- UNC1860 and the Temple of Oats: Iran’s Hidden Hand in Middle Eastern Networks
September 19, 2024
UNC1860 is a persistent and opportunistic Iranian state-sponsored threat actor that is likely affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). A key feature of UNC1860 is its collection of specialized tooling and passive backdoors that Mandiant believes supports several objectives, including its role as a probable initial access provider and its ability to gain ...
- 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 ...
- State-backed attackers and commercial surveillance vendors repeatedly use the same exploits
August 29, 2024
Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) observed multiple in-the-wild exploit campaigns, between November 2023 and July 2024, delivered from a watering hole attack on Mongolian government websites. The campaigns first delivered an iOS WebKit exploit affecting iOS versions older than 16.6.1 and then later, a Chrome exploit chain against Android users running versions from m121 to m123. ...
- 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 ...
- An investigation into the tools and methods used by the Higaisa group
August 19, 2024
In March 2020 specialists from the PT Expert Security Center conducted an analysis on the activities of the APT group Higaisa. This group was first studied by security analysts at Tencent in November 2019. In that analysis, Tencent specialists reached the conclusion that Higaisa has its origins in South Korea. The group, which is still active ...
- 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 . ...