Advanced Persistent Threat


NEWS 
  • An overview of targeted attacks and APTs on Linux

    September 10, 2020

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot has been written about targeted attacks on Windows systems. Windows is, due to its popularity, the platform for which we discover most APT attack tools. At the same time, there’s a widely held opinion that Linux is a secure-by-default operating system that isn’t susceptible to malicious code. It’s certainly true that ...

  • Transparent Tribe: Evolution analysis, part 2

    August 26, 2020

    Transparent Tribe, also known as PROJECTM or MYTHIC LEOPARD, is a highly prolific group whose activities can be traced as far back as 2013. In the last four years, this APT group has never taken time off. They continue to hit their targets, which typically are Indian military and government personnel. This is the second of ...

  • Lazarus group strikes cryptocurrency firm through LinkedIn job adverts

    August 25, 2020

    The Lazarus group is on the hunt for cryptocurrency once more and has now launched a targeted attack against a crypto organization by exploiting the human element of the corporate chain. On Tuesday, cybersecurity researchers from F-Secure said the cryptocurrency organization is one of the latest victims in a global campaign which has targeted businesses in ...

  • Transparent Tribe: Evolution analysis, part 1

    August 20, 2020

    Transparent Tribe, also known as PROJECTM and MYTHIC LEOPARD, is a highly prolific group whose activities can be traced as far back as 2013. Proofpoint published a very good article about them in 2016, and since that day, we have kept an eye on the group. We have periodically reported their activities through our APT ...

  • Threat Recap: Darkside, Crysis, Negasteal, Coinminer

    August 19, 2020

    In the past few weeks, we have spotted notable developments for different types of threats. For ransomware, a new family named Darkside surfaced, while operators behind Crysis/Dharma released a hacking toolkit. For messaging threats, a targeted email campaign was used to propagate Negasteal/Agent Tesla. Finally, for fileless threats, a coinminer was seen bundled with legitimate applications. Read ...

  • US govt exposes new North Korean BLINDINGCAN backdoor malware

    August 19, 2020

    U.S. government agencies today published a malware analysis report exposing information on a remote access trojan (RAT) malware used by North Korean hackers in attacks targeting government contractors. The malware was identified by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and is known as known BLINDINGCAN. The trojan was attributed ...

  • FBI and NSA expose new Linux malware Drovorub, used by Russian state hackers

    August 13, 2020

    The FBI and NSA have published today a joint security alert containing details about a new strain of Linux malware that the two agencies say was developed and deployed in real-world attacks by Russia’s military hackers. The two agencies say Russian hackers used the malware, named Drovorub, was to plant backdoors inside hacked networks. Based on evidence ...

  • CactusPete APT group’s updated Bisonal backdoor

    August 13, 2020

    CactusPete (also known as Karma Panda or Tonto Team) is an APT group that has been publicly known since at least 2013. Some of the group’s activities have been previously described in public by multiple sources. We have been investigating and privately reporting on this group’s activity for years as well. Historically, their activity has ...

  • Linux Spyware Stack Ties Together 5 Chinese APTs

    August 5, 2020

    A stack of Linux backdoor malware used for espionage, compiled dynamically and customizable to specific targets, is being used as a shared resource by five different Chinese-language APT groups, according to researchers. According to an analysis from BlackBerry released at Black Hat 2020 on Wednesday, those five groups have turned out to all be splinters of ...

  • Iranian hacker group becomes first known APT to weaponize DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH)

    August 4, 2020

    An Iranian hacking group known as Oilrig has become the first publicly known threat actor to incorporate the DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol in its attacks. Speaking in a webinar last week, Vincente Diaz, a malware analyst for antivirus maker Kaspersky, said the change happened in May this year when Oilrig added a new tool to its hacking ...