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:
- Travelex UK Website Still Down After Cyberattack
January 3, 2020
The British website of foreign currency seller Travelex remains offline as of Friday 3 January, after being taken down following a cyber-attack on Monday 30 December (New Years Eve). The good news is that an investigation has shown there is no indication the virus has compromised any personal or customer data. But the fact that nearly a ...
- FBI Warns of Maze Ransomware Focusing on U.S. Companies
January 3, 2020
Organizations in the private sector received an alert from the F.B.I. about operators of the Maze ransomware focusing on companies in the U.S. to encrypt information on their systems after stealing it first. The warning came less than a week after the Bureau warned about the LockerGoga and MegaCortex ransomware threats infecting corporate systems. Maze has been operating since ...
- 3 Critical Bugs Allow Remote Attacks on Cisco NX-OS and Switches
January 3, 2020
Cisco Systems has issued patches for three critical vulnerabilities impacting a key tool for managing its network platform and switches. The bugs could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass endpoint authentication and execute arbitrary actions with administrative privileges on targeted devices, the vendor said. the networking giant disclosed the critical flaws on Thursday; all three ...
- Cybercriminals Fill Up on Gas Pump Transaction Scams Ahead of Oct. Deadline
January 3, 2020
Gas stations are gearing up for a major change in credit-card fraud liability in October, when they will find themselves on the hook for card-skimming attacks at the pump. In the meantime though, cybercriminals will be targeting pay-at-the-pump point-of-sale mechanisms with a vengeance, researchers say. Fuel pumps represent a last bastion of non-encrypted transactions. Unlike when ...
- FIN7 Hackers’ BIOLOAD Malware Drops Fresher Carbanak Backdoor
December 27, 2019
Malware researchers have uncovered a new tool used by the financially-motivated cybercriminal group known as FIN7 to load fresher builds of the Carbanak backdoor. Dubbed BIOLOAD, the malware loader has a low detection rate and shares similarities with BOOSTWRITE, another loader recently identified to be part of FIN7’s arsenal. The malware relies on a technique called binary planting that ...
- Critical Citrix Bug Puts 80,000 Corporate LANs at Risk
December 26, 2019
Digital workspace and enterprise networks vendor Citrix has announced a critical vulnerability in the Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Citrix Gateway. If exploited, it could allow unauthenticated attackers to gain remote access to a company’s local network and carry out arbitrary code execution. The Citrix products (formerly the NetScaler ADC and Gateway) are used for ...

