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RAT
BazarCall Cyber Security email security Phishing email RAT

Hackers use BazarCall Malware to Infect Victims

 

The most current strategy for tainting your PC is astoundingly antiquated: It utilizes a telephone call. Online researchers are documenting a new malware campaign that they've named "BazarCall." One of its primary malware "payloads" is the BazarLoader remote-access Trojan, which can give a hacker full authority over your PC and be utilized to install more malware. 

In the same way as other malware campaigns, BazarCall begins with a phishing email but from that point goes amiss to a novel distribution method - utilizing phone call centers to circulate pernicious Excel documents that install malware. Rather than bundling attachments with the email, BazarCall emails brief clients to call a telephone number to cancel a subscription before they are naturally charged. These call centres would then direct clients to a specially crafted website to download a "cancellation form" that installs the BazarCall malware. 

All BazarCall assaults begin with a phishing email targeting corporate clients that express the recipient's free trial is about to run out. Be that as it may, these emails don't give any insights about the supposed subscription. The emails at that point brief the client to contact a listed telephone number to cancel the subscription before they are charged $69.99 to $89.99 for a renewal. While the greater part of the emails seen by BleepingComputer has been from a fictitious company named "Medical reminder service, Inc.", the emails have additionally utilized other phony organization names, for example, 'iMed Service, Inc.', 'Blue Cart Service, Inc.', and 'iMers, Inc.' 

All these emails use similar subjects, for example, "Thank you for using your free trial" or "Your free trial period is almost over!" Security researcher ExecuteMalware has put together a more broad list of email subjects utilized by this assault. At the point when a recipient calls the listed telephone number, they will be set on a short hold and afterward be welcomed by a live individual. When asked for more data or how to cancel the subscription, the call center agent asks the victim for a unique customer ID enclosed in the email.

Randy Pargman, Vice President of Threat Hunting and Counterintelligence at Binary Defense, disclosed to BleepingComputer that this unique customer ID is a core component of the assault and is utilized by the call center to decide whether the caller is a targeted victim.
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Wordpress Vulnerability
malware Plugins Wordpress Security Wordpress Vulnerability

WordPress Websites Infected with Malware Via Fake jQuery Files


Cybersecurity experts discovered fake variants of the jQuery Migrate plugin inserted in various sites that had unclear codes to launch malware. The files are tagged as jquery-migrate.min.js and jquery-migrate.js, currently located where Java files are generally found on WordPress websites but in reality are fake. Presently, around 7 Million websites use the jQuery Migrate plugin, the popularity of the plugin may have led hackers to use it as a decoy to plant their malware under the plugin name. 

Cybersecurity experts Adrian Stoian and Denis Sinegubko earlier this week discovered fake jQuery files pretending to be jQuery migrate plugins on several websites. To avoid getting caught, the infected files interchange with legitimate files having ./wp-includes/js/jquery/ directory where all the WordPress files are present. 

These counterfeit files have further muddled the codes using an anonymous analytics.js file containing malicious codes. As of now, the threat level of this attack is yet to be determined, but a search query shared by Sinegubko revealed that the malicious code infected around forty web pages.  

The filename 'analytics' however, has nothing to do with the metrics of websites. Bleeping computer enquired some infected file codes. "The code has references to "/wp-admin/user-new.php" which is the WordPress administration page for creating new users. Moreover, the code accesses the _wpnonce_create-user variable which WordPress uses to enforce Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protections," reports Bleeping Computer. 

In general, if the hackers get the CSRF tokens, it allows them to imitate fake requests from the user end. Attaching these malicious scripts on WordPress websites allows hackers to deploy various cyberattacks using that may vary from credit card skimming for Megacart scams or redirecting users to scammed websites. Here, the victims may be led to fake survey forums, tech assistance frauds, requests for subscribing to spam notifications, or installing malicious browser extensions.  

Helpnet Security reports, "everyone with half a mind for security will tell you not to click on links in emails, but few people can explain exactly why you shouldn’t do that. Clicking on that link means that an attacker can fake any user-supplied input on a site and make it indistinguishable from a user doing it themselves."
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U.S. & Israel
BadBlood Cyber Attacks Iranian hackers Phishing Campaign U.S. & Israel

Medical Professionals of U.S. and Israel Targeted in a 'BadBlood' Phishing Campaign

 

Email security firm, Proofpoint has exposed a hacking group linked with the Iranian government targeting nearly two-dozen medical researchers in Israel and U.S. The targeted medical professionals particularly work in the oncology, genetics, and neurology fields in both U.S. and Israel. Proofpoint described the phishing campaign as ‘BadBlood’ due to its nature of targeting medical professionals.

According to Proofpoint, the Iranian hacking group operates with different names such as TA453, Charming Kitten, Phosphorus, APT35, ITG18, Ajax Security Team, NewsBeef, and Newscaster. The hacking group that has been operating since 2011, is specifically targeting medical professionals, activists, and journalists in the Middle East, the U.K., and the U.S. 

To lure the victims into their trap, the Iranian hacking group employed a Gmail account in the name of prominent Israeli physicist, Daniel Zaifman. The attackers sent a series of malicious emails from the Zaifman account to the medical professionals claiming to contain sensitive information on Israel’s nuclear program. 

The malicious emails contained a link that directed the victims to a fake Microsoft login page and once opened, the malicious links extracted the users’ email credentials. Although the motives of this attack is not yet clear, many researchers believe the operation was conducted to acquire medical research or private health data on intelligence targets of interest to Tehran. 

“While this campaign may represent a shift in TA453 targeting overall, it is also possible it may be an outlier, reflective of a specific priority intelligence tasking given to TA453. While targeting medical experts in genetics, neurology and oncology may not be a lasting shift in TA453 targeting, it does indicate at least a temporary change in TA453 collection priorities. BadBlood is aligned with an escalating trend globally of medical research being increasingly targeted by espionage motivated focused threat actors,” Proofpoint stated.
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Universities
Bypass of Sensitive data. Clop Ransomware Cyber Security Data Leak Stealing of Sensitive data Universities

Cyberextortion Threat Evolves as Clop Ransomware Attacked 6 U.S Universities Data Security

 


Malicious actors are now using novel ways to extract universities' data, and are threatening to share stolen data on dark websites unless universities pay them a lot of money. 
The current update reads that the Clop ransomware group claimed to have access to six top universities of the United States including institutions’ financial documents information and passport data belonging to their staff and students. According to the report, a group of hackers has first posted the stolen data online on March 29. 

The universities' that have been attacked, include — The University of Miami, the Yeshiva University, the University of Maryland, the Stanford University, the University of Colorado Boulder, And the University of California, Merced. 

However, there is no official confirmation regarding this cyber-attack from any of the aforementioned universities, it's unsure whether or not the cyberinfrastructure of these universities has been attacked or the hacker group asked for money in exchange for data. 

Additionally, a few days back, Michigan State University also confirmed a cyber attack by a group that was threatening to share it on the dark websites unless a bounty is paid. 

The data stolen by the Clop ransomware group include federal tax documents, passports, requests for tuition remission paperwork, tax summary documents, and applications for the Board of Nursing. 

This data breach affected several individuals and staff of the universities as the shared information also exposed sensitive credentials, such as names of individuals, date of birth, photos, home addresses, immigration status, passport numbers, and social security numbers. 

Not only this, but some news websites also confirmed that the leaked data included several more screenshots including retirement documentation, and 2019/2020 benefit adjustment requests, late enrollment benefit application forms for employees, and the UCPath Blue Shield health savings plan enrollment requests, amid much more. 

It should be noted that such attacks are not unusual for the Clop ransomware group as the group is known for its assault against various organizations. Furthermore, Michigan State University’s officials stated in the regard that, “Payment to these criminals only allows these crimes to be perpetuated and further target other victims. The decision not to pay was in accordance with law enforcement guidance and reached with support from the university’s Board of Trustees and president”.
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Visa
Clop Ransomware Data Breach Extortion Shell Visa

Shell’s Employees’ Visas Dumped Online as part of Extortion Attempt

 



Royal Dutch Shell became the latest corporation to witness an attack by the Clop ransomware group. The compromised servers were rebuilt and brought into service with a new Accellion security patch; the security patch eliminates the vulnerabilities and enhances security controls to detect new attacks and threats. 

"A cyber incident impacted a third-party, Accellion, software tool called the File Transfer Appliance (FTA) which is used within Shell," stated Shell spinner. In a statement last week, Shell confirmed that it too was affected by the security incident but it has only affected the Accellion FTA appliance which is used to transfer large data files securely by the company. 

In an attempt to bribe the company into paying a ransom, the criminals behind the malware have siphoned sensitive documents from a software system used by Shell and leaked some of the data online, including a set of employees' passports and visa scans. The idea being that once the ransom is paid, no further information will be released into the public domain. 

As stated by Shell, the data accessed during a “limited window of time” contained some personal data together with data from Shell companies and some of their stakeholders. The company to downplay the impact stated that “there is no evidence of any impact to Shell’s core IT systems,” and the server accessed was “isolated from the rest of Shell’s digital infrastructure.” But it did acknowledge that the crooks had probably grabbed “some personal data and data from Shell companies and some of their stakeholders.” 

Previously this month, files from infosec outfit Qualys, including purchase orders, appliance scan results, and quotations also surfaced on the extortionists' hidden site. Other victims include Canadian aerospace firm Bombardier, which had details of a military-grade radar leaked, London ad agency The7stars, and German giant Software AG.

The group has now posted several documents to its Tor-hidden website, including scans of supposed Shell employees' US visas, a passport page, and files from its American and Hungarian offices, in order to persuade Shell to compensate the hackers and prevent more stolen data from leaking. 

According to BleepingComputer, to stack up the pressure, the Clop gang now e-mails its victims' to warn them that the data is stolen and will be leaked if a ransom is not paid.
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Whistle-blower
Catastrophic Data Breach Ubiquiti Whistle-blower

US Based, Ubiquiti Inc. covers up a Catastrophic Data Breach, Claims a Whistle-blower

 

Ubiquiti Inc., a major provider of cloud-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) equipment such as routers, network video recorders, and surveillance cameras, announced on the 11th of January that their customer account information had been compromised due to a breach involving a third-party cloud service provider. According to a whistle-blower involved, in the response to the breach, Ubiquiti significantly downplayed a "catastrophic" incident in order to mitigate the stock price, and the third-party cloud provider assertion was a hoax. 

Ubiquiti, whose consumer-grade routers have now been associated with security and manageability, is accused of concealing a "catastrophic" security breach. The company said that someone gained "unauthorized access" to the company's servers, which were operated by a "third-party cloud provider" and where data for the ui.com web portal, was stored. 

The vendor claimed that the intrusion contained names, email addresses, and likely hashed password credentials, as well as residential addresses and phone numbers of customers. But they did not indicate how many customers were affected. 

Since Ubiquiti reportedly left root administrator logins in a LastPass account, hackers had complete access to the company's AWS servers, and they could have accessed any Ubiquiti networking hardware that customers had installed up to monitor through the company's cloud service. 

When Ubiquiti eventually released a statement, it was far from reassuring — in truth, it was woefully inadequate. The company stated again that there was no proof that any user data had been hacked or stolen. 

However, as the security specialist, Krebs points out, the whistle-blower claimed clearly that the organization does not keep logs on who accessed or did not access the compromised servers, which would serve as evidence. The statement from Ubiquiti also states that the hacker tried to extort money from the company. However, the whistle-blower who "participated" in the security breach investigation told security specialist Brian Krebs a few months later that the event was even worse than it appeared and could be characterized as "catastrophic." The source reported to KrebsOnSecurity that perhaps the third-party cloud provider justification was a "fabrication” and that the security breach was "massively downplayed" in an effort to preserve the company's stock value.

The whistle-blower wrote, "It was catastrophically worse than reported, and legal silenced and overruled efforts to decisively protect customers. The breach was massive, customer data was at risk, access to customers' devices deployed in corporations and homes around the world was at risk,” in the letter penned to the European regulators. 

According to Krebs, Ubiquiti IT workers discovered a vulnerability planted by threat actors in late December, which was eliminated in the first week of January. Employee passwords were reportedly rotated until the public was fully informed of the violation when a second vulnerability was found. The cybercriminals approached Ubiquiti and requested 50 Bitcoin (roughly $3 million) in exchange for silence. The seller, on the other hand, remained unresponsive.
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Tax refunds
Cyber Crime IRS Office 365 Phishing emails Tax refunds

IRS Warned of an Ongoing IRS-Impersonation Scam

 

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cautioned of ongoing phishing assaults impersonating the IRS and targeting educational establishments. The assaults focus around colleges staff and understudies with .edu email addresses and use tax refund payments as snare to lure clueless victims. The IRS said the phishing emails “appear to target university and college students from both public and private, profit and non-profit institutions.” 

It added that the suspect emails show the IRS logo and utilize different headlines, for example, "Tax Refund Payment" or "Recalculation of your tax refund payment." Clicking on a link takes victims to a phony site that requests individuals to submit a form to claim their refund. 

Abnormal Security researchers who detected these assaults in the wild, recently said that they circumvent Office 365 security and landed in the mailboxes of between 5,000 and 50,000 targets. "This impersonation is especially convincing as the attacker's landing page is identical to the IRS website including the popup alert that states' THIS US GOVERNMENT SYSTEM IS FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY', a statement that also appears on the legitimate IRS website," Abnormal Security revealed. 

 The phishing site requests taxpayers to provide their: 

• Social Security number
• First Name 
• Last Name 
• Date of Birth 
• Prior Year Annual Gross Income (AGI)
• Driver's License Number
• Current Address 
• City
• State/U.S. Territory 
• ZIP Code/Postal Code
• Electronic Filing PIN

Hank Schless, Senior Manager, Security Solutions at Lookout, says, "At this time of year, attackers will pose as members of the IRS to socially engineer employees into sharing sensitive tax-related information such as social security numbers or bank account information." 

Schless adds, “Security teams should be protecting employees across all endpoints to ensure they don’t fall victim to a phishing attack or download a malicious attachment that compromises the organization’s entire security posture. These scams are most effective on mobile devices, and attackers know that and are creating phishing campaigns like this to take advantage of the mobile interface that makes it hard to spot a malicious message. People access their work email on a smartphone or tablet just as much as they do on a computer. Any text, email, WhatsApp message, or communication that creates a time-sensitive situation should be a red flag. Employees should approach these messages with extreme caution or go straight to their IT and security teams to validate it.”
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User Data Leak
Dark Web Data Breach Mobikwik Users User Data User Data Leak

Here's How to Safeguard Against Mobikwik Data Breach

 

Cybersecurity researchers claimed that the KYC data of as many as 11 crores Mobikwik users had been leaked and put up for sale on the dark web. However, the Gurugram-based digital wallet company is denying the data breach by stating that they have not discovered any evidence of a data leak.

Rajshekhar Rajaharia, an independent cyber-security researcher was the first person who disclosed the data leak in February. He had said that bank details, email addresses, and other sensitive details of nearly 11 crore Indians were leaked on the dark web. 

Approximately, 8 terabytes (TB) of personal user information were stolen from Mobikwik’s main server by a hacker named ‘Jordan Daven’ and put on dark web platforms on January 20, Rajaharia stated. As a shred of evidence, Jordan Devan emailed the link of the stolen database to PTI and stated that they do not have any other motive of using the data except to acquire it from the company and delete it from their end and also shared the private details of Mobikwik founder Bipin Preet Singh and CEO Upasana Taku from the stolen database. 

When approached, Mobikwik denied the claims and stated, “the company is subjected to stringent compliance measures under its PCI-DSS and ISO Certifications which includes annual security audits and quarterly penetration tests to ensure the security of its platform. As soon this matter was reported, the company undertook a thorough investigation with the help of external security experts and did not find any evidence of breach.” 

Precautionary measures for Mobikwik users 

To check out whether your data is compromised or not, you have to download the Tor browser. It is a free and open-source web that helps you anonymously browse the web. You should also update your Mobikwik account by setting new passwords and setting up two-factor authentication. 

Open this link to access the entire database of the leak that is now online. Search for your data by using your email id or contact number. If nothing pops up, you are safe but if something does pop up then you should immediately contact your bank, and block your cards now.
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Mobikwik
10 crore Data Breach Data Leak KYC Mobikwik

Data Leak of 10cr Users: ‘The Largest KYC Data Leak in History’

 

According to cybersecurity researcher Rajshekahar Rajaharia, mobile payment app Mobikwik came under attack after the data of 10 crores of its users was posted for sale on a hacker website on the dark web. The alleged data breach was conducted by a group of hackers known as the ‘Ninja Storm,' who have also been selling the ‘leaked' details online since March 26. 

The data is being sold for 1.5 Bitcoins, which is nearly Rs 63 lakhs, as per a post by the hacker community. Ever since tens of thousands of people have taken to Twitter to share screenshots of their personal information being exposed. It is the ‘largest KYC data leak in history,' according to cybersecurity researcher Elliot Laderson. 

Personal information of merchants who obtained loans via Mobikwik is also said to be available for purchase in exchange for bitcoins. Over 4 crore Mobikwik customers' card details and hashes are reportedly included in the leak. 

The Gurugram-based fintech firm has maintained a denial of its involvement in the breach, accusing the researchers who made the infringement public of being "media-crazed" and offering "concocted files" as evidence. "We thoroughly investigated and did not find any security lapses. Our user and company data are completely safe and secure," said a spokesperson from Mobikwik. 

On January 20, a hacker named 'Jordan Daven' took over 8 terabytes (TB) of private user data from Mobikwik's main server and posted it on dark-web websites, according to Rajaharia. “Regular keys and passwords should have been changed and logs should have been monitored to prevent this kind of security compromise,” he said. 

Furthermore, in February, Rajaharia claimed that a hacker was selling Mobikwik user data, including PAN card numbers, Aadhar numbers, debit/credit card numbers, phone numbers, and other personally identifiable information that is typically exchanged mostly during Know Your Customer (KYC) process. 

To complicate things, Mobikwik claims that its technology has not been hacked. In a statement, it said, “Some media-crazed so-called security researchers have repeatedly attempted to present concocted files wasting precious time of our organization as well as members of the media.“ 

It isn't the first time Mobikwik has been the target of a cyber-attack. The business witnessed another information security incident in 2010. 

According to reports, the Reserve Bank of India is keeping an eye on such security breaches and has enacted many new regulations, along with the upcoming payment aggregator and payment gateway guidelines, that will limit customer data exposure to a few databases of approved gateways.
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ransomware attacks
Cyber Crime Hackers MIDC Mumbai Ransomware ransomware attacks

MIDC’s Server Hacked, Threat to Destroy Data

 

The server of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation was hacked as of late. The ransomware 'SYNack' affected the applications and database servers facilitated at the MIDC headquarters in Mumbai by encrypting the information put away in these servers. Hackers have demanded Rs 500 crore, they have mailed a demand of Rs 500 crore on MIDC's official mail ID, sources said. 

The malware additionally tainted some desktop PCs across various office areas of the MIDC. The assailants had attached a ransom note giving details of the assault and the steps needed to be taken to approach them for decryption of information. Nonetheless, no sum was directly referenced in the ransom note, a statement given by the MIDC expressed. After the hack, every one of the 16 regional workplaces in the state, including the head office in Mumbai, has been shut down. 

The total data of all the industrial estates, entrepreneurs, government elements, and different plans identified with MIDC is accessible on an online system. The whole work has come to a halt since last Monday after the hack. The MIDC approached the police after which the Cyber Crime Police started their probe into the hacking incident, joint commissioner of police, crime, Milind Bharambe affirmed to the FPJ. 

 A statement issued by the MIDC read, "On Sunday, March 21, at around 2:30 AM, we received automated alerts that our applications were down. On further analysis during the day, the ransomware attack was confirmed. MIDC’s applications are hosted on ESDS cloud (services managed by ESDS, Cloud Service Provider) and local servers (managed by MIDC internal team). We have Trend Micro anti-virus license for end-point security monitoring. The details of the ransomware were shared with Trend Micro for further analysis." 

"As an immediate measure, the MIDC systems were disconnected from the network to contain the spread of the virus. The backup files for different application servers were stored on a different network segment on Cloud DC and were not infected. As per the recommendations from Cyber Security experts, several steps are being taken to control the spread of virus and minimize the impact," the statement read further.
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Vulnerabilities and Exploits
GitHub Netmask SSRF Vulnerabilities and Exploits

278,000 GitHub Repositories Affected by a Critical Networking Flaw in Netmask

 

Security researchers have unearthed a critical networking flaw CVE-2021-28918 in a popular npm library netmask. Netmask is commonly utilized by tons of thousands of applications to analyze IPv4 addresses and CIDR blocks or compare them. 

Netmask usually gets over 3 million weekly downloads, and as of today, has scored over 238 million complete downloads over its lifetime. Apart from this, nearly 278,000 GitHub repositories depend on the netmask. Due to improper input validation flaw, netmask sees a different IP and this flaw could allow hackers to achieve server-side request forgery (SSRF) in downstream applications.

 Security researchers Victor Viale, Sick Codes, Nick Sahler, Kelly Kaoudis, and John Jackson were responsible for tracking down the vulnerability in the popular netmask library. The flaw was initially detected when security researchers including Codes were designing a patch for a separate, critical, SSRF flaw (CVE-2020-28360) in downstream package Private-IP, which helps in preventing personal IP addresses from communicating with an application’s internal resources.

According to a GitHub advisory published by Sick Codes, “the primary cause of the problem turned out to be Netmask’s incorrect evaluation of individual IPv4 octets that contain octal strings as left-stripped integers, leading to an inordinate attack surface on hundreds of thousands of projects that rely on Netmask to filter or evaluate IPv4 block ranges, both inbound and outbound.”

Security researchers initially discovered the flaw on March 16 and advised node js developers to examine their projects for use of Netmask and upgrade immediately if they identify the package in use. Sick Codes stated that the 30 billion nodejs packages downloaded last week were mostly installed by automated CI/CD pipelines and with no manual runtime inspections.

Olivier Poitrey, netmask developer and director of engineering at Netflix, released a series of patches [1,2,3] for the bug to GitHub, containing test cases validating that IPv4 octets with 0 prefixes are treated as octal and not decimal numbers. Earlier this month, the Perl component Net::Netmask also suffered from this bug.
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