Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a new and entirely undetected Linux threat dubbed OrBit, signally a growing trend of malware attacks geared towards the popular operating system. The malware gets its name from one of the filenames that’s utilized to temporarily store the output of executed commands (“/tmp/.orbit”), according to cybersecurity firm Intezer. […]
A malware-as-a-service (Maas) dubbed Matanbuchus has been observed spreading through phishing campaigns, ultimately dropping the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation framework on compromised machines. Matanbuchus, like other malware loaders such as BazarLoader, Bumblebee, and Colibri, is engineered to download and execute second-stage executables from command-and-control (C&C) servers on infected systems without detection. Available on Russian-speaking cybercrime forums […]
An enterprise-grade surveillanceware dubbed Hermit has been put to use by entities operating from within Kazakhstan, Syria, and Italy over the years since 2019, new research has revealed. Lookout attributed the spy software, which is equipped to target both Android and iOS, to an Italian company named RCS Lab S.p.A and Tykelab Srl, a telecom […]
Cybersecurity researchers have detailed the workings of a fully-featured malware loader dubbed PureCrypter that’s being purchased by cyber criminals to deliver remote access trojans (RATs) and information stealers. “The loader is a .NET executable obfuscated with SmartAssembly and makes use of compression, encryption, and obfuscation to evade antivirus software products,” Zscaler’s Romain Dumont said in […]
A novel hardware attack dubbed PACMAN has been demonstrated against Apple’s M1 processor chipsets, potentially arming a malicious actor with the capability to gain arbitrary code execution on macOS systems. It leverages “speculative execution attacks to bypass an important memory protection mechanism, ARM Pointer Authentication, a security feature that is used to enforce pointer integrity,” […]
An unofficial security patch has been made available for a new Windows zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT), even as the Follina flaw continues to be exploited in the wild. The issue — referenced as DogWalk — relates to a path traversal flaw that can be exploited to stash a malicious executable […]
A new wave of phishing campaigns has been observed spreading a previously documented malware called SVCReady. “The malware is notable for the unusual way it is delivered to target PCs — using shellcode hidden in the properties of Microsoft Office documents,” Patrick Schläpfer, a threat analyst at HP, said in a technical write-up. SVCReady is […]
The Parrot traffic direction system (TDS) that came to light earlier this year has had a larger impact than previously thought, according to new research. Sucuri, which has been tracking the same campaign since February 2019 under the name “NDSW/NDSX,” said that “the malware was one of the top infections” detected in 2021, accounting for […]
As ransomware infections have evolved from purely encrypting data to schemes such as double and triple extortion, a new attack vector is likely to set the stage for future campaigns. Called Ransomware for IoT or R4IoT by Forescout, it’s a “novel, proof-of-concept ransomware that exploits an IoT device to gain access and move laterally in […]
Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a zero-day flaw in Microsoft Office that could be abused to achieve arbitrary code execution on affected Windows systems. The vulnerability came to light after an independent cybersecurity research team known as nao_sec uncovered a Word document (“05-2022-0438.doc“) that was uploaded to VirusTotal from an IP address in Belarus. […]
An unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) group has been linked to a series of spear-phishing attacks targeting Russian government entities since the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war in late February 2022. “The campaigns […] are designed to implant a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that can be used to surveil the computers it infects, and run […]
The inner workings of a cybercriminal group known as the Wizard Spider have been exposed, shedding light on its organizational structure and motivations. “Most of Wizard Spider’s efforts go into hacking European and U.S. businesses, with a special cracking tool used by some of their attackers to breach high-value targets,” Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT said […]
In early 2022, Microsoft addressed CVE-2022-22005, a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability that used website creation features in SharePoint, releasing a security patch. Even though the flaw had already been fixed, a security researcher found a new way to exploit the deserialization bug by uploading malicious files to the server. Many languages use serialization and […]
A first-of-its-kind security analysis of iOS Find My function has identified a novel attack surface that makes it possible to tamper with the firmware and load malware onto a Bluetooth chip that’s executed while an iPhone is “off.” The mechanism takes advantage of the fact that wireless chips related to Bluetooth, Near-field communication (NFC), and […]
An unidentified threat actor has been linked to an actively in-development malware toolkit called the “Eternity Project” that lets professional and amateur cybercriminals buy stealers, clippers, worms, miners, ransomware, and a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) bot. What makes this malware-as-a-service (MaaS) stand out is that besides using a Telegram channel to communicate updates about the latest […]
A previously undocumented remote access trojan (RAT) written in the Go programming language has been spotted disproportionately targeting entities in Italy, Spain, and the U.K. Called Nerbian RAT by enterprise security firm Proofpoint, the novel malware leverages COVID-19-themed lures to propagate as part of a low volume email-borne phishing campaign that started on April 26, […]
Days after F5 released patches for a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting its BIG-IP family of products, security researchers are warning that they were able to create an exploit for the shortcoming. Tracked CVE-2022-1388 (CVSS score: 9.8), the flaw relates to an iControl REST authentication bypass that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote […]
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Windows malware with worm-like capabilities and is propagated by means of removable USB devices. Attributing the malware to a cluster named “Raspberry Robin,” Red Canary researchers noted that the worm “leverages Windows Installer to reach out to QNAP-associated domains and download a malicious DLL.” The earliest signs of the […]
A researcher has detected a critical vulnerability in some of the most common malware and ransomware variants today and whose exploitation would allow interrupting file encryption on infected systems, preventing successful attacks. Among the ransomware strains affected by this flaw are dangerous variants such as AvosLocker, Conti, LockBit, REvil, and the recently detected Black Basta. […]
Security researchers have disclosed a security issue that could have allowed attackers to weaponize the VirusTotal platform as a conduit to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on unpatched third-party sandboxing machines employed antivirus engines. The flaw, now patched, made it possible to “execute commands remotely within [through] VirusTotal platform and gain access to its various […]
A proof-of-concept (PoC) code demonstrating a newly disclosed digital signature bypass vulnerability in Java has been shared online. The high-severity flaw in question, CVE-2022-21449 (CVSS score: 7.5), impacts the following versions of Java SE and Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition – Oracle Java SE: 7u331, 8u321, 11.0.14, 17.0.2, 18 Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition: 20.3.5, 21.3.1, 22.0.0.2 […]