• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

McLaren Health Care data breach impacted over 743,000 people

 | 

American steel giant Nucor confirms data breach in May attack

 | 

The financial impact of Marks & Spencer and Co-op cyberattacks could reach £440M

 | 

Iran-Linked Threat Actors Cyber Fattah Leak Visitors and Athletes' Data from Saudi Games

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 50

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 529 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

Iran confirmed it shut down internet to protect the country against cyberattacks

 | 

Godfather Android trojan uses virtualization to hijack banking and crypto apps

 | 

Cloudflare blocked record-breaking 7.3 Tbps DDoS attack against a hosting provider

 | 

Linux flaws chain allows Root access across major distributions

 | 

A ransomware attack pushed the German napkin firm Fasana into insolvency

 | 

Researchers discovered the largest data breach ever, exposing 16 billion login credentials

 | 

China-linked group Salt Typhoon breached satellite firm Viasat

 | 

Iran experienced a near-total national internet blackout

 | 

Malicious Minecraft mods distributed by the Stargazers DaaS target Minecraft gamers

 | 

Healthcare services company Episource data breach impacts 5.4 Million people

 | 

Watch out, Veeam fixed a new critical bug in Backup & Replication product

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Linux Kernel flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

News Flodrix botnet targets vulnerable Langflow servers

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Apple products, and TP-Link routers flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • APT
  • Breaking News
  • Cyber Crime
  • Hacking
  • Malware
  • Russian group RomCom exploited Firefox and Tor Browser zero-days to target attacks Europe and North America

Russian group RomCom exploited Firefox and Tor Browser zero-days to target attacks Europe and North America

Pierluigi Paganini November 27, 2024

The Russian RomCom group exploited Firefox and Tor Browser zero-day vulnerabilities in attacks on users in Europe and North America.

Russian-based cybercrime group RomCom (aka UAT-5647, Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, UAC-0180, UNC2596) exploited two Firefox and Tor Browser zero-day vulnerabilities in recent attacks on users across Europe and North America.

The first zero-day exploited by the Russian group, is a use-after-free issue, tracked as CVE-2024-9680, in Firefox.

The vulnerability CVE-2024-9680 resides in Animation timelines. Firefox Animation Timelines is a feature in the Firefox Developer Tools suite that allows developers to inspect, edit, and debug animations directly within the browser. It provides a visual interface for managing animations, including CSS animations and transitions, as well as those created with the Web Animations API.

An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to achieve code execution in the content process.

The second zero-day exploited by the threat actor is CVE-2024-49039. The issue is a Windows Task Scheduler privilege escalation flaw that allows AppContainer escape, enabling low-privileged users to run code at Medium integrity. Discovered by multiple researchers, it is actively exploited, especially across different regions, highlighting its potential impact.

RomCom chained the two vulnerabilities to compromise victims’ systems without user interaction. Victims were infected with the group’s backdoor by simply tricking them into visiting a maliciously crafted website.

“The compromise chain is composed of a fake website that redirects the potential victim to the server hosting the exploit, and should the exploit succeed, shellcode is executed that downloads and executes the RomCom backdoor.” reads the report published by ESET.

From October 10–16, 2024, attackers exploited unpatched browsers via fake websites that dropped payloads with no user interaction. Victims were redirected to legitimate sites afterward to avoid suspicion. According to ESET, the attackers used fake servers with recurring prefixes or suffixes like “redir” or “red” in domain names.

RomCom

When a user visits the specially crafted websites using a vulnerable browser, an exploit triggers shellcode execution, using Reflective DLL Injection (RDI) to escape Firefox’s sandbox. This leads to downloading and executing the RomCom backdoor from C2 servers like journalctd[.]live, correctiv[.]sbs, or cwise[.]store.

ESET reported that between October 10 and November 4, 2024, websites hosting the exploit primarily targeted victims in Europe and North America, with up to 250 victims per country.

“Chaining together two zero-day vulnerabilities armed RomCom with an exploit that requires no user interaction. This level of sophistication shows the threat actor’s will and means to obtain or develop stealthy capabilities.” concludes the report. “ESET shared detailed findings with Mozilla, following our coordinated vulnerability disclosure process shortly after discovery. Mozilla released a blogpost about how they reacted to the disclosure and were able to release a fix within 25 hours, which is very impressive in comparison to industry standards.”

In October 2024, Cisco Talos researchers observed Russia-linked threat actor RomCom targeting Ukrainian government agencies and Polish entities in a new wave of attacks since at least late 2023. 

In the recent attacks, RomCom deployed an updated variant of the RomCom RAT dubbed ‘SingleCamper.’ SingleCamper is loaded directly from registry into memory and relies on a loopback address to communicate with its loader. The threat actors also employed two new downloaders, called RustClaw and MeltingClaw, plus two backdoors, DustyHammock (Rust-based) and C++-based ShadyHammock

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Russia)


facebook linkedin twitter

Cybercrime Hacking hacking news information security news IT Information Security malware Pierluigi Paganini RomCom Security News

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini June 23, 2025
McLaren Health Care data breach impacted over 743,000 people
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini June 23, 2025
American steel giant Nucor confirms data breach in May attack
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    McLaren Health Care data breach impacted over 743,000 people

    Data Breach / June 23, 2025

    American steel giant Nucor confirms data breach in May attack

    Data Breach / June 23, 2025

    The financial impact of Marks & Spencer and Co-op cyberattacks could reach £440M

    Cyber Crime / June 23, 2025

    Iran-Linked Threat Actors Cyber Fattah Leak Visitors and Athletes' Data from Saudi Games

    Cyber warfare / June 23, 2025

    Qilin ransomware gang now offers a "Call Lawyer" feature to pressure victims

    Breaking News / June 22, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT