A suspected Vietnamese-origin threat actor has been observed targeting victims in several Asian and Southeast Asian countries with malware designed to harvest valuable data since at least May 2023. Cisco Talos is tracking the cluster under the name CoralRaider, describing it as financially motivated. Targets of the campaign include India, China, South Korea, Bangladesh, Pakistan, […]
On an unexpected Tuesday, the collision of a container ship with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore not only disrupted the normal flow of traffic and commerce but also sparked a vigorous debate on the potential causes of this incident. Among the various theories proposed, the role of cybersecurity—or the lack thereof—has emerged as […]
The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two individuals and five entities associated with the Intellexa Alliance for their role in “developing, operating, and distributing” commercial spyware designed to target government officials, journalists, and policy experts in the country. “The proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing security risks […]
A financial entity in Vietnam was the target of a previously undocumented threat actor called Lotus Bane as part of a cyber attack that was first detected in March 2023. Singapore-headquartered Group-IB described the hacking outfit as an advanced persistent threat group that’s believed to have been active since at least 2022. The exact specifics […]
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 […]
A coalition of dozens of countries, including France, the U.K., and the U.S., along with tech companies such as Google, MDSec, Meta, and Microsoft, have signed a joint agreement to curb the abuse of commercial spyware to commit human rights abuses. The initiative, dubbed the Pall Mall Process, aims to tackle the proliferation and irresponsible […]
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against six officials associated with the Iranian intelligence agency for attacking critical infrastructure entities in the U.S. and other countries. The officials include Hamid Reza Lashgarian, Mahdi Lashgarian, Hamid Homayunfal, Milad Mansuri, Mohammad Bagher Shirinkar, and Reza Mohammad Amin Saberian, who are part […]
A former software engineer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) for transmitting classified documents to WikiLeaks and for possessing child pornographic material. Joshua Adam Schulte, 35, was originally charged in June 2018. He was found guilty in July […]
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 […]
Mexican financial institutions are under the radar of a new spear-phishing campaign that delivers a modified version of an open-source remote access trojan called AllaKore RAT. The BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team attributed the activity to an unknown Latin America-based financially motivated threat actor. The campaign has been active since at least 2021. “Lures use […]
A threat actor affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has been observed waging a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign targeting financial, government, military, and telecommunications sectors in the Middle East for at least a year. Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point, which discovered the campaign alongside Sygnia, is tracking the actor under the name […]
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 […]
An updated version of an Android banking trojan called Xenomorph has set its sights on more than 35 financial institutions in the U.S. The campaign, according to Dutch security firm ThreatFabric, leverages phishing web pages that are designed to entice victims into installing malicious Android apps that target a broader list of apps than its […]
Users in Latin America (LATAM) are the target of a financial malware called JanelaRAT that’s capable of capturing sensitive information from compromised Microsoft Windows systems. “JanelaRAT mainly targets financial and cryptocurrency data from LATAM bank and financial institutions,” Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers Gaetano Pellegrino and Sudeep Singh said, adding it “abuses DLL side-loading techniques from legitimate […]
Mastodon, a popular decentralized social network, has released a security update to fix critical vulnerabilities that could expose millions of users to potential attacks. Mastodon is known for its federated model, consisting of thousands of separate servers called “instances,” and it has over 14 million users across more than 20,000 instances. The most critical vulnerability, […]
A critical security flaw has been disclosed in miniOrange’s Social Login and Register plugin for WordPress that could enable a malicious actor to log in as any user-provided information about email address is already known. Tracked as CVE-2023-2982 (CVSS score: 9.8), the authentication bypass flaw impacts all versions of the plugin, including and prior to […]
Researchers from SentinelLabs found a social engineering effort aimed at specialists in North Korean issues that was carried out by an advanced persistent threat (APT) organization with ties to North Korea. The APT group mostly concentrates its attacks on organizations and think tanks located in South Korea; however, they have also claimed victims in the […]
Bandit Stealer, a recently discovered information stealer by Trend Micro, effectively targets cryptocurrency wallets and web browsers while skillfully avoiding detection. The malware prioritizes Windows as its target and leverages the legitimate command-line tool runas[.]exe to execute programs under different user permissions. The objective is to elevate privileges, gain administrative access, and bypass security measures […]
Three different threat actors leveraged hundreds of elaborate fictitious personas on Facebook and Instagram to target individuals located in South Asia as part of disparate attacks. “Each of these APTs relied heavily on social engineering to trick people into clicking on malicious links, downloading malware or sharing personal information across the internet,” Guy Rosen, chief […]
In yet another instance of how threat actors are abusing Google Ads to serve malware, a threat actor has been observed leveraging the technique to deliver a new Windows-based financial trojan and information stealer called LOBSHOT. “LOBSHOT continues to collect victims while staying under the radar,” Elastic Security Labs researcher Daniel Stepanic said in an […]
The prolific Iranian nation-state group known as Charming Kitten is actively targeting multiple victims in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and India with a novel malware dubbed BellaCiao, adding to its ever-expanding list of custom tools. Discovered by Bitdefender Labs, BellaCiao is a “personalized dropper” that’s capable of delivering other malware payloads onto a […]