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Microsoft is warning of cyber attack campaigns that abuse legitimate file hosting services such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Dropbox that are widely used in enterprise environments as a defense evasion tactic. The end goal of the campaigns are broad and varied, allowing threat actors to compromise identities and devices and conduct business email compromise ( BEC ) attacks, which ultimately result in financial fraud, data exfiltration, and lateral movement to other endpoints. The weaponization of legitimate internet services (LIS) is an increasingly popular risk vector adopted by adversaries to blend in with legitimate network traffic in a manner such that it often bypasses traditional security defenses and complicates attribution efforts. The approach is also called living-off-trusted-sites (LOTS), as it leverages the trust and familiarity of these services to sidestep email security guardrails and deliver malware. Microsoft said it has been observing a new trend in phishing c

Ivanti has warned that three new security vulnerabilities impacting its Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) have come under active exploitation in the wild. The zero-day flaws are being weaponized in conjunction with another flaw in CSA that the company patched last month, the Utah-based software services provider said. Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an authenticated attacker with admin privileges to bypass restrictions, run arbitrary SQL statements, or obtain remote code execution. "We are aware of a limited number of customers running CSA 4.6 patch 518 and prior who have been exploited when CVE-2024-9379, CVE-2024-9380, or CVE-2024-9381 are chained with CVE-2024-8963," the company said . There is no evidence of exploitation against customer environments running CSA 5.0. A brief description of the three shortcomings is as follows - CVE-2024-9379 (CVSS score: 6.5) - SQL injection in the admin web console of Ivanti CSA before version 5.0.2 all

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,

Users searching for game cheats are being tricked into downloading a Lua-based malware that is capable of establishing persistence on infected systems and delivering additional payloads. "These attacks capitalize on the popularity of Lua gaming engine supplements within the student gamer community," Morphisec researcher Shmuel Uzan said in a new report published today, adding "this malware strain is highly prevalent across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and even Australia." Details about the campaign were first documented by OALabs in March 2024, in which users were lured into downloading a malware loader written in Lua by exploiting a quirk in GitHub to stage malicious payloads. McAfee Labs, in a subsequent analysis , detailed threat actors' use of the same technique to deliver a variant of the RedLine information stealer by hosting the malware-bearing ZIP archives within legitimate Microsoft repositories. "We disabled user accounts an

Russian government agencies and industrial entities are the target of an ongoing activity cluster dubbed Awaken Likho . "The attackers now prefer using the agent for the legitimate MeshCentral platform instead of the UltraVNC module, which they had previously used to gain remote access to systems," Kaspersky said , detailing a new campaign that began in June 2024 and continued at least until August. The Russian cybersecurity company said the campaign primarily targeted Russian government agencies, their contractors, and industrial enterprises. Awaken Likho, also tracked as Core Werewolf and PseudoGamaredon, was first documented by BI.ZONE in June 2023 in connection with cyber attacks directed against defense and critical infrastructure sectors. The group is believed to be active since at least August 2021. The spear-phishing attacks involve distributing malicious executables disguised as Microsoft Word or PDF documents by assigning them double extensions like "doc

A little-known threat actor tracked as GoldenJackal has been linked to a series of cyber attacks targeting embassies and governmental organizations with an aim to infiltrate air-gapped systems using two disparate bespoke toolsets. Victims included a South Asian embassy in Belarus and a European Union (E.U.) government organization, Slovak cybersecurity company ESET said. "The ultimate goal of GoldenJackal seems to be stealing confidential information, especially from high-profile machines that might not be connected to the internet," security researcher Matías Porolli noted in an exhaustive analysis. GoldenJackal first came to light in May 2023, when Russian security vendor Kaspersky detailed the threat cluster's attacks on government and diplomatic entities in the Middle East and South Asia. The adversary's origins stretch back to at least 2019. An important characteristic of the intrusions is the use of a worm named JackalWorm that's capable of infectin

Is your store at risk? Discover how an innovative web security solution saved one global online retailer and its unsuspecting customers from an "evil twin" disaster. Read the full real-life case study here . The Invisible Threat in Online Shopping When is a checkout page, not a checkout page? When it's an "evil twin"! Malicious redirects can send unsuspecting shoppers to these perfect-looking fake checkout pages and steal their payment information, so could your store be at risk too? Discover how an innovative web security solution saved one global online retailer and its unsuspecting customers from an "evil twin" disaster. (You can read the full case study here ) Anatomy of an Evil Twin Attack In today's fast-paced world of online shopping, convenience often trumps caution. Shoppers quickly move through product selection to checkout, rarely scrutinizing the process. This lack of attention creates an opportunity for cybercriminals to exploit. The Deceptive Redirect The

Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes and misinformation may cause worry in the world of technology and investment, but this powerful, foundational technology has the potential to benefit organizations of all kinds when harnessed appropriately. In the world of cybersecurity, one of the most important areas of application of AI is augmenting and enhancing identity management systems. AI-powered identity lifecycle management is at the vanguard of digital identity and is used to enhance security, streamline governance and improve the UX of an identity system. Benefits of an AI-powered identity AI is a technology that crosses barriers between traditionally opposing business area drivers, bringing previously conflicting areas together: AI enables better operational efficiency by reducing risk and improving security AI enables businesses to achieve goals by securing cyber-resilience AI facilitates agile and secure access by ensuring regulatory compliance AI and unifi

Ukraine has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack that targeted Russia state media company VGTRK and disrupted its operations, according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters . The incident took place on the night of October 7, VGTRK confirmed , describing it as an "unprecedented hacker attack." However, it said "no significant damage" was caused and that everything was working normally despite attempts to interrupt radio and TV broadcasts. That said, Russian media outlet Gazeta.ru reported that the hackers wiped "everything" from the company's servers, including backups, citing an anonymous source. A source told Reuters that "Ukrainian hackers 'congratulated' Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company." The attack is believed to be the work of a pro-Ukrainian hacker group called Sudo rm-RF . The Russian government has since said an investi

Qualcomm has rolled out security updates to address nearly two dozen flaws spanning proprietary and open-source components, including one that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-43047 (CVSS score: 7.8), has been described as a user-after-free bug in the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Service that could lead to "memory corruption while maintaining memory maps of HLOS memory." Qualcomm credited Google Project Zero researcher Seth Jenkins and Conghui Wang for reporting the flaw, and Amnesty International Security Lab for confirming in-the-wild activity. "There are indications from Google Threat Analysis Group that CVE-2024-43047 may be under limited, targeted exploitation," the chipmaker said in an advisory. "Patches for the issue affecting FASTRPC driver have been made available to OEMs together with a strong recommendation to deploy the update on affected devices as soon as possible."

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new botnet malware family called Gorilla (aka GorillaBot) that draws its inspiration from the leaked Mirai botnet source code. Cybersecurity firm NSFOCUS, which identified the activity last month, said the botnet "issued over 300,000 attack commands, with a shocking attack density" between September 4 and September 27, 2024. No less than 20,000 commands designed to mount distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have been issued from the botnet every day on average. The botnet is said to have targeted more than 100 countries, attacking universities, government websites, telecoms, banks, gaming, and gambling sectors. China, the U.S., Canada, and Germany have emerged as the most attacked countries. The Beijing-headquartered company said Gorilla primarily uses UDP flood , ACK BYPASS flood, Valve Source Engine (VSE) flood , SYN flood , and ACK flood to conduct the DDoS attacks, adding the connectionless nature of the UDP prot

Organizations are losing between $94 - $186 billion annually to vulnerable or insecure APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and automated abuse by bots. That's according to The Economic Impact of API and Bot Attacks report from Imperva, a Thales company. The report highlights that these security threats account for up to 11.8% of global cyber events and losses, emphasizing the escalating risks they pose to businesses worldwide. Drawing on a comprehensive study conducted by the Marsh McLennan Cyber Risk Intelligence Center, the report analyzes over 161,000 unique cybersecurity incidents. The findings demonstrate a concerning trend: the threats posed by vulnerable or insecure APIs and automated abuse by bots are increasingly interconnected and prevalent. Imperva warns that failing to address security risks associated with these threats could lead to substantial financial and reputational damage. API Adoption and the Expanding Attack Surface APIs have become indispensable to mod

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the Apache Avro Java Software Development Kit (SDK) that, if successfully exploited, could allow the execution of arbitrary code on susceptible instances. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-47561 , impacts all versions of the software prior to 1.11.4. "Schema parsing in the Java SDK of Apache Avro 1.11.3 and previous versions allows bad actors to execute arbitrary code," the project maintainers said in an advisory released last week. "Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.11.4 or 1.12.0, which fix this issue." Apache Avro, analogous to Google's Protocol Buffers ( protobuf ), is an open-source project that provides a language-neutral data serialization framework for large-scale data processing. The Avro team notes that the vulnerability affects any application if it allows users to provide their own Avro schemas for parsing. Kostya Kortchinsky from the Databricks security team has been credited with discov

Ever heard of a "pig butchering" scam? Or a DDoS attack so big it could melt your brain? This week's cybersecurity recap has it all – government showdowns, sneaky malware, and even a dash of app store shenanigans. Get the scoop before it's too late! ⚡ Threat of the Week Double Trouble: Evil Corp & LockBit Fall : A consortium of international law enforcement agencies took steps to arrest four people and take down nine servers linked to the LockBit (aka Bitwise Spider) ransomware operation. In tandem, authorities outed a Russian national named Aleksandr Ryzhenkov, who was one of the high-ranking members of the Evil Corp cybercrime group and also a LockBit affiliate. A total of 16 individuals who were part of Evil Corp have been sanctioned by the U.K. 🔔 Top News DoJ & Microsoft Seize 100+ Russian Hacker Domains: The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and Microsoft announced the seizure of 107 internet domains used by a Russian state-sponsored threat a

Google has announced that it's piloting a new security initiative that automatically blocks sideloading of potentially unsafe Android apps in India, after similar tests in Singapore, Thailand, and Brazil. The enhanced fraud protection feature aims to keep users safe when they attempt to install malicious apps from sources other than the Google Play Store, such as web browsers, messaging apps, and file managers. The program, which was first launched in Singapore earlier this February, has already blocked nearly 900,000 high-risk installations in the Southeast Asian nation, the tech giant said. "This enhanced fraud protection will analyze and automatically block the installation of apps that may use sensitive permissions frequently abused for financial fraud," Eugene Liderman, director of mobile security strategy at Google, said . It works by examining the permissions declared by a third-party app in real-time and checking for permissions that are typically abused by

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

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a strategic framework that helps organizations continuously assess and manage cyber risk. It breaks down the complex task of managing security threats into five distinct stages: Scoping, Discovery, Prioritization, Validation, and Mobilization. Each of these stages plays a crucial role in identifying, addressing, and mitigating vulnerabilities - before they can be exploited by attackers.  On paper, CTEM sounds great . But where the rubber meets the road – especially for CTEM neophytes - implementing CTEM can seem overwhelming. The process of putting CTEM principles into practice can look prohibitively complex at first. However, with the right tools and a clear understanding of each stage, CTEM can be an effective method for strengthening your organization's security posture.  That's why I've put together a step-by-step guide on which tools to use for which stage. Want to learn more? Read on… Stage 1: Scoping  When you're defin