Cyber Bites

A new form of malware has been discovered to be targeting Apple MacOS user, with researches saying that it is tied to a state-backed hacking operation. The malware campaign has been identified by cybersecurity analysts at Trend Micro, who have linked campaign back to the Vietnamese backed group OceanLotus, also known as APT32. OceanLotus has been known to target their attacks at organisations working in Vietnam such as media, research and construction. However, their motivation...

Microsoft has recently identified Vitemanese government-backed hackers to be deploying cryptocurrency-mining malware alongside their usual cyber-espionage toolkits. The report by Microsoft highlights a growing trend in cyber-security where an increasing number of state-funded hacking groups are trying their hand at regular cybercrime operations, making it harder to distinguish intelligence-gathering operations from financially motivated crime. The Vietnamese group, identified by Microsoft as Bismuth, has been active since 2012 and is better known by other code names...

The British drug manufacturer AstraZeneca has recently been targetted by what are suspected to be North Korean hackers, who have tried to break into their systems. AstraZeneca is one of the many pharmaceutical companies racing to release a vaccine for COVID-19. The hackers posed as recruiters for professional social networking site, LinkedIn, and the networking platform, WhatsApp, approaching AstraZeneca's staff with fake job offers. They sent out documents to the company's workforce claiming to be...

The Endemol Shine Group, an Amsterdam-based production and distribution company that produces shows such as The Voice, Big Brother and Master Chef has been hit by a ransomware attack. The ransomware gang behind the attack is DopplePaymer, who Microsoft warned the public about in November. DopplePaymer claimed responsibility for the attack with Endemol Shine being added to the claim with sample files used for confirmation. It still remains unknown how much or what data has...

A treat actor has recently stolen an unknown number of C-level executive's email passwords from across the world and is selling hundreds of them online.  The data is being sold on a closed-access forum called Exploit.in, which is primarily for Russian hackers. Both emails and passwords for Microsoft and Office 365 accounts are being sold for what are supposedly those of high-level executives, according to the hacker. Access to these kinds of accounts can be...

Months after the attack Canon publically confirmed that the cyberattack in August was caused by ransomware, and that data was stolen from servers by hackers during this attack. The attack was first reported by BleepingComputer when they found that there was a suspicious outage on cannons cloud photo storage service, image.canon, which caused users to lose files. On August 5, Canon USA released a company-wide notice informing employees of the system issues which resulted in...

The personal and health data of over 16 million Brazilian COVID-19 patients has been exposed after a hospital employee foolishly uploaded a spreadsheet or names, passwords, and access keys to sensetive government systems on GitHub. Two government databases, E-SUS-VE and Sivep-Gripe, used to store patients COVID-19 data, were among the systems exposed. The Sivep-Gripe database is used to keep track of hospitalized cases, and E-SUS-VE is used to record COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms. These two...

A French security research firm has accidentality discovered a zero-day vulnerability that affects the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. The researchers found the vulnerability while they were working on updating a Windows security tool. The vulnerability can be found in two misconfigured registry keys for the DNSCache and RPC Endpoint Mapper services that are part of every Windows installation. Clément Labro, the security researchers who discovered the vulnerability have said that an...

InterSloth's 'Among Us' is one of the latest games to be hitting the world by storm, with it being popular among PC and mobile gamers alike. Cybercriminals have noted the games popularity and begun to take advantage of it, creating fake versions of the game in order to distribute malware. New research from the app protection firm Promon, who have partnered with Wultra, has shown that there are over 60 fake 'Among Us' apps masquerading...