How APT41 revived the BlackLotus bootkit to attack diplomatic organizations in Central Asia


Back in October 2022, Kaspersky GReAT was looking into a peculiar advertisement on a hacking forum. A cybercriminal had been advertising a UEFI bootkit, dubbed BlackLotus, that could bypass Secure Boot, for $5,000. Given the low price for such powerful capabilities, the cybersecurity community initially took this advertisement with a grain of salt. As no BlackLotus samples were found in the wild, no one could at the time verify the claims made in the forum post.

However, about half a year later, in March 2023, ESET confirmed that the BlackLotus advertisement was genuine. The researchers tracked down samples of this bootkit and confirmed that it can indeed bypass Secure Boot through a vulnerability called Baton Drop (CVE-2022-21894). As this vulnerability was still exploitable in 2023, Microsoft had to release multiple security updates to address it.

Read more…
Source:  Kaspersky


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Hackers hijacked hundreds of devices in an outlandish intel campaign aimed at US and Asian targets

    June 29, 2025

    A recently disclosed cyber espionage operation, dubbed LapDogs, has drawn scrutiny following revelations from SecurityScorecard’s Strike Team. The operation, believed to be conducted by China-aligned threat actors, has quietly infiltrated over 1,000 devices across the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. What makes this campaign distinctive is its use of hijacked SOHO routers ...

  • Hacktivist groups led a massive surge in DDoS on US businesses following an attack on Iran

    June 28, 2025

    An abrupt and massive rise in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against U.S. businesses has coincided with Washington’s involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict. According to Radware’s Director of Threat Intelligence, Pascal Geenens, between June 21 and 22, 2025, hacktivist-led DDoS claims surged by 800%. This dramatic increase was paralleled by a 900% drop in ...

  • FBI, cybersecurity firms say a prolific hacking crew is now targeting airlines and the transportation sector

    June 28, 2025

    The FBI and cybersecurity firms are warning that the prolific hacking group known as Scattered Spider is now targeting airlines and the transportation sector. In a brief statement on Friday shared with TechCrunch, the FBI said it had “recently observed” cyberattacks resembling Scattered Spider to include the airline sector. Executives from Google’s cybersecurity unit Mandiant and ...

  • AI Goes on Offense: How LLMs Are Redefining the Cybercrime Landscape

    June 26, 2025

    In their last blog, Rapid7 explored the broader rise of AI-enabled threats across ransomware, phishing, and nation-state operations. Now, they’re narrowing in on a specific piece of that evolution: how cybercriminals are using large language models to scale and automate their tactics. AI in cybersecurity is no longer experimental. It’s embedded in workflows, transforming everything from ...

  • US, French authorities confirm arrest of BreachForums hackers

    June 26, 2025

    U.S. and French authorities have confirmed the arrests of five hackers accused of being behind several major hacks and being part of a notorious cybercrime forum. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of British national Kai West, 25, accusing him of being “a serial hacker” known as IntelBroker. U.S. authorities allege West ...

  • Cisco Releases Security Advisory Affecting Cisco Identity Service Engine

    June 26, 2025

    Cisco has released a security advisory addressing two vulnerabilities, affecting Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) . CVE-2025-20281 Cisco ISE API Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2025-20281 is an ‘API unauthenticated remote code execution’ vulnerability with a CVSSv3 score of 9.8. Successful exploitation could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to ...