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A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the Microchip Advanced Software Framework (ASF) that, if successfully exploited, could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-7490 , carries a CVSS score of 9.5 out of a maximum of 10.0. It has been described as a stack-based overflow vulnerability in ASF's implementation of the tinydhcp server stemming from a lack of adequate input validation. "There exists a vulnerability in all publicly available examples of the ASF codebase that allows for a specially crafted DHCP request to cause a stack-based overflow that could lead to remote code execution," CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) said in an advisory. Given that the software is no longer supported and is rooted in IoT-centric code, CERT/CC has warned that the vulnerability is "likely to surface in many places in the wild." The issue impacts ASF 3.52.0.2574 and all prior versions of the software, with the agency also noting th

A hacktivist group known as Twelve has been observed using an arsenal of publicly available tools to conduct destructive cyber attacks against Russian targets. "Rather than demand a ransom for decrypting data, Twelve prefers to encrypt victims' data and then destroy their infrastructure with a wiper to prevent recovery," Kaspersky said in a Friday analysis. "The approach is indicative of a desire to cause maximum damage to target organizations without deriving direct financial benefit." The hacking group, believed to have been formed in April 2023 following the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war, has a track record of mounting cyber attacks that aim to cripple victim networks and disrupt business operations. It has also been observed conducting hack-and-leak operations that exfiltrate sensitive information, which is then shared on its Telegram channel. Kaspersky said Twelve shares infrastructural and tactical overlaps with a ransomware group called DARKSTA

For years, securing a company's systems was synonymous with securing its "perimeter." There was what was safe "inside" and the unsafe outside world. We built sturdy firewalls and deployed sophisticated detection systems, confident that keeping the barbarians outside the walls kept our data and systems safe. The problem is that we no longer operate within the confines of physical on-prem installations and controlled networks. Data and applications now reside in distributed cloud environments and data centers, accessed by users and devices connecting from anywhere on the planet. The walls have crumbled, and the perimeter has dissolved, opening the door to a new battlefield: identity . Identity is at the center of what the industry has praised as the new gold standard of enterprise security: "zero trust." In this paradigm, explicit trust becomes mandatory for any interactions between systems, and no implicit trust shall subsist. Every access request, regardless of its origin,

An Iranian advanced persistent threat (APT) threat actor likely affiliated with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) is now acting as an initial access facilitator that provides remote access to target networks. Google-owned Mandiant is tracking the activity cluster under the moniker UNC1860 , which it said shares similarities with intrusion sets tracked by Microsoft, Cisco Talos, and Check Point as Storm-0861 (formerly DEV-0861), ShroudedSnooper , and Scarred Manticore , respectively. "A key feature of UNC1860 is its collection of specialized tooling and passive backdoors that [...] supports several objectives, including its role as a probable initial access provider and its ability to gain persistent access to high-priority networks, such as those in the government and telecommunications space throughout the Middle East," the company said . The group first came to light in July 2022 in connection with destructive cyber attacks targeting Albania with a rans

Ivanti has revealed that a critical security flaw impacting Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) has come under active exploitation in the wild. The new vulnerability, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-8963, carries a CVSS score of 9.4 out of a maximum of 10.0. It was "incidentally addressed" by the company as part of CSA 4.6 Patch 519 and CSA 5.0. "Path Traversal in the Ivanti CSA before 4.6 Patch 519 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to access restricted functionality," the company said in a Thursday bulletin. It also noted that the flaw could be chained with CVE-2024-8190 (CVSS score: 7.2), permitting an attacker to bypass admin authentication and execute arbitrary commands on the appliance.  Ivanti has further warned that it's "aware of a limited number of customers who have been exploited by this vulnerability," days after it disclosed active exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2024-8190. This indicates that the threat actors behind th

Until just a couple of years ago, only a handful of IAM pros knew what service accounts are. In the last years, these silent Non-Human-Identities (NHI) accounts have become one of the most targeted and compromised attack surfaces . Assessments report that compromised service accounts play a key role in lateral movement in over 70% of ransomware attacks. However, there's an alarming disproportion between service accounts' compromise exposure and potential impact, and the available security measures to mitigate this risk.  In this article, we explore what makes service accounts such a lucrative target, why they are beyond the scope of most security control, and how the new approach of unified identity security can prevent service accounts from compromise and abuse .  Active Directory Service accounts 101: Non-human identities used for M2M In an Active Directory (AD) environment , service accounts are user accounts that are not associated with human beings but are used for machine-to-

Cybersecurity in healthcare has never been more urgent. As the most vulnerable industry and largest target for cybercriminals, healthcare is facing an increasing wave of cyberattacks. When a hospital's systems are held hostage by ransomware, it's not just data at risk — it's the care of patients who depend on life-saving treatments. Imagine an attack that forces emergency care to halt, surgeries to be postponed, or a cancer patient's private health information used for extortion. This is the reality healthcare faces as cybercriminals exploit people who need care. Healthcare accounted for 17.8% of all breach events and 18.2% of destructive ransomware events since 2012 1 , surpassing other sectors like finance, government, and education. This alarming rise in attacks makes one thing clear: poor cybersecurity hygiene is the root cause, and the consequences for failing to address these vulnerabilities are devastating. Organizations that neglect basic cybersecurity practices, like sof

Microsoft has revealed that a financially motivated threat actor has been observed using a ransomware strain called INC for the first time to target the healthcare sector in the U.S. The tech giant's threat intelligence team is tracking the activity under the name Vanilla Tempest (formerly DEV-0832). "Vanilla Tempest receives hand-offs from GootLoader infections by the threat actor Storm-0494, before deploying tools like the Supper backdoor, the legitimate AnyDesk remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, and the MEGA data synchronization tool," it said in a series of posts shared on X. In the next step, the attackers proceed to carry out lateral movement through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and then use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Provider Host to deploy the INC ransomware payload. The Windows maker said Vanilla Tempest has been active since at least July 2022, with previous attacks targeting education, healthcare, IT, and manufacturing secto

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a never-before-seen botnet comprising an army of small office/home office (SOHO) and IoT devices that are likely operated by a Chinese nation-state threat actor called Flax Typhoon (aka Ethereal Panda or RedJuliett). The sophisticated botnet, dubbed Raptor Train by Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, is believed to have been operational since at least May 2020, hitting a peak of 60,000 actively compromised devices in June 2023. "Since that time, there have been more than 200,000 SOHO routers, NVR/DVR devices, network attached storage (NAS) servers, and IP cameras; all conscripted into the Raptor Train botnet, making it one of the largest Chinese state-sponsored IoT botnets discovered to-date," the cybersecurity company said in a 81-page report shared with The Hacker News. The infrastructure powering the botnet is estimated to have ensnared hundreds of thousands of devices since its formation, with the network powered by a three-tiered

The evolution of software always catches us by surprise. I remember betting against the IBM computer Deep Blue during its chess match against the grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, only to be stunned when the machine claimed victory. Fast forward to today, would we have imagined just three years ago that a chatbot could write essays, handle customer support calls, and even craft commercial artwork? We continue to be amazed by what software can achieve—tasks we once thought were strictly human domains. Such is the surprise unfolding in the sphere of cybersecurity testing. Hold tight! Demystifying Penetration Testing If someone had told me 10 years ago that computer software could one day perform the work of an ethical hacker, I would have said 'No way, Jose'. Penetration testing—PT for short—is when experts mimic hackers to test a company's defenses. It's a critical practice, mandated by major regulatory bodies like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and DORA to ensure network safety. Yet, despite

Broadcom on Tuesday released updates to address a critical security flaw impacting VMware vCenter Server that could pave the way for remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-38812 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as a heap-overflow vulnerability in the DCE/RPC protocol . "A malicious actor with network access to vCenter Server may trigger this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted network packet potentially leading to remote code execution," the virtualization services provider said in a bulletin. The shortcoming is similar to two other remote code execution flaws, CVE-2024-37079 and CVE-2024-37080 (CVSS scores: 9.8), that VMware resolved in vCenter Server in June 2024. Also addressed by VMware is a privilege escalation flaw in the vCenter Server (CVE-2024-38813, CVSS score: 7.5) that could enable a malicious actor with network access to the instance to escalate privileges to root by sending a specially crafted network packet. Securit

SolarWinds has released fixes to address two security flaws in its Access Rights Manager (ARM) software, including a critical vulnerability that could result in remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-28991 , is rated 9.0 out of a maximum of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. It has been described as an instance of deserialization of untrusted data. "SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) was found to be susceptible to a remote code execution vulnerability," the company said in an advisory. "If exploited, this vulnerability would allow an authenticated user to abuse the service, resulting in remote code execution." Security researcher Piotr Bazydlo of the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on May 24, 2024. The ZDI, which has assigned the shortcoming a CVSS score of 9.9, said it exists within a class called JsonSerializationBinder and stems from a lack of proper validation of user

Malicious actors are likely leveraging publicly available proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for recently disclosed security flaws in Progress Software WhatsUp Gold to conduct opportunistic attacks. The activity is said to have commenced on August 30, 2024, a mere five hours after a PoC was released for CVE-2024-6670 (CVSS score: 9.8) by security researcher Sina Kheirkhah of the Summoning Team, who is also credited with discovering and reporting CVE-2024-6671 (CVSS scores: 9.8). Both the critical vulnerabilities, which allow an unauthenticated attacker to retrieve a user's encrypted password, were patched by Progress in mid-August 2024. "The timeline of events suggests that despite the availability of patches, some organizations were unable to apply them quickly, leading to incidents almost immediately following the PoC's publication," Trend Micro researchers Hitomi Kimura and Maria Emreen Viray said in a Thursday analysis. The attacks observed by the cybersec

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new malware campaign targeting Linux environments to conduct illicit cryptocurrency mining and deliver botnet malware. The activity, which specifically singles out the Oracle Weblogic server, is designed to deliver a malware strain dubbed Hadooken , according to cloud security firm Aqua. "When Hadooken is executed, it drops a Tsunami malware and deploys a crypto miner," security researcher Assaf Moran said . The attack chains exploit known security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, such as weak credentials, to obtain an initial foothold and execute arbitrary code on susceptible instances. This is accomplished by launching two nearly-identical payloads, one written in Python and the other, a shell script, both of which are responsible for retrieving the Hadooken malware from a remote server (" 89.185.85[.]102 " or " 185.174.136[.]204 "). "In addition, the shell script version attempts to iterate ov

Nearly 1.3 million Android-based TV boxes running outdated versions of the operating system and belonging to users spanning 197 countries have been infected by a new malware dubbed Vo1d (aka Void). "It is a backdoor that puts its components in the system storage area and, when commanded by attackers, is capable of secretly downloading and installing third-party software," Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web said in a report published today. A majority of the infections have been detected in Brazil, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Russia, Tunisia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Algeria, and Indonesia. It's currently not known what the source of the infection is, although it's suspected that it may have either involved an instance of prior compromise that allows for gaining root privileges or the use of unofficial firmware versions with built-in root access. The following TV models have been targeted as part of the campaign - KJ-SMART4KVIP (Android 10.1; KJ-SMA

Internet-exposed Selenium Grid instances are being targeted by bad actors for illicit cryptocurrency mining and proxyjacking campaigns. "Selenium Grid is a server that facilitates running test cases in parallel across different browsers and versions," Cado Security researchers Tara Gould and Nate Bill said in an analysis published today. "However, Selenium Grid's default configuration lacks authentication, making it vulnerable to exploitation by threat actors." The abuse of publicly-accessible Selenium Grid instances for deploying crypto miners was previously highlighted by cloud security firm Wiz in late July 2024 as part of an activity cluster dubbed SeleniumGreed . Cado, which observed two different campaigns against its honeypot server, said the threat actors are exploiting the lack of authentication protections to carry out a diverse set of malicious actions. The first of them leverages the " goog:chromeOptions " dictionary to inject a Ba