Mirage Kitten – also known as UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm, and Nimbus Manticore – is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group focused on cyber-espionage operations against aerospace, aviation, defense, and telecommunications sectors across the Middle East and Africa, using highly targeted spear-phishing campaigns, fake recruitment portals, and custom multi-stage malware to gain persistent access and exfiltrate sensitive data.
During recent threat research, Kaspersky identified a previously undocumented malware set developed and used by Mirage Kitten. The toolset includes NightLedger, a new Windows backdoor for reconnaissance, command execution, file operations, process discovery, and screenshot capture; and two custom WebSocket-based tunnelers, ArcBridge and BridgeHead, for covert network access and operator-controlled tunneling.
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:
- FBI, Coast Guard boarded hacked oil tankers heading toward US coast
September 18, 2026
Cybersecurity teams with the U.S. Coast Guard and the FBI boarded two U.S.-bound oil tankers last month after hackers reportedly compromised at least one of the ship’s networks and took control of its navigation, propulsion, and cargo systems. According to a joint statement shared with TechCrunch, the agencies boarded the vessels in the Gulf of Mexico ...
- Fake parcel delivery messages steal your card and bank details
September 18, 2026
Parcel delivery phishing campaigns appear around the world under different courier names. In the United States, the messages commonly impersonate USPS and claim that a package has an invalid address or could not be delivered. Similar messages impersonate Colissimo and Chronopost in France, Correos in Spain, Poste Italiane in Italy, and PostNL in the Netherlands. The ...
- Atomic macOS (AMOS) Stealer Activity
September 16, 2026
This article reviews an Atomic macOS (AMOS) stealer malware infection generated in a lab environment. While several sources have published articles analyzing AMOS stealer, the associated indicators constantly change. This article presents a snapshot of indicators seen in early August 2026 and is designed to help readers better understand AMOS stealer. AMOS stealer is an information ...
- NightEagle targets Russian companies
September 16, 2026
Over the past year, Kaspersky Global Emergency Response Team (GERT) has investigated several incidents involving the NightEagle group (APT-Q-95). This group has been active since at least 2023 and originally focused on organizations in Asia. Kaspersky researchers have now identified attacks by the group targeting businesses in Russia. This post examines both known and new ...
- Hackers publish thousands of drivers’ data after breaching Florida motor vehicle database
September 16, 2026
The ShinyHunters hacking group has published hundreds of thousands of files from a Florida state database of vehicles and driver information. The hackers said they published the stolen data on its leak site “because the victim did not pay a ransom or cooperate and comply” with the hackers’ demands. The hackers said they breached the database, ...
- CVE-2026-76461: Critical Cisco Secure Email Gateway Vulnerability Exploited in the Wild
September 15, 2026
On September 14, 2026, Cisco published a security advisory for CVE-2026-76461, a critical SQL injection vulnerability affecting Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email Gateway. The vulnerability has a reported CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 and could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on an affected appliance. Cisco Secure ...