Chinese APT Abuses VSCode to Target Government in Asia


Unit 42 researchers recently found that Stately Taurus abused the popular Visual Studio Code software in espionage operations targeting government entities in Southeast Asia. Stately Taurus is a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group that carries out cyberespionage attacks.

This threat actor used Visual Studio Code’s embedded reverse shell feature to gain a foothold in target networks. This is a relatively new technique that a security researcher discovered in 2023. According to our telemetry, this is the first time a threat actor used it in the wild.

Read more…
Source: Palo Alto Unit 42


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • HP Enterprise was hacked by the same Russian state-sponsored group that targeted Microsoft

    January 25, 2024

    HP Enterprise was infiltrated by a hacking group linked to Russian intelligence last year, the business IT company has revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The threat actor is believed to be Midnight Blizzard, also known as Cozy Bear, which was the same group that recently breached the email accounts of several senior executives ...

  • Russian hackers attack Ukraine MoD resources

    January 25, 2024

    Cyber attacks by Russian government-funded groups on the resources run by the Ministry of Defense using phishing, distribution of remote code execution malware, and blocking of access to web resources have been recorded. “Last day, attacks on Ukraine’s government and commercial sectors were recorded. Also, attacks by Russia-funded hacker groups were launched on the resources of ...

  • Microsoft actions following attack by nation state actor Midnight Blizzard

    January 19, 2024

    The Microsoft security team detected a nation-state attack on our corporate systems on January 12, 2024, and immediately activated our response process to investigate, disrupt malicious activity, mitigate the attack, and deny the threat actor further access. Microsoft has identified the threat actor as Midnight Blizzard, the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as Nobelium. Beginning in ...

  • Chinese Espionage Group UNC3886 Found Exploiting CVE-2023-34048 Since Late 2021

    January 19, 2024

    While publicly reported and patched in October 2023, Mandiant and VMware Product Security have found UNC3886, a highly advanced China-nexus espionage group, has been exploiting CVE-2023-34048 as far back as late 2021. These findings stem from Mandiant’s continued research of the novel attack paths used by UNC3886, which historically focuses on technologies that are unable to ...

  • Russian threat group COLDRIVER expands its targeting of Western officials to include the use of malware

    January 18, 2024

    Over the years, TAG has analyzed a range of persistent threats including COLDRIVER (also known as UNC4057, Star Blizzard and Callisto), a Russian threat group focused on credential phishing activities against high profile individuals in NGOs, former intelligence and military officers, and NATO governments. In order to gain the trust of targets, COLDRIVER often utilizes impersonation ...

  • 7777-Botnet Infection Vectors

    January 18, 2024

    In October 2023, the 7777-Botnet was first discussed in a writeup titled, The Curious Case of the 7777-Botnet. The author, supported by other researchers, describes a ~10,000 node botnet that’s purpose is to brute-force Microsoft Azure user credentials. It employs targeted, low-volume methods that are so effective that they were only discovered due to a geolocation ...