Mar 25, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Crime / DDoS Attack In what’s a case of setting a thief to catch a thief, the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) revealed that it has created a network of fake DDoS-for-hire websites to infiltrate the online criminal underground. “All of the NCA-run sites, which have so far been accessed by
Cyber Security
Mar 23, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Browser Security German and South Korean government agencies have warned about cyber attacks mounted by a threat actor tracked as Kimsuky using rogue browser extensions to steal users’ Gmail inboxes. The joint advisory comes from Germany’s domestic intelligence apparatus, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV),
Mar 18, 2023Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Cyber Espionage The zero-day exploitation of a now-patched medium-severity security flaw in the Fortinet FortiOS operating system has been linked to a suspected Chinese hacking group. Threat intelligence firm Mandiant, which made the attribution, said the activity cluster is part of a broader campaign designed to deploy backdoors onto
Mar 17, 2023Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Firmware Google is calling attention to a set of severe security flaws in Samsung’s Exynos chips, some of which could be exploited remotely to completely compromise a phone without requiring any user interaction. The 18 zero-day vulnerabilities affect a wide range of Android smartphones from Samsung, Vivo, Google, wearables
Threat activity clusters affiliated with the Chinese and Russian cybercriminal ecosystems have been observed using a new piece of malware that’s designed to load Cobalt Strike onto infected machines. Dubbed SILKLOADER by Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, the malware leverages DLL side-loading techniques to deliver commercial adversary simulation software. The development comes as improved detection capabilities
Mar 15, 2023Ravie LakshmananPatch Tuesday / Software Update Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday update for March 2023 is rolling out with remediations for a set of 80 security flaws, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Eight of the 80 bugs are rated Critical, 71 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate
Mar 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananThreat Intelligence / Cyber Attack An open source adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing kit has found a number of takers in the cybercrime world for its ability to orchestrate attacks at scale. Microsoft Threat Intelligence is tracking the threat actor behind the development of the kit under its emerging moniker DEV-1101. An AiTM phishing
Mar 03, 2023Ravie LakshmananThreat Intelligence / Cyber Attack The China-aligned Mustang Panda actor has been observed using a hitherto unseen custom backdoor called MQsTTang as part of an ongoing social engineering campaign that commenced in January 2023. “Unlike most of the group’s malware, MQsTTang doesn’t seem to be based on existing families or publicly available
Mar 01, 2023Ravie LakshmananEncryption / Email Security Google has announced the general availability of client-side encryption (CSE) for Gmail and Calendar, months after piloting the feature in late 2022. The data privacy controls enable “even more organizations to become arbiters of their own data and the sole party deciding who has access to it,” Google’s
Feb 24, 2023Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Firmware Google said it’s working with ecosystem partners to harden the security of firmware that interacts with Android. While the Android operating system runs on what’s called the application processor (AP), it’s just one of the many processors of a system-on-chip (SoC) that cater to various tasks like cellular
Feb 22, 2023Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Security / Software Update Apple has revised the security advisories it released last month to include three new vulnerabilities impacting iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The first flaw is a race condition in the Crash Reporter component (CVE-2023-23520) that could enable a malicious actor to read arbitrary files as root. The iPhone
Feb 21, 2023Ravie LakshmananSocial Engineering / Cryptocurrency Popular cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase disclosed that it experienced a cybersecurity attack that targeted its employees. The company said its “cyber controls prevented the attacker from gaining direct system access and prevented any loss of funds or compromise of customer information.” The incident, which took place on February
Feb 20, 2023Ravie LakshmananThreat Analysis / Cyber Attack Russia’s cyber attacks against Ukraine surged by 250% in 2022 when compared to two years ago, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant disclosed in a new joint report. The targeting, which coincided and has since persisted following the country’s military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,
Norwegian police agency Økokrim has announced the seizure of 60 million NOK (about $5.84 million) worth of cryptocurrency stolen by the Lazarus Group in March 2022 following the Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge hack. “This case shows that we also have a great capacity to follow the money on the blockchain, even if the criminals use
Feb 20, 2023Ravie LakshmananMobile Security / Zero Day 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
Feb 18, 2023Ravie LakshmananAuthentication / Online Security Twitter has announced that it’s limiting the use of SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) to its Blue subscribers. “While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors,” the company said. “We will no longer allow
Feb 15, 2023Ravie LakshmananPrivacy / Technology Google announced on Tuesday that it’s officially rolling out Privacy Sandbox on Android in beta to eligible mobile devices running Android 13. “The Privacy Sandbox Beta provides new APIs that are designed with privacy at the core, and don’t use identifiers that can track your activity across apps and
Feb 14, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat Intelligence Microsoft on Monday attributed a China-based cyber espionage actor to a set of attacks targeting diplomatic entities in South America. The tech giant’s Security Intelligence team is tracking the cluster under the emerging moniker DEV-0147, describing the activity as an “expansion of the group’s data exfiltration operations that traditionally
Feb 13, 2023Ravie LakshmananCyber Threat Intelligence The advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as Tonto Team carried out an unsuccessful attack on cybersecurity company Group-IB in June 2022. The Singapore-headquartered firm said that it detected and blocked malicious phishing emails originating from the group targeting its employees. It’s also the second attack aimed at Group-IB,