Author: Chris H

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a novel malware campaign that leverages Google Sheets as a command-and-control (C2) mechanism.
The activity, detected by Proofpoint starting August 5, 2024, impersonates tax authorities from governments in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., with the goal of targeting over 70 organizations worldwide by means of a bespoke tool called Voldemort that’s equipped to

Ransomware attacks and email-based fraud account for 80% to 90% of all claims processed by cyber insurers, but a handful of cybersecurity technologies can help prevent big damages.

A non-profit supporting Vietnamese human rights has been the target of a multi-year campaign designed to deliver a variety of malware on compromised hosts.
Cybersecurity company Huntress attributed the activity to a threat cluster known as APT32, a Vietnamese-aligned hacking crew that’s also known as APT-C-00, Canvas Cyclone (formerly Bismuth), Cobalt Kitty, and OceanLotus. The intrusion is

A large-scale extortion campaign has compromised various organizations by taking advantage of publicly accessible environment variable files (.env) that contain credentials associated with cloud and social media applications.
“Multiple security missteps were present in the course of this campaign, including the following: Exposing environment variables, using long-lived credentials, and absence

Brain Cipher made a loud entry to the ransomware scene, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as sophisticated as its accomplishment would suggest.

An ongoing social engineering campaign with alleged links to the Black Basta ransomware group has been linked to “multiple intrusion attempts” with the goal of conducting credential theft and deploying a malware dropper called SystemBC.
“The initial lure being utilized by the threat actors remains the same: an email bomb followed by an attempt to call impacted users and offer a fake solution,”

At Black Hat USA, security researcher Michael Bargury released a “LOLCopilot” ethical hacking module to demonstrate how attackers can exploit Microsoft Copilot — and offered advice for defensive tooling.

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Kimsuky has been linked to a new set of attacks targeting university staff, researchers, and professors for intelligence gathering purposes.
Cybersecurity firm Resilience said it identified the activity in late July 2024 after it observed an operation security (OPSEC) error made by the hackers.
Kimsuky, also known by the names APT43, ARCHIPELAGO,

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a novel Linux kernel exploitation technique dubbed SLUBStick that could be exploited to elevate a limited heap vulnerability to an arbitrary memory read-and-write primitive.
“Initially, it exploits a timing side-channel of the allocator to perform a cross-cache attack reliably,” a group of academics from the Graz University of Technology said [PDF]. “

The runaway success of an upstart ransomware outfit called “Dark Angels” may well influence the cyberattack landscape for years to come.