Software Supply Chain | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat actors have long leveraged typosquatting as a means to trick unsuspecting users into visiting malicious websites or downloading booby-trapped software and packages. These attacks typically involve registering domains or packages with names slightly altered from their legitimate counterparts (e.g., goog1e.com vs. google.com). Adversaries targeting open-source repositories across platforms have relied on developers making typing errors to initiate software supply chain attacks through PyPI, npm, Maven Central, NuGet, RubyGems, and Crate. The latest findings from cloud security firm Orca show that even GitHub Actions , a continuous integration and continuous delivery ( CI/CD ) platform, is not immune from the threat. "If developers make a typo in their GitHub action that matches a typosquatter's action, applications could be made to run malicious code without the developer even realizing," security researcher Ofir Yakobi said in a report shared with The Ha

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

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,

A new supply chain attack technique targeting the Python Package Index (PyPI) registry has been exploited in the wild in an attempt to infiltrate downstream organizations. It has been codenamed Revival Hijack by software supply chain security firm JFrog, which said the attack method could be used to hijack 22,000 existing PyPI packages and result in "hundreds of thousands" of malicious package downloads. These susceptible packages have more than 100,000 downloads or have been active for over six months. "This attack technique involves hijacking PyPI software packages by manipulating the option to re-register them once they're removed from PyPI's index by the original owner," JFrog security researchers Andrey Polkovnychenko and Brian Moussalli said in a report shared with The Hacker News. At its core, the attack hinges on the fact that Python packages published in the PyPI repository may get removed, making available the names of those deleted projects

Threat actors with ties to North Korea have been observed publishing a set of malicious packages to the npm registry, indicating "coordinated and relentless" efforts to target developers with malware and steal cryptocurrency assets. The latest wave, which was observed between August 12 and 27, 2024, involved packages named temp-etherscan-api, ethersscan-api, telegram-con, helmet-validate, and qq-console. "Behaviors in this campaign lead us to believe that qq-console is attributable to the North Korean campaign known as 'Contagious Interview,'" software supply chain security firm Phylum said . Contagious Interview refers to an ongoing campaign that seeks to compromise software developers with information stealing malware as part of a purported job interview process that involves tricking them into downloading bogus npm packages or fake installers for video conferencing software such as MiroTalk hosted on decoy websites. The end goal of the attacks is to

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about the security risks in the machine learning (ML) software supply chain following the discovery of more than 20 vulnerabilities that could be exploited to target MLOps platforms. These vulnerabilities, which are described as inherent- and implementation-based flaws, could have severe consequences, ranging from arbitrary code execution to loading malicious datasets. MLOps platforms offer the ability to design and execute an ML model pipeline, with a model registry acting as a repository used to store and version-trained ML models. These models can then be embedded within an application or allow other clients to query them using an API (aka model-as-a-service). "Inherent vulnerabilities are vulnerabilities that are caused by the underlying formats and processes used in the target technology," JFrog researchers said in a detailed report. Some examples of inherent vulnerabilities include abusing ML models to run code of the attacker

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an updated variant of a known stealer malware that attackers affiliated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have delivered as part of prior cyber espionage campaigns targeting job seekers. The artifact in question is an Apple macOS disk image (DMG) file named "MiroTalk.dmg" that mimics the legitimate video call service of the same name, but, in reality, serves as a conduit to deliver a native version of BeaverTail, security researcher Patrick Wardle said . BeaverTail refers to a JavaScript stealer malware that was first documented by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in November 2023 as part of a campaign dubbed Contagious Interview that aims to infect software developers with malware through a supposed job interview process. Securonix is tracking the same activity under the moniker DEV#POPPER . Besides siphoning sensitive information from web browsers and crypto wallets, the malware is capable of delivering addi

One of the enduring challenges of building modern applications is to make them more secure without disrupting high-velocity DevOps processes or degrading the developer experience. Today's cyber threat landscape is rife with sophisticated attacks aimed at all different parts of the software supply chain and the urgency for software-producing organizations to adopt DevSecOps practices that deeply integrate security throughout the software development life cycle has never been greater.  However, HOW organizations go about it is of critical importance. For example, locking down the development platform, instituting exhaustive code reviews, and enforcing heavyweight approval processes may improve the security posture of pipelines and code, but don't count on applications teams to operate fluidly enough to innovate. The same goes for application security testing; uncovering a mountain of vulnerabilities does little good if developers have inadequate time or guidance to fix them. At a high

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that it's partnering with the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Securing Software Repositories Working Group to publish a new framework to secure package repositories. Called the  Principles for Package Repository Security , the framework  aims  to establish a set of foundational rules for package managers and further harden open-source software ecosystems. "Package repositories are at a critical point in the open-source ecosystem to help prevent or mitigate such attacks," OpenSSF  said . "Even simple actions like having a documented account recovery policy can lead to robust security improvements. At the same time, capabilities must be balanced with resource constraints of package repositories, many of which are operated by non-profit organizations." Notably, the principles lay out four security maturity levels for package repositories across four categories of authenticati

Section four of the " Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity " introduced a lot of people in tech to the concept of a "Software Supply Chain" and securing it. If you make software and ever hope to sell it to one or more federal agencies, you  have  to pay attention to this. Even if you never plan to sell to a government, understanding your Software Supply Chain and learning how to secure it will pay dividends in a stronger security footing and the benefits it provides. This article will look at three ways to supercharge your  Software Supply Chain Security . What is your Software Supply Chain? It's essentially everything that goes into building a piece of software: from the IDE in which the developer writes code, to the third-party dependencies, to the build systems and scripts, to the hardware and operating system on which it runs. Instabilities and vulnerabilities can be introduced, maliciously or not, from inception to deployment and even beyond.  1: Ke

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is  urging  manufacturers to get rid of default passwords on internet-exposed systems altogether, citing severe risks that could be exploited by malicious actors to gain initial access to, and move laterally within, organizations. In an alert published last week, the agency called out Iranian threat actors affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for exploiting operational technology devices with default passwords to gain access to critical infrastructure systems in the U.S. Default passwords  refer to factory default software configurations for embedded systems, devices, and appliances that are typically publicly documented and identical among all systems within a vendor's product line. As a result, threat actors could scan for internet-exposed endpoints using tools like Shodan and attempt to breach them through default passwords, often gaining root or administrative privileges to  perform po

An unknown threat actor has been observed publishing typosquat packages to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository for nearly six months with an aim to deliver malware capable of gaining persistence, stealing sensitive data, and accessing cryptocurrency wallets for financial gain. The 27 packages, which masqueraded as popular legitimate Python libraries, attracted thousands of downloads, Checkmarx said in a new report. A majority of the downloads originated from the U.S., China, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Russia, Ireland, Singapore, the U.K., and Japan. "A defining characteristic of this attack was the utilization of steganography to hide a malicious payload within an innocent-looking image file, which increased the stealthiness of the attack," the software supply chain security firm  said . Some of the packages are pyefflorer, pyminor, pyowler, pystallerer, pystob, and pywool, the last of which was planted on May 13, 2023. A common denominator to these packages is t

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new set of malicious packages published to the NuGet package manager using a lesser-known method for malware deployment. Software supply chain security firm ReversingLabs described the campaign as coordinated and ongoing since August 1, 2023, while linking it to a  host of rogue NuGet packages  that were observed delivering a remote access trojan called SeroXen RAT . "The threat actors behind it are tenacious in their desire to plant malware into the NuGet repository, and to continuously publish new malicious packages," Karlo Zanki, reverse engineer at ReversingLabs,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The names of some of the packages are below - Pathoschild.Stardew.Mod.Build.Config KucoinExchange.Net Kraken.Exchange DiscordsRpc SolanaWallet Monero Modern.Winform.UI MinecraftPocket.Server IAmRoot ZendeskApi.Client.V2 Betalgo.Open.AI Forge.Open.AI Pathoschild.Stardew.Mod.BuildConfig CData.NetSuite.Net.

The maintainers of the official third-party software repository for Python have begun imposing a new two-factor authentication (2FA) condition for projects deemed "critical." "We've begun rolling out a 2FA requirement: soon, maintainers of critical projects must have 2FA enabled to publish, update, or modify them," Python Package Index (PyPI)  said  in a tweet last week. "Any maintainer of a critical project (both 'Maintainers' and 'Owners') are included in the 2FA requirement," it  added . Additionally, the developers of critical projects who have not previously turned on 2FA on PyPi are being offered free hardware security keys from the Google Open Source Security Team. PyPI, which is run by the Python Software Foundation, houses more than 350,000 projects, of which over  3,500 projects  are said to be tagged with a "critical" designation. According to the repository maintainers, any project accounting for the top 1%

A widespread software supply chain attack has targeted the NPM package manager at least since December 2021 with rogue modules designed to steal data entered in forms by users on websites that include them. The coordinated attack, dubbed IconBurst by ReversingLabs, involves no fewer than two dozen NPM packages that include obfuscated JavaScript, which comes with malicious code to harvest sensitive data from forms in embedded downstream mobile applications and websites. "These clearly malicious attacks relied on typo-squatting, a technique in which attackers offer up packages via public repositories with names that are similar to — or common misspellings of — legitimate packages," security researcher Karlo Zanki  said  in a Tuesday report. "Attackers impersonated high-traffic NPM modules like umbrellajs and packages published by ionic.io." The packages in question, most of which were published in the last months, have been collectively downloaded more than 27,00