Security News
The Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team is warning that Russian hacking groups are exploiting the Follina code execution vulnerability in new phishing campaigns to install the CredoMap malware and Cobalt Strike beacons. The RTF document used in the APT28 campaign attempts to exploit CVE-2022-30190, aka "Follina," to download and launch the CredoMap malware on a target's device.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday disclosed that it took down the infrastructure associated with a Russian botnet known as RSOCKS in collaboration with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. The botnet, operated by a sophisticated cybercrime organization, is believed to have ensnared millions of internet-connected devices, including Internet of Things devices, Android phones, and computers for use as a proxy service. "The RSOCKS botnet offered its clients access to IP addresses assigned to devices that had been hacked," the DoJ said in a press release.
A Russian operated botnet known as RSOCKS has been shut down by the US Department of Justice acting with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It is believed to have compromised millions of computers and other devices around the globe. The RSOCKS botnet functioned as an IP proxy service, but instead of offering legitimate IP addresses leased from internet service providers, it was providing criminals with access to the IP addresses of devices that had been compromised by malware, according to a statement from the US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of California.
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the disruption of the Russian RSocks malware botnet used to hijack millions of computers, Android smartphones, and IoT devices worldwide for use as proxy servers. A botnet is a swarm of devices that threat actors can remotely control to perform various behavior, including DDoS attacks, crypto mining, and deploying additional malware.
Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team is warning that the Russian hacking group Sandworm may be exploiting Follina, a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool currently tracked as CVE-2022-30190. It is worth noting that Ukraine's agency assesses with medium confidence that behind the malicious activity is the Sandworm hacker group.
The Kremlin-backed cyberattack against satellite communications provider Viasat, which happened an hour before Russia invaded Ukraine, was "One of the biggest cyber events that we have seen, perhaps ever, and certainly in warfare," according to Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of CrowdStrike and chair of security-centric think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator. The two suggested that the primary purpose of the attack on satellite comms provider Viasat was to disrupt Ukrainian communications during the invasion, by wiping the modems' firmware remotely, it also disabled thousands of small-aperture terminals in Ukraine and across Europe.
Russian crooks are selling network credentials and virtual private network access for a "Multitude" of US universities and colleges on criminal marketplaces, according to the FBI. According to a warning issued on Thursday, these stolen credentials sell for thousands of dollars on both dark web and public internet forums, and could lead to subsequent cyberattacks against individual employees or the schools themselves. "The exposure of usernames and passwords can lead to brute force credential stuffing computer network attacks, whereby attackers attempt logins across various internet sites or exploit them for subsequent cyber attacks as criminal actors take advantage of users recycling the same credentials across multiple accounts, internet sites, and services," the Feds' alert [PDF] said.
Two Russian internet service providers have received notices from Google that the global caching servers on their network have been disabled. A caching server is an ISP-bound node for fast serving Google content faster to internet subscribers and maintain high access reliability even during outages.
Emails between leading pro-Brexit figures in the UK have seemingly been stolen and leaked online by what could be a Kremlin cyberespionage team. The emails were uploaded to a.co.uk website titled "Very English Coop d'Etat," Reuters first reported this week.
An unknown advanced persistent threat group has been linked to a series of spear-phishing attacks targeting Russian government entities since the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war in late February 2022. The cybersecurity company attributed the attacks with low confidence to a Chinese hacking group, citing infrastructure overlaps between the RAT and Sakula Rat malware used by a threat actor known as Deep Panda.