On April 12th, 2023, Microsoft released a slew of new patches for its Windows operating system, one of which was to fix CVE-2023-21554, a remotely-exploitable vulnerability in the obscure Windows Message Queuing (MSMQ) service that can lead to remote code execution (RCE).

The relevance of this macOS specimen is well articulated in their tweet:

“Lockbit ransomware group has created their first MacOS-based payload. We believe this is the first time a large ransomware threat group has developed a payload for Apple products.” vx-underground

Ok, so even though it’s the weekend, we have what appears to be a new macOS malware specimen from one of the more notorious ransomware gangs! Coupled with the fact that this may be, (as noted by @VXUnderground), “the first time a large ransomware threat group has developed a payload for Apple products” …I was intrigued to decided to dig right in!

Kernel 6.2 ditched a useful defense against ghostly chip design flaw

Google has released an emergency Chrome security update to address the first zero-day vulnerability exploited in attacks since the start of the year.

This is a story about a security vulnerability in Google that allowed me to run arbitrary code on the computers of 50+ Google employees. Although Google initially considered my finding a serious security incident, later on, it changed its mind and stated that my finding is not, in fact, a vulnerability, but the intended behavior of their software.

Mac Monitor is Red Canary’s newly available tool for collection and dynamic system analysis on macOS endpoints.
Red Canary Mac Monitor is a feature-rich dynamic analysis tool for macOS that leverages our extensive understanding of the platform and Apple’s latest APIs to collect and present relevant security events. Mac Monitor is practically the macOS version of the Microsoft Sysinternals tool, Procmon. Mac Monitor collects a wide variety of telemetry classes, including processes, interprocess, files, file metadata, logins, XProtect detections, and more—enabling defenders to quickly and effectively analyze enriched, high-fidelity macOS security events in a native, modern, and customizable user interface

CyberArk Labs discovered a new malware called Vare that is distributed over the popular chatting service, Discord. Vare has been used to target new malware operators by using social engineering tactics on them. Additionally, we have found that Vare uses Discord’s infrastructure as a backbone for its operations. This malware is linked to a new group called “Kurdistan 4455” based out of southern Turkey and is still early in its forming stage.

As the U.S. deals with a nationwide swatting wave, Motherboard has traced much of the activity to a particular swatting-as-a-service account on Telegram. Torswats uses synthesized voices to pressure law enforcement to specific locations.

The Military Counterintelligence Service and the CERT Polska team (CERT.PL) observed a widespread espionage campaign linked to Russian intelligence services

"There are advocacy groups for reptile owners but not hackers, so that seems like a miss," said Ilona Cohen of HackerOne.

The Vice Society ransomware gang exfiltrated victim network data using a custom Microsoft PowerShell script. We dissect how each function of it works.

One of the hackers who breached Western Digital provided some details about the hack, the data stolen, and what the hackers are demanding.

Le parlement français a adopté une loi autorisant la vidéosurveillance algorithmique, très décriée. A Genève, une étude montre l’opacité autour des caméras de surveillance, qui se multiplient

The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.

in February 2023, Kaspersky technologies detected a number of attempts to execute similar elevation-of-privilege exploits on Microsoft Windows servers belonging to small and medium-sized businesses in the Middle East, in North America, and previously in Asia regions. These exploits were very similar to already known Common Log File System (CLFS) driver exploits that we analyzed previously, but we decided to double check and it was worth it – one of the exploits turned out to be a zero-day, supporting different versions and builds of Windows, including Windows 11. The exploit was highly obfuscated with more than 80% of the its code being “junk” elegantly compiled into the binary, but we quickly fully reverse-engineered it and reported our findings to Microsoft. Microsoft assigned CVE-2023-28252 to the Common Log File System elevation-of-privilege vulnerability, and a patch was released on April 11, 2023, as part of April Patch Tuesday.

Microsoft addresses 97 CVEs, including one that was exploited in the wild as a zero day

Check Point Research recently discovered three vulnerabilities in the “Microsoft Message Queuing” service, commonly known as MSMQ. These vulnerabilities were disclosed to Microsoft and patched in the April Patch Tuesday update. The most severe of these, dubbed QueueJumper by CPR (CVE-2023-21554), is a critical vulnerability that could allow unauthorized attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code in the context of the Windows service process mqsvc.exe.

Microsoft analyzes a threat group tracked as DEV-0196, the actor’s iOS malware “KingsPawn”, and their link to an Israel-based private sector offensive actor (PSOA) known as QuaDream, which reportedly sells a suite of exploits, malware, and infrastructure called REIGN, that’s designed to exfiltrate data from mobile devices.

At least five civil society victims of QuaDream’s spyware and exploits were identified in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Victims include journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker. Traces of a suspected iOS 14 zero-click exploit used to deploy QuaDream’s spyware.

Researchers found malware developed by QuaDream, a little-known government spyware maker, which was used against journalists and politicians.