- U.S. doubles reward for tips on North Korean-backed hackers
July 26, 2022
The U.S. State Department has increased rewards paid to anyone providing information on any North Korean-sponsored threat groups’ members to $10 million. “If you have information on any individuals associated with the North Korean government-linked malicious cyber groups (such as Andariel, APT38, Bluenoroff, Guardians of Peace, Kimsuky, or Lazarus Group) and who are involved in targeting ...
- Attackers Move Quickly to Exploit High-Profile Zero Days: Insights From the 2022 Unit 42 Incident Response Report
July 26, 2022
Software vulnerabilities remain a key avenue of initial access for attackers according to the 2022 Unit 42 Incident Response Report. While this underscores the need for organizations to operate with a well-defined patch management strategy, we’ve observed that attackers are increasingly quick to exploit high-profile zero-day vulnerabilities, further increasing the time pressure on organizations when ...
- North Korean hackers attack EU targets with Konni RAT malware
July 23, 2022
Threat analysts have uncovered a new campaign attributed to APT37, a North Korean group of hackers, targeting high-value organizations in the Czech Republic, Poland, and other European countries. In this campaign, the hackers use malware known as Konni, a remote access trojan (RAT) capable of establishing persistence and performing privilege escalation on the host. Konni has been ...
- Analyzing Penetration-Testing Tools That Threat Actors Use to Breach Systems and Steal Data
July 20, 2022
The use of legitimate Windows tools as part of malicious actors’ malware arsenal has become a common observation in cyber incursions in recent years. We’ve discussed such use in a previous article where PsExec, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), simple batch files or third-party tools such as PC Hunter and Process Hacker were used to disable ...
- Belgium says Chinese hackers attacked its Ministry of Defense
July 19, 2022
The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belgium says multiple Chinese state-backed threat groups targeted the country’s defense and interior ministries. “Belgium exposes malicious cyber activities that significantly affected our sovereignty, democracy, security and society at large by targeting the FPS Interior and the Belgian Defence,” the foreign minister said. “Belgium assesses these malicious cyber activities to have ...
- Hackers pose as journalists to breach news media org’s networks
July 16, 2022
Researchers following the activities of advanced persistent (APT) threat groups originating from China, North Korea, Iran, and Turkey say that journalists and media organizations have remained a constant target for state-aligned actors. The adversaries are either masquerading or attacking these targets because they have unique access to non-public information that could help expand a cyberespionage operation. Recent ...
- Transparent Tribe begins targeting education sector in latest campaign
July 13, 2022
Cisco Talos recently discovered an ongoing campaign conducted by the Transparent Tribe APT group against students at various educational institutions in India. This campaign was partially covered by another security firm, but our findings reveal more details regarding the adversary’s operations. Typically, this APT group focuses on targeting government (government employees, military personnel) and pseudo-government entities ...
- North Korean State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Use Maui Ransomware to Target the Healthcare and Public Health Sector
July 6, 2022
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to provide information on Maui ransomware, which has been used by North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors since at least May 2021 to target Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) Sector ...
- Crypto sleuths pin $100 million Harmony theft on Lazarus Group
July 1, 2022
Investigators at a blockchain analysis outfit have linked the theft of $100 million in crypto assets last week to the notorious North Korean-based cybercrime group Lazarus. The company said it had tracked the movement of some of the stolen cryptocurrency to a so-called mixer used to launder such ill-gotten funds. Blockchain startup Harmony announced June 23 ...
- Evilnum hackers return in new operation targeting migration orgs
June 28, 2022
The Evilnum hacking group is showing renewed signs of malicious activity, targeting European organizations that are involved in international migration. Evilnum is an APT (advanced persistent threat) that has been active since at least 2018 and had its campaign and tools exposed only recently, in 2020. At that time, ESET published a technical report describing the threat ...
- An unknown APT actor attacking high-profile entities in Europe and Asia
June 21, 2022
ToddyCat is a relatively new APT actor that we have not been able to relate to other known actors, responsible for multiple sets of attacks detected since December 2020 against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia. We still have little information about this actor, but we know that its main distinctive signs are two formerly ...
- Russian govt hackers hit Ukraine with Cobalt Strike, CredoMap malware
June 21, 2022
The Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is warning that Russian hacking groups are exploiting the Follina code execution vulnerability in new phishing campaigns to install the CredoMap malware and Cobalt Strike beacons. The APT28 hacking group is believed to be sending emails containing a malicious document name “Nuclear Terrorism A Very Real Threat.rtf.”. The threat ...
- Android-wiping BRATA malware is evolving into a persistent threat
June 19, 2022
The threat actor behind BRATA banking trojan has evolved their tactics and improved the malware with information-stealing capabilities. Italian mobile security company Cleafy has been tracking BRATA activity and noticed in the most recent campaigns changes that lead to longer persistence on the device. “The modus operandi now fits into an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) activity pattern,” ...
- Sophos Firewall zero-day bug exploited weeks before fix
June 16, 2022
Chinese hackers used a zero-day exploit for a critical-severity vulnerability in Sophos Firewall to compromise a company and breach cloud-hosted web servers operated by the victim. The security issue has been fixed in the meantime but various threat actors continued to exploit it to bypass authentication and run arbitrary code remotely on multiple organizations. On March 25, ...
- Aoqin Dragon hacking group quietly spied on their targets for 10 years
June 10, 2022
Researchers have discovered a stealthy espionage campaign by a most likely China-backed hacking group that has targeted government, education and telecommunication organizations since 2013. The attackers used a range of techniques to infect targets with malware, such as via malicious Word documents, fake removable devices leading users to malicious folders, and fake antivirus vendor icons that ...
- Qbot malware now uses Windows MSDT zero-day in phishing attacks
June 7, 2022
A critical Windows zero-day vulnerability, known as Follina and still waiting for an official fix from Microsoft, is now being actively exploited in ongoing phishing attacks to infect recipients with Qbot malware. Proofpoint first reported Monday that the same zero-day was used in phishing targeting US and EU government agencies. Last week, the enterprise security firm also ...
- WinDealer dealing on the side
June 2, 2022
LuoYu is a lesser-known threat actor that has been active since 2008. It primarily goes after targets located in China, such as foreign diplomatic organizations established in the country, members of the academic community, or companies from the defense, logistics and telecommunications sectors. In their initial disclosures on this threat actor, TeamT5 identified three malware ...
- Wizard Spider hackers hire cold callers to scare ransomware victims into paying up
May 18, 2022
Researchers have exposed the inner workings of Wizard Spider, a hacking group that pours its illicit proceeds back into the criminal enterprise. On Wednesday, PRODAFT published the results of an investigation into Wizard Spider, believed to either be or be associated with the Grim Spider and Lunar Spider hacking groups. According to the cybersecurity firm, Wizard Spider, ...
- FBI: North Korea’s tech workers are posing as freelance developers, helping hackers
May 17, 2022
Skilled software and mobile app developers from North Korea are posing as US-based remote workers to land contract work as developers in US and European tech and crypto firms. The warning comes in a new joint advisory from The US Department of State, the US Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ...
- Iran-linked Cobalt Mirage extracts money, info from US orgs – report
May 13, 2022
The Iran-linked Cobalt Mirage crew is running attacks against America for both financial gain and for cyber-espionage purposes, according to Secureworks’ threat intelligence team. The cybercriminal gang has been around since June 2020, and its most recent activities have been put into two categories. One, using ransomware to extort money, as illustrated by a strike in ...
