Cyber Defense Advisors

Month: March 2025

Medusa Ransomware Uses Malicious Driver to Disable Anti-Malware with Stolen Certificates

The threat actors behind the Medusa ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation have been observed using a malicious driver dubbed ABYSSWORKER as part of a bring your own vulnerable driver (BYOVD) attack designed to disable anti-malware tools. Elastic Security Labs said it observed a Medusa ransomware attack that delivered the encryptor by means of a loader packed using […]

Cyber News

NCSC Releases Post-Quantum Cryptography Timeline

The UK’s National Computer Security Center (part of GCHQ) released a timeline—also see their blog post—for migration to quantum-computer-resistant cryptography. It even made The Guardian. Tags: cryptography, quantum cryptography, UK Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.  

Cyber News

China-Linked APT Aquatic Panda: 10-Month Campaign, 7 Global Targets, 5 Malware Families

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Aquatic Panda has been linked to a “global espionage campaign” that took place in 2022 targeting seven organizations. These entities include governments, Catholic charities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and think tanks across Taiwan, Hungary, Turkey, Thailand, France, and the United States. The activity, which took place over […]

Cyber News

10 Critical Network Pentest Findings IT Teams Overlook

After conducting over 10,000 automated internal network penetration tests last year, vPenTest has uncovered a troubling reality that many businesses still have critical security gaps that attackers can easily exploit. Organizations often assume that firewalls, endpoint protection, and SIEMs are enough to keep them secure. But how effective are these defenses when put to the […]

Cyber News

Kaspersky Links Head Mare to Twelve, Targeting Russian Entities via Shared C2 Servers

Two known threat activity clusters codenamed Head Mare and Twelve have likely joined forces to target Russian entities, new findings from Kaspersky reveal. “Head Mare relied heavily on tools previously associated with Twelve. Additionally, Head Mare attacks utilized command-and-control (C2) servers exclusively linked to Twelve prior to these incidents,” the company said. “This suggests potential […]

Cyber News

Ongoing Cyber Attacks Exploit Critical Vulnerabilities in Cisco Smart Licensing Utility

Two now-patched security flaws impacting Cisco Smart Licensing Utility are seeing active exploitation attempts, according to SANS Internet Storm Center. The two critical-rated vulnerabilities in question are listed below – CVE-2024-20439 (CVSS score: 9.8) – The presence of an undocumented static user credential for an administrative account that an attacker could exploit to log in […]

Cyber News

BlackLock ransomware: What you need to know

What is the BlackLock ransomware? BlackLock is a relatively new ransomware group. First seen in March 2024, the ransomware operation initially operated under the name El Dorado, before rebranding as BlackLock late last year.  BlackLock follows a RaaS (ransomware-as-a-service) business model, leasing its tools and infrastructure to affiliates who launch attacks, sharing a proportion of […]

Cyber News

YouTube Game Cheats Spread Arcane Stealer Malware to Russian-Speaking Users

YouTube videos promoting game cheats are being used to deliver a previously undocumented stealer malware called Arcane likely targeting Russian-speaking users. “What’s intriguing about this malware is how much it collects,” Kaspersky said in an analysis. “It grabs account information from VPN and gaming clients, and all kinds of network utilities like ngrok, Playit, Cyberduck, […]

Cyber News

Critical GitHub Attack

This is serious: A sophisticated cascading supply chain attack has compromised multiple GitHub Actions, exposing critical CI/CD secrets across tens of thousands of repositories. The attack, which originally targeted the widely used “tj-actions/changed-files” utility, is now believed to have originated from an earlier breach of the “reviewdog/action-setup@v1” GitHub Action, according to a report. […] CISA […]

Cyber News