- North Korean Kimsuky hacking group allegedly behind breach of South Korean nuclear institute
June 21, 2021
A North Korean hacking group with a history of high-profile attacks against South Korea allegedly breached the network of South Korea’s state-run nuclear research institute last month. Representative Ha Tae-keung of the People Power Party, South Korea’s main opposition party, claimed 13 unauthorised IP addresses accessed the internal network of Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) ...
- Ferocious Kitten: 6 years of covert surveillance in Iran
June 16, 2021
Ferocious Kitten is an APT group that since at least 2015 has been targeting Persian-speaking individuals who appear to be based in Iran. Although it has been active for a long time, the group has mostly operated under the radar and has not been covered by security researchers to the best of our knowledge. It ...
- Gelsemium APT was behind February compromise of NoxPlayer
June 9, 2021
ESET has published details of an advanced persistent threat (APT) crew that appears to have deployed recent supply chain attack methods against targets including “electronics manufacturers,” although it didn’t specify which. “Victims of its campaigns are located in East Asia as well as the Middle East and include governments, religious organizations, electronics manufacturers and universities,” said ...
- Novel ‘Victory’ Backdoor Spotted in Chinese APT Campaign
June 7, 2021
An ongoing surveillance operation has been uncovered that targets a Southeast Asian government, researchers said – using a previously unknown espionage malware. According to Check Point Research, the attack involves spear-phishing emails with malicious Word documents to gain initial access, along with the exploitation of older, known Microsoft Office security vulnerabilities. But most notable, researchers said, ...
- New SkinnyBoy malware used by Russian hackers to breach sensitive orgs
June 3, 2021
Security researchers have discovered a new piece of malware called SkinnyBoy that was used in spear-phishing campaigns attributed to Russian-speaking hacking group APT28. The threat actor, also known as Fancy Bear, Sednit, Sofacy, Strontium, or PwnStorm, used SkinnyBoy in attacks targeting military and government institutions earlier this year. SkinnyBoy is intended for an intermediary stage of the ...
- Email spoofing: how attackers impersonate legitimate senders
June 3, 2021
In a nutshell, email spoofing is the creation of fake emails that seem legitimate. This article analyzes the spoofing of email addresses through changing the From header, which provides information about the sender’s name and address. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the main email transmission protocol in TCP/IP networks) offers no protection against spoofing, so it ...
- US seizes domains used by APT29 in recent USAID phishing attacks
June 1, 2021
The US Department of Justice has seized two Internet domains used in recent phishing attacks impersonating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to distribute malware and gain access to internal networks. The two domains seized by the DOJ are theyardservicecom and were used to receive data exfiltrated from victims of the targeted phishing ...
- Russian gang behind SolarWinds hack returns with phishing attack disguised as mail from US aid agency
May 28, 2021
Nobelium, the Russia-aligned gang identified as the perpetrators of the supply chain attack on SolarWinds’ Orion software, has struck again, Microsoft vice president Tom Burt in a blogpost Thursday. Burt’s post says the attacks saw Nobelium gain access to accounts on the email marketing service “Constant Contact” operated by The United States Agency for International Development ...
- Re-Checking Your Pulse: Updates on Chinese APT Actors Compromising Pulse Secure VPN Devices
May 27, 2021
Mandiant published detailed results of our investigations into compromised Pulse Secure devices by suspected Chinese espionage operators. This blog post is intended to provide an update on our findings, give additional recommendations to network defenders, and discuss potential implications for U.S.-China strategic relations. Mandiant continues to gather evidence and respond to intrusions involving compromises of Pulse ...
- Elizabethan England has nothing on modern-day Russia
May 26, 2021
The threat landscape is changing. Organizations need to defend against an ever-evolving tranche of threat actors. For a long time, the lines that distinguish state-sponsored and crimeware groups were well-defined. We believe this is no longer the case. In today’s landscape, there are groups that, although their modus operandi (MO) is consistent with crimeware groups, ...