Sophos X-Ops has found 19 "cheap, independently produced, and crudely constructed" junk gun ransomware variants on the dark web. These junk gun variants aim to disrupt the affiliate-based Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model that has dominated the ransomware market. Instead of selling or buying ransomware to or as an affiliate, attackers develop and sell simple variants for a one-time fee. Other threat actors can use such variants to attack small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as individuals.

A new Android banking malware called "SoumniBot" uses a less common obfuscation technique, exploiting flaws in the Android manifest extraction and parsing procedure. The method allows SoumniBot to bypass standard Android security measures and steal information. Researchers discovered and analyzed the malware, providing technical details on how it uses the Android routine to parse and extract APK manifests. This article continues to discuss findings regarding the SoumniBot malware.

According to Microsoft Threat Intelligence research, known vulnerabilities in OpenMetadata's open source metadata repository have been actively exploited since early April, allowing threat actors to launch Remote Code Execution (RCE) cyberattacks on unpatched Kubernetes clusters. OpenMetadata is an open source platform that serves as both a management tool and a central repository for metadata. Researchers published information in mid-March on five new vulnerabilities that impacted versions before v1.3.1.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently charged Moldovan national Alexander Lefterov, the owner and operator of a large-scale botnet that infected thousands of computers across the United States.  Also known as Alipako, Uptime, and Alipatime, the 37-year-old man from Chisinau was indicted in December 2021 for aggravated identity theft, computer fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.  The DoJ noted that Lefterov and his henchmen used malware to steal credentials from the infected devices.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced that it is investigating a cyberattack in which information was compromised. The organization stated that the attack targeted local Information Technology (IT) infrastructure in UN City, a complex in Copenhagen that houses nearly a dozen UN agencies. On March 27, the UNDP learned that a data-extortion actor had stolen data, including human resources and procurement information.

UK police infiltrated and disrupted the "LabHost" Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) operation that made cybercriminals more than £1 million ($1.3 million) from thousands of targets. Europol described LabHost as one of the largest PhaaS platforms, providing fraudsters the tools to conduct sophisticated phishing and smishing (SMS phishing) campaigns. According to London's Metropolitan Police, which led the law enforcement operation against the PhaaS platform, LabHost hosted up to 40,000 phishing sites by 2024, with 2,000 criminals paying a monthly subscription fee.

Michigan healthcare organization Cherry Street Services (Cherry Health) has recently started notifying over 180,000 individuals that their personal information was compromised in a ransomware attack.  Cherry Health noted that the incident occurred on December 21, 2023, and disrupted certain systems, suggesting that file-encrypting ransomware might have been involved.  In a filing with the Maine Attorney General’s Office this week, Cherry Health confirmed that ransomware was involved in the attack and revealed that approximately 184,000 individuals were affected by the incident.

A Northwestern University Computer Science team took first place in the fuzzing tool competition at the 17th International Workshop on Search-Based and Fuzz Testing (SBFT 2024). Fuzz testing, also known as fuzzing, is an automated testing method used to detect coding errors and security vulnerabilities in software, operating systems, or networks by generating a massive amount of invalid or random data inputs and monitoring for system crashes, failures, or memory leaks.