Jan 02, 2025The Hacker NewsCloud Security / Threat Intelligence In the past year, cross-domain attacks have gained prominence as an emerging tactic among adversaries. These operations exploit weak points across multiple domains – including endpoints, identity systems and cloud environments – so the adversary can infiltrate organizations, move laterally and evade detection. eCrime groups like […]
Continue ReadingCybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the npm package registry that masquerades as a library for detecting vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts but, in reality, drops an open-source remote access trojan called Quasar RAT onto developer systems. The heavily obfuscated package, named ethereumvulncontracthandler, was published to npm on December 18, 2024, by a […]
Continue ReadingJan 02, 2025Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / Hacking German prosecutors have charged three Russian-German nationals for acting as secret service agents for Russia. The individuals, named Dieter S., Alexander J., and Alex D., have been accused of working for a foreign secret service. Dieter S. is also alleged to have participated in sabotage operations as well […]
Continue ReadingJan 01, 2025Ravie LakshmananWeb Security / Vulnerability Threat hunters have disclosed a new “widespread timing-based vulnerability class” that leverages a double-click sequence to facilitate clickjacking attacks and account takeovers in almost all major websites. The technique has been codenamed DoubleClickjacking by security researcher Paulos Yibelo. “Instead of relying on a single click, it takes advantage […]
Continue ReadingJan 01, 2025Ravie LakshmananGenerative AI / Election Interference The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday leveled sanctions against two entities in Iran and Russia for their attempts to interfere with the November 2024 presidential election. The federal agency said the entities – a subordinate organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard […]
Continue ReadingDec 31, 2024Ravie LakshmananData Security / Privacy The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a final rule carrying out Executive Order (EO) 14117, which prevents mass transfer of citizens’ personal data to countries of concern such as China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. “This final rule is […]
Continue ReadingDec 31, 2025Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Incident Response The United States Treasury Department said it suffered a “major cybersecurity incident” that allowed suspected Chinese threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents. “On December 8, 2024, Treasury was notified by a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, that a threat actor had gained access to […]
Continue ReadingCybersecurity researchers have uncovered three security weaknesses in Microsoft’s Azure Data Factory Apache Airflow integration that, if successfully exploited, could have allowed an attacker to gain the ability to conduct various covert actions, including data exfiltration and malware deployment. “Exploiting these flaws could allow attackers to gain persistent access as shadow administrators over the entire […]
Continue ReadingDec 30, 2025Ravie LakshmananCybersecurity / Compliance The United States Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has proposed new cybersecurity requirements for healthcare organizations with an aim to safeguard patients’ data against potential cyber attacks. The proposal, which seeks to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of […]
Continue ReadingDec 30, 2025The Hacker NewsBrowser Security / GenAI Security News has been making headlines over the weekend of the extensive attack campaign targeting browser extensions and injecting them with malicious code to steal user credentials. Currently, over 25 extensions, with an install base of over two million users, have been found to be compromised, and […]
Continue ReadingDec 29, 2025Ravie LakshmananEndpoint Protection / Browser Security A new attack campaign has targeted known Chrome browser extensions, leading to at least 16 extensions being compromised and exposing over 600,000 users to data exposure and credential theft. The attack targeted publishers of browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store via a phishing campaign and used […]
Continue ReadingDec 28, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Threat Intelligence A high-severity flaw impacting select Four-Faith routers has come under active exploitation in the wild, according to new findings from VulnCheck. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-12856 (CVSS score: 7.2), has been described as an operating system (OS) command injection bug affecting router models F3x24 and F3x36. The severity […]
Continue ReadingDec 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananCryptocurrency / Cyber Espionage North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign have been observed dropping a new JavaScript malware called OtterCookie. Contagious Interview (aka DeceptiveDevelopment) refers to a persistent attack campaign that employs social engineering lures, with the hacking crew often posing as recruiters to trick individuals looking for […]
Continue ReadingDec 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Data Theft The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting “several dozen users” in 2024. “Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula […]
Continue ReadingDec 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananFirewall Security / Vulnerability Palo Alto Networks has disclosed a high-severity vulnerability impacting PAN-OS software that could cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on susceptible devices. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-3393 (CVSS score: 8.7), impacts PAN-OS versions 10.X and 11.X, as well as Prisma Access running PAN-OS versions. It has been addressed in […]
Continue ReadingDec 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananBotnet / DDoS Attack Cybersecurity researchers are warning about a spike in malicious activity that involves roping vulnerable D-Link routers into two different botnets, a Mirai variant dubbed FICORA and a Kaiten (aka Tsunami) variant called CAPSAICIN. “These botnets are frequently spread through documented D-Link vulnerabilities that allow remote attackers to execute […]
Continue ReadingDec 27, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Software Security The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released patches to address a maximum severity vulnerability in the MINA Java network application framework that could result in remote code execution under specific conditions. Tracked as CVE-2024-52046, the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It affects versions 2.0.X, 2.1.X, and […]
Continue ReadingDec 26, 2024Ravie LakshmananCybercrime / Ransomware A Brazilian citizen has been charged in the United States for allegedly threatening to release data stolen by hacking into a company’s network in March 2020. Junior Barros De Oliveira, 29, of Curitiba, Brazil has been charged with four counts of extortionate threats involving information obtained from protected computers […]
Continue ReadingDec 25, 2024Ravie LakshmananCloud Security / Vulnerability Cybersecurity researchers have discovered several security flaws in the cloud management platform developed by Ruijie Networks that could permit an attacker to take control of the network appliances. “These vulnerabilities affect both the Reyee platform, as well as Reyee OS network devices,” Claroty researchers Noam Moshe and Tomer […]
Continue ReadingDec 25, 2024Ravie LakshmananServer Security / Vulnerability The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has shipped security updates to address a critical security flaw in Traffic Control that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary Structured Query Language (SQL) commands in the database. The SQL injection vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45387, is rated 9.9 out […]
Continue ReadingDec 25, 2024Ravie LakshmananCyber Attack / Malware The Iranian nation-state hacking group known as Charming Kitten has been observed deploying a C++ variant of a known malware called BellaCiao. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky, which dubbed the new version BellaCPP, said it discovered the artifact as part of a “recent” investigation into a compromised machine in […]
Continue ReadingDec 24, 2024Ravie LakshmananMalware / Data Exfiltration Cybersecurity researchers have flagged two malicious packages that were uploaded to the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository and came fitted with capabilities to exfiltrate sensitive information from compromised hosts, according to new findings from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs. The packages, named zebo and cometlogger, attracted 118 and 164 downloads […]
Continue ReadingDec 24, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Software Security The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday added a now-patched high-severity security flaw impacting Acclaim Systems USAHERDS to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2021-44207 (CVSS score: 8.1), a case of […]
Continue ReadingDec 24, 2024Ravie LakshmananCybercrime / Malware Japanese and U.S. authorities have formerly attributed the theft of cryptocurrency worth $308 million from cryptocurrency company DMM Bitcoin in May 2024 to North Korean cyber actors. “The theft is affiliated with TraderTraitor threat activity, which is also tracked as Jade Sleet, UNC4899, and Slow Pisces,” the agencies said. […]
Continue ReadingDec 24, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Zero Day The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released a security update to address an important vulnerability in its Tomcat server software that could result in remote code execution (RCE) under certain conditions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-56337, has been described as an incomplete mitigation for CVE-2024-50379 (CVSS score: 9.8), […]
Continue ReadingDec 23, 2024Ravie LakshmananMachine Learning / Threat Analysis Cybersecurity researchers have found that it’s possible to use large language models (LLMs) to generate new variants of malicious JavaScript code at scale in a manner that can better evade detection. “Although LLMs struggle to create malware from scratch, criminals can easily use them to rewrite or […]
Continue ReadingA dual Russian and Israeli national has been charged in the United States for allegedly being the developer of the now-defunct LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation since its inception in or around 2019 through at least February 2024. Rostislav Panev, 51, was arrested in Israel earlier this August and is currently awaiting extradition, the U.S. Department […]
Continue ReadingThe Lazarus Group, an infamous threat actor linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), has been observed leveraging a “complex infection chain” targeting at least two employees belonging to an unnamed nuclear-related organization within the span of one month in January 2024. The attacks, which culminated in the deployment of a new modular […]
Continue ReadingDec 20, 2024Ravie LakshmananVulnerability / Cyber Attack A now-patched critical security flaw impacting Fortinet FortiClient EMS is being exploited by malicious actors as part of a cyber campaign that installed remote desktop software such as AnyDesk and ScreenConnect. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2023-48788 (CVSS score: 9.3), an SQL injection bug that allows attackers to […]
Continue ReadingDec 20, 2024Ravie LakshmananMalware / Supply Chain Attack The developers of Rspack have revealed that two of their npm packages, @rspack/core and @rspack/cli, were compromised in a software supply chain attack that allowed a malicious actor to publish malicious versions to the official package registry with cryptocurrency mining malware. Following the discovery, versions 1.1.7 of […]
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