Headline
Google Warns of Internet Explorer Zero-Day Vulnerability Exploited by ScarCruft Hackers
An Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability was actively exploited by a North Korean threat actor to target South Korean users by capitalizing on the recent Itaewon Halloween crowd crush to trick users into downloading malware. The discovery, reported by Google Threat Analysis Group researchers Benoît Sevens and Clément Lecigne, is the latest set of attacks perpetrated by ScarCruft, which is
Patch Management / Zero-Day
An Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability was actively exploited by a North Korean threat actor to target South Korean users by capitalizing on the recent Itaewon Halloween crowd crush to trick users into downloading malware.
The discovery, reported by Google Threat Analysis Group researchers Benoît Sevens and Clément Lecigne, is the latest set of attacks perpetrated by ScarCruft, which is also called APT37, InkySquid, Reaper, and Ricochet Chollima.
“The group has historically focused their targeting on South Korean users, North Korean defectors, policy makers, journalists, and human rights activists,” TAG said in a Thursday analysis.
The new findings illustrate the threat actor’s continued abuse of Internet Explorer flaws such as CVE-2020-1380 and CVE-2021-26411 to drop backdoors like BLUELIGHT and Dolphin, the latter of which was disclosed by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET late last month.
Another key tool in its arsenal is RokRat, a Windows-based remote access trojan that comes with a wide range of functions that allow it to capture screenshots, log keystrokes, and even harvest Bluetooth device information.
The attack chain observed by Google TAG entails the use of a malicious Microsoft Word document that was uploaded to VirusTotal on October 31, 2022. It abuses yet another Internet Explorer zero-day flaw in the JScript9 JavaScript engine, CVE-2022-41128, that was patched by Microsoft last month.
The file references the October 29 incident that took place in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul and exploits public interest in the tragedy to retrieve an exploit for the vulnerability upon opening it. The attack is enabled by the fact that Office renders HTML content using Internet Explorer.
Successful exploitation is followed by the delivery of a shellcode that wipes all traces by clearing the Internet Explorer cache and history as well as downloading the next stage payload.
Google TAG said it could not recover the follow-on malware used in the campaign, although it’s suspected to have involved the deployment of RokRat, BLUELIGHT, or Dolphin.
Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.
Related news
An updated version of a sophisticated backdoor framework called MATA has been used in attacks aimed at over a dozen Eastern European companies in the oil and gas sector and defense industry as part of a cyber espionage operation that took place between August 2022 and May 2023. "The actors behind the attack used spear-phishing mails to target several victims, some were infected with Windows
Nearly 20% of the zero-day flaws that attackers exploited in 2022 were in network, security, and IT management products, Mandiant says.
As many as 55 zero-day vulnerabilities were exploited in the wild in 2022, with most of the flaws discovered in software from Microsoft, Google, and Apple. While this figure represents a decrease from the year before, when a staggering 81 zero-days were weaponized, it still represents a significant uptick in recent years of threat actors leveraging unknown security flaws to their advantage. The
The RIG exploit kit (EK) touched an all-time high successful exploitation rate of nearly 30% in 2022, new findings reveal. "RIG EK is a financially-motivated program that has been active since 2014," Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT said in an exhaustive report shared with The Hacker News. "Although it has yet to substantially change its exploits in its more recent activity, the type and
IE is still a vector: South Koreans lured in with references to the deadly Halloween celebration crowd crush in Seoul last October.
By Habiba Rashid The backdoor is equipped with a wide range of spying capabilities, including exfiltrating files, keylogging, and stealing browser data, etc. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: North Korean APT37 Unleashes Dolphin Backdoor on South Korea
By Habiba Rashid The backdoor is equipped with a wide range of spying capabilities, including exfiltrating files, keylogging, and stealing browser data, etc. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: North Korean APT37 Unleashes Dolphin Backdoor on South Korea
The North Korea-linked ScarCruft group has been attributed to a previously undocumented backdoor called Dolphin that the threat actor has used against targets located in its southern counterpart. "The backdoor [...] has a wide range of spying capabilities, including monitoring drives and portable devices and exfiltrating files of interest, keylogging and taking screenshots, and stealing
The North Korea-linked ScarCruft group has been attributed to a previously undocumented backdoor called Dolphin that the threat actor has used against targets located in its southern counterpart. "The backdoor [...] has a wide range of spying capabilities, including monitoring drives and portable devices and exfiltrating files of interest, keylogging and taking screenshots, and stealing
Plus: Major patches dropped this month for Chrome, Firefox, VMware, Cisco, Citrix, and SAP.
Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for November 2022, including vulnerabilities that were added between October and November Patch Tuesdays. As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to create the report. Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239107 The most important news of this Patch Tuesday was a release of patches […]
Windows Scripting Languages Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Windows Scripting Languages Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2022-41118.
By Deeba Ahmed Microsoft has urged Windows Administrators to install the updates urgently so make sure you have the latest patches installed! This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Microsoft Issues Patches to Fix 6 Active 0-Day Windows Vulnerabilities
Microsoft's latest round of monthly security updates has been released with fixes for 68 vulnerabilities spanning its software portfolio, including patches for six actively exploited zero-days. 12 of the issues are rated Critical, two are rated High, and 55 are rated Important in severity. This also includes the weaknesses that were closed out by OpenSSL the previous week. Also separately
Let's face it: Having “2022 election” in the headline above is probably the only reason anyone might read this story today. Still, while most of us here in the United States are anxiously awaiting the results of how well we've patched our Democracy, it seems fitting that Microsoft Corp. today released gobs of security patches for its ubiquitous Windows operating systems. November's patch batch includes fixes for a whopping six zero-day security vulnerabilities that miscreants and malware are already exploiting in the wild.
Long-awaited security fixes for ProxyNotShell and Mark of the Web bypasses are part of a glut of actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities and other critical flaws that admins need to prioritize in the coming hours.
The operators behind the Rig Exploit Kit have swapped the Raccoon Stealer malware for the Dridex financial trojan as part of an ongoing campaign that commenced in January 2022. The switch in modus operandi, spotted by Romanian company Bitdefender, comes in the wake of Raccoon Stealer temporarily closing the project after one of its team members responsible for critical operations passed away in
Though the once-popular browser is officially now history as far as Microsoft support goes, adversaries won't stop attacking it, security experts say.