Advanced Persistent Threat


NEWS 
  • Chinese APT Abuses VSCode to Target Government in Asia

    September 6, 2024

    Unit 42 researchers recently found that Stately Taurus abused the popular Visual Studio Code software in espionage operations targeting government entities in Southeast Asia. Stately Taurus is a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group that carries out cyberespionage attacks. This threat actor used Visual Studio Code’s embedded reverse shell feature to gain a foothold in target ...

  • Tropic Trooper spies on government entities in the Middle East

    September 5, 2024

    Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy and Pirate Panda) is an APT group active since 2011. This group has traditionally targeted sectors such as government, healthcare, transportation and high-tech industries in Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong. Kaspersky recent investigation has revealed that in 2024 they conducted persistent campaigns targeting a government entity in the Middle ...

  • BlindEagle flying high in Latin America

    August 19, 2024

    BlindEagle, also known as “APT-C-36”, is an APT actor recognized for employing straightforward yet impactful attack techniques and methodologies. The group is known for their persistent campaigns targeting entities and individuals in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Panama and other countries in Latin America. They have been targeting entities in multiple sectors, including governmental institutions, financial companies, energy ...

  • A Deep Dive into a New ValleyRAT Campaign Targeting Chinese Speakers

    August 15, 2024

    FortiGuard Labs recently encountered an ongoing ValleyRAT campaign specifically targeting Chinese speakers. This malware has historically targeted e-commerce, finance, sales, and management enterprises. ValleyRAT is a multi-stage malware that utilizes diverse techniques to monitor and control its victims and deploy arbitrary plugins to cause further damage. Another noteworthy characteristic of this malware is its heavy usage ...

  • EastWind campaign: new CloudSorcerer attacks on government organizations in Russia

    August 14, 2024

    In late July 2024, we detected a series of ongoing targeted cyberattacks on dozens of computers at Russian government organizations and IT companies. The threat actors infected devices using phishing emails with malicious shortcut attachments. These shortcuts were used to deliver malware that received commands via the Dropbox cloud service. Attackers used this malware to download ...

  • Chinese cyber attack sparks alert over six year old MS vuln

    August 5, 2024

    The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a Microsoft vulnerability dating back to 2018 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalogue after evidence emerged that it is being used in an attack chain by the China-backed APT41 advanced persistent threat group. CVE-2018-0824 was first addressed by Microsoft in the May 2018 Patch ...

  • Operation Giant Financial Storm Under Circuit Breaker Orders

    August 2, 2024

    Since 2022, the BerBeroka group has been mentioned in every annual report released by the QiAnXin Threat Intelligence Center. The group was disclosed by QiAnXin friendly company Trend Micro. QiAnXin researchers have continued to track it under this name after merging internal groups. In fact, BerBeroka is the same as group such as DRBControl and TAG33 . ...

  • Fighting Ursa Luring Targets With Car for Sale

    August 2, 2024

    A Russian threat actor Palo Alto Unit 42 track as Fighting Ursa advertised a car for sale as a lure to distribute HeadLace backdoor malware. The campaign likely targeted diplomats and began as early as March 2024. Fighting Ursa (aka APT28, Fancy Bear and Sofacy) has been associated with Russian military intelligence and classified as an ...

  • Onyx Sleet uses array of malware to gather intelligence for North Korea

    July 25, 2024

    On July 25, 2024, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted an individual linked to the North Korean threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Onyx Sleet. Microsoft Threat Intelligence collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in tracking activity associated with Onyx Sleet. Microsoft will continue to closely monitor Onyx Sleet’s activity to assess ...

  • APT41 Has Arisen From the DUST

    July 18, 2024

    Recently, Mandiant became aware of an APT41 intrusion where the malicious actor deployed a combination of ANTSWORD and BLUEBEAM web shells for persistence. These web shells were identified on a Tomcat Apache Manager server and active since at least 2023. APT41 utilized these web shells to execute certutil.exe to download the DUSTPAN dropper to stealthily load ...