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The iPhones belonging to nearly three dozen journalists, activists, human rights lawyers, and civil society members in Jordan have been targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to joint findings from Access Now and the Citizen Lab. Nine of the 35 individuals have been publicly confirmed as targeted, out of whom six had their devices […]
Urdu-speaking readers of a regional news website that caters to the Gilgit-Baltistan region have likely emerged as a target of a watering hole attack designed to deliver a previously undocumented Android spyware dubbed Kamran. The campaign, ESET has discovered, leverages Hunza News (urdu.hunzanews[.]net), which, when opened on a mobile device, prompts visitors of the Urdu […]
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new dropper-as-a-service (DaaS) for Android called SecuriDropper that bypasses new security restrictions imposed by Google and delivers the malware. Dropper malware on Android is designed to function as a conduit to install a payload on a compromised device, making it a lucrative business model for threat actors, who […]
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. Besides requesting invasive permissions to access call logs, camera, SMS messages, and […]
The three zero-day flaws addressed by Apple on September 21, 2023, were leveraged as part of an iPhone exploit chain in an attempt to deliver a spyware strain called Predator targeting former Egyptian member of parliament Ahmed Eltantawy between May and September 2023. “The targeting took place after Eltantawy publicly stated his plans to run […]
Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that’s designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with nefarious features to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and chat messages to an actor-controlled server. […]
Apple on Thursday released emergency security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to address two zero-day flaws that have been exploited in the wild to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware. The issues are described as below – CVE-2023-41061 – A validation issue in Wallet that could result in arbitrary code execution when handling […]
The U.S. government on Tuesday added two foreign commercial spyware vendors, Cytrox and Intellexa, to an economic blocklist for weaponizing cyber exploits to gain unauthorized access to devices and “threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.” This includes the companies’ corporate holdings in Hungary (Cytrox Holdings Crt), North Macedonia (Cytrox AD), Greece […]
Two file management apps on the Google Play Store have been discovered to be spyware, putting the privacy and security of up to 1.5 million Android users at risk. These apps engage in deceptive behaviour and secretly send sensitive user data to malicious servers in China. Pradeo, a leading mobile security company, has uncovered this […]
Android-based phone monitoring app LetMeSpy has disclosed a security breach that allowed an unauthorized third-party to steal sensitive data associated with thousands of Android users. “As a result of the attack, the criminals gained access to email addresses, telephone numbers and the content of messages collected on accounts,” LetMeSpy said in an announcement on its […]
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a batch of six flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. This comprises three vulnerabilities that Apple patched this week (CVE-2023-32434, CVE-2023-32435, and CVE-2023-32439), two flaws in VMware (CVE-2023-20867 and CVE-2023-20887), and one shortcoming impacting Zyxel devices (CVE-2023-27992). CVE-2023-32434 and […]
Threat actors using hacking tools from an Israeli surveillanceware vendor named QuaDream targeted at least five members of civil society in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. According to findings from a group of researchers from the Citizen Lab, the spyware campaign was directed against journalists, political opposition figures, and […]
Samsung has announced a new feature called Message Guard that comes with safeguards to protect users from malware and spyware via what’s referred to as zero-click attacks. The South Korean chaebol said the solution “preemptively” secures users’ devices by “limiting exposure to invisible threats disguised as image attachments.” The security feature, available on Samsung Messages […]
Tainted VPN installers are being used to deliver a piece of surveillanceware dubbed EyeSpy as part of a malware campaign that started in May 2022. It uses “components of SecondEye – a legitimate monitoring application – to spy on users of 20Speed VPN, an Iranian-based VPN service, via trojanized installers,” Bitdefender said in an analysis. […]
Financial institutions are being targeted by a new version of Android malware called SpyNote at least since October 2022 that combines both spyware and banking trojan characteristics. “The reason behind this increase is that the developer of the spyware, who was previously selling it to other actors, made the source code public,” ThreatFabric said in […]
A Barcelona-based surveillanceware vendor named Variston IT is said to have surreptitiously planted spyware on targeted devices by exploiting several zero-day flaws in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Windows, some of which date back to December 2018. “Their Heliconia framework exploits n-day vulnerabilities in Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Defender, and provides all the tools necessary […]
A previously undocumented strain of Android spyware with extensive information gathering capabilities has been found disguised as a book likely designed to target the Uyghur community in China. The malware comes under the guise of a book titled “The China Freedom Trap,” a biography written by the exiled Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa. “In light of […]
More than 200 Android apps masquerading as fitness, photo editing, and puzzle apps have been observed distributing spyware called Facestealer to siphon user credentials and other valuable information. “Similar to Joker, another piece of mobile malware, Facestealer changes its code frequently, thus spawning many variants,” Trend Micro analysts Cifer Fang, Ford Quin, and Zhengyu Dong […]
Senior officials in the European Union were allegedly targeted with NSO Group’s infamous Pegasus surveillance tool, according to a new report from Reuters. At least five individuals, including European Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, are said to have been singled out in total, the news agency said, citing documents and two unnamed E.U. officials. However, it’s […]
A previously undocumented cyber-espionage malware aimed at Apple’s macOS operating system leveraged a Safari web browser exploit as part of a watering hole attack targeting politically active, pro-democracy individuals in Hong Kong. Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET attributed the intrusion to an actor with “strong technical capabilities,” calling out the campaign’s overlaps to that of a […]
Apple reportedly notified several U.S. Embassy and State Department employees that their iPhones may have been targeted by an unknown assailant using state-sponsored spyware created by the controversial Israeli company NSO Group, according to multiple reports from Reuters and The Washington Post. At least 11 U.S. Embassy officials stationed in Uganda or focusing on issues […]