- Mac Backdoor Linked to Lazarus Targets Korean Users
November 20, 2019
Criminal interest in MacOS continues to grow, with malware authors churning out more threats that target users of the popular OS. Case in point: A new variant of a Mac backdoor (detected by Trend Micro as Backdoor.MacOS.NUKESPED.A) attributed to the cybercriminal group Lazarus, which was observed targeting Korean users with a macro-embedded Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Similarities to an ...
- APT33 Mounts Focused, Highly Targeted Botnet Attacks Against U.S. Victims
November 14, 2019
The Iran-linked, espionage-focused advanced threat group known as APT33 has been spotted using more than a dozen obfuscated botnets to carry out narrowly targeted attacks against government and academic targets in the Middle East, the U.S. and Asia. Each botnet, linked to its own command-and-control (C2) server, comprises a small group of up to a dozen ...
- Kaspersky identifies mysterious APT mentioned in 2017 Shadow Brokers leak
November 5, 2019
In 2017, a mysterious group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers published online a data dump called “Lost in Translation.” The data dump — believed to have been obtained from the US National Security Agency (NSA) — contained a collection of exploits and hacking tools, including the now-infamous EternalBlue, the exploit that provided the steam ...
- Calypso APT Emerges from the Shadows to Target Governments
October 31, 2019
A newly discovered APT group, dubbed Calypso after a custom malware RAT that it uses, has been targeting state institutions in six different countries since 2016. Government organizations in India (34 percent), Brazil and Kazakhstan (18 percent respectively), Russia and Thailand (12 percent respectively) and Turkey (6 percent) have all been successfully infiltrated at some point, ...
- Mobile Malware and APT Espionage: Prolific, Pervasive, and Cross-Platform
October 23, 2019
Until now, the public’s exposure to mobile phone malware has been dominated by news about the privately run “greyware” vendors who have made headlines for being purveyors of spyware tools. These commercial smartphone spyware tools reportedly end up in the hands of autocrats who use it to hamper free speech, quash dissent, or worse. Consumers ...
- Russian APT Turla targets 35 countries on the back of Iranian infrastructure
October 21, 2019
Dozens of countries have become embroiled in a state-backed spat between Russian and Iranian hacking groups, security agencies have warned. On Monday, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), together with the US National Security Agency (NSA), published an advisory warning that military establishments, government departments, scientific organizations, and universities are among victims of an ongoing hacking campaign ...
- Tortoiseshell Group Targets IT Providers in Saudi Arabia in Probable Supply Chain Attacks
October 18, 2019
Previously undocumented group hits IT providers in the Middle East. A previously undocumented attack group is using both custom and off-the-shelf malware to target IT providers in Saudi Arabia in what appear to be supply chain attacks with the end goal of compromising the IT providers’ customers. The group, which we are calling Tortoiseshell, has been active ...
- APT trends report Q3 2019
October 16, 2019
For more than two 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 ...
- Report: Nation state hackers and cyber criminals are spoofing each other
October 4, 2019
Nation-state hackers and cyber criminals are increasingly impersonating each other to try and hide their tracks as part of advanced attack techniques says Optiv Security in its 2019 Cyber Threat Intelligence Estimate report. The top industries being targeted are retail, healthcare, government and financial institutions. Cryptojacking and ransomware are new exploits that join the traditional list of computer ...
- PKPLUG: Chinese Cyber Espionage Group Attacking Asia
October 3, 2019
For three years, Unit 42 has tracked a set of cyber espionage attack campaigns across Asia, which used a mix of publicly available and custom malware. Unit 42 created the moniker “PKPLUG” for the threat actor group, or groups, behind these and other documented attacks referenced later in this report. We say group or groups ...