The Good

In a global crackdown against cybercrime, Interpol dismantled malicious servers that served as a channel for phishing and malware attacks in great measure. Meanwhile, authorities from the U.S. and Brazil wiped out the KV botnet and Grandoreiro trojan, respectively.

• Interpol detained 31 suspected cybercriminals and took down 70% of 1,300 malicious servers in a three-month-long coordinated operation called Operation Synergia. Most of these servers were located in Europe, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and were used to carry out phishing attacks or distribute malware. In addition to the 31 arrests, Interpol identified an additional 70 suspects responsible for phishing attacks, spreading banking malware, and distributing ransomware.

• The U.S. disrupted the Chinese state-sponsored Volt Typhoon hacking campaign that targeted American and allied critical infrastructure. The campaign involved embedding KV Botnet into privately owned routers to conceal its presence. A vast majority of routers from Cisco and NetGear that reached the end-of-life status were compromised by the botnet.

• ESET researchers, in collaboration with the Federal Police of Brazil, wrecked the Grandoreiro malware threat, which has been targeting Spanish-speaking countries with financial fraud since 2017. This was possible after researchers discovered a design flaw in the malware's network protocol. The criminal structure is suspected of moving at least 3.6 million euros through fraud since 2019.

The Bad

Ransomware attack woes escalated as Schneider Electric's Sustainability Business division and a U.S. military-linked IT provider, Technica, fell victim to separate ransomware attacks. Additionally, Keenan & Associates disclosed a ransomware attack that impacted the sensitive data of over 1.5 million individuals.

• California-based insurance broker Keenan & Associates notified over 1.5 million individuals about last year's ransomware and data exfiltration attack. An unauthorized party had gained access to some of the internal systems of the firm multiple times for about a week. The compromised data includes names, birth dates, SSNs, passport numbers, driver's license numbers, and health-related information.

• Cloudflare revealed a breach of its internal Atlassian server by a suspected 'nation-state attacker', accessing Confluence wiki, Jira bug database, and Bitbucket source code management. The intrusion started on November 14, 2023, and involved one access token and three service account credentials stolen in Okta's breach from October.

• French multinational Schneider Electric disclosed that its Sustainability Business division was impacted in a ransomware attack earlier this month. The attack affected its Resource Advisory product, as well as other division-specific systems. It is reported that the Cactus ransomware group is behind the attacks.

• The BlackCat group threatened to leak 300GB of data stolen from Technica, a Virginia-based IT services company that works with the federal government. The stolen data also includes sensitive information about the U.S. military. To back up its claim, ALPHV posted more than two dozen screenshots of purportedly stolen documents featuring the names, Social Security numbers, clearance levels, and roles and work locations of dozens of people.

• Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is investigating a data breach in its internal network. The breach affected the remote access to GAC’s network and several employees were asked to stop working remotely. The incident also impacted two internal drives, emails, calendars, and contacts of several staff members.

• Researchers from RedHunt Labs discovered a significant security lapse at Mercedes-Benz, where a private key and authentication token were unintentionally left accessible online. The exposed token could provide unrestricted access to the company's GitHub Enterprise Server, resulting in the exposure of source code, cloud access keys, blueprints, single sign-on passwords, API keys, and more. The affected repositories also contained Azure and AWS credentials.

• In a new update, the LockBit ransomware gang claimed responsibility for attacks on Saint Anthony Hospital in Chicago by adding the name to its list of victims and demanding a $900,000 ransom to prevent the leak of data. The hospital had previously acknowledged the attack that was discovered on December 18, 2023. It determined that files containing patient information were copied from the network.

• Security analysts at Resecurity found 1,572 compromised credentials on the dark web belonging to telecom network administrators and engineers from various companies including RIPE, Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), and the Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Center (LACNIC). Victims of the incident span across various sectors, including an Iranian research organization, a Kenyan financial institution, a major Spanish financial organization, and an Iraqi government agency.

• The FBI issued a public service announcement cautioning about scammers exploiting courier services in tech support and government impersonation scams. Perpetrators, often targeting senior citizens, coerce victims into liquidating assets, buying precious metals, or wiring funds based on false claims of compromised financial accounts. The scammers then arrange for couriers to collect cash or valuables in person. The elaborate scheme has led to aggregated losses exceeding $55 million from May to December 2023.

• A threat group infiltrated the database of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, obtaining confidential information, including the prime minister's identity documents, medical analyses, and other personal data. The attackers threatened to release the personal data of deputies if they did not receive a ransom, demanding 0.8 bitcoins. They reportedly published some information online, including the identity cards of Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and UDMR leader Kelemen Hunor.

• The IntelBroker group allegedly targeted a popular mobile banking app with over 10 million users. The threat actor posted details of the exploit on a hacker forum, offering an exploit capable of scraping and leaking sensitive information from the banking app. The data for sale included full names, countries, and payment methods of users. Cybercriminals demanded payment exclusively in XMR (Monero).

• Direct Trading Technologies, an international fintech company, exposed the sensitive information of over 300,000 users due to a misconfigured web server discovered by the Cybernews research team. The leaked data included trading activity, names, email addresses, IP addresses, plaintext passwords, home addresses, phone numbers, and credit card details. Additionally, internal comments from the company's outreach team about clients were exposed.

• A misconfigured S3 bucket leaked COVID e-passport details of 3.5 Indian people, including their passport information, mobile numbers, vehicle numbers, gender, and email addresses. Early investigation reveals that the leaky database belonged to a third-party service provider.

New Threats

Several malware campaigns abusing recently disclosed vulnerabilities were discovered in the wild. While Akamai reported Log4Shell vulnerability and Polkit Linux component flaws being exploited to distribute new variants of the FritzFrog botnet, InfectedSlurs botnet was observed exploiting six zero-day vulnerabilities impacting Hitron DVR device models. In a separate instance, the Trigona group targeted MS-SQL servers to install Mimic ransomware.

• Akamai Security Intelligence Group (SIG) uncovered several new variants of the FritzFrog botnet, one of which includes the capability to exploit the 2021 Log4Shell vulnerability. The botnet has also been upgraded with a module to exploit a privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2021-4034) in the Polkit Linux component. So far, the botnet has infected over 1500 victims worldwide.

• The Patchwork APT group was found to have created at least 12 malicious Android apps, including MeetMe, Let’s Chat, Quick Chat, and Rafaqat, and distributed them through Google Play Store and other platforms to exfiltrate data from Pakistani users. As part of the attack, the attackers used romance scams to trick the victims into installing the apps that eventually downloaded the VajraSpy RAT onto their Android phones.

• The CERT-UA warned about a PurpleFox malware campaign that infected at least 2,000 computers in Ukraine. As part of the activity, CERT-UA leveraged IOCs associated with the malware to monitor infected hosts between January 20 and 31, and detected 486 intermediate control server IP addresses, most of which were located in China.

• Mandiant researchers discovered new malware attacks targeting Ivanti Connect Secure VPN and Policy Secure devices. Attackers were observed exploiting CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 to execute arbitrary commands on the unpatched Ivanti devices. Some of the malware employed in these attacks include a custom web shell tracked as BUSHWALK, a new variant of the LIGHTWIRE web shell, a Python-based CHAINLINE web shell, the FRAMESTING web shell, and KrustyLoader. Meanwhile, the CISA issued a fresh directive, demanding all federal agencies disconnect all instances of Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure products within 48 hours.

• Security researchers identified approximately 45,000 Jenkins instances that are vulnerable to a critical RCE bug CVE-2024-23897. The security issue can be abused in several ways, including manipulating Resource Root URLs, "Remember me" cookies, or CSRF protection bypass. Depending on permissions, attackers can exploit the flaw to access sensitive information, potentially leading to the decryption of stored secrets and other malicious activities.

• AT&T researchers came across a phishing attack that leveraged the Microsoft Teams chat group to push DarkGate malware onto victims’ systems. The attackers used a domain named .onmicrosoft.com to send phishing messages, tricking users into downloading a deceptive file. Researchers noted that the attack succeeded because users had enabled External Access in Microsoft Teams users to message users in other tenants by default.

• Researchers at Unit 42 identified a large-scale campaign named ApateWeb that employed over 130,000 domains to distribute scareware, PUPs, and other scam pages. The campaign involved adware programs, a rogue browser, and various browser extensions. These served as potential initial access points for cybercriminals, putting victims at risk of more severe threats.

• The Trigona ransomware threat actor expanded its activities by installing Mimic malware targeting MS-SQL servers. The actor abused the Bulk Copy Program (BCP) feature in MS-SQL servers, utilizing the bcp.exe command-line tool during the malware installation process. The threat actor also used the Everything file search tool to speed up file encryption and imitate aspects of the Conti ransomware. The installed files contained tools for deactivating Windows Defender and port forwarding.

• Akamai issued an InfectedSlurs botnet advisory following the discovery of active exploitation of multiple DVR device models from Hitron Systems. The botnet exploited six zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-22768 through CVE-2024-22772, and CVE-2024-23842) to launch attacks. These vulnerabilities, categorized as improper input validation issues, allowed attackers to inject OS commands and achieve remote code execution.

• A new ransomware group, named Alpha, was observed on the landscape along with its leak site on the dark web. It displayed data from industries impacted across the U.K, U.S., and Israel. The ransomware appends a random 8-character alphanumeric extension to encrypted files, and its DLS, titled "MYDATA," is considered unstable and frequently offline.

• Cado researchers recently encountered a novel malware campaign, dubbed “Commando Cat”, targeting exposed Docker API endpoints. It is unclear who the threat actor behind Commando Cat is or where they're from, though there is an overlap in scripts and IP addresses to other groups like Team TNT, indicating a potential connection.

• Mandiant reported that the UNC4990 threat group has shifted from its traditional method of using USB devices to distribute payloads. It is now abusing legitimate services such as Ars Technica, GitHub, GitLab, and Vimeo to host the EMPTYSPACE downloader. It can execute QUIETBOARD backdoor or any payload from the command and control (C2) server.

• Russia-based Star Blizzard APT impersonated Russian researchers and academics in a new campaign to gain access to their colleagues’ email accounts. The emails contained a document that included blurring content and a fake button to Google Drive.