Credential theft was the main goal in 25% of incidents last quarter, and new ransomware variants made their appearance - read more about the top trends, TTPs, and security weaknesses that facilitated adversary actions.

Thursday, October 24, 2024 06:00

Threat actors are increasingly conducting identity-based attacks across a range of operations that are proving highly effective, with credential theft being the main goal in a quarter of incident response engagements.

These attacks were primarily facilitated by living-off-the-land binaries (LoLBins), open-source applications, command line utilities, and common infostealers, highlighting the relative ease at which these operations can be carried out. In addition to outright credential harvesting, we also saw password spraying and brute force attacks, adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) operations, and insider threats, underscoring the variety of ways in which actors are compromising users' identities.  

Identity-based attacks are concerning because they often involve actors launching internal attacks from a compromised, valid account--making such activity difficult to detect. Moreover, once account compromise is achieved, an actor can carry out any number of malicious activities, including account creation, escalating privileges to gain access to more sensitive information, and launching social engineering attacks, like business email compromise (BEC), against other users on the network. 

Watch the team discuss some of the major takeaways of the report, and recommendations for defenders

**Threats against identity **

This quarter, Cisco Talos Incident Response (Talos IR) has responded to a growing number of engagements in which adversaries have leveraged password-spraying campaigns to obtain valid usernames and passwords to facilitate initial access. This quarter, 25 percent of incidents involved password spraying and/or brute force attempts to steal valid credentials. This method involves an adversary using a password, or a small list of commonly used passwords, against many different accounts on a network, a strategy that helps avoid account lockouts that would typically occur when brute-forcing a single account with many passwords. Although adversaries have been using password-spraying attacks for credential access for years, the activity illustrates that organizations should continue to stress the importance of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and strong password policies to limit unauthorized attempts.  

Talos IR observed AitM phishing attacks play out in a number of ways this quarter, where adversaries attempted to trick users into entering their credentials into fake login pages. In one engagement, Talos IR investigated a phishing case where, after clicking a malicious link in a phishing email, the victim was redirected to a site prompting them to enter their credentials, and subsequently approved an MFA request. In another engagement, an initial phishing email redirected a user to a page that simulates a Microsoft O365 login and MFA portal, capturing the user's credentials and subsequently logging in on their behalf. The first login by the adversary was seen 20 minutes after the initial phishing email, highlighting the speed, ease, and effectiveness of these operations. 

**Ransomware **

Ransomware, pre-ransomware, and data theft extortion – in which cybercriminals steal and threaten to release victims’ files or other data without using any encryption mechanisms — accounted for nearly 40 percent of engagements this quarter. Talos IR observed RansomHub, RCRU64, and DragonForce ransomware variants for the first time this quarter, while also responding to previously seen ransomware variants, such as BlackByte, Cerber, and BlackSuit. 

  
A third of these engagements involved exploitation of known vulnerabilities that are consistently leveraged by ransomware operators/affiliates to deploy ransomware, according to public reporting. For example, in one BlackByte ransomware engagement, we observed an admin account created and added to an “ESX Admin” group as part of exploitation of the ESXi hypervisor vulnerability, CVE-2024-37085. This vulnerability, which has reportedly been exploited by other ransomware operators, involves a domain group whose members are granted full administrative access to the ESXi hypervisor by default without proper validation. 

As part of a years-long trend in greater democratization of ransomware adversaries, we continue to see new variants and ransomware operations emerging. In an incident involving the RCRU64 ransomware –a malware family that has received limited public reporting – the adversary used stolen credentials on an accidentally exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) account to gain initial access. The threat actor then performed a dump of all domain credentials using publicly available tools, such as fgdump and pwdump, to steal Windows hashes. The threat actor also deployed custom tools, including “saxcvz.exe” and “close.exe”, to kill processes and close SQL servers running on the host, respectively. Open-source tools such as Mimikatz, Advanced Port Scanner, and IObit Unlocker were also used to facilitate the compromise. Of note, Talos has not previously seen IObit Unlocker used in a ransomware incident, though the tool has been used in Play ransomware attacks, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

**Looking forward:** While there are constantly new ransomware groups entering the threat landscape, some established operations still pose a risk and should not be ignored. We saw this most recently last quarter with RansomHub, where Talos IR not only observed RansomHub actors in two separate incidents, but also using two different extortion models: double-extortion and data theft extortion. For example, we observed RansomHub affiliates conduct data theft extortion, where affiliates steal and threaten to release data without deploying ransomware or using any encryption mechanisms, as well as leverage a double-extortion model by deploying ransomware and encrypting systems and exfiltrating data to extort victims, respectively. In late August, this activity coincided with a CISA advisory on the RansomHub ransomware group, which disseminated indicators of compromise (IOCs) and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) identified as recently as August. While RansomHub was first discovered in February 2024, the recent Talos IR incidents and CISA advisory warrants that this continues to be a ransomware threat to monitor. 

****Targeting** **

Organizations in the education, manufacturing, and financial services verticals were most affected this quarter, where combined, these sectors accounted for more than 30 percent of compromises. This finding is in line with targeting trends from Q1 2024 (January - March), where the education and manufacturing companies were the most targeted. 

**  
**Initial access** **

For the fourth consecutive time in over a year, the most observed means of gaining initial access was the use of valid accounts, accounting for 66 percent of engagements when initial access could be determined. This is a _slight_ increase compared to the previous quarter (60 percent). Additionally, 20 percent of engagements featured adversaries exploiting or leveraging vulnerable and public-facing applications for initial access. 

  
**Looking forward:** Talos IR identified a sophisticated actor targeting a critical infrastructure entity leveraging several known vulnerabilities in internet-facing web servers and two F5 BIG-IP network appliances, consistent with Talos’ reporting on state-sponsored and other sophisticated adversaries’ increased interest in targeting network devices. We assess that networking equipment will remain an attractive target due to the large attack surface it presents and potential access to victim networks it can offer, highlighting the dichotomy of high value and weak security in these devices that makes them a prime target for exploitation. This activity is another reminder of the importance of patching systems, especially network-facing devices. 

****Security weaknesses** **

We continue to see a significant number of compromises that could have been prevented with the presence of certain security fundamentals, like MFA and proper configuration of endpoint detection products. In nearly 40 percent of engagements, misconfigured MFA, lack of MFA, and MFA bypass accounted for the top observed security weaknesses this quarter. Additionally, in 100 percent of the engagements that involved threat actors sending phishing emails to victims, MFA was bypassed or not fully enabled, while over 20 percent of incidents where ransomware was deployed did not have MFA enabled on VPNs. 

  
Other security weaknesses, which we commonly see every quarter, involved improper endpoint detection and response (EDR) or security solution misconfigurations. For example, lack of EDR on all systems and/or poorly configured EDR solutions accounted for nearly 30 percent of incidents this quarter. Additionally, nearly 20 percent of engagements this quarter had misconfigured or not fully enabled network security solutions. 

In an incident involving SocGholish, a drive-by malware framework, Talos IR recommended configuring Cisco Umbrella properly to block unwanted content, which could have helped to prevent this attack. Blocking "uncategorized" websites in Cisco Umbrella’s "Web Content Categories" will help proactively mitigate suspicious or malicious activity. 

****Top-observed MITRE ATT&CK techniques** **

The table below represents the MITRE ATT&CK techniques observed in this quarter’s Talos IR engagement. Given that some techniques can fall under multiple tactics, we grouped them under the most relevant tactic in which they were leveraged. Please note, this is not an exhaustive list. 

Key findings from the MITRE ATT&CK appendix include:  

*   In terms of identity-based attacks, we consistently saw adversaries leveraging reconnaissance tactics to identify/gather credentials and then use those valid accounts to gain initial access. This also contributes to the growing trend this quarter in which adversaries are leveraging password spraying to obtain credentials. 
*   Nearly 20 percent of engagements this quarter featured proxy usage for command and control (C2). This activity included tools such as the Fast Reverse Proxy (FRPC) to establish a connection, or the Neo-reGoerg proxy tool to set up a SOCKS proxy. 
*   In a significant shift compared to previous quarters, we saw a decrease in adversary usage of remote access software, such as AnyDesk. Remote access software was used in less than 5 percent of engagements this quarter, compared to 35 percent last quarter (Q2 2024), where these tools provide the attacker an ability to control a target computer remotely. 

Tactic

Technique

Example

Initial Access (TA0001)

T1078 Valid Accounts

Adversary leveraged stolen or compromised credentials

Reconnaissance (TA0043)

T1592 Gather Victim Host Information

Text file contains details about host

Persistence (TA0003)

T1136 Create Account

Created a user to add to the local administrator’s group

Execution (TA0002)

T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

Executes PowerShell code to retrieve information about the client's Active Directory environment

Discovery (TA0007)

T1046 Network Service Discovery

Use a network or port scanner utility

Credential Access (TA0006)

T1003 OS Credential Dumping

Deploy Mimikatz and publicly available password lookup utilities

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)

T1484 Domain Policy Modification

Modify GPOs to execute malicious files

Lateral Movement (TA0008)

T1021.002 Remote Services: SMB / Windows Admin Shares

Adversaries may abuse valid accounts using SMB to move laterally in a target environment.

Defense Evasion (TA0005)

T1562.001 Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools

Adversaries may disable or uninstall security tools to evade detection

Command and Control (TA0011)

T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer

Adversaries may transfer tools from an external system to a compromised system

Impact (TA0040)

T1486 Data Encrypted for Impact

Deploy Hive ransomware and encrypt critical systems

Exfiltration (TA0010)

T1048.003 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol

Use WinSCP for potential exfiltration of system information

Collection (TA0009)

T1074 Data Staged

Adversary collected data in a central location prior to exfiltration

Software/Tool

S0357 Impacket

An open-source collection of modules written in Python for programmatically constructing and manipulating network protocols

Talos IR trends Q3 2024: Identity-based operations loom large

The North Korean threat actor known as Lazarus Group has been attributed to the zero-day exploitation of a now-patched security flaw in Google Chrome to seize control of infected devices.
Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky said it discovered a novel attack chain in May 2024 that targeted the personal computer of an unnamed Russian national with the Manuscrypt backdoor.
This entails triggering the

The North Korean threat actor known as Lazarus Group has been attributed to the zero-day exploitation of a now-patched security flaw in Google Chrome to seize control of infected devices.

Cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky said it discovered a novel attack chain in May 2024 that targeted the personal computer of an unnamed Russian national with the Manuscrypt backdoor.

This entails triggering the zero-day exploit simply upon visiting a fake game website ("detankzone\[.\]com") that was aimed at the individuals in the cryptocurrency sector. The campaign is estimated to have commenced in February 2024.

"On the surface, this website resembled a professionally designed product page for a decentralized finance (DeFi) NFT-based (non-fungible token) multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) tank game, inviting users to download a trial version," Kaspersky researchers Boris Larin and Vasily Berdnikov said.

"But that was just a disguise. Under the hood, this website had a hidden script that ran in the user's Google Chrome browser, launching a zero-day exploit and giving the attackers complete control over the victim's PC."

The vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-4947, a type confusion bug in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine that Google patched in mid-May 2024.

The use of a malicious tank game (DeTankWar, DeFiTankWar, DeTankZone, or TankWarsZone) as a conduit to deliver malware is a tactic that Microsoft has attributed to another North Korean threat activity cluster dubbed Moonstone Sleet.

These attacks are carried out by approaching prospective targets through email or messaging platforms, tricking them into installing the game by posing as a blockchain company or a game developer seeking investment opportunities.

Kaspersky's latest findings add another piece to the attack puzzle, highlighting the role played by the zero-day browser exploit in the campaign.

Specifically, the exploit contains code for two vulnerabilities: the first is used to give attackers read and write access to the entire address space of the Chrome process from the JavaScript (CVE-2024-4947), and the second is abused to get around the V8 sandbox.

"The \[second\] vulnerability is that the virtual machine has a fixed number of registers and a dedicated array for storing them, but the register indexes are decoded from the instruction bodies and are not checked," the researchers explained. "This allows attackers to access the memory outside the bounds of the register array."

The V8 sandbox bypass was patched by Google in March 2024 following a bug report that was submitted on March 20, 2024. That said, it's currently not known if the attackers discovered it earlier and weaponized it as a zero-day, or if it was exploited as an N-day vulnerability.

Successful exploitation is followed by the threat actor running a validator that takes the form of a shellcode responsible for gathering system information, which is then used to determine if the machine is valuable enough to conduct further post-exploitation actions. The exact payload delivered after this stage is currently unknown.

"What never ceases to impress us is how much effort Lazarus APT puts into their social engineering campaigns," the Russian company said, pointing out the threat actor's pattern of contacting influential figures in the cryptocurrency space to help them promote their malicious website.

"For several months, the attackers were building their social media presence, regularly making posts on X (formerly Twitter) from multiple accounts and promoting their game with content produced by generative AI and graphic designers."

The attacker's activity has been observed across X and LinkedIn, not to mention the specially-crafted websites and email messages sent to targets of interest.

The website is also designed to lure visitors into downloading a ZIP archive ("detankzone.zip") that, once launched, is a fully functional downloadable game that requires player registration, but also harbors code to launch a custom loader codenamed YouieLoad, as previously detailed by Microsoft.

What's more, it's believed that the Lazarus Group stole the source code for the game from a legitimate blockchain play-to-earn (P2E) game named DeFiTankLand (DFTL), which suffered a hack of its own in March 2024, leading to the theft of $20,000 worth of DFTL2 coins.

Although the project developers blamed an insider for the breach, Kaspersky suspects that the Lazarus Group was behind it, and that they stole the game's source code alongside the DFTL2 coins and repurposed it to advance their goals.

"Lazarus is one of the most active and sophisticated APT actors, and financial gain remains one of their top motivations," the researchers said.

"The attackers' tactics are evolving and they're constantly coming up with new, complex social engineering schemes. Lazarus has already successfully started using generative AI, and we predict that they will come up with even more elaborate attacks using it."

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Lazarus Group Exploits Google Chrome Vulnerability to Control Infected Devices

The Russian-language malware primarily enlists computers to mine Monero, but theoretically it can do worse.

Source: Artimages via Alamy Stock Photo

An 8-year-old modular botnet is still kicking, spreading a cryptojacker and Web shell on machines spread across multiple continents.

"Prometei" was first discovered in 2020, but later evidence suggested that it's been in the wild since at least 2016. In those intervening years it spread to more than 10,000 computers globally, in countries as diverse as Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, and Germany, whose Federal Office for Information Security categorizes it as a medium-impact threat.

"Prometei's reach is global due to its focus on widely used software vulnerabilities," explains Callie Guenther, senior manager of cyber-threat research at Critical Start. "The botnet spreads through weak configurations and unpatched systems, targeting regions with inadequate cybersecurity practices. Botnets like Prometei typically do not discriminate by region but seek maximum impact by exploiting systemic weaknesses. \[In this case\], organizations using unpatched or poorly configured Exchange servers are particularly at risk."

Trend Micro details what a Prometei attack looks like: clunky in its initial infection but stealthy thereafter, capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in a variety of different services and systems, and focused on cryptojacking but capable of more.

**Loud Entry Into Unloved Systems**

Don't expect an initial Prometei infection to be terribly sophisticated.

The case Trend Micro observed began with a number of failed network login attempts from two IP addresses appearing to come from Cape Town, South Africa, which aligned closely with known Prometei infrastructure.

After its first successful login into a machine, the malware went to work testing out a variety of outdated vulnerabilities that might still be lingering in its target's environment. For example, it uses the half-decade old "BlueKeep" bug in the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) — rated a "critical" 9.8 out of 10 in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System — to try and achieve remote code execution (RCE). It uses the even older EternalBlue vulnerability to propagate via Server Message Block (SMB). On Windows systems, it tries the 3-year-old ProxyLogon arbitrary file write vulnerabilities CVE-2021-27065 and CVE-2021-26858, which have "high" 7.8 CVSS ratings.

Exploiting such old vulnerabilities could be read as lazy. In another light, it's an effective approach to weeding out better-equipped systems belonging to more active organizations.

"Prime targets are those systems that have not been or cannot be patched for some reason, which translates to them being either unmonitored or neglected from normal security processes," Mayuresh Dani, manager of security research at Qualys, points out. "The malware authors want to go after easy pickings, and in today's connected world, I consider this intelligent, as if they know that their targets will be plagued by multiple security issues."

**Prometei's Fire**

Once Prometei gets to where it wants to go, it has some neat tricks for achieving its ends. It uses a domain generation algorithm (DGA) to harden its command-and-control (C2) infrastructure, enabling it to continue operating even if victims try blocking one or more of its domains. It manipulates targeted systems to allow its traffic through firewalls, and runs itself automatically upon system reboots.

One particularly useful Prometei command evokes the WDigest authentication protocol, which stores passwords in plaintext in memory. WDigest is typically disabled in modern Windows systems, so Prometei forces those plaintext passwords, which it then dumps into a dynamic link library (DLL). Then, another Prometei command configures Windows Defender to ignore that particular DLL, allowing those passwords to be exfiltrated without raising any red flags.

The most obvious purpose of a Prometei infection appears to be cryptojacking — using infected machines to help mine the ultra-anonymous Monero cryptocurrency without their owners' knowing it. Beyond that, though, it downloads and configures an Apache Web server that serves as a persistent Web shell. The Web shell allows attackers to upload more malicious files and execute arbitrary commands.

As Stephen Hilt, senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, points out, botnet infections are often associated with other kinds of attacks as well.

"I always look at the cryptomining groups being a canary in the coal mine — it's an indicator that there's probably more going on in your system," he says. "If you look at our 2021 blog, there was LemonDuck, a ransomware group, and \[Prometei\] all within the same machines."

**Russia Links**

There is one specific part of the globe that Prometei does not touch.

The botnet's Tor-based C2 server is made to specifically avoid certain exit nodes in some former Soviet countries. To further ensure the safety of Russian-language targets, it possesses a credential-stealing component that deliberately avoids affecting any accounts labeled "Guest" or "Other user" in Russian.

Older variants of the malware contained bits of Russian-language settings and language code, and the name "Prometei" is a translation of "Prometheus" in various Slavic languages. In the famous myth, Zeus programs an eagle to attack Prometheus' liver every day, only for the liver to persist through reboots each night.

**About the Author**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

'Prometei' Botnet Spreads Its Cryptojacker Worldwide

The Snyk gradle plugin is vulnerable to Code Injection when scanning an untrusted Gradle project. The vulnerability can be triggered if Snyk test is run inside the untrusted project due to the improper handling of the current working directory name. Snyk recommends only scanning trusted projects.

**Exploitability Metrics**

Attack Vector: This metric reflects the context by which vulnerability exploitation is possible. This metric value (and consequently the resulting severity) will be larger the more remote (logically, and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerable system. The assumption is that the number of potential attackers for a vulnerability that could be exploited from across a network is larger than the number of potential attackers that could exploit a vulnerability requiring physical access to a device, and therefore warrants a greater severity.

Attack Complexity: This metric captures measurable actions that must be taken by the attacker to actively evade or circumvent existing built-in security-enhancing conditions in order to obtain a working exploit. These are conditions whose primary purpose is to increase security and/or increase exploit engineering complexity. A vulnerability exploitable without a target-specific variable has a lower complexity than a vulnerability that would require non-trivial customization. This metric is meant to capture security mechanisms utilized by the vulnerable system.

Attack Requirements: This metric captures the prerequisite deployment and execution conditions or variables of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These differ from security-enhancing techniques/technologies (ref Attack Complexity) as the primary purpose of these conditions is not to explicitly mitigate attacks, but rather, emerge naturally as a consequence of the deployment and execution of the vulnerable system.

Privileges Required: This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess prior to successfully exploiting the vulnerability. The method by which the attacker obtains privileged credentials prior to the attack (e.g., free trial accounts), is outside the scope of this metric. Generally, self-service provisioned accounts do not constitute a privilege requirement if the attacker can grant themselves privileges as part of the attack.

User interaction: This metric captures the requirement for a human user, other than the attacker, to participate in the successful compromise of the vulnerable system. This metric determines whether the vulnerability can be exploited solely at the will of the attacker, or whether a separate user (or user-initiated process) must participate in some manner.

**Vulnerable System Impact Metrics**

Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the VULNERABLE SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.

Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).

Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.

**Subsequent System Impact Metrics**

Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.

Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).

Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.

GHSA-qqqw-gm93-qf6m: OS Command Injection in Snyk gradle plugin

The Snyk php plugin is vulnerable to Code Injection when scanning an untrusted PHP project. The vulnerability can be triggered if Snyk test is run inside the untrusted project due to the improper handling of the current working directory name. Snyk recommends only scanning trusted projects.

GHSA-69f9-h8f9-7vjf: OS Command Injection in Snyk php plugin

The North Korean actor is going after cryptocurrency investors worldwide leveraging a genuine-looking game site and AI-generated content and images.

Source: MAHATHIR MOHD YASIN via Shutterstock

North Korea's infamous Lazarus Group is using a well-designed fake game website, a now-patched Chrome zero-day bug, professional LinkedIn accounts, AI-generated images, and other tricks to try and steal from cryptocurrency users worldwide.

The group appears to have launched the elaborate campaign in February and has since used multiple accounts on X and tricked influential figures in the cryptocurrency space to promote their malware-infected crypto game site.

**Elaborate Campaign**

"Over the years, we have uncovered many \[Lazarus\] attacks on the cryptocurrency industry, and one thing is certain: these attacks are not going away," said researchers at Kaspersky, after discovering the latest campaign while investigating a recent malware infection. "Lazarus has already successfully started using generative AI, and we predict that they will come up with even more elaborate attacks using it," the security vendor noted.

The state-sponsored Lazarus group may not quite be a recognizable name yet, but it is easily among the most prolific and dangerous cyber threat actors in operation. Since making headlines with an attack on Sony Pictures back in 2014, Lazarus — and subgroups such as Andariel and Bluenoroff — have figured in countless notorious security incidents. These have included the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, the $81 million heist at Bank of Bangladesh, and attempts to steal COVID-vaccine-related secrets from major pharmaceutical companies during the height of the pandemic.

Analysts believe that many of the group's financially motivated attacks, including those involving ransomware, card-skimming, and cryptocurrency users, are really attempts to generate revenue for the money-strapped North Korean government's missile program.

In the latest campaign the group appears to have refined some of the social engineering tricks employed in past campaigns. Central to the new scam is detankzone dot-com, a professionally designed product page that invites visitors to download an NFT-based multiplayer online tank game. Kaspersky researchers found the game to be well designed and functional, but only because Lazarus actors had stolen the source code of a legitimate game to build it.

**A Chrome Zero-Day and a Second Bug**

Kaspersky found the website to contain exploit code for two Chrome vulnerabilities. One of them, tracked as CVE-2024-4947, was a previously unknown zero-day bug in Chrome's V8 browser engine. It gave the attackers a way to execute arbitrary code inside a browser sandbox via a specially crafted HTML page. Google addressed the vulnerability in May after Kaspersky reported the flaw to the company.

The other Chrome vulnerability that Kaspersky observed in the latest Lazarus Group exploit is that it does not appear to have a formal identifier. It gave the attackers a way to escape the Chrome V8 sandbox entirely and gain full access to the system. The threat actor used that access to deploy shellcode for collecting information on the compromised system before deciding whether to deploy further malicious payloads on the compromised system, including a backdoor called Manuscrypt.

What makes the campaign noteworthy is the effort that Lazarus Group actors appear to have put into its social engineering angle. "They focused on building a sense of trust to maximize the campaign's effectiveness, designing details to make the promotional activities appear as genuine as possible," Kaspersky researchers Boris Larin and Vasily Berdnikov wrote. They used multiple fake accounts to promote their site via X and LinkedIn along AI-generated content and images to create an illusion of authenticity around their fake game site.

"The attackers also attempted to engage cryptocurrency influencers for further promotion, leveraging their social media presence not only to distribute the threat but also to target their crypto accounts directly," Larin and Berdnikov wrote.

**About the Author**

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

Lazarus Group Exploits Chrome Zero-Day in Latest Campaign

New variants of a banking malware called Grandoreiro have been found to adopt new tactics in an effort to bypass anti-fraud measures, indicating that the malicious software is continuing to be actively developed despite law enforcement efforts to crack down on the operation.
"Only part of this gang was arrested: the remaining operators behind Grandoreiro continue attacking users all over the

New variants of a banking malware called Grandoreiro have been found to adopt new tactics in an effort to bypass anti-fraud measures, indicating that the malicious software is continuing to be actively developed despite law enforcement efforts to crack down on the operation.

"Only part of this gang was arrested: the remaining operators behind Grandoreiro continue attacking users all over the world, further developing new malware and establishing new infrastructure," Kaspersky said in an analysis published Tuesday.

Some of the other freshly incorporated tricks include the use of a domain generation algorithm (DGA) for command-and-control (C2) communications, ciphertext stealing (CTS) encryption, and mouse tracking. Also observed are "lighter, local versions" that are specifically focused on targeting banking customers in Mexico.

Grandoreiro, active since 2016, has consistently evolved over time, taking efforts to stay undetected, while also widening its geographic scope to Latin America and Europe. It's capable of stealing credentials for 1,700 financial institutions, located in 45 countries and territories.

It's said to operate under the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, although evidence points to it being only offered to select cybercriminals and trusted partners.

One of the most significant developments this year concerning Grandoreiro is the arrests of some of the group's members, an event that has led to the fragmentation of the malware's Delphi codebase.

"This discovery is supported by the existence of two distinct codebases in simultaneous campaigns: newer samples featuring updated code, and older samples which rely on the legacy codebase, now targeting only users in Mexico — customers of around 30 banks," Kaspersky said.

Grandoreiro is primarily distributed by means of a phishing email, and to a lesser extent, through malicious ads served on Google. The first stage is a ZIP file, which, in turn, contains a legitimate file and an MSI loader that's responsible for downloading and launching the malware.

Campaigns observed in 2023 have been found to leverage extremely large portable executables with a file size of 390 MB by masquerading as AMD External Data SSD drivers to bypass sandboxes and fly under the radar.

The banking malware comes equipped with features to gather host information and IP address location data. It also extracts the username and checks if it contains the strings "John" or "WORK," and if so, halts its execution.

"Grandoreiro searches for anti-malware solutions such as AVAST, Bitdefender, Nod32, Kaspersky, McAfee, Windows Defender, Sophos, Virus Free, Adaware, Symantec, Tencent, Avira, ActiveScan, and CrowdStrike," the company said. "It also looks for banking security software, such as Topaz OFD and Trusteer."

Another notable function of the malware is to check for the presence of certain web browsers, email clients, VPN, and cloud storage applications on the system and monitor user activity across those apps. Furthermore, it can act as a clipper to reroute cryptocurrency transactions to wallets under the threat actor's control.

Newer attack chains detected in the aftermath of the arrests this year include a CAPTCHA barrier prior to the execution of the main payload as a way to get around automatic analysis.

The latest version of Grandoreiro has also received significant updates, including the ability to self-update, log keystrokes, select the country for listing victims, detect banking security solutions, use Outlook to send spam emails and monitor Outlook emails for specific keywords.

It's also equipped to capture mouse movements, signaling an attempt to mimic user behavior and trick anti-fraud systems into identifying the activity as legitimate.

"This discovery highlights the continuous evolution of malware like Grandoreiro, where attackers are increasingly incorporating tactics designed to counter modern security solutions that rely on behavioral biometrics and machine learning," the researchers said.

Once the credentials are obtained, the threat actors cash out the funds to accounts belonging to local money mules by means of transfer apps, cryptocurrency, or gift cards, or an ATM. The mules are identified using Telegram channels, paying them $200 to $500 per day.

Remote access to the victim machine is facilitated using a Delphi-based tool named Operator that displays a list of victims whenever they begin browsing a targeted financial institution website.

"The threat actors behind the Grandoreiro banking malware are continuously evolving their tactics and malware to successfully carry out attacks against their targets and evade security solutions," Kaspersky said.

"Brazilian banking trojans are already an international threat; they're filling the gaps left by Eastern European gangs who have migrated into ransomware."

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New Grandoreiro Banking Malware Variants Emerge with Advanced Tactics to Evade Detection

Tax preparation firms shared user information with Google and Meta without proper consent by using tracking pixels

Four tax preparation software companies failed to comply with government rules that require the sharing of tax-related info to be done only with specific disclosures and full tax-payer consent, according to an audit released by the Treasure Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in the United States.

> “According to Treasury Regulation § 301.7216-3, tax return information may not be used or disclosed except as specifically permitted or when the taxpayer provides consent.”

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) partners with tax professionals and other entities that assist taxpayers in meeting their tax obligations. Before partnering with these professionals and entities, the IRS conducts suitability checks. But the IRS does not have awareness of the full scope of information that an online provider routinely collects, beyond what is filed with the IRS, or shared with third parties.

Further, the guidance for obtaining taxpayer consent to use or disclose taxpayer information does not specifically address the use of pixels, such as those used by Facebook and Google to track information on a website.

These pixels are basically a piece of code that website owners can place on their website. The pixel collects data that helps businesses track conversions from ads, optimize ads, build target audiences for future ads, and re-market to people that have already taken some kind of action on their website. That’s nice for the advertisers, but the combined information of all these pixels potentially provides the recipients with an almost complete portrait of your browsing behavior.

The audit was performed after TIGTA received a congressional letter raising concerns about the data sharing practices of online tax filing companies. This letter spoke of data sharing methods that used a pixel to capture an individual’s entries on the online tax filing companies’ website, which then sent data entered for the preparation of online tax returns to a third party to focus marketing and advertisement efforts to each user.

In other words, information that is highly regulated was collected and shared outside the rules of those regulations, which could have allowed for invasions of privacy.

TIGTA acknowledged that it shared similar concerns and that it was in the process of conducting a separate but related review.

TIGTA did not disclose the names of the four companies that were the subject of these investigations, but in a follow-up letter from 3 senators and a member of congress they mention TaxSlayer, H&R Block, TaxAct, and Ramsey Solutions.

The review found that the audited companies’ consent statements did not comply with the requirements of Treasury Regulation § 301.7216. Specifically, the consent statements did not clearly identify the intended purpose of the disclosure and the specific recipient(s) of the tax return information.

Based on the results TIGTA advised the IRS to update their revenue procedure to include language that consent statements must identify the purpose of disclosure and specific recipient(s); evaluate whether any updates are needed to the guidance regarding data sharing practices, e.g., the use of pixels; and identify and implement potential solutions that will ensure that online providers comply with the regulatory requirements of taxpayer consent statements.

The IRS has taken actions to address the previously reported deficiencies with the suitability check processes and procedures for tax preparation companies. For example, the IRS:

*   Updated procedures to ensure consistency with initial and continuous suitability checks.
*   Established a consistent adjudication process for applicants with a criminal history.
*   Modified procedures to systemically create cases requiring research and resolution for tax compliance issues.
*   Modified procedures to accept only electronic fingerprint cards.

**We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identity**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection.

 After concerns of handing Facebook taxpayer info, four companies found to have improperly shared data 

Russia, Iran, and China are targeting the US election with an evolving array of influence operations in the last days of campaign season.

As November 5 draws closer, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) warned on Wednesday that malicious foreign influence operations launched by Russia, China, and Iran against the US presidential election are continuing to evolve and should not be ignored even though they have come to feel inevitable. In the group's fifth report, researchers emphasize the range of ongoing activities as well as the inevitability that attackers will work to stoke doubts about the integrity of the election in its aftermath.

In spite of escalating conflict in the Middle East, Microsoft says that Iran has been able to keep up its operations targeting the US election, particularly targeting the Trump campaign and attempting to foment anti-Israel sentiment. Russian actors, meanwhile, have been focused on targeting the Harris campaign with character attacks and AI-generated content, including deepfakes. And China has shifted its focus in recent weeks, researchers say, to target down-ballot Republican candidates as well as sitting members of Congress who promote policies adversarial to China or in conflict with its interests.

Crucially, MTAC says it is all but certain that these actors will attempt to stoke division and mistrust in vote security on Election Day and in its immediate aftermath.

“As MTAC observed during the 2020 presidential cycle, foreign adversaries will amplify claims of election rigging, voter fraud, or other election integrity issues to sow chaos among the US electorate and undermine international confidence in US political stability,” the researchers wrote in their report.

As the 2024 campaign season enters its final phase, the researchers say that they expect to see AI-generated media continuing to show up in new campaigns, particularly because content can spread so rapidly in the charged period immediately around Election Day. The report also notes that Microsoft has detected Iranian actors probing election-related websites and media outlets, “suggesting preparations for more direct influence operations as Election Day nears.”

Chinese actors focusing on US congressional races and other figures also indicates a fluency and far-reaching approach to deploying influence operations. China-backed groups have recently launched campaigns against US representative Barry Moore, and US senators Marsha Blackburn and Marco Rubio (who is not currently up for reelection), pushing corruption allegations and promoting opposing candidates.

MTAC says that many influence campaigns from all of the actors fail to gain traction. But the efforts are still significant, because the narratives that do break through can have significant impact, and the activity in general contributes to the volume and intensity of false and misleading claims circulating in the information landscape surrounding the election.

“History has shown that the ability of foreign actors to rapidly distribute deceptive content can significantly impact public perception and electoral outcomes,” MTAC general manager Clint Watts wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “With a particular focus on the 48 hours before and after Election Day, voters, government institutions, candidates and parties must remain vigilant to deceptive and suspicious activity online.”

Microsoft Warns Foreign Disinformation Is Hitting the US Election From All Directions

Popular titles on both Google Play and Apple's App Store include hardcoded and unencrypted AWS and Azure credentials in their codebases or binaries, making them vulnerable to misuse by threat actors.

Source: Aleksia via Alamy Stock Photo

Several widely used mobile apps, some with millions of downloads, expose hardcoded and unencrypted credentials to cloud services within their code bases, researchers from Symantec have found. This potentially allows anyone with access to the app’s binary or source code to extract the credentials to exploit cloud infrastructure for misuse.

Popular apps for both Android and iPhone devices include credentials for either Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure Blog Storage within their code, Symantec revealed in a blog post this week. And they're found on each device platform’s respective official mobile app store: Google Play and Apple's App Store.

"This dangerous practice means that anyone with access to the app's binary or source code could potentially extract these credentials and misuse them to manipulate or exfiltrate data, leading to severe security breaches," Symantec engineers wrote in the post.

Further, the "widespread nature" of the vulnerabilities across apps for both iOS and Android platforms "underscores the urgent need for a shift towards more secure development practices" when it comes to mobile applications, they added.

Symantec’s research zeroed in on a number of widely distributed mobile applications that included either AWS or Azure credentials in their codebases. In terms of the former, both Android and iOS apps are guilty of credential exposure, while several Android apps expose Azure storage credentials.

Related:SoftwareOne Launches Cloud Competency Centre in Malaysia

For example, an app called The Pic Stitch: Collage Maker found on the Google Play store contains hardcoded AWS production credentials — including the production Amazon S3 bucket name, the read and write access keys, and secret keys — in its codebase, the researchers found. It also reveals staging credentials in some cases.

**iOS Apps With Serious Security Risks**

Meanwhile, three iOS apps examined by Symantec also were found to expose AWS credentials. One called Crumbl, which has more than 3.9 million user ratings and is ranked No. 5 in the Food & Drink category on the Apple App Store, initializes an AWSStaticCredentialsProvider with plaintext credentials. The credentials, which are used to configure AWS services, include both an access key and secret key.

Furthermore, the app also includes another "significant security oversight" by including a WebSocket Secure (WSS) endpoint within its code. This endpoint, part of the Amazon API URL, is hardcoded with an API Gateway that directly connects to the Internet of Things services on AWS.

"Exposing such URLs alongside static credentials makes it easier for attackers to potentially intercept or manipulate communications, leading to unauthorized access to the associated AWS resources," the engineers wrote. Thus, this vulnerable configuration, without proper encryption or obfuscation, "presents a serious risk to the integrity of the application and its backend infrastructure," they noted.

Related:Unmanaged Cloud Credentials Pose Risk to Half of Orgs

Two other iOS apps with hundreds of thousands of App Store ratings also expose AWS credentials by hardcoding them directly within their code; the apps are Eureka: Earn Money for Surveys and Videoshop – Video Editor.

The former allocates an INMAWSCredentials object and initializes it with the access key and secret key, both stored in plaintext and which can be used to log events to AWS, "exposing critical cloud resources to potential attacks," the engineers said.

The latter directly embeds unencrypted AWS credentials in the \[VSAppDelegate setupS3\] method, which means anyone with access to the app's binary could easily extract them. This would give them unauthorized access to the associated S3 buckets and potentially lead to data theft or manipulation.

**Android Apps Expose Azure Credentials**

Similarly, three Android applications expose credentials to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage directly, via either their binaries or codebases, Symantec found.

Related:Cisco Disables DevHub Access After Security Breach

An Indian ride-sharing app, Meru Cabs — which has more than 5 million downloads on Google Play — includes hardcoded Azure credentials within its UploadLogs service by embedding a connection string that includes an account key. "This connection string is used to manage log uploads, exposing critical cloud storage resources to potential abuse," the engineers wrote.

Sulekha Business, another Android app with more than 500,000 downloads, embeds multiple hardcoded Azure credentials used for various purposes — such as adding posts, handling invoices, and storing user profiles — across its codebase.

A third Android app that also has more than 500,000 downloads, ReSound Tinnitus Relief, also hardcodes Azure Blob Storage credentials for managing various assets and sound files, the exposure of which could lead to unauthorized access and data breaches.

**Mitigation Begins With App Development**

Symantec’s findings come a day after the release of a report by Datadog that found that unmanaged credentials that live for too long on a cloud-based network posed a security risk to half of organizations. Indeed, any inadvertent disclosure of credentials to cloud services exposes any organization with network infrastructure, software, or other assets running on them to significant risk, according to Symantec.

A good place to start to mitigate these risks is in the development of applications, where developers should follow best practices for managing sensitive information. They include the use of environment variables to store sensitive credentials so they are loaded at runtime rather than embedded directly in the app's code, according to Symantec.

Developers also should use dedicated secrets management tools, such as AWS Secrets Manager or Azure Key Vault, to securely store and access credentials. If the credentials must be stored in the app, then they should ensure that they use strong encryption algorithms, and decrypt them at runtime as needed.

According to Symantec, another way to protect credentials and also avoid other potential app-development missteps is to integrate automated security-scanning tools into the development pipeline to detect common security flaws early in the development process.

**About the Author**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

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