Cyber Defense Advisors

Year: 2024

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  • June 4, 2024

Hackers Use MS Excel Macro to Launch Multi-Stage Malware Attack in Ukraine

A new sophisticated cyber attack has been observed targeting endpoints geolocated to Ukraine with an aim to deploy Cobalt Strike and seize control of the compromised hosts. The attack chain, per Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, involves a Microsoft Excel file that carries an embedded VBA macro to initiate the infection, “The attacker uses a multi-stage malware […]

Cyber News
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  • June 4, 2024

Snowflake Warns: Targeted Credential Theft Campaign Hits Cloud Customers

Cloud computing and analytics company Snowflake said a “limited number” of its customers have been singled out as part of a targeted campaign. “We have not identified evidence suggesting this activity was caused by a vulnerability, misconfiguration, or breach of Snowflake’s platform,” the company said in a joint statement along with CrowdStrike and Google-owned Mandiant. […]

Cyber News
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  • June 4, 2024

DarkGate Malware Replaces AutoIt with AutoHotkey in Latest Cyber Attacks

Cyber attacks involving the DarkGate malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operation have shifted away from AutoIt scripts to an AutoHotkey mechanism to deliver the last stages, underscoring continued efforts on the part of the threat actors to continuously stay ahead of the detection curve. The updates have been observed in version 6 of DarkGate released in March 2024 […]

Cyber News
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  • June 4, 2024

Oracle WebLogic Server OS Command Injection Flaw Under Active Attack

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a security flaw impacting the Oracle WebLogic Server to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2017-3506 (CVSS score: 7.4), the issue concerns an operating system (OS) command injection vulnerability that could be exploited to obtain unauthorized access […]

Cyber News

A Savvy SME Cybersecurity Playbook

A Savvy SME Cybersecurity Playbook Crafting a Cyber Shield Without Breaking the Bank Navigating the fine line between robust cybersecurity and tight budget constraints can be like walking a tightrope—blindfolded. But in this digital balancing act, the phrase “less is more” really comes to life, especially for small to mid-sized businesses exploring the intricate world […]

Cyber Thoughts
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  • June 3, 2024

Researchers Uncover RAT-Dropping npm Package Targeting Gulp Users

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new suspicious package uploaded to the npm package registry that’s designed to drop a remote access trojan (RAT) on compromised systems. The package in question is glup-debugger-log, which targets users of the gulp toolkit by masquerading as a “logger for gulp and gulp plugins.” It has been downloaded 175 times […]

Cyber News
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  • June 3, 2024

Authorities Ramp Up Efforts to Capture the Mastermind Behind Emotet

Law enforcement authorities behind Operation Endgame are seeking information related to an individual who goes by the name Odd and is allegedly the mastermind behind the Emotet malware. Odd is also said to go by the nicknames Aron, C700, Cbd748, Ivanov Odd, Mors, Morse, and Veron over the past few years, according to a video […]

Cyber News
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  • June 3, 2024

Seeing Like a Data Structure

Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not […]

Cyber News
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  • June 3, 2024

AI Will Increase the Quantity—and Quality—of Phishing Scams

A piece I coauthored with Fredrik Heiding and Arun Vishwanath in the Harvard Business Review: Summary. Gen AI tools are rapidly making these emails more advanced, harder to spot, and significantly more dangerous. Recent research showed that 60% of participants fell victim to artificial intelligence (AI)-automated phishing, which is comparable to the success rates of […]

Cyber News