ExCobalt: GoRed, the hidden-tunnel technique


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


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • GigaWiper: Anatomy of a destructive backdoor assembled from multiple malware

    July 9, 2026

    In October 2025, Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified destructive wiping activity and uncovered a sophisticated Go programming language (Golang)-based backdoor we now track as GigaWiper, a versatile implant that combines robust command-and-control (C2) capabilities with multiple destructive payloads, including disk wiping, fake ransomware, and system-level sabotage. GigaWiper is particularly notable for its makeup. It’s not a single, ...

  • Vidar Stealer Unmasked: Code Signing Abuse, Go Loaders and File Inflation

    July 7, 2026

    In April 2026, Unit 42 researchers identified a financially motivated campaign delivering Vidar stealer and the XMRig cryptocurrency miner to consumer and small- and medium-sized business victims worldwide. Attackers lure victims via malvertising to pages for downloading files that impersonate cracked versions of copyright-protected software. Upon execution, the loader drops and runs both Vidar stealer and ...

  • Self-destructing Mistic backdoor linked to access broker selling corporate footholds to ransomware gangs

    June 25, 2026

    A new self-destructing backdoor called Mistic used in intrusions since April appears to be linked to a criminal gang that compromises corporate networks and then sells that access to ransomware groups, according to security researchers. This backdoor, also tracked as MLTBackdoor, was first documented by Zscaler earlier this month, with the security shop suggesting the novel malware is ...

  • A VBScript campaign distributed through WhatsApp deploying RMM software

    June 22, 2026

    In June 2026, Kaspersky observed a malware campaign distributing malicious VBScript files through direct messages in WhatsApp. The campaign affected users across multiple countries and territories, including Malaysia, Brazil, India, Mexico, Singapore, UK, Spain, Taiwan, Australia, Russia and Vietnam, with the highest number of victims observed in Malaysia. At the time of writing this article, ...

  • Dozens of malicious wallpapers found on Steam Workshop

    June 16, 2026

    Since late 2025, malware has been spreading rapidly through the Steam Workshop, the gaming platform’s built-in service for players to create and share custom content. The attackers are primarily targeting gamers in China and Russia, aiming to hijack their accounts. To pull this off, they are exploiting Wallpaper Engine – a popular live wallpaper app ...

  • Operation FlutterBridge: macOS Malvertising Campaign Spreads New FlutterShell Backdoor

    June 2, 2026

    Palo Alto Unit 42 are tracking an increasingly widespread malvertising campaign targeting macOS. This campaign appears to be the next stage of a previous campaign known as JSCoreRunner, which was first identified in August 2025. In recent months, the financially-motivated attackers behind these campaigns transitioned from delivering standard adware, to delivering adware with full backdoor ...