"Hackers Are Exploiting Discord and Slack Links to Serve Up Malware"

Collaboration platforms such as Discord and Slack have increased in use to help maintain ties during the COVID-19 pandemic. As these platforms have increasingly become an integral part of our lives, threat actors have been using them to deliver malware to unsuspecting victims. Cisco's security division Talos recently shared new research that shows how collaboration tools like Slack and Discord have become powerful mechanisms for cybercriminals over the course of the pandemic. Research has found that these platforms are being used to distribute malware in the form of trustworthy-looking links. Hackers have used Discord to control their malicious code on infected machines remotely and to steal data. According to Cisco's researchers, all of the techniques they found do not use an apparent hackable vulnerability in Slack or Discord. A victim also does not need Slack or Discord to be installed on their machine for the discovered techniques to work. The researchers' methods take advantage of less studied features offered by these collaboration platforms, as well as their ubiquity and the trust that users put in them. This article continues to discuss the different ways in which cybercriminals are using Discord and Slack to deliver and control malware, the collaboration platforms' response to Cisco's findings, and how organizations can prevent malware distribution via these platforms. 

Wired reports "Hackers Are Exploiting Discord and Slack Links to Serve Up Malware"