Kaspersky Threat Research has uncovered attacks on educational organizations in Latin America and Africa in which attackers used artificial intelligence to help direct activity inside compromised networks. Researchers traced reconnaissance, credential theft, movement between computers and data collection, including activity that compromised highly privileged administrator accounts.
The attackers used CyberStrikeAI, an open-source penetration-testing framework that combines a command-and-control system with a large language model. In this architecture, a human operator sets objectives, while the model can select tools, generate commands and analyze execution results. An implant installed on the compromised machine executes those commands and returns the results to the attackers’ server. Kaspersky observed the attacks between September and October 2026.
Read more…
Source: Kaspersky
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Nation-state threat actor Mint Sandstorm refines tradecraft to attack high-value targets
April 18, 2023
Over the past several months, Microsoft has observed a mature subgroup of Mint Sandstorm, an Iranian nation-state actor previously tracked as PHOSPHORUS, refining its tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Specifically, this subset has rapidly weaponized N-day vulnerabilities in common enterprise applications and conducted highly-targeted phishing campaigns to quickly and successfully access environments of interest. This Mint ...
- CISA Releases Four Industrial Control Systems Advisories
April 18, 2023
CISA released four Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on April 18, 2023. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS. CISA encourages users and administrators to review the newly released ICS advisories for technical details and mitigations: ICSA-23-108-01 Omron CSCJ Series ICSA-23-108-02 Schneider Electric Easy UPS Online Monitoring Software Read more… Source: U.S. Cybersecurity ...
- State-sponsored campaigns target global network infrastructure
April 18, 2023
Recently, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) released a report on a sustained campaign by a Russian intelligence agency targeting a vulnerability in routers that Cisco had published a patch for in 2017. This campaign, dubbed “Jaguar Tooth,” is an example of a much broader trend of sophisticated adversaries targeting networking infrastructure to advance ...
- New QBot email attacks use PDF and WSF combo to install malware
April 17, 2023
QBot malware is now distributed in phishing campaigns utilizing PDFs and Windows Script Files (WSF) to infect Windows devices. Qbot (aka QakBot) is a former banking trojan that evolved into malware that provides initial access to corporate networks for other threat actors. This initial access is done by dropping additional payloads, such as Cobalt Strike, Brute ...
- Update now: Google emits emergency fix for zero-day Chrome vulnerability
April 17, 2023
Google on Friday released an emergency update for Chrome to address a zero-day security flaw. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-2033, can be exploited by a malicious webpage to run arbitrary code in the browser. Thus, surfing to a bad website with a vulnerable browser could lead to your device being hijacked. Exploit code for this hole ...
- Hackers abuse Google Command and Control red team tool in attacks
April 17, 2023
The Chinese state-sponsored hacking group APT41 was found abusing the GC2 (Google Command and Control) red teaming tool in data theft attacks against a Taiwanese media and an Italian job search company. APT 41, also known as HOODOO, is a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known to target a wide range of industries in the USA, Asia, ...