SparklingGoblin is the name given to a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group with connections to the Winnti umbrella (aka APT41, Barium, Earth Baku, or Wicked Panda). It’s primarily known for its attacks targeting various entities in East and Southeast Asia at least since 2019, with a specific focus on the academic sector.

In August 2021, ESET unearthed a new piece of custom Windows malware codenamed SideWalk (aka ScrambleCross) that was exclusively leveraged by the actor to strike an unnamed computer retail company based in the U.S.

Subsequent findings from Symantec, part of Broadcom software, have linked the use of SideWalk to an espionage attack group it tracks under the moniker Grayfly, while pointing out the malware’s similarities to that of Crosswalk.

The matter is now under investigation and Slack is out of bounds.

San-Franciso-headquartered ride-hailing company Uber, with a presence in over 10,000 cities in 72 countries, is now investigating a breach after an 18-year-old hacked into its network and allegedly has access to its source code, The New York Times.

The incident came to light after the alleged hacker reached out to cybersecurity experts and the NYT and sent them images of the company’s email, cloud storage, and code repositories as proof of their accomplishment.

A set of six high-severity firmware vulnerabilities impacting a broad range of HP devices used in enterprise environments are still waiting to be patched, although some of them were publicly disclosed since July 2021.

Firmware flaws are particularly dangerous because they can lead to malware infections that persist even between OS re-installations or allow long-term compromises that would not trigger standard security tools.

As Binarly highlights in the report, even though it’s been a month since they made some of the flaws public at Black Hat 2022, the vendor hasn’t released security updates for all impacted models, leaving many customers exposed to attacks.