The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday disclosed details of a "novel persistent backdoor" called SUBMARINE deployed by threat actors in connection with the hack on Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances. . "SUBMARINE comprises multiple artifacts — including a SQL trigger, shell scripts, and a loaded library for a Linux daemon — that together enable execution with root privileges, persistence, command and control, and cleanup," the agency said . The findings come from an analysis of malware samples obtained from an unnamed organization that had been compromised by threat actors exploiting a critical flaw in ESG devices, CVE-2023-2868 (CVSS score: 9.8), which allows for remote command injection. Evidence gathered so far shows that the attackers behind the activity, a suspected China nexus-actor tracked by Mandiant as UNC4841, leveraged the flaw as a zero-day in October 2022 to gain initial access to victim environments and implanted backdoors to establish and maintain persistence. To that end, the infection chain involved sending phishing emails with booby-trapped TAR file attachments to trigger exploitation, leading to the deployment of a reverse shell payload to establish communication with the threat actor's command-and-control (C2) server, from where a passive backdoor known as SEASPY is downloaded for executing arbitrary commands on the device. SUBMARINE, also codenamed DEPTHCHARGE by the Google-owned threat intelligence firm, is the latest malware family to be discovered in connection with the operation. Executed with root privileges, it resides in a Structured Query Language (SQL) database on the ESG appliance. The link for this article located at The Hacker News is no longer available. . AQUANAUT infiltration tactic leverages SQL procedures and code, targeting a significant vulnerability in Cisco Web Security Appliances.. Barracuda Email Security,SUBMARINE,Command Injection,Cyber Threat. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Chinese AV vendor 360 has discovered a virus in the wild that makes its home in a computer's BIOS, where it remains hidden from conventional virus scanners. The contaminant, called Mebromi, first checks to see whether the victim's computer uses an Award BIOS. If so, it uses the CBROM command-line tool to hook its extension into the BIOS. . The next time the system boots, the BIOS extension adds additional code to the hard drive's master boot record (MBR) in order to infect the winlogon.exe / winnt.exe processes on Windows XP and 2003 / Windows 2000 before Windows boots. The next time Windows launches, the malicious code downloads a rootkit to prevent the drive's MBR from being cleaned by a virus scanner. But even if the drive is cleaned, the whole infection routine is repeated the next time the BIOS module is booted. Mebromi can also survive a change of hard drive. If the computer doesn't use an Award BIOS, the contaminant simply infects the MBR. The link for this article located at H Security is no longer available. . The next time the system boots, the BIOS extension adds additional code to the hard drive's master b. chinese, vendor, virus, makes, computer's. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
A new and improved botnet that has infected 4.5 million Windows PCs is "practically indestructible," security researchers say.. TDL-4, the name for both the bot Trojan that infects machines and the ensuing collection of compromised computers, is "the most sophisticated threat today," reported Kaspersky Labs researcher Sergey Golovanov late last month. "[TDL-4] is practically indestructible," Golovanov said. The link for this article located at Network World is no longer available. . TDL-4, an advanced botnet, significantly threatens millions of Windows PCs with its remarkable resilience and persistence.. TDL-4 Botnet, Windows Malware, Botnet Security, Cyber Threats, Malware Analysis. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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