Security News

NET-based post-exploitation framework called IceApple that has been deployed on Microsoft Exchange server instances to facilitate reconnaissance and data exfiltration. "Suspected to be the work of a state-nexus adversary, IceApple remains under active development, with 18 modules observed in use across a number of enterprise environments, as of May 2022," CrowdStrike said in a Wednesday report.

Docker APIs on Linux servers are being targeted by a large-scale Monero crypto-mining campaign from the operators of the Lemon Duck botnet. Cryptomining gangs are a constant threat to poorly secured or misconfigured Docker systems, with multiple mass-exploitation campaigns reported in recent years.

A Hive ransomware affiliate has been targeting Microsoft Exchange servers vulnerable to ProxyShell security issues to deploy various backdoors, including Cobalt Strike beacon. From there, the threat actors perform network reconnaissance, steal admin account credentials, exfiltrate valuable data, ultimately deploying the file-encrypting payload. The details come from security and analytics company Varonis, who was called in to investigate a ransomware attack on one of its customers.

"The TDS has infected various web servers hosting more than 16,500 websites, ranging from adult content sites, personal websites, university sites, and local government sites," Avast researchers Pavel Novák and Jan Rubín said in a report published last week. Earlier this January, the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team detailed another TDS called Prometheus that has been put to use in different campaigns mounted by cybercriminal groups to distribute Campo Loader, Hancitor, IcedID, QBot, Buer Loader, and SocGholish malware.

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a "Simple but efficient" persistence mechanism adopted by a relatively nascent malware loader called Colibri, which has been observed deploying a Windows information stealer known as Vidar as part of a new campaign. "The attack starts with a malicious Word document deploying a Colibri bot that then delivers the Vidar Stealer," Malwarebytes Labs said in an analysis.

An unidentified threat actor has been observed employing a "Complex and powerful" malware loader with the ultimate objective of deploying cryptocurrency miners on compromised systems and potentially facilitating the theft of Discord tokens. "The evidence found on victim networks appears to indicate that the goal of the attacker was to install cryptocurrency mining software on victim machines," researchers from the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom Software, said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

Hackers are compromising WordPress sites to insert a malicious script that uses visitors' browsers to perform distributed denial-of-service attacks on Ukrainian websites. Today, MalwareHunterTeam discovered a WordPress site compromised to use this script, targeting ten websites with Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

In a new blog post published tonight, Microsoft has confirmed that one of their employee's accounts was compromised by Lapsus$, providing limited access to source code repositories. "No customer code or data was involved in the observed activities. Our investigation has found a single account had been compromised, granting limited access. Our cybersecurity response teams quickly engaged to remediate the compromised account and prevent further activity," explained Microsoft in an advisory about the Lapsus$ threat actors.

Okta confirmed today they suffered a security incident in January this year when hackers gained access to the laptop of one of its support engineers that could initiate passwords resets fort customers. Results from the forensic investigation showed that the attacker had an opportunity window of five days, during which time the intruder had access to the laptop of an Okta support engineer that could initiate passwords resets fort customers.

Microsoft says they are investigating claims that the Lapsus$ data extortion hacking group breached their internal Azure DevOps source code repositories and stolen data. Early Sunday morning, the Lapsus$ gang indicated that they hacked Microsoft's Azure DevOps server by posting a screenshot on Telegram of alleged internal source code repositories.