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:

  • Inside Malware Markets: Current Trends and Competitive Forces

    July 30, 2019

    Regardless of location, legitimacy, or legality, markets of all kinds act in accordance with a prevailing set of forces. Made famous by business management guru Michael Porter, his eponymous Five Forces generally dictate how markets will operate — that includes markets for malware. Porter’s Five Forces Rivalry Among Existing Competitors Bargaining Power of Suppliers Bargaining Power of Buyers Threat of ...

  • Cyberattack warning to small plane owners: How your aircraft could be vulnerable

    July 30, 2019

    The alert from the DHS critical infrastructure computer emergency response team. warns that modern flight systems are vulnerable to hacking if a person manages to gain unrestricted access to an aircraft. The alert also recommends that small plane owners restrict unauthorized physical access to their aircraft the best they can. It warns that access should remain limited until ...

  • Rare Steganography Hack Can Compromise Fully Patched Websites

    July 26, 2019

    An unusual steganographic technique that an attacker can use to implant a malicious webshell on unsuspecting websites has been spotted in Latin America. According to research from Trustwave shared exclusively with Threatpost, a forensic investigation showed that an adversary is implanting PHP code into JPEG files’ EXIF headers in order to upload malware onto targeted ...

  • Unique Monokle Android Spyware Self-Signs Certificates

    July 24, 2019

    A never-before-publicized mobile spy tool, a mobile surveillanceware remote access trojan (RAT) for Android called Monokle, has been spotted using novel techniques to exfiltrate data. According to the Lookout researchers who discovered Monokle in the wild, the malware has the ability to self-sign trusted certificates to intercept encrypted SSL traffic. It can also record a phone’s ...

  • Multistage Attack Delivers BillGates/Setag Backdoor, Can Turn Elasticsearch Databases into DDoS Botnet ‘Zombies’

    July 23, 2019

    Elasticsearch is no stranger to cybercriminal abuse given its popularity and use to organizations. In fact, this year’s first quarter saw a surge of attacks — whether by exploiting vulnerabilities or taking advantage of security gaps — leveled against Elasticsearch servers. These attacks mostly deliveredcryptocurrency-mining malware, as in the case of one attack we saw last year. The latest attack we spotted deviates from the ...

  • Cybercrime gang adds new tactics to credit card data-stealing campaign

    July 23, 2019

    A hacking operation has deployed new malware in the latest evolution of its campaign to make money by stealing credit card data. The FIN8 cybercrime group was first identified in January 2016, and typically targets point-of-sale (POS) systems with malware attacks designed to steal credit card information, which is then sold on for profit on dark ...