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Chinese-speaking users are the target of a "highly organized and sophisticated attack" campaign that is likely leveraging phishing emails to infect Windows systems with Cobalt Strike payloads. "The attackers managed to move laterally, establish persistence and remain undetected within the systems for more than two weeks," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk and Tim Peck said in a new report. The covert campaign, codenamed SLOW#TEMPEST and not attributed to any known threat actor, commences with malicious ZIP files that, when unpacked, activates the infection chain, leading to the deployment of the post-exploitation toolkit on compromised systems. Present with the ZIP archive is a Windows shortcut (LNK) file that disguises itself as a Microsoft Word file, "违规远程控制软件人员名单.docx.lnk," which roughly translates to "List of people who violated the remote control software regulations." "Given the language used in the lure files, it's likely th

Microsoft on Friday revealed that the Kremlin-backed threat actor known as  Midnight Blizzard  (aka APT29 or Cozy Bear) managed to gain access to some of its source code repositories and internal systems following a  hack that came to light  in January 2024. "In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard is using information initially exfiltrated from our corporate email systems to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access," the tech giant  said . "This has included access to some of the company's source code repositories and internal systems. To date we have found no evidence that Microsoft-hosted customer-facing systems have been compromised." Redmond, which is continuing to investigate the extent of the breach, said the Russian state-sponsored threat actor is attempting to leverage the different types of secrets it found, including those that were shared between customers and Microsoft in email. It, however, did not disclose what the

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,

Conor Brian Fitzpatrick has been sentenced to time served and 20 years of supervised release for his role as the creator and administrator of BreachForums. Fitzpatrick, who went by the online alias "pompompurin," was arrested in March 2023 in New York and was subsequently charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud and possession of child pornography. He was later released on a $300,000 bond, and in July 2023, he pleaded guilty to the charges. BreachForums was a major cyber crime marketplace that facilitated the trafficking of stolen data since March 2022. Prior to its shutdown exactly a year later, the website boasted of over 340,000 members. Among the stolen items commonly sold on the platform were bank account information, Social Security numbers, personally identifying information (PII), hacking tools, breached databases, and account login information for compromised online accounts with service providers and merchants. BreachForums also advertised servic

In April 2020, Cynet launched the world's first Incident Response Challenge to test and reward the skills of Incident Response professionals. The Challenge consisted of 25 incidents, in increasing difficulty, all inspired by real-life scenarios that required participants to go beyond the textbook solution and think outside of the box. Over 2,500 IR professionals competed to be recognized as the top incident responders. Now that the competition is over (however, the challenge website is still open for anyone who wants to practice solving the challenges), Cynet makes the detailed solutions available as a free resource for knowledge and inspiration. Providing the thought process and detailed steps to solve each of the challenges will serve as a training aid and knowledge base for incident responders. The Fine Art of Forensic Investigation The core of any IR processes is the forensic investigation. It uncovers the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or l

Cybersecurity firm Cynet today announced the launch of a first of its kind challenge to enable Incident Response professionals to test their skills with 25 forensic challenges that were built by top researchers and analysts. The challenge is available on https://incident-response-challenge.com/ and is open to anyone willing to test his or her investigation skills, between April 21st and May 15th. What's more interesting is that there's a USD 5000 prize for the first-place winner of the challenge. Forensic investigation is at the core of any IR processes and provides the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or limited attack view to the concrete and actionable knowledge on the attack's root cause and the impact that is essential for recovery and restore operations. The challenge of the incident responder is to identify and collect the scattered traces the attackers have left them and connect the dots to understand the how, what, and where of the atta

WikiLeaks published hundreds of more files from the Vault 7 series today which, it claims, show how CIA can mask its hacking attacks to make it look like it came from other countries, including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Dubbed " Marble ," the part 3 of CIA files contains 676 source code files of a secret anti-forensic Marble Framework, which is basically an obfuscator or a packer used to hide the true source of CIA malware. The CIA's Marble Framework tool includes a variety of different algorithm with foreign language text intentionally inserted into the malware source code to fool security analysts and falsely attribute attacks to the wrong nation. The leaked files indicate that the Marble's source code includes Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi languages, as well as English, which shows that the CIA has engaged in clever hacking games. "Marble is used to hamper[ing] forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributin