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״Defenders think in lists, attackers think in graphs," said John Lambert from Microsoft, distilling the fundamental difference in mindset between those who defend IT systems and those who try to compromise them. The traditional approach for defenders is to list security gaps directly related to their assets in the network and eliminate as many as possible, starting with the most critical. Adversaries, in contrast, start with the end goal in mind and focus on charting the path toward a breach. They will generally look for the weakest link in the security chain to break in and progress the attack from there all the way to the crown jewels. Security teams must embrace the attacker's perspective to ensure their organization's cybersecurity defenses are adequate. Drawing an analogy to a daily life example, the standard way to defend our house from intrusion is to ensure all the doors are locked. But to validate that your house is protected requires testing your security like a burgla

A newer version of a malware loader called  Hijack Loader  has been observed incorporating an updated set of anti-analysis techniques to fly under the radar. "These enhancements aim to increase the malware's stealthiness, thereby remaining undetected for longer periods of time," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Muhammed Irfan V A  said  in a technical report. "Hijack Loader now includes modules to add an exclusion for Windows Defender Antivirus, bypass User Account Control (UAC), evade inline API hooking that is often used by security software for detection, and employ process hollowing." Hijack Loader, also called IDAT Loader, is a malware loader that was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company in September 2023. In the intervening months, the tool has been used as a conduit to deliver various malware families. This includes Amadey, Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2), Meta Stealer, Racoon Stealer V2, Remcos RAT, and Rhadamanthys. What makes the latest vers

A high-severity flaw impacting the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress is being actively exploited by threat actors to create rogue admin accounts on susceptible websites. The  findings  come from WPScan, which said that the vulnerability ( CVE-2023-40000 , CVSS score: 8.3) has been leveraged to set up bogus admin users with the names wpsupp‑user and wp‑configuser. CVE-2023-40000, which was  disclosed  by Patchstack in February 2024, is a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could permit an unauthenticated user to elevate privileges by means of specially crafted HTTP requests. The flaw was addressed in October 2023 in version 5.7.0.1. It's worth noting that the latest version of the plugin is 6.2.0.1, which was  released  on April 25, 2024. LiteSpeed Cache has over 5 million active installations, with statistics showing that versions other than 5.7, 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2 are still active on 16.8% of all websites. According to the Automattic-owned company, malwar

The U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) has unmasked the administrator and developer of the LockBit ransomware operation, revealing it to be a 31-year-old Russian national named  Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev . In addition, Khoroshev has been sanctioned  by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCD), the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. Europol, in a  press statement , said authorities are in possession of over 2,500 decryption keys and are continuing to contact LockBit victims to offer support. Khoroshev, who went by the monikers LockBitSupp and putinkrab, has also become the subject of asset freezes and travel bans, with the U.S. Department of State offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction. Previously, the agency had  announced  reward offers of up to $15 million seeking information leading to the identity and location of k

The Iranian state-backed hacking outfit called  APT42  is making use of enhanced social engineering schemes to infiltrate target networks and cloud environments. Targets of the attack include Western and Middle Eastern NGOs, media organizations, academia, legal services and activists, Google Cloud subsidiary Mandiant said in a report published last week. "APT42 was observed  posing as journalists  and event organizers to build trust with their victims through ongoing correspondence, and to deliver invitations to conferences or legitimate documents," the company  said . "These social engineering schemes enabled APT42 to harvest credentials and use them to gain initial access to cloud environments. Subsequently, the threat actor covertly exfiltrated data of strategic interest to Iran, while relying on built-in features and open-source tools to avoid detection." APT42 (aka Damselfly and UNC788),  first documented  by the company in September 2022, is an Iranian st

The MITRE Corporation has offered more details into the recently disclosed cyber attack, stating that the first evidence of the intrusion now dates back to December 31, 2023. The attack, which  came to light last month , singled out MITRE's Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE) through the exploitation of two Ivanti Connect Secure zero-day vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2023–46805 and CVE-2024–21887, respectively. "The adversary maneuvered within the research network via VMware infrastructure using a compromised administrator account, then employed a combination of backdoors and web shells to maintain persistence and harvest credentials," MITRE  said . While the organization had previously disclosed that the attackers performed reconnaissance of its networks starting in January 2024, the latest technical deep dive puts the earliest signs of compromise in late December 2023, with the adversary dropping a Perl-based web shell calle

How safe is your comments section? Discover how a seemingly innocent 'thank you' comment on a product page concealed a malicious vulnerability, underscoring the necessity of robust security measures. Read the full real-life case study  here .  When is a 'Thank you' not a 'Thank you'? When it's a sneaky bit of code that's been hidden inside a 'Thank You' image that somebody posted in the comments section of a product page! The guilty secret hidden inside this particular piece of code was designed to let hackers bypass security controls and steal the personal identifying information of online shoppers, which could have meant big trouble for them and the company. The page in question belongs to a global retailer. User communities are often a great source of unbiased advice from fellow enthusiasts, which was why a Nikon camera owner was posting there. They were looking for the ideal 50mm lens and asked for a recommendation. They offered thanks in advance to whoever might take th

Google on Monday announced that it's simplifying the process of enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) for users with personal and Workspace accounts. Also called 2-Step Verification ( 2SV ), it aims to add an extra layer of security to users' accounts to prevent takeover attacks in case the passwords are stolen. The new change entails adding a second step method, such as an authenticator app or a hardware security key, before turning on 2FA, thus eliminating the need for using the less secure SMS-based authentication. "This is particularly helpful for organizations using Google Authenticator (or other equivalent time-based one-time password (TOTP) apps)," the company  said . "Previously, users had to enable 2SV with a phone number before being able to add Authenticator." Users with hardware security keys have two options to add them to their accounts, including by registering a FIDO1 credential on the hardware key or by assigning a passkey (i.e., a F

A Russian operator of a now-dismantled BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange has  pleaded guilty  to money laundering charges from 2011 to 2017. Alexander Vinnik, 44, was charged in January 2017 and taken into custody in Greece in July 2017. He was subsequently  extradited  to the U.S. in August 2022. Vinnik and his co-conspirators have been accused of owning and managing BTC-e, which allowed its criminal customers to trade in Bitcoin with high levels of anonymity. BTC-e is said to have facilitated transactions for cybercriminals worldwide, receiving illicit proceeds from numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings. The crypto exchange received more than $4 billion worth of bitcoin over the course of its operation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). It also processed over $9 billion-worth of transactions and served over one million users worldwide, several of them i

More than 50% of the 90,310 hosts have been found exposing a  Tinyproxy service  on the internet that's vulnerable to a critical unpatched security flaw in the HTTP/HTTPS proxy tool. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-49606 , carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10, per Cisco Talos, which described it as a use-after-free bug impacting versions 1.10.0 and 1.11.1, the latter of which is the latest version. "A specially crafted HTTP header can trigger reuse of previously freed memory, which leads to memory corruption and could lead to remote code execution," Talos  said  in an advisory last week. "An attacker needs to make an unauthenticated HTTP request to trigger this vulnerability." In other words, an unauthenticated threat actor could send a specially crafted  HTTP Connection header  to trigger memory corruption that can result in remote code execution. According to  data  shared by attack surface management company Censys, of the 90,310 hosts exp