Beyond the Surface: the evolution and expansion of the SideWinder APT group


SideWinder, aka T-APT-04 or RattleSnake, is one of the most prolific APT groups that began its activities in 2012 and was first publicly mentioned by us in 2018. Over the years, the group has launched attacks against high-profile entities in South and Southeast Asia. Its primary targets have been military and government entities in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China and Nepal.

Over the years, SideWinder has carried out an impressive number of attacks and its activities have been extensively described in various analyses and reports published by different researchers and vendors, one of the latest of which was released at the end of July 2024. The group may be perceived as a low-skilled actor due to the use of public exploits, malicious LNK files and scripts as infection vectors, and the use of public RATs, but their true capabilities only become apparent when you carefully examine the details of their operations.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Canada: Cyber attack hits engineering giant with contracts for military bases, power plants

    March 9, 2023

    A Canadian engineering giant whose work involves critical military, power and transportation infrastructure across the country has been hit with a ransomware attack. Toronto-based Black & McDonald has so far refused to publicly comment on the cyberattack, while the Department of National Defence and other clients of the company have downplayed any impact or damage. Read more… Source: ...

  • Suspected Chinese cyber spies target unpatched SonicWall devices

    March 9, 2023

    Suspected Chinese cyber criminals have zeroed in on unpatched SonicWall gateways and are infecting the devices with credential-stealing malware that persists through firmware upgrades, according to Mandiant. The spyware targets the SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 Series – a gateway device that provides VPN access to remote users. Read more… Source: The Register  

  • Examining Ransomware Payments From a Data-Science Lens

    March 9, 2023

    Ransomware has come a long way since the Internet’s pre-cryptocurrency days. The advent of cryptocurrency was an important turning point in the evolution of this cyberthreat, as malicious actors are now no longer confined to available local or regional payment options when collecting ransom payments. The operation costs and monetization models of a ransomware group can be ...

  • Fortinet warns of new critical unauthenticated RCE vulnerability

    March 8, 2023

    Fortinet has disclosed a “Critical” vulnerability impacting FortiOS and FortiProxy, which allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code or perform denial of service (DoS) on the GUI of vulnerable devices using specially crafted requests. This buffer underflow vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-25610 and has a CVSS v3 score of 9.3, rating it critical. This type ...

  • These DrayTek routers are under actual attack – and there’s no patch

    March 8, 2023

    If you’re still using post-support DrayTek Vigor routers it may be time to junk them, or come up with some other workaround, as a cunning malware variant is setting up shop in the kit. The operators behind the Hiatus malware campaign are hijacking DrayTek Vigor router models 2960 and 3900 powered by MIPS, i386 and Arm-based ...

  • New malware variant has “radio silence” mode to evade detection

    March 7, 2023

    The Sharp Panda cyber-espionage hacking group is targeting high-profile government entities in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia with a new version of the ‘Soul’ malware framework. The particular malware was previously seen in espionage campaigns targeting critical Southeast Asian organizations, attributed to various Chinese APTs. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer