name CRYSTALRAY , said the activities have witnessed a tenfold surge, adding it includes "mass scanning, exploiting multiple vulnerabilities, and placing backdoors using multiple [open-source software] security tools." The primary objective of the attacks is to harvest and sell credentials, deploy cryptocurrency miners, and maintain persistence in victim environments. A majority of the infections are concentrated in the U.S., China, Singapore, Russia, France, Japan, and India, among others. Prominent among the open-source programs used by the threat actor is SSH-Snake , which was first released in January 2024. It has been described as a tool to carry out automatic network traversal using SSH private keys discovered on systems. The abuse of the software by CRYSTALRAY was

In today's digital age, passwords serve as the keys to our most sensitive information, from social media accounts to banking and business systems. This immense power brings with it significant responsibility—and vulnerability. Most people don't realize their credentials have been compromised until the damage is done. Imagine waking up to drained bank accounts, stolen identities, or a company's reputation in tatters. This isn't just a hypothetical scenario – it's the harsh reality faced by countless individuals and organizations every day. Recent data reveals that compromised credentials are the single biggest attack vector in 2024. That means stolen passwords, not exotic malware or zero-day exploits, are the most common way hackers breach systems and wreak havoc. To help you navigate this critical issue, we invite you to join our exclusive webinar, " Compromised Credentials in 2024: What to Know About the World's #1 Attack Vector. " What You'

Cyber espionage groups associated with China have been linked to a long-running campaign that has infiltrated several telecom operators located in a single Asian country at least since 2021. "The attackers placed backdoors on the networks of targeted companies and also attempted to steal credentials," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm did not reveal the country that was targeted, but said it found evidence to suggest that the malicious cyber activity may have started as far back as 2020. The attacks also targeted an unnamed services company that catered to the telecoms sector and a university in another Asian country, it added. The choice of tools used in this campaign overlaps with other missions conducted by Chinese espionage groups like Mustang Panda (aka Earth Preta and Fireant), RedFoxtrot (aka Neeedleminer and Nomad Panda), and Naikon (aka Firefly) in recent years. This incl

Human rights activists in Morocco and the Western Sahara region are the targets of a new threat actor that leverages phishing attacks to trick victims into installing bogus Android apps and serve credential harvesting pages for Windows users. Cisco Talos is  tracking  the activity cluster under the name  Starry Addax , describing it as primarily singling out activists associated with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Starry Addax's infrastructure – ondroid[.]site and ondroid[.]store – is designed to target both Android and Windows users, with the latter involving fake websites masquerading as login pages for popular social media websites. In light of active investigation into the campaign, Talos said it cannot publicly disclose which websites are being targeted with credential harvesting attacks. "However, the threat actors are establishing their own infrastructure and hosting credential harvesting pages such as fake login pages for media and email services po

The threat actor known as COLDRIVER has continued to engage in credential theft activities against entities that are of strategic interests to Russia while simultaneously improving its detection evasion capabilities. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team is tracking under the cluster as  Star Blizzard  (formerly SEABORGIUM). It's also called Blue Callisto, BlueCharlie (or TAG-53), Calisto (alternately spelled Callisto), Gossamer Bear, and TA446. The adversary "continues to prolifically target individuals and organizations involved in international affairs, defense, and logistics support to Ukraine, as well as academia, information security companies, and other entities aligning with Russian state interests," Redmond  said . Star Blizzard , linked to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), has a  track record  of setting up lookalike domains that impersonate the login pages of targeted companies. It's known to be active since at least 2017. In August 2023,

A collection of 21 security flaws have been discovered in Sierra Wireless AirLink cellular routers and open-source software components like  TinyXML  and  OpenNDS . Collectively tracked as  Sierra:21 , the issues expose over 86,000 devices across critical sectors like energy, healthcare, waste management, retail, emergency services, and vehicle tracking to cyber threats, according to Forescout Vedere Labs. A majority of these devices are located in the U.S., Canada, Australia, France, and Thailand. "These vulnerabilities may allow attackers to steal credentials, take control of a router by injecting malicious code, persist on the device and use it as an initial access point into critical networks," the industrial cybersecurity company  said  in a new analysis. Of the 21 vulnerabilities, one is rated critical, nine are rated high, and 11 are rated medium in severity. This includes remote code execution (RCE), cross-site scripting (XSS), denial-of-service (DoS), unauthori

The North Korea-aligned  Lazarus Group  has been attributed as behind a new campaign in which an unnamed software vendor was compromised through the exploitation of known security flaws in another high-profile software. The attack sequences, according to Kaspersky, culminated in the deployment of malware families such as SIGNBT and  LPEClient , a known hacking tool used by the threat actor for victim profiling and payload delivery. "The adversary demonstrated a high level of sophistication, employing advanced evasion techniques and introducing SIGNBT malware for victim control," security researcher Seongsu Park  said . "The SIGNBT malware used in this attack employed a diverse infection chain and sophisticated techniques." The Russian cybersecurity vendor said the company that developed the exploited software had been a victim of a Lazarus attack several times, indicating an attempt to steal source code or poison the software supply chain, as in the case of the 

Is your organization constantly under threat from credential phishing? Even with comprehensive security awareness training, many employees still fall victim to credential phishing scams. The result? Cybercriminals gaining immediate and unhindered access to sensitive data, email accounts, and other applications. But what if you could outsmart these criminals and protect your organization? Join  Graham Cluley , renowned cybersecurity expert and host of the Smashing Security podcast, and  Mike Britton , CISO at Abnormal Security, for an illuminating webinar that delves into the world of credential phishing and offers actionable insights. What Will You Learn? Understanding the Lure:  How attackers manipulate victims into submitting credentials, employing tactics such as generative AI. Why Victims Fall for the Trap:  A detailed look at why security awareness training may not always succeed in preventing employees from taking the bait. Effective Strategies to Combat Threats:  Compre

A hack-for-hire group that was  first exposed in 2019  has expanded its focus to set its sights on entities with business or political ties to Russia. Dubbed Void Balaur , the cyber mercenary collective has a history of launching cyberattacks against biotechnology and telecom companies since 2015. As many as 3,500 victims have been reported as of November 2021. "Void Balaur [...] primarily dabbles in cyber espionage and data theft, selling the stolen information to anyone willing to pay," Trend Micro  noted  at the time. Attacks conducted by the group are typically both generic and opportunistic and are aimed at gaining unauthorized access to widely-used email services, social media, messaging, and corporate accounts. Earlier this June, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) took the wraps off a set of  credential theft attacks  targeting journalists, European politicians, and non-profit's mounted by the threat actor. "Void Balaur also goes after targets va

Credential theft is clearly still a problem. Even after years of warnings, changing password requirements, and multiple forms of authentication,  password  stealing remains a top attack method used by cyber criminals. The latest  report  from the Ponemon Institute shares that 54% of security incidents were caused by credential theft, followed by ransomware and DDoS attacks. 59% of organizations aren't revoking credentials that are no longer needed, meaning passwords can go unattended and dormant like a sitting duck (similar to what happened with Colonial Pipeline). And  Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report  cites that nearly 50% of all data breaches were caused by stolen credentials. The stats don't lie. Cybercriminals are advancing, there's no doubt, but if there's an option to take the path of least resistance, they'll take it. Too often, that means compromising passwords and exploiting vulnerable access points.  Credential Theft and Critical Access