- Over the Kazuar’s nest: Cracking down on a freshly hatched backdoor used by Pensive Ursa
October 31, 2023
While tracking the evolution of Pensive Ursa (aka Turla, Uroburos), Unit 42 researchers came across a new, upgraded variant of Kazuar. Not only is Kazuar another name for the enormous and dangerous cassowary bird, Kazuar is an advanced and stealthy .NET backdoor that Pensive Ursa usually uses as a second stage payload. Pensive Ursa is a ...
- From Albania to the Middle East: The Scarred Manticore is listening
October 31, 2023
Check Point Research, in collaboration with Sygnia’s Incident Response Team, has been tracking and responding to the activities of Scarred Manticore, an Iranian nation-state threat actor that primarily targets government and telecommunication sectors in the Middle East. Scarred Manticore, linked to the prolific Iranian actor OilRig (a.k.a APT34, EUROPIUM, Hazel Sandstorm), has persistently pursued high-profile organizations, ...
- A cascade of compromise: unveiling Lazarus’ new campaign
October 27, 2023
Earlier this year, a software vendor was compromised by the Lazarus malware delivered through unpatched legitimate software. What’s remarkable is that these software vulnerabilities were not new, and despite warnings and patches from the vendor, many of the vendor’s systems continued to use the flawed software, allowing the threat actor to exploit them. Upon further investigation, ...
- Crambus: New Campaign Targets Middle Eastern Government
October 19, 2023
The Iranian Crambus espionage group (aka OilRig, APT34) staged an eight-month-long intrusion against a government in the Middle East between February and September 2023. During the compromise, the attackers stole files and passwords and, in one case, installed a PowerShell backdoor (dubbed PowerExchange) that was used to monitor incoming mails sent from an Exchange Server ...
- Multiple North Korean threat actors exploiting the TeamCity CVE-2023-42793 vulnerability
October 18, 2023
Since early October 2023, Microsoft has observed two North Korean nation-state threat actors – Diamond Sleet and Onyx Sleet – exploiting CVE-2023-42793, a remote-code execution vulnerability affecting multiple versions of JetBrains TeamCity server. TeamCity is a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) application used by organizations for DevOps and other software development activities. In past operations, Diamond ...
- Analyzing cyber activity surrounding the conflict in the Middle East
October 17, 2023
In light of the ongoing escalation in the Middle East, Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence unit has been monitoring the activity of different threat actors involved in the conflict in cyber space. As they noted in the Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2022/2023 report, any rise in political tensions or the outbreak of hostilities is almost always accompanied by ...
- Kaspersky uncovers APT campaign targeting APAC government entities
October 17, 2023
Kaspersky researchers have discovered a persistent campaign compromising a specific type of secure USB drive used to provide encryption for safe data storage. Dubbed “TetrisPhantom,” this espionage effort targets government entities in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC), and shows no discernible overlap with any known threat actor. These and other findings are detailed in Kaspersky’s new ...
- ToddyCat: Keep calm and check logs
October 12, 2023
ToddyCat is an advanced APT actor that Kaspersky researchers described in a previous publication last year. The group started its activities in December 2020 and has been responsible for multiple sets of attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia. Kaspersky first publication was focused on their main tools, Ninja Trojan and Samurai Backdoor, and ...
- Stayin’ Alive – targeted attacks against telecoms and government ministries in Asia
October 11, 2023
In the last few months, Check Point Research has been tracking “Stayin’ Alive”, an ongoing campaign that has been active since at least 2021. The campaign operates in Asia, primarily targeting the Telecom industry, as well as government organizations. The “Stayin’ Alive” campaign consists of mostly downloaders and loaders, some of which are used as ...
- Grayling: Previously unseen threat actor targets multiple organizations in Taiwan
October 10, 2023
A previously unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) group used custom malware and multiple publicly available tools to target a number of organizations in the manufacturing, IT, and biomedical sectors in Taiwan. A government agency located in the Pacific Islands, as well as organizations in Vietnam and the U.S., also appear to have been hit as ...