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Introduction In today’s interconnected digital ecosystem, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) play a pivotal role in enabling seamless communication and data exchange between various software applications and systems. APIs act as bridges, facilitating the sharing of information and functionalities. However, as the use of APIs continues to rise, they have become an increasingly attractive target for

Sep 30, 2023THNCyber Espionage / Malware Sophisticated cyber actors backed by Iran known as OilRig have been linked to a spear-phishing campaign that infects victims with a new strain of malware called Menorah. “The malware was designed for cyberespionage, capable of identifying the machine, reading and uploading files from the machine, and downloading another file

The role of the chief information security officer has evolved significantly in recent years. As cybersecurity becomes even more of a critical concern for businesses, CISOs now find themselves in increasingly pivotal positions within their organizations. The intensity of the CISO position means it typically has a shelf life, however, with security leaders often leaving

Sep 30, 2023THNRansomware / Cyber Threat The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning of a new trend of dual ransomware attacks targeting the same victims, at least since July 2023. “During these attacks, cyber threat actors deployed two different ransomware variants against victim companies from the following variants: AvosLocker, Diamond, Hive, Karakurt, LockBit,

Threat actors are selling a new crypter and loader called ASMCrypt, which has been described as an “evolved version” of another loader malware known as DoubleFinger. “The idea behind this type of malware is to load the final payload without the loading process or the payload itself being detected by AV/EDR, etc.,” Kaspersky said in

Sep 28, 2023THNSupply Chain / Malware A new malicious campaign has been observed hijacking GitHub accounts and committing malicious code disguised as Dependabot contributions with an aim to steal passwords from developers. “The malicious code exfiltrates the GitHub project’s defined secrets to a malicious C2 server and modify any existing javascript files in the attacked

What is Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP)? Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) is a security protocol commonly used to protect wireless networks. PEAP extends the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) by encapsulating the EAP connection within a Transport Layer Security (TLS) tunnel. PEAP was designed to provide authentication for 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) to

Sep 27, 2023THNMalware / Cyber Attack A new threat actor known as AtlasCross has been observed leveraging Red Cross-themed phishing lures to deliver two previously undocumented backdoors named DangerAds and AtlasAgent. NSFOCUS Security Labs described the adversary as having a “high technical level and cautious attack attitude,” adding that “the phishing attack activity captured this

Sep 26, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Password Microsoft is officially rolling out support for passkeys in Windows 11 today as part of a major update to the desktop operating system. The feature allows users to login to websites and applications without having to provide a username and password, instead relying on their device PIN or biometric

Sep 25, 2023THNCyber Attack / Phishing Ukrainian military entities are the target of a phishing campaign that leverages drone manuals as lures to deliver a Go-based open-source post-exploitation toolkit called Merlin. “Since drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been an integral tool used by the Ukrainian military, malware-laced lure files themed as UAVs service

Even in today’s cloud-based environments, USB drives are a useful tool. Removable media can perform a variety of tasks, among them quick transfers between systems on different networks or moving installation and configuration files to air-gapped networks. Optical media, such as CDs and DVDs, are also still found in some networks. For all their versatility,

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

Sep 23, 2023THNCyber Espionage / Malware Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously undocumented advanced backdoor dubbed Deadglyph employed by a threat actor known as Stealth Falcon as part of a cyber espionage campaign. “Deadglyph’s architecture is unusual as it consists of cooperating components – one a native x64 binary, the other a .NET assembly,” ESET

Sep 22, 2023THNMalware / Cyber Threat An active malware campaign targeting Latin America is dispensing a new variant of a banking trojan called BBTok, particularly users in Brazil and Mexico. “The BBTok banker has a dedicated functionality that replicates the interfaces of more than 40 Mexican and Brazilian banks, and tricks the victims into entering

DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is a relatively new protocol that encrypts domain name system traffic by passing DNS queries through a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure encrypted session. DoH seeks to improve online privacy by hiding DNS queries from view. DoH works similarly to DNS, but HTTPS sessions keep the requests and minimize the information exchanged

Sep 21, 2023THNTelecom Security / Cyber Attack A previously undocumented threat actor dubbed Sandman has been attributed to a set of cyber attacks targeting telecommunic koation providers in the Middle East, Western Europe, and the South Asian subcontinent. Notably, the intrusions leverage a just-in-time (JIT) compiler for the Lua programming language known as LuaJIT as

An eye-opening 74% of breaches include the human element, according to Verizon’s “2023 Data Breach Investigations Report,” be it from negligence, stolen credentials or falling victim to phishing scams. With IBM reporting the average total cost of a ransomware breach at $5.13 million, it is critical that organizations conduct ransomware-specific training to help employees recognize

Sep 20, 2023THNCyber Crime / Dark Web Finnish law enforcement authorities have announced the takedown of PIILOPUOTI, a dark web marketplace that specialized in illegal narcotics trade since May 2022. “The site operated as a hidden service in the encrypted TOR network,” the Finnish Customs (aka Tulli) said in a brief announcement on Tuesday. “The

Sep 19, 2023THNMalware / Cyber Threat Telecommunication service providers in the Middle East are the target of a new intrusion set dubbed ShroudedSnooper that employs a stealthy backdoor called HTTPSnoop. “HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to listen to incoming

Cloud security vendor Wiz discovered 38 TB of private Microsoft data that was accidentally exposed by AI researchers employed by the tech giant. Wiz’s research was published in a blog post Monday as part of coordinated disclosure with Microsoft. According to Wiz security researchers Hillai Ben-Sasson and Ronny Greenberg, who authored the research, Microsoft’s AI

Sep 18, 2023THNCloud Security / Cryptocurrecy A novel cloud-native cryptojacking operation has set its eyes on uncommon Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings such as AWS Amplify, AWS Fargate, and Amazon SageMaker to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. The malicious cyber activity has been codenamed AMBERSQUID by cloud and container security firm Sysdig. “The AMBERSQUID operation was able

Sep 17, 2023THNCryptocurrency / Cyber Attack The North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group has stolen nearly $240 million in cryptocurrency since June 2023, marking a significant escalation of its hacks. According to multiple reports from Certik, Elliptic, and ZachXBT, the infamous hacking group is said to be suspected behind the theft of $31 million in digital assets

Sep 16, 2023THNPrivacy / Technology The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped TikTok with a €345 million (about $368 million) fine for violating the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in relation to its handling of children’s data. The investigation, initiated in September 2021, examined how the popular short-form video platform processed personal data

Developer platform Retool disclosed it suffered a breach last month that involved vishing attack on an employee and affected 27 cloud customers. In a blog post Wednesday, Retool revealed it was targeted in a spear phishing attack on August 27. A threat actor impersonating an IT staff member conducted SMS-based phishing and a successful vishing

The volume of cybersecurity vulnerabilities is rising, with close to 30% more vulnerabilities found in 2022 vs. 2018. Costs are also rising, with a data breach in 2023 costing $4.45M on average vs. $3.62M in 2017. In Q2 2023, a total of 1386 victims were claimed by ransomware attacks compared with just 831 in Q1

Protecting the company against cyber attacks is a cross-organizational endeavor. And while employees are often called the first line of defense, it’s critical not to overlook senior leaders and the C-suite. IT has a lot of work to do in defending the organization against hackers, which includes ensuring endpoint protection, backing up data, installing firewalls

Sep 14, 2023THNEndpoint Security / Vulnerability A set of memory corruption flaws have been discovered in the ncurses (short for new curses) programming library that could be exploited by threat actors to run malicious code on vulnerable Linux and macOS systems. “Using environment variable poisoning, attackers could chain these vulnerabilities to elevate privileges and run

Sep 13, 2023THNKubernetes / Cloud Security Three interrelated high-severity security flaws discovered in Kubernetes could be exploited to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges on Windows endpoints within a cluster. The issues, tracked as CVE-2023-3676, CVE-2023-3893, and CVE-2023-3955, carry CVSS scores of 8.8 and impact all Kubernetes environments with Windows nodes. Fixes for the

A Cisco VPN flaw disclosed last week has faced attempted exploitation at the hands of the Akira ransomware gang. The zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-20269, is a medium-severity flaw affecting the remote access VPN features in Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software. It could, according to the networking vendor’s advisory,

Sep 12, 2023THNSoftware Security / Vulnerability A new vulnerability disclosed in GitHub could have exposed thousands of repositories at risk of repojacking attacks, new findings show. The flaw “could allow an attacker to exploit a race condition within GitHub’s repository creation and username renaming operations,” Checkmarx security researcher Elad Rapoport said in a technical report