Advanced Persistent Threat


NEWS 
  • APT-C-36 Updates Its Spam Campaign Against South American Entities With Commodity RATs

    September 13, 2021

    In 2019, Trend Micro researchers wrote a blog entry about a threat actor, likely based in Colombia, targeting entities in Colombia and other South American countries with spam emails. This threat actor is sometimes referred to as APT-C-36 or Blind Eagle. Since then, we have continued tracking this threat actor. In this blog entry, we ...

  • US Media, Retailers Targeted by New SparklingGoblin APT

    August 25, 2021

    An emerging international cybergang is broadening its targets to include North American media firms, universities and one computer retailer. The advanced persistent threat (APT) group is new, according to researchers who dubbed it SparklingGoblin. Also new is a novel backdoor technique, called SideWalk, used by the APT to penetrate cybersecurity defenses. SparklingGoblin, according to ESET researchers ...

  • APT41 Resurfaces as Earth Baku With New Cyberespionage Campaign

    August 24, 2021

    Trend Micro researchers have uncovered a cyberespionage campaign being perpetrated by Earth Baku, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group with a known history of carrying out cyberattacks under the alias APT41. This is not the group’s first foray into cyberespionage, and its long list of past cybercrimes also includes ransomware and cryptocurrency mining attacks. Earth Baku ...

  • The Next Disruptive ICS Attacker: An Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)?

    August 18, 2021

    No discussion on ICS attacks could be complete without talking about what some would call, ‘the elephant in the room.’ Critical infrastructure has always been a target for warfare, and modern ICS are no exception. Several high-profile ICS disruptions have in fact been attributed to malicious hackers working at the behest of a military or intelligence ...

  • Govt hackers impersonate HR employees to hit Israeli targets

    August 17, 2021

    Hackers associated with the Iranian government have focused attack efforts on IT and communication companies in Israel, likely in an attempt to pivot to their real targets. The campaigns have been attributed to the Iranian APT group known as Lyceum, Hexane, and Siamesekitten, running espionage campaigns since at least 2018. In multiple attacks detected in May and ...

  • Confucius Uses Pegasus Spyware-related Lures to Target Pakistani Military

    August 17, 2021

    While investigating the Confucius threat actor, we found a recent spear phishing campaign that utilizes Pegasus spyware-related lures to entice victims into opening a malicious document downloading a file stealer. The NSO Group’s spyware spurred a collaborative investigation that found that it was being used to target high-ranking individuals in 11 different countries. In this blog ...

  • ‘DeadRinger’ Targeted Exchange Servers Long Before Discovery

    August 4, 2021

    Threat actors linked to China exploited the notorious Microsoft Exchange ProxyLogon vulnerabilities long before they were publicly disclosed, in attacks against telecommunications companies aimed at stealing sensitive customer data and maintaining network persistence, researchers have found. Researchers from Cybereason have been tracking multiple cyberespionage campaigns – collectively dubbed “DeadRinger” – since 2017, reporting initially on findings ...

  • Here’s 30 servers Russian intelligence uses to fling malware at the West, beams RiskIQ

    July 30, 2021

    Details of 30 servers thought to be used by Russia’s SVR spy agency (aka APT29) as part of its ongoing campaigns to steal Western intellectual property were made public today by RiskIQ. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service “is actively serving malware (WellMess, WellMail) previously used in espionage campaigns targeting COVID-19 research in the UK, US, and Canada,” ...

  • DOJ: SolarWinds hackers breached emails from 27 US Attorneys’ offices

    July 30, 2021

    The US Department of Justice says that the Microsoft Office 365 email accounts of employees at 27 US Attorneys’ offices were breached by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) during the SolarWinds global hacking spree. “The APT is believed to have access to compromised accounts from approximately May 7 to December 27, 2020,” the DOJ said ...

  • APT trends report Q2 2021

    July 29, 2021

    Investigating the recent Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities Kaspersky and their colleagues from AMR found an attacker deploying a previously unknown backdoor, “FourteenHi”, in a campaign that we dubbed ExCone, active since mid-March. During our investigation we revealed multiple tools and variants of FourteenHi, configured with infrastructure that FireEye reported as being related to the UNC2643 activity ...