Cybercriminals Combine Phishing and EV Certificates to Deliver Ransomware Payloads

The threat actors behind RedLine and Vidar information stealers have been observed pivoting to ransomware through phishing campaigns that spread initial payloads signed with Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificates. "This suggests that the threat actors are streamlining operations by making their techniques multipurpose," Trend Micro researchers said in a new analysis published this

Critical GitHub Vulnerability Exposes 4,000+ Repositories to Repojacking Attack

A new vulnerability disclosed in GitHub could have exposed thousands of repositories at risk of repojacking attacks, new findings show. The flaw "could allow an attacker to exploit a race condition within GitHub's repository creation and username renaming operations," Checkmarx security researcher Elad Rapoport said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Successful exploitation of

New LABRAT Campaign Exploits GitLab Flaw for Cryptojacking and Proxyjacking Activities

A new, financially motivated operation dubbed LABRAT has been observed weaponizing a now-patched critical flaw in GitLab as part of a cryptojacking and proxyjacking campaign. "The attacker utilized undetected signature-based tools, sophisticated and stealthy cross-platform malware, command-and-control (C2) tools which bypassed firewalls, and kernel-based rootkits to hide their presence," Sysdig 

India Passes New Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB), Putting Users' Privacy First

The Indian President Droupadi Murmu on Friday granted assent to the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB) after it was unanimously passed by both houses of the parliament last week, marking a significant step towards securing people's information. "The Bill provides for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognizes both the rights of the individuals to protect their

Alert: Million of GitHub Repositories Likely Vulnerable to RepoJacking Attack

Millions of software repositories on GitHub are likely vulnerable to an attack called RepoJacking, a new study has revealed. This includes repositories from organizations such as Google, Lyft, and several others, Massachusetts-based cloud-native security firm Aqua said in a Wednesday report. The supply chain vulnerability, also known as dependency repository hijacking, is a class of attacks that

Fake Researcher Profiles Spread Malware through GitHub Repositories as PoC Exploits

At least half of dozen GitHub accounts from fake researchers associated with a fraudulent cybersecurity company have been observed pushing malicious repositories on the code hosting service. All seven repositories, which are still available as of writing, claim to be a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for purported zero-day flaws in Discord, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Exchange Server. VulnCheck,

Over Half of Security Leaders Lack Confidence in Protecting App Secrets, Study Reveals

It might come as a surprise, but secrets management has become the elephant in the AppSec room. While security vulnerabilities like Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) often make headlines in the cybersecurity world, secrets management remains an overlooked issue that can have immediate and impactful consequences for corporate safety.  A recent study by GitGuardian found that 75% of IT

5 Reasons Why Access Management is the Key to Securing the Modern Workplace

The way we work has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. We now operate within digital ecosystems, where remote work and the reliance on a multitude of digital tools is the norm rather than the exception. This shift – as you likely know from your own life – has led to superhuman levels of productivity that we wouldn't ever want to give up. But moving fast comes at a cost. And for

The Rising Threat of Secrets Sprawl and the Need for Action

The most precious asset in today's information age is the secret safeguarded under lock and key. Regrettably, maintaining secrets has become increasingly challenging, as highlighted by the 2023 State of Secrets Sprawl report, the largest analysis of public GitHub activity.  The report shows a 67% year-over-year increase in the number of secrets found, with 10 million hard-coded secrets detected

Privacy Sandbox Initiative: Google to Phase Out Third-Party Cookies Starting 2024

Google has announced plans to officially flip the switch on its twice-delayed Privacy Sandbox initiatives as it slowly works its way to deprecate support for third-party cookies in Chrome browser. To that end, the search and advertising giant said it intends to phase out third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users globally in the first quarter of 2024. "This will support developers in conducting

GitHub Extends Push Protection to Prevent Accidental Leaks of Keys and Other Secrets

GitHub has announced the general availability of a new security feature called push protection, which aims to prevent developers from inadvertently leaking keys and other secrets in their code. The Microsoft-owned cloud-based repository hosting platform, which began testing the feature a year ago, said it's also extending push protection to all public repositories at no extra cost. The

Western Digital Confirms Customer Data Stolen by Hackers in March Breach

Digital storage giant Western Digital confirmed that an "unauthorized third party" gained access to its systems and stole personal information belonging to the company's online store customers. "This information included customer names, billing and shipping addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers," the San Jose-based company said in a disclosure last week. "In addition, the database

Wanted Dead or Alive: Real-Time Protection Against Lateral Movement

Just a few short years ago, lateral movement was a tactic confined to top APT cybercrime organizations and nation-state operators. Today, however, it has become a commoditized tool, well within the skillset of any ransomware threat actor. This makes real-time detection and prevention of lateral movement a necessity to organizations of all sizes and across all industries. But the disturbing truth

N.K. Hackers Employ Matryoshka Doll-Style Cascading Supply Chain Attack on 3CX

The supply chain attack targeting 3CX was the result of a prior supply chain compromise associated with a different company, demonstrating a new level of sophistication with North Korean threat actors. Google-owned Mandiant, which is tracking the attack event under the moniker UNC4736, said the incident marks the first time it has seen a "software supply chain attack lead to another software

Lazarus Group Adds Linux Malware to Arsenal in Operation Dream Job

The notorious North Korea-aligned state-sponsored actor known as the Lazarus Group has been attributed to a new campaign aimed at Linux users. The attacks are part of a persistent and long-running activity tracked under the name Operation Dream Job, ESET said in a new report published today. The findings are crucial, not least because it marks the first publicly documented example of the

DFIR via XDR: How to expedite your investigations with a DFIRent approach

Rapid technological evolution requires security that is resilient, up to date and adaptable. In this article, we will cover the transformation in the field of DFIR (digital forensics and incident response) in the last couple years, focusing on the digital forensics' aspect and how XDR fits into the picture. Before we dive into the details, let's first break down the main components of DFIR and

Are Source Code Leaks the New Threat Software vendors Should Care About?

Less than a month ago, Twitter indirectly acknowledged that some of its source code had been leaked on the code-sharing platform GitHub by sending a copyright infringement notice to take down the incriminated repository. The latter is now inaccessible, but according to the media, it was accessible to the public for several months. A user going by the name FreeSpeechEnthousiast committed

Western Digital Hit by Network Security Breach - Critical Services Disrupted!

Data storage devices maker Western Digital on Monday disclosed a "network security incident" that involved unauthorized access to its systems. The breach is said to have occurred on March 26, 2023, enabling an unnamed third party to gain access to a "number of the company's systems." Following the discovery of the hack, Western Digital said it has initiated incident response efforts and enlisted

GitHub Swiftly Replaces Exposed RSA SSH Key to Protect Git Operations

Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub said it took the step of replacing its RSA SSH host key used to secure Git operations "out of an abundance of caution" after it was briefly exposed in a public repository. The activity, which was carried out at 05:00 UTC on March 24, 2023, is said to have been undertaken as a measure to prevent any bad actor from impersonating the service or

Expert-Led Webinar: Learn Proven Strategies to Secure Your Identity Perimeter

The stakes are high when it comes to cybersecurity. No longer are we dealing with unskilled hackers trying to break into corporate systems with brute force. Today, cybercriminals are using highly sophisticated methods like social engineering, spear phishing, and BEC to target users directly and log in with valid credentials. This is why the identity perimeter has become a critical battleground

Why Healthcare Can't Afford to Ignore Digital Identity

Investing in digital identity can improve security, increase clinical productivity, and boost healthcare's bottom line. — by Gus Malezis, CEO of Imprivata Digitalization has created immeasurable opportunities for businesses over the past two decades. But the growth of hybrid work and expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) has outpaced traditional 'castle and moat' cybersecurity, introducing

The Secret Vulnerability Finance Execs are Missing

The (Other) Risk in Finance A few years ago, a Washington-based real estate developer received a document link from First American – a financial services company in the real estate industry – relating to a deal he was working on. Everything about the document was perfectly fine and normal. The odd part, he told a reporter, was that if he changed a single digit in the URL, suddenly, he could see

The Pivot: How MSPs Can Turn a Challenge Into a Once-in-a-Decade Opportunity

Cybersecurity is quickly becoming one of the most significant growth drivers for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). That's the main insight from a recent study from Lumu: in North America, more than 80% of MSPs cite cybersecurity as a primary growth driver of their business. Service providers have a huge opportunity to expand their business and win new customers by developing their cybersecurity

You Don't Know Where Your Secrets Are

Do you know where your secrets are? If not, I can tell you: you are not alone. Hundreds of CISOs, CSOs, and security leaders, whether from small or large companies, don't know either. No matter the organization's size, the certifications, tools, people, and processes: secrets are not visible in 99% of cases. It might sound ridiculous at first: keeping secrets is an obvious first thought when

GitHub Breach: Hackers Stole Code-Signing Certificates for GitHub Desktop and Atom

GitHub on Monday disclosed that unknown threat actors managed to exfiltrate encrypted code signing certificates pertaining to some versions of GitHub Desktop for Mac and Atom apps. As a result, the company is taking the step of revoking the exposed certificates out of abundance of caution. The following versions of GitHub Desktop for Mac have been invalidated: 3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, 3.0.5, 3.0.6,

Git Users Urged to Update Software to Prevent Remote Code Execution Attacks

The maintainers of the Git source code version control system have released updates to remediate two critical vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a malicious actor to achieve remote code execution. The flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-23521 and CVE-2022-41903, impacts the following versions of Git: v2.30.6, v2.31.5, v2.32.4, v2.33.5, v2.34.5, v2.35.5, v2.36.3, v2.37.4, v2.38.2, and v2.39.0. <!-

Hackers Can Abuse Legitimate GitHub Codespaces Feature to Deliver Malware

New research has found that it is possible for threat actors to abuse a legitimate feature in GitHub Codespaces to deliver malware to victim systems. GitHub Codespaces is a cloud-based configurable development environment that allows users to debug, maintain, and commit changes to a given codebase from a web browser or via an integration in Visual Studio Code. It also comes with a port

Hackers Using CAPTCHA Bypass Tactics in Freejacking Campaign on GitHub

A South Africa-based threat actor known as Automated Libra has been observed employing CAPTCHA bypass techniques to create GitHub accounts in a programmatic fashion as part of a freejacking campaign dubbed PURPLEURCHIN. The group "primarily targets cloud platforms offering limited-time trials of cloud resources in order to perform their crypto mining operations," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42

Hackers Breach Okta's GitHub Repositories, Steal Source Code

Okta, a company that provides identity and access management services, disclosed on Wednesday that some of its source code repositories were accessed in an unauthorized manner earlier this month. "There is no impact to any customers, including any HIPAA, FedRAMP, or DoD customers," the company said in a public statement. "No action is required by customers." The security event, which was first

GitHub Announces Free Secret Scanning for All Public Repositories

GitHub on Thursday said it is making available its secret scanning service to all public repositories on the code hosting platform for free. "Secret scanning alerts notify you directly about leaked secrets in your code," the company said, adding it's expected to complete the rollout by the end of January 2023.  Secret scanning is designed to examine repositories for access tokens, private keys,

Experts Find URLScan Security Scanner Inadvertently Leaks Sensitive URLs and Data

Security researchers are warning of "a trove of sensitive information" leaking through urlscan.io, a website scanner for suspicious and malicious URLs. "Sensitive URLs to shared documents, password reset pages, team invites, payment invoices and more are publicly listed and searchable," Positive Security co-founder, Fabian Bräunlein, said in a report published on November 2, 2022. The

Dropbox Breach: Hackers Unauthorizedly Accessed 130 GitHub Source Code Repositories

File hosting service Dropbox on Tuesday disclosed that it was the victim of a phishing campaign that allowed unidentified threat actors to gain unauthorized access to 130 of its source code repositories on GitHub. "These repositories included our own copies of third-party libraries slightly modified for use by Dropbox, internal prototypes, and some tools and configuration files used by the

GitHub Repojacking Bug Could've Allowed Attackers to Takeover Other Users' Repositories

Cloud-based repository hosting service GitHub has addressed a high-severity security flaw that could have been exploited to create malicious repositories and mount supply chain attacks. The RepoJacking technique, disclosed by Checkmarx, entails a bypass of a protection mechanism called popular repository namespace retirement, which aims to prevent developers from pulling unsafe repositories with

New Chinese Cyberespionage Group Targeting IT Service Providers and Telcos

Telecommunications and IT service providers in the Middle East and Asia are being targeted by a previously undocumented Chinese-speaking threat group dubbed WIP19. The espionage-related attacks are characterized by the use of a stolen digital certificate issued by a Korean company called DEEPSoft to sign malicious artifacts deployed during the infection chain to evade detection. "Almost all

Researchers Detail Critical RCE Flaw Reported in Popular vm2 JavaScript Sandbox

A now-patched security flaw in the vm2 JavaScript sandbox module could be abused by a remote adversary to break out of security barriers and perform arbitrary operations on the underlying machine. "A threat actor can bypass the sandbox protections to gain remote code execution rights on the host running the sandbox," GitHub said in an advisory published on September 28, 2022. <!--adsense--> The

Hackers Using Fake CircleCI Notifications to Hack GitHub Accounts

GitHub has put out an advisory detailing what may be an ongoing phishing campaign targeting its users to steal credentials and two-factor authentication (2FA) codes by impersonating the CircleCI DevOps platform. The Microsoft-owned code hosting service said it learned of the attack on September 16, 2022, adding the campaign impacted "many victim organizations." The fraudulent messages claim to

GitLab Issues Patch for Critical Flaw in its Community and Enterprise Software

DevOps platform GitLab this week issued patches to address a critical security flaw in its software that could lead to arbitrary code execution on affected systems. Tracked as CVE-2022-2884, the issue is rated 9.9 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system and impacts all versions of GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) starting from 11.3.4 before 15.1.5, 15.2 before 15.2.3,

GitHub Dependabot Now Alerts Developers On Vulnerable GitHub Actions

Cloud-based code hosting platform GitHub has announced that it will now start sending Dependabot alerts for vulnerable GitHub Actions to help developers fix security issues in CI/CD workflows. "When a security vulnerability is reported in an action, our team of security researchers will create an advisory to document the vulnerability, which will trigger an alert to impacted repositories,"

Hackers Behind Twilio Breach Also Targeted Cloudflare Employees

Web infrastructure company Cloudflare on Tuesday disclosed at least 76 employees and their family members received text messages on their personal and work phones bearing similar characteristics as that of the sophisticated phishing attack against Twilio. The attack, which transpired around the same time Twilio was targeted, came from four phone numbers associated with T-Mobile-issued SIM cards

The Truth About False Positives in Security

TL;DR: As weird as it might sound, seeing a few false positives reported by a security scanner is probably a good sign and certainly better than seeing none. Let's explain why. Introduction False positives have made a somewhat unexpected appearance in our lives in recent years. I am, of course, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, which required massive testing campaigns in order to control the