The story behind HISAA
Health care breaches lead to legislation Highlights of the new standard include: Performing and documenting a security risk analysis of exposure Documentation of a business continuity plan (BCP) Stress test of resiliency and documentation of any planned changes to the BCP A signed statement by both the CEO and CISO of compliance * A third-party audit to certify compliance (no later than six months after enactment)
SmokeBuster Tool
- ThreatLabz has developed a tool named SmokeBuster to detect, analyze, and remediate infections. SmokeBuster supports 32-bit and 64-bit instances of SmokeLoader and versions 2017-2022. The tool is compatible with Windows 7 to Windows 11. SmokeLoader is a malware downloader that originated in 2011. The malware is primarily designed to deliver second-stage payloads, which include information stealers and ransomware. Despite a major disruption by Operation Endgame in May 2024, SmokeLoader continues to be used by numerous threat groups largely due to numerous cracked versions publicly available on the internet. The last four versions of SmokeLoader contain coding flaws that significantly impact an infected system’s performance.
Censorship Attack against the Tor network
In the last few days, many Tor relay operators - mainly hosting relay nodes on providers like Hetzner - began receiving abuse notices. All the abuses reported many failed SSH login attempts - part of a brute force attack - coming from their Tor relays. Tor relays normally only transport traffic between a guard and an exit node of the Tor network, and per-se should not perform any SSH connections to internet-facing hosts, let alone performing SSH brute force attacks.
Cyber attack on pharmaceutical distributor AEP
AEP GmbH was the victim of a targeted cyber attack on October 28, which led to the partial encryption of the company's IT systems. The company's own security systems detected the attack. The company provides information about this on its website.
Botnet 7777: Are You Betting on a Compromised Router?
Discover the latest insights on the Quad7 / 7777 botnet in our detailed analysis. Learn about the expansion of this resilient threat, its targeting patterns, and proactive measures to defend against compromised routers. Stay informed with our up-to-date findings and recommendations.
Chinese threat actor Storm-0940 uses credentials from password spray attacks from a covert network
Since August 2023, Microsoft has observed intrusion activity targeting and successfully stealing credentials from multiple Microsoft customers that is enabled by highly evasive password spray attacks. Microsoft has linked the source of these password spray attacks to a network of compromised devices we track as CovertNetwork-1658, also known as xlogin and Quad7 (7777). Microsoft is […]
Amazon identified internet domains abused by APT29
APT29 aka Midnight Blizzard recently attempted to phish thousands of people. Building on work by CERT-UA, Amazon recently identified internet domains abused by APT29, a group widely attributed to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). In this instance, their targets were associated with government agencies, enterprises, and militaries, and the phishing campaign was apparently aimed at […]
Midnight Blizzard conducts large-scale spear-phishing campaign using RDP files
Since October 22, 2024, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed Russian threat actor Midnight Blizzard sending a series of highly targeted spear-phishing emails to individuals in government, academia, defense, non-governmental organizations, and other sectors. This activity is ongoing, and Microsoft will continue to investigate and provide updates as available. Based on our investigation of previous Midnight […]
Attacker Abuses Victim Resources to Reap Rewards from Titan Network
- Trend Micro researchers observed an attacker exploiting the Atlassian Confluence vulnerability CVE-2023-22527 to achieve remote code execution for cryptomining via the Titan Network. The malicious actor used public IP lookup services and various system commands to gather details about the compromised machine. The attack involved downloading and executing multiple shell scripts to install Titan binaries and connect to the Titan Network with the attacker’s identity. * The malicious actor connects compromised machines to the Cassini Testnet, which allows them to participate in the delegated proof of stake system for reward tokens.
Change Healthcare says 100 million people impacted by February ransomware attack
Change Healthcare updated filings with the federal government to warn that about 100 million people had information accessed by hackers during a ransomware attack in February. The Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Office for Civil Rights said Change Healthcare notified them on October 22 that “approximately 100 million individual notices have been sent regarding this breach.”