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The Pakistan-nexus  Transparent Tribe  actor has been linked to a new set of attacks targeting Indian government, defense, and aerospace sectors using cross-platform malware written in Python, Golang, and Rust. "This cluster of activity spanned from late 2023 to April 2024 and is anticipated to persist," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team  said  in a technical report published early last week. The spear-phishing campaign is also notable for its abuse of popular online services such as Discord, Google Drive, Slack, and Telegram, once again underscoring how threat actors are  adopting legitimate programs  into their attack flows. According to BlackBerry, the targets of the email-based attacks included three companies that are crucial stakeholders and clients of the Department of Defense Production ( DDP ). All the three companies targeted are headquartered in the Indian city of Bengaluru. While the names of the firms were not disclosed, indications are that the

A new attack campaign dubbed  CLOUD#REVERSER  has been observed leveraging legitimate cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox to stage malicious payloads. "The VBScript and PowerShell scripts in the CLOUD#REVERSER inherently involves command-and-control-like activities by using Google Drive and Dropbox as staging platforms to manage file uploads and downloads," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The scripts are designed to fetch files that match specific patterns, suggesting they are waiting for commands or scripts placed in Google Drive or Dropbox." The starting point of the attack chain is a phishing email bearing a ZIP archive file, which contains an executable that masquerades as a Microsoft Excel file. In an interesting twist, the filename makes use of the hidden right-to-left override ( RLO ) Unicode character (U+202E) to reverse the order of the characters that co

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,

Every Google Workspace administrator knows how quickly Google Drive becomes a messy sprawl of loosely shared confidential information. This isn't anyone's fault; it's inevitable as your productivity suite is purposefully designed to enable real-time collaboration – both internally and externally.  For Security & Risk Management teams, the untenable risk of any Google Drive footprint lies in the toxic combinations of sensitive data, excessive permissions, and improper sharing. However, it can be challenging to differentiate between typical business practices and potential risks without fully understanding the context and intent.  Material Security, a company renowned for its innovative method of protecting sensitive data within employee mailboxes, has recently launched  Data Protection for Google Drive  to safeguard the sprawl of confidential information scattered throughout Google Drive with a powerful discovery and remediation toolkit. How Material Security helps organ

The ubiquity of GitHub in information technology (IT) environments has made it a lucrative choice for threat actors to host and deliver malicious payloads and act as  dead drop resolvers , command-and-control, and data exfiltration points. "Using GitHub services for malicious infrastructure allows adversaries to blend in with legitimate network traffic, often bypassing traditional security defenses and making upstream infrastructure tracking and actor attribution more difficult," Recorded Future  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm described the approach as "living-off-trusted-sites" (LOTS), a spin on the living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques often adopted by threat actors to conceal rogue activity and fly under the radar. Prominent among the methods by which GitHub is  abused   relates  to  payload   delivery , with some actors leveraging its features for command-and-control (C2) obfuscation. Last month, ReversingLabs  detailed  a number of rogue

Chromium-based web browsers are the target of a new malware called Rilide that masquerades itself as a seemingly legitimate extension to harvest sensitive data and siphon cryptocurrency. "Rilide malware is disguised as a legitimate Google Drive extension and enables threat actors to carry out a broad spectrum of malicious activities, including monitoring browsing history, taking screenshots, and injecting malicious scripts to withdraw funds from various cryptocurrency exchanges," Trustwave SpiderLabs Research said in a report shared with The Hacker News. What's more, the stealer malware can display forged dialogs to deceive users into entering a two-factor authentication code to withdraw digital assets. Trustwave said it identified two different campaigns involving  Ekipa RAT  and  Aurora Stealer  that led to the installation of the malicious browser extension. While Ekipa RAT is distributed via booby-trapped Microsoft Publisher files, rogue Google Ads act as the

The Russian state-sponsored hacking collective known as APT29 has been attributed to a new phishing campaign that takes advantage of legitimate cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox to deliver malicious payloads on compromised systems. "These campaigns are believed to have targeted several Western diplomatic missions between May and June 2022," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  said  in a Tuesday report. "The lures included in these campaigns suggest targeting of a foreign embassy in Portugal as well as a foreign embassy in Brazil." APT29, also tracked under the monikers Cozy Bear, Cloaked Ursa, or The Dukes, has been characterized as an organized cyberespionage group working to collect intelligence that aligns with Russia's strategic objectives. Some aspects of the advanced persistent threat's activities, including the infamous  SolarWinds supply chain attack  of 2020, are separately tracked by Microsoft under the name Nobelium, with Mandiant calling i

Researchers have disclosed details of a newly discovered macOS variant of a malware implant developed by a Chinese espionage threat actor known to strike attack organizations across Asia. Attributing the attacks to a group tracked as  Storm Cloud , cybersecurity firm Volexity characterized the new malware, dubbed Gimmick, as a "feature-rich, multi-platform malware family that uses public cloud hosting services (such as Google Drive) for command-and-control (C2) channels." The cybersecurity firm said it recovered the sample through memory analysis of a compromised MacBook Pro running macOS 11.6 (Big Sur) as part of an intrusion campaign that took place in late 2021. "Storm Cloud is an advanced and versatile threat actor, adapting its tool set to match different operating systems used by its targets," Volexity researchers Damien Cash, Steven Adair, and Thomas Lancaster  said  in a report. "They make use of built-in operating system utilities, open-source to

An unpatched security weakness in Google Drive could be exploited by malware attackers to distribute malicious files disguised as legitimate documents or images, enabling bad actors to perform spear-phishing attacks comparatively with a high success rate. The latest security issue—of which Google is aware but, unfortunately, left unpatched—resides in the " manage versions " functionality offered by Google Drive that allows users to upload and manage different versions of a file, as well as in the way its interface provides a new version of the files to the users. Logically, the manage versions functionally should allow Google Drive users to update an older version of a file with a new version having the same file extension, but it turns out that it's not the case. According to A. Nikoci, a system administrator by profession who reported the flaw to Google and later disclosed it to The Hacker News, the affected functionally allows users to upload a new version wit

Since most security tools also keep an eye on the network traffic to detect malicious IP addresses, attackers are increasingly adopting infrastructure of legitimate services in their attacks to hide their malicious activities. Cybersecurity researchers have now spotted a new malware attack campaign linked to the notorious DarkHydrus APT group that uses Google Drive as its command-and-control (C2) server. DarkHydrus first came to light in August last year when the APT group was leveraging the open-source Phishery tool to carry out credential-harvesting campaign against government entities and educational institutions in the Middle East. The latest malicious campaign conducted by the DarkHydrus APT group was also observed against targets in the Middle East, according to reports published by the 360 Threat Intelligence Center ( 360TIC ) and Palo Alto Networks. This time the advanced threat attackers are using a new variant of their backdoor Trojan, called RogueRobin , which i

In an effort to secure users' data while maintaining privacy, Google has announced a new security measure for Android Backup Service that now encrypts all your backup data stored on its cloud servers in a way that even the company can't read it. Google allows Android users to automatically backup their essential app data and settings to their Google account, allowing them to simply restore it when required, instead of re-configuring all the apps after formatting or switching to a new phone. However, until now your backup data was not encrypted and visible to Google, and now the company is going to change its storage procedure. Starting with Android Pie, Google is going to encrypt your Android device backup data in the following way: Step 1: Your Android device will generate a random secret key (not known to Google), Step 2: The secret key will then get encrypted using your lockscreen PIN/pattern/passcode (not known to Google), Step 3: This passcode-protected

Soon you will be able to auto backup and sync your whole computer on Google Drive. Yes, you heard that right. By the end of this month, Google will launch Backup and Sync — a new, simple tool that has been designed to help you backup not only your documents and photos in the cloud but your entire computer as well. Data loss is always the worst thing that can happen to anyone, so having backups of all your data is always a good idea. Also, having regular backups can save you and your company in the events of data breaches and ransomware attacks. "On June 28th, 2017, we will launch Backup and Sync from Google, a tool intended to help everyday users back up files and photos from their computers, so they're safe and accessible from anywhere," reads Google's post on the G Suite Blog. The Backup and Sync tool will replace the current Google Drive uploader client for Mac/PC, and will also be integrated into the desktop Google Photos uploader. So, instead of creati

What if your phone suddenly slips into a bathtub? Maybe you'll end up losing all your important data, more specifically, your WhatsApp photos, videos, Voice Notes and Chat Data that flows through your chats. Sounds scary, isn't it?  But, now you need not worry if your phone suddenly died or broke – Thanks to the new integration to your favorite messaging app WhatsApp with Google Drive. Google and Facebook announced a partnership that will bring Google Drive integration to WhatsApp for Android, allowing you to automatically backup all your chat messages and multimedia content regularly to the cloud. BackUp Your WhatsApp Data to Google Drive With Google Drive integration, you can create a private backup of your: Chat History Voice Messages Photos Videos …to "keep your memory safe," Google says. You can also decide to backup your WhatsApp data: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Not at All. Data BackUp and Recovery with Enc

Google has found an excellent idea to celebrate Safer Internet Day . The search engine giant is offering a nice perk for its users who complete a quick Security Checkup by February 17th. No doubt, its willing to bribe us, , but you probably should review your security settings anyway, and I loved the idea. Now, what's the perk?? Google is providing you 2GB of extra space in your Google Drive account and there's an easy way to fetch the offer. You just have to check your account security, and for that, simply follow the steps given below: In the next week, head to Google's security checkup page Then, follow some simple instructions given on the page Under the Security Checkup process, a user will go through simple confirmations, like: Your backup email address Ensures your account recovery information is current Lets you review recent sign-in activity Confirms the list of apps that access your account information. The process will hardly take 5 minutes or so t

Another privacy issue has been discovered in Google Drive which could have led sensitive and personal information stored on the cloud service exposed to unauthorized parties. The security flaw has now patched by Google, but its discovery indicates that the vulnerability of cloud data when accessed via a link can allow " anyone who has the link " to access your private data without any further authentication. HOW THE SECURITY FLAW WORKS The security hole addressed a risk to files that included a clickable URL on your cloud file sharing service. When someone opens the file and clicks on an embedded hyperlink, then they get sent to the website of a third-party website owner. Upon accessing this URL, unfortunately the external Internet user - an unauthorized party - could potentially access your sensitive information by accessing the original documents that included the URL. GOOGLE EXPLANATION Google explained the actual nature of the security flaw in a blog p

You all are quite aware of phishing attacks , and for those who are not, Phishing scams are typically fraudulent email messages, masquerading as a well known and trustworthy entity in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from victims. However, phishing attacks have become more sophisticated recently. The Pro-hacker group, Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is also popular for its advance phishing attack and had purposely targeted twitter account and websites of various popular brands like Forbes, Microsoft, Obama, Facebook, CNN, eBay and PayPal in the past using phishing techniques. Security researchers have seen an increase in the number of phishing attacks every day, but recently a tricky scam came across by the researchers at the Symantec , which is targeting Google Docs and Google Drive users. Under this phishing scam, an email with a subject of " Documents ", tricks recipient to view an ' important document ' stored on the Google Docs by cli

Privacy protection in the services we use on a daily basis has been a big topic of conversation following accusations that Google, Microsoft, Apple and other large tech companies were working with government agencies to provide user data. According to a new report by CNet , Google may introduce encryption for users' data generated on their Google Drive to protect its customers' privacy against attempts by the U.S. government to access the data. Why Encryption ?  Secure encryption of users' private files means that Google would not be able to divulge the contents of stored communications even if NSA submitted a legal order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or if police obtained a search warrant for domestic law enforcement purposes. "Mechanisms like this could give people more confidence and allow them to start backing up potentially their whole device, " said Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Many companies use SSL and HTTPS to secu

Once again Google Security Team Shoot itself in the foot. Ansuman Samantaray , an Indian penetration tester discovered a small, but creative Security flaw in Google drive that poses phishing threat to million of Google users was ignored  by Google Security team by replying that," It is just a mare phishing attempt,not a bug in Google ". According to Ansuman , he reported a JavaScript Script Execution vulnerability in Google Drive Files on 20th December 2012 to Google Security Team and but Google rejected the report on 21st December. Ability to execute malicious script through Google drive files poses security threats, not just phishing attack, but an attacker able to extends the attack to malware spreading, etc. The flaw exist in the way Google Drive preview the documents in the browser. Online preview of the files executing code written in doc files as HTML/JavaScript just by changing the value of a parameter called " export " in the URL. ie.