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A Russia-linked threat actor has been linked to a new campaign that employed a car for sale as a phishing lure to deliver a modular Windows backdoor called HeadLace . "The campaign likely targeted diplomats and began as early as March 2024," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a report published today, attributing it with medium to high level of confidence to APT28 , which is also referred to as BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, Fighting Ursa, Forest Blizzard, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, ITG05, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422. It's worth noting that car-for-sale phishing lure themes have been previously put to use by a different Russian nation-state group called APT29 as far back as May 2023, indicating that APT28 is repurposing successful tactics for its own campaigns. Earlier this May, the threat actor was implicated in a series of campaigns targeting networks across Europe with the HeadLace malware and credential-harvesting web pages. The attacks are characterize

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday  added  a security flaw impacting Apache Flink, an open-source, unified stream-processing and batch-processing framework, to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as  CVE-2020-17519 , the issue relates to a case of improper access control that could allow an attacker to read any file on the local filesystem of the JobManager through its REST interface. This also means that a remote unauthenticated attacker could send a specially crafted directory traversal request that could permit unauthorized access to sensitive information. The vulnerability, which impacts Flink versions 1.11.0, 1.11.1, and 1.11.2, was  addressed  in January 2021 in versions 1.11.3 or 1.12.0. The exact nature of the attacks exploiting the flaw is presently unknown, although Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 warned of extensive in-the-wild abuse between November 2020 and January 2

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,

Palo Alto Networks has  shared  remediation guidance for a recently disclosed critical security flaw impacting PAN-OS that has come under active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), could be weaponized to obtain unauthenticated remote shell command execution on susceptible devices. It has been addressed in multiple versions of PAN-OS 10.2.x, 11.0.x, and 11.1.x. There is evidence to suggest that the issue has been exploited as a zero-day since at least March 26, 2024, by a threat cluster tracked as UTA0218. The activity, codenamed  Operation MidnightEclipse , entails the use of the flaw to drop a Python-based backdoor called UPSTYLE that's capable of executing commands transmitted via specially crafted requests. The intrusions have not been linked to a known threat actor or group, but it's suspected to be a state-backed hacking crew given the tradecraft and the victimology observed. The  latest remediation advice  offered by Palo

Palo Alto Networks has shared more details of a critical security flaw impacting PAN-OS that has come under active exploitation in the wild by malicious actors. The company described the vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), as "intricate" and a combination of two bugs in versions PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, and PAN-OS 11.1 of the software. "In the first one, the GlobalProtect service did not sufficiently validate the session ID format before storing them. This enabled the attacker to store an empty file with the attacker's chosen filename," Chandan B. N., senior director of product security at Palo Alto Networks,  said . "The second bug (trusting that the files were system-generated) used the filenames as part of a command."  It's worth noting that while neither of the issues are critical enough on their own, when chained together, they could lead to unauthenticated remote shell command execution. Palo Alto Networks sai

Palo Alto Networks has released hotfixes to address a maximum-severity security flaw impacting PAN-OS software that has come under active exploitation in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), the critical vulnerability is a case of command injection in the GlobalProtect feature that an unauthenticated attacker could weaponize to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on the firewall. Fixes for the shortcoming are available in the following versions - PAN-OS 10.2.9-h1 PAN-OS 11.0.4-h1, and PAN-OS 11.1.2-h3 Patches for other commonly deployed maintenance releases are expected to be released over the next few days. "This issue is applicable only to PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, and PAN-OS 11.1 firewalls configured with GlobalProtect gateway or GlobalProtect portal (or both) and device telemetry enabled," the company  clarified  in its updated advisory. It also said that while Cloud NGFW firewalls are not impacted by CVE-2024-3400, specific PAN-OS

Threat actors have been exploiting the newly disclosed zero-day flaw in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software dating back to March 26, 2024, nearly three weeks before it came to light yesterday. The network security company's Unit 42 division is  tracking  the activity under the name  Operation MidnightEclipse , attributing it as the work of a single threat actor of unknown provenance. The security vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-3400  (CVSS score: 10.0), is a command injection flaw that enables unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on the firewall. It's worth noting that the issue is applicable only to PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, and PAN-OS 11.1 firewall configurations that have GlobalProtect gateway and device telemetry enabled. Operation MidnightEclipse entails the exploitation of the flaw to create a cron job that runs every minute to fetch commands hosted on an external server ("172.233.228[

Palo Alto Networks is warning that a critical flaw impacting PAN-OS software used in its GlobalProtect gateways is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2024-3400 , the issue has a CVSS score of 10.0, indicating maximum severity. "A command injection vulnerability in the GlobalProtect feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software for specific PAN-OS versions and distinct feature configurations may enable an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on the firewall," the company  said  in an advisory published today. The flaw impacts the following versions of PAN-OS, with fixes expected to be released on April 14, 2024 - PAN-OS < 11.1.2-h3 PAN-OS < 11.0.4-h1 PAN-OS < 10.2.9-h1 The company also said that the issue is applicable only to firewalls that have the configurations for both  GlobalProtect gateway  (Network > GlobalProtect > Gateways) and  device telemetry  (Device > Setup > Telemetry) enabled.

Threat actors are actively scanning and exploiting a pair of security flaws that are said to affect as many as 92,000 internet-exposed D-Link network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Tracked as  CVE-2024-3272  (CVSS score: 9.8) and  CVE-2024-3273  (CVSS score: 7.3), the vulnerabilities impact  legacy D-Link products  that have reached end-of-life (EoL) status. D-Link, in an  advisory , said it does not plan to ship a patch and instead urges customers to replace them. "The vulnerability lies within the nas_sharing.cgi uri, which is vulnerable due to two main issues: a backdoor facilitated by hard-coded credentials, and a command injection vulnerability via the system parameter," security researcher who goes by the name netsecfish  said  in late March 2024. Successful exploitation of the flaws could lead to arbitrary command execution on the affected D-Link NAS devices, granting threat actors the ability to access sensitive information, alter system configurations, or even

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Linux variant of a remote access trojan (RAT) called BIFROSE (aka Bifrost) that uses a deceptive domain mimicking VMware. "This latest version of Bifrost aims to bypass security measures and compromise targeted systems," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Anmol Maurya and Siddharth Sharma  said . BIFROSE  is one of the long-standing threats that has been active since 2004. It has been offered for sale in underground forums for up to $10,000 in the past, according to a  report  from Trend Micro in December 2015. The malware has been put to use by a state-backed hacking group from China tracked as  BlackTech  (aka Circuit Panda, HUAPI, Manga Taurus, Palmerworm, PLEAD, Red Djinn, and Temp.Overboard), which has a history of striking organizations in Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S. It's suspected that the threat actor purchased the source code or gained access to it around 2010, and repurposed the malware for use in its own

Google Cloud has addressed a medium-severity security flaw in its platform that could be abused by an attacker who already has access to a Kubernetes cluster to escalate their privileges. "An attacker who has compromised the  Fluent Bit  logging container could combine that access with high privileges required by  Anthos Service Mesh  (on clusters that have enabled it) to escalate privileges in the cluster," the company  said  as part of an advisory released on December 14, 2023. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which discovered and reported the shortcoming, said adversaries could weaponize it to carry out "data theft, deploy malicious pods, and disrupt the cluster's operations." There is no evidence that the issue has been exploited in the wild. It has been addressed in the following versions of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Anthos Service Mesh (ASM) - 1.25.16-gke.1020000 1.26.10-gke.1235000 1.27.7-gke.1293000 1.28.4-gke.1083000 1.17.8-asm.8 1.18.

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered what they say is malicious cyber activity orchestrated by two prominent Chinese nation-state hacking groups targeting 24 Cambodian government organizations. "This activity is believed to be part of a long-term espionage campaign," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers  said  in a report last week. "The observed activity aligns with geopolitical goals of the Chinese government as it seeks to leverage their strong relations with Cambodia to project their power and expand their naval operations in the region." Targeted organizations span defense, election oversight, human rights, national treasury and finance, commerce, politics, natural resources, and telecommunications sectors. The assessment stems from the persistent nature of inbound network connections originating from these entities to a China-linked adversarial infrastructure that masquerades as cloud backup and storage services over a "period of several month

An unnamed Southeast Asian government has been targeted by multiple China-nexus threat actors as part of espionage campaigns targeting the region over extended periods of time. "While this activity occurred around the same time and in some instances even simultaneously on the same victims' machines, each cluster is characterized by distinct tools, modus operandi, and infrastructure," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Lior Rochberger, Tom Fakterman, and Robert Falcone  said  in an exhaustive three-part report. The attacks, which targeted different governmental entities such as critical infrastructure, public healthcare institutions, public financial administrators and ministries, have been attributed with moderate confidence to three disparate clusters tracked as  Stately Taurus  (aka Mustang Panda),  Alloy Taurus  (aka Granite Typhoon), and  Gelsemium . Mustang Panda Uses TONESHELL Variant and ShadowPad "The attackers conducted a cyberespionage operation th

The threat actors linked to the malware loader known as IcedID have made updates to the BackConnect (BC) module that's used for post-compromise activity on hacked systems, new findings from Team Cymru reveal. IcedID, also called BokBot , is a strain of malware similar to  Emotet  and  QakBot  that started off as a banking trojan in 2017, before switching to the role of an initial access facilitator for other payloads. Recent versions of the malware have been  observed  removing functionality related to online banking fraud to prioritize ransomware delivery. The BackConnect (BC) module,  first documented  by Netresec in October 2022, relies on a proprietary command-and-control (C2) protocol to exchange commands between a server and the infected host. The protocol, which comes with a VNC component for remote access, has also been identified in other malware such as the now-discontinued  BazarLoader  and QakBot. In December 2022, Team Cymru  reported  the discovery of 11 BC C2s a

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new cloud targeting, peer-to-peer (P2P) worm called  P2PInfect  that targets vulnerable Redis instances for follow-on exploitation. "P2PInfect exploits Redis servers running on both Linux and Windows Operating Systems making it more scalable and potent than other worms," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers William Gamazo and Nathaniel Quist  said . "This worm is also written in Rust, a highly scalable and cloud-friendly programming language." It's estimated that as many as 934 unique Redis systems may be vulnerable to the threat. The first known instance of P2PInfect was detected on July 11, 2023. A notable characteristic of the worm is its ability to infects vulnerable Redis instances by exploiting a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability,  CVE-2022-0543  (CVSS score: 10.0), which has been previously exploited to deliver multiple  malware families  such as  Muhstik ,  Redigo , and  HeadCrab  over the past ye

A threat actor known as  Muddled Libra  is targeting the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry with persistent attacks that leverage advanced social engineering ploys to gain initial access. "The attack style defining Muddled Libra appeared on the cybersecurity radar in late 2022 with the release of the 0ktapus phishing kit, which offered a prebuilt hosting framework and bundled templates," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  said  in a technical report. Libra is the constellation-themed  designation  given by the cybersecurity company for cybercrime groups. The "muddled" moniker for the threat actor stems from the prevailing ambiguity with regards to the use of the 0ktapus framework. 0ktapus , also known as Scatter Swine, refers to an intrusion set that first came to light in August 2022 in connection with smishing attacks against over 100 organizations, including Twilio and Cloudflare. Then in late 2022, CrowdStrike  detailed  a string of cyber assaults aimed

Governmental entities in the Middle East and Africa have been at the receiving end of sustained cyber-espionage attacks that leverage never-before-seen and rare credential theft and Exchange email exfiltration techniques. "The main goal of the attacks was to obtain highly confidential and sensitive information, specifically related to politicians, military activities, and ministries of foreign affairs," Lior Rochberger, senior threat researcher at Palo Alto Networks,  said  in a technical deep dive published last week. The company's Cortex Threat Research team is  tracking  the activity under the temporary name  CL-STA-0043  (where CL stands for cluster and STA stands for state-backed motivation), describing it as a "true advanced persistent threat." The infection chain is triggered by the exploitation of vulnerable on-premises Internet Information Services ( IIS ) and Microsoft Exchange servers to infiltrate target networks. Palo Alto Networks said it det

The Chinese nation-state group dubbed  Alloy Taurus  is using a Linux variant of a backdoor called PingPull as well as a new undocumented tool codenamed Sword2033. That's according to findings from Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which  discovered  recent malicious cyber activity carried out by the group targeting South Africa and Nepal. Alloy Taurus is the constellation-themed moniker assigned to a threat actor that's known for its attacks targeting telecom companies since at least 2012. It's also tracked by Microsoft as Granite Typhoon (previously Gallium). Last month, the adversary was attributed to a campaign called  Tainted Love  targeting telecommunication providers in the Middle East as part of a broader operation referred to as Soft Cell. Recent cyber espionage attacks mounted by Alloy Taurus have also broadened their victimology footprint to include financial institutions and government entities. PingPull,  first documented  by Unit 42 in June 2022, is a remote