- Chinese Playful Taurus Activity in Iran
January 18, 2023
Playful Taurus, also known as APT15, BackdoorDiplomacy, Vixen Panda, KeChang and NICKEL, is a Chinese advanced persistent threat group that routinely conducts cyber espionage campaigns. The group has been active since at least 2010 and has historically targeted government and diplomatic entities across North and South America, Africa and the Middle East. In June 2021, ESET ...
- Earth Bogle: Campaigns Target the Middle East with Geopolitical Lures
January 17, 2023
While threat hunting, Trend Micro researchers found an active campaign using Middle Eastern geopolitical themes as a lure to target potential victims in the Middle East and Africa. In this campaign researchers have labeled Earth Bogle, the threat actor uses public cloud storage services such as files.fm and failiem.lv to host malware, while compromised web ...
- Bluebottle: Campaign Hits Banks in French-speaking Countries in Africa
January 5, 2023
Bluebottle, a cyber-crime group that specializes in targeted attacks against the financial sector, is continuing to mount attacks on banks in Francophone countries. The group makes extensive use of living off the land, dual-use tools, and commodity malware, with no custom malware deployed in this campaign. The activity observed by Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, ...
- Russia’s Trident Ursa (aka Gamaredon APT) Cyber Conflict Operations Unwavering Since Invasion of Ukraine
December 20, 2022
Since Unit 42 last blog in early February covering the advanced persistent threat (APT) group Trident Ursa (aka Gamaredon, UAC-0010, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm), Ukraine and its cyber domain has faced ever-increasing threats from Russia. Trident Ursa is a group attributed by the Security Service of Ukraine to Russia’s Federal Security Service. As the conflict has continued ...
- Iran-linked Charming Kitten espionage gang bares claws to pollies, power orgs
December 15, 2022
An Iranian cyber espionage gang with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has learned new methods and phishing techniques, and aimed them at a wider set of targets – including politicians, government officials, critical infrastructure and medical researchers – according to email security vendor Proofpoint. Over the past two years, the threat actor group that ...
- Hackers target Japanese politicians with new MirrorStealer malware
December 15, 2022
A hacking group tracked as MirrorFace has been targeting Japanese politicians for weeks before the House of Councilors election in July 2022, using a previously undocumented credentials stealer named ‘MirrorStealer.’ The campaign was discovered by ESET, whose analysts report they could piece together evidence thanks to operational mistakes made by the hackers that left traces behind. The ...
- DeathStalker targets legal entities with new Janicab variant
December 8, 2022
“Dosen’t matter how long you wait for the bus on a rainy day, X seconds was enough to get wet?” Just to clarify, the above subheading isn’t a normal quote, but a message that Janicab malware attempted to decode in its newest use of YouTube dead-drop resolvers (DDRs). While hunting for less common Deathstalker intrusions that use ...
- Internet Explorer 0-day exploited by North Korean actor APT37
December 7, 2022
To protect our users, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) routinely hunts for 0-day vulnerabilities exploited in-the-wild. This blog will describe a 0-day vulnerability, discovered by TAG in late October 2022, embedded in malicious documents and used to target users in South Korea. TAG attributes this activity to a group of North Korean government-backed actors known ...
- Always Another Secret: Lifting the Haze on China-nexus Espionage in Southeast Asia
November 28, 2022
Mandiant Managed Defense recently identified cyber espionage activity that heavily leverages USB devices as an initial infection vector and concentrates on the Philippines. Mandiant tracks this activity as UNC4191 and we assess it has a China nexus. UNC4191 operations have affected a range of public and private sector entities primarily in Southeast Asia and extending to ...
- New ransomware attacks in Ukraine linked to Russian Sandworm hackers
November 25, 2022
New ransomware attacks targeting organizations in Ukraine first detected this Monday have been linked to the notorious Russian military threat group Sandworm. Slovak software company ESET who first spotted this wave of attacks, says the ransomware they named RansomBoggs has been found on the networks of multiple Ukrainian organizations. “While the malware written in .NET is new, ...