- Operation TunnelSnake
May 6, 2021
Formerly unknown rootkit used to secretly control networks of regional organizations Windows rootkits, especially those operating in kernel space, are pieces of malware infamous for their near absolute power in the operating system. Usually deployed as drivers, such implants have high privileges in the system, allowing them to intercept and potentially tamper with core I/O operations ...
- The UNC2529 Triple Double: A Trifecta Phishing Campaign
May 4, 2021
In December 2020, Mandiant observed a widespread, global phishing campaign targeting numerous organizations across an array of industries. Mandiant tracks this threat actor as UNC2529. Based on the considerable infrastructure employed, tailored phishing lures and the professionally coded sophistication of the malware, this threat actor appears experienced and well resourced. This blog post will discuss the ...
- UNC2447 SOMBRAT and FIVEHANDS Ransomware: A Sophisticated Financial Threat
April 29, 2021
Mandiant has observed an aggressive financially motivated group, UNC2447, exploiting one SonicWall VPN zero-day vulnerability prior to a patch being available and deploying sophisticated malware previously reported by other vendors as SOMBRAT. Mandiant has linked the use of SOMBRAT to the deployment of ransomware, which has not been previously reported publicly. UNC2447 monetizes intrusions by extorting ...
- Cyberspies target military organizations with new Nebulae backdoor
April 28, 2021
A Chinese-speaking threat actor has deployed a new backdoor in multiple cyber-espionage operations spanning roughly two years and targeting military organizations from Southeast Asia. For at least a decade, the hacking group known as Naikon has actively spied on organizations in countries around the South China Sea, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, for ...
- Ghostwriter Update: Cyber Espionage Group UNC1151 Likely Conducts Ghostwriter Influence Activity
April 28, 2021
In July 2020, Mandiant Threat Intelligence released a public report detailing an ongoing influence campaign we named “Ghostwriter.” Ghostwriter is a cyber-enabled influence campaign which primarily targets audiences in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland and promotes narratives critical of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) presence in Eastern Europe. Since releasing our public report, we have ...
- APT trends report Q1 2021
April 27, 2021
For four years, the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky has been publishing quarterly summaries of advanced persistent threat (APT) activity. The summaries are based on our threat intelligence research and provide a representative snapshot of what we have published and discussed in greater detail in our private APT reports. They are designed ...
- Lazarus hacking group now hides payloads in BMP image files
April 20, 2021
The Lazarus group has tweaked its loader obfuscation techniques by abusing image files in a recent phishing campaign. Lazarus is a state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) group from North Korea. Known as one of the most prolific and sophisticated APTs out there, Lazarus has been in operation for over a decade and is considered responsible for worldwide ...
- NSA: 5 Security Bugs Under Active Nation-State Cyberattack
April 16, 2021
The Feds are warning that nation-state actors are once again after U.S. assets, this time in a spate of cyberattacks that exploit five vulnerabilities that affect VPN solutions, collaboration-suite software and virtualization technologies. According to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which issued an alert Thursday, the advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as APT29 (a.k.a. ...
- It was Russia wot did it: SolarWinds hack was done by Kremlin’s APT29 crew, say UK and US
April 15, 2021
Russia’s infamous APT 29, aka Cozy Bear, was behind the SolarWinds Orion attack, the US and UK governments said today as America slapped sanctions on Russian infosec companies as well as expelling diplomats from that country’s US embassy. One of the sanctioned companies is Positive Technologies, familiar in the West for, among other things, in-depth research ...
- Zero-day vulnerability in Desktop Window Manager (CVE-2021-28310) used in the wild
April 13, 2021
While analyzing the CVE-2021-1732 exploit originally discovered by the DBAPPSecurity Threat Intelligence Center and used by the BITTER APT group, we discovered another zero-day exploit we believe is linked to the same actor. We reported this new exploit to Microsoft in February and after confirmation that it is indeed a zero-day, it received the designation ...