While supply chain threats have been quietly compounding over the past decade, the last 12–18 months have triggered a drastic shift in the scale and velocity of these attacks. Rather than just hunting for bugs in finished software, attackers are targeting the everyday tools and code developers rely on.
Unit 42 research shows this happening at every step of the building process. We’ve observed attackers spending years pretending to be helpful contributors just to hide backdoors in core software, as seen in the XZ Utils vulnerability (CVE-2024-3094). We’ve seen attackers hijack accounts to drop malware into popular libraries, like in the Axios supply chain attack. And we’ve seen them misuse setup scripts to automatically steal credentials using the Shai-Hulud npm worm.
Read more…
Source: Palo Alto Unit 42
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Australian Health Insurance-Themed Spam Spreads Ursnif
April 21, 2020
Trend Micro researchers encountered a spam campaign referencing the Australian health insurance brand Medicare. The attachment, which Trend Micro detects as Trojan.X97M.URSNIF.THDAEBO, downloads the malicious file (detected as TrojanSpy.Win32.URSNIF.THDAEBO). The campaign aims to spread the spyware Ursnif, also known as Gozi. The email headers pertain to payment transactions with the words “Statement,” “Invoice,” or “Transaction,” and include a ...
- Starbleed bug impacts FPGA chips used in data centers, IoT devices, industrial equipment
April 20, 2020
A team of academics says they’ve discovered a new security bug that impacts Xilinx FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) chipsets. Named Starbleed, the bug allows attackers — with both physical or remote access — to extract and tamper with an FGPA’s bitstream (configuration file) to reprogram the chip with malicious code. FPGAs are add-in cards that can ...
- Cognizant hit by ‘Maze’ ransomware attack
April 19, 2020
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp on Saturday said it was hit by a “Maze” ransomware cyber attack, resulting in service disruptions for some of its clients. The information technology services provider said it was taking steps to contain the incident, with the help of cyber defense companies, and has also engaged with law enforcement authorities. Ransomware is a ...
- Prague Airport says thwarted several cyber attacks; hospitals also targeted
April 18, 2020
Prague Airport and a regional Czech hospital said on Saturday they had thwarted cyber attacks on their IT networks, reinforcing warnings by the national cyber security watchdog of likely attempts to harm the country’s infrastructure. “Attempted attacks on web pages of the airport were detected in preparatory phases,” the airport’s spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. ...
- German government might have lost tens of millions of euros in COVID-19 phishing attack
April 18, 2020
The government of North Rhine-Westphalia, a province in western Germany, is believed to have lost tens of millions of euros after it failed to build a secure website for distributing coronavirus emergency aid funding. The funds were lost following a classic phishing operation. Cybercriminals created copies of an official website that the NRW Ministry of Economic Affairs had set ...
- DHS CISA: Companies are getting hacked even after patching Pulse Secure VPNs
April 17, 2020
Companies that run Pulse Secure VPN servers are still at risk of getting hacked, despite patching vulnerable systems, cyber-security agencies from the US and Japan have warned this month. Pulse Secure VPN servers are enterprise-grade VPN gateways that companies use to let workers connect to internal company networks from across the internet. Last year, a major vulnerability ...

