Operation ForumTroll: APT attack with Google Chrome zero-day exploit chain


In mid-March 2025, Kaspersky technologies detected a wave of infections by previously unknown and highly sophisticated malware.

In all cases, infection occurred immediately after the victim clicked on a link in a phishing email, and the attackers’ website was opened using the Google Chrome web browser. No further action was required to become infected. All malicious links were personalized and had a very short lifespan. However, Kaspersky’s exploit detection and protection technologies successfully identified the zero-day exploit that was used to escape Google Chrome’s sandbox. Kaspersky researchers quickly analyzed the exploit code, reverse-engineered its logic, and confirmed that it was based on a zero-day vulnerability affecting the latest version of Google Chrome, which was then reported to the Google security team.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


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


Related:

  • xHunt Campaign: Newly Discovered Backdoors Using Deleted Email Drafts and DNS Tunnelling for C2

    November 9, 2020

    The xHunt campaign has been active since at least July 2018 and we have seen this group target Kuwait government and shipping and transportation organizations. Recently, we observed evidence that the threat actors compromised a Microsoft Exchange Server at an organization in Kuwait. We do not have visibility into how the actors gained access to ...

  • Ransomware hits e-commerce platform X-Cart

    November 9, 2020

    E-commerce software vendor X-Cart suffered a ransomware attack at the end of October that brought down customer stores hosted on the company’s hosting platform. The incident is believed to have taken place after attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party software to gain access to X-Cart’s store hosting systems. “We have identified what we believed to have ...

  • Gitpaste-12 malware wants to add your Linux servers and IoT devices to its botnet

    November 9, 2020

    A new form of malware is targeting Linux servers and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and adding them to a botnet in what appears to be the first stage of a hacking campaign targeting cloud computing infrastructure – although the purpose of the attacks remains unclear. Uncovered by cybersecurity researchers at Juniper Threat Labs, the malicious ...

  • New Slipstream NAT bypass attacks to be blocked by browsers

    November 9, 2020

    Web browser vendors are planning to block a new attack technique that would allow attackers to bypass a victim’s NAT, firewall, or router to gain access to any TCP/UDP service hosted on their devices. The attack method, dubbed NAT Slipstreaming, was discovered by security researcher Samy Kamkar and it requires the victims to visit the threat ...

  • FBI: Hackers stole source code from US government agencies and private companies

    November 7, 2020

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation has sent out a security alert warning that threat actors are abusing misconfigured SonarQube applications to access and steal source code repositories from US government agencies and private businesses. Intrusions have taken place since at least April 2020, the FBI said in an alert sent out last month and made public ...

  • When Threat Actors Fly Under the Radar: Vatet, PyXie and Defray777

    November 6, 2020

    As security practitioners, Palo Alto Unit 42 researchers spend a lot of time focusing on the threat actors and malware families that leverage the most impactful exploits or affect the highest number of victims. But what happens when a threat actor goes “low and slow” to fly under the radar? One could argue that, in ...