Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence, November 28 - December 02, 2022

The Good

• The EU Council issued a new cybersecurity directive, NIS2, which would set standards for cyber risk management and reporting obligations across every sector. The new directive aims to harmonize cybersecurity requirements and measures across member states by establishing minimum rules for a regulatory framework and laying down mechanisms for effective cooperation among relevant authorities.
• The Spanish National Police took down a cybercrime operation that leveraged fake cryptocurrency investment sites to defraud 300 victims, across Europe, and steal over $12.8 million. During the investigation, six members of the cybercrime organization were arrested in Madrid and Barcelona and will face charges of suspected fraud, money laundering, and usurpation of marital status.
• Law enforcement across 27 countries, along with Europol, took down 12,526 websites hosting illegal content related to counterfeiting and online piracy. The police disconnected 32 servers used to distribute the content for 2294 television channels. They also shuttered 15 online stores selling counterfeit products on social media sites and seized 127,365 fake clothes, watches, shoes, accessories, perfumes, electronics, and other items worth over $3.9 million.
• The Australian government awarded up to $25.4 million in grants under the second round of the Cyber Security Skills Partnership Innovation Fund. The objective is to support projects that improve the quality and diversity of Australia’s cybersecurity professionals by funding collaborative projects between industry and the education sector.

The Bad

• South Staffordshire Water, England, revealed that a ransomware attack it suffered in August may have resulted in the exposure of sensitive personal information and bank details. Customers who have been paying via debit card seem to be victims of this attack. The Cl0p ransomware group is a potential suspect in the crime.
• Schools in Gloucester County, New Jersey, notified parents of a significant breach that has impacted their operations, leading to the cancelation of multiple activities across schools. There’s no clue so far about the involvement of any hacker group, however, the investigation is ongoing. 
• A cyberattack crippled the networks of Accuro, a New Zealand-based health insurance firm, restricting users’ access to core systems. It’s unclear what all customer data was exposed to hackers. The company has sent out a message about keeping the systems offline for some time and urged everyone to cooperate.
• LastPass and its parent company GoTo disclosed a security incident wherein an unauthorized party illegally accessed some of their customers’ information. It added that all the customer passwords are safe. Other stolen data remains unclear.
• The RansomHouse ransomware group targeted Keralty, a multinational healthcare organization, knocking its websites offline and interrupting the operations of the company and its subsidiaries. The healthcare giant operates 12 hospitals and 371 medical centers in Latin America, the U.S., Spain, and Asia.
• ENC Security, Netherlands, was found blurting out its API keys and certificate files for over a year owing to a misconfiguration. The company is a third-party vendor for Sony, Lexar, and Sandisk USB keys as it provides encryption solutions for data safety. The data was accessible from May 27, 2021, up until November 9, 2022.
• Pediatric-specific health IT solutions company Connexin Software confirmed that it suffered a security incident that impacted nearly 2.2 million individuals. The ripple effects of the attacks have impacted the networks of about 120 pediatric physician practices and practice groups. The leaked database comprised PII, and a variety of medical and insurance records.
• Unauthorized access at Community Health Network, Indiana, impacted approximately 1.5 million individuals. The incident involves the use of website tracking codes by some third parties. These helped them in teleporting certain patient information from the site to the tracking technology vendors.
• A previously reported ransomware strain has been rebranded as Trigona and researchers claimed to have found multiple victims of the new strain. Moreover, hackers behind it have released a new negotiation site on Tor where they ask for ransom in Monero. However, It remains obscure how hackers penetrate the target networks to deploy ransomware.
• China-linked cyberespionage group UNC4191 has been observed targeting public and private entities in Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific, the U.S., and Europe, with increased attention on the Philippines. Hackers attempt to steal data from air-gapped systems through self-replicating malware on USB drives. The three malware families, dubbed MISTCLOAK, DARKDEW, and BLUEHAZE, can help achieve backdoor access to compromised devices. 
• Guilford College, North Carolina, disclosed a ransomware attack that culminated in the leak of sensitive data of students, faculty, and staff. The Hive group took full responsibility for the attack and threatened to leak the stolen data if the ransom amount is not paid. In response to the attack, the impacted networks were brought offline.
• It is estimated that personal records pertaining to over 5.4 million Twitter users, containing non-public information, are being shared for free on the dark web. The data was reportedly extracted by exploiting an API flaw that was fixed in January. The leaked information includes the phone numbers and email addresses of the users.
• All data with the Zwijndrecht police in Antwerp, Belgium, from 2006 until September 2022 was published by the Ragnar Locker ransomware group. The leak exposes thousands of car number plates, fines, personnel details, investigation reports, crime report files, and more. This particular attack was originally planned against the municipality of Zwijndrecht.
• Canadian retailer Harry Rosen revealed it fell victim to a cyberattack. Ransomware group BianLian has listed the company as a victim on its leak site and released a 1GB file as proof of its attack. Written for Windows systems in the Go language, the ransomware presumably runs its encryption at a much greater speed. The lesser-known ransomware group was initially spotted in August.

New Threats

• AquaSec security firm spotted a new Go-based malware, dubbed Redigo, launching attacks on Redis servers. The adversaries are exploiting a critical flaw, CVE-2022-0543, in Redis servers. The flaw—CVSS score 10.0—is a Lua sandbox escape flaw that impacts Debian and Debian-derived Linux distributions.
• Google TAG uncovered Heliconia, a commercial spyware, designed to exploit flaws in Microsoft Defender security software, and Chrome and Firefox browsers. The malware framework comprises three key components—Heliconia Noise, Heliconia Soft, and Files. Google has urged users to update browsers and software as a defense against exploits.
• McAfee’s Mobile Research team identified a fake version of a legitimate mobile security app on the Google Play Store targeting Japanese users. The threat actors used Google Drive to distribute the malware. The malware can extract passwords and abuse reverse proxy to snoop around mobile payment services.
• Approximately 300,000 users across 71 countries have fallen victim to a new Android threat campaign. According to Zimperium, a mobile security firm, the malicious software posed as a legitimate education-themed application to harvest users’ Facebook credentials. The trojan used native libraries such as "libabc.so" to dodge device security.
• Researchers at Lookout discovered roughly 300 Android and iOS apps manipulating individuals into taking loans. It is specifically targeting those who do not qualify for a traditional loan. Through unfair loan terms, hackers attempt to exfiltrate a wide range of user data and use it later to blackmail them for repayment.
• ‘Invisible Challenge’ on TikTok is being exploited by cybercriminals to install malware on thousands of devices through a fake software offer. The fake software, in fact, installs the W4SP Stealer malware. Through this, hackers attempt to pilfer passwords and compromise cryptocurrency wallets and Discord accounts. These videos had already garnered over a million views.
• Evina researcher Maxime Ingrao uncovered Symoo, a fake Android SMS app with 100,000 downloads. It acts as an SMS relay service for account creation for the likes of Google, Instagram, Microsoft, Telegram, and Facebook. It was observed that Symoo exfiltrates SMS data to a domain in use by another application on Google Play, Virtual Number (not available anymore).
• Cyble researchers laid bare a variant of Punisher ransomware that has been propagating through a COVID-19 theme-based phishing website. Disguised as a COVID tracking application, it targeted Chilean users and demanded the equivalent of $1000 in BTC for decrypting the files of the victims.