Malicious NuGet Packages Caught Distributing SeroXen RAT Malware

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.

Atlassian Warns of New Critical Confluence Vulnerability Threatening Data Loss

Atlassian has warned of a critical security flaw in Confluence Data Center and Server that could result in "significant data loss if exploited by an unauthenticated attacker."

Tracked as CVE-2023-22518, the vulnerability is rated 9.1 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scoring system. It has been described as an instance of "improper authorization vulnerability."

Trojanized PyCharm Software Version Delivered via Google Search Ads

A new malvertising campaign has been observed capitalizing on a compromised website to promote spurious versions of PyCharm on Google search results by leveraging Dynamic Search Ads.

"Unbeknownst to the site owner, one of their ads was automatically created to promote a popular program for Python developers, and visible to people doing a Google search for it," Jérôme Segura, director of threat intelligence at Malwarebytes, said in a report.

Canada Bans WeChat and Kaspersky Apps On Government Devices

Canada on Monday announced a ban on the use of apps from Tencent and Kaspersky on government mobile devices, citing an "unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security."

"The Government of Canada is committed to keeping government information and networks secure," the Canadian government said. "We regularly monitor potential threats and take immediate action to address risks."

Meta Launches Paid Ad-Free Subscription in Europe to Satisfy Privacy Laws

Meta on Monday announced plans to offer an ad-free option to access Facebook and Instagram for users in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland to comply with "evolving" data protection regulations in the region.

The ad-free subscription, which costs €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android, is expected to be officially available starting next month. The company's proposal for a subscription version of its service was first reported by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month.

Pro-Hamas Hacktivists Targeting Israeli Entities with Wiper Malware

A pro-Hamas hacktivist group has been observed using a new Linux-based wiper malware dubbed BiBi-Linux Wiper, targeting Israeli entities amidst the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war.

"This malware is an x64 ELF executable, lacking obfuscation or protective measures," Security Joes said in a new report published today. "It allows attackers to specify target folders and can potentially destroy an entire operating system if run with root permissions."

EleKtra-Leak Cryptojacking Attacks Exploit AWS IAM Credentials Exposed on GitHub

A new ongoing campaign dubbed EleKtra-Leak has set its eyes on exposed Amazon Web Service (AWS) identity and access management (IAM) credentials within public GitHub repositories to facilitate cryptojacking activities. "As a result of this, the threat actor associated with the campaign was able to create multiple AWS Elastic Compute (EC2) instances that they used for wide-ranging and long-lasting cryptojacking operations," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News.

Urgent: New Security Flaws Discovered in NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes

Three unpatched high-severity security flaws have been disclosed in the NGINX Ingress controller for Kubernetes that could be weaponized by a threat actor to steal secret credentials from the cluster.

The vulnerabilities are as follows -

Hackers Using MSIX App Packages to Infect Windows PCs with GHOSTPULSE Malware

A new cyber attack campaign has been observed using spurious MSIX Windows app package files for popular software such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Grammarly, and Cisco Webex to distribute a novel malware loader dubbed GHOSTPULSE.

"MSIX is a Windows app package format that developers can leverage to package, distribute, and install their applications to Windows users," Elastic Security Labs researcher Joe Desimone said in a technical report published last week.

Researchers Uncover Wiretapping of XMPP-Based Instant Messaging Service

New findings have shed light on what's said to be a lawful attempt to covertly intercept traffic originating from jabber[.]ru (aka xmpp[.]ru), an XMPP-based instant messaging service, via servers hosted on Hetzner and Linode (a subsidiary of Akamai) in Germany.

"The attacker has issued several new TLS certificates using Let's Encrypt service which were used to hijack encrypted STARTTLS connections on port 5222 using transparent [man-in-the-middle] proxy," a security researcher who goes by the alias ValdikSS said earlier this week.

N. Korean Lazarus Group Targets Software Vendor Using Known Flaws

The North Korea-aligned Lazarus Group has been attributed as behind a new campaign in which an unnamed software vendor was compromised through the exploitation of known security flaws in another high-profile software.

The attack sequences, according to Kaspersky, culminated in the deployment of malware families such as SIGNBT and LPEClient, a known hacking tool used by the threat actor for victim profiling and payload delivery.

Google Expands Its Bug Bounty Program to Tackle Artificial Intelligence Threats

Google has announced that it's expanding its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) to compensate researchers for finding attack scenarios tailored to generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems in an effort to bolster AI safety and security.

"Generative AI raises new and different concerns than traditional digital security, such as the potential for unfair bias, model manipulation or misinterpretations of data (hallucinations)," Google's Laurie Richardson and Royal Hansen said.

F5 Issues Warning: BIG-IP Vulnerability Allows Remote Code Execution

F5 has alerted customers of a critical security vulnerability impacting BIG-IP that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution.

The issue, rooted in the configuration utility component, has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2023-46747, and carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.

iLeakage: New Safari Exploit Impacts Apple iPhones and Macs with A- and M-Series CPUs

A group of academics has devised a novel side-channel attack dubbed iLeakage that exploits a weakness in the A- and M-series CPUs running on Apple iOS, iPadOS, and macOS devices, enabling the extraction of sensitive information from the Safari web browser.

"An attacker can induce Safari to render an arbitrary webpage, subsequently recovering sensitive information present within it using speculative execution," researchers Jason Kim, Stephan van Schaik, Daniel Genkin, and Yuval Yarom said in a new study.

Microsoft Warns as Scattered Spider Expands from SIM Swaps to Ransomware

The prolific threat actor known as Scattered Spider has been observed impersonating newly hired employees in targeted firms as a ploy to blend into normal on-hire processes and takeover accounts and breach organizations across the world.

Microsoft, which disclosed the activities of the financially motivated hacking crew, described the adversary as "one of the most dangerous financial criminal groups," calling out its operational fluidity and its ability to incorporate SMS phishing, SIM swapping, and help desk fraud into its attack model.

Record-Breaking 100 Million RPS DDoS Attack Exploits HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Flaw

Cloudflare on Thursday said it mitigated thousands of hyper-volumetric HTTP distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that exploited a recently disclosed flaw called HTTP/2 Rapid Reset, 89 of which exceeded 100 million requests per second (RPS).

"The campaign contributed to an overall increase of 65% in HTTP DDoS attack traffic in Q3 compared to the previous quarter," the web infrastructure and security company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Similarly, L3/4 DDoS attacks also increased by 14%."

Iranian Group Tortoiseshell Launches New Wave of IMAPLoader Malware Attacks

The Iranian threat actor known as Tortoiseshell has been attributed to a new wave of watering hole attacks that are designed to deploy a malware dubbed IMAPLoader.

"IMAPLoader is a .NET malware that has the ability to fingerprint victim systems using native Windows utilities and acts as a downloader for further payloads," the PwC Threat Intelligence said in a Wednesday analysis.

Critical Flaw in NextGen's Mirth Connect Could Expose Healthcare Data

Users of Mirth Connect, an open-source data integration platform from NextGen HealthCare, are being urged to update to the latest version following the discovery of an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability.

Tracked as CVE-2023-43208, the vulnerability has been addressed in version 4.4.1 released on October 6, 2023.

YoroTrooper: Researchers Warn of Kazakhstan's Stealthy Cyber Espionage Group

A relatively new threat actor known as YoroTrooper is likely made of operators originating from Kazakhstan.

The assessment, which comes from Cisco Talos, is based on their fluency in Kazakh and Russian, use of Tenge to pay for operating infrastructure, and very limited targeting of Kazakhstani entities, barring the government's Anti-Corruption Agency.

Nation State Hackers Exploiting Zero-Day in Roundcube Webmail Software

The threat actor known as Winter Vivern has been observed exploiting a zero-day flaw in Roundcube webmail software on October 11, 2023, to harvest email messages from victims' accounts.

"Winter Vivern has stepped up its operations by using a zero-day vulnerability in Roundcube," ESET security researcher Matthieu Faou said in a new report published today. Previously, it was using known vulnerabilities in Roundcube and Zimbra, for which proofs-of-concept are available online."

Critical OAuth Flaws Uncovered in Grammarly, Vidio, and Bukalapak Platforms

Critical security flaws have been disclosed in the Open Authorization (OAuth) implementation of popular online services such as Grammarly, Vidio, and Bukalapak, building upon previous shortcomings uncovered in Booking[.]com and Expo.

The weaknesses, now addressed by the respective companies following responsible disclosure between February and April 2023, could have allowed malicious actors to obtain access tokens and potentially hijack user accounts.

Act Now: VMware Releases Patch for Critical vCenter Server RCE Vulnerability

VMware has released security updates to address a critical flaw in the vCenter Server that could result in remote code execution on affected systems.

The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-34048 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the implementation of the DCE/RPC protocol.

Malvertising Campaign Targets Brazil's PIX Payment System with GoPIX Malware

The popularity of Brazil's PIX instant payment system has made it a lucrative target for threat actors looking to generate illicit profits using a new malware called GoPIX.

Kaspersky, which has been tracking the active campaign since December 2022, said the attacks are pulled off using malicious ads that are served when potential victims search for "WhatsApp web" on search engines.

Alert: PoC Exploits Released for Citrix and VMware Vulnerabilities

Virtualization services provider VMware has alerted customers to the existence of a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a recently patched security flaw in Aria Operations for Logs.

Tracked as CVE-2023-34051 (CVSS score: 8.1), the high-severity vulnerability relates to a case of authentication bypass that could lead to remote code execution.

Ex-NSA Employee Pleads Guilty to Leaking Classified Data to Russia

A former employee of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has pleaded guilty to charges accusing him of attempting to transmit classified defense information to Russia.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 31, served as an Information Systems Security Designer for the NSA from June 6, 2022, to July 1, 2022, where he had Top Secret clearance to access sensitive documents. The latest development comes more than a year after his arrest.

34 Cybercriminals Arrested in Spain for Multi-Million Dollar Online Scams

Spanish law enforcement officials have announced the arrest of 34 members of a criminal group that carried out various online scams, netting the gang about €3 million ($3.2 million) in illegal profits.

Authorities conducted searches across 16 locations Madrid, Malaga, Huelva, Alicante, and Murcia, seizing two simulated firearms, a katana sword, a baseball bat, €80,000 in cash, four high-end vehicles, and computer and electronic material worth thousands of euros.

Operation Triangulation: Experts Uncover Deeper Insights into iOS Zero-Day Attacks

The TriangleDB implant used to target Apple iOS devices packs in at least four different modules to record microphone, extract iCloud Keychain, steal data from SQLite databases used by various apps, and estimate the victim's location.

The findings come from Kaspersky, which detailed the great lengths the adversary behind the campaign, dubbed Operation Triangulation, went to conceal and cover up its tracks while clandestinely hoovering sensitive information from the compromised devices.

Backdoor Implant on Hacked Cisco Devices Modified to Evade Detection

The backdoor implanted on Cisco devices by exploiting a pair of zero-day flaws in IOS XE software has been modified by the threat actor so as to escape visibility via previous fingerprinting methods.

"Investigated network traffic to a compromised device has shown that the threat actor has upgraded the implant to do an extra header check," NCC Group's Fox-IT team said. "Thus, for a lot of devices, the implant is still active, but now only responds if the correct Authorization HTTP header is set."

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, said in a Monday notice.

DoNot Team's New Firebird Backdoor Hits Pakistan and Afghanistan

The threat actor known as DoNot Team has been linked to the use of a novel .NET-based backdoor called Firebird targeting a handful of victims in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which disclosed the findings in its APT trends report Q3 2023, said the attack chains are also configured to deliver a downloader named CSVtyrei, so named for its resemblance to Vtyrei.

Quasar RAT Leverages DLL Side-Loading to Fly Under the Radar

The open-source remote access trojan known as Quasar RAT has been observed leveraging DLL side-loading to fly under the radar and stealthily siphon data from compromised Windows hosts.

"This technique capitalizes on the inherent trust these files command within the Windows environment," Uptycs researchers Tejaswini Sandapolla and Karthickkumar Kathiresan said in a report published last week, detailing the malware's reliance on ctfmon.exe and calc.exe as part of the attack chain.

Europol Dismantles Ragnar Locker Ransomware Infrastructure, Nabs Key Developer

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 magistrates of the Paris Judicial Court."

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 support case management system is separate from the production Okta service, which is fully operational and has not been impacted."

Cisco Zero-Day Exploited to Implant Malicious Lua Backdoor on Thousands of Devices

Cisco has warned of a new zero-day flaw in IOS XE that has been actively exploited by an unknown threat actor to deploy a malicious Lua-based implant on susceptible devices.

Tracked as CVE-2023-20273 (CVSS score: 7.2), the issue relates to a privilege escalation flaw in the web UI feature and is said to have been used alongside CVE-2023-20198 as part of an exploit chain.

Malvertisers Using Google Ads to Target Users Searching for Popular Software

Details have emerged about a malvertising campaign that leverages Google Ads to direct users searching for popular software to fictitious landing pages and distribute next-stage payloads.

Malwarebytes, which discovered the activity, said it's "unique in its way to fingerprint users and distribute time sensitive payloads."

Vietnamese Hackers Target U.K., U.S., and India with DarkGate Malware

Attacks leveraging the DarkGate commodity malware targeting entities in the U.K., the U.S., and India have been linked to Vietnamese actors associated with the use of the infamous Ducktail stealer.

"The overlap of tools and campaigns is very likely due to the effects of a cybercrime marketplace," WithSecure said in a report published today. "Threat actors are able to acquire and use multiple different tools for the same purpose, and all they have to do is come up with targets, campaigns, and lures."

ExelaStealer: A New Low-Cost Cybercrime Weapon Emerges

A new information stealer named ExelaStealer has become the latest entrant to an already crowded landscape filled with various off-the-shelf malware designed to capture sensitive data from compromised Windows systems.

"ExelaStealer is a largely open-source infostealer with paid customizations available from the threat actor," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher James Slaughter said in a technical report.

U.S. DoJ Cracks Down on North Korean IT Scammers Defrauding Global Businesses

The U.S. government has announced the seizure of 17 website domains used by North Korean information technology (IT) workers as part of an illicit scheme to defraud businesses across the world, evade sanctions, and fund the country's ballistic missile program.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) said the U.S. confiscated approximately $1.5 million of the revenue that these IT workers collected from unwitting victims using the deceptive scheme in October 2022 and January 2023. It also called out North Korea for flooding the "global marketplace with ill-intentioned information technology workers."

Sophisticated MATA Framework Strikes Eastern European Oil and Gas Companies

An updated version of a sophisticated backdoor framework called MATA has been used in attacks aimed at over a dozen Eastern European companies in the oil and gas sector and defense industry as part of a cyber espionage operation that took place between August 2022 and May 2023.

"The actors behind the attack used spear-phishing mails to target several victims, some were infected with Windows executable malware by downloading files through an internet browser," Kaspersky said in a new exhaustive report published this week.

Google Play Protect Introduces Real-Time Code-Level Scanning for Android Malware

Google has announced an update to its Play Protect with support for real-time scanning at the code level to tackle novel malicious apps prior to downloading and installing them on Android devices.

"Google Play Protect will now recommend a real-time app scan when installing apps that have never been scanned before to help detect emerging threats," the tech giant said.

Iran-Linked OilRig Targets Middle East Governments in 8-Month Cyber Campaign

The Iran-linked OilRig threat actor targeted an unnamed Middle East government between February and September 2023 as part of an eight-month-long campaign.

The attack led to the theft of files and passwords and, in one instance, resulted in the deployment of a PowerShell backdoor called PowerExchange, the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

Microsoft Warns of North Korean Attacks Exploiting JetBrains TeamCity Flaw

North Korean threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in JetBrains TeamCity to opportunistically breach vulnerable servers, according to Microsoft.

The attacks, which entail the exploitation of CVE-2023-42793 (CVSS score: 9.8), have been attributed to Diamond Sleet (aka Labyrinth Chollima) and Onyx Sleet (aka Andariel or Silent Chollima).

Google TAG Detects State-Backed Threat Actors Exploiting WinRAR Flaw

A number of state-back threat actors from Russia and China have been observed exploiting a recent security flaw in the WinRAR archiver tool for Windows as part of their operations.

The vulnerability in question is CVE-2023-38831 (CVSS score: 7.8), which allows attackers to execute arbitrary code when a user attempts to view a benign file within a ZIP archive. The shortcoming has been actively exploited since at least April 2023.

Lazarus Group Targeting Defense Experts with Fake Interviews via Trojanized VNC Apps

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group (aka Hidden Cobra or TEMP.Hermit) has been observed using trojanized versions of Virtual Network Computing (VNC) apps as lures to target the defense industry and nuclear engineers as part of a long-running campaign known as Operation Dream Job.

"The threat actor tricks job seekers on social media into opening malicious apps for fake job interviews," Kaspersky said in its APT trends report for Q3 2023.

Critical Citrix NetScaler Flaw Exploited to Target from Government, Tech Firms

Citrix is warning of exploitation of a recently disclosed critical security flaw in NetScaler ADC and Gateway appliances that could result in exposure of sensitive information.

Tracked as CVE-2023-4966 (CVSS score: 9.4), the vulnerability impacts the following supported versions

Qubitstrike Targets Jupyter Notebooks with Crypto Mining and Rootkit Campaign

A threat actor, presumably from Tunisia, has been linked to a new campaign targeting exposed Jupyter Notebooks in a two-fold attempt to illicitly mine cryptocurrency and breach cloud environments.

Dubbed Qubitstrike by Cado, the intrusion set utilizes Telegram API to exfiltrate cloud service provider credentials following a successful compromise.

TetrisPhantom: Cyber Espionage via Secure USBs Targets APAC Governments

Government entities in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are the target of a long-running cyber espionage campaign dubbed TetrisPhantom.

"The attacker covertly spied on and harvested sensitive data from APAC government entities by exploiting a particular type of secure USB drive, protected by hardware encryption to ensure the secure storage and transfer of data between computer systems," Kaspersky said in its APT trends report for Q3 2023.

New Admin Takeover Vulnerability Exposed in Synology's DiskStation Manager

A medium-severity flaw has been discovered in Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) that could be exploited to decipher an administrator's password and remotely hijack the account.

"Under some rare conditions, an attacker could leak enough information to restore the seed of the pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), reconstruct the admin password, and remotely take over the admin account," Claroty's Sharon Brizinov said in a Tuesday report.

D-Link Confirms Data Breach: Employee Falls Victim to Phishing Attack

Taiwanese networking equipment manufacturer D-Link has confirmed a data breach that led to the exposure of what it said is "low-sensitivity and semi-public information."

"The data was confirmed not from the cloud but likely originated from an old D-View 6 system, which reached its end of life as early as 2015," the company said.

Discord: A Playground for Nation-State Hackers Targeting Critical Infrastructure

In what's the latest evolution of threat actors abusing legitimate infrastructure for nefarious ends, new findings show that nation-state hacking groups have entered the fray in leveraging the social platform for targeting critical infrastructure.

Discord, in recent years, has become a lucrative target, acting as a fertile ground for hosting malware using its content delivery network (CDN) as well as allowing information stealers to siphon sensitive data off the app and facilitating data exfiltration by means of webhooks.

Critical Vulnerabilities Uncovered in Open Source CasaOS Cloud Software

Two critical security flaws discovered in the open-source CasaOS personal cloud software could be successfully exploited by attackers to achieve arbitrary code execution and take over susceptible systems.

The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2023-37265 and CVE-2023-37266, both carry a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.

Experts Warn of Severe Flaws Affecting Milesight Routers and Titan SFTP Servers

A severity flaw impacting industrial cellular routers from Milesight may have been actively exploited in real-world attacks, new findings from VulnCheck reveal.

Tracked as CVE-2023-43261 (CVSS score: 7.5), the vulnerability has been described as a case of information disclosure that affects UR5X, UR32L, UR32, UR35, and UR41 routers before version 35.3.0.7 that could enable attackers to access logs such as httpd.log as well as other sensitive credentials.

CERT-UA Reports: 11 Ukrainian Telecom Providers Hit by Cyberattacks

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has revealed that threat actors "interfered" with at least 11 telecommunication service providers in the country between May and September 2023.

The agency is tracking the activity under the name UAC-0165, stating the intrusions led to service interruptions for customers.

Warning: Unpatched Cisco Zero-Day Vulnerability Actively Targeted in the Wild

Cisco has warned of a critical, unpatched security flaw impacting IOS XE software that's under active exploitation in the wild.

Rooted in the web UI feature, the zero-day vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-20198 and has been assigned the maximum severity rating of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system.

Pro-Russian Hackers Exploiting Recent WinRAR Vulnerability in New Campaign

Pro-Russian hacking groups have exploited a recently disclosed security vulnerability in the WinRAR archiving utility as part of a phishing campaign designed to harvest credentials from compromised systems.

"The attack involves the use of malicious archive files that exploit the recently discovered vulnerability affecting the WinRAR compression software versions prior to 6.23 and traced as CVE-2023-38831," Cluster25 said in a report published last week.

SpyNote: Beware of This Android Trojan that Records Audio and Phone Calls

The Android banking trojan known as SpyNote has been dissected to reveal its diverse information-gathering features.

Typically spread via SMS phishing campaigns, attack chains involving the spyware trick potential victims into installing the app by clicking on the embedded link, according to F-Secure.

Signal Debunks Zero-Day Vulnerability Reports, Finds No Evidence

Encrypted messaging app Signal has pushed back against "viral reports" of an alleged zero-day flaw in its software, stating it found no evidence to support the claim.

"After responsible investigation *we have no evidence that suggests this vulnerability is real* nor has any additional info been shared via our official reporting channels," it said in a series of messages posted in X (formerly Twitter).

Binance's Smart Chain Exploited in New 'EtherHiding' Malware Campaign

Threat actors have been observed serving malicious code by utilizing Binance's Smart Chain (BSC) contracts in what has been described as the "next level of bulletproof hosting."

The campaign, detected two months ago, has been codenamed EtherHiding by Guardio Labs.

Microsoft to Phase Out NTLM in Favor of Kerberos for Stronger Authentication

Microsoft has announced that it plans to eliminate NT LAN Manager (NTLM) in Windows 11 in the future, as it pivots to alternative methods for authentication and bolster security.

"The focus is on strengthening the Kerberos authentication protocol, which has been the default since 2000, and reducing reliance on NT LAN Manager (NTLM)," the tech giant said. "New features for Windows 11 include Initial and Pass Through Authentication Using Kerberos (IAKerb) and a local Key Distribution Center (KDC) for Kerberos."

New PEAPOD Cyberattack Campaign Targeting Women Political Leaders

European Union military personnel and political leaders working on gender equality initiatives have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an updated version of RomCom RAT called PEAPOD.

Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the name Void Rabisu, which is also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, and UNC2596, and is also believed to be associated with Cuba ransomware.

Researchers Unveil ToddyCat's New Set of Tools for Data Exfiltration

The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as ToddyCat has been linked to a new set of malicious tools that are designed for data exfiltration, offering a deeper insight into the hacking crew's tactics and capabilities.

The findings come from Kaspersky, which first shed light on the adversary last year, linking it to attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia for nearly three years.

DarkGate Malware Spreading via Messaging Services Posing as PDF Files

A piece of malware known as DarkGate has been observed being spread via instant messaging platforms such as Skype and Microsoft Teams.

In these attacks, the messaging apps are used to deliver a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) loader script that masquerades as a PDF document, which, when opened, triggers the download and execution of an AutoIt script designed to launch the malware.

FBI, CISA Warn of Rising AvosLocker Ransomware Attacks Against Critical Infrastructure

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 tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

Malicious NuGet Package Targeting .NET Developers with SeroXen RAT

A malicious package hosted on the NuGet package manager for the .NET Framework has been found to deliver a remote access trojan called SeroXen RAT.

The package, named Pathoschild.Stardew.Mod.Build.Config and published by a user named Disti, is a typosquat of a legitimate package called Pathoschild.Stardew.ModBuildConfig, software supply chain security firm Phylum said in a report today.

ShellBot Uses Hex IPs to Evade Detection in Attacks on Linux SSH Servers

The threat actors behind ShellBot are leveraging IP addresses transformed into its hexadecimal notation to infiltrate poorly managed Linux SSH servers and deploy the DDoS malware.

"The overall flow remains the same, but the download URL used by the threat actor to install ShellBot has changed from a regular IP address to a hexadecimal value," the AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC) said in a new report published today.

Microsoft Defender Thwarts Large-Scale Akira Ransomware Attack

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.

Researchers Uncover Malware Posing as WordPress Caching Plugin

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new sophisticated strain of malware that masquerades a WordPress plugin to stealthily create administrator accounts and remotely control a compromised site.

"Complete with a professional looking opening comment implying it is a caching plugin, this rogue code contains numerous functions, adds filters to prevent itself from being included in the list of activated plugins, and has pinging functionality that allows a malicious actor to check if the script is still operational, as well as file modification capabilities," Wordfence said.

Researchers Uncover Ongoing Attacks Targeting Asian Governments and Telecom Giants

High-profile government and telecom entities in Asia have been targeted as part of an ongoing campaign since 2021 that's designed to deploy basic backdoors and loaders for delivering next-stage malware.

Cybersecurity company Check Point is tracking the activity under the name Stayin' Alive. Targets include organizations located in Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan.

Two High-Risk Security Flaws Discovered in Curl Library - New Patches Released

Patches have been released for two security flaws impacting the Curl data transfer library, the most severe of which could potentially result in code execution.

Over 17,000 WordPress Sites Compromised by Balada Injector in September 2023

More than 17,000 WordPress websites have been compromised in the month of September 2023 with a malware known as Balada Injector, nearly twice the number of detections in August.

Of these, 9,000 of the websites are said to have been infiltrated using a recently disclosed security flaw in the tagDiv Composer plugin (CVE-2023-3169, CVSS score: 6.1) that could be exploited by unauthenticated users to perform stored cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

CISA Warns of Actively Exploited Adobe Acrobat Reader Vulnerability

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a high-severity flaw in Adobe Acrobat Reader to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation.

Tracked as CVE-2023-21608 (CVSS score: 7.8), the vulnerability has been described as a use-after-free bug that can be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE) with the privileges of the current user.

Microsoft Releases October 2023 Patches for 103 Flaws, Including 2 Active Exploits

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for October 2023, addressing a total of 103 flaws in its software, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild.

Of the 103 flaws, 13 are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. This is apart from 18 security vulnerabilities addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the second Tuesday of September.

Microsoft Warns of Nation-State Hackers Exploiting Critical Atlassian Confluence Vulnerability

Microsoft has linked the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server to a nation-state actor it tracks as Storm-0062 (aka DarkShadow or Oro0lxy).

The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the vulnerability since September 14, 2023.

HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Zero-Day Vulnerability Exploited to Launch Record DDoS Attacks

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloudflare, and Google on Tuesday said they took steps to mitigate record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that relied on a novel technique called HTTP/2 Rapid Reset.

The layer 7 attacks were detected in late August 2023, the companies said in a coordinated disclosure. The cumulative susceptibility to this attack is being tracked as CVE-2023-44487, and carries a CVSS score of 7.5 out of a maximum of 10.

Google Adopts Passkeys as Default Sign-in Method for All Users

Google on Tuesday announced the ability for all users to set up passkeys by default, five months after it rolled out support for the FIDO Alliance-backed passwordless standard for Google Accounts on all platforms.

"This means the next time you sign in to your account, you'll start seeing prompts to create and use passkeys, simplifying your future sign-ins," Google's Sriram Karra and Christiaan Brand said.

Researchers Uncover Grayling APT's Ongoing Attack Campaign Across Industries

A previously undocumented threat actor of unknown provenance has been linked to a number of attacks targeting organizations in the manufacturing, IT, and biomedical sectors in Taiwan.

The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, attributed the attacks to an advanced persistent threat (APT) it tracks under the name Grayling. Evidence shows that the campaign began in February 2023 and continued until at least May 2023.

New Magecart Campaign Alters 404 Error Pages to Steal Shoppers' Credit Cards

A sophisticated Magecart campaign has been observed manipulating websites' default 404 error page to conceal malicious code in what's been described as the latest evolution of the attacks.

The activity, per Akamai, targets Magento and WooCommerce websites, with some of the victims belonging to large organizations in the food and retail industries.

libcue Library Flaw Opens GNOME Linux Systems Vulnerable to RCE Attacks

A new security flaw has been disclosed in the libcue library impacting GNOME Linux systems that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on affected hosts.

Tracked as CVE-2023-43641 (CVSS score: 8.8), the issue is described as a case of memory corruption in libcue, a library designed for parsing cue sheet files. It impacts versions 2.2.1 and prior.

Citrix Devices Under Attack: NetScaler Flaw Exploited to Capture User Credentials

A recently disclosed critical flaw in Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway devices is being exploited by threat actors to conduct a credential harvesting campaign.

IBM X-Force, which uncovered the activity last month, said adversaries exploited "CVE-2023-3519 to attack unpatched NetScaler Gateways to insert a malicious script into the HTML content of the authentication web page to capture user credentials."

PEACHPIT: Massive Ad Fraud Botnet Powered by Millions of Hacked Android and iOS

An ad fraud botnet dubbed PEACHPIT leveraged an army of hundreds of thousands of Android and iOS devices to generate illicit profits for the threat actors behind the scheme.

The botnet is part of a larger China-based operation codenamed BADBOX, which also entails selling off-brand mobile and connected TV (CTV) devices on popular online retailers and resale sites that are backdoored with an Android malware strain called Triada.

Cybercriminals Using EvilProxy Phishing Kit to Target Senior Executives in U.S. Firms

Senior executives working in U.S.-based organizations are being targeted by a new phishing campaign that leverages a popular adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing toolkit named EvilProxy to conduct credential harvesting and account takeover attacks.

Menlo Security said the activity started in July 2023, primarily singling out banking and financial services, insurance, property management and real estate, and manufacturing sectors.

High-Severity Flaws in ConnectedIO's 3G/4G Routers Raise Concerns for IoT Security

Multiple high-severity security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in ConnectedIO's ER2000 edge routers and the cloud-based management platform that could be exploited by malicious actors to execute malicious code and access sensitive data.

"An attacker could have leveraged these flaws to fully compromise the cloud infrastructure, remotely execute code, and leak all customer and device information," Claroty's Noam Moshe said in an analysis published last week.

Security Patch for Two New Flaws in Curl Library Arriving on October 11

The maintainers of the Curl library have released an advisory warning of two forthcoming security vulnerabilities that are expected to be addressed as part of updates released on October 11, 2023.

This includes a high severity and a low-severity flaw tracked under the identifiers CVE-2023-38545 and CVE-2023-38546, respectively.

Gaza-Linked Cyber Threat Actor Targets Israeli Energy and Defense Sectors

A Gaza-based threat actor has been linked to a series of cyber attacks aimed at Israeli private-sector energy, defense, and telecommunications organizations.

Microsoft, which revealed details of the activity in its fourth annual Digital Defense Report, is tracking the campaign under the name Storm-1133.

North Korea's Lazarus Group Launders $900 Million in Cryptocurrency

As much as $7 billion in cryptocurrency has been illicitly laundered through cross-chain crime, with the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group linked to the theft of roughly $900 million of those proceeds between July 2022 and July of this year.

"As traditional entities such as mixers continue to be subject to seizures and sanctions scrutiny, the crypto crime displacement to chain- or asset-hopping typologies is also on the rise," blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said in a new report published this week.

Chinese Hackers Target Semiconductor Firms in East Asia with Cobalt Strike

Threat actors have been observed targeting semiconductor companies in East Asia with lures masquerading as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) that are designed to deliver Cobalt Strike beacons.

The intrusion set, per EclecticIQ, leverages a backdoor called HyperBro, which is then used as a conduit to deploy the commercial attack simulation software and post-exploitation toolkit.

GitHub's Secret Scanning Feature Now Covers AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Slack

GitHub has announced an improvement to its secret scanning feature that extends validity checks to popular services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Slack.

Validity checks, introduced by the Microsoft subsidiary earlier this year, alert users whether exposed tokens found by secret scanning are active, thereby allowing for effective remediation measures. It was first enabled for GitHub tokens.

The cloud-based code hosting and version control service said it intends to support more tokens in the future.

Supermicro's BMC Firmware Found Vulnerable to Multiple Critical Vulnerabilities

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) firmware for Supermicro baseboard management controllers (BMCs) that could result in privilege escalation and execution of malicious code on affected systems.

The seven flaws, tracked from CVE-2023-40284 through CVE-2023-40290, vary in severity from High to Critical, according to Binarly, enabling unauthenticated actors to gain root access to the BMC system. Supermicro has shipped a BMC firmware update to patch the bugs.

QakBot Threat Actors Still in Action, Using Ransom Knight and Remcos RAT in Latest Attacks

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 command-and-control (C2) servers," Cisco Talos researcher Guilherme Venere said in a new report published today.

Cisco Releases Urgent Patch to Fix Critical Flaw in Emergency Responder Systems

Cisco has released updates to address a critical security flaw impacting Emergency Responder that allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to sign into susceptible systems using hard-coded credentials.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-20101 (CVSS score: 9.8), is due to the presence of static user credentials for the root account that the company said is usually reserved for use during development.

Qualcomm Releases Patch for 3 new Zero-Days Under Active Exploitation

Chipmaker Qualcomm has released security updates to address 17 vulnerabilities in various components, while warning that three other zero-days have come under active exploitation.

Of the 17 flaws, three are rated Critical, 13 are rated High, and one is rated Medium in severity.

Warning: PyTorch Models Vulnerable to Remote Code Execution via ShellTorch

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple critical security flaws in the TorchServe tool for serving and scaling PyTorch models that could be chained to achieve remote code execution on affected systems.

Israel-based runtime application security company Oligo, which made the discovery, has coined the vulnerabilities ShellTorch.

Over 3 Dozen Data-Stealing Malicious npm Packages Found Targeting Developers

Nearly three dozen counterfeit packages have been discovered in the npm package repository that are designed to exfiltrate sensitive data from developer systems, according to findings from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs.

One set of packages – named @expue/webpack, @expue/core, @expue/vue3-renderer, @fixedwidthtable/fixedwidthtable, and @virtualsearchtable/virtualsearchtable – harbored an obfuscated JavaScript file that's capable of gathering valuable secrets.

Researcher Reveals New Techniques to Bypass Cloudflare's Firewall and DDoS Protection

Firewall and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack prevention mechanisms in Cloudflare can be circumvented by exploiting gaps in cross-tenant security controls, defeating the very purpose of these safeguards, it has emerged.

"Attackers can utilize their own Cloudflare accounts to abuse the per-design trust-relationship between Cloudflare and the customers' websites, rendering the protection mechanism ineffective," Certitude researcher Stefan Proksch said in a report published last week.

Arm Issues Patch for Mali GPU Kernel Driver Vulnerability Amidst Ongoing Exploitation

Arm has released security patches to contain a security flaw in the Mali GPU Kernel Driver that has come under active exploitation in the wild.

Silent Skimmer: A Year-Long Web Skimming Campaign Targeting Online Payment Businesses

A financially motivated campaign has been targeting online payment businesses in the Asia Pacific, North America, and Latin America with web skimmers for more than a year.

The BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team is tracking the activity under the name Silent Skimmer, attributing it to an actor who is knowledgeable in the Chinese language. Prominent victims include online businesses and point-of-sale (PoS) service providers.

OpenRefine's Zip Slip Vulnerability Could Let Attackers Execute Malicious Code

A high-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the open-source OpenRefine data cleanup and transformation tool that could result in arbitrary code execution on affected systems.

Tracked as CVE-2023-37476 (CVSS score: 7.8), the vulnerability is a Zip Slip vulnerability that could have adverse impacts when importing a specially crafted project in versions 3.7.3 and below.

BunnyLoader: New Malware-as-a-Service Threat Emerges in the Cybercrime Underground

Cybersecurity experts have discovered yet another malware-as-a-service (MaaS) threat called BunnyLoader that's being advertised for sale on the cybercrime underground.

"BunnyLoader provides various functionalities such as downloading and executing a second-stage payload, stealing browser credentials and system information, and much more," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Satyam Singh said in an analysis published last week.

Zanubis Android Banking Trojan Poses as Peruvian Government App to Target Users

An emerging Android banking trojan called Zanubis is now masquerading as a Peruvian government app to trick unsuspecting users into installing the malware.

"Zanubis's main infection path is through impersonating legitimate Peruvian Android applications and then tricking the user into enabling the Accessibility permissions in order to take full control of the device," Kaspersky said in an analysis published last week.