Special Report: Massive Global IT Outages Triggered by Faulty CrowdStrike Update
Cascading and catastrophic IT outages have hit thousands of organizations worldwide after CrowdStrike issued a faulty update in its Falcon Sensor product that caused Windows operating systems to crash.
In collaboration with Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), Mandiant has observed a sustained campaign by the advanced persistent threat group APT41 targeting and successfully compromising multiple organizations operating within the global shipping and logistics, media and entertainment, technology, and automotive sectors. The majority of organizations were operating in Italy, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. APT41 successfully infiltrated and maintained prolonged, unauthorized access to numerous victims' networks since 2023, enabling them to extract sensitive data over an extended period. APT41 used a combination of ANTSWORD and BLUEBEAM web shells for the execution of DUSTPAN to execute BEACON backdoor for command-and-control communication. Later in the intrusion, APT41 leveraged DUSTTRAP, which would lead to hands-on keyboard activity. APT41 used publicly available tools SQLULDR2 for copying data from databases and PINEGROVE to exfiltrate data to Microsoft OneDrive
Banks, airlines, brokerage houses report widespread outages across the globe
Businesses worldwide are experiencing outages, including Windows "blue screen of death" errors on their computers, in what has already become one of the
Office of Public Affairs | Two Foreign Nationals Plead Guilty to Participating in LockBit Ransomware Group
Two foreign nationals pleaded guilty today to participating in the LockBit ransomware group—at various times the most prolific ransomware variant in the world—and to deploying LockBit attacks against victims in the United States and worldwide.
New hacker group uses open-source tools to spy on entities in Asia-Pacific region
An operation labeled TAG-100 by Insikt Group researchers deploys two types of backdoor malware — SparkRAT and Pantegana — that have only been spotted in limited ways previously.
Critical Cisco bug lets hackers add root users on SEG devices
Cisco has fixed a critical severity vulnerability that lets attackers add new users with root privileges and permanently crash Security Email Gateway (SEG) appliances using emails with malicious attachments. Tracked as CVE-2024-20401, this arbitrary file write security flaw in the SEG content scanning and message filtering features is caused by an absolute path traversal weakness that allows replacing any file on the underlying operating system.
Fake AWS Packages Ship Command and Control Malware In JPEG Files
On July 13, 2024, the Phylum platform alerted us to a series of odd packages published to the npm package registry. At first glance, these packages appear entirely legitimate; however, as our system automatically noted, they contained sophisticated command and control functionality hidden in image files that would be executed
Germany to ban Chinese companies' components from core parts of its 5G networks | AP News
Germany's top security official says the country will bar the use of critical components made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in core parts of its 5G networks in two steps starting in 2026.
Iraq-based cybercriminals deploy malicious Python packages to steal data
An information-stealing script embedded in a Python package on the popular repository PyPI appears to be connected to a cybercriminal operation based in Iraq, according to researchers at Checkmarx.
ClickFix Deception: A Social Engineering Tactic to Deploy Malware
Authored by Yashvi Shah and Vignesh Dhatchanamoorthy McAfee Labs has discovered a highly unusual method of malware delivery, referred to by researchers as
FBI Gains Access to Suspected Trump Shooter’s Password Locked Phone
The FBI announced on Monday it had successfully gained access to the phone used by Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspected shooter in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Uncoordinated Vulnerability Disclosure: The Continuing Issues with CVD
On patch Tuesday last week, Microsoft released an update for CVE-2024-38112, which they said was being exploited in the wild. We at the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) agree with them because that’s what we told them back in May when we detected this exploit in the wild and reported it to Microsoft. However, you may notice that no one from Trend or ZDI was acknowledged by Microsoft. This case has become a microcosm of the problems with coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) as vendors push for coordinated disclosure from researchers but rarely practice any coordination regarding the fix. This lack of transparency from vendors often leaves researchers who practice CVD with more questions than answers.
Kaspersky Lab Closing U.S. Division; Laying Off Workers
Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, has told workers in its U.S.-based division that they are being laid off this week and that it is closing its U.S. business, according to several sources. The sudden move comes after the U.S. Commerce Department announced last month that it was banning the sale of Kaspersky software in the U.S. beginning July 20. The company has been selling its software here since 2005.
Critical Exim bug bypasses security filters on 1.5 million mail servers
Censys warns that over 1.5 million Exim mail transfer agent (MTA) instances are unpatched against a critical vulnerability that lets threat actors bypass security filters.
Delaying security updates and neglecting regular reviews created vulnerabilities that were exploited by attackers, resulting in severe ransomware consequences. Initial access via FortiGate Firewall SSL VPN using a dormant account Deployed persistent backdoor (“svchost.exe”) on the failover server, and conducted lateral movement via RDP. Exploitation attempts of CVE-2023-27532 was followed by activation of xp_cmdshell and rogue user account creation. Threat actors made use of NetScan, AdFind, and various tools provided by NirSoft to conduct network discovery, enumeration, and credential harvesting. * Windows Defender was permanently disabled using DC.exe, followed by ransomware deployment and execution with PsExec.exe.
RockYou2024: 10 billion passwords leaked in the largest compilation of all time
The largest password compilation with nearly ten billion unique passwords was leaked on a popular hacking forum. The Cybernews research team believes the leak poses severe dangers to users prone to reusing passwords. The king is dead. Long live the king. Cybernews researchers discovered what appears to be the largest password compilation with a staggering 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext passwords. The file with the data, titled rockyou2024.txt, was posted on July 4th by forum user ObamaCare.
Allies agree new NATO Integrated Cyber Defence Centre
The NATO Integrated Cyber Defence Centre (NICC) will enhance the protection of NATO and Allied networks and the use of cyberspace as an operational domain. The Centre will inform NATO military commanders on possible threats and vulnerabilities in cyberspace, including privately-owned civilian critical infrastructures necessary to support military activities.
Kematian-Stealer : A Deep Dive into a New Information Stealer
Kematian-Stealer is actively being developed and distributed as an open-source tool on GitHub. Our investigation revealed that the stealer’s source code, related scripts, and a builder for generating malicious binaries are hosted under the GitHub account “Somali-Devs.” Significant contributions from the user KDot227 suggest a close link between this account and the development of the stealer. These scripts and stealer are designed to covertly extract sensitive data from unsuspecting users and organizations.
Since May 26, 2024, Phylum has been monitoring a persistent supply chain attacker involving a trojanized version of jQuery. We initially discovered the malicious variant on npm, where we saw the compromised version published in dozens of packages over a month. After investigating, we found instances of the trojanized jQuery
AhnLab SEcurity intelligence Center (ASEC) covered cases of AsyncRAT being distributed via various file extensions (.chm, .wsf, and .lnk). [1] [2] In the aforementioned blog posts, it can be seen that the threat actor used normal document files disguised as questionnaires to conceal the malware. In a similar vein, there have been cases recently where the malware was disguised as an ebook.
CVE-2024-4577 Exploits in the Wild One Day After Disclosure
The Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT) has been monitoring activity surrounding CVE-2024-4577, a PHP vulnerability that affects installations running CGI mode that was disclosed in June 2024. The vulnerability primarily affects Windows installations using Chinese and Japanese language locales, but it is possible that the vulnerability applies to a wider range of installations. As early as one day after disclosure, the SIRT observed numerous exploit attempts to abuse this vulnerability, indicating high exploitability and quick adoption by threat actors. The exploitations include command injection and multiple malware campaigns: Gh0st RAT, RedTail cryptominers, and XMRig. Akamai App & API Protector has been automatically mitigating exploits that target our customers. In this blog post, we’ve included a comprehensive list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) for the various exploits we discuss.
How do cryptocurrency drainer phishing scams work?
In recent months, a surge in cryptodrainer phishing attacks has been observed, targeting cryptocurrency holders with sophisticated schemes aimed at tricking them into divulging their valuable credentials.