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"LockBit developer Rostoslav Panev charged for billions in global ransomware damages."

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Russ Roberts (https://www.hawaiicybersecurityjournal.net).

LockBit Developer Rostislav Panev Charged for Billions in Global Ransomware Damages

Dec 21, 2024 Ransomware / Cybercrime

A dual Russian and Israeli national has been charged in the United States for allegedly being the developer of the now-defunct LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation since its inception in or around 2019 through at least February 2024. Rostislav Panev , 51, was arrested in Israel earlier this August and is currently awaiting extradition, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement. Based on fund transfers to a cryptocurrency wallet owned by Panev, he allegedly earned approximately $230,000 between June 2022 and February 2024. "Rostislav Panev for years built and maintained the digital weapons that enabled his LockBit co-conspirators to wreak havoc and cause billions of dollars in damage around the world," U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said . LockBit, which was one of the most prolific ransomware groups, had its infrastructure seized in February 2024 as part of an international law enforcement operation called Cronos. It gained notoriety for tar...

Shaping the Cyber-Physical Future: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for 2025

ClaroEnterprise Security / Artificial Intelligence

Learn the essential strategies for enhancing data privacy, building resilient supply chains, and mitigating the latest cyber-physical security challenges to prepare your business to thrive in 2025.

Lazarus Group Spotted Targeting Nuclear Engineers with CookiePlus Malware

Dec 20, 2024 Cyber Espionage / Malware

The Lazarus Group, an infamous threat actor linked to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has been observed leveraging a "complex infection chain" targeting at least two employees belonging to an unnamed nuclear-related organization within the span of one month in January 2024. The attacks, which culminated in the deployment of a new modular backdoor referred to as CookiePlus , are part of a long-running cyber espionage campaign known as Operation Dream Job, which is also tracked as NukeSped by cybersecurity company Kaspersky. It's known to be active since at least 2020, when it was exposed by ClearSky. These activities often involve targeting developers and employees in various companies, including defense, aerospace, cryptocurrency, and other global sectors, with lucrative job opportunities that ultimately lead to the deployment of malware on their machines. "Lazarus is interested in carrying out supply chain attacks as part of the DeathNote...

Rspack npm Packages Compromised with Crypto Mining Malware in Supply Chain Attack

Dec 20, 2024 Malware / Supply Chain Attack

The developers of Rspack have revealed that two of their npm packages, @rspack/core and @rspack/cli , were compromised in a software supply chain attack that allowed a malicious actor to publish malicious versions to the official package registry with cryptocurrency mining malware. Following the discovery , versions 1.1.7 of both libraries have been unpublished from the npm registry. The latest safe version is 1.1.8. "They were released by an attacker who gained unauthorized npm publishing access, and contain malicious scripts," software supply chain security firm Socket said in an analysis. Rspack is billed as an alternative to the webpack , offering a "high performance JavaScript bundler written in Rust." Originally developed by ByteDance, it has since been adopted by several companies such as Alibaba, Amazon, Discord, and Microsoft, among others. The npm packages in question, @rspack/core, and @rspack/cli, attract weekly downloads of over 300,000 and 145...

Sophos Issues Hotfixes for Critical Firewall Flaws: Update to Prevent Exploitation

Dec 20, 2024 Firewall Security / Vulnerability

Sophos has released hotfixes to address three security flaws in Sophos Firewall products that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution and allow privileged system access under certain conditions. Of the three, two are rated Critical in severity. There is currently no evidence that the shortcomings have been exploited in the wild. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-12727 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A pre-auth SQL injection vulnerability in the email protection feature that could lead to remote code execution, if a specific configuration of Secure PDF eXchange (SPX) is enabled in combination with the firewall running in High Availability ( HA ) mode. CVE-2024-12728 (CVSS score: 9.8) - A weak credentials vulnerability arising from a suggested and non-random SSH login passphrase for High Availability (HA) cluster initialization that remains active even after the HA establishment process completed, thereby exposing an account with privileged access if SSH is ena...

Hackers Exploiting Critical Fortinet EMS Vulnerability to Deploy Remote Access Tools

Dec 20, 2024 Vulnerability / Cyber Attack

A now-patched critical security flaw impacting Fortinet FortiClient EMS is being exploited by malicious actors as part of a cyber campaign that installed remote desktop software such as AnyDesk and ScreenConnect.  The vulnerability in question is CVE-2023-48788 (CVSS score: 9.3), an SQL injection bug that allows attackers to execute unauthorized code or commands by sending specially crafted data packets. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said the October 2024 attack targeted an unnamed company's Windows server that was exposed to the internet and had two open ports associated with FortiClient EMS. "The targeted company employs this technology to allow employees to download specific policies to their corporate devices, granting them secure access to the Fortinet VPN," it said in a Thursday analysis. Further analysis of the incident found that the threat actors took advantage of CVE-2023-48788 as an initial access vector, subsequently dropping a ScreenConnect exe...

CISA Adds Critical Flaw in BeyondTrust Software to Exploited Vulnerabilities List

Dec 20, 2024 CISA / Vulnerability

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a critical security flaw impacting BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access (PRA) and Remote Support (RS) products to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-12356 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a command injection flaw that could be exploited by a malicious actor to run arbitrary commands as the site user. "BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access (PRA) and Remote Support (RS) contain a command injection vulnerability, which can allow an unauthenticated attacker to inject commands that are run as a site user," CISA said. While the issue has already been plugged into customers' cloud instances, those using self-hosted versions of the software are recommended to update to the below versions - Privileged Remote Access (versions 24.3.1 and earlier) - PRA patch BT24-10-ONPREM1 or BT24-10-ONPREM2 Rem...

Thousands Download Malicious npm Libraries Impersonating Legitimate Tools

Dec 19, 2024 Supply Chain / Software Security

Threat actors have been observed uploading malicious typosquats of legitimate npm packages such as typescript-eslint and @types/node that have racked up thousands of downloads on the package registry. The counterfeit versions, named @typescript_eslinter/eslint and types-node , are engineered to download a trojan and retrieve second-stage payloads, respectively. "While typosquatting attacks are hardly new, the effort spent by nefarious actors on these two libraries to pass them off as legitimate is noteworthy," Sonatype's Ax Sharma said in an analysis published Wednesday. "Furthermore, the high download counts for packages like "types-node" are signs that point to both some developers possibly falling for these typosquats, and threat actors artificially inflating these counts to boost the trustworthiness of their malicious components." The npm listing for @typescript_eslinter/eslint, Sonatype's analysis revealed, points to a phony GitHub repo...

Data Governance in DevOps: Ensuring Compliance in the AI Era

Dec 16, 2024DevOps / Data Governance

With the evolution of modern software development, CI/CD pipeline governance has emerged as a critical factor in maintaining both agility and compliance. As we enter the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of robust pipeline governance has only intensified. With that said, we'll explore the concept of CI/CD pipeline governance and why it's vital, especially as AI becomes increasingly prevalent in our software pipelines. What is CI/CD Pipeline Governance? CI/CD pipeline governance refers to the framework of policies, practices, and controls that oversee the entire software delivery process. It ensures that every step, from the moment the code is committed to when it's deployed in production, adheres to organizational standards, security protocols, and regulatory requirements. In DevOps, this governance acts as a guardrail, allowing teams to move fast without compromising on quality, security, or compliance. It's about striking the delicate balance betwee...

Juniper Warns of Mirai Botnet Targeting SSR Devices with Default Passwords

Dec 19, 2024 Malware / Botnet

Juniper Networks is warning that Session Smart Router (SSR) products with default passwords are being targeted as part of a malicious campaign that deploys the Mirai botnet malware. The company said it's issuing the advisory after "several customers" reported anomalous behavior on their Session Smart Network (SSN) platforms on December 11, 2024. "These systems have been infected with the Mirai malware and were subsequently used as a DDoS attack source to other devices accessible by their network," it said . "The impacted systems were all using default passwords." Mirai , which has had its source code leaked in 2016, has spawned several variants over the years. The malware is capable of scanning for known vulnerabilities as well as default credentials to infiltrate devices and enlist them into a botnet for mounting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. To mitigate such threats, organizations are recommended to change their passwords with i...

Fortinet Warns of Critical FortiWLM Flaw That Could Lead to Admin Access Exploits

Dec 19, 2024 Vulnerability / Network Security

Fortinet has issued an advisory for a now-patched critical security flaw impacting Wireless LAN Manager (FortiWLM) that could lead to disclosure of sensitive information. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-34990, carries a CVSS score of 9.6 out of a maximum of 10.0. It was originally fixed by Fortinet back in September 2023, but without a CVE designation. "A relative path traversal [CWE-23] in FortiWLM may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to read sensitive files," the company said in an alert released Wednesday. However, according to a description of the security flaw in the NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the path traversal vulnerability could also be exploited by an attacker to "execute unauthorized code or commands via specially crafted web requests." The flaw impacts the following versions of the product - FortiWLM versions 8.6.0 through 8.6.5 (Fixed in 8.6.6 or above) FortiWLM versions 8.5.0 through 8.5.4 (Fixed in 8.5.5...

CISA Mandates Cloud Security for Federal Agencies by 2025 Under Binding Directive 25-01

Dec 19, 2024 Cloud Security / Encryption

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 25-01, ordering federal civilian agencies to secure their cloud environments and abide by Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) secure configuration baselines. "Recent cybersecurity incidents highlight the significant risks posed by misconfigurations and weak security controls, which attackers can use to gain unauthorized access, exfiltrate data, or disrupt services," the agency said , adding the directive "will further reduce the attack surface of the federal government networks." As part of 25-01, agencies are also recommended to deploy CISA-developed automated configuration assessment tools to measure against the baselines, integrate with the agency's continuous monitoring infrastructure, and address any deviations from the secure configuration baselines. While the baselines are currently limited to Microsoft 365 (Azure Active Directory / ...

Dutch DPA Fines Netflix €4.75 Million for GDPR Violations Over Data Transparency

Dec 19, 2024 Privacy / Data Protection

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) on Wednesday fined video on-demand streaming service Netflix €4.75 million ($4.93 million) for not giving consumers enough information about how it used their data between 2018 and 2020. An investigation launched by the DPA in 2019 found that the tech giant did not inform customers clearly enough in its privacy statement about what it does with the data it collects from its users. This includes email addresses, telephone numbers, payment details, as well as information about what customers watch on the platform. "Furthermore, customers did not receive sufficient information when they asked Netflix which data the company collects about them," the DPA said , adding these constitute violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Besides failing to clarify the purpose and legal basis for gathering the data, the company has also been accused of being unclear about what kinds of information are shared with third-parties a...