All news with #credential access tag

🔒 Huntress warns of a widespread compromise of SonicWall SSL VPN devices that allowed threat actors to rapidly authenticate into multiple accounts across customer environments. Activity began on October 4, 2025, impacting over 100 VPN accounts across 16 customers, with logins traced to IP 202.155.8[.]73. While some intrusions disconnected quickly, others involved network scanning and attempts to access local Windows accounts. Organizations are urged to reset firewall credentials, restrict WAN management, revoke exposed API keys, monitor logins, and enforce MFA.

🔒 Join The Hacker News and Specops Software for a Halloween webinar, "Cybersecurity Nightmares: Tales from the Password Graveyard," that examines how weak passwords lead to costly breaches and operational strain. The live session reviews real breach stories, explains why traditional complexity rules fail, and offers a live demo showing how Specops blocks breached passwords in real time and builds compliant, user-friendly policies. Attendees will get a straightforward three-step plan to cut helpdesk resets, meet compliance, and stop credential-based attacks.

🔍 Cisco Talos details UAT-8099, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime group that compromises reputable IIS servers to conduct SEO fraud and steal high-value credentials, certificates and configuration files. The actors exploit file-upload weaknesses to deploy ASP.NET web shells, enable RDP, create hidden administrative accounts and install VPN/reverse-proxy tools for persistence. They automate operations with custom scripts, deploy Cobalt Strike via DLL sideloading and install multiple BadIIS variants to manipulate search rankings and redirect mobile users to ads or gambling sites. Talos published IoCs, Snort/ClamAV signatures and mitigation guidance.

🔒 WestJet confirmed a cybersecurity incident that exposed personal data for about 1.2 million customers, including passports and government IDs. Attackers used social engineering to reset an employee password and accessed the network via Citrix, later moving through Windows and Microsoft cloud systems. The airline said no card numbers, CVVs, expiry dates, or user passwords were compromised and has offered two years of identity protection while working with the FBI.

🔐 Credential-based attacks are at epidemic levels: the 2025 Verizon DBIR shows 22% of breaches begin with compromised credentials, and Check Point's External Risk Management saw leaked credential volumes rise 160% year‑over‑year. Attackers increasingly prefer to "log in" rather than "hack in," exploiting exposed passwords, tokens, API keys and OAuth abuse. The article recommends a hybrid mesh architecture that unifies identity, network, endpoint and cloud telemetry to apply context-aware, adaptive access controls, improved credential hygiene, and faster detection and response.

🛡️ Check Point Research reports that Iranian-linked threat actor Nimbus Manticore is expanding operations into Europe, focusing on the defense, telecom and aerospace sectors. The group uses fake job portals and targeted spear‑phishing to deliver malicious files disguised as hiring materials while impersonating prominent aerospace firms. Evolving toolsets such as MiniJunk and MiniBrowse enable stealthy data theft and persistent access, consistent with intelligence-collection objectives linked to IRGC priorities.

🔎 The article explains why Dark Web monitoring is essential for CISOs and security teams, focusing on the discovery of leaked credentials, sensitive corporate data, and brand-abuse used in fraud and phishing. It profiles ten leading solutions and contrasts commercial Digital Risk Protection services with open-source intelligence platforms. The piece emphasizes integration with XDR/MDR, API access, takedown capabilities, and VIP and supply‑chain monitoring to prioritize responses and reduce business risk.

🔒 The ShinyHunters extortion group claims they stole approximately 1.5 billion Salesforce records from 760 companies by abusing compromised Salesloft Drift and Drift Email OAuth tokens exposed in a Salesloft GitHub breach. The attackers reportedly accessed Account, Contact, Case, Opportunity, and User tables and searched exfiltrated data for secrets to pivot further. Google/Mandiant and the FBI are tracking the activity as UNC6040/UNC6395, and Salesforce urges customers to enable MFA, enforce least privilege, and manage connected apps carefully.

🔐 SonicWall says firewall configuration backup files in certain MySonicWall accounts were exposed in a security incident and is urging customers to reset credentials immediately. The company reports it cut off attacker access and is working with cybersecurity and law enforcement to investigate. SonicWall published an Essential Credential Reset checklist to help administrators update passwords, API keys, tokens and related secrets and to restrict WAN access before making changes.

⚠️ A default configuration in Cursor, an AI-powered fork of VS Code, automatically executes tasks when a project folder is opened because Workspace Trust is disabled. Oasis Security demonstrated that a malicious .vscode/tasks.json can run arbitrary commands without user action, risking credential theft and environment takeover. Cursor intends to keep the autorun behavior and advises enabling Workspace Trust manually or using a different editor for untrusted repos.

🔒 A newly identified phishing-as-a-service called Salty2FA is being used in campaigns that bypass multi-factor authentication by intercepting verification flows and abusing trusted services like Cloudflare Turnstile. Ontinue researchers report the kit uses subdomain rotation, domain-pairing, geo-blocking and dynamic corporate branding to make credential pages appear legitimate. The framework simulates SMS, authenticator apps, push approvals and even hardware-token prompts, routing victims through Turnstile gates to filter automated analysis before harvesting credentials.

🔐 Attackers affiliated with the Scattered Spider group exploited weak vendor phone procedures to obtain repeated password and MFA resets from Cognizant’s service desk, then used the access to escalate to domain-admin footholds at Clorox. Clorox says the intrusion caused roughly $380 million in damages, including remediation and extended business-interruption losses. The case highlights failure to follow agreed verification processes and the amplified risk of outsourced help desks. Organizations should enforce out-of-band caller verification, immutable reset logs, and automated containment to reduce the attacker window.

🚨 Operation BarrelFire, attributed to a group Seqrite Labs calls Noisy Bear, targeted Kazakhstan's national oil company KazMunaiGas in May 2025 using tailored phishing. Attackers sent ZIP attachments containing an .LNK downloader, a decoy document, and a README in Russian and Kazakh instructing use of a fake KazMunayGaz_Viewer. The chain deployed a malicious batch, a PowerShell loader named DOWNSHELL, and a 64-bit DLL implant that executes shellcode to open a reverse shell. Infrastructure was linked to Russia-based bulletproof host Aeza Group, which has been sanctioned.

🔒 NotDoor is a newly reported Outlook VBA backdoor attributed to the Russian state-sponsored actor APT28 that monitors incoming mail for a trigger phrase and enables data exfiltration, file drops, and remote command execution. S2 Grupo's LAB52 describes deployment via DLL side-loading of onedrive.exe, which loads a malicious SSPICLI.dll, disables macro protections, and runs Base64-encoded PowerShell to establish persistence. The implant watches for a trigger such as "Daily Report" and supports four commands — cmd, cmdno, dwn and upl — sending stolen files via Proton Mail.

🔒 Mitsubishi Electric disclosed a MELSEC iQ-F Series CPU module vulnerability (CVE-2025-7731) that transmits sensitive authentication data in cleartext over SLMP, enabling remote attackers to intercept credentials and read or write device values or halt program execution. Assigned CVSS v4 8.7 and described as remotely exploitable with low attack complexity, the issue affects many FX5U/FX5UC/FX5UJ/FX5S variants — Mitsubishi reports no planned patch. Mitsubishi and CISA recommend mitigations such as encrypting SLMP traffic with a VPN, restricting LAN access, isolating control networks behind firewalls, and following ICS hardening best practices.

🔒 The maintainers of nx warned of a supply-chain compromise that allowed attackers to publish malicious versions of the npm package and several supporting plugins that gathered credentials. Rogue postinstall scripts scanned file systems, harvested GitHub, cloud and AI credentials, and exfiltrated them as Base64 to public GitHub repositories named 's1ngularity-repository' under victim accounts. Security firms reported 2,349 distinct secrets leaked; maintainers rotated tokens, removed the malicious versions, and urged immediate credential rotation and system cleanup.

🔒 Cybersecurity researchers at Zimperium zLabs have identified a new HOOK Android banking trojan variant that deploys full-screen ransomware-style overlays to extort victims. The overlay is remotely triggered via the command "ransome" and displays a warning, wallet address and amount, and can be dismissed by the attacker with "delete_ransome". An offshoot of ERMAC, the latest HOOK builds on banking malware techniques and now supports 107 remote commands, introducing transparent gesture-capture overlays, fake NFC and payment screens, and deceptive unlock prompts to harvest credentials and crypto recovery phrases.

🔐 Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) detected a March 2025 campaign attributed to UNC6384 that uses captive-portal hijacks to deliver a digitally signed downloader called STATICPLUGIN. The downloader (observed as AdobePlugins.exe) retrieves an MSI and, via DLL sideloading through Canon’s IJ Printer Assistant Tool, stages a PlugX variant tracked as SOGU.SEC entirely in memory. Operators used valid TLS and GlobalSign-signed certificates issued to Chengdu Nuoxin Times Technology Co., Ltd, aiding evasion while targeting diplomats and other entities.