Dark Reading's digest of the other don't-miss stories of the week, including YouTube account takeovers and a sad commentary on cyber-pro hopelessness.

There's no such thing as a slow week for cybercrime, which means that covering the waterfront on all of the threat intelligence and interesting stories out there is a difficult, if not impossible, task. This week was no exception and, in fact, seemed to offer a veritable trove of important happenings that we would be remiss not to mention.

To wit: Dangerous malware campaigns! Info-theft! YouTube Account Takeovers! Crypto under siege! Microsoft warnings!

In light of this, Dark Reading is debuting a weekly "in case you missed it" (ICYMI) digest, rounding up important news from the week that our editors just didn't have time to cover before.

This week, read on for more on the following, ICYMI:

*   Smart Factories Face Snowballing Cyberactivity
*   Lazarus Group Likely Behind $100M Crypto-Heist
*   8220 Gang Adds Atlassian Bug to Active Attack Chain
*   Critical Infrastructure Cyber Pros Feel Hopeless
*   Hacker Impersonates TrustWallet in Crypto Phishing Scam
*   Cookie-Stealing YTStealer Takes Over YouTube Accounts
*   Follina Bug Used to Spread XFiles Spyware

**Smart Factories Face Snowballing Cyberactivity**

A whopping 40% of smart factories globally have experienced a cyberattack, according to a survey out this week.

Smart factories – in which industrial Internet of things IIoT) sensors and equipment are used to reduce costs, obtain telemetry, and bolster automation – are officially a thing, with the digitization of manufacturing well underway. But cyberattackers are taking notice too, according to Capgemini Research Institute.

Among sectors, heavy industry faced the highest volume of cyberattacks (51%). Those attacks take many forms, too: 27% of firms have seen an increase of 20% or more in bot-herders taking over IIoT endpoints for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks; and 28% of firms said they have seen an increase of 20% or more in employees or vendors bringing in infected devices, for instance.

"With the smart factory being one of the emblematic technologies of the transition to digitization, it is also a prime target for cyberattackers, who are scenting new blood," according to the report.

At the same time, the firm also uncovered that in nearly half (47%) of organizations, smart factory cybersecurity is not a C-level concern.

**Lazarus Group Likely Behind $100M Crypto-Heist**

Security researchers are laying the $100 million hack of the Horizon Bridge crypto exchange at the feet of North Korea's notorious Lazarus Group advanced persistent threat.

Horizon Bridge enables users of the Harmony blockchain to interact with other blockchains. The heist occurred June 24, with the culprits making off with various cryptoassets, including Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and BNB.

According to Elliptic, there are strong indications that Lazarus is behind the incident. The group not only carries out classic APT activity like cyber-espionage, but also acts as a money-earner for the North Korean regime, researchers noted.

The thieves in this case have so far sent 41% of the $100 million in stolen crypto assets into the Tornado Cash mixer, Elliptic noted, which essentially acts as a money launderer.

**8220 Gang Adds Atlassian Bug to Active Attack Chain**

The 8220 Gang has added the latest critical security vulnerability affecting Atlassian Confluence Server and Data Center to its bag of tricks in order to distribute cryptominers and an IRC bot, Microsoft warned this week.

The Chinese-speaking threat group has been actively exploiting the bug since it was disclosed in early June.

"The group has actively updated its techniques and payloads over the last year. The most recent campaign targets i686 and x86\_64 Linux systems and uses RCE exploits for CVE-2022-26134 (Confluence) and CVE-2019-2725 (WebLogic) for initial access," Microsoft's Security Intelligence Centre tweeted.

**Critical Infrastructure Cyber Pros Feel Hopeless**

A staggering 95% of cybersecurity leaders at critical national infrastructure organizations in the UK say they could see themselves leaving their jobs in the next year.

According to a survey from Bridewell, 42% feel a breach is inevitable and don't want to tarnish their career, while 40% say they are experiencing stress and burnout which is impacting their personal life.

Meanwhile more than two -thirds of the respondents say that the volume of threats and successful attacks has increased over the past year – and 69% say it is harder to detect and respond to threats.

**Hacker Impersonates TrustWallet in Crypto Phishing Scam**

More than 50,000 phishing emails sent from a malicious Zendesk account made their way to email boxes in recent weeks, looking to take over TrustWallet accounts and drain funds.

TrustWallet is an Ethereum wallet and a popular platform for storing non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Researchers at Vade said that the phish impersonates the service, using a slick and convincing TrustWallet-branded site to ask for users' password recovery phrases on a sleek TrustWallet phishing page.

The emails, meanwhile, are unlikely to trigger email gateway filters, since they're being sent from Zendesk.com, which is a trusted, high-reputation domain.

"As NFTs and cryptocurrencies overall have seen a significant downturn in recent weeks, on-edge investors are likely to react quickly to emails about their crypto accounts," according to Vade's analysis this week.

**Cookie-Stealing YTStealer Takes Over YouTube Accounts**

A never-before-seen malware-as-a-service threat has emerged on Dark Web forums, aimed at taking over YouTube accounts.

Researchers at Intezer noted that the malware, which it straightforwardly calls YTStealer, works to steal YouTube authentication cookies from content creators in order to feed the underground demand for access to YouTube accounts. The cookies are extracted from the browser’s database files in the user’s profile folder.

"To validate the cookies and to grab more information about the YouTube user account, the malware starts one of the installed web browsers on the infected machine in headless mode and adds the cookie to its cookie store," according to the analysis. "\[That way\] the malware can operate the browser as if the threat actor sat down on the computer without the current user noticing anything."

From there, YTStealer navigates to YouTube’s Studio content-management page and nabs data, including the channel name, how many subscribers it has, how old it is, if it is monetized, if it's an official artist channel, and if the name has been verified.

**Follina Bug Used to Spread X-Files Spyware**

A rash of cyberattacks is underway, looking to exploit the Microsoft Follina vulnerability to lift scores of sensitive information from victims.

Follina is a recently patched remote code-execution (RCE) bug that's exploitable through malicious Word documents. It started life as an unpatched zero-day that quickly caught on among cybercrime groups.

According to a Cyberint Research Team report shared with Dark Reading via email, analysts found several XFiles stealer campaigns where Follina vulnerability was exploited as part of the delivery phase.

"The group that is selling the stealer is a Russia-region based and is currently looking to expand," researchers said. "Recent evidence suggests worldwide threat actor campaigns \[underway\]."

The stealer sniffs out data from all Chromium-based browsers, Opera, and Firefox, including history, cookies, passwords, and credit card information. It also lifts FTP, Telegram and Discord credentials, and looks for predefined file types that are located on the victim's Desktop along with a screenshot. It also targets other clients, such as Steam, and crypto-wallets.

ICYMI: A Microsoft Warning, Follina, Atlassian, and More

Google on Thursday announced a slew of improvements to its password manager service aimed at creating a more consistent look and feel across different platforms.
Central to the changes is a "simplified and unified management experience that's the same in Chrome and Android settings," Ali Sarraf, Google Chrome product manager, said in a blog post.

The updates are also expected to automatically

Google on Thursday announced a slew of improvements to its password manager service aimed at creating a more consistent look and feel across different platforms.

Central to the changes is a "simplified and unified management experience that's the same in Chrome and Android settings," Ali Sarraf, Google Chrome product manager, said in a blog post.

The updates are also expected to automatically group multiple passwords for the same sites as well as introduce an option to manually add passwords. Although Google appears to be not ready yet to make Password Manager as a standalone app, users on Android can now add a shortcut to it on the homescreen.

In a related change on iOS, should users opt for Chrome as the default autofill provider, Password Manager comes with the ability to generate unique, strong passwords.

The built-in Password Checkup feature on Android is receiving an upgrade of its own too. Beyond checking for hacked credentials, it can further highlight weak and reused passwords à la Apple iOS. Google is also expanding the compromised password warnings to Chrome users across all operating systems.

Last but not least, Google is bringing a new "Touch-to-Login" to Chrome on Android that allows users to sign in to websites with a single tap after entering the credentials with autofill. It's worth noting that Apple implemented a similar feature in Safari with iOS 12.2.

Found this article interesting? Follow THN on Facebook, Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Google Improves Its Password Manager to Boost Security Across All Platforms

It didn't have to be this way: So far 2022's tranche of zero-days shows too many variants of previously patched security bugs, according Google Project Zero.

So far this year, a total of 18 security vulnerabilities have been exploited as unpatched zero-days in the wild, according to an analysis – and half of those were preventable flaws.

According to Google's Project Zero, nine of the issues were simply variants of previously patched bugs, with four being variants of previous 2021 in-the-wild zero-day bugs. Since these are closely related to security weaknesses that have been seen before, it blows a hole in the theory that zero-day exploits are so advanced that defenders can't hope to catch them, Project Zero's Maddie Stone notes.

"\[After\] the original in-the-wild zero-day \[was\] patched, attackers came back with a variant of the original bug," she explains in a Thursday blog post. "Many of the 2022 in-the-wild 0-days are due to the previous vulnerability not being fully patched."

The slate of 2022 zero-days affects a wide range of platforms, including Apple iOS, Atlassian Confluence, Chromium, Google Pixel, Linux, WebKit, and, of course, Windows (including the Follina and PetitPotam vulns).

In some these cases (Windows win32k and Chromium), the proof-of-concept attack path was patched but not the root cause, so attackers could trigger the original vulnerability through a different path. In other cases, such as PetitPotam, the original vulnerability was patched but "at some point regressed so that attackers could exploit the same vulnerability again," Stone says.

"The goal is to force attackers to start from scratch each time we detect one of their exploits: they’re forced to discover a whole new vulnerability, they have to invest the time in learning and analyzing a new attack surface, they must develop a brand new exploitation method," she says. "To do that effectively, we need correct and comprehensive fixes."

18 Zero-Days Exploited So Far in 2022

Infamous malware Raccoon Stealer is reportedly back in business after a break.
The post Raccoon Stealer returns with a new bag of tricks appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The popular malware Raccoon stealer, which suspended operations after a developer allegedly died in the Ukraine invasion, has returned.

Raccoon stealer is malware as a service, with the developers selling it to would-be users. The operation is a tightly-run ship, to the extent that customers have digital signatures tied to their executables. If files end up on malware scanning services, the malware authors know exactly who the leak has come from.

**So much data, so little time**

The popular tool, used for data theft, is ubiquitous where stealing credentials is concerned. Cryptocurrency wallets, cookies, passwords, browser autofill data, and credit card data: pretty much anything is up for grabs.

Since 2019, Raccoon stealer has been lifting data from the unwary. Cheap to purchase and packing a large range of features, it is able to steal from as many as 60 different applications including:

**Email**: Outlook, Thunderbird, Thunderbird  
**Browsers**: Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Vivaldi, SeaMonkey, Vivaldi  
**Cryptocurrency app**s: Exodus, Monero, Electrum, Jaxx

Raccoon’s two most popular delivery methods are phishing campaigns (the tried and tested malicious Word document/Macro combination) and exploit kits. Once data is located on the target system, it is eventually placed into a .zip file and sent to the malware Command and Control (C&C) server.

Its operators are constantly innovating, for example making use of Telegram to operate C&C. This is one malware project which wasn’t going to stay gone for long.

**An all new raccoon rampage**

The new version, Raccoon Stealer 2.0, was claimed as being sold on Telegram and in circulation since May 17. However, these claims related to Telegram have since been shown to be fake.

While functionality appears to be mostly similar to the original version, there are some notable differences. The creators claim to have improved the software and resurrected their malware antics to “honour” the legacy of the teammate who died:

> _After our teammate loss we made a decision that we can not leave our project and we will continue our work in his honour. Raccoon Stealer 2.0 was totally coded from the very beginning. New back-end, new front-end, absolutely new stealer software._

**Smash and grab**

Credit card data, autofill, browser passwords, and a big slice of cryptocurrency wallets are once more targets for Raccoon Stealer. The big change up seems to be related to how data is exfiltrated. This new version doesn’t appear to be particularly stealthy.

The name of the game in data exfiltration is to make as few moves as possible to help evade detection. Sneaky malware will collect data as it goes, before eventually sending the whole lot in a zip in one go. If an infection is constantly pinging away, the chances of it being caught by security tools increases dramatically.

Here, Racoon Stealer seems to be throwing a little caution to the wind. The stealer sends data every single time it adds to its exfiltrated data collection. Researchers note that Raccoon Stealer 2.0 possesses no obfuscation or anti-analysis techniques.

I’d love to know if some sort of data driven analysis led developers to the conclusion that smash and grab is ultimately more suited to their business model than waiting it out. Ultimately, this may be the one bright note for embattled IT admins in the wake of everyone’s least favourite raccoon’s re-emergence onto the malware scene.

Raccoon Stealer returns with a new bag of tricks

Plus: Google issues fixes for Android bugs, and Cisco, Citrix, SAP, WordPress, and more issue major patches for enterprise systems.

June has seen the release of multiple security updates, with important patches issued for the likes of Google's Chrome and Android as well as dozens of patches for Microsoft products, including fixes for a Windows zero-day vulnerability that attackers had already exploited. Apple updates were absent at the time of writing, but the month also included some major enterprise-focused patches for Citrix, SAP, and Cisco products.

Here’s what you need to know about the major patches released in the past month.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday release was pretty hefty in June, including fixes for 55 flaws in the tech giant’s products. This Patch Tuesday was particularly important because it addressed an already exploited remote code execution (RCE) issue in Windows dubbed Follina, which Microsoft has been aware of since at least May.

Tracked as CVE-2022-30190, Follina—which takes advantage of vulnerabilities in the Windows Support Diagnostic tool and can execute without the need to open a document—has already been used by multiple criminal groups and state-sponsored attackers.

Three of the vulnerabilities addressed in Patch Tuesday affecting Windows Server are RCE flaws and rated as critical. However, the patches seem to be breaking some VPN and RDP connections, so be careful.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome updates continue to come thick and fast. That’s no bad thing, as the world’s most popular browser is by default one of the biggest targets for hackers. In June, Google released Chrome 103 with patches for 14 vulnerabilities, some of which are serious.

Tracked as CVE-2022-2156, the biggest flaw is a use-after-free issue in Base reported by Google’s Project Zero bug-hunting team that could lead to arbitrary code execution, denial of service, or corruption of data. Worse, when chained with other vulnerabilities the flaw could lead to full system compromise.

Other issues patched in Chrome include vulnerabilities in Interest Groups, WebApp Provider, and a flaw in the V8 Javascript and WebAssembly engine.

Google Android

Of the multiple Android security issues Google patched in June, the most severe is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to remote code execution with no additional execution privileges needed, Google said in its Android Security Bulletin.

Google also released updates for its Pixel devices to patch issues in the Android Framework, Media Framework, and System Components.

Samsung users seem to have gotten lucky with Android updates of late, with the device maker rolling out its patches very quickly. The June security update is no different, reaching the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 series, Galaxy S21 series, Galaxy S22 series, and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 straightaway.

Cisco

Software maker Cisco released a patch in June to fix a critical vulnerability in Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager and Cisco Email Security Appliance that could allow a remote attacker to bypass authentication and log in to the web management interface of an affected device.

The issue, tracked as CVE-2022-20798, could be exploited if an attacker enters something specific on the login page of the affected device, which would provide access to the web-based management interface, Cisco said.

Citrix

Citrix has issued a warning urging users to patch some major vulnerabilities that could let attackers reset admin passwords. The vulnerabilities in Citrix Application Delivery Management could result in corruption of the system by a remote, unauthenticated user, Citrix said in a security bulletin. “The impact of this can include the reset of the administrator password at the next device reboot, allowing an attacker with ssh access to connect with the default administrator credentials after the device has rebooted,” the company wrote.

Citrix recommends that traffic to the Citrix ADM’s IP address be segmented from standard network traffic. This diminishes the risk of exploitation, it said. However, the vendor also urged customers to install the updated versions of Citrix ADM server and Citrix ADM agent “as soon as possible.”

SAP

Software firm SAP has released 12 security patches as part of its June Patch Day, three of which are serious. The first listed by SAP relates to an update released on April 2018 Patch Day and applies to the browser control Google Chromium used by the firm’s business clients. Details of this vulnerability aren’t available, but it has a severity score of 10, so the patch should be applied straightaway.

Another major fix concerns an issue in the SAProuter proxy in NetWeaver and ABAP Platform, which could allow an attacker to execute SAProuter administration commands from a remote client. The third major patch fixes a privilege escalation bug in SAP PowerDesigner Proxy 16.7.

Splunk Enterprise

Splunk has released some out-of-band patches for its Enterprise product, fixing issues including a critical-rated vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution.

Labeled CVE-2022-32158, the flaw could allow an adversary to compromise a Universal Forwarder endpoint and execute code on other endpoints connected to the deployment server. Thankfully, there’s no indication that the vulnerability has been used in any real-world attacks.

Ninja Forms WordPress Plug-In

Ninja Forms, a WordPress plug-in with over a million active installations, has patched a serious issue that’s probably being used by attackers in the wild. “We uncovered a code injection vulnerability that made it possible for unauthenticated attackers to call a limited number of methods in various Ninja Forms classes, including a method that unserialized user-supplied content, resulting in Object Injection,” security analysts at the WordPress Wordfence Threat Intelligence team said in an update.

This could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code or delete arbitrary files on sites where a separate POP chain was present, researchers said.

The flaw has been fully patched in versions 3.0.34.2, 3.1.10, 3.2.28, 3.3.21.4, 3.4.34.2, 3.5.8.4, and 3.6.11. WordPress appears to have performed a forced automatic update for the plug-in, so your site may already be using one of the patched versions.

Atlassian

Australian software company Atlassian has released a patch to fix a zero-day flaw that’s already being exploited by attackers. Tracked as CVE-2022-26134, the RCE vulnerability in the Confluence Server and Data Center can be used to backdoor internet-exposed servers.

GitLab

GitLab has issued patches for versions 15.0.1, 14.10.4, and 14.9.5 for GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. The updates contain important security fixes for eight vulnerabilities, one of which could allow for account takeover.

With this in mind, the firm “strongly recommends” that all GitLab installations be upgraded to the latest version “as soon as possible.” GitLab.com is already running the patched version.

You Need to Update Windows and Chrome Right Now

Fixed bug could allow attackers to extract sensitive information

Ben Dickson 30 June 2022 at 10:20 UTC

Fixed bug could allow attackers to extract sensitive information

  

A recently-patched security hole in Chromium browsers allowed attackers to bypass safeguards against dangling markup injection’, an attack that extracts sensitive information from webpages.

While dangling markup injection is well-known and -addressed in Chromium browsers, the new attack took advantage of an unaddressed case in how the browser upgrades unsafe HTTP connections.

**Extracting sensitive markup**

Dangling markup injection captures data cross-domain in situations where full cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks aren’t possible.

If an application doesn’t sanitize user-supplied data before integrating it into the markup, an attacker can take advantage to force the page to send some of the page’s markup to their own server.

For example, the attacker can inject HTML markup that includes a specially crafted element that invokes a resource on the attacker’s server and sends HTML markup on the page as the query string to the server.

The Chromium team has been patching dangling markup injection bugs since 2017 and has added restrictions to escape or remove HTML markup inserted into URL strings.

**Safe connection, unsafe markup**

Chromium also has another security feature that upgrades unsafe HTTP protocols used in the HTML markup.

For example, if the src attribute of an tag refers to an HTTP address, the browser automatically upgrades it to HTTPS to enforce encrypted connections.

SeungJu Oh, the security researcher who reported the new bug, discovered that when the browser upgrades an in-page URL from HTTP to HTTPS, it bypasses the dangling markup injection safeguards.

As a result, if an attacker provides a dangling markup injection string that uses the HTTP scheme, it will not go through the dangling markup injection sanitization process when the URL is upgraded to HTTPS.

Oh provided a proof of concept with an tag, but also said that the same scheme works with audio, video, and possibly more tags.

“This allows attackers to get personal information by leaking the user’s content when \[the\] script is unavailable due to security elements such as CSP,” Oh writes.

According to the conversation thread in the Chromium bug report platform, the function that switches the URL protocol to HTTPS causes the dangling markup flag to become false, which in turn bypasses the security checks on the URL string. The bug has been patched in the new version of Chromium-based browsers.

The findings further highlight the necessity to sanitize user input before integrating it into the markup.

It is also a reminder of the complexities of managing the security of products that have many moving parts.

Sometimes, a security fix in one part of the program can break the safeguards in another, as Chromium’s latest dangling markup injection vulnerability shows.

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Chromium browsers vulnerable to dangling markup injection

**According to the CVSS metric, a successful exploitation could lead to a scope change (S:C). What does this mean for this vulnerability?**

This vulnerability could lead to a browser sandbox escape.

CVE-ID

Learn more at National Vulnerability Database (NVD)

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**20220614**

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CVE-2022-33680: Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability. This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2022-33638, CVE-2022-33639.

CVE-2022-30192

Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability. This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2022-30192, CVE-2022-33639.

CVE-2022-33638

Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability. This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2022-30192, CVE-2022-33638.

Tag

#chrome