Sophos | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A trio of threat activity clusters linked to China has been observed compromising more government organizations in Southeast Asia as part of a renewed state-sponsored operation codenamed Crimson Palace , indicating an expansion in the scope of the espionage effort. Cybersecurity firm Sophos, which has been monitoring the cyber offensive, said it comprises three intrusion sets tracked as Cluster Alpha (STAC1248), Cluster Bravo (STAC1870), and Cluster Charlie (STAC1305). STAC is an abbreviation for "security threat activity cluster." "The attackers consistently used other compromised organizational and public service networks in that region to deliver malware and tools under the guise of a trusted access point," security researchers Mark Parsons, Morgan Demboski, and Sean Gallagher said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. A noteworthy aspect of the attacks is that it entails the use of an unnamed organization's systems as a command-and-control

An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as  Dragon Breath  has been observed adding new layers of complexity to its attacks by adopting a novel  DLL side-loading  mechanism. "The attack is based on a classic side-loading attack, consisting of a clean application, a malicious loader, and an encrypted payload, with various modifications made to these components over time," Sophos researcher Gabor Szappanos  said . "The latest campaigns add a twist in which a first-stage clean application 'side'-loads a second clean application and auto-executes it. The second clean application side-loads the malicious loader DLL. After that, the malicious loader DLL executes the final payload." Operation Dragon Breath, also tracked under the names APT-Q-27 and Golden Eye, was  first   documented  by QiAnXin in 2020, detailing a watering hole campaign designed to trick users into downloading a trojanized Windows installer for Telegram. A  subsequent   campaign  un

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,

Security software company Sophos has released a patch update for its firewall product after it was discovered that attackers were exploiting a new critical zero-day vulnerability to attack its customers' network. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2022-3236  (CVSS score: 9.8), impacts Sophos Firewall v19.0 MR1 (19.0.1) and older and concerns a code injection vulnerability in the User Portal and Webadmin components that could result in remote code execution. The company  said  it "has observed this vulnerability being used to target a small set of specific organizations, primarily in the South Asia region," adding it directly notified these entities. As a workaround, Sophos is recommending that users take steps to ensure that the User Portal and Webadmin are not exposed to WAN. Alternatively, users can update to the latest supported version - v19.5 GA v19.0 MR2 (19.0.2) v19.0 GA, MR1, and MR1-1 v18.5 MR5 (18.5.5) v18.5 GA, MR1, MR1-1, MR2, MR3, and MR4 v18.0 MR3, MR4,

Cybersecurity firm Sophos on Monday warned that a recently patched critical security vulnerability in its firewall product is being actively exploited in real-world attacks. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2022-1040 , is rated 9.8 out of 10 on the CVSS scoring system and impacts Sophos Firewall versions 18.5 MR3 (18.5.3) and older. It relates to an authentication bypass vulnerability in the User Portal and Webadmin interface that, if successfully weaponized, allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. "Sophos has observed this vulnerability being used to target a small set of specific organizations primarily in the South Asia region," the company  noted  in a revised advisory published Monday. "We have informed each of these organizations directly." The flaw has been addressed in a hotfix that's automatically installed for customers who have the " Allow automatic installation of hotfixes " setting enabled. As a workaround, Sophos is recommending

In a sign that threat actors continuously shift tactics and update their defensive measures, the operators of the SolarMarker information stealer and backdoor have been found leveraging stealthy Windows Registry tricks to establish long-term persistence on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Sophos, which spotted the new behavior, said that the remote access implants are still being detected on targeted networks despite the campaign witnessing a decline in November 2021. Boasting of information harvesting and backdoor capabilities, the .NET-based malware has been linked to at least three different attack waves in 2021. The first set,  reported in April , took advantage of search engine poisoning techniques to trick business professionals into visiting sketchy Google sites that installed SolarMarker on the victim's machines. Then in August, the malware was  observed  targeting healthcare and education sectors with the goal of gathering credentials and sensitive information.

Hackers are planning to increase data security attacks via applications on social networking websites this Christmas, according to an expert. Earlier this month, IT security firm Sophos traced the history of malware and viruses created over the Christmas period from 1987 until 2009. The blog post revealed that, although some were relatively harmless festive pranks, more cyberattacks over the holidays could have serious repercussions for computer users. Rik Ferguson, senior security analyst at Trend Micro, stated that hackers conduct such attacks annually. "Criminals absolutely do, every year without fail, conduct campaigns designed to take advantage of people's willingness to search for and click on links relating to Christmas activity, whether that's through phishing campaigns or sending social engineering emails masquerading as Christmas cards," he said. Mr. Ferguson added that apps on social networking sites had "come of age as an attack platform" and