Category: security

– Victim’s contact list, likely for distributing the malware via SMS originating from trusted contacts.
– Incoming SMS messages, including those containing one-time passwords (OTPs).
– Images stored on the device to use for OCR scanning.
– Generic device information, likely for optimizing the attacks.

SpyAgent can also receive commands from the C2 to change the sound settings or send SMS messages, likely used to send phishing texts to distribute the malware. McAfee found that the operators of the SpyAgent campaign did not follow proper security practices in configuring their servers, allowing the researchers to gain access to them. Admin panel pages, as well as files and data stolen from victims, were easily accessible, allowing McAfee to confirm that the malware had claimed multiple victims. The stolen images are processed and OCR-scanned on the server side and then organized on the admin panel accordingly to allow easy management and immediate utilization in wallet hijack attacks.

A significant backdoor in millions of contactless cards made by China-based Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group allows instantaneous cloning of RFID smart cards used to open office doors and hotel rooms around the world.

French security services firm Quarkslab has made an eye-popping discovery… Although the backdoor requires just a few minutes of physical proximity to an affected card to conduct an attack, an attacker in a position to carry out a supply chain attack could execute such attacks instantaneously at scale, researcher Philippe Teuwen explained in a paper.

Thanks to Slashdot reader wiredmikey for sharing the article.

Mobile device management (MDM) software allows businesses and schools to remotely monitor and manage entire fleets of devices used by employees or students. Singapore’s Ministry of Education, touted as a significant customer of Mobile Guardian on the company’s website since 2020, said in a statement overnight that thousands of its students had devices remotely wiped during the cyberattack. “Based on preliminary checks, about 13,000 students in Singapore from 26 secondary schools had their devices wiped remotely by the perpetrator,” the Singaporean education ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it was removing the Mobile Guardian software from its fleet of student devices, including affected iPads and Chromebooks.

Other domains show surprising growth, though — while Roblox is the only gaming category entry within the top 20 apps, its passkey adoption is outperforming giant platforms like Facebook, X, and Adobe, for example. Dashlane’s report also found that passkey usage increased successful sign-ins by 70 percent compared to traditional passwords.

KnowBe4 said the fake employee likely had his workstation connected “to an address that is basically an ‘IT mule laptop farm.'” They’d then use a VPN to work the night shift from where they actually reside — in this case, North Korea “or over the border in China.” That work would take place overnight, making it appear that they’re logged on during normal U.S. business hours. “The scam is that they are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs,” Sjouwerman wrote. “I don’t have to tell you about the severe risk of this.” Despite the intrusion, Sjouwerman said “no illegal access was gained, and no data was lost, compromised, or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 systems.” He chalked up the incident to a threat actor that “demonstrated a high level of sophistication in creating a believable cover identity” and identified “weaknesses in the hiring and background check processes.”

After gaining access to the Solaris enclave, the red team discovered they couldn’t pivot into the Windows part of the network because missing credentials blocked their path, despite enjoying months of access to sensitive web apps and databases. Undeterred, CISA managed to make its way into the Windows network after carrying out phishing attacks on unidentified members of the target agency, one of which was successful. It said real adversaries may have instead used prolonged password-praying attacks rather than phishing at this stage, given that several service accounts were identified as having weak passwords. After gaining that access, the red team injected a persistent RAT and later discovered unsecured admin credentials, which essentially meant it was game over for the agency being assessed. “None of the accessed servers had any noticeable additional protections or network access restrictions despite their sensitivity and critical functions in the network,” CISA said.

CISA described this as a “full domain compromise” that gave the attackers access to tier zero assets — the most highly privileged systems. “The team found a password file left from a previous employee on an open, administrative IT share, which contained plaintext usernames and passwords for several privileged service accounts,” the report reads. “With the harvested Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) information, the team identified one of the accounts had system center operations manager (SCOM) administrator privileges and domain administrator privileges for the parent domain. “They identified another account that also had administrative permissions for most servers in the domain. The passwords for both accounts had not been updated in over eight years and were not enrolled in the organization’s identity management (IDM).” From here, the red team realized the victim organization had trust relationships with multiple external FCEB organizations, which CISA’s team then pivoted into using the access they already had.

The team “kerberoasted” one partner organization. Kerberoasting is an attack on the Kerberos authentication protocol typically used in Windows networks to authenticate users and devices. However, it wasn’t able to move laterally with the account due to low privileges, so it instead used those credentials to exploit a second trusted partner organization. Kerberoasting yielded a more privileged account at the second external org, the password for which was crackable. CISA said that due to network ownership, legal agreements, and/or vendor opacity, these kinds of cross-organizational attacks are rarely tested during assessments. However, SILENTSHIELD assessments are able to be carried out following new-ish powers afforded to CISA by the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the same powers that also allow CISA’s Federal Attack Surface Testing (FAST) pentesting program to operate. It’s crucial that these avenues are able to be explored in such exercises because they’re routes into systems adversaries will have no reservations about exploring in a real-world scenario. For the first five months of the assessment, the target FCEB agency failed to detect or remediate any of the SILENTSHIELD activity, raising concerns over its ability to spot genuine malicious activity. CISA said the findings demonstrated the need for agencies to apply defense-in-depth principles. The cybersecurity agency recommended network segmentation and a Secure-by-Design commitment.

On Wednesday, CDK Global told dealerships that it’s “investigating a cyber incident” and “proactively shut all systems down” while addressing the issue. However, as reported by Automotive News, CDK Global restored its systems shortly after, only to shut them down hours later due to “an additional cyber incident.”

CVE-2024-4577 affects PHP only when it runs in a mode known as CGI, in which a web server parses HTTP requests and passes them to a PHP script for processing. Even when PHP isn’t set to CGI mode, however, the vulnerability may still be exploitable when PHP executables such as php.exe and php-cgi.exe are in directories that are accessible by the web server. This configuration is extremely rare, with the exception of the XAMPP platform, which uses it by default. An additional requirement appears to be that the Windows locale — used to personalize the OS to the local language of the user — must be set to either Chinese or Japanese. The critical vulnerability was published on June 6, along with a security patch. Within 24 hours, threat actors were exploiting it to install TellYouThePass, researchers from security firm Imperva reported Monday. The exploits executed code that used the mshta.exe Windows binary to run an HTML application file hosted on an attacker-controlled server. Use of the binary indicated an approach known as living off the land, in which attackers use native OS functionalities and tools in an attempt to blend in with normal, non-malicious activity.

In a post published Friday, Censys researchers said that the exploitation by the TellYouThePass gang started on June 7 and mirrored past incidents that opportunistically mass scan the Internet for vulnerable systems following a high-profile vulnerability and indiscriminately targeting any accessible server. The vast majority of the infected servers have IP addresses geolocated to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Japan, likely stemming from the fact that Chinese and Japanese locales are the only ones confirmed to be vulnerable, Censys researchers said in an email. Since then, the number of infected sites — detected by observing the public-facing HTTP response serving an open directory listing showing the server’s filesystem, along with the distinctive file-naming convention of the ransom note — has fluctuated from a low of 670 on June 8 to a high of 1,800 on Monday. Censys researchers said in an email that they’re not entirely sure what’s causing the changing numbers.