- France warns of APT31 cyberspies targeting French organizations
July 21, 2021
Today, the French national cyber-security agency warned of an ongoing series of attacks against a large number of French organizations coordinated by the Chinese-backed APT31 hacking group. “It appears from our investigations that the threat actor uses a network of compromised home routers as operational relay boxes in order to perform stealth reconnaissance as well as ...
- StrongPity APT Group Deploys Android Malware for the First Time
July 21, 2021
We recently conducted an investigation into a malicious Android malware sample, which we believe can be attributed to the StrongPity APT group, that was posted on the Syrian e-Gov website. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the group has been publicly observed using malicious Android applications as part of ...
- Safeguarding Critical Infrastructure Against Threats From The People’s Republic Of China
July 19, 2021
As today’s announcement from the White House indicates, the cyber threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to evolve and poses a real risk to the nation’s critical infrastructure, as well as businesses and organization of all sizes at home and around the world. CISA regularly shares actionable information to help security professionals ...
- CISA: Chinese State-Sponsored Cyber Operations – Observed TTPs
July 19, 2021
The National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assess that People’s Republic of China state-sponsored malicious cyber activity is a major threat to U.S. and Allied cyberspace assets. Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors aggressively target U.S. and allied political, economic, military, educational, and critical infrastructure (CI) personnel and ...
- UK and White House blame China for Microsoft Exchange Server hack
July 19, 2021
The UK government has formally laid the blame for the Microsoft Exchange Server cyberattack at the feet of China. On Monday, the government joined others — including the victim company itself, Microsoft — in claiming the cyberattack was the work of Chinese state-sponsored hackers, namely Hafnium, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group. The United States, NATO, and ...
- LuminousMoth APT: Sweeping attacks for the chosen few
July 14, 2021
handpick a set of targets that in turn are handled with almost surgical precision, with infection vectors, malicious implants and payloads being tailored to the victims’ identities or environment. It’s not often we observe a large-scale attack conducted by actors fitting this profile, usually due to such attacks being noisy, and thus putting the underlying ...
- The Underground Exploit Market and the Importance of Virtual Patching
July 13, 2021
Over the past two calendar years, we conducted research on the underground exploit market to learn more about the life cycle of exploits, the kinds of buyers and sellers who transact, and the business models that are in effect in the underground. We detail our findings in our research paper “The Rise and Imminent Fall ...
- SolarWinds patches critical Serv-U vulnerability exploited in the wild
July 12, 2021
SolarWinds is urging customers to patch a Serv-U remote code execution vulnerability exploited in the wild by “a single threat actor” in attacks targeting a limited number of customers. “Microsoft has provided evidence of limited, targeted customer impact, though SolarWinds does not currently have an estimate of how many customers may be directly affected by the ...
- Lazarus Targets Job-Seeking Engineers with Malicious Documents
July 9, 2021
The notorious Lazarus advanced persistent threat (APT) group has been identified as the cybergang behind a campaign spreading malicious documents to job-seeking engineers. The ploy involves impersonating defense contractors seeking job candidates. Researchers have been tracking Lazarus activity for months with engineering targets in the United States and Europe, according to a report published online by ...
- Oil & Gas Targeted in Year-Long Cyber-Espionage Campaign
July 8, 2021
A sophisticated campaign targeting large international companies in the oil and gas sector has been underway for more than a year, researchers said, spreading common remote access trojans (RATs) for cyber-espionage purposes. According to Intezer analysis, spear-phishing emails with malicious attachments are used to drop various RATs on infected machines, including Agent Tesla, AZORult, Formbook, Loki ...
- NSA, Partners Release Cybersecurity Advisory on Brute Force Global Cyber Campaign
July 1, 2021
FORT MEADE, Md. – The National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) released a Cybersecurity Advisory today exposing malicious cyber activities by Russian military intelligence against U.S. and global organizations, starting from mid-2019 and likely ongoing. This advisory is ...
- Cobalt Strike Usage Explodes Among Cybercrooks
June 29, 2021
The use of Cobalt Strike – the legitimate, commercially available tool used by network penetration testers – by cybercrooks has shot through the roof, according to Proofpoint researchers, who say that the tool has now “gone fully mainstream in the crimeware world.” The researchers have tracked a year-over-year increase of 161 percent in the number of ...
- Russian hackers had months-long access to Denmark’s central bank
June 29, 2021
Russian state hackers compromised Denmark’s central bank (Danmarks Nationalbank) and planted malware that gave them access to the network for more than half a year without being detected. The breach was part of the SolarWinds cyber espionage campaign last year that the U.S. attributed to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, through its hacking division ...
- Nobelium hackers accessed Microsoft customer support tools
June 26, 2021
Microsoft says they have discovered new attacks conducted by the Russian state-sponsored Nobelium hacking group, including a hacked Microsoft support agent’s computer that exposed customer’s subscription information. Nobelium is Microsoft’s name for a state-sponsored hacking group believed to be operating out of Russia responsible for the SolarWinds supply-chain attacks. In a new blog post published Friday night, ...
- North Korean Kimsuky hacking group allegedly behind breach of South Korean nuclear institute
June 21, 2021
A North Korean hacking group with a history of high-profile attacks against South Korea allegedly breached the network of South Korea’s state-run nuclear research institute last month. Representative Ha Tae-keung of the People Power Party, South Korea’s main opposition party, claimed 13 unauthorised IP addresses accessed the internal network of Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) ...
- Ferocious Kitten: 6 years of covert surveillance in Iran
June 16, 2021
Ferocious Kitten is an APT group that since at least 2015 has been targeting Persian-speaking individuals who appear to be based in Iran. Although it has been active for a long time, the group has mostly operated under the radar and has not been covered by security researchers to the best of our knowledge. It ...
- Gelsemium APT was behind February compromise of NoxPlayer
June 9, 2021
ESET has published details of an advanced persistent threat (APT) crew that appears to have deployed recent supply chain attack methods against targets including “electronics manufacturers,” although it didn’t specify which. “Victims of its campaigns are located in East Asia as well as the Middle East and include governments, religious organizations, electronics manufacturers and universities,” said ...
- Novel ‘Victory’ Backdoor Spotted in Chinese APT Campaign
June 7, 2021
An ongoing surveillance operation has been uncovered that targets a Southeast Asian government, researchers said – using a previously unknown espionage malware. According to Check Point Research, the attack involves spear-phishing emails with malicious Word documents to gain initial access, along with the exploitation of older, known Microsoft Office security vulnerabilities. But most notable, researchers said, ...
- New SkinnyBoy malware used by Russian hackers to breach sensitive orgs
June 3, 2021
Security researchers have discovered a new piece of malware called SkinnyBoy that was used in spear-phishing campaigns attributed to Russian-speaking hacking group APT28. The threat actor, also known as Fancy Bear, Sednit, Sofacy, Strontium, or PwnStorm, used SkinnyBoy in attacks targeting military and government institutions earlier this year. SkinnyBoy is intended for an intermediary stage of the ...
- Email spoofing: how attackers impersonate legitimate senders
June 3, 2021
In a nutshell, email spoofing is the creation of fake emails that seem legitimate. This article analyzes the spoofing of email addresses through changing the From header, which provides information about the sender’s name and address. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the main email transmission protocol in TCP/IP networks) offers no protection against spoofing, so it ...
