In nearly every segment of our lives, AI (artificial intelligence) now makes a significant impact: It can deliver better healthcare diagnoses and treatments; detect and reduce the risk of financial fraud; improve inventory management; and serve up the right recommendation for a streaming movie on Friday night. However, one can also make a strong case that some of AI’s most significant impacts
Cybersecurity researchers have detected in the wild yet another variant of the Phobos ransomware family known as Faust.
Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, which detailed the latest iteration of the ransomware, said it's being propagated by means of an infection that delivers a Microsoft Excel document (.XLAM) containing a VBA script.
"The attackers utilized the Gitea service to store several files
Medieval castles stood as impregnable fortresses for centuries, thanks to their meticulous design. Fast forward to the digital age, and this medieval wisdom still echoes in cybersecurity. Like castles with strategic layouts to withstand attacks, the Defense-in-Depth strategy is the modern counterpart — a multi-layered approach with strategic redundancy and a blend of passive and active security
40-year-old Russian national Vladimir Dunaev has been sentenced to five years and four months in prison for his role in creating and distributing the TrickBot malware, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.
The development comes nearly two months after Dunaev pleaded guilty to committing computer fraud and identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.
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Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on the command-and-control (C2) server workings of a known malware family called SystemBC.
"SystemBC can be purchased on underground marketplaces and is supplied in an archive containing the implant, a command-and-control (C2) server, and a web administration portal written in PHP," Kroll said in an analysis published last week.
The risk
The 2023/2024 Axur Threat Landscape Report provides a comprehensive analysis of the latest cyber threats. The information combines data from the platform's surveillance of the Surface, Deep, and Dark Web with insights derived from the in-depth research and investigations conducted by the Threat Intelligence team.
Discover the full scope of digital threats in the Axur Report 2023/2024.
Overview
A new Go-based malware loader called CherryLoader has been discovered by threat hunters in the wild to deliver additional payloads onto compromised hosts for follow-on exploitation.
Arctic Wolf Labs, which discovered the new attack tool in two recent intrusions, said the loader's icon and name masquerades as the legitimate CherryTree note-taking application to dupe potential victims
The ransomware group known as Kasseika has become the latest to leverage the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attack to disarm security-related processes on compromised Windows hosts, joining the likes of other groups like Akira, AvosLocker, BlackByte, and RobbinHood.
The tactic allows "threat actors to terminate antivirus processes and services for the deployment of ransomware," Trend
Governments from Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. have imposed financial sanctions on a Russian national for his alleged role in the 2022 ransomware attack against health insurance provider Medibank.
Alexander Ermakov (aka blade_runner, GistaveDore, GustaveDore, or JimJones), 33, has been tied to the breach of the Medibank network as well as the theft and release of Personally Identifiable
Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "notable increase" in threat actor activity actively exploiting a now-patched flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to deliver the Godzilla web shell on compromised hosts.
"The web shells are concealed within an unknown binary format and are designed to evade security and signature-based scanners," Trustwave said. "Notably, despite the binary's unknown file
The ransomware industry surged in 2023 as it saw an alarming 55.5% increase in victims worldwide, reaching a staggering 4,368 cases.
Figure 1: Year over year victims per quarter
The rollercoaster ride from explosive growth in 2021 to a momentary dip in 2022 was just a teaser—2023 roared back with the same fervor as 2021, propelling existing groups and ushering in a wave of formidable
Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Bosch BCC100 thermostats and Rexroth NXA015S-36V-B smart nutrunners that, if successfully exploited, could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected systems.
Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender, which discovered the flaw in Bosch BCC100 thermostats last August, said the issue could be weaponized by an attacker to
The threat actors associated with the Medusa ransomware have ramped up their activities following the debut of a dedicated data leak site on the dark web in February 2023 to publish sensitive data of victims who are unwilling to agree to their demands.
“As part of their multi-extortion strategy, this group will provide victims with multiple options when their data is posted on their
Generative AI will enable anyone to launch sophisticated phishing attacks that only Next-generation MFA devices can stop
The least surprising headline from 2023 is that ransomware again set new records for a number of incidents and the damage inflicted. We saw new headlines every week, which included a who’s-who of big-name organizations. If MGM, Johnson Controls, Chlorox, Hanes Brands, Caesars
Cybersecurity researchers have identified an updated version of a macOS information stealer called Atomic (or AMOS), indicating that the threat actors behind the malware are actively enhancing its capabilities.
"It looks like Atomic Stealer was updated around mid to late December 2023, where its developers introduced payload encryption in an effort to bypass detection rules,"
A decryptor for the Tortilla variant of the Babuk ransomware has been released by Cisco Talos, allowing victims targeted by the malware to regain access to their files.
The cybersecurity firm said the threat intelligence it shared with Dutch law enforcement authorities made it possible to arrest the threat actor behind the operations.
The encryption key has also been shared with Avast,
A threat actor called Water Curupira has been observed actively distributing the PikaBot loader malware as part of spam campaigns in 2023.
“PikaBot’s operators ran phishing campaigns, targeting victims via its two components — a loader and a core module — which enabled unauthorized remote access and allowed the execution of arbitrary commands through an established connection with
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said it charged 19 individuals worldwide in connection with the now-defunct xDedic Marketplace, which is estimated to have facilitated more than $68 million in fraud.
In wrapping up its investigation into the dark web portal, the agency said the transnational operation was the result of close cooperation with law enforcement authorities from Belgium
Microsoft on Thursday said it’s once again disabling the ms-appinstaller protocol handler by default following its abuse by multiple threat actors to distribute malware.
“The observed threat actor activity abuses the current implementation of the ms-appinstaller protocol handler as an access vector for malware that may lead to ransomware distribution,” the Microsoft Threat Intelligence
The banking malware known as Carbanak has been observed being used in ransomware attacks with updated tactics.
"The malware has adapted to incorporate attack vendors and techniques to diversify its effectiveness," cybersecurity firm NCC Group said in an analysis of ransomware attacks that took place in November 2023.
"Carbanak returned last month through new
Two British teens part of the LAPSUS$ cyber crime and extortion gang have been sentenced for their roles in orchestrating a string of high-profile attacks against a number of companies.
Arion Kurtaj, an 18-year-old from Oxford, has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order due to his intent to get back to cybercrime "as soon as possible," BBC reported. Kurtaj, who is autistic, was
A new phishing campaign is leveraging decoy Microsoft Word documents as bait to deliver a backdoor written in the Nim programming language.
"Malware written in uncommon programming languages puts the security community at a disadvantage as researchers and reverse engineers' unfamiliarity can hamper their investigation," Netskope researchers Ghanashyam Satpathy and Jan Michael Alcantara 
A new piece of JavaScript malware has been observed attempting to steal users' online banking account credentials as part of a campaign that has targeted more than 40 financial institutions across the world.
The activity cluster, which employs JavaScript web injections, is estimated to have led to at least 50,000 infected user sessions spanning North America, South America, Europe, and Japan.
Ransomware groups are increasingly switching to remote encryption in their attacks, marking a new escalation in tactics adopted by financially motivated actors to ensure the success of their campaigns.
"Companies can have thousands of computers connected to their network, and with remote ransomware, all it takes is one underprotected device to compromise the entire network," Mark Loman, vice
The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) has officially announced the disruption of the BlackCat ransomware operation and released a decryption tool that more than 500 affected victims can use to regain access to files locked by the malware.
Court documents show that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enlisted the help of a confidential human source (CHS) to act as an affiliate
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on the inner workings of the ransomware operation led by Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev, a Russian national who was indicted by the U.S. government earlier this year for his alleged role in launching thousands of attacks across the world.
Matveev, who resides in Saint Petersburg and is known by the aliases Wazawaka, m1x, Boriselcin, Uhodiransomwar,
The threat actors behind the Play ransomware are estimated to have impacted approximately 300 entities as of October 2023, according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory from Australia and the U.S.
"Play ransomware actors employ a double-extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data and have impacted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure organizations in North
A new wave of phishing messages distributing the QakBot malware has been observed, more than three months after a law enforcement effort saw its infrastructure dismantled by infiltrating its command-and-control (C2) network.
Microsoft, which made the discovery, described it as a low-volume campaign that began on December 11, 2023, and targeted the hospitality industry.
"Targets
Microsoft on Wednesday said it obtained a court order to seize infrastructure set up by a group called Storm-1152 that peddled roughly 750 million fraudulent Microsoft accounts and tools through a network of bogus websites and social media pages to other criminal actors, netting the operators millions of dollars in illicit revenue.
"Fraudulent online accounts act as the gateway to a host of
Let's begin with a thought-provoking question: among a credit card number, a social security number, and an Electronic Health Record (EHR), which commands the highest price on a dark web forum?
Surprisingly, it's the EHR, and the difference is stark: according to a study, EHRs can sell for up to $1,000 each, compared to a mere $5 for a credit card number and $1 for a social
The North Korean threat actor known as Kimsuky has been observed targeting research institutes in South Korea as part of a spear-phishing campaign with the ultimate goal of distributing backdoors on compromised systems.
"The threat actor ultimately uses a backdoor to steal information and execute commands," the AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC) said in an
Ransomware attacks have become a significant and pervasive threat in the ever-evolving realm of cybersecurity. Among the various iterations of ransomware, one trend that has gained prominence is Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS). This alarming development has transformed the cybercrime landscape, enabling individuals with limited technical expertise to carry out devastating attacks.
The Russian founder of the now-defunct Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange has pleaded guilty, nearly 11 months after he was arrested in Miami earlier this year.
Anatoly Legkodymov (aka Anatolii Legkodymov, Gandalf, and Tolik), according to the U.S. Justice Department, admitted to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business that enabled other criminal actors to launder their
A previously unknown Linux remote access trojan called Krasue has been observed targeting telecom companies in Thailand by threat actors to main covert access to victim networks at lease since 2021.
Named after a nocturnal female spirit of Southeast Asian folklore, the malware is "able to conceal its own presence during the initialization phase," Group-IB said in a report
Microsoft has warned of a new wave of CACTUS ransomware attacks that leverage malvertising lures to deploy DanaBot as an initial access vector.
The DanaBot infections led to "hands-on-keyboard activity by ransomware operator Storm-0216 (Twisted Spider, UNC2198), culminating in the deployment of CACTUS ransomware," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in a series of posts on X (
A Russian national has been found guilty in connection with his role in developing and deploying a malware known as TrickBot, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced.
Vladimir Dunaev, 40, was arrested in South Korea in September 2021 and extradited to the U.S. a month later.
"Dunaev developed browser modifications and malicious tools that aided in credential harvesting and data
A CACTUS ransomware campaign has been observed exploiting recently disclosed security flaws in a cloud analytics and business intelligence platform called Qlik Sense to obtain a foothold into targeted environments.
"This campaign marks the first documented instance [...] where threat actors deploying CACTUS ransomware have exploited vulnerabilities in Qlik Sense for initial access,"
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
A variant of a ransomware strain known as DJVU has been observed to be distributed in the form of cracked software.
"While this attack pattern is not new, incidents involving a DJVU variant that appends the .xaro extension to affected files and demanding ransom for a decryptor have been observed infecting systems alongside a host of various commodity loaders and infostealers," Cybereason
A coordinated law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of key individuals in Ukraine who are alleged to be a part of several ransomware schemes.
"On 21 November, 30 properties were searched in the regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, Rivne, and Vinnytsia, resulting in the arrest of the 32-year-old ringleader," Europol said in a statement today. "Four of the ringleader's most active
Multiple threat actors, including LockBit ransomware affiliates, are actively exploiting a recently disclosed critical security flaw in Citrix NetScaler application delivery control (ADC) and Gateway appliances to obtain initial access to target environments.
The joint advisory comes from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
The ransomware strain known as Play is now being offered to other threat actors "as a service," new evidence unearthed by Adlumin has revealed.
"The unusual lack of even small variations between attacks suggests that they are being carried out by affiliates who have purchased the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) and are following step-by-step instructions from playbooks delivered with it," the
In this article, we will provide a brief overview of Silverfort's platform, the first (and currently only) unified identity protection platform on the market. Silverfort’s patented technology aims to protect organizations from identity-based attacks by integrating with existing identity and access management solutions, such as AD (Active Directory) and cloud-based services, and extending secure
The threat actors behind the 8Base ransomware are leveraging a variant of the Phobos ransomware to conduct their financially motivated attacks.
The findings come from Cisco Talos, which has recorded an increase in activity carried out by the cybercriminals.
“Most of the group’s Phobos variants are distributed by SmokeLoader, a backdoor trojan," security researcher Guilherme Venere said in an
U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have released a joint advisory about a cybercriminal group known as Scattered Spider that's known to employ sophisticated phishing tactics to infiltrate targets.
"Scattered Spider threat actors typically engage in data theft for extortion using multiple social engineering techniques and have recently leveraged BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware alongside their
The threat actors behind the Rhysida ransomware engage in opportunistic attacks targeting organizations spanning various industry sectors.
The advisory comes courtesy of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC).
"Observed as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS)
A set of novel attack methods has been demonstrated against Google Workspace and the Google Cloud Platform that could be potentially leveraged by threat actors to conduct ransomware, data exfiltration, and password recovery attacks.
"Starting from a single compromised machine, threat actors could progress in several ways: they could move to other cloned machines with GCPW installed, gain access
Russian threat actors have been possibly linked to what's been described as the "largest cyber attack against Danish critical infrastructure," in which 22 companies associated with the operation of the country's energy sector were targeted in May 2023.
"22 simultaneous, successful cyberattacks against Danish critical infrastructure are not commonplace," Denmark's SektorCERT said [PDF]. "The
Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated a new technique that exploits a critical security flaw in Apache ActiveMQ to achieve arbitrary code execution in memory.
Tracked as CVE-2023-46604 (CVSS score: 10.0), the vulnerability is a remote code execution bug that could permit a threat actor to run arbitrary shell commands.
It was patched by Apache in ActiveMQ versions 5.15.16, 5.16.7, 5.17.6,
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has given a November 17, 2023, deadline for federal agencies and organizations to apply mitigations to secure against a number of security flaws in Juniper Junos OS that came to light in August.
The agency on Monday added five vulnerabilities to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active
The threat actors behind a new ransomware group called Hunters International have acquired the source code and infrastructure from the now-dismantled Hive operation to kick-start its own efforts in the threat landscape.
"It appears that the leadership of the Hive group made the strategic decision to cease their operations and transfer their remaining assets to another group, Hunters
Cybersecurity researchers have unmasked a prolific threat actor known as farnetwork, who has been linked to five different ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) programs over the past four years in various capacities.
Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, which attempted to infiltrate a private RaaS program that uses the Nokoyawa ransomware strain, said it underwent a "job interview" process with the
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
The threat actors linked to Kinsing have been observed attempting to exploit the recently disclosed Linux privilege escalation flaw called Looney Tunables as part of a "new experimental campaign" designed to breach cloud environments.
"Intriguingly, the attacker is also broadening the horizons of their cloud-native attacks by extracting credentials from the Cloud Service Provider (CSP)," cloud
In today's digital landscape, around 60% of corporate data now resides in the cloud, with Amazon S3 standing as the backbone of data storage for many major corporations.
Despite S3 being a secure service from a reputable provider, its pivotal role in handling vast amounts of sensitive data (customer personal information, financial data, intellectual property, etc.), provides a juicy target for
Europol on Friday announced the takedown of the infrastructure associated with Ragnar Locker ransomware, alongside the arrest of a "key target" in France.
"In an action carried out between 16 and 20 October, searches were conducted in Czechia, Spain, and Latvia," the agency said. "The main perpetrator, suspected of being a developer of the Ragnar group, has been brought in front of the examining
Ransomware attacks have only increased in sophistication and capabilities over the past year. From new evasion and anti-analysis techniques to stealthier variants coded in new languages, ransomware groups have adapted their tactics to effectively bypass common defense strategies.
Cyble, a renowned cyber threat intelligence company recognized for its research and findings, recently released its
The AvosLocker ransomware gang has been linked to attacks against critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S., with some of them detected as recently as May 2023.
That's according to a new joint cybersecurity advisory released by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailing the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation's
Microsoft on Wednesday said that a user containment feature in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint helped thwart a "large-scale remote encryption attempt" made by Akira ransomware actors targeting an unknown industrial organization in early June 2023.
The tech giant's threat intelligence team is tracking the operator as Storm-1567.
The attack leveraged devices that were not onboarded to Microsoft
Despite the disruption to its infrastructure, the threat actors behind the QakBot malware have been linked to an ongoing phishing campaign since early August 2023 that led to the delivery of Ransom Knight (aka Cyclops) ransomware and Remcos RAT.
This indicates that “the law enforcement operation may not have impacted Qakbot operators’ spam delivery infrastructure but rather only their
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