While responding to an incident at one of their clients, the PT ESC CSIRT team discovered a previously unknown backdoor written in Go, which they attributed to a cybercrime gang dubbed ExCobalt.
ExCobalt focuses on cyberespionage and includes several members active since at least 2016 and presumably once part of the notorious Cobalt gang. Cobalt attacked financial institutions to steal funds. One of Cobalt’s hallmarks was the use of the CobInt tool, something ExCobalt began to use in 2022. Over the past year, the PT ESC has recorded attacks linked to ExCobalt and investigated related incidents at Russian organizations in the following sectors: Metallurgy, Telecommunications, Mining, Information technology, Government, Software development
Read more…
Source: Positive Technologies
Related:
- Deception in Depth: PRC-nexus espionage campaign hijacks web traffic to target diplomats
August 25, 2025
This blog post presents Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) findings and analysis of this espionage campaign, as well as the evolution of the threat actor’s operational capabilities. GTIG examine how the malware is delivered, how the threat actor utilized social engineering and evasion techniques, and technical aspects of the multi-stage malware payloads. In this campaign, the ...
- The Resurgence of IoT Malware: Inside the Mirai-Based Botnet Campaign
August 22, 2025
Over the past year, FortiGuard Labs has been tracking a stealthy malware strain exploiting a range of vulnerabilities to infiltrate systems. Initially disclosed by a Chinese cybersecurity firm under the name “Gayfemboy.” The malware resurfaced this past July with new activity, this time targeting vulnerabilities in products from vendors such as DrayTek, TP-Link, Raisecom, and Cisco, ...
- GodRAT – New RAT targeting financial institutions
August 19, 2025
In September 2024, Kaspersky researchers detected malicious activity targeting financial (trading and brokerage) firms through the distribution of malicious .scr (screen saver) files disguised as financial documents via Skype messenger. The threat actor deployed a newly identified Remote Access Trojan (RAT) named GodRAT, which is based on the Gh0st RAT codebase. To evade detection, the attackers ...
- Evolution of the PipeMagic backdoor: from the RansomExx incident to CVE-2025-29824
August 18, 2025
In April 2025, Microsoft patched 121 vulnerabilities in its products. According to the company, only one of them was being used in real-world attacks at the time the patch was released: CVE-2025-29824. The exploit for this vulnerability was executed by the PipeMagic malware, which Kaspersky researchers first discovered in December 2022 in a RansomExx ransomware campaign. ...
- New Ransomware Charon Uses Earth Baxia APT Techniques to Target Enterprises
August 12, 2025
Trend Micro researchers recently identified a new ransomware family called Charon, deployed in a targeted attack observed in the Middle East’s public sector and aviation industry. The threat actor employed a DLL sideloading technique notably similar to tactics previously documented in the Earth Baxia campaigns, which have historically targeted government sectors. The attack chain leveraged a ...
- Gunra Ransomware Group Unveils Efficient Linux Variant
July 29, 2025
Gunra ransomware was first observed in April 2025 in a campaign that targeted Windows systems using techniques inspired by the infamous Conti ransomware. Trend Micror monitoring of the ransomware landscape revealed that threat actors behind Gunra have expanded with a Linux variant, signaling a strategic move toward cross-platform targeting. The novel ransomware group has already made ...