Microsoft, OpenAI Warn of Nation-State Hackers Weaponizing AI for Cyber Attacks

Nation-state actors associated with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China are experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) to complement their ongoing cyber attack operations.
The findings come from a report published by Microsoft in collaboration with OpenAI, both of which said they disrupted efforts made by five state-affiliated actors that used its

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/micros...state.html

Critical Exchange Server Flaw (CVE-2024-21410) Under Active Exploitation

Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that a newly disclosed critical security flaw in Exchange Server has been actively exploited in the wild, a day after it released fixes for the vulnerability as part of its Patch Tuesday updates.
Tracked as CVE-2024-21410 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the Exchange Server.
"An attacker

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/critic...-2024.html

Chinese Hackers Using Deepfakes in Advanced Mobile Banking Malware Attacks

A Chinese-speaking threat actor codenamed GoldFactory has been attributed to the development of highly sophisticated banking trojans, including a previously undocumented iOS malware called GoldPickaxe that's capable of harvesting identity documents, facial recognition data, and intercepting SMS.
"The GoldPickaxe family is available for both iOS and Android platforms,"

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/chines...es-in.html

How Nation-State Actors Target Your Business: New Research Exposes Major SaaS Vulner

With many of the highly publicized 2023 cyber attacks revolving around one or more SaaS applications, SaaS has become a cause for genuine concern in many boardroom discussions. More so than ever, considering that GenAI applications are, in fact, SaaS applications.
Wing Security (Wing), a SaaS security company, conducted an analysis of 493 SaaS-using companies in Q4 of 2023. Their study

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/how-na...-your.html

Ivanti Pulse Secure Found Using 11-Year-Old Linux Version and Outdated Libraries

A reverse engineering of the firmware running on Ivanti Pulse Secure appliances has revealed numerous weaknesses, once again underscoring the challenge of securing software supply chains.
Eclypsiusm, which acquired firmware version 9.1.18.2-24467.1 as part of the process, said the base operating system used by the Utah-based software company for the device is CentOS 6.4.
"Pulse Secure runs an

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/ivanti...-year.html

Russian Turla Hackers Target Polish NGOs with New TinyTurla-NG Backdoor

The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla has been observed using a new backdoor called TinyTurla-NG as part of a three-month-long campaign targeting Polish non-governmental organizations in December 2023.
"TinyTurla-NG, just like TinyTurla, is a small 'last chance' backdoor that is left behind to be used when all other unauthorized access/backdoor mechanisms have failed or been

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/russia...olish.html

U.S. Government Disrupts Russia-Linked Botnet Engaged in Cyber Espionage

The U.S. government on Thursday said it disrupted a botnet comprising hundreds of small office and home office (SOHO) routers in the country that was put to use by the Russia-linked APT28 actor to conceal its malicious activities.
"These crimes included vast spear-phishing and similar credential harvesting campaigns against targets of intelligence interest to the Russian government, such as U.S.

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/us-gov...inked.html

U.S. State Government Network Breached via Former Employee's Account

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has revealed that an unnamed state government organization's network environment was compromised via an administrator account belonging to a former employee.
"This allowed the threat actor to successfully authenticate to an internal virtual private network (VPN) access point," the agency said in a joint advisory published

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/us-sta...ached.html

Malicious 'SNS Sender' Script Abuses AWS for Bulk Smishing Attacks

A malicious Python script known as SNS Sender is being advertised as a way for threat actors to send bulk smishing messages by abusing Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Notification Service (SNS).
The SMS phishing messages are designed to propagate malicious links that are designed to capture victims' personally identifiable information (PII) and payment card details, SentinelOne 

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/malici...s-aws.html

Why We Must Democratize Cybersecurity

With breaches making the headlines on an almost weekly basis, the cybersecurity challenges we face are becoming visible not only to large enterprises, who have built security capabilities over the years, but also to small to medium businesses and the broader public. While this is creating greater awareness among smaller businesses of the need to improve their security posture, SMBs are often

https://thehackernews.com/2024/02/why-we...urity.html