Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence - January 15–19

The Good

In the past few months, water facilities remained a lucrative target for cyberattacks. Amidst the concern, the CISA issued an incident response guideline to help organizations augment their incident response planning and collaboration with federal partners. In another development, the FTC joined hands with Global CAPE to streamline cooperation on law enforcement investigations related to privacy and data security.

• The Australian Cyber Security Center published a guideline on how business leaders can secure their devices, social media accounts, and communication channels from cyber threats. Some recommendations include enabling MFA, updating software and applications, installing software from trusted sources, enabling security features on messaging apps, using screen locks on all devices, and backing up important files.
• The CISA, the FBI, and EPA, jointly published an incident response guide for organizations in the Water and Wastewater Systems (WWS) sector. Developed in collaboration with over 25 WWS sector industries, and state government partners, the guide covers the four stages of the incident response lifecycle: Preparation; Detection and analysis; Containment, eradication and recovery; and Post-incident activities. The guide will assist utilities with approaches for collaboration with federal entities to lower cyber risk against drinking water and wastewater systems.
• The FTC joined the Global Cooperation Arrangement for Privacy Enforcement (Global CAPE) to lend intelligence and assist privacy investigators worldwide. The move will allow the FTC to streamline investigations, and share information with other privacy authorities around the world that would also participate in the Global CAPE.

The Bad

Misconfigured databases leaking a trove of information continue to explode as Toyota Tsusho Insurance Broker India and Inspiring Vacations became the latest victims. Meanwhile, the LockBit group extended its victim list with three new names, including Foxsemicon.

• A threat actor named ‘wangfei19860902055’ advertised the sale of a database related to GEICO on a dark web forum. The compromised database contains 552,900 records with various personal information fields such as first name, last name, phone number, address, city, and state. The incident came to light on January 14 after the threat actor posted details on the Nuovo BreachForums.

• The Singing River Health System in Mississippi notified nearly 253,000 individuals about a ransomware attack that compromised their sensitive information. Potentially affected information includes names, birthdates, Social Security numbers, medical information, and health information of patients. The Rhysida group had claimed responsibility for the assault in August 2023.

• The now-defunctInferno Drainer crypto wallet was used to create over 16,000 unique malicious domains and trick people into handing over $80 million in assets worldwide. Over 137,000 victims were tricked on phishing websites into connecting their cryptocurrency wallets with the attackers’ infrastructure, from November 2022 through November 2023.

• The LockBit ransomware group added two new victims to its dark web portal - Maisons de l’Avenir in France and Shinwa Co in Japan. While further details of the attacks remain unknown, threat actors have issued a stern deadline for their ransom demands, set for February 04. In another instance, Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturer, Foxsemicon, fell victim to a LockBit ransomware attack. The group threatened to publish stolen customer data if a ransom was not paid.

• Several websites in Lithuania were hit by a wave of DDoS attacks, thus, disrupting their services. A Russian politically motivated hacker group, NoName, claimed responsibility for the attacks on its Telegram channel. Some of the impacted organizations included Compensa Vienna Insurance Group, If Insurance, Lithuanian Roads Association, AD REM, INIT, and Balticum.

• Toyota Tsusho Insurance Broker India, an Indo-Japanese insurance venture, operated a misconfigured server that exposed more than 650,000 Microsoft-hosted email messages and customers' sensitive information. The exposed information included insurance policy PDFs, password reset links, OTP, and more.

• A €10 million ($11 million) ransom demand followed after a crippling attack on the Calvià City Council in Majorca, Spain, impacting municipal services. Administrative deadlines are suspended until January 31. Forensic analysis is underway to understand the impact of the attack. While citizen services are reachable by phone, urgent document submissions can be made through the General State Administration portal. The mayor refused to pay the ransom.

• Cybersecurity firm Netcraft reported that scammers are utilizing newly registered, low-cost domain names with global top-level domain extensions (.cloud, .sbs) to host sites selling dubious health products. Perpetrators often use fake news campaigns, mimicking reputable layouts, and fabricate endorsements from TV shows like Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den. The affordability of these domains allows criminals to spread these campaigns cost-effectively.

• Melbourne-based travel agency Inspiring Vacations experienced a significant data leak, with a 26.8GB database left publicly accessible without any security measures. The database contained 112,605 records, including high-resolution passport images, travel visa certificates, itinerary or ticket files, and personal information of 13,684 customers. The incident also impacted internal company documents, including 17,000 tax invoices to partners and affiliates.

• Kansas State University (K-State) suffered a cybersecurity incident that impacted a portion of its network and services. The disruption affected certain network systems, including VPN, K-State Today emails, and videos on Canvas, or Mediasite. The university immediately launched an investigation into the incident and is working to restore the impacted systems.

• A cyberattack at VF Corp affected the personal data of 35.5 million customers. The firm has reported the data breach to regulators in a filing, however, there is no mention of the kind of data stolen in the attack. ALPHV (or BlackCat) ransomware group has claimed credit for the breach.

• Google’s Threat Analysis Group revealed that COLDRIVER actors have increasingly attempted to deploy backdoors on the devices of targets in NATO countries and Ukraine. These attacks have been active since November 2022 and the main targets are high-profile individuals in NGOs, former intelligence and military officials and NATO governments.

New Threats

The exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities spiked with Google and Citrix products taking a hit across the globe. The FBI raised alarm against Androxgh0st malware attacks and the NCSC-FI reported a surge in Akira ransomware attacks in the country.

• The FBI warned against a new campaign leveraging Androxgh0st malware to steal credentials from various high-profile applications such as AWS, Microsoft 365, Twilio, and SendGrid. The campaign targeted Apache webservers and websites using the vulnerable version of the Laravel Web application framework to gain initial access. In many instances, the attackers were found exploiting other vulnerabilities in the PHPUnit testing framework and Apache HTTP Server to deploy the malware.

• Google addressed CVE-2024-0519, a zero-day vulnerability in the Chrome browser, marking the first instance of such a flaw being exploited in the wild this year. The vulnerability is an out-of-bounds memory access bug in the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine. Attackers could leverage this flaw to gain unauthorized access to data beyond the memory buffer, potentially leading to sensitive information exposure or system crashes.

• ASEC discovered a new campaign that used booby-trapped files disguised as adult games to infect South Korean users with Remcos RAT. These files were distributed via web hards and upon execution, caused the download of malicious Visual Basic Scripts that launched an intermediate binary named "ffmpeg.exe." This process fetches the Remcos RAT from a server controlled by threat actors, enabling unauthorized remote control and surveillance of compromised systems.

• The NCSC-FI noted a surge in Akira ransomware attacks targeting organizations in the country. The attacks, which increased in December 2023, involve threat actors wiping NAS and backup devices. Six out of seven reported infections were attributed to the Akira ransomware family. The attackers exploit poorly secured VPN gateways on Cisco ASA or FTD devices, leveraging a known vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-20269. The ransomware group claims to have hacked multiple organizations in various industries since March 2023.

• CRIL identified a Go Stealer variant potentially targeting the Indian Air Force. The malware is distributed through a ZIP file named ‘SU-30_Aircraft_Procurement, hosted on Oshi, an anonymous file storage. The sequence of the infection in the attack involves a progression from a ZIP file to an ISO file, followed by an LNK file, ultimately leading to the deployment of a stealer payload.

• Microsoft reported Mint Sandstorm, an Iranian APT35 subgroup, using spear-phishing to target researchers and university staff in the U.S., Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the and U.K. Employing custom phishing lures, the hackers deliver a new, evasive backdoor called MediaPl. This malware disguises itself as Windows Media Player, utilizing encrypted communication channels to interact with its command-and-control server.

• Citrix has urgently advised customers to patch Netscaler ADC and Netscaler Gateway appliances against two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2023-6548 and CVE-2023-6549. These vulnerabilities affect the Netscaler management interface and expose unpatched instances to RCE and DoS attacks. However, attackers require low-privilege account access and specific configuration settings to exploit the flaws. Only customer-managed Netscaler appliances are impacted, while Citrix-managed cloud services are unaffected.

• Amidst the rise in the number of attacks exploiting two recently disclosed vulnerabilities in Ivanti COnnect Secure VPN appliances, the CISA warned that another Ivanti product flaw (CVE-2023-35082) was being widely exploited. The flaw affects Ivanti’s Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) product. If exploited, the vulnerability can enable attackers to potentially access users’ PII and changes on the server.

• VMware warned its customers about a critical vCenter Server vulnerability being exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2023-34048, the vulnerability is an out-of-bounds write issue related to the implementation of the DCERPC protocol. It can allow attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on systems.

• A malicious package uploaded to the npm registry was found deploying a sophisticated trojan on compromised Windows machines. The package, named “oscompatible,” attracted 380 downloads before it was taken down. It contained a few strange binaries, including a single executable file, a DLL and an encrypted DAT file, alongside a JavaScript file.

• More than 170000 Android TVs were hacked by the Bigpanzi bot to launch DDoS attacks. The botnet was built by a group with the same name that has been active since 2015. It is distributed through a variety of fake apps pretending to offer pirated content, enhance TV viewing experiences, and backdoor firmware updates. Once installed, the apps and firmware updates would ensnare infected devices into the Bigpanzi botnet and carry out attacks.

• Security researchers discovered that more than 178,000 SonicWall NGFW appliances with exposed online management interfaces are vulnerable to potential DoS and RCE attacks. Two DoS security flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-22274 and CVE-2023-0656, affect these appliances. While SonicWall PSIRT claims no knowledge of these vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild, the exposure poses a significant risk.