Security News
A wave of targeted cyberattack campaigns bent on espionage is cresting around the globe, using a strain of a 13-year old backdoor trojan named Bandook. According to Check Point Research, Bandook was last spotted being used in 2015 and 2017/2018, in the "Operation Manul" and "Dark Caracal" campaigns, respectively.
Facebook fixed a critical flaw in the Facebook Messenger for Android messaging app that allowed callers to listen to other users' surroundings without permission before the person on the other end picked up the call. Facebook Messenger for Android has been installed on more than 1 billion Android devices according to the app's official Play Store page.
Israeli spyware maker NSO Group has taken a leaf out of Hollywood in an attempt to avoid any legal repercussions from making and selling tools that hack WhatsApp users' phones. When NSO failed to turn up in court in the US state, Facebook claimed victory; and NSO accused it of lying and having failed to serve the legal documents.
The North Korean advanced persistent threat group known as Kimsuky is actively attacking commercial-sector businesses, often by posing as South Korean reporters, according to an alert from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Kimsuky has been operating as a cyberespionage group since 2012 under the auspices of the regime in Pyongyang.
The European Union has imposed sanctions on a Russian military malware developer and the commander of Russia's MI6 equivalent, a mere five years after the two targeted Germany's parliament with a cyberattack. The pair, an admiral commanding the GRU spy agency and a malware dev already on international sanctions lists for targeting the MH17 mass murder investigation, are now subject to yet another travel ban.
The EU's top court on Tuesday put limits on how European spy and security agencies could harvest troves of personal data, but said this could be done under a serious threat to national security. At the request of the courts in France, Belgium and Britain, the European Court of Justice confirmed that "EU law precludes national legislation" that requires telcos and tech companies to carry out the "Indiscriminate retention" of data, a statement said.
Infosec outfit Check Point says it has uncovered a six-year Iranian cyber-spying campaign directed at expats and dissidents worldwide. "The handpicked targets included supporters of Mujahedin-e Khalq and the Azerbaijan National Resistance Organization, two prominent resistance movements that advocate the liberation of Iranian people and minorities within Iran," said Check Point in its research report on RampantKitten.
The malware's emergence dovetails with a change in the chain of infection and an expansion of infrastructure for the APT. According to researchers at Cybereason, PyVil RAT enables the attackers to exfiltrate data, perform keylogging and take screenshots, and can roll out secondary credential-harvesting tools such as LaZagne. The latest series of campaigns observed by Cybereason that use PyVil RAT are widespread yet targeted, taking aim at FinTech companies across the U.K. and E.U. The attack vector is spear-phishing emails, which use the Know Your Customer regulations as a lure.
Denmark's top foreign intelligence chief has been suspended for spying on Danish citizens illegally for up to six years after a whistleblower released a trove of documents to government regulators. In a press release yesterday, the independent regulator of the Danish security services said it had received information from a whistleblower in November that revealed the country's foreign intelligence service "Had withheld key and crucial information," and given "Incorrect information on matters relating to the collection of the service and disclosure of information."
The APT group Transparent Tribe is mounting an ongoing cyberespionage campaign, researchers said, which is aimed at military and diplomatic targets around the world. Transparent Tribe has updated Crimson RAT for this campaign, the firm said, adding a server-side component used to manage infected client machines as well as a new USBWorm component developed for stealing files from removable drives, spreading across systems by infecting removable media, and downloading and executing a thin-client version of Crimson from a remote server.