- COVID-19 Themed Malware Within Cloud Environments
May 11, 2020
Unit 42 researchers found that public cloud infrastructure has communicated with domains known to distribute COVID-19 themed malware. On March 24, 2020, Unit 42 published a blog discussing attack patterns used by malicious actors in relation to the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). Taking these findings a step further, researchers attempted to uncover if there are malicious COVID-19 related ...
- Zeus Sphinx revamped as coronavirus relief payment attack wave continues
May 11, 2020
The Zeus Sphinx banking Trojan is now receiving frequent updates and upgrades to its malicious arsenal while being deployed in active coronavirus scams. On Monday, IBM Security researcher Nir Shwarts said the company has been tracking the evolution of the malware which is based on the leaked codebase of the well-known Zeus v.2 Trojan. Zeus Sphinx — also referred ...
- North Korean hackers infect real 2FA app to compromise Macs
May 9, 2020
Hackers have hidden malware in a legitimate two-factor authentication (2FA) app for macOS to distribute Dacls, a remote access trojan associated with the North Korean Lazarus group. Dacls has been used to target Windows and Linux platforms and the recently discovered RAT variant for macOS borrows from them much of the functionality and code. The threat actor planted the ...
- Threat Brief: Maze Ransomware Activities
May 8, 2020
Since the beginning of the calendar year, Palo Alto Networks has detected an uptick in Maze ransomware samples across multiple industries. As a result, we’ve created this general threat assessment post on the Maze ransomware activities and a full visualization of these techniques can be viewed in the Unit 42 Playbook Viewer. Maze ransomware, a variant of ChaCha ...
- Naikon’s Aria
May 8, 2020
Our colleagues at Checkpoint put together a fine research writeup on some Naikon resources and activity related to “aria-body” that we detected in 2017 and similarly reported in 2018. To supplement their research findings, we are summarizing and publishing portions of the findings reported in our June 2018 “Naikon’s New AR Backdoor Deployment to Southeast Asia”. This ...
- Targeted Ransomware Attack Hits Taiwanese Organizations
May 6, 2020
A new targeted attack has infected several organizations in Taiwan with a new ransomware family, which we have dubbed ColdLock. This attack is potentially destructive as the ransomware appears to target databases and email servers for encryption. The information we gathered indicates that this attack started hitting organizations in early May. Analysis of the malware points ...
- Coinminer, DDoS Bot Attack Docker Daemon Ports
May 6, 2020
Researchers found an open directory containing malicious files, which was first reported in a series of Twitter posts by MalwareHunterTeam. Analyzing some of the files, we found a malicious cryptocurrency miner and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) bot that targets open Docker daemon ports. The attack starts with the shell script named mxutzh.sh, which scans for open ports (2375, ...
- Excel Files with Hidden Sheets Target Users in Italy
May 5, 2020
A spam campaign using emails that have Excel file (.xls) attachments (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.XF.HIDDBOOK.THDBHBO) has been seen circulating and targeting users in Italy and some users in Germany and other countries. The attachment appears blank when opened, but it has a sheet set to “hidden” that attempts to connect to a URL and download a ...
- Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM
May 1, 2020
A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the sample propagated through the employee pool via the infected company’s mobile device management ...
- WebMonitor RAT Bundled with Zoom Installer
April 29, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the usefulness of communication apps for work-from-home (WFH) setups. However, like they always do, cybercriminals are expected to exploit popular trends and user behavior. We have witnessed threats against several messaging apps including Zoom. In early April, we spotted an attack leveraging Zoom installers to spread a cryptocurrency miner. We recently encountered a similar attack ...