Ongoing Campaign Bombards Enterprises with Spam Emails and Phone Calls

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered an ongoing social engineering campaign that bombards enterprises with spam emails with the goal of obtaining initial access to their environments for follow-on exploitation. "The incident involves a threat actor overwhelming a user's email with junk and calling the user, offering assistance," Rapid7 researchers Tyler McGraw, Thomas Elkins, and

Microsoft Outlook Flaw Exploited by Russia's APT28 to Hack Czech, German Entities

Czechia and Germany on Friday revealed that they were the target of a long-term cyber espionage campaign conducted by the Russia-linked nation-state actor known as APT28, drawing condemnation from the European Union (E.U.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the U.K., and the U.S. The Czech Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), in a statement, said some unnamed

Alert: Cybercriminals Deploying VCURMS and STRRAT Trojans via AWS and GitHub

A new phishing campaign has been observed delivering remote access trojans (RAT) such as VCURMS and STRRAT by means of a malicious Java-based downloader. “The attackers stored malware on public services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and GitHub, employing a commercial protector to avoid detection of the malware,” Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Yurren Wan said. An unusual aspect of the

A New Age of Hacktivism

In the past 2 years, we have observed a significant surge in hacktivism activity due to ongoing wars and geopolitical conflicts in various regions. Since the war against Ukraine began, we have witnessed a notable mobilization of non-state and state-backed actors alike, forming new groups or joining existing hacker collectives.  We understand hacktivism as a form of computer hacking that is

Iran and Hezbollah Hackers Launch Attacks to Influence Israel-Hamas Narrative

Hackers backed by Iran and Hezbollah staged cyber attacks designed to undercut public support for the Israel-Hamas war after October 2023. This includes destructive attacks against key Israeli organizations, hack-and-leak operations targeting entities in Israel and the U.S., phishing campaigns designed to steal intelligence, and information operations to turn public opinion against Israel. Iran

U.S. Sanctions 6 Iranian Officials for Critical Infrastructure Cyber Attacks

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against six officials associated with the Iranian intelligence agency for attacking critical infrastructure entities in the U.S. and other countries. The officials include Hamid Reza Lashgarian, Mahdi Lashgarian, Hamid Homayunfal, Milad Mansuri, Mohammad Bagher Shirinkar, and Reza Mohammad Amin

AnyDesk Hacked: Popular Remote Desktop Software Mandates Password Reset

Remote desktop software maker AnyDesk disclosed on Friday that it suffered a cyber attack that led to a compromise of its production systems. The German company said the incident, which it discovered following a security audit, is not a ransomware attack and that it has notified relevant authorities. "We have revoked all security-related certificates and systems have been remediated or replaced

Critical Cisco Flaw Lets Hackers Remotely Take Over Unified Comms Systems

Cisco has released patches to address a critical security flaw impacting Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions products that could permit an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected device. Tracked as CVE-2024-20253 (CVSS score: 9.9), the issue stems from improper processing of user-provided data that a threat actor could abuse to send a

Pro-Iranian Hacker Group Targeting Albania with No-Justice Wiper Malware

The recent wave of cyber attacks targeting Albanian organizations involved the use of a wiper called No-Justice. The findings come from cybersecurity company ClearSky, which said the Windows-based malware "crashes the operating system in a way that it cannot be rebooted." The intrusions have been attributed to an Iranian “psychological operation group” known as Homeland

BazaCall Phishing Scammers Now Leveraging Google Forms for Deception

The threat actors behind the BazaCall call back phishing attacks have been observed leveraging Google Forms to lend the scheme a veneer of credibility. The method is an "attempt to elevate the perceived authenticity of the initial malicious emails," cybersecurity firm Abnormal Security said in a report published today. BazaCall (aka BazarCall), which was first

Major Cyber Attack Paralyzes Kyivstar - Ukraine's Largest Telecom Operator

Ukraine's biggest telecom operator Kyivstar has become the victim of a "powerful hacker attack,” disrupting customer access to mobile and internet services. "The cyberattack on Ukraine's #Kyivstar telecoms operator has impacted all regions of the country with high impact to the capital, metrics show, with knock-on impacts reported to air raid alert network and banking sector as

Okta Discloses Broader Impact Linked to October 2023 Support System Breach

Identity services provider Okta has disclosed that it detected "additional threat actor activity" in connection with the October 2023 breach of its support case management system. "The threat actor downloaded the names and email addresses of all Okta customer support system users," the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "All Okta Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC) and

Vietnamese Hackers Using New Delphi-Powered Malware to Target Indian Marketers

The Vietnamese threat actors behind the Ducktail stealer malware have been linked to a new campaign that ran between March and early October 2023, targeting marketing professionals in India with an aim to hijack Facebook business accounts. "An important feature that sets it apart is that, unlike previous campaigns, which relied on .NET applications, this one used Delphi as the programming

New BiBi-Windows Wiper Targets Windows Systems in Pro-Hamas Attacks

Cybersecurity researchers have warned about a Windows version of a wiper malware that was previously observed targeting Linux systems in cyber attacks aimed at Israel. Dubbed BiBi-Windows Wiper by BlackBerry, the wiper is the Windows counterpart of BiBi-Linux Wiper, which has been put to use by a pro-Hamas hacktivist group in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war last month. "The Windows variant [...

U.S. Treasury Sanctions Russian Money Launderer in Cybercrime Crackdown

The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions against a 37-year-old Russian woman for taking part in the laundering of virtual currency for the country's elites and cybercriminal crews, including the Ryuk ransomware group. Ekaterina Zhdanova, per the department, is said to have facilitated large cross border transactions to assist Russian individuals to gain access to Western financial

Okta's Recent Customer Support Data Breach Impacted 134 Customers

Identity and authentication management provider Okta on Friday disclosed that the recent support case management system breach affected 134 of its 18,400 customers. It further noted that the unauthorized intruder gained access to its systems from September 28 to October 17, 2023, and ultimately accessed HAR files containing session tokens that could be used for session hijacking attacks. "The

1Password Detects Suspicious Activity Following Okta Support Breach

Popular password management solution 1Password said it detected suspicious activity on its Okta instance on September 29 following the support system breach, but reiterated that no user data was accessed. "We immediately terminated the activity, investigated, and found no compromise of user data or other sensitive systems, either employee-facing or user-facing," Pedro Canahuati, 1Password CTO, 

Okta's Support System Breach Exposes Customer Data to Unidentified Threat Actors

Identity services provider Okta on Friday disclosed a new security incident that allowed unidentified threat actors to leverage stolen credentials to access its support case management system. "The threat actor was able to view files uploaded by certain Okta customers as part of recent support cases," David Bradbury, Okta's chief security officer, said. "It should be noted that the Okta

Financially Motivated UNC3944 Threat Actor Shifts Focus to Ransomware Attacks

The financially motivated threat actor known as UNC3944 is pivoting to ransomware deployment as part of an expansion to its monetization strategies, Mandiant has revealed. "UNC3944 has demonstrated a stronger focus on stealing large amounts of sensitive data for extortion purposes and they appear to understand Western business practices, possibly due to the geographical composition of the group,

TikTok Faces Massive €345 Million Fine Over Child Data Violations in E.U.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped TikTok with a €345 million (about $368 million) fine for violating the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in relation to its handling of children's data. The investigation, initiated in September 2021, examined how the popular short-form video platform processed personal data relating to child users (those between the

Okta Warns of Social Engineering Attacks Targeting Super Administrator Privileges

Identity services provider Okta on Friday warned of social engineering attacks orchestrated by threat actors to obtain elevated administrator permissions. “In recent weeks, multiple U.S.-based Okta customers have reported a consistent pattern of social engineering attacks against IT service desk personnel, in which the caller’s strategy was to convince service desk personnel to reset all

"Mysterious Team Bangladesh" Targeting India with DDoS Attacks and Data Breaches

A hacktivist group known as Mysterious Team Bangladesh has been linked to over 750 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and 78 website defacements since June 2022. "The group most frequently attacks logistics, government, and financial sector organizations in India and Israel," Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity firm Group-IB said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The group is

Iranian Company Cloudzy Accused of Aiding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Hackers

Services offered by an obscure Iranian company known as Cloudzy are being leveraged by multiple threat actors, including cybercrime groups and nation-state crews. "Although Cloudzy is incorporated in the United States, it almost certainly operates out of Tehran, Iran – in possible violation of U.S. sanctions – under the direction of someone going by the name Hassan Nozari," Halcyon said in a new

A Few More Reasons Why RDP is Insecure (Surprise!)

If it seems like Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) has been around forever, it's because it has (at least compared to the many technologies that rise and fall within just a few years.) The initial version, known as "Remote Desktop Protocol 4.0," was released in 1996 as part of the Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition and allowed users to remotely access and control Windows-based computers over a