When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it’s easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the
Multiple threat actors are exploiting the recently disclosed security flaws in JetBrains TeamCity software to deploy ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, Cobalt Strike beacons, and a Golang-based remote access trojan called Spark RAT.
The attacks entail the exploitation of CVE-2024-27198 (CVSS score: 9.8) that enables an adversary to bypass authentication measures and gain administrative
A new variant of a data wiping malware called AcidRain has been detected in the wild that's specifically designed for targeting Linux x86 devices.
The malware, dubbed AcidPour, is compiled for Linux x86 devices, SentinelOne's Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade said in a series of posts on X.
"The new variant [...] is an ELF binary compiled for x86 (not MIPS) and while it refers to similar devices/
Chinese users looking for legitimate software such as Notepad++ and VNote on search engines like Baidu are being targeted with malicious ads and bogus links to distribute trojanized versions of the software and ultimately deploy Geacon, a Golang-based implementation of Cobalt Strike.
“The malicious site found in the notepad++ search is distributed through an advertisement block,” Kaspersky
Fortinet has warned of a critical security flaw impacting its FortiClientEMS software that could allow attackers to achieve code execution on affected systems.
"An improper neutralization of special elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection') vulnerability [CWE-89] in FortiClientEMS may allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute unauthorized code or commands via specifically crafted
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
Microsoft on Friday revealed that the Kremlin-backed threat actor known as Midnight Blizzard (aka APT29 or Cozy Bear) managed to gain access to some of its source code repositories and internal systems following a hack that came to light in January 2024.
"In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard is using information initially exfiltrated from our
Threat actors have been observed leveraging the QEMU open-source hardware emulator as tunneling software during a cyber attack targeting an unnamed "large company" to connect to their infrastructure.
While a number of legitimate tunneling tools like Chisel, FRP, ligolo, ngrok, and Plink have been used by adversaries to their advantage, the development marks the first QEMU that has been
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical security flaw impacting JetBrains TeamCity On-Premises software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-27198 (CVSS score: 9.8), refers to an authentication bypass bug that allows for a complete
A new pair of security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in JetBrains TeamCity On-Premises software that could be exploited by a threat actor to take control of affected systems.
The flaws, tracked as CVE-2024-27198 (CVSS score: 9.8) and CVE-2024-27199 (CVSS score: 7.3), have been addressed in version 2023.11.4. They impact all TeamCity On-Premises versions through 2023.11.3.
“The
The Five Eyes (FVEY) intelligence alliance has issued a new cybersecurity advisory warning of cyber threat actors exploiting known security flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure gateways, noting that the Integrity Checker Tool (ICT) can be deceived to provide a false sense of security.
"Ivanti ICT is not sufficient to detect compromise and that a cyber threat actor may be able
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new attack technique called Silver SAML that can be successful even in cases where mitigations have been applied against Golden SAML attacks.
Silver SAML “enables the exploitation of SAML to launch attacks from an identity provider like Entra ID against applications configured to use it for authentication, such as Salesforce,” Semperis
The notorious Lazarus Group actors exploited a recently patched privilege escalation flaw in the Windows Kernel as a zero-day to obtain kernel-level access and disable security software on compromised hosts.
The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-21338 (CVSS score: 7.8), which can permit an attacker to gain SYSTEM privileges. It was resolved by Microsoft earlier this month as part
As an IT leader, staying on top of the latest cybersecurity developments is essential to keeping your organization safe. But with threats coming from all around — and hackers dreaming up new exploits every day — how do you create proactive, agile cybersecurity strategies? And what cybersecurity approach gives you the most bang for your buck, mitigating your risks and maximizing the value of your
A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed SPIKEDWINE has been observed targeting officials in European countries with Indian diplomatic missions using a new backdoor called WINELOADER.
The adversary, according to a report from Zscaler ThreatLabz, used a PDF file in emails that purported to come from the Ambassador of India, inviting diplomatic staff to a wine-tasting
The notorious North Korean state-backed hacking group Lazarus uploaded four packages to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository with the goal of infecting developer systems with malware.
The packages, now taken down, are pycryptoenv, pycryptoconf, quasarlib, and swapmempool. They have been collectively downloaded 3,269 times, with pycryptoconf accounting for the most
At least two different suspected China-linked cyber espionage clusters, tracked as UNC5325 and UNC3886, have been attributed to the exploitation of security flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure VPN appliances.
UNC5325 abused CVE-2024-21893 to deliver a wide range of new malware called LITTLELAMB.WOOLTEA, PITSTOP, PITDOG, PITJET, and PITHOOK, as well as attempted to maintain
Processing alerts quickly and efficiently is the cornerstone of a Security Operations Center (SOC) professional's role. Threat intelligence platforms can significantly enhance their ability to do so. Let's find out what these platforms are and how they can empower analysts.
The Challenge: Alert Overload
The modern SOC faces a relentless barrage of security alerts generated by SIEMs and EDRs.
Cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from the Five Eyes nations have released a joint advisory detailing the evolving tactics of the Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as APT29.
The hacking outfit, also known as BlueBravo, Cloaked Ursa, Cozy Bear, Midnight Blizzard (formerly Nobelium), and The Dukes, is assessed to be affiliated with the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the
The threat actors behind the LockBit ransomware operation have resurfaced on the dark web using new infrastructure, days after an international law enforcement exercise seized control of its servers.
To that end, the notorious group has moved its data leak portal to a new .onion address on the TOR network, listing 12 new victims as of writing.
The administrator behind LockBit, in a&
The China-linked threat actor known as Mustang Panda has targeted various Asian countries using a variant of the PlugX (aka Korplug) backdoor dubbed DOPLUGS.
"The piece of customized PlugX malware is dissimilar to the general type of the PlugX malware that contains a completed backdoor command module, and that the former is only used for downloading the latter," Trend Micro researchers Sunny Lu
In the tumultuous landscape of cybersecurity, the year 2023 left an indelible mark with the brazen exploits of the Scattered Spider threat group. Their attacks targeted the nerve centers of major financial and insurance institutions, culminating in what stands as one of the most impactful ransomware assaults in recent memory.
When organizations have no response plan in place for such an
A critical security flaw in the Bricks theme for WordPress is being actively exploited by threat actors to run arbitrary PHP code on susceptible installations.
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-25600 (CVSS score: 9.8), enables unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution. It impacts all versions of the Bricks up to and including 1.9.6.
It has been addressed by the theme developers in&
Did you know that Network Detection and Response (NDR) has become the most effective technology to detect cyber threats? In contrast to SIEM, NDR offers adaptive cybersecurity with reduced false alerts and efficient threat response.
Are you aware of Network Detection and Response (NDR) and how it’s become the most effective technology to detect cyber threats?
NDR massively
Multiple companies operating in the cryptocurrency sector are the target of an ongoing malware campaign that involves a newly discovered Apple macOS backdoor codenamed RustDoor.
RustDoor was first documented by Bitdefender last week, describing it as a Rust-based malware capable of harvesting and uploading files, as well as gathering information about the infected machines. It's
With breaches making the headlines on an almost weekly basis, the cybersecurity challenges we face are becoming visible not only to large enterprises, who have built security capabilities over the years, but also to small to medium businesses and the broader public. While this is creating greater awareness among smaller businesses of the need to improve their security posture, SMBs are often
The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla has been observed using a new backdoor called TinyTurla-NG as part of a three-month-long campaign targeting Polish non-governmental organizations in December 2023.
"TinyTurla-NG, just like TinyTurla, is a small 'last chance' backdoor that is left behind to be used when all other unauthorized access/backdoor mechanisms have failed or been
With many of the highly publicized 2023 cyber attacks revolving around one or more SaaS applications, SaaS has become a cause for genuine concern in many boardroom discussions. More so than ever, considering that GenAI applications are, in fact, SaaS applications.
Wing Security (Wing), a SaaS security company, conducted an analysis of 493 SaaS-using companies in Q4 of 2023. Their study
Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that a newly disclosed critical security flaw in Exchange Server has been actively exploited in the wild, a day after it released fixes for the vulnerability as part of its Patch Tuesday updates.
Tracked as CVE-2024-21410 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the Exchange Server.
"An attacker
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered an "implementation vulnerability" that has made it possible to reconstruct encryption keys and decrypt data locked by Rhysida ransomware.
The findings were published last week by a group of researchers from Kookmin University and the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA).
"Through a comprehensive analysis of Rhysida Ransomware, we identified an
Incident response (IR) is a race against time. You engage your internal or external team because there's enough evidence that something bad is happening, but you’re still blind to the scope, the impact, and the root cause. The common set of IR tools and practices provides IR teams with the ability to discover malicious files and outbound network connections. However, the identity aspect - namely
The operators of Raspberry Robin are now using two new one-day exploits to achieve local privilege escalation, even as the malware continues to be refined and improved to make it stealthier than before.
This means that "Raspberry Robin has access to an exploit seller or its authors develop the exploits themselves in a short period of time," Check Point said in a report this
Sixty-one banking institutions, all of them originating from Brazil, are the target of a new banking trojan called Coyote.
"This malware utilizes the Squirrel installer for distribution, leveraging Node.js and a relatively new multi-platform programming language called Nim as a loader to complete its infection," Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said in a Thursday report.
What
An unnamed Islamic non-profit organization in Saudi Arabia has been targeted as part of a stealthy cyber espionage campaign designed to drop a previously undocumented backdoor called Zardoor.
Cisco Talos, which discovered the activity in May 2023, said the campaign has likely persisted since at least March 2021, adding it has identified only one compromised target to date, although it's
The threat actors behind a loader malware called HijackLoader have added new techniques for defense evasion, as the malware continues to be increasingly used by other threat actors to deliver additional payloads and tooling.
"The malware developer used a standard process hollowing technique coupled with an additional trigger that was activated by the parent process writing to a pipe,"
JetBrains is alerting customers of a critical security flaw in its TeamCity On-Premises continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) software that could be exploited by threat actors to take over susceptible instances.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-23917, carries a CVSS rating of 9.8 out of 10, indicative of its severity.
"The vulnerability may enable an unauthenticated
A significant challenge within cyber security at present is that there are a lot of risk management platforms available in the market, but only some deal with cyber risks in a very good way. The majority will shout alerts at the customer as and when they become apparent and cause great stress in the process. The issue being that by using a reactive, rather than proactive approach, many risks
Cloudzy, a prominent cloud infrastructure provider, proudly announces a significant enhancement in its cybersecurity landscape. This breakthrough has been achieved through a recent consultation with Recorded Future, a leader in providing real-time threat intelligence and cybersecurity analytics. This initiative, coupled with an overhaul of Cloudzy's cybersecurity strategies, represents a major
Juniper Networks has released out-of-band updates to address high-severity flaws in SRX Series and EX Series that could be exploited by a threat actor to take control of susceptible systems.
The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-21619 and CVE-2024-21620, are rooted in the J-Web component and impact all versions of Junos OS. Two other shortcomings, CVE-2023-36846 and CVE-2023-
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
Microsoft on Thursday said the Russian state-sponsored threat actors responsible for a cyber attack on its systems in late November 2023 have been targeting other organizations and that it's currently beginning to notify them.
The development comes a day after Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) revealed that it had been the victim of an attack perpetrated by a hacking crew
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 U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday issued an emergency directive urging Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to implement mitigations against two actively exploited zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) and Ivanti Policy Secure (IPS) products.
The development arrives as the vulnerabilities – an authentication bypass
Microsoft on Friday revealed that it was the target of a nation-state attack on its corporate systems that resulted in the theft of emails and attachments from senior executives and other individuals in the company's cybersecurity and legal departments.
The Windows maker attributed the attack to a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard (formerly
High-profile individuals working on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. have been targeted by an Iranian cyber espionage group called Mint Sandstorm since November 2023.
The threat actor "used bespoke phishing lures in an attempt to socially engineer targets into downloading malicious files," the
As many as five different malware families were deployed by suspected nation-state actors as part of post-exploitation activities leveraging two zero-day vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) VPN appliances since early December 2023.
"These families allow the threat actors to circumvent authentication and provide backdoor access to these devices," Mandiant said in an
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,
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added six security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation.
This includes CVE-2023-27524 (CVSS score: 8.9), a high-severity vulnerability impacting the Apache Superset open-source data visualization software that could enable remote code execution.
Organizations in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) sector are in the crosshairs of an Iranian threat actor as part of a campaign designed to deliver a never-before-seen backdoor called FalseFont.
The findings come from Microsoft, which is tracking the activity under its weather-themed moniker Peach Sandstorm (formerly Holmium), which is also known as APT33, Elfin, and Refined Kitten.
"
Threat actors are increasingly making use of GitHub for malicious purposes through novel methods, including abusing secret Gists and issuing malicious commands via git commit messages.
"Malware authors occasionally place their samples in services like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Discord to host second stage malware and sidestep detection tools," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki 
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
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
Malware analysis encompasses a broad range of activities, including examining the malware's network traffic. To be effective at it, it's crucial to understand the common challenges and how to overcome them. Here are three prevalent issues you may encounter and the tools you'll need to address them.
Decrypting HTTPS traffic
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), the protocol for secure
Microsoft has warned that adversaries are using OAuth applications as an automation tool to deploy virtual machines (VMs) for cryptocurrency mining and launch phishing attacks.
"Threat actors compromise user accounts to create, modify, and grant high privileges to OAuth applications that they can misuse to hide malicious activity," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said in an
A phishing campaign has been observed delivering an information stealer malware called MrAnon Stealer to unsuspecting victims via seemingly benign booking-themed PDF lures.
"This malware is a Python-based information stealer compressed with cx-Freeze to evade detection," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said. "MrAnon Stealer steals its victims' credentials, system
Tactical and targeting overlaps have been discovered between the enigmatic advanced persistent threat (APT) called Sandman and a China-based threat cluster that's known to use a backdoor referred to as KEYPLUG.
The assessment comes jointly from SentinelOne, PwC, and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team based on the fact that the adversary's Lua-based malware LuaDream and KEYPLUG have
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 threat actor known as COLDRIVER has continued to engage in credential theft activities against entities that are of strategic interests to Russia while simultaneously improving its detection evasion capabilities.
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team is tracking under the cluster as Star Blizzard (formerly SEABORGIUM). It's also called Blue Callisto, BlueCharlie (or TAG-53),
Threat intelligence refers to gathering, processing, and analyzing cyber threats, along with proactive defensive measures aimed at strengthening security. It enables organizations to gain a comprehensive insight into historical, present, and anticipated threats, providing context about the constantly evolving threat landscape.
Importance of threat intelligence in the cybersecurity ecosystem
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