PassiveNeuron: a sophisticated campaign targeting servers of high-profile organizations


Back in 2024, Kaspersky researchers gave a brief description of a complex cyberespionage campaign that we dubbed “PassiveNeuron”. This campaign involved compromising the servers of government organizations with previously unknown APT implants, named “Neursite” and “NeuralExecutor”.

However, since its discovery, the PassiveNeuron campaign has been shrouded in mystery. For instance, it remained unclear how the implants in question were deployed or what actor was behind them. After the researchers detected this campaign and prevented its spreading back in June 2024, they did not see any further malware deployments linked to PassiveNeuron for quite a long time, about six months. However, since December 2024, Kaspersky researchers have observed a new wave of infections related to PassiveNeuron, with the latest ones dating back to August 2025.

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:

  • Dragos Industrial Ransomware Analysis Q3 2024

    December 17, 2024

    The third quarter (July – September) of 2024 brought transformative shifts to the ransomware landscape, emphasizing its dynamic and continuously evolving nature. The ransomware threat ecosystem remained highly active in the third quarter, fueled by new groups, rebranding of existing entities, expansion of initial access broker operations, and proliferation of illicitly traded tools. Ransomware operators increasingly ...

  • Texas medical school says hackers stole sensitive health data of 1.4 million individuals

    December 17, 2024

    The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) confirmed hackers accessed the personal and sensitive health data of over 1.4 million individuals during a September cyberattack. The cyberattack, which also affected TTUHSC’s El Paso campus, saw attackers steal information including Social Security numbers, financial account information, government-issued ID details, and health information — including medical records ...

  • BeyondTrust security advisory addresses a vulnerability in the Remote Support and Privileged Remote Access systems

    December 17, 2024

    BeyondTrust has released a security advisory that addresses a vulnerability in the Remote Support and Privileged Remote Access systems. Remote Support allows authorised individuals such as IT Helpdesk staff to connect to remote systems. Privileged Remote Access facilitates just-in-time secure access to enterprise environments. CVE-2024-12356 has a CVSSv3 score of 9.8 and if exploited could ...

  • Download a banking Trojan to track your parcel

    December 17, 2024

    In late October 2024, a new scheme for distributing a certain Android banking Trojan called “Mamont” was uncovered. The victim would receive an instant message from an unknown sender asking to identify a person in a photo. The attackers would then send what appeared to be the photo itself but was actually a malware installer. Shortly ...

  • Link Trap: GenAI Prompt Injection Attack

    December 17, 2024

    With the rise of generative AI, new security vulnerabilities are emerging. One such vulnerability is prompt injection, a method that malicious actors can exploit to manipulate AI systems. Typically, the impact of prompt injection attacks is closely tied to the permissions granted to the AI. However, the attack discussed in this article differs from commonly known ...

  • Proof-of-Concept Released for Critical Apache Struts Vulnerability

    December 17, 2024

    Apache has released a security bulletin addressing a critical vulnerability in Apache Struts 2. Apache Struts is an open-source model-view-controller (MVC) framework for creating Java web applications. CVE-2024-53677 is a ‘Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type’ vulnerability and has a CVSSv4 score of 9.5. This vulnerability exists in the File Upload Interceptor, which allows developers ...