- Hackers breach sensitive government and police data in Italy
October 28, 2024
Prosecutors in Milan have uncovered a network of hackers and former law enforcement officials accused of using malware and insider contacts to break into several government databases, including the Interior Ministry. The group allegedly accessed over 800,000 confidential records, even targeting accounts linked to the president’s office. Prosecutors said on Saturday that the operation was allegedly ...
- The Crypto Game of Lazarus APT: Investors vs. Zero-days
October 23, 2024
On May 13, 2024, Kaspersky consumer-grade product Kaspersky Total Security detected a new Manuscrypt infection on the personal computer of a person living in Russia. Since Lazarus rarely attacks individuals, this piqued Kaspersky researchers interest and they decided to take a closer look. The researchers discovered that prior to the detection of Manuscrypt, Kaspersky technologies also ...
- Russia says ‘unprecedented’ cyber attack hits foreign ministry amid BRICS summit
October 23, 2024
The Russian Foreign Ministry was targeted by a severe cyber attack on Wednesday, coinciding with the major BRICS summit taking place in the country, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Earlier Zakharova said that the ministry had been targeted by a large-scale distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). “A massive cyberattack from abroad began this morning on the infrastructure of ...
- Data storage in spotlight of Italian security committee after Intesa breach
October 22, 2024
Italy’s influential parliamentary committee on security will hold a round of hearings on data storage following a major breach at the country’s biggest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. Intesa Sanpaolo is under investigation by prosecutors in the southern Italian city of Bari after it emerged that the accounts of ...
- Analysis of the Crypt Ghouls group: continuing the investigation into a series of attacks on Russia
October 18, 2024
Last December, Kaspersky researchers discovered a new group targeting Russian businesses and government agencies with ransomware. Further investigation into this group’s activity suggests a connection to other groups currently targeting Russia. Kaspersky researchers have seen overlaps not only in indicators of compromise and tools, but also tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Moreover, the infrastructure partially overlaps ...
- Europol: Charges unveiled in ongoing effort to de-anonymise DDoS group Anonymous Sudan
October 17, 2024
US authorities have unveiled this week charges against two Sudanese nationals involved in a significant Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) cybercrime network, following an international investigation that spanned multiple countries. The investigation exposed the activities of Anonymous Sudan, a prolific cybercrime group conducting destructive DDoS attacks to support their ideologically-motivated agenda. Europol coordinated the European dimension of the investigation, ...
- Beyond the Surface: the evolution and expansion of the SideWinder APT group
October 15, 2024
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, ...
- European government systems hit by air-gap malware attack
October 9, 2024
In the last five years, hackers managed to steal sensitive information from air-gapped systems belonging to different European governments on at least three separate occasions. An air-gapped system is a computer or network that is physically isolated from unsecured networks, such as the internet, to prevent unauthorized access and enhance security. Still, crooks managed to steal ...
- Awaken Likho is awake: new techniques of an APT group
October 7, 2024
In July 2021, a campaign was launched primarily targeting Russian government agencies and industrial enterprises. Shortly after the campaign started, Kaspersky began tracking it, and published three reports in August and September 2024 through their threat research subscription on the threat actor they named Awaken Likho (also named by other vendors as Core Werewolf). While investigating ...
- Storm-0501: Ransomware attacks expanding to hybrid cloud environments
September 26, 2024
Microsoft has observed the threat actor tracked as Storm-0501 launching a multi-staged attack where they compromised hybrid cloud environments and performed lateral movement from on-premises to cloud environment, leading to data exfiltration, credential theft, tampering, persistent backdoor access, and ransomware deployment. The said attack targeted multiple sectors in the United States, including government, manufacturing, transportation, and ...
- From 12 to 21: How Kaspersky discovered connections between the Twelve and BlackJack groups
September 25, 2024
While analyzing attacks on Russian organizations, Kaspersky team regularly encounters overlapping tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) among different cybercrime groups, and sometimes even shared tools. Kaspersky researchers recently discovered one such overlap: similar tools and tactics between two hacktivist groups – BlackJack and Twelve, which likely belong to a single cluster of activity. In this report, ...
- China accuses Taiwan-backed group of cyberattacks
September 23, 2024
The Ministry of State Security said a Taiwan military-backed hacking group has been carrying out cyberattacks against targets in China, urging people to report “anti-propaganda sabotage”. The ministry said since the beginning of this year, Anonymous 64 had sought to upload and broadcast “content that denigrates the mainland’s political system and major policies” on websites, outdoor ...
- Philippines: Department of Foreign Affairs concerned over data breach at passport printing unit
September 21, 2024
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) of the Philippines has announced that they’re really concerned over the data breach at APO Production Unit – a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) in charge of printing passports. During a Senate finance subcommittee hearing on the agency’s proposed budget for 2025, DFA Office of Consular Affairs Assistant Secretary Adelio ...
- -=TWELVE=- is back
September 20, 2024
In the spring of 2024, posts with real people’s personal data began appearing on the -=TWELVE=- Telegram channel. Soon it was blocked for falling foul of the Telegram terms of service. The group stayed off the radar for several months, but as Kaspersky researchers investigated a late June 2024 attack, they found that it employed techniques ...
- Indonesia’s tax agency probes alleged personal data breach
September 19, 2024
Indonesia’s tax agency is investigating an alleged data breach that exposes the taxpayer identification numbers of millions of Indonesians, including President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, his ministers and his two sons, an official said. A series of cyber-attacks have hit Indonesian companies and government agencies in the past few years, which experts attribute to the government’s lax ...
- TikTok just had the most important two hours of its life
September 16, 2024
Who really controls TikTok’s magical algorithm — the US-based company that runs the app or its Chinese parent, ByteDance? That’s the question that bedeviled a trio of federal judges on Monday charged with deciding whether to allow the implementation of a law that could ultimately result in TikTok being banned for all Americans. After more than ...
- Chinese APT Abuses VSCode to Target Government in Asia
September 6, 2024
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 ...
- Tropic Trooper spies on government entities in the Middle East
September 5, 2024
Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy and Pirate Panda) is an APT group active since 2011. This group has traditionally targeted sectors such as government, healthcare, transportation and high-tech industries in Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong. Kaspersky recent investigation has revealed that in 2024 they conducted persistent campaigns targeting a government entity in the Middle ...
- Should State Governments Ban Ransomware Payments?
September 3, 2024
In 2021, North Carolina became the first state to prohibit public ransomware payments, even going so far as to ban negotiations with cyber criminals. It was a groundbreaking move. Florida followed suit in 2022, but its legislation took a less stringent approach, covering a narrower range of entities and omitting some of the stricter provisions ...
- Head Mare: adventures of a unicorn in Russia and Belarus
September 2, 2024
Head Mare is a hacktivist group that first made itself known in 2023 on the social network X (formerly Twitter). In their public posts, the attackers reveal information about some of their victims, including organization names, internal documents stolen during attacks, and screenshots of desktops and administrative consoles. By analyzing incidents in Russian companies, Kaspersky researchers ...