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
Related:
- Mitigating large-scale credential attacks
August 18, 2026
Identity has effectively become the new perimeter, where cybercriminals are increasingly choosing to log in rather than break in. To accomplish this, attackers frequently gather previously leaked username and password pairs. Gathering these credentials can then allow them to pivot to password spraying against services exposed to the internet, gaining credentials for other products and ...
- Hunting MacSync Stealer infrastructure through behavioral pivots
August 18, 2026
MacSync Stealer is a macOS-focused information stealer that relies on changing infrastructure to deliver payloads, communicate with compromised devices, and exfiltrate data. Earlier reporting by RST Cloud identified the threat through a limited set of domains and documented rapid command-and-control (C2) replacement after public disclosure. Microsoft Defender Experts expanded that view by correlating recurring endpoints and network behaviors ...
- ‘Unprecedented’ number of Apple users received recent spyware alert, say investigators
August 17, 2026
An unprecedented number of Apple customers have reported receiving a recent threat notification alerting them to suspected spyware attacks targeting their devices, according to experts who investigate these types of incidents. Several people publicly and privately reported receiving Apple’s spyware alerts over the weekend, after Apple sent out a new wave of notifications on Friday alerting customers in ...
- Operation ASTERIX: Anatomy of a Crypto Fraud Pipeline
August 17, 2026
Rapid7 researchers identified an exposed web directory on infrastructure used to support a cryptocurrency fraud operation. The server contained raw phone-number datasets, account-validation tools, enriched lead records, phishing panels, voice-dialing scripts, fake wallet applications, persistence mechanisms, and Telegram exfiltration code. Among the artifacts was evidence that the operator relied on AI coding assistants throughout the ...
- ChainDrop worm crawls into npm supply chain, evades standard defenses
August 15, 2026
A new variant of the Shai-Hulud npm worm has poisoned hundreds of packages while adding propagation techniques that can leave little trace in the corresponding source repositories. In Frank Herbert’s Dune, Shai-Hulud was the name of the giant self-sustaining desert sandworms that moved silently beneath the surface of the planet Arrakis. So it made sense that when ...
- Researchers find ultimate Windows kill switch which can disable antivirus with almost no user interaction
August 14, 2026
Microsoft has recently fixed a vulnerability that allowed threat actors to bypass advanced security measures, disable antivirus software, and expose the target device to full system takeover. All of this, it seems, could have been possible with a very simple script, and a single click from the victim’s side. Luckily, the vulnerability was discovered by white hat hackers, ...