Security News

US and Japan warn of Chinese hackers backdooring Cisco routers
2023-09-27 15:51

US and Japanese law enforcement and cybersecurity agencies warn of the Chinese 'BlackTech' hackers breaching network devices to install custom backdoors for access to corporate networks. The FBI notice warns that the BlackTech hackers use custom, regularly updated malware to backdoor network devices, which are used for persistence, initial access to networks, and to steal data by redirecting traffic to attacker-controlled servers.

Chinese Hackers TAG-74 Targets South Korean Organizations in a Multi-Year Campaign
2023-09-26 09:49

A "multi-year" Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage campaign has been observed targeting South Korean academic, political, and government organizations. Recorded Future's Insikt Group, which is...

Sophisticated Phishing Campaign Targeting Chinese Users with ValleyRAT and Gh0st RAT
2023-09-20 09:56

Chinese-language speakers have been increasingly targeted as part of multiple email phishing campaigns that aim to distribute various malware families such as Sainbox RAT, Purple Fox, and a new...

Chinese Redfly Group Compromised a Nation's Critical Grid in 6-Month ShadowPad Campaign
2023-09-12 10:18

A threat actor called Redfly has been linked to a compromise of a national grid located in an unnamed Asian country for as long as six months earlier this year using a known malware referred to as ShadowPad. "The attackers managed to steal credentials and compromise multiple computers on the organization's network," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The earliest sign of an attack targeting the Asian entity is said to have been recorded on February 23, 2023, when ShadowPad was executed on a single computer, followed by running the backdoor three months later on May 17.

How Chinese hackers got their hands on Microsoft’s token signing key
2023-09-07 13:50

The mystery of how Chinese hackers managed to steal a crucial signing key that allowed them to breach Microsoft 365's email service and access accounts of employees of 25 government agencies has been explained: they found it somewhere where it shouldn't have been - Microsoft's corporate environment. The signing key was included in the snapshot of the crashed process of a consumer signing system because of an unexpected race condition, and its presence in the crash dump wasn't detected by Microsoft's credential scanning methods.

Chinese-Speaking Cybercriminals Launch Large-Scale iMessage Smishing Campaign in U.S.
2023-09-04 05:30

A new large-scale smishing campaign is targeting the U.S. by sending iMessages from compromised Apple iCloud accounts with an aim to conduct identity theft and financial fraud. "The Chinese-speaking threat actors behind this campaign are operating a package-tracking text scam sent via iMessage to collect personally identifying information and payment credentials from victims, in the furtherance of identity theft and credit card fraud," Resecurity said in an analysis published last week.

Barracuda gateway attacks: How Chinese snoops keep a grip on victims' networks
2023-08-30 23:00

Nearly a third of organizations compromised by Chinese cyberspies via a critical bug in some Barracuda Email Security Gateways were government units, according to Mandiant. Mandiant continues to recommend people dump and replace their at-risk Barracuda equipment.

Chinese Hacking Group Exploits Barracuda Zero-Day to Target Government, Military, and Telecom
2023-08-29 14:54

A suspected Chinese-nexus hacking group exploited a recently disclosed zero-day flaw in Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway appliances to breach government, military, defense and aerospace, high-tech industry, and telecom sectors as part of a global espionage campaign. What's more, FOXTROT shares overlaps with an open-source rootkit called Reptile, which has been extensively used by multiple Chinese hacking crews in recent months.

Chinese media teases imminent exposé of seismic US spying scheme
2023-08-15 01:57

China's Global Times, a state-controlled media outlet, has teased an imminent exposé of alleged US attacks on seismic data measurement stations. The statements from China are objective and professional.

Encryption Flaws in Popular Chinese Language App Put Users' Typed Data at Risk
2023-08-10 11:14

A widely used Chinese language input app for Windows and Android has been found vulnerable to serious security flaws that could allow a malicious interloper to decipher the text typed by users. The findings from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which carried out an analysis of the encryption mechanism used in Tencent's Sogou Input Method, an app that has over 455 million monthly active users across Windows, Android, and iOS. The vulnerabilities are rooted in EncryptWall, the service's custom encryption system, allowing network eavesdroppers to extract the textual content and access sensitive data.