Its seems that the efforts of Ukrainian hacktivists have decided to focus their efforts on a new and interesting target. In addition to other strategic targets, they have gone after one of the central portals for Russian alcohol distribution. The attack is currently manifested in the form of a distributed denial of service attack(s) targeting the portal to render it inaccessible. This means that distillers and distributors of alcoholic beverages are not able to get their products into consumers hands.

in the wild. The patch for this bug is one of 37 that are part of the monthly security release which covers multiple components in the popular mobile OS. This comes at a time when mobile banking malware is on the rise and there are also concerns around threat groups targeting phones to compromise them for use in MFA request responses.

The idea of DLL hijacking is a well known one and one that is used by attackers to compromise security tools and even sophisticated anti-malware solutions. DLLs (Dynamic Link Library) are not much more than static files that sit idle on a system until loaded. These libraries contain information that is important to the operation of the program calling it. If an attacker can replace a DLL with one of their own that prevents or alters the operation of the calling program, they have successfully hijacked it. Because of the flexibility and shared nature of DLL they are an easy target.

Ransomware is a huge shadow over many businesses and individuals’ heads. It has loomed as a significant threat since the first stains hit the internet inside malicious zip files masquerading as “Xerox” documents. Since that time ransomware and the groups behind it have evolved significantly. At the top of the food chain are groups like Hive and Conti who have not only evolved their own tools but utilize strategic approaches to their organizations complete with acquisitions and, in some cases, attempted legitimate business fronts to further their activities.