Cyber Defense | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Organizations in Kazakhstan are the target of a threat activity cluster dubbed Bloody Wolf that delivers a commodity malware called STRRAT (aka Strigoi Master). "The program selling for as little as $80 on underground resources allows the adversaries to take control of corporate computers and hijack restricted data," cybersecurity vendor BI.ZONE said in a new analysis. The cyber attacks employ phishing emails as an initial access vector, impersonating the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan and other agencies to trick recipients into opening PDF attachments. The file purports to be a non-compliance notice and contains links to a malicious Java archive (JAR) file as well as an installation guide for the Java interpreter necessary for the malware to function. In an attempt to lend legitimacy to the attack, the second link points to a web page associated with the country's government website that urges visitors to install Java in order to ensure that th

Imagine you could gain access to any Fortune 100 company for $10 or less, or even for free. Terrifying thought, isn't it? Or exciting, depending on which side of the cybersecurity barricade you are on. Well, that's basically the state of things today. Welcome to the infostealer garden of low-hanging fruit. Over the last few years, the problem has grown bigger and bigger, and only now are we slowly learning its full destructive potential. In this article, we will describe how the entire cybercriminal ecosystem operates, the ways various threat actors exploit data originating from it, and most importantly, what you can do about it. Let's start with what infostealer malware actually is. As the name suggests, it's malware that... steals data. Depending on the specific type, the information it extracts might differ slightly, but most will try to extract the following: Cryptocurrency wallets Bank account information and saved credit card details Saved passwords from various apps Bro

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 shed light on a short-lived DarkGate malware campaign that leveraged Samba file shares to initiate the infections. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said the activity spanned the months of March and April 2024, with the infection chains using servers running public-facing Samba file shares hosting Visual Basic Script (VBS) and JavaScript files. Targets included North America, Europe, and parts of Asia. "This was a relatively short-lived campaign that illustrates how threat actors can creatively abuse legitimate tools and services to distribute their malware," security researchers Vishwa Thothathri, Yijie Sui, Anmol Maurya, Uday Pratap Singh, and Brad Duncan said . DarkGate, which first emerged in 2018, has evolved into a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) offering used by a tightly controlled number of customers. It comes with capabilities to remotely control compromised hosts, execute code, mine cryptocurrency, launch reverse shells, and drop addit

The cybersecurity threat landscape has witnessed a dramatic and alarming rise in the average ransomware payment, an increase exceeding 500%. Sophos, a global leader in cybersecurity, revealed in its annual "State of Ransomware 2024" report that the average ransom payment has increased 500% in the last year with organizations that paid a ransom reporting an average payment of $2 million, up from $400,000 in 2023. Separately, RISK & INSURANCE, a leading media source for the insurance industry reported recently that in 2023 the median ransom demand soared to $20 million in 2023 from $1.4 million in 2022, and payment skyrocketed to $6.5 million in 2023 from $335,000 in 2022, much more than 500%. This shocking surge is a testament to the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks and the significant vulnerabilities inherent in outdated security methods. The most significant factor contributing to this trend is a broad reliance on twenty-year-old, legacy Multi-Factor Authentic

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new evasive malware loader named SquidLoader that spreads via phishing campaigns targeting Chinese organizations. AT&T LevelBlue Labs, which first observed the malware in late April 2024, said it incorporates features that are designed to thwart static and dynamic analysis and ultimately evade detection. Attack chains leverage phishing emails that come with attachments that masquerade as Microsoft Word documents, but, in reality, are binaries that pave the way for the execution of the malware, which is then used to fetch second-stage shellcode payloads from a remote server, including Cobalt Strike. "These loaders feature heavy evasion and decoy mechanisms which help them remain undetected while also hindering analysis," security researcher Fernando Dominguez said . "The shellcode that is delivered is also loaded in the same loader process, likely to avoid writing the payload to disk and thus risk being detected."

Digital content is a double-edged sword, providing vast benefits while simultaneously posing significant threats to organizations across the globe. The sharing of digital content has increased significantly in recent years, mainly via email, digital documents, and chat. In turn, this has created an expansive attack surface and has made 'digital content' the preferred carrier for cybercriminals and nation-state threat actors. Digital content is the easy way in for attackers, whether it be to launch sophisticated attacks, malware distribution and phishing or ransomware attacks.  Governments and highly regulated industries are particularly vulnerable due to the notoriety attackers can receive and the "prize" or impact that can come in compromising their networks. For Governments and defense agencies, this could mean losing access to sensitive and classified information. For critical infrastructure and highly regulated industries that could mean disruption to services or physical damage.

Ransomware attacks targeting VMware ESXi infrastructure follow an established pattern regardless of the file-encrypting malware deployed, new findings show. "Virtualization platforms are a core component of organizational IT infrastructure, yet they often suffer from inherent misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, making them a lucrative and highly effective target for threat actors to abuse," cybersecurity firm Sygnia  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The Israeli company, through its incident response efforts involving various ransomware families like LockBit, HelloKitty, BlackMatter, RedAlert (N13V), Scattered Spider, Akira, Cactus, BlackCat and Cheerscrypt, found that attacks on virtualization environments adhere to a similar sequence of actions. This includes the following steps - Obtaining initial access through phishing attacks, malicious file downloads, and exploitation of known vulnerabilities in internet-facing assets Escalating their privilege

The China-linked threat actor known as Sharp Panda has expanded their targeting to include governmental organizations in Africa and the Caribbean as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. "The campaign adopts Cobalt Strike Beacon as the payload, enabling backdoor functionalities like C2 communication and command execution while minimizing the exposure of their custom tools," Check Point said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This refined approach suggests a deeper understanding of their targets." The Israeli cybersecurity firm is tracking the activity under a new name  Sharp Dragon , describing the adversary as careful in its targeting, while at the same time broadening its reconnaissance efforts. The adversary  first came to light  in June 2021, when it was detected targeting a Southeast Asian government to deploy a backdoor on Windows systems dubbed VictoryDLL. Subsequent attacks mounted by Sharp Dragon have set their sights on high-profile gov

The Iranian state-backed hacking outfit called  APT42  is making use of enhanced social engineering schemes to infiltrate target networks and cloud environments. Targets of the attack include Western and Middle Eastern NGOs, media organizations, academia, legal services and activists, Google Cloud subsidiary Mandiant said in a report published last week. "APT42 was observed  posing as journalists  and event organizers to build trust with their victims through ongoing correspondence, and to deliver invitations to conferences or legitimate documents," the company  said . "These social engineering schemes enabled APT42 to harvest credentials and use them to gain initial access to cloud environments. Subsequently, the threat actor covertly exfiltrated data of strategic interest to Iran, while relying on built-in features and open-source tools to avoid detection." APT42 (aka Damselfly and UNC788),  first documented  by the company in September 2022, is an Iranian st

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday sanctioned two firms and four individuals for their involvement in malicious cyber activities on behalf of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC) from at least 2016 to April 2021. This includes the front companies Mehrsam Andisheh Saz Nik (MASN) and Dadeh Afzar Arman (DAA), as well as the Iranian nationals Alireza Shafie Nasab, Reza Kazemifar Rahman, Hossein Mohammad Harooni, and Komeil Baradaran Salmani. "These actors targeted more than a dozen U.S. companies and government entities through cyber operations, including spear-phishing and malware attacks," the Treasury Department  said . Concurrent with the sanctions, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  unsealed  an indictment against the four individuals for orchestrating cyber attacks targeting the U.S. government and private entities. Furthermore, a  reward of up to $10 million  has been an