Security News

ESET researchers have discovered that the updating mechanism of NoxPlayer, an Android emulator for Windows and macOS, made by Hong Kong-based company BigNox, was compromised by an unknown threat actor and used to infect gamers with malware. NoxPlayer is used by gamers from over 150 countries around the globe according to BigNox but, as ESET found in January 2021, the supply-chain attack was focused on infecting only Asian gamers with at least three different malware strains.

Stord introduced the Stord Cloud Supply Chain, offering end-to-end supply chain services spanning its network of over 500 warehouses, 30 fulfillment centers and 20,000 carriers, vertically integrated through a singular pay-as-you-go software platform. Stord has built the supply chain cloud that wraps up all the logistics services and technology tools needed for an end-to-end supply chain in one pre-integrated cloud platform.

To help organizations increase the efficiency of their global supply chains, Oracle announced new logistics capabilities within Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing. The updates to Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Global Trade Management, a part of Oracle Cloud SCM, help customers reduce costs, make better planning decisions, and improve customer experience.

In general terms, a supply chain refers to the network of people and companies involved in the development of a particular product, not dissimilar to a home construction project that relies on a contractor and a web of subcontractors. The most recent case targeting federal agencies involved Russian government hackers who are believed to have sneaked malicious code into popular software that monitors computer networks of businesses and governments.

"First, if the stolen certificate was used for Mimecast customers to verify the validity of the servers their users' connect to, it would allow an attacker that was able to man-in-the middle the user to server connection to easily decrypt the encrypted data stream and access potentially sensitive information." Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi, told Threatpost that attackers could also possibly disable Office 365's Mimecast protections altogether to make an email-borne attack more effective.

CrowdStrike, one of the cybersecurity companies called in by IT management firm SolarWinds to investigate the recently disclosed supply chain attack, on Monday shared details about a piece of malware used by the attackers to insert a backdoor into SolarWinds' Orion product. According to CrowdStrike, the threat group behind the attack on SolarWinds used a piece of malware named Sunspot to inject the previously analyzed Sunburst backdoor into the Orion product without being detected.

JetBrains' CEO, Maxim Shafirov, denied reports from multiple news outlets that the company played a role in the SolarWinds supply chain attack. TeamCity, a continuous integration and deployment system used for unit testing and code quality analysis, is the JetBrains product that officials are reportedly looking into as a potential attack vector used by the SolarWinds hackers.

North Korean hacking group Thallium has targeted users of a private stock investment messenger service in a software supply chain attack, according to a report published this week. Attackers alter the installer of a stock investment app.

It is believed that the recently disclosed attack targeting Texas-based IT management solutions provider SolarWinds resulted in threat actors gaining access to the networks of more than 250 organizations, according to reports. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the SolarWinds supply chain attack is believed to have impacted as many as 250 government agencies and businesses.

Data breaches at Adobe, Target, Home Depot, and Neiman Marcus are only a few examples, in which hackers have mounted targeted attacks against an organization's supply chain. As companies improved their defenses against direct network attacks, hackers shifted their focus to the weakest link by exploiting the supply chain to gain backdoor access to IT systems.