Security
Linux variant of Cobalt Strike Beacon attacks organizations around the world
Cobalt Strike Beacon, codenamed Vermilion Strike, is practically undetectable by antivirus software.
Researchers of the Israeli information security company Intezer told about recently discovered new versions of Cobalt Strike Beacon for Linux and Windows, used by hackers in attacks on government organizations, banks, telecommunications and IT companies.
The version of Cobalt Strike Beacon, code-named Vermilion Strike, which has not yet been detected by antivirus solutions, is a rare case of porting to Linux a tool traditionally used by red teams of security testers on Windows machines.
The Cobalt Strike developers position their product as “threat emulation software”, and Beacon, in turn, acts as a model of the attacker and simulates his actions after the initial breach.
Vermilion Strike uses the Cobalt Strike C&C protocol to connect to the C&C server. In addition, it is equipped with the functions of downloading files, running shell commands and writing to files.
The research of specialists is based on the artifacts they discovered, uploaded to VirusTotal on August 10, 2021 from Malaysia. At the time of writing, only two antivirus solutions have detected Vermilion Strike files as malicious.
Once installed, the malware runs in the background and decrypts the configurations required for Beacon to function. It then creates a fingerprint of the compromised Linux machine and establishes a connection to the remote server via DNS or HTTP and extracts the instructions, encoded with base64 and encrypted using AES. These instructions allow the malware to run arbitrary commands, write to files, and upload files to the server.
During the research, the specialists also found samples that shed light on the version of Vermilion Strike for Windows with the same functionality and C&C domains used to manage hosts.
According to the researchers, the spy campaign is very limited in scope. Unlike large operations, malware is used only in certain attacks, which indicates a “skilled attacker”.
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Security
In 2018, Google had an AI ready for a ChatGPT-style chatbot, but it was closed due to security issues.
In recent months, the ChatGPT chatbot has been on the news pages, and this has forced many companies to catch up with OpenAI. Among them are Microsoft, Google and a number of Chinese corporations. However, reportedly, the situation could be different.
As early as 2018, Google is said to have had a natural language processing AI similar to ChatGPT. However, company executives closed the project, considering it too dangerous. One of the developers was research engineer Daniel De Freitas, and Noam Shazeer, a software engineer at Google, also contributed to the project.
The project was called Meena and was a chatbot that could talk about different topics. With him you could discuss TV shows, have discussions about philosophy and joke. At the same time, the developers believed that this technology could be added to the search engine, however, in the end, Google stopped development. The company said the bot did not meet its AI security standards.
Note that later, on the basis of these developments, the LaMDA chat bot was created, which flies into the basis of Bard. Thus, the development nevertheless reached the mass user, albeit with a great delay.
Phones
Two-way satellite communications and military-grade security. Presented smartphone Motorola Defy 2
The British company Bullitt Group and Motorola, now owned by the Chinese Lenovo, introduced a new smartphone of the protected Motorola Defy series. The highlights of the Motorola Defy 2 are support for two-way satellite communication, combined with 5G fifth-generation cellular networks, and a very durable design.
The smartphone is resistant to dust, sand, dirt and water (IP68 and IP69K) and has been tested to military standard Mil-Spec 810H for extreme high and low temperatures, humid environments, salt fog, vibration and shock. The Motorola Defy 2 can be washed with soap and water and can also be cleaned with alcohol wipes.
The smartphone itself is equipped with a 6.6-inch Full HD + display with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, an 8 MP front camera, a main triple camera (50 MP, 8 and 2 MP), SoC MediaTek Dimensity 930, 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB flash memory that can be expanded with microSD cards, and a 5000 mAh battery with support for 15W charging and Qi wireless charging.
MediaTek Bullitt and 3GPP NTN technology, Bullitt satellite messaging service are supported. The smartphone is running Android 12 operating system, two major Android updates and 5 years of security updates are promised.
The Motorola Defy 2 smartphone will be available from Q2 2023 on select carriers in North America, Latin America and Canada starting at $599.
Empress hacker hacked into Hogwarts Legacy and today posted it on a torrent – anyone can download the game. The ISO file is just over 88 GB.
The Denuvo V17 provided protection for the Hogwarts Legacy, but it failed. Empress has previously said that it is going to hack the game, it also talked about creating some new technologies that would help bypass the protection of Hogwarts Legacy, and promised to “destroy” Denuvo. There are already over 80 comments on the torrent tracker, most thanks to Empress for the hack.
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