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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

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

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,

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

The threat actors behind the Rhadamanthys information stealer have added new advanced features to the malware, including using artificial intelligence (AI) for optical character recognition (OCR) as part of what's called "Seed Phrase Image Recognition." "This allows Rhadamanthys to extract cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases from images, making it a highly potent threat for anyone dealing in cryptocurrencies," Recorded Future's Insikt Group said in an analysis of version 0.7.0 of the malware. "The malware can recognize seed phrase images on the client side and send them back to the command-and-control (C2) server for further exploitation." First discovered in the wild in September 2022, Rhadamanthys has emerged as one of the most potent information stealers that are advertised under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, alongside Lumma and others. The malware continues to have an active presence despite suffering bans from underground forum

Russian-speaking users have been targeted as part of a new campaign distributing a commodity trojan called DCRat (aka DarkCrystal RAT) by means of a technique known as HTML smuggling . The development marks the first time the malware has been deployed using this method, a departure from previously observed delivery vectors such as compromised or fake websites, or phishing emails bearing PDF attachments or macro-laced Microsoft Excel documents. "HTML smuggling is primarily a payload delivery mechanism," Netskope researcher Nikhil Hegde said in an analysis published Thursday. "The payload can be embedded within the HTML itself or retrieved from a remote resource." The HTML file, in turn, can be propagated via bogus sites or malspam campaigns. Once the file is launched via the victim's web browser, the concealed payload is decoded and downloaded onto the machine. The attack subsequently banks on some level of social engineering to convince the victim to ope

An advanced threat actor with an India nexus has been observed using multiple cloud service providers to facilitate credential harvesting, malware delivery, and command-and-control (C2). Web infrastructure and security company Cloudflare is tracking the activity under the name SloppyLemming , which is also called Outrider Tiger and Fishing Elephant . "Between late 2022 to present, SloppyLemming has routinely used Cloudflare Workers, likely as part of a broad espionage campaign targeting South and East Asian countries," Cloudflare said in an analysis. SloppyLemming is assessed to be active since at least July 2021, with prior campaigns leveraging malware such as Ares RAT and WarHawk , the latter of which is also linked to a known hacking crew called SideWinder. The use of Ares RAT, on the other hand, has been attributed to SideCopy , a threat actor likely of Pakistani origin. Targets of the SloppyLemming's activity span government, law enforcement, energy, education

Phishing attacks are becoming more advanced and harder to detect, but there are still telltale signs that can help you spot them before it's too late. See these key indicators that security experts use to identify phishing links: 1. Check Suspicious URLs  Phishing URLs are often long, confusing, or filled with random characters. Attackers use these to disguise the link's true destination and mislead users.  The first step in protecting yourself is to inspect the URL carefully. Always ensure it begins with "HTTPS," as the "s" indicates a secure connection using an SSL certificate.  However, keep in mind that SSL certificates alone are not enough. Cyber attackers have increasingly used legitimate-looking HTTPS links to distribute malicious content. This is why you should be suspicious of links that are overly complex or look like a jumble of characters.  Tools like ANY.RUN's Safebrowsing allow users to check suspicious links in a secure and isolated environment w

Transportation and logistics companies in North America are the target of a new phishing campaign that delivers a variety of information stealers and remote access trojans (RATs). The activity cluster, per Proofpoint, makes use of compromised legitimate email accounts belonging to transportation and shipping companies so as to inject malicious content into existing email conversations. As many as 15 breached email accounts have been identified as used as part of the campaign. It's currently not clear how these accounts are infiltrated in the first place or who is behind the attacks. "Activity which occurred from May to July 2024 predominately delivered Lumma Stealer, StealC, or NetSupport," the enterprise security firm said in an analysis published Tuesday. "In August 2024, the threat actor changed tactics by employing new infrastructure and a new delivery technique, as well as adding payloads to deliver DanaBot and Arechclient2." The attack chains invol

A North Korea-linked cyber-espionage group has been observed leveraging job-themed phishing lures to target prospective victims in energy and aerospace verticals and infect them with a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed MISTPEN. The activity cluster is being tracked by Google-owned Mandiant under the moniker UNC2970 , which it said overlaps with a threat group known as TEMP.Hermit , which is also broadly called Lazarus Group or Diamond Sleet (formerly Zinc). The threat actor has a history of targeting government, defense, telecommunications, and financial institutions worldwide since at least 2013 to collect strategic intelligence that furthers North Korean interests. It's affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). The threat intelligence firm said it has observed UNC2970 singling out various entities located in the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, Cyprus, Sweden, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. "UNC2970 targets victims under the guise o

The Colombian insurance sector is the target of a threat actor tracked as Blind Eagle with the end goal of delivering a customized version of a known commodity remote access trojan (RAT) referred to as Quasar RAT since June 2024. "Attacks have originated with phishing emails impersonating the Colombian tax authority," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Gaetano Pellegrino said in a new analysis published last week. The advanced persistent threat (APT), also known as AguilaCiega, APT-C-36, and APT-Q-98, has a track record of focusing on organizations and individuals in South America, particularly related to the government and finance sectors in Colombia and Ecuador. The attack chains, as recently documented by Kaspersky, originate with phishing emails that entice recipients into clicking on malicious links that serve as the launchpad for the infection process. The links, either embedded within a PDF attachment or directly in the email body, point to ZIP archives hosted on

Android device users in South Korea have emerged as a target of a new mobile malware campaign that delivers a new type of threat dubbed SpyAgent . The malware "targets mnemonic keys by scanning for images on your device that might contain them," McAfee Labs researcher SangRyol Ryu said in an analysis, adding the targeting footprint has broadened in scope to include the U.K. The campaign makes use of bogus Android apps that are disguised as seemingly legitimate banking, government facilities, streaming, and utility apps in an attempt to trick users into installing them. As many as 280 fake applications have been detected since the start of the year. It all starts with SMS messages bearing booby-trapped links that urge users to download the apps in question in the form of APK files hosted on deceptive sites. Once installed, they are designed to request intrusive permissions to collect data from the devices. This includes contacts, SMS messages, photos, and other device i

North Korean threat actors have leveraged a fake Windows video conferencing application impersonating FreeConference.com to backdoor developer systems as part of an ongoing financially-driven campaign dubbed Contagious Interview. The new attack wave, spotted by Singaporean company Group-IB in mid-August 2024, is yet another indication that the activity is also leveraging native installers for Windows and Apple macOS to deliver malware. Contagious Interview, also tracked as DEV#POPPER, is a malicious campaign orchestrated by a North Korean threat actor tracked by CrowdStrike under the moniker Famous Chollima. The attack chains begin with a fictitious job interview, tricking job seekers into downloading and running a Node.js project that contains the BeaverTail downloader malware, which in turn delivers InvisibleFerret, a cross-platform Python backdoor that's equipped with remote control, keylogging, and browser stealing capabilities. Some iterations of BeaverTail, which also

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

Attackers are increasingly using new phishing toolkits (open-source, commercial, and criminal) to execute adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks. AitM enables attackers to not just harvest credentials but steal live sessions, allowing them to bypass traditional phishing prevention controls such as MFA, EDR, and email content filtering. In this article, we're going to look at what AitM phishing is, how it works, and what organizations need to be able to detect and block these attacks effectively. What is AitM phishing? AitM phishing is a technique that uses dedicated tooling to act as a proxy between the target and a legitimate login portal for an application.  As it's a proxy to the real application, the page will appear exactly as the user expects, because they are logging into the legitimate site – just taking a detour via the attacker's device. For example, if accessing their webmail, the user will see all their real emails; if accessing their cloud file store then all their r