The Good

Significant advancements in cybersecurity measures have been made recently by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). It has taken two important steps: enhancing identity verification with a new program and allocating significant funds to fortify the cybersecurity posture of the Department of Labor and Environmental Protection Agency. In a notable move towards enhancing vulnerability assessment, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) has publicly launched CVSS 4.0.

• The GSA released a new program roadmap to improve the identity and verification capabilities of Login[.]gov and comply with security standards. Meanwhile, the GSA’s Technology Modernization Fund set aside five new investments to improve the cybersecurity postures for the Department of Labor and Environmental Protection Agency. While the Labor Department will use $15.2 million for zero-trust architecture, the EPA will invest its $2.5 million into the security of its analytical radiation data system.

• A new version of the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS 4.0), which solves the loopholes discovered in CVSS version 3.1, has been unveiled by the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST). Some of the improvements include the addition of new base metrics, a focus on OT/ICS/safety systems, and enhanced disclosure of impact metrics.

• New regulations were proposed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to safeguard customer accounts from SIM switching and port-out scams. Under the proposed rules, wireless operators would have to deploy secure methods of user authentication before moving a SIM card to a new device or a phone number to a different network.

The Bad

In a series of alarming cyber incidents, multiple high-profile organizations have fallen victim to data breaches and cyberattacks, raising concerns over data security. The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population experienced a massive data breach. Pepsi Bottling Ventures also suffered a significant breach, exposing the sensitive personal, financial, and health data of employees. The North Korean Lazarus hacking group orchestrated a daring $60 million cryptocurrency heist at Alphapo, leaving its mark on the digital world.

• The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population suffered a data breach wherein threat actors stole approximately two million records and offered them for sale on the Popürler hacking forum. The attackers provided a sample dataset of 1,000 people, containing their names, IDs, phone numbers, addresses, diagnosis details, and treatment information.

• In a public announcement, Pepsi Bottling Ventures revealed that the personal, financial, and health information of over 28,000 employees was impacted in a data breach that occurred between December 23, 2022, and January 19, 2023. The incident was the result of attackers gaining unauthorized access to certain systems. The compromised data includes names, email addresses, ID numbers, Social Security numbers, medical history details, and health insurance information.

• The North Korean Lazarus hacking group was found behind the $60 million cryptocurrency heist at Alphapo. The theft includes over 6 million USDT, 108k USDC, 100.2 million FTN, 430k TFL, 2.5k ETH, 1,700 DAI, and $37M of TRON and BTC, all of which were stolen from hot wallets, possibly using leaked private keys. The attack was carried out on July 23.

• An analysis of nearly 20 million information-stealing malware logs revealed that approximately 400,000 corporate credentials are being sold on hacker forums and Telegram channels. Some of these belong to business applications such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Quickbooks, AWS, GCP, Okta, and DocuSign.

• Yamaha’s Canadian music division confirmed dealing with a cyberattack after BlackByte and Akira ransomware groups claimed to have targeted the company. While BlackByte added the company’s name to its list of victims on June 14, Akira listed the company’s name on July 21. According to the official statement, the attack led to unauthorized access to systems and the theft of sensitive data.

• Tampa General Hospital, Florida, revealed sensitive data of more than 1.2 million patients was stolen during an attempted ransomware attack in May. This sensitive information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health insurance information, and medical record numbers of patients. The electronic medical record system was not accessed by hackers, reported the hospital.

• U.S. cosmetics conglomerate Estée Lauder suffered a cyberattack, with BlackCat and Cl0p claiming responsibility by adding the organization to their respective victims’ lists. The BlackCat group claimed that it stole more than 130GB of the company’s data but did not encrypt the network. The Cl0p group even added 62 clients of EY to its leak site, including 3TB of critical information such as client folders, passport scans, visa scans, risk and asset management documents, contracts, and agreements.

• Nickelodeon suffered a data breach that allegedly caused the leak of 500GB of confidential data, including unreleased television shows, scripts, and other material. The leak is said to have originated from the ‘consumer products and experience’ portal and was initially detected in January on Discord.

• Suncor Energy confirmed that an unauthorized party breached its IT network on or around June 21 to access the basic information of Petro-Points members. The company did not disclose how many members were affected but plans to notify customers if it finds out additional data was accessed.

• An unprotected database was found exposing around 725.8GB of data, containing over 8 million records of users and employees. The database belonged to Poorvika, one of India’s largest tech retailers. The records contained personal information such as dates of birth, marital status, family dependencies, tax invoices, and more.

New Threats

Recent cybersecurity incidents exposed significant vulnerabilities across various software systems, raising concerns among organizations and users alike. Ivanti's Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) was targeted by threat actors exploiting highly-critical bugs. Meanwhile, NoEscape, a rebranded version of Avaddon ransomware, wreaked havoc on enterprises through double extortion attacks, encrypting files on Windows, Linux, and VMWare ESXi servers. The emergence of new malware variants like Abyss Locker and CherryBlos/FakeTrade further added to the complexity of the cybersecurity landscape.

• Software firm Ivanti disclosed a couple of security vulnerabilities affecting its Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM), which was exploited by threat actors in the wild. The vulnerabilities—CVE-2023-35081 and CVE-2023-35078—pose various threats such as allowing remote attackers to obtain PII, add an administrative account, change the configuration via authentication bypass, and even conduct arbitrary file writes to the EPMM server.
• A rebranded version of Avaddon dubbed NoEscape surfaced in July that reportedly crippled multiple enterprises in double extortion attacks. Since its inception, the ransomware group has listed 10 different companies on its data leak site, from different verticals. It steals data and encrypts files on Windows, Linux, and VMWare ESXi servers.
• MalwareHunterTeam reported a new variant of the Abyss Locker ransomware designed to target Linux-based VMware ESXi servers. It employs SSH brute-force attacks to gain unauthorized access to servers. The ransomware claimed data theft ranging from 35GB to 700GB from different organizations. Also, researchers suspect a connection with HelloKitty ransomware due to similar code elements.
• Two related Android families, dubbed CherryBlos and FakeTrade, were found involved in cryptocurrency-mining and financially motivated scam campaigns targeting Android users. While CherryBlos was distributed via fraudulent services on popular social media platforms, FakeTrade leveraged fake money-earning apps for propagation.
• A new and insidious cybersecurity threat named P2PInfect was seen exploiting vulnerabilities within Redis servers to move laterally through networks. It exhibits cross-platform capabilities, targeting both Linux and Windows systems. The Windows variant of P2PInfect includes a Monitor component for self-updating and launching the new version.
• Dark.IoT, a Mirai variant, and Katana botnets targeted a command injection vulnerability (CVE-2023-28771) in Zyxel firewalls to launch DDoS attacks. The attackers utilized tools such as curl or wget to download scripts for further actions. These scripts were tailored for the MIPS architecture and downloaded from several distinct IP addresses.
• A new malware, dubbed Realst, was spotted targeting macOS systems. It was being distributed via websites hosting fake blockchain games such as Brawl Earth, WildWorld, Dawnland, Destruction, Evolion, Pearl, and SaintLegend. It is capable of emptying crypto wallets and stealing stored passwords and browser data. So far, there are 16 distinct variants of Realst that are fairly similar to each other, however, utilize different API call sets.
• Over 900,000 devices were found vulnerable to an arbitrary code execution flaw in MikroTik RouterOS. The bug, tracked as CVE-2023-30799, impacts RouterOS versions before 6.49.7 and RouterOS long-term versions through 6.48.6. An attacker can abuse the flaw to escalate privileges from admin to super-admin on the Winbox or HTTP interface. The flaw was addressed with the release of the stable version of 6.49.7.
• Sysdig researchers reported a sophisticated hacking operation, dubbed Scarleteel 2.0, targeting AWS Fargate environments. Threat actors exploited a minor mistake in AWS policy to gain control over a Fargate account. Some Jupyter Notebook containers deployed in a Kubernetes cluster have also been abused, allowing actors to proceed with different types of attacks to steal AWS credentials.
• Cyble’s threat analysts revealed that over 130,000 photovoltaic (PV) monitoring and diagnostic systems are exposed online, making them potential targets for cyberattacks. These products are from various vendors such as Solar-Log, Danfoss, Contec, SMA Solar Technology, and Saj Electric. While PoC exploit codes for vulnerabilities impacting several of these solar products are available online, a few of these products are inadequately secured.
• Researchers at Wiz detected a new fileless malware dubbed PyLoose that targets cloud workloads. Evidence showed that the malware was spotted in 200 different instances of cryptojacking attacks. It includes a compressed and encoded precompiled XMRig miner that is dropped directly into memory using a known Linux fileless technique.