Proofpoint recently identified a SugarGh0st RAT campaign targeting organizations in the United States involved in artificial intelligence efforts, including those in academia, private industry, and government service.
Proofpoint tracks the cluster responsible for this activity as UNK_SweetSpecter. SugarGh0st RAT is a remote access trojan, and is a customized variant of Gh0stRAT, an older commodity trojan typically used by Chinese-speaking threat actors. SugarGh0st RAT has been historically used to target users in Central and East Asia, as first reported by Cisco Talos in November 2023.
Read more…
Source: ProofPoint
Related:
- APT15 Pokes Its Head Out With Upgraded MirageFox RAT
June 19, 2018
The elusive APT15 cyber-espionage group, believed to be affiliated with the Chinese government, has been spotted for the first time in many months, mounting a highly targeted spy campaign using an upgraded version of the Mirage remote access trojan. This is the first evidence of the China-linked actor’s activity since hacking the U.K. government and military ...
- FakeSpy Android Information-Stealing Malware Targets Japanese and Korean-Speaking Users
June 19, 2018
Spoofing legitimate mobile applications is a common cybercriminal modus that banks on their popularity and relies on their users’ trust to steal information or deliver payloads. Cybercriminals typically use third-party app marketplaces to distribute their malicious apps, but in operations such as the ones that distributed CPUMINER, BankBot, and MilkyDoor, they would try to get their apps published ...
- Chinese Hackers Carried Out Country-Level Watering Hole Attack
June 14, 2018
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered an espionage campaign that has targeted a national data center of an unnamed central Asian country in order to conduct watering hole attacks. The campaign is believed to be active covertly since fall 2017 but was spotted in March by security researchers from Kaspersky Labs, who have attributed these attacks to a ...
- Lazarus Group used ActiveX zero-day vulnerability to attack South Korean security think tank
June 13, 2018
An ActiveX zero-day vulnerability used in attacks against a South Korean think tank has been connected to Lazarus Group. The target of these attacks was the Sejong Institute, a non-profit South Korean think tank which conducts research on national security. The private organization works with academic institutions worldwide. Read more… Source: ZDNet
- InvisiMole Burrows into Targets with Rich Espionage Tools
June 11, 2018
Researchers are expressing concern over a versatile spyware called InvisiMole that has been spotted in highly targeted campaigns targeting Windows PCs in Russia and the Ukraine. The malicious code, which comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, has a modular architecture, with two different, feature-rich backdoors that have overlapping functionality. Read more… Source: ThreatPost
- China blamed for data theft from US Navy contractor
June 11, 2018
China is being blamed for a cyberattack on a US Navy contractor which has led to the theft of sensitive military information. As reported by The Washington Post, US officials have claimed that up to 614 Gigabytes of information was stolen, including signal and sensor data, as well as submarine radio information relating to cryptographic systems. Plans for ...

