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:
- Graboid: First-Ever Cryptojacking Worm Found in Images on Docker Hub
October 16, 2019
Unit 42 researchers identified a new cryptojacking worm we’ve named Graboid that’s spread to more than 2,000 unsecured Docker hosts. We derived the name by paying homage to the 1990’s movie “Tremors,” since this worm behaves similarly to the sandworms in the movie, in that it moves in short bursts of speed, but overall is ...
- 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 ...
- Silent Librarian Retools Phishing Emails to Hook Student Credentials
October 16, 2019
Silent Librarian is targeting university students in full force with a revamped phishing campaign. The threat group, aiming to steal student login credentials, is using new tricks that bring more credibility to its phishing emails and helping it avoid detection. The threat group (also known as TA407 and Cobalt Dickens), which operates out of Iran, has ...
- WAV audio files are now being used to hide malicious code
October 16, 2019
Two reports published in the last few months show that malware operators are experimenting with using WAV audio files to hide malicious code. The technique is known as steganography — the art of hiding information in plain sight, in another data medium. In the software field, steganography — also referred to as stego — is used to describe the ...
- Cybercrime Tool Prices Bump Up in Dark Web Markets
October 16, 2019
Prices have been rising in the last two years for longstanding tools available on the Dark Web to help bad actors commit cyber attacks and fraud, alongside newer innovations that are emerging to bolster crimes like ransomware and SIM swapping, new research has found. Keeping track of these trends in dark-web markets for the tools and ...
- Blackremote: Money Money Money – A Swedish Actor Peddles an Expensive New RAT
October 15, 2019
While researching prevalent commodity Remote Access Tools (RATs), Unit 42 researchers discovered a new, undocumented RAT in September, which had almost 50 samples observed in more than 2,200 attack sessions within the first month it was sold. In this report, we document the RAT manager/builder, client malware, and profile the Swedish actor behind this together ...

