Spyware vendor targets users in Italy and Kazakhstan
Today, alongside Google’s Project Zero, we are detailing capabilities provided by RCS Labs, an Italian vendor that uses a combination of tactics, including atypical drive-by downloads as initial infection vectors to target mobile users on both iOS and Android.
Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War
This report represents research conducted by Microsoft’s threat intelligence and data science teams with the goal of sharpening our understanding of the threat landscape in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The report also offers a series of lessons and conclusions resulting from the data gathered and analyzed. Notably, the report reveals new information about Russian efforts including an increase in network penetration and espionage activities amongst allied governments, non-profits and other organizations outside Ukraine. This report also unveils detail about sophisticated and widespread Russian foreign influence operations being used among other things, to undermine Western unity and bolster their war efforts. We are seeing these foreign influence operations enacted in force in a coordinated fashion along with the full range of cyber destructive and espionage campaigns. Finally, the report calls for a coordinated and comprehensive strategy to strengthen collective defenses – a task that will require the private sector, public sector, nonprofits and civil society to come together. The foreword of this new report, written by Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith, offers additional detail below.
Council conclusions on a Framework for a coordinated EU response to hybrid campaigns
RECALLS the relevant conclusions of the European Council1 and the Council2, ACKNOWLEDGES that state and non-state actors are increasingly using hybrid tactics, posing a growing threat to the security of the EU, its Member States and its partners3. RECOGNISES that, for some actors applying such tactics, peacetime is a period for covert malign activities, when a conflict can continue or be prepared for in a less open form. EMPHASISES that state actors and non-state actors also use information manipulation and other tactics to interfere in democratic processes and to mislead and deceive citizens. NOTES that Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine is showing the readiness to use the highest level of military force, regardless of legal or humanitarian considerations, combined with hybrid tactics, cyberattacks, foreign information manipulation and interference, economic and energy coercion and an aggressive nuclear rhetoric, and ACKNOWLEDGES the related risks of potential spillover effects in EU neighbourhoods that could harm the interests of the EU.
BRATA is evolving into an Advanced Persistent Threat
Here we go with another episode about our (not so) old friend, BRATA. In almost one year, threat actors (TAs) have further improved the capabilities of this malware. In our previous blog post [1] we defined three main BRATA variants, which appeared during two different waves detected by our telemetries at the very end of 2021. However, during the last months we have observed a change in the attack pattern commonly used.
Zimbra Email - Stealing Clear-Text Credentials via Memcache injection
We discovered flaws in Zimbra, an enterprise email solution, that allow attackers to steal credentials of users and gain access to their email accounts.
Linux Threat Hunting: 'Syslogk' a kernel rootkit found under development in the wild
Introduction Rootkits are dangerous pieces of malware. Once in place, they are usually really hard to detect. Their code is typically more challenging to write than other malware, so developers resort to code reuse from open source projects. As rootkits are very interesting to analyze, we are always looking out for these kinds of samples […]
ASyncRat surpasses Dridex, TrickBot and Emotet to become dominant email threat
Earlier this year Malwarebytes released its 2022 Threat Review, a review of the most important threats and cybersecurity trends of 2021, and what they could mean for 2022. Among other things it covers the year’s alarming rebound in malware detections, and a significant shift in the balance of email threats.
People’s Republic of China State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Exploit Network Providers and Devices
Best Practices • Apply patches as soon as possible • Disable unnecessary ports and protocols • Replace end-of-life infrastructure • Implement a centralized patch management system
With the "Follina" / CVE-2022-30190 0day still hot, i.e., still waiting for an official fix while apparently already getting exploited by nation-backed attackers, another related unfixed vulnerability in Microsoft's Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) bubbled to the surface. In January 2020, security researcher Imre Rad published an article titled "The trouble with Microsoft’s Troubleshooters," describing a method for having a malicious executable file being saved to user's Startup folder, where it would subsequently get executed upon user's next login. What the user has to do for this to happen is open a "diagcab" file...
Russian Cyberattack Hits Wales-Ukraine Football Broadcast
The broadcast of the Football World Cup 2022 qualifier game between Wales and Ukraine on Sunday was interrupted in Ukraine by a cyberattack that targeted OLL.TV...
Analysis and Attribution of the Eternity Ransomware: Timeline and Emergence of the Eternity Group
XVigil discovered a financially motivated threat actor group, dubbed Eternity group, actively operating on the internet, selling worms, stealers, DDoS tools, and ransomware builders.
Deadly secret: Electronic warfare shapes Russia-Ukraine war
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — On Ukraine’s battlefields , the simple act of powering up a cellphone can beckon a rain of deathly skyfall. Artillery radar and remote controls for unmanned aerial vehicles may also invite fiery shrapnel showers.
The U.S. government "kill[s] people based on metadata," but it doesn't do that with the trove of information collected on American communications, according to former head of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden.
We discovered that Gimmick MacOS malware communicates only through their C2 server hosted on Google Drive. The malware was discovered in the first week of May and it has been actively targeting macOS devices
Large-scale Analysis of DNS-based Tracking Evasion - broad data leaks included?
User tracking technologies are ubiquitous on the web. In recent times web browsers try to fight abuses. This led to an arms race where new tracking and anti-tracking measures are being developed. The use of one of such evasion techniques, the CNAME cloaking technique is recently quickly gaining popularity. Our evidence indicates that the use of the CNAME scheme threatens web security and privacy systematically and in general
Guerre en Ukraine : Anonymous déclare la cyberguerre à Killnet, un collectif de hackers pro-russes
En luttant contre le groupe Killnet, Anonymous espère réduire le nombre d'attaques en ligne portées par ce dernier à l'encontre des gouvernements de plusieurs pays membres de l'OTAN
PyPI package 'ctx' and PHP library 'phpass' compromised to steal environment variables
This week, immensely popular PyPI package 'ctx' has been compromised and altered to steal environment variables from its users. Additionally, a forked PHP project 'phpass' also suffered a repo-hijacking attack with the project tained with identical malicious payload.
Pegasus vs. Predator: Dissident's Doubly-Infected iPhone Reveals Cytrox Mercenary Spyware
Two Egyptians—exiled politician Ayman Nour and the host of a popular news program (who wishes to remain anonymous)—were hacked with Predator spyware, built and sold by the previously little-known mercenary spyware developer Cytrox. The phone of Ayman Nour was simultaneously infected with both Cytrox’s Predator and NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, operated by two different government clients.
To protect our users, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) routinely hunts for 0-day vulnerabilities exploited in-the-wild. In 2021, we reported nine 0-days affecting Chrome, Android, Apple and Microsoft, leading to patches to protect users from these attacks.
Canada bans Huawei and ZTE from 5G networks over security concerns
The Government of Canada announced its intention to ban the use of Huawei and ZTE telecommunications equipment and services across the country's 5G and 4G networks.
Policy Statement – Securing Canada’s Telecommunications System
The Government of Canada has serious concerns about suppliers such as Huawei and ZTE who could be compelled to comply with extrajudicial directions from foreign governments in ways that would conflict with Canadian laws or would be detrimental to Canadian interests.
Malicious PyPI package opens backdoors on Windows, Linux, and Macs
Yet another malicious Python package has been spotted in the PyPI registry performing supply chain attacks to drop Cobalt Strike beacons and backdoors on Windows, Linux, and macOS systems.
President Rodrigo Chaves says Costa Rica is at war with Conti hackers
The president of Costa Rica says his country is "at war", as cyber-criminals cause major disruption to IT systems of numerous government ministries. Rodrigo Chaves said hackers infiltrated 27 government institutions, including municipalities and state-run utilities.
Exploiting an Unbounded memcpy in Parallels Desktop
This post details the development of a guest-to-host virtualization escape for Parallels Desktop on macOS, as used in our successful Pwn2Own 2021 entry. Give...
