Security News
The U.S. government on Tuesday added two foreign commercial spyware vendors, Cytrox and Intellexa, to an economic blocklist for weaponizing cyber exploits to gain unauthorized access to devices and "Threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide." Cytrox is the maker of a mobile mercenary spyware called Predator that's analogous to NSO Group's Pegasus.
The US government on Tuesday added commercial spyware makers Intellexa and Cytrox to its Entity List, saying the duo are a possible threat to national security. Adding Intellexa and Cytrox to the Entity List places export restrictions on the software vendors as part of the Biden administration's ongoing crackdown against commercial surveillance technology.
Per Le Monde, lawmakers from French president Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party added several amendments to what's been dubbed the "Snoopers' charter" - requiring remote spying only be used "When justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime," and even then only for a "Strict and proportional" length of time. French justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said the bill will only apply to a few dozen cases per year and, rather than being a way for France to get government-sponsored spyware onto the devices of anyone accused of a crime, will save lives.
Two file management apps on the Google Play Store have been discovered to be spyware, putting the privacy and security of up to 1.5 million Android users at risk. These apps engage in deceptive behaviour and secretly send sensitive user data to malicious servers in China.
Today, CISA ordered federal agencies to patch recently patched security vulnerabilities exploited as zero-days to deploy Triangulation spyware on iPhones via iMessage zero-click exploits. The attacks started in 2019 and are still ongoing, according to the company, and they use iMessage zero-click exploits that exploit the now-patched iOS zero-day bugs.
Apple has released patches for three zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild. Referencing Kaspersky's findings, Apple says that those last two vulnerabilities "May have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7.".
Whoever is infecting people's iPhones with the TriangleDB spyware may be targeting macOS computers with similar malware, according to Kaspersky researchers. In the security shop's ongoing analysis of the smartphone snooping campaign - during which attackers exploit a kernel vulnerability to obtain root privileges and install TriangleDB on victims' handsets - Kaspersky analysts uncovered 24 commands provided by the malware that can be used for a range of illicit activities; everything from stealing data, to tracking the victim's geolocation, and terminating processes.
Apple addressed three new zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks installing Triangulation spyware on iPhones via iMessage zero-click exploits. The attacks started in 2019 and are still ongoing, according to Kaspersky, who reported in early June that some iPhones on its network were infected with previously unknown spyware via iMessage zero-click exploits that exploited iOS zero-day bugs.
More details have emerged about the spyware implant that's delivered to iOS devices as part of a campaign called Operation Triangulation. The Russian cybersecurity company has codenamed the backdoor TriangleDB. "The implant is deployed after the attackers obtain root privileges on the target iOS device by exploiting a kernel vulnerability," Kaspersky researchers said in a new report published today.
Three Android apps on Google Play were used by state-sponsored threat actors to collect intelligence from targeted devices, such as location data and contact lists. The malicious Android apps were discovered by Cyfirma, who attributed the operation with medium confidence to the Indian hacking group "DoNot," also tracked as APT-C-35, which has targeted high-profile organizations in Southeast Asia since at least 2018.