MOONSHINE Exploit Kit and DarkNimbus Backdoor Enabling Earth Minotaur’s Multi-Platform Attacks


Trend Micro researchers have been continuously monitoring the MOONSHINE exploit kit’s activity since 2019. During our research, they discovered a MOONSHINE exploit kit server with improper operational security: Its server exposed MOONSHINE’s toolkits and operation logs, which revealed the information of possible victims and the attack tactics of a threat actor we have named Earth Minotaur.

MOONSHINE was first discovered as part of malicious activities against the Tibetan community, and is believed to also be associated with previous malicious activities against Uyghurs. It’s designed to implant a backdoor by exploiting the vulnerabilities of instant messaging apps on Android mobile devices.

Read more…
Source: Trend Micro


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Vice Society Ransomware Group Targets Manufacturing Companies

    January 24, 2023

    The Vice Society ransomware group made headlines in late 2022 and early 2023 during a spate of attacks against several targets, such as the one that affected the rapid transit system in San Francisco. Most reports have the threat actor focusing its efforts on the education and the healthcare industries. However, through Trend Micro’s telemetry data, ...

  • New wave of attacks use ProxyNotShell/OWASSRF vulnerabilities to target Microsoft Exchange

    January 24, 2023

    Researchers at S.C. Bitdefender SRL today warned of a new wave of attacks using known vulnerabilities to target Microsoft Exchange. The researchers started to notice an increase in attacks using ProxyNotShell/OWASSRF exploits to target on-premises Microsoft Exchange deployments at the end of November. The Server-Side Request Forgery attacks allow an attacker to send a crafted request ...

  • LastPass owner GoTo says hackers stole customers’ backups

    January 24, 2023

    LastPass’ parent company GoTo – formerly LogMeIn – has confirmed that cybercriminals stole customers’ encrypted backups during a recent breach of its systems. The breach was first confirmed by LastPass on November 30. At the time, LastPass chief executive Karim Toubba said an “unauthorized party” had gained access to some customers’ information stored in a third-party ...

  • Hackers use Golang source code interpreter to evade detection

    January 24, 2023

    A Chinese-speaking hacking group tracked as ‘DragonSpark’ was observed employing Golang source code interpretation to evade detection while launching espionage attacks against organizations in East Asia. The attacks are tracked by SentinelLabs, whose researchers report that DragonSpark relies on a little-known open-source tool called SparkRAT to steal sensitive data from compromised systems, execute commands, perform lateral ...

  • Apple fixes actively exploited iOS zero-day on older iPhones, iPads

    January 23, 2023

    Apple has backported security patches addressing a remotely exploitable zero-day vulnerability to older iPhones and iPads. This bug is tracked as CVE-2022-42856, and it stems from a type confusion weakness in Apple’s Webkit web browser browsing engine. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer  

  • FBI Confirms Lazarus Group Cyber Actors Responsible for Harmony’s Horizon Bridge Currency Theft

    January 23, 2023

    The FBI continues to combat malicious cyber activity, including the threat posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the U.S. and our private sector partners. Through our investigation, we were able to confirm that the Lazarus Group (also known as APT38), cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft ...