After weeks of withering criticism and exposed security flaws, Microsoft has vastly scaled back its ambitions for Recall, its AI-enabled silent recording feature, and added new privacy features.

When Microsoft named its new Windows feature Recall, the company intended the word to refer to a kind of perfect, AI-enabled memory for your device. Today, the other, unintended definition of “recall”—a company's admission that a product is too dangerous or defective to be left on the market in its current form—seems more appropriate.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that it would be making multiple dramatic changes to its rollout of its Recall feature, making it an opt-in feature in the Copilot+ compatible versions of Windows where it had previously been turned on by default, and introducing new security measures designed to better keep data encrypted and require authentication to access Recall's stored data.

“We are updating the set-up experience of Copilot+ PCs to give people a clearer choice to opt-in to saving snapshots using Recall,” reads a blog post from Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows and devices. “If you don’t proactively choose to turn it on, it will be off by default.”

The changes come amid a mounting barrage of criticism from the security and privacy community, which has described Recall—which silently stores a screenshot of the user's activity every five seconds as fodder for AI analysis—as a gift to hackers: essentially unrequested, preinstalled spyware built into new Windows computers.

In the preview versions of Recall, that screenshot data, complete with the user's every bank login, password, and porn site visit would have been indefinitely collected on the user's machine by default. And though that highly sensitive data is stored locally on the user's machine and not uploaded to the cloud, cybersecurity experts have warned that it all remains accessible to any hacker who so much as gains a temporary foothold on a user's Recall-enabled device, giving them a long-term panopticon view of the victim's digital life.

"It makes your security very fragile,” as Dave Aitel, a former NSA hacker and founder of security firm Immunity, described it—more charitably than some others—to WIRED earlier this week. “Anyone who penetrates your computer for even a second can get your whole history. Which is not something people want.”

In addition to making Recall an opt-in feature, Microsoft’s Davuluri also writes that the company will make changes to better safeguard the data Recall collects and more closely police who can turn it on, requiring that users prove their identity via its Microsoft Hello authentication function any time they either enable Recall or access its data, which can require a PIN or biometric check of the user’s face or thumbprint. Davuluri says Recall’s data will remain encrypted in storage until the user authenticates.

All of that is a “great improvement,” says Jake Williams, another former NSA hacker who now serves as VP of R&D at the cybersecurity consultancy Hunter Strategy, where he says he's been asked by some of the firm's clients to test Recall's security before they add Microsoft devices that use it to their networks. But Williams still sees serious risks in Recall, even in its latest form.

Many users will turn on Recall, he points out, partly due to Microsoft’s high-profile marketing of the feature. And when they do, they’ll still face plenty of unresolved privacy problems, from domestic abusers that often demand partners give up their PINs to subpoenas or lawsuits that compel them to turn over their historical data. “Satya Nadella has been out there talking about how this is a game changer and the solution to all problems,” Williams says, referring to Microsoft's CEO. “If customers turn it on, there’s still a huge threat of legal discovery. I can’t imagine a corporate legal team that’s ready to accept the risk of all of a user’s actions being turned over in discovery.”

For Microsoft, the Recall rollback comes in the midst of an embarrassing string of cybersecurity incidents and breaches—including a leak of terabytes of its customers' data and a shocking penetration of government email accounts enabled by a cascading series of Microsoft security slipups—that have grown so problematic as to become a sticking point given its uniquely close relationship with the US government.

Those scandals have escalated to the degree that Microsoft's Nadella issued a memo just last month declaring that Microsoft would make security its first priority in any business decision. “If you’re faced with the trade-off between security and another priority, your answer is clear: **Do security**,” Nadella's memo read (emphasis his). “In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.”

By all appearances, Microsoft's rollout of Recall—even after today's announcement—displays the opposite approach, and one that seems more in line with business as usual in Redmond: Announce a feature, get pummeled for its glaring security failures, then belatedly scramble to control the damage.

Microsoft Will Switch Off Recall by Default After Security Backlash

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed that the LightSpy spyware allegedly targeting Apple iOS users is in fact a previously undocumented macOS variant of the implant.
The findings come from both Huntress Labs and ThreatFabric, which separately analyzed the artifacts associated with the cross-platform malware framework that likely possesses capabilities to infect Android, iOS, Windows, macOS,

LightSpy Spyware's macOS Variant Found with Advanced Surveillance Capabilities

A security vulnerability in Ariane Allegro Hotel Check-In Kiosks exposed guest data and potentially compromised room access. However,…

A security vulnerability in Ariane Allegro Hotel Check-In Kiosks exposed guest data and potentially compromised room access. However, a patch has been developed and is now available to address this issue, enhancing the security of the system

Pentagrid, a Swiss cybersecurity firm, recently uncovered a vulnerability in Ariane Allegro Scenario Player, a widely used software program in hotel check-in kiosks. The vulnerability could allow someone to exit the kiosk’s intended use (kiosk mode) and access the underlying Windows Desktop OS. 

The software vendor, Ariane Systems, is a world leader in self-check-in and out solutions, serving 3,000 hotels and 500,000 rooms in over 25 countries. 

During a threat modelling workshop at a hospitality brand in Liechtenstein and Switzerland, Pentagrid’s Martin Schobert revealed that the app crashed in Kiosk mode after entering a single quote character into the guest search. 

The hotel brand uses this check-in terminal, likely a type Ariane Duo 6000 series, for smaller locations to facilitate room booking/check-in, initiate payment via a POS terminal, provision RFID transponders to open the booked hotel room, and print invoices.

Schobert found that guests/users have to search for room reservations by entering booking code or surname. If the name contains a single-quote, such as “O’YOLO,” the application hangs, the Windows OS prompts the user to wait or stop the task, and selecting stop terminates the kiosk mode application.

Screenshot: Pentagrid

When stopped, the Windows OS becomes accessible, which may have adverse consequences. such as allowing hotel network attacks, access to data stored on the terminal, including PII, reservations, and invoices, and RFID transponder allowing room keys to be created for other rooms. However, to exploit the flaw, the user must have physical access to the system, and the terminal must be in a self-service state, which hotels typically enable during specific times.

A CVE for the vulnerability is yet to be assigned whereas Kiosk Mode Bypass severity has been given as 6.3 (Medium). The vulnerability, discovered in March 2024, was promptly communicated to the vendor.

Ariane Systems clarified that these are “legacy systems,” in which the USB ports are disabled and “no PII or exploitable data can be retrieved from the kiosk.” Moreover, it believed the hotel must be using an outdated version of the software. However, Pentagrid asserted that the system’s design lets “the kiosk produces and keeps accessible invoice files.”  

Nevertheless, Ariane Systems confirmed the issue has been fixed. However, the exact version fixing the issue isn’t publicly known. Hackread suggests contacting the vendor directly for clarification and installing the latest version immediately to stay protected. 

John Bambenek, President of Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence Consulting firm Bambenek Consulting commented on the issue emphasising the dangers of the potential access to victims’ rooms in domestic violence cases, theft of credit card data due to terminals doubling as POS devices.

_“_The biggest risk involves various domestic violence and stalking scenarios where unwanted guests could get keys to open a victim’s room. As these devices are also used as POS terminals to facilitate payments of hotel rooms, presumably the biggest risk there is stolen credit card information._“_

_“_The underlying issue seems to be that the specific terminals at this specific location had the vulnerability (albeit, a very simple one to find) and later versions did not. Kiosks tend to be “set and forget” devices which means operators may not know they need to be updated on a routine basis…or if they are updated at all,_“_ he added.

_“_These devices probably cannot be completely isolated from the main hotel network as part of the point is to issue keys and handle room management, however, the devices should be limited to sending only required machines and ports with everything else filtered,_“_ Bambenek advised.

1.  Vietnamese Group Hacks and Sells Bedroom Camera Footage
2.  Hotel reservation platform leaked data from online booking sites
3.  Vulnerability Exposed Ibis Budget Guest Room Codes to Hackers

Hotel Kiosks Vulnerability Exposed Guest Data, Room Access

A new discovery that the AI-enabled feature’s historical data can be accessed even by hackers without administrator privileges only contributes to the growing sense that the feature is a “dumpster fire.”

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has hailed the company's new Recall feature, which stores a history of your computer desktop and makes it available to AI for analysis, as “photographic memory” for your PC. Within the cybersecurity community, meanwhile, the notion of a tool that silently takes a screenshot of your desktop every five seconds has been hailed as a hacker's dream come true and the worst product idea in recent memory.

Now, security researchers have pointed out that even the one remaining security safeguard meant to protect that feature from exploitation can be trivially defeated.

Since Recall was first announced last month, the cybersecurity world has pointed out that if a hacker can install malicious software to gain a foothold on a target machine with the feature enabled, they can quickly gain access to the user's entire history stored by the function. The only barrier, it seemed, to that high-resolution view of a victim's entire life at the keyboard was that accessing Recall's data required administrator privileges on a user's machine. That meant malware without that higher-level privilege would trigger a permission pop-up, allowing users to prevent access, and that malware would also likely be blocked by default from accessing the data on most corporate machines.

Then on Wednesday, James Forshaw, a researcher with Google's Project Zero vulnerability research team, published an update to a blog post pointing out that he had found methods for accessing Recall data _without_ administrator privileges—essentially stripping away even that last fig leaf of protection. “No admin required ;-)” the post concluded.

“Damn,” Forshaw added on Mastodon. “I really thought the Recall database security would at least be, you know, secure.”

Forshaw's blog post described two different techniques to bypass the administrator privilege requirement, both of which exploit ways of defeating a basic security function in Windows known as access control lists that determine which elements on a computer require which privileges to read and alter. One of Forshaw's methods exploits an exception to those control lists, temporarily impersonating a program on Windows machines called AIXHost.exe that can access even restricted databases. Another is even simpler: Forshaw points out that because the Recall data stored on a machine is considered to belong to the user, a hacker with the same privileges as the user could simply rewrite the access control lists on a target machine to grant themselves access to the full database.

That second, simpler bypass technique “is just mindblowing, to be honest,” says Alex Hagenah, a cybersecurity strategist and ethical hacker. Hagenah recently built a proof-of-concept hacker tool called TotalRecall designed to show that someone who gained access to a victim's machine with Recall could immediately siphon out all the user's history recorded by the feature. Hagenah's tool, however, still required that hackers find another way to gain administrator privileges through a so-called “privilege escalation” technique before his tool would work.

With Forshaw's technique, “you don’t need any privilege escalation, no pop-up, nothing,” says Hagenah. “This would make sense to implement in the tool for a bad guy.”

In fact, just an hour after speaking to WIRED about Forshaw's finding, Hagenah added the simpler of Forshaw's two techniques to his TotalRecall tool, then confirmed that the trick worked by accessing all the Recall history data stored on another user's machine for which he didn't have administrator access. “So simple and genius,” he wrote in a text to WIRED after testing the technique.

That confirmation removes one of the last arguments Recall's defenders have had against criticisms that the feature acts as, essentially, a piece of pre-installed spyware on a user's machine, ready to be exploited by any hacker who can gain a foothold on the device. “It makes your security very fragile, in the sense that anyone who penetrates your computer for even a second can get your whole history,” says Dave Aitel, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Immunity and a former NSA hacker. “Which is not something people want.”

For now, security researchers have been testing Recall in preview versions of the tool ahead of its expected launch later this month. Microsoft said it plans to integrate Recall on compatible Copilot+ PCs with the feature turned on by default. WIRED reached out to the company for comment on Forshaw's findings about Recall's security issues, but the company has yet to respond.

The revelation that hackers can exploit Recall without even using a separate privilege escalation technique only contributes further to the sense that the feature was rushed to market without a proper review from the company's cybersecurity team—despite the company's CEO Nadella proclaiming just last month that Microsoft would make security its first priority in every decision going forward. “You cannot convince me that Microsoft's security teams looked at this and said ‘that looks secure,’” says Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and now the VP of R&D at the cybersecurity consultancy Hunter Strategy, where he says he's been asked by some of the firm's clients to test Recall's security before they add Microsoft devices that use it to their networks.

“As it stands now, it’s a security dumpster fire,” Williams says. “This is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen from an enterprise security standpoint.”

Microsoft’s Recall Feature Is Even More Hackable Than You Thought

### Summary

Jupyter Server on Windows has a vulnerability that lets unauthenticated attackers leak the NTLMv2 password hash of the Windows user running the Jupyter server. An attacker can crack this password to gain access to the Windows machine hosting the Jupyter server, or access other network-accessible machines or 3rd party services using that credential. Or an attacker perform an NTLM relay attack without cracking the credential to gain access to other network-accessible machines.



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1.  GitHub Advisory Database
2.  GitHub Reviewed
3.  CVE-2024-35178

**Jupyter server on Windows discloses Windows user password hash**

**Package**

pip jupyter\_server (pip)

**Affected versions**

<= 2.14.0

**Description**

**Summary**

Jupyter Server on Windows has a vulnerability that lets unauthenticated attackers leak the NTLMv2 password hash of the Windows user running the Jupyter server. An attacker can crack this password to gain access to the Windows machine hosting the Jupyter server, or access other network-accessible machines or 3rd party services using that credential. Or an attacker perform an NTLM relay attack without cracking the credential to gain access to other network-accessible machines.

**References**

*   GHSA-hrw6-wg82-cm62
*   https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-35178
*   jupyter-server/jupyter\_server@79fbf80

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database

Jun 6, 2024

GHSA-hrw6-wg82-cm62: Jupyter server on Windows discloses Windows user password hash

Multiple variants of Trojan.Win32.DarkGateLoader malware suffer from a code execution vulnerability.

    Discovery / credits: Malvuln (John Page aka hyp3rlinx) (c) 2024Original source: https://malvuln.com/advisory/afe012ed0d96abfe869b9e26ea375824.txtContact: malvuln13@gmail.comMedia: x.com/malvuln  Threat: Trojan.Win32.DarkGateLoader (multi variants)Vulnerability: Arbitrary Code ExecutionDescription: Multiple variants of this malware look for and execute x32-bit "urlmon.dll" PE file in its current directory. Therefore, we can hijack that DLL and execute our own code to intercept and terminate the malware. Once loaded the exploit dll will check if the current directory is "C:\Windows\System32", if not we grab our process ID and terminate. Leverage RansomLord v3.1 for DLL generation, while written as a proof-of-concept to specifically defeat ransomware, it can also be used to generate DLLs to try an exploit other types of malwares. All basic tests were conducted successfully in a virtual machine environment.Family: DarkGateLoaderType: PE32MD5: afe012ed0d96abfe869b9e26ea375824SHA256: 18d87c514ff25f817eac613c5f2ad39b21b6e04b6da6dbe8291f04549da2c290Other vulnerable samples: cad102af0d2709fd57f62d9cce9ba174ca2ef9d31463414286572958928941703c609ac6b2de29578a2383d71e12caa9Vuln ID: MVID-2024-0685Disclosure: 06/05/2024Exploit/PoC:1) Download RansomLord v3.1    https://github.com/malvuln/RansomLord2) Locate the x32 urlmon.dll entry using the -m flag (DLL Map)3) Use -g flag (Generate Exploit) to output an x32 DLL urlmon.dll, based on an existing vulnerable malware in the victims list.4) (Optional) -e flag to setup Windows event IOC logging in the registry, this will attempt to log the SHA256 hash, full path and filename.Disclaimer: The information contained within this advisory is supplied "as-is" with no warranties or guarantees of fitness of use or otherwise. Permission is hereby granted for the redistribution of this advisory, provided that it is not altered except by reformatting it, and that due credit is given. Permission is explicitly given for insertion in vulnerability databases and similar, provided that due credit is given to the author. The author is not responsible for any misuse of the information contained herein and accepts no responsibility for any damage caused by the use or misuse of this information. The author prohibits any malicious use of security related information or exploits by the author or elsewhere. Do not attempt to download Malware samples. The author of this website takes no responsibility for any kind of damages occurring from improper Malware handling or the downloading of ANY Malware mentioned on this website or elsewhere. All content Copyright (c) Malvuln.com (TM).

Trojan.Win32.DarkGateLoader MVID-2024-0685 Code Execution

AI’s integration into search engines could change the way many of us interact with the internet.

Thursday, June 6, 2024 14:00

As someone who used to think that his entire livelihood would come from writing, I’ve long wondered if any sort of computer or AI could replace my essential functions at work. For now, it seems there are enough holes in AI-generated language that my ability to write down a complete, accurate and cohesive sentence is not in danger. 

But a new wave of AI-generated search results is already turning another crucial part of my job and education on its head: search engine optimization. 

Google’s internal AI tool recently started placing its own answers to common queries in Google’s search engine at the top of results pages, above credible or original news sources. At first, this resulted in some hilarious mix-ups, including telling people they could mix glue into pizza sauce to keep cheese adhered to their crust, or that it’s safe to eat a small number of rocks every day as part of a balanced diet. 

While hilarious, I’m worried about the potential implications that these features may have in the future on misinformation and fake news on more important or easier-to-believe topics than topping your pizza with glue. 

There currently doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to when these types of results do or don’t show up. Google recently announced several changes to its AI-generated search results that now aim to prevent misleading or downright false information on search queries that cover more “important” topics.  

“For topics like news and health, we already have strong guardrails in place. For example, we aim to not show AI Overviews for hard news topics, where freshness and factuality are important. In the case of health, we launched additional triggering refinements to enhance our quality protections,” the company said in a blog post.  

When testing this out firsthand, I got mixed results. For “hard” news topics, they aren’t displaying AI-generated results at all. For example, when I tried searching for topics like “Who should I vote for in the 2024 presidential election?” and “Does the flu vaccine really work?” 

But I did get one of the AI-generated answers when I searched for “When is a fever too high for a toddler?” The displayed answer told me to call a pediatrician if my child is older than three months and has a fever of 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Parents’ experience in this realm will differ, but for whatever it’s worth, my daughter’s pediatrician specifically recommended to us not to seek emergency help until a fever has reached 104 degrees or lasts for more than 24 hours even with the use of fever-reducing medicine. 

Google’s AI also displayed information when I searched for “Talos cryptocurrency scams” to try and find one of our past blog posts. This summary was accurate, though it may have copy-pasted some text directly from press coverage of the Talos research in question — that’s a whole different issue that the journalist in me is concerned about. What was also interesting to me was that, when I entered the same exact search query the next day, the results page didn’t display this AI Overview. 

Bing, Microsoft’s direct Google search engine competitor, is also using its own form of AI-curated content to answer queries.  

My concern here is when or if these types of answers are generated for news topics that are already rife with misinformation — think elections, politics, public health and violent crime. Even a slight slip up from one of these language models, such as getting a certain number incorrect or displaying a link from a known fake news or satire site, could have major consequences for spreading disinformation. 

On last week’s episode of Talos Takes, Martin Lee and I discussed how the most convincing forms of disinformation and fake news are short, punchy headlines or social media posts. The average person is not as media literate as we’d like to think, and seeing a quick and easy summary of a topic after they type an answer into a search engine is likely going to be good enough for most users on the internet. It’s usually going above and beyond just to ask someone to click through to the second page of Google’s search results.  

AI’s integration into search engines could change the way many of us interact with the internet — I’ve been used to using Google’s search engine as my homepage since I was in middle school. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I don’t want to assume that this is going to be an issue, perhaps companies will sort all the issues out, or AI overviews won’t come for more serious news topics than general life questions. But so far, the results shouldn’t inspire much confidence. 

**The one big thing **

Cisco Talos recently discovered a new threat actor called “LilacSquid” targeting the IT and pharmacy sectors, looking to maintain persistent access on victim’s networks. This campaign leverages vulnerabilities in public-facing application servers and compromised remote desktop protocol (RDP) credentials to orchestrate the deployment of a variety of open-source tools, such as MeshAgent and SSF, alongside customized malware, such as "PurpleInk," and two malware loaders we are calling "InkBox" and "InkLoader.”    

**Why do I care? **

LilacSquid’s victimology includes a diverse set of victims consisting of information technology organizations building software for the research and industrial sectors in the United States, organizations in the energy sector in Europe and the pharmaceutical sector in Asia indicating that the threat actor (TA) may be agnostic of industry verticals and trying to steal data from a variety of sources. Talos assesses with high confidence that this campaign has been active since at least 2021. Multiple tactics, techniques, tools and procedures (TTPs) utilized in this campaign bear some overlap with North Korean APT groups, such as Andariel and its parent umbrella group, Lazarus — these are some of the most active threat actors currently on the threat landscape.  

**So now what? **

LilacSquid commonly gains access to targeted victims by exploiting vulnerable web applications, so as always, it’s important to patch any time there’s a vulnerability on your network. Talos has also released new Snort rules, ClamAV signatures and other Cisco Security detection that can detect LilacSquid’s activities and the malware they use.  

**Top security headlines of the week **

**Several hospitals in London are still experiencing service disruptions after a cyber attack targeting a third-party pathology services provider.** Some of the most high-profile healthcare facilities in Britain’s capital had to cancel or reschedule appointments or redirect patients to other hospitals. Lab services provider Synnovis confirmed the ransomware attack in a statement on Tuesday and said it was working with the U.K.’s National Health Service to minimize the effects on patients. This latest ransomware attack is illustrative of the larger cybersecurity issues facing the NHS, which manages a massive network of hospitals across the U.K. and has more than 1.7 million employees. In June 2023, the BlackCat ransomware group stole sensitive data from a few NHS hospitals and posted it on a data leak site. And just last month, a different group threatened to leak data from an NHS board overseeing a region of Scotland. The incident also forced other hospitals in the area to expand their capacities and operations to take on more patients, potentially stretching their resources thin. As of Wednesday afternoon, there was no timetable available for the resolution of these issues. (The Record by Recorded Future, Bloomberg) 

**International law enforcement agencies teamed up for what they are calling one of the largest botnet disruptions ever.** U.S. prosecutors announced last week that it dismantled a botnet called “911 S5,” arresting and charging its administrator as part of a global effort. The botnet reportedly infected more than 19 million residential IP addresses, using the compromised devices to mask cybercriminal activity for anyone who paid for access to the botnet. Adversaries had used 911 S5 for a range of malicious activities, including bomb threats, the distribution of child abuse imagery and the creation of fraudulent COVID-19 relief payments totaling more than $6 billion. The administrator, a People’s Republic of China native, is charged with creating and disseminating “malware to compromise and amass a network of millions of residential Windows computers worldwide,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. The botnet was allegedly active between 2014 and July 2022. 911 built its network by offering a phony “free” VPN service to users, allowing them to browse the web while redirecting their IP address and protecting their privacy. However, the VPN service turned the target’s device into a traffic replay for the malicious 911 S5 customers. (U.S. Department of Justice, Krebs on Security) 

**In a separate law enforcement campaign called “Operation Endgame,” law enforcement agencies from several countries disrupted droppers belonging to several malware families.** Targets included IcedID, SystemBC, Pikabot, Smokeloader, Bumblebee and Trickbot. The coordinated effort between multiple European countries and the U.S. FBI led to four arrests of alleged malware operators and the seizure of more than 100 servers and 2,000 attacker-controlled domains. Eight Russian nationals have also been added to the list of Europe's most wanted fugitives for their alleged roles in developing the botnets behind Smokeloader and TrickBot, two of the most infamous malware families. Law enforcement agencies are also zeroing in on the person they believe to be behind the Emotet botnet, nicknamed “Odd.” "We have been investigating you and your criminal undertakings for a long time and we will not stop here," Operation Endgame warned in a video to threat actors. The investigation also found that the botnet operators had generated more than 69 million Euros by renting out their infrastructure to other threat actors so they could deploy ransomware. (Dark Reading, Europol) 

**Can’t get enough Talos? **

*   Talos Takes Ep. #185: How much has AI helped bad actors who spread disinformation? 
*   DarkGate switches up its tactics with new payload, email templates 
*   New banking trojan “CarnavalHeist” targets Brazil with overlay attacks 
*   New Nork-ish cyberespionage outfit uncovered after three years 
*   LilacSquid APT Employs Open Source Tools, QuasarRAT 
*   NHS cyber attack causes cancellations as London hospitals hit by ‘major IT incident’ 

**Upcoming events where you can find Talos **

**_AREA41_** **_(June 6 – 7)_** 

_Zurich, Switzerland_ 

> _Gergana Karadzhova-Dangela from Cisco Talos Incident Response will highlight the primordial importance of actionable incident response documentation for the overall response readiness of an organization. During this talk, she will share commonly observed mistakes when writing IR documentation and ways to avoid them. She will draw on her experiences as a responder who works with customers during proactive activities and actual cybersecurity breaches._ 

**_Cisco Connect U.K._** **_(June 25)_**

_London, England_

> _In a fireside chat, Cisco Talos experts Martin Lee and Hazel Burton discuss the most prominent cybersecurity threat trends of the near future, how these are likely to impact UK organizations in the coming years, and what steps we need to take to keep safe._

**_BlackHat USA_** **_(Aug. 3 – 8)_** 

_Las Vegas, Nevada_ 

**_Defcon_** **_(Aug. 8 – 11)_** 

_Las Vegas, Nevada_ 

**_BSides Krakow_** **_(Sept. 14)_**  

_Krakow, Poland_ 

**Most prevalent malware files from Talos telemetry over the past week **

**SHA 256:** 9be2103d3418d266de57143c2164b31c27dfa73c22e42137f3fe63a21f793202   
**MD5:** e4acf0e303e9f1371f029e013f902262   
**Typical Filename:** FileZilla\_3.67.0\_win64\_sponsored2-setup.exe   
**Claimed Product:** FileZilla   
**Detection Name:** W32.Application.27hg.1201 

**SHA 256:** 0e2263d4f239a5c39960ffa6b6b688faa7fc3075e130fe0d4599d5b95ef20647   
**MD5:** bbcf7a68f4164a9f5f5cb2d9f30d9790   
**Typical Filename:** bbcf7a68f4164a9f5f5cb2d9f30d9790.vir   
**Claimed Product:** N/A   
**Detection Name:** Win.Dropper.Scar::1201 

**SHA 256:** 5616b94f1a40b49096e2f8f78d646891b45c649473a5b67b8beddac46ad398e1  
**MD5:** 3e10a74a7613d1cae4b9749d7ec93515  
**Typical Filename:** IMG001.exe  
**Claimed Product:** N/A  
**Detection Name:** Win.Dropper.Coinminer::1201

**SHA 256:** a024a18e27707738adcd7b5a740c5a93534b4b8c9d3b947f6d85740af19d17d0   
**MD5:** b4440eea7367c3fb04a89225df4022a6   
**Typical Filename:** Pdfixers.exe   
**Claimed Product:** Pdfixers   
**Detection Name:** W32.Superfluss:PUPgenPUP.27gq.1201 

**SHA 256:** c67b03c0a91eaefffd2f2c79b5c26a2648b8d3c19a22cadf35453455ff08ead0    
**MD5:** 8c69830a50fb85d8a794fa46643493b2    
**Typical Filename:** AAct.exe    
**Claimed Product:** N/A     
**Detection Name:** PUA.Win.Dropper.Generic::1201

The sliding doors of misinformation that come with AI-generated search results

Sophos uncovers “Operation Crimson Palace, a long-term cyberespionage effort targeting a Southeast Asian government. Learn how attackers used…

Sophos uncovers “Operation Crimson Palace, a long-term cyberespionage effort targeting a Southeast Asian government. Learn how attackers used DLL sideloading and VMware exploits to steal sensitive military, economic, and South China Sea data. Discover how Southeast Asia can defend against future cyberattacks.

Cybersecurity firm Sophos has shared details of a large-scale espionage campaign dubbed “Crimson Palace.” This Chinese state-sponsored effort targeted a government agency in Southeast Asia for nearly two years, through tactics like DLL sideloading and VMware exploitation.

As per Sophos MDR’s human-led threat-hunting service, multiple Chinese state-sponsored actors have been active since early 2022, and despite a few weeks of dormancy, intrusion activity continues targeting the organization, which Sophos categorizes as “mixed estate.”

Sophos initially discovered activity in March 2022 with the detection of NUPAKAGE malware, attributed to Earth Preta and again in December 2022, intrusion activity was discovered using DLL-stitching to deploy malicious backdoors on domain controllers.

During the investigation, Sophos researchers found three distinct clusters of activity named Cluster Alpha, Cluster Bravo, and Cluster Charlie, targeting the same organization. These clusters overlap with multiple Chinese nation-state groups, including Worok, the APT41 subgroup Earth Longzhi, BackdoorDiplomacy, REF5961, TA428 and a relatively new threat group, Unfading Sea Haze that was reported in May 2024 to be carrying out extensive cyberattacks against military targets in the South China Sea.

Cluster Alpha focused on sideloading malware and establishing persistent C2 channels, while Cluster Bravo focused on using valid accounts to spread laterally. Cluster Charlie prioritized access management and aimed to exfiltrate sensitive information for espionage purposes.

These clusters used a mix of custom malware and publicly available tools to gather sensitive political, economic, and military information. These include CCoreDoor, PocoProxy, an updated variant of Cobalt Strike, PowHeartBeat backdoor, EAGERBEE malware, NUPAKAGE, Merlin C2 Agent, PhantomNet backdoor, RUDEBIRD malware, and an LSASS logon credential interceptor.

> _“Sophos MDR has observed the actors attempting to collect documents with file names that indicate they are of intelligence value, including military documents related to strategies in the South China Sea.”_
> 
> Sophos

Sophos believes the campaign’s primary aim is to maintain cyberespionage access for safeguarding Chinese state interests, including accessing critical IT systems, performing reconnaissance, collecting sensitive information, and deploying malware implants for command-and-control communications.

The campaign as per Sophos’ blog post, also included over 15 distinct DLL sideloading scenarios, most of which abused Windows Services, legitimate Microsoft binaries, and AV vendor software.

****Threat Actors Collaborating Worldwide****

This marks the first instance where Chinese threat groups are actively collaborating to target an entity, each with its own working hours and scheduling activities, directed by a central authority.

Last month, cybersecurity researchers at Check Point reported that several Iranian state-sponsored hacker groups are teaming up for large-scale attacks. Similarly, a report from Flashpoint last month highlighted that Russian state-sponsored hacker groups are changing tactics. They are now partnering up and increasingly relying on malicious paid tools instead of the custom-made tools they previously used.

1.  China-Linked Spyware Found in Play Store Apps, 2m Downloads
2.  China’s insidious surveillance against Uyghurs with Android malware
3.  Muddling Meerkat Suspected of Espionage via Great Firewall of China
4.  Chinese Blackwood APT Deploys NSPX30 Backdoor in Cyberespionage
5.  Cyberattacks Surge 325% in Philippines Amid South China Sea Standoff

Crimson Palace: Chinese Hackers Steal Military Secrets Over 2 Years

A husband, now indicted, allegedly used seven Apple AirTags to stalk his ex-wife over a period of several weeks. His trial begins this month.

Following their divorce, a husband carried out a campaign of stalking and abuse against his ex-wife—referred to only as “S.K.”—by allegedly hiding seven separate Apple AirTags on or near her car, according to documents filed by US prosecutors for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The documents, unearthed by 404 Media in collaboration with Court Watch, reveal how everyday consumer tools, like Bluetooth trackers, are sometimes leveraged for abuse against spouses and romantic partners.

 “The Defendant continued to adapt and use increasingly sophisticated efforts to hide the AirTags he placed on S.K.’s car,” US attorneys said. “It is clear from the timing of the placement of the AirTags and corroborating cell-site data, that he was monitoring S.K.’s movements.”

On May 8, the US government filed an indictment against the defendant, Ibodullo Muhiddinov Numanovich, with one alleged count of stalking against his ex-wife, S.K.

The stalking at the center of the government’s indictment allegedly began around March 27, when the FBI first learned about S.K. finding and removing an AirTag from her car. Less than a month later, on April 18, the FBI found a second AirTag that “was taped underneath the front bumper of S.K.’s vehicle with white duct tape.”

The very next day, the FBI found a third AirTag. This time, it was “wrapped in a blue medical mask and secured under the vehicle near the rear passenger side wheel well.”

This pattern of finding an AirTag, removing it, and then finding another was punctuated by physical and verbal intimidation, the government wrote. After a fourth AirTag was removed, the government said that Numanovich called S.K., followed her to a car wash, and “banged on her windows, and demanded to know why S.K. was not answering his calls.” Less than one week later, during a period of just 10 minutes, the government said that Numanovich left five threatening voice mails on S.K.’s phone, calling her “disgusting” and “worse than an animal.”

During the investigation, the FBI retrieved seven AirTags in total. Here is where those AirTags were found:

1.  Found by S.K. with no detail on specific location
2.  Duct-taped underneath the front bumper of S.K.’s car
3.  Underneath S.K.’s car, near the passenger-side wheel well, wrapped in a blue medical mask
4.  Within the frame of SK’s driver-side mirror, wedged between the mirror itself and the casing around it
5.  “An opening within the vehicle’s frame” which, documents say, was previously sealed by a rubber plug that was removed
6.  Underneath the license plate on S.K.’s car
7.  Undisclosed

For two of the retrieved AirTags, the FBI deactivated the trackers and then, away from S.K., placed the AirTags at separate locations. At an undisclosed location in Philadelphia where the FBI placed one AirTag, FBI agents later saw Numanovich “exit his vehicle with his phone in his hand, and begin searching for the AirTag.” At a convenience store where the FBI placed a second AirTag, agents said they again saw Numanovich.

The FBI also received information about attempted pairings and successful unpairings with Numanovich’s Apple account for three of the Apple AirTags.

In addition to the alleged pattern of stalking, the government also accused Numanovich of abusing SK both physically and emotionally, threatening her in person and over the phone, and recording sexually explicit videos of her to use as extortion. After a search warrant was authorized on May 13, agents found “approximately 140 sexually explicit photographs and videos of S.K.” stored on Numanovich’s phone, along with records for “numerous” financial accounts that transferred more than $4 million between 2022 and 2023.

In a follow-on request from the government to detain Numanovich before his trial begins, prosecutors also revealed that S.K. may have been brought into the US through a “Russian-based human smuggling network”—a network of which Numanovich might be a member.

According to 404 Media, a jury trial for Numanovich is scheduled to start on June 8.

**Improving AirTag safety**

Just last month, Apple and Google announced an industry specification for Bluetooth tracking devices such as AirTags to help alert users to unwanted tracking. The specification will make it possible to alert users across both iOS and Android if a device is unknowingly being used to track them. We applaud this development.

**We don’t just report on threats—we remove them**

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by downloading Malwarebytes today.

 Husband stalked ex-wife with seven AirTags, indictment says 

A worried researcher has created a tool to demonstrate exactly how much of a security backdoor Microsoft is creating with Recall.

Microsoft’s Recall feature has been criticized heavily by pretty much everyone since it was announced last month. Now, researchers have demonstrated the risks by creating a tool that can find, extract, and display everything Recall has stored on a device.

For those unaware, Recall is a feature within what Microsoft is calling its “Copilot+ PCs,” a reference to the AI assistant and companion which the company released in late 2023.

The idea is that Recall can assist users to reconstruct past activity by taking regular screenshots of a user’s activity and storing them, so it can answer important questions like “where did I see those expensive white sneakers?”

However, the scariest part is that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers and that data may be in snapshots that are stored on your device.

Many security professionals have pointed out that this kind of built-in spyware is a security risk. But Microsoft tried to reassure users, saying:

> “Recall data is only stored locally and not accessed by Microsoft or anyone who does not have device access.”

The problem lies in that last part of the statement. Who has device access? Although Microsoft claimed that an attacker would need to gain physical access, unlock the device and sign in before they could access saved screenshots, it turns out that might not be true.

As a warning about how Recall could be abused by criminal hackers, Alex Hagenah, a cybersecurity researcher, has released a demo tool that is capable of automatically extracting and displaying everything Recall records on a laptop.

For reasons any science fiction fan will understand, Hagenah has named that tool TotalRecall.  All the information that Recall saves into its main database on a Windows laptop can be “recalled.“

As Hagenah points out:

> “The database is unencrypted. It’s all plain text.”

TotalRecall can automatically find the Recall database on a person’s computer and make a copy of the file, for whatever date range you want. Pulling one day of screenshots from Recall, which stores its information in an SQLite database, took two seconds at most, according to Hagenah. Once TotalRecall has been deployed, it is possible to generate a summary about the data or search for specific terms in the database.

Now imagine an info-stealer that incorporates the capabilities of TotalRecall. This is not a far-fetched scenario because many information stealers are modular. The operators can add or leave out certain modules based on the target and the information they are after. And reportedly, the number of devices infected with data stealing malware has seen a sevenfold increase since 2023.

Another researcher, Kevin Beaumont, says he has built a website where a Recall database can be uploaded and instantly searched. He says he hasn’t released the site yet, to allow Microsoft time to potentially change the system.

According to Beaumont:

> “InfoStealer trojans, which automatically steal usernames and passwords, are a major problem for well over a decade—now these can just be easily modified to support Recall.”

It’s true that any information stealer will need administrator rights to access Recall data, but attacks that gain those right have been around for years, and most information stealer malware does this already.

Hagenah also warned that in cases of employers with bring your own devices (BYOD) policies, there’s a risk of someone leaving with huge volumes of company data saved on their laptops.

It is worrying that this type of tools is already available even before the official launch of Recall. The risk of identity theft only increases when we allow our machines to “capture” every move we make and everything we look at.

**We don’t just report on threats – we help safeguard your entire digital identit**y

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your—and your family’s—personal information by using identity protection.

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