Security News
Bugs in the implementation of Microsoft Exchange's Autodiscover feature have leaked approximately 100,000 login names and passwords for Windows domains worldwide.In a new report by Amit Serper, Guardicore's AVP of Security Research, the researcher reveals how the incorrect implementation of the Autodiscover protocol, rather than a bug in Microsoft Exchange, is causing Windows credentials to be sent to third-party untrusted websites.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Russian cryptocurrency exchange Suex for helping facilitate and launder transactions from at least eight ransomware variants as part of the government's efforts to crack down on a surge in ransomware incidents and make it difficult for bad actors to profit from such attacks using digital currencies. "Virtual currency exchanges such as SUEX are critical to the profitability of ransomware attacks, which help fund additional cybercriminal activity," the department said in a press release.
The US Treasury on Tuesday sanctioned virtual cryptocurrency exchange Suex OTC for handling financial transactions for ransomware operators, an intervention that's part of a broad US government effort to disrupt online extortion and related cyber-crime. According to the US Treasury, more than 40 per cent of the firm's known transaction history involves illicit entities, and that it handled payments from at least eight ransomware variants.
The US Treasury Department announced the first-ever sanctions against a cryptocurrency exchange, the Russian-linked Suex, for facilitating ransom transactions for ransomware gangs and helping them evade sanctions. By sanctioning crypto exchanges providing ransomware groups with material support, the US hopes to drain their funding and disrupt their operations.
The Biden administration is expected to issue sanctions against crypto exchanges, wallets, and traders used by ransomware gangs to convert ransom payments into fiat money. With ransomware attacks against US interests and infrastructure escalating over the past two years, the White House has increased its efforts to disrupt ransomware operations.
In 2018, hackers famously compromised several cryptocurrency exchanges by compromising a popular software library used by most exchanges on the internet. Cryptocurrency exchanges are convenient, which means people will almost certainly continue to use them.
An ongoing campaign has been found to leverage a network of websites acting as a "Dropper as a service" to deliver a bundle of malware payloads to victims looking for "Cracked" versions of popular business and consumer applications. The attacks work by taking advantage of a number of bait pages hosted on WordPress that contain "Download" links to software packages, which, when clicked, redirect the victims to a different website that delivers potentially unwanted browser plug-ins and malware, such as installers for Raccoon Stealer, Stop ransomware, the Glupteba backdoor, and a variety of malicious cryptocurrency miners that masquerade as antivirus solutions.
Over the past two weeks, it has been busy with ransomware news ranging from a gang shutting down and releasing a master decryption key to threat actors turning to Microsoft Exchange exploits to breach networks. The FBI and CISA have also been busy, releasing advisories warning of ransomware attacks over holiday weekends, gangs targeting food and agriculture organizations, information about the 1% group, and IOCs for the Hive Ransomware.
The Conti ransomware gang is hacking into Microsoft Exchange servers and breaching corporate networks using recently disclosed ProxyShell vulnerability exploits. ProxyShell is the name of an exploit utilizing three chained Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities that allow unauthenticated, remote code execution on unpatched vulnerable servers.
The massive attack on Microsoft Exchange servers in March may have been China harvesting information to train AI systems, according to US government officials and computer-security experts who talked to NPR. The plundering of these Exchange systems was attributed to Chinese government cyber-spies known as Hafnium; Beijing denied any involvement. It's said the crew exploited four zero-days in Redmond's mail software in a chain to hijack the servers and siphon off data.