Research Saturday

This week, Dave Bittner is joined by Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (JAGS) from SentinelOne's SentinelLabs to discuss the work his team and Tinexta Cyber did on "Operation Digital Eye | Chinese APT Compromises Critical Digital Infrastructure via Visual Studio Code Tunnels." Tinexta Cyber and SentinelLabs have been tracking threat activities targeting business-to-business IT service providers in Southe...

This week, we are joined by Ismael Valenzuela, VP of Threat Research & Intelligence, and Jacob Faires, Principal Threat Researcher, from Blackberry discussing the team's work on "LightSpy: APT41 Deploys Advanced DeepData Framework In Targeted Southern Asia Espionage Campaign." In April 2024, BlackBerry uncovered a significant evolution of the LightSpy malware campaign, attributed to Chinese cyber-...

Nati Tal, Head of Guardio Labs, sits down to share their work on “CrossBarking” — Exploiting a 0-Day Opera Vulnerability with a Cross-Browser Extension Store Attack. Guardio Labs has uncovered a critical vulnerability in the Opera browser, enabling malicious extensions to exploit Private APIs for actions like screen capturing, browser setting changes, and account hijacking. Highlighting the ease o...

This week, we are joined by Kyla Cardona and Aurora Johnson from SpyCloud discussing their research "China’s Surveillance State Is Selling Citizen Data as a Side Hustle." Chinese technology companies, under CCP mandate, collect vast amounts of data on citizens, creating opportunities for corrupt insiders to steal and resell this information on dark markets. These stolen datasets, aggregated into "...

Karlo Zanki, Reverse Engineer at ReversingLabs, discussing their work on "Malicious PyPI crypto pay package aiocpa implants infostealer code." ReversingLabs' machine learning-based threat hunting system identified a malicious PyPI package, aiocpa, designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency wallet information. Unlike typical attacks involving typosquatting, the attackers published a seemingly legitimate...

This week, we are joined by Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura from Cisco Talos, and they are discussing "Operation Celestial Force employs mobile and desktop malware to target Indian entities." Cisco Talos revealed Operation Celestial Force, an espionage campaign by the Pakistani threat group "Cosmic Leopard," targeting Indian defense, government, and technology sectors. Active for at least six ye...

Adam Khan, VP of Security Operations at Barracuda, joins to discuss his team's work on "The evolving use of QR codes in phishing attacks." Cybercriminals are evolving phishing tactics by embedding QR codes, or “quishing,” into PDF documents attached to emails, tricking recipients into scanning them to access malicious websites that steal credentials. Barracuda researchers found over half a million...

This week, we are joined by Andrew Morris, Founder and CTO of GreyNoise, to discuss their work on "GreyNoise Intelligence Discovers Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Live Streaming Cameras with the Help of AI." GreyNoise discovered two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in IoT-connected live streaming cameras, used in sensitive environments like healthcare and industrial operations, by leveraging its AI-...

Shawn Kanady, Global Director of Trustwave SpiderLabs, to discuss their work on "Pronsis Loader: A JPHP-Driven Malware Diverging from D3F@ck Loader." Trustwave SpiderLabs has uncovered Pronsis Loader, a new malware variant using the rare programming language JPHP and stealthy installation tactics to evade detection. The malware is capable of delivering high-risk payloads like Lumma Stealer and Lat...

Please enjoy this encore episode: Noah Pack, a SANS Internet Storm Center Intern, sits down to discuss research on "What happens when you accidentally leak your AWS API keys?" This research is a guest diary from Noah and shares a project he worked on after seeing an online video of someone who created a python script that emailed colleges asking for free swag to be shipped to him. The research sta...

This week, we are joined by Ami Luttwak, Co-Founder and CTO from Wiz, sharing their work on "Wiz Research Finds Critical NVIDIA AI Vulnerability Affecting Containers Using NVIDIA GPUs, Including Over 35 percent of Cloud Environments." A critical vulnerability in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit, widely used for GPU access in AI workloads, could allow attackers to escape containers and gain full access...

This week we are joined by, Blake Darché, Head of Cloudforce One at Cloudflare, to discuss their work on "Unraveling SloppyLemming’s Operations Across South Asia." Cloudforce One's investigation into the advanced threat actor "SloppyLemming" reveals an extensive espionage campaign targeting South and East Asia, with a focus on Pakistan's government, defense, telecommunications, and energy sectors....

Enjoy this special encore episode, where we are joined by Jon Williams from Bishop Fox, as he is sharing their research on "It’s 2024 and Over 178,000 SonicWall Firewalls are Publicly Exploitable." SonicWall published advisories for CVE-2022-22274 and CVE-2023-0656 a year apart after finding that NGFW series 6 and 7 devices are affected by two unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The...

This week, we are joined by, Amnon Kushnir from Sygnia, who is sharing their work on "China-Nexus Threat Group ‘Velvet Ant’ Leverages a Zero-Day to Deploy Malware on Cisco Nexus Switches." In early 2024, Sygnia observed the ‘Velvet Ant’ threat group exploiting a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2024-20399) to infiltrate Cisco Switch appliances and operate undetected within enterprise networks. This att...

This week, we are pleased to be joined by Mick Baccio, global security advisor for Splunk SURGe, sharing their research on "LLM Security: Splunk & OWASP Top 10 for LLM-based Applications." The research dives into the rapid rise of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) that initially seem magical, but behind the scenes, they are sophisticated systems built by humans. Despite their impressive capabili...

This week we are joined by Chester Wisniewski, Global Field CTO from Sophos X-Ops team, to discuss their work on "Crimson Palace returns: New Tools, Tactics, and Targets." Sophos X-Ops has observed a resurgence in cyberespionage activity, tracked as Operation Crimson Palace, targeting Southeast Asian government organizations. After a brief lull, Cluster Charlie resumed operations in September 2023...

In this episode, Trevor Hilligoss, VP of SpyCloud Labs at SpyCloud, discusses the increasing threat of ransomware, emphasizing the role of infostealer malware in facilitating these attacks. He draws from SpyCloud's 2024 Malware and Ransomware Defense Report, highlighting how compromised identity data from infostealers creates opportunities for ransomware operators. With 75% of organizations experi...

Joshua Miller from Proofpoint is discussing their work on "Best Laid Plans: TA453 Targets Religious Figure with Fake Podcast Invite Delivering New BlackSmith Malware Toolset." Proofpoint identified Iranian threat actor TA453 targeting a prominent Jewish figure with a fake podcast interview invitation, using a benign email to build trust before sending a malicious link. The attack attempted to deli...

We are joined by Yves Younan, Senior Manager, Talos Vulnerability Discovery and Research from Cisco, discussing their work on "How multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft apps for macOS pave the way to stealing permissions." Cisco Talos has uncovered eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft applications for macOS that could allow attackers to exploit the system's permission model by injecting malicious li...

Jonathan Tanner, Senior Security Researcher from Barracuda, discussing their work on "Stealthy phishing attack uses advanced infostealer for data exfiltration." The recent phishing attack, detailed by Barracuda, uses a sophisticated infostealer malware to exfiltrate a wide array of sensitive data. The attack begins with a phishing email containing an ISO file with an HTA payload, which downloads a...

Alex Delamotte, Threat Researcher from SentinelOne Labs, joins to share their work on "Xeon Sender | SMS Spam Shipping Multi-Tool Targeting SaaS Credentials." SentinelOne’s Labs team has uncovered new research on Xeon Sender, a cloud hacktool used to launch SMS spam attacks via legitimate APIs like Amazon SNS. First seen in 2022, this tool has been repurposed by multiple threat actors and distribu...

This week, N2K's very own Brandon Karpf sits down with Kevin Lentz, Team Leader of the Cyber Pacific Project at the Global Disinformation Lab, and they discuss the recent threatcasting report "Cyber Competition in the Indo-Pacific Gray Zone 2035." This report, developed using the Threatcasting Method, examines how the U.S. and Indo-Pacific allies can coordinate their cyber defense efforts in respo...

Tim Peck, a Senior Threat Researcher at Securonix, is discussing their work on "Threat actors behind the DEV#POPPER campaign have retooled and are continuing to target software developers via social engineering." The DEV#POPPER campaign continues to evolve, now targeting developers with malware capable of operating on Linux, Windows, and macOS systems. The threat actors, believed to be North Korea...

Robert Duncan, VP of Product Strategy from Netcraft, is discussing their work on "Mule-as-a-Service Infrastructure Exposed." Netcraft's new threat intelligence reveals the intricate connections within global fraud networks, showing how criminals use specialized services like Mule-as-a-Service (MaaS) to launder scam proceeds. By mapping the cyber and financial infrastructure, including bank account...

Snir Ben Shimol from ZEST Security on their work, "How we hacked a cloud production environment by exploiting Terraform providers." In this blog, ZEST discusses the security risks associated with Terraform providers, particularly those from community sources. The research highlights the importance of carefully vetting providers, regular scanning, and following best practices like version pinning t...