US govt pushes spyware to other countries? Senator Wyden would like a word

The US International Trade Administration (ITA) has admitted it promotes the sale of American-approved commercial spyware to foreign governments, and won’t answer questions about it, according to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). Wyden, in a letter to US Commerce Secretary Read More …

CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. CVE-2023-2868 Barracuda Networks ESG Appliance Improper Input Validation Vulnerability These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and Read More …

Buhti: New Ransomware Operation Relies on Repurposed Payloads

A relatively new ransomware operation calling itself Buhti appears to be eschewing developing its own payload and is instead utilizing variants of the leaked LockBit and Babuk ransomware families to attack Windows and Linux systems. While the group doesn’t develop Read More …

COSMICENERGY: New OT Malware Possibly Related To Russian Emergency Response Exercises

Mandiant identified novel operational technology (OT) / industrial control system (ICS)-oriented malware, which we track as COSMICENERGY, uploaded to a public malware scanning utility in December 2021 by a submitter in Russia. The malware is designed to cause electric power Read More …

Mercenary mayhem: A technical analysis of Intellexa’s PREDATOR spyware

Commercial spyware use is on the rise, with actors leveraging these sophisticated tools to conduct surveillance operations against a growing number of targets. Cisco Talos has new details of a commercial spyware product sold by the spyware firm Intellexa (formerly Read More …

Volt Typhoon targets US critical infrastructure with living-off-the-land techniques

Microsoft has uncovered stealthy and targeted malicious activity focused on post-compromise credential access and network system discovery aimed at critical infrastructure organizations in the United States. The attack is carried out by Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored actor based in China Read More …

New PowerExchange malware backdoors Microsoft Exchange servers

A new PowerShell-based malware dubbed PowerExchange was used in attacks linked to APT34 Iranian state hackers to backdoor on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers. After infiltrating the mail server via a phishing email containing an archived malicious executable, the threat actors deployed Read More …