MOVEit has been in the news quite a bit lately. First it was the disclosure of a Zero-Day that was actively being exploited since October 2022. Next up was the fact that the group exploiting the flaw was probably tinkering around the vulnerability since mice 2021. If that were not bad enough a new security audit performed on the MFT (managed file transfer) has found even more vulnerabilities in the service. The flaws are like the original zero-day flaws, in that they are SQL injection flaws that allow for theft of data from customer databases.

Although Banking, Mortgage, and other financial institutions are always under attack, it is never a good thing to see a coordinated campaign targeting them. Microsoft has disclosed once such campaign using Attacker (Adversary, Man)-in -the-Middle tactics for phishing and BEC (Business Email Compromise) attacks. This style of attack is also not new and one that is often seen in the financial world. These campaigns typically start with one organization that gets popped.

In today’s episode of why we need to change how we do things; it has come to light that the critical MOVEit zero-day that allowed complete control over targeted file transfer platforms may have been identified by the Cl0p ransomware group as far back as 2021. According to researchers at Kroll, the group appears to have been looking for the right way to properly exploit is as part of a data theft campaign against the Managed File Transfer Utility.

One thing that has always bothered me is the concept that censoring or hiding certain types of speech, thought, information etc., is somehow going to change minds and make society better. Simply put, this approach is myopic and bankrupt in such a fundamental way it is staggering how many highly educated people fully believe in it. The concept that you can hide the truth, or shape reality by editing out things you do not like does not exist. The Turth (yes with a capital T) is immutable. It exists outside of any desire to hide or change it regardless of any political affiliation or thought.

The fine folks at the Royal ransomware group have begun testing a new flavor of encryptor that is being called BlackSuit (The hat was already taken). First identified in January of this year (2023), Royal is believed to be Conti returned to life. Royal is also a private group, meaning they are not selling their services to anyone else but looking to keep things internal and hoard all their revenue. Royal is who went after the City of Dallas recently and might have poked the bear on that one.

Google has pushed out a new patch for Chrome to deal with a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-3079. In the patch release Google is clear that this vulnerability is actively being exploited in the wild and that users of both Chrome and Edge should update to the latest version as soon as possible. The report of the flaw was from Google’s own threat research team making this an even more urgent event.

After the disclosure of a serious Zero-Day that allowed an unauthenticated user to basically own the device. Barracuda is now saying that remediation action for any device that was compromised is a full replacement regardless of the firmware version. It seems that once an attacker gets their malware into the device, it is done. There is not a clean way to remove it and simply patching it does not disable the control that the attacker has on the device. It also seems that at factory resent does not clear it out.

As we hear more about Supply Chain attacks and the need for Software Build of Materials we are now hearing of an attack on the popular game, Minecraft. It seems that attackers are leveraging popular Modding platforms to push out information stealing malware (Fractureiser). They are accomplishing this by injecting malicious code into modifications that are then uploaded to different platforms. These are then downloaded and installed by unwary gamers.

As if the internet needed something else bad floating around it seems that groups that engage in extortion schemes involving the threat of releasing images of a sexual nature are now getting help from AI image creation tools. Sextortion emails are nothing new, in many cases the blackmail is little more than an effort to get a target to click on a malicious file (disguised as an image or video file) in order to get ransomware on a system if the original blackmail is not good enough.

It is Wednesday, so it is about time to talk about a new strain of malware. In this case one that leverages Microsoft’s PowerShell to do its dirty work. Primarily a post-exploitation tool, PowerDrop is leveraged after access is obtained by other means. According to researchers at Adlumin, the tool also seems to focus on information gathering/theft. The attack also used WMI (Windows Management instrumentation) to execute the PowerShell commands which could be a move to living off the land.