The Good

The implementation of robust cybersecurity measures necessitates adequate funding, alongside other crucial elements. This week, the General Services Administration (GSA) has taken significant strides toward addressing this need for key federal departments. The agency has diverted a huge sum of money to the Labor Department and Environment Protection Agency (EPA) which will help improve their security postures. In another major achievement, the UK’s NCA successfully dismantled a multi-million dollar scam operation that targeted elderly people.

• The GSA’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) made new investments to improve the cybersecurity postures of the Department of Labor and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 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.

• Security researchers at Avast released a free decryption tool to decrypt files encrypted by Akira ransomware. The ransomware first emerged in March and encrypted files using .akira extensions. It has been blamed for a number of high-profile attacks on universities, financial institutions, and even a daycare center for children.

• The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) busted a multi-million dollar scam that targeted elderly people by pretending as police officers and cold-calling them. They informed them that their relative was involved in an accident that led to the death of others. The agency arrested around a dozen of suspects in the scam.

The Bad

It was not all good in cyberspace. Several massive security incidents that either led to the leak of users’ data or disruption in operations were also reported this week. A major bottling company made a public announcement, confirming that the personal and financial information of over 28,000 employees was stolen from its systems in a data breach dating back more than six months. The operations at the largest port in Japan also came to a halt for a day after it was badly hit by ransomware. In addition to that, an Indian retailer came into the limelight for exposing around 725.8 GB of data, including over eight million user and employee records.

• 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 port of Nagoya, Japan, was forced to temporarily suspend its container loading and unloading operations at the terminal due to a ransomware attack that occurred on July 4. The port authority dealt with the attack before it could lead to a larger impact. The attackers remain unknown.

• The website and mobile app of the Russian state-owned railway company RZD were down for several hours following a massive cyberattack, forcing passengers to buy tickets at railway stations. The Ukrainian hacker group IT Army claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel.

• JumpCloud, a provider of cloud-based identity and access management solutions, urged all its impacted customers to reset their admin API keys in the wake of an ongoing cybersecurity incident. The company informed the concerned clients about the critical nature of this incident, reinforcing its commitment to safeguarding their operations.

• Nickelodeon is investigating 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 observed in January on Discord.

• Reversing Labs discovered more than a dozen malicious packages published to the npm repository, harvesting data from Microsoft 365 users. The malicious packages were downloaded around 1,000 times before they were removed from the repository.

• 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 725.8 GB of data, including 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.

• An unsecured database belonging to Kings of Translation inadvertently exposed over 25,000 records, including a Florida driver’s license, a letter from a Ukrainian ambassador, and an FBI background check document. The exposed data contained PII, internal screenshots of the source code, and customer documents stored in the uploads folder.

New Threats

Truebot malware family was on the radar of federal authorities as they find new versions of the malware targeting organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Google Play Store remained a potential attack vector for threat actors, with researchers discovering two new malicious apps pilfering user data to servers hosted in China. A series of attacks against European agencies and entities were also reported in a newly discovered SmugX campaign.

• In a joint advisory, the CISA and other agencies warned about the rise in Truebot malware activity against organizations in the U.S. and Canada. The attacks are active since May. The latest variants of the malware exploited a remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2022-31199) in the Netwrix Auditor server to gain initial access.
• A campaign targeting experts working with Middle Eastern affairs and nuclear security has been attributed to Charming Kitten (aka TA453). The attackers pretended to be a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) to deploy malware on both Apple and Microsoft products. The goal of the campaign is to deploy several backdoors on victims’ systems to gather intelligence.
• 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.
• Cyfirma discovered a new infostealer named WISE REMOTE that is currently being advertised in underground hacking forums. It includes features to collect and exfiltrate a bunch of data from infected hosts. All the data is sent to a remote control panel, ready to be re-packaged and sold on underground credential markets.
• A recent series of attacks targeting European governments, embassies, and foreign policy-making entities was attributed to Red Delta and Mustang Panda threat actors. The campaign, dubbed SmugX, leveraged the HTML smuggling tactic to deploy a new variant of PlugX malware.
• A new tool, called TeamsPhisher, available on GitHub can enable attackers to misuse a recently disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft Teams and automatically deliver malicious files to users' systems. It is a Python-based tool that executes a fully automated attack.
• ASEC recently discovered that Crysis ransomware attackers were scanning the internet, via brute force or dictionary attacks, for vulnerable RDP endpoints to install Venus ransomware on systems. Upon getting access, the attackers first attempted to encrypt the systems with Crysis ransomware. However, after failing to do so, the second attempt at encryption was done using the Venus ransomware.
• The SonicWall Capture Labs Research team observed a new campaign delivering a new variant of Agent Tesla malware via Native Loader. The variant is distributed as an NSIS installer consisting of an NSIS script, DLL plugin, and encrypted payload file.
• Aqua Security reported a suspected TeamTNT operation, named Silentbob, in which the gang deployed an aggressive worm against cloud infrastructure. The worm was designed to target JupyterLab and Docker APIs and deploy a version of the Tsunami backdoor malware, as well as cryptominers.
• Two malicious file management apps hosted on Google Play Store, with more than 1.5 million combined downloads, were found sending user data to servers in China. The data sent out included contact lists, media content, real-time location, network provider, country code, and device information. The two apps are named ‘File Recovery and Data Recovery’ and ‘File Manager.’