Mysterious hacking group Careto was run by the Spanish government


More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques.

Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others. Eventually the researchers were able to attribute the network activity to a mysterious — and at the time completely unknown — Spanish-speaking hacking group that they called Careto, after the Spanish slang word (“ugly face” or “mask” in English), which they found buried within the malware’s code.

Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News


Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.


Related:

  • US government’s vaccine website defaced with AI-generated content

    June 11, 2025

    A U.S. government website designed to inform the public about vaccines has been defaced and now hosts apparently AI-generated spam. The domain, which belongs to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), appears to have been hosting the same kind of content — mostly gay-themed and LGBTQ+ posts — since at least May 12, ...

  • Toxic trend: Another malware threat targets DeepSeek

    June 11, 2025

    DeepSeek-R1 is one of the most popular LLMs right now. Users of all experience levels look for chatbot websites on search engines, and threat actors have started abusing the popularity of LLMs. kaspersky previously reported attacks with malware being spread under the guise of DeepSeek to attract victims. The malicious domains spread through X posts and ...

  • BlackSuit Continues Social Engineering Attacks in Wake of Black Basta’s Internal Conflict

    June 10, 2025

    There has been a significant decrease in social engineering attacks linked to the Black Basta ransomware group since late December 2024. This lapse also included the leaked Black Basta chat logs in February 2025, indicating internal conflict within the group. Despite this, Rapid7 has observed sustained social engineering attacks. Evidence now suggests that BlackSuit affiliates have ...

  • Patch Tuesday – June 2025

    June 10, 2025

    Microsoft is addressing 67 vulnerabilities this June 2025 Patch Tuesday. Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for just one of the vulnerabilities published today, and that is reflected in CISA KEV. Separately, Microsoft is aware of existing public disclosure for one other freshly published vulnerability. Microsoft’s luck holds for a ninth consecutive Patch Tuesday, since neither ...

  • ConnectWise rotating code signing certificates due to security concerns

    June 9, 2025

    ConnectWise is updating the digital signing certificates used in ScreenConnect, ConnectWise Automate, and ConnectWise RMM due to concerns raised by a third-party researcher about how ScreenConnect handled certain configuration data in earlier versions. In addition to issuing new certificates, ConnectWise is releasing an update to improve how this configuration data is managed in ScreenConnect. This issue ...

  • 5 Things Security Leaders Need to Know About Agentic AI

    June 9, 2025

    From writing assistance to intelligent summarization, generative AI has already transformed the way businesses work. But we’re now entering a new phase where AI doesn’t just generate content, but takes independent action on our behalf. This next evolution is called ‘agentic AI’, and it’s moving fast. Amazon recently announced a dedicated R&D group focused on agentic ...