Cyber Security
ESET Uncovers New Mobile Phishing Scam
ESET Research discovered an uncommon type of phishing campaign targeting mobile users and analysed a case observed in the wild that targeted clients of a prominent Czech bank. This technique is noteworthy because it installs a phishing application from a third-party website without the user having to allow third-party app installation. On Android, this could result in the silent installation of a special kind of APK, which even appears to be installed from the Google Play store. The threat targeted iPhone (iOS) users as well.
The phishing websites targeting iOS instruct victims to add a Progressive Web Application (PWA) to their home screens, while on Android, the PWA is installed after confirming custom pop-ups in the browser. At this point, on both operating systems, these phishing apps are largely indistinguishable from the real banking apps that they mimic. PWAs are essentially websites bundled into what feels like a stand-alone application, with this feeling being enhanced by the use of native system prompts. PWAs, just like websites, are cross-platform, which explains how these PWA phishing campaigns can target both iOS and Android users. The novel technique was observed in Czechia by ESET analysts working on the ESET Brand Intelligence Service, which provides monitoring of threats targeting a client’s brand.
“For iPhone users, such an action might break any ‘walled garden’ assumptions about security,” says ESET researcher Jakub Osmani, who analyzed the threat. ESET analysts’ discovery of a series of phishing campaigns, targeting mobile users, used three different URL delivery mechanisms. These mechanisms include automated voice calls, SMS messages, and social media malvertising. The voice call delivery is done via an automated call that warns the user about an out-of-date banking app and asks the user to select an option on the numerical keyboard.
After the correct button is pressed, a phishing URL is sent via SMS, as was reported in a tweet. Initial delivery by SMS was performed by sending messages indiscriminately to Czech phone numbers. The message sent included a phishing link and text to socially engineer victims into visiting the link. The malicious campaign was spread via registered advertisements on Meta platforms like Instagram and Facebook. These ads included a call to action, like a limited offer for users who “download an update below.”
After opening the URL delivered in the first stage, Android victims are presented with two distinct campaigns, either a high-quality phishing page imitating the official Google Play store page for the targeted banking application, or a copycat website for that application. From here, victims are asked to install a “new version” of the banking app.
The phishing campaign and method are possible only because of the technology of progressive web applications. In short, PWAs are applications built using traditional web application technologies that can run on multiple platforms and devices. WebAPKs could be considered an upgraded version of progressive web apps, as the Chrome browser generates a native Android application from a PWA: in other words, an APK. These WebAPKs look like regular native apps. Furthermore, installing a WebAPK does not produce any of the “installation from an untrusted source” warnings. The app will even be installed if installation from third-party sources is not allowed.
One group used a Telegram bot to log all entered information into a Telegram group chat via the official Telegram API, while another used a traditional Command & Control (C&C) server with an administrative panel. “Based on the fact that the campaigns used two distinct C&C infrastructures, we have determined that two separate groups were operating the PWA/WebAPK phishing campaigns against several banks,” concludes Osmani. Most of the known cases have taken place in Czechia, with only two phishing applications appearing outside of the country (specifically in Hungary and Georgia).
Cyber Security
Sophos MDR Protects 26,000 Customers Globally with Latest Innovations
Sophos has announced that its Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service has reached a major milestone, now protecting more than 26,000 organizations globally, growing its customer base by 37% in 2024. This achievement highlights the increasing demand for Sophos’ proactive, expert-led security solutions, which help organizations of all sizes stay protected 24/7 against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, including the most advanced ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) and phishing attacks.
Sophos MDR offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities that go beyond standard threat containment to include full-scale incident response, such as root cause analysis, the removal of malicious tools or artefacts used by attackers, and investigations across customers’ environments to ensure adversaries are fully ejected to prevent another attack. What further differentiates Sophos is that these incident response services are included with Sophos MDR on an unlimited basis, meaning customers are not additionally charged and there is no limit on the number of incident response hours. Sophos MDR Complete also includes a breach protection warranty covering up to $1 million in incident response expenses. Sophos provides flexibility for how customers can work with the MDR analysts, including the ability to pre-authorize them to contain an active threat.
Sophos has made significant investments into its MDR offering with increased analyst capacity, AI-assisted workflows, new features and expanded integrations to help deliver the best possible outcomes through improved protection, detection and investigation of threats. Sophos has added the following new features:
- Proof of Value: New Sophos MDR service insights to explain the MDR team’s actions including highlighting the human hours spent threat hunting and creating and tuning detections. High-value dashboard enhancements include details of MITRE ATT&CK tactics uncovered in proactive threat hunts conducted by Sophos’ MDR team, MDR analyst coverage, case investigation summaries and an account health check status.
- Enhanced Security for Microsoft Customers: New Sophos-proprietary detections for Microsoft Office 365 identify threats including business email compromise and adversary in the middle account takeover attacks, independent of the customer’s Microsoft license level.
- Expanded Compatibility with Third Parties: This expanded ecosystem of turnkey integrations with third-party cybersecurity and IT tools includes a new Backup and Recovery integration category.
- Proactive Vulnerability Mitigation: Sophos Managed Risk powered by Tenable provides attack surface vulnerability management as a new managed service option for Sophos MDR customers.
- Efficiency and Automation: Sophos MDR has added AI-powered workflows to streamline operational processes and drive better security outcomes for our customers. This innovation delivers a reduced mean time to respond (MTTR) through more efficient triage, while also ensuring that all legitimate threats are rapidly investigated. This enables analysts to concentrate on other tasks such as threat hunting, account health monitoring and detection engineering.
“Attackers are continuously advancing their tactics to outmanoeuvre traditional security defences,” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president of product management at Sophos. “Our customers rely on Sophos MDR to help their organizations tackle today’s threats 24/7 with full-scale incident response to remove active adversaries and conduct root cause analysis to identify the underlying issues that led to an incident. We’re consistently evolving our solutions with new offerings and integrations, just like attackers are constantly evolving their tactics, so customers can disrupt threats before they escalate into destructive attacks.”
Cyber Security
Group-IB Joins Cybercrime Atlas at WEF to Combat Global Cybercrime
Group-IB has announced today that it has joined the Cybercrime Atlas—an initiative hosted at the World Economic Forum—to contribute to the research of the evolving landscape of cybercrime, support the disruption of cybercriminal infrastructure and operations, and to enhance collaborations between local and international stakeholders to enhance cybersecurity globally.
The Cybercrime Atlas, hosted at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity, leverages open-source research to generate actionable insights into the cybercriminal ecosystem. Its community comprises organizations pivotal in identifying and dismantling cybercriminal activities. This collaborative initiative seeks to build a global, action-focused repository of cybercrime intelligence, promoting cooperation among investigators, law enforcement, financial institutions, and businesses at both national and international levels. Group-IB’s analysts have already begun contributing to Cybercrime Mapping, and Cybercrime Investigation Working Groups.
“Joining the Cybercrime Atlas initiative is not just an opportunity – it’s a responsibility. In a world where cyber threats transcend borders, collaboration is our most powerful defence. By uniting with the Cybercrime Atlas community and other key stakeholders, we connect expertise and critical intelligence, creating a united front that can disrupt criminal networks and make the digital world a safer place for everyone,” said Dmitry Volkov, CEO, Group-IB.
“The Cybercrime Atlas is a collaborative research initiative by leading companies and experts, facilitated by the World Economic Forum, to map the cybercrime landscape. The insights generated are promoting opportunities for greater cooperation between the private sector and law enforcement to address cybercrime,” said Tal Goldstein, Head of Strategy and Policy, World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity.
Cyber Security
ESET Research Discovers UEFI Secure Boot Bypass Vulnerability
ESET researchers have discovered a vulnerability, affecting the majority of UEFI-based systems, that allows actors to bypass UEFI Secure Boot. This vulnerability, assigned CVE-2024-7344, was found in a UEFI application signed by Microsoft’s “Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA 2011” third-party UEFI certificate. The exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to the execution of untrusted code during system boot, enabling potential attackers to easily deploy malicious UEFI bootkits (such as Bootkitty or BlackLotus) even on systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, regardless of the operating system installed.
ESET reported the findings to the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) in June 2024, which successfully contacted the affected vendors. The issue has now been fixed in affected products, and the old, vulnerable binaries were revoked by Microsoft in the January 14, 2025, Patch Tuesday update.
The affected UEFI application is part of several real-time system recovery software suites developed by Howyar Technologies Inc., Greenware Technologies, Radix Technologies Ltd., SANFONG Inc., Wasay Software Technology Inc., Computer Education System Inc., and Signal Computer GmbH.
“The number of UEFI vulnerabilities discovered in recent years and the failures in patching them or revoking vulnerable binaries within a reasonable time window shows that even such an essential feature as UEFI Secure Boot should not be considered an impenetrable barrier,” says ESET researcher Martin Smolár, who discovered the vulnerability. “However, what concerns us the most concerning the vulnerability is not the time it took to fix and revoke the binary, which was quite good compared to similar cases, but the fact that this isn’t the first time that such an unsafe signed UEFI binary has been discovered. This raises questions of how common the use of such unsafe techniques is among third-party UEFI software vendors, and how many other similar obscure, but signed, bootloaders there might be out there.”
Exploitation of this vulnerability is not limited to systems with the affected recovery software installed, as attackers can bring their copy of the vulnerable binary to any UEFI system with the Microsoft third-party UEFI certificate enrolled. Also, elevated privileges are required to deploy the vulnerable and malicious files to the EFI system partition (local administrator on Windows; root on Linux). The vulnerability is caused by the use of a custom PE loader instead of using the standard and secure UEFI functions LoadImage and StartImage. All UEFI systems with Microsoft third-party UEFI signing enabled are affected (Windows 11 Secured-core PCs should have this option disabled by default).
The vulnerability can be mitigated by applying the latest UEFI revocations from Microsoft. Windows systems should be updated automatically. Microsoft’s advisory for the CVE-2024-7344 vulnerability can be found here. For Linux systems, updates should be available through the Linux Vendor Firmware Service.
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