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An unnamed European Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and its three diplomatic missions in the Middle East were targeted by two previously undocumented backdoors tracked as LunarWeb and LunarMail. ESET, which identified the activity, attributed it with medium confidence to the Russia-aligned cyberespionage group Turla (aka Iron Hunter, Pensive Ursa, Secret Blizzard, Snake, Uroburos, and Venomous Bear), citing tactical overlaps with prior campaigns identified as orchestrated by the group. "LunarWeb, deployed on servers, uses HTTP(S) for its C&C [command-and-control] communications and mimics legitimate requests, while LunarMail, deployed on workstations, is persisted as an Outlook add-in and uses email messages for its C&C communications," security researcher Filip Jurčacko  said . An analysis of the Lunar artifacts shows that they may have been used in targeted attacks since early 2020, or even earlier. Turla, assessed to be affiliated with Russia's Federal S

Here's How to Enhance Your Cyber Resilience with CVSS In late 2023, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) v4.0 was unveiled, succeeding the eight-year-old CVSS v3.0, with the aim to enhance vulnerability assessment for both industry and the public. This latest version introduces additional metrics like safety and automation to address criticism of lacking granularity while presenting a revised scoring system for a more comprehensive evaluation. It further emphasizes the importance of considering environmental and threat metrics alongside the base score to assess vulnerabilities accurately. Why Does It Matter? The primary purpose of the CVSS is to evaluate the risk associated with a vulnerability. Some vulnerabilities, particularly those found in network products, present a clear and significant risk as unauthenticated attackers can easily exploit them to gain remote control over affected systems. These vulnerabilities have frequently been exploited over the years, of

A malware botnet called  Ebury  is estimated to have compromised 400,000 Linux servers since 2009, out of which more than 100,000 were still compromised as of late 2023. The findings come from Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, which characterized it as one of the most advanced server-side malware campaigns for financial gain. "Ebury actors have been pursuing monetization activities [...], including the spread of spam, web traffic redirections, and credential stealing," security researcher Marc-Etienne M.Léveillé  said  in a deep dive analysis. "[The] operators are also involved in cryptocurrency heists by using AitM and credit card stealing via network traffic eavesdropping, commonly known as server-side web skimming." Ebury was first documented over a decade ago as part of a campaign codenamed  Operation Windigo  that targeted Linux servers to deploy the malware, alongside other backdoors and scripts like Cdorked and Calfbot to redirect web traffic and send spam

While cloud adoption has been top of mind for many IT professionals for nearly a decade, it's only in recent months, with industry changes and announcements from key players, that many recognize the time to make the move is now. It may feel like a daunting task, but tools exist to help you move your virtual machines (VMs) to a public cloud provider – like Microsoft Azure – with relative ease. Transitioning from VMware vSphere to Microsoft Azure requires careful planning and execution to ensure a smooth migration process. In this guide, we'll walk through the steps involved in moving your virtualized infrastructure to the cloud giant, Microsoft Azure. Whether you're migrating your entire data center or specific workloads, these steps will help you navigate the transition effectively. 1. Assess Your Environment: Before diving into the migration process, assess your current VMware vSphere environment thoroughly. Identify all virtual machines (VMs), dependencies, and resource

A Dutch court on Tuesday sentenced one of the co-founders of the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer service to 5 years and 4 months in prison. While the name of the defendant was  redacted in the verdict , it's known that Alexey Pertsev, a 31-year-old Russian national, has been  awaiting trial  in the Netherlands on money laundering charges. Pertsev, one of the developers of Tornado Cash, was  arrested  in Amsterdam in August 2022 days after the U.S. Treasury Department  sanctioned  the service for allowing malicious actors such as the Lazarus Group to launder and cash out their proceeds. In addition to the imprisonment, the defendant is expected to forfeit cryptocurrency assets worth €1.9 million (~$2.05 million) and a Porsche car that had been previously seized. "The defendant declared that it was never his intention to break the law or to facilitate criminal activities," a summary of the ruling  said . "With Tornado Cash, he wanted to offer a l

Microsoft has addressed a total of  61 new security flaws  in its software as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for May 2024, including two zero-days which have been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 61 flaws, one is rated Critical, 59 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. This is in addition to  30 vulnerabilities  resolved in the Chromium-based Edge browser over the past month, including two recently disclosed zero-days ( CVE-2024-4671  and  CVE-2024-4761 ) that have been tagged as exploited in attacks. The two security shortcomings that have been weaponized in the wild are below - CVE-2024-30040  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Windows MSHTML Platform Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2024-30051  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Desktop Window Manager ( DWM ) Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability "An unauthenticated attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain code execution through convincing a user to open a malicious

Multiple security flaws have been  disclosed  in VMware Workstation and Fusion products that could be exploited by threat actors to access sensitive information, trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition, and execute code under certain circumstances. The four vulnerabilities impact Workstation versions 17.x and Fusion versions 13.x, with fixes available in version 17.5.2 and 13.5.2, respectively, the Broadcom-owned virtualization services provider said. A brief description of each of the flaws is below - CVE-2024-22267  (CVSS score: 9.3) - A use-after-free vulnerability in the Bluetooth device that could be exploited by a malicious actor with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine to execute code as the virtual machine's VMX process running on the host CVE-2024-22268  (CVSS score: 7.1) - A heap buffer-overflow vulnerability in the Shader functionality that could be exploited by a malicious actor with non-administrative access to a virtual machine with 3D gr

Cybercriminals are vipers. They're like snakes in the grass, hiding behind their keyboards, waiting to strike. And if you're a small- and medium-sized business (SMB), your organization is the ideal lair for these serpents to slither into.  With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, SMBs like you must do more to protect themselves. But at what price? That's the daunting question many SMBs are forced to ask. Amidst your everyday challenges, the answer seems obvious: forgo investing in a robust cybersecurity solution for the time being. However, the alternative is to cross your fingers and hope hackers don't find you. That, of course, isn't the most prudent strategy, as the uncomfortable truth is threat actors now see your organization as a quick path to profit. Therefore, if your defenses are weak—or just not there—these digital crooks are likely to disrupt your operations, access sensitive data, and extort a heavy ransom. In this article, we'll explore the financial burdens

Google on Monday shipped emergency fixes to address a new zero-day flaw in the Chrome web browser that has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-4761 , is an out-of-bounds write bug impacting the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. It was reported anonymously on May 9, 2024. Out-of-bounds write bugs  could be typically exploited by malicious actors to corrupt data, or induce a crash or execute arbitrary code on compromised hosts. "Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2024-4761 exists in the wild," the tech giant  said . Additional details about the nature of the attacks have been withheld to prevent more threat actors from weaponizing the flaw. The disclosure comes merely days after the company patched  CVE-2024-4671 , a use-after-free vulnerability in the Visuals component that has also been exploited in real-world attacks. With the latest fix, Google has addressed a total of six zero-days since the sta

The maintainers of the  Cacti  open-source network monitoring and fault management framework have addressed a dozen security flaws, including two critical issues that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. The most severe of the vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-25641  (CVSS score: 9.1) - An arbitrary file write vulnerability in the "Package Import" feature that allows authenticated users having the "Import Templates" permission to execute arbitrary PHP code on the web server, resulting in remote code execution CVE-2024-29895  (CVSS score: 10.0) - A command injection vulnerability allows any unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary command on the server when the " register_argc_argv " option of PHP is On Also addressed by Cacti are two other high-severity flaws that could lead to code execution via SQL injection and file inclusion - CVE-2024-31445  (CVSS score: 8.8) - An SQL injection vulnerability in api_automation.php that

Deploying advanced authentication measures is key to helping organizations address their weakest cybersecurity link: their human users. Having some form of 2-factor authentication in place is a great start, but many organizations may not yet be in that spot or have the needed level of authentication sophistication to adequately safeguard organizational data. When deploying advanced authentication measures, organizations can make mistakes, and it is crucial to be aware of these potential pitfalls.  1. Failing to conduct a risk assessment A comprehensive risk assessment is a vital first step to any authentication implementation. An organization leaves itself open to risk if it fails to assess current threats and vulnerabilities, systems and processes or needed level of protections required for different applications and data.  Not all applications demand the same levels of security. For example, an application that handles sensitive customer information or financials may require stro