Over the Kazuar’s nest: Cracking down on a freshly hatched backdoor used by Pensive Ursa

While tracking the evolution of Pensive Ursa (aka Turla, Uroburos), Unit 42 researchers came across a new, upgraded variant of Kazuar. Not only is Kazuar another name for the enormous and dangerous cassowary bird, Kazuar is an advanced and stealthy Read More …

From Albania to the Middle East: The Scarred Manticore is listening

Check Point Research, in collaboration with Sygnia’s Incident Response Team, has been tracking and responding to the activities of Scarred Manticore, an Iranian nation-state threat actor that primarily targets government and telecommunication sectors in the Middle East. Scarred Manticore, linked Read More …

A cascade of compromise: unveiling Lazarus’ new campaign

Earlier this year, a software vendor was compromised by the Lazarus malware delivered through unpatched legitimate software. What’s remarkable is that these software vulnerabilities were not new, and despite warnings and patches from the vendor, many of the vendor’s systems Read More …

Crambus: New Campaign Targets Middle Eastern Government

The Iranian Crambus espionage group (aka OilRig, APT34) staged an eight-month-long intrusion against a government in the Middle East between February and September 2023. During the compromise, the attackers stole files and passwords and, in one case, installed a PowerShell Read More …

Multiple North Korean threat actors exploiting the TeamCity CVE-2023-42793 vulnerability

Since early October 2023, Microsoft has observed two North Korean nation-state threat actors – Diamond Sleet and Onyx Sleet – exploiting CVE-2023-42793, a remote-code execution vulnerability affecting multiple versions of JetBrains TeamCity server. TeamCity is a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) Read More …

Analyzing cyber activity surrounding the conflict in the Middle East

In light of the ongoing escalation in the Middle East, Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence unit has been monitoring the activity of different threat actors involved in the conflict in cyber space. As they noted in the Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2022/2023 report, Read More …

Kaspersky uncovers APT campaign targeting APAC government entities

Kaspersky researchers have discovered a persistent campaign compromising a specific type of secure USB drive used to provide encryption for safe data storage. Dubbed “TetrisPhantom,” this espionage effort targets government entities in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC), and shows no discernible Read More …

ToddyCat: Keep calm and check logs

ToddyCat is an advanced APT actor that Kaspersky researchers described in a previous publication last year. The group started its activities in December 2020 and has been responsible for multiple sets of attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia. Read More …

Stayin’ Alive – targeted attacks against telecoms and government ministries in Asia

In the last few months, Check Point Research has been tracking “Stayin’ Alive”, an ongoing campaign that has been active since at least 2021. The campaign operates in Asia, primarily targeting the Telecom industry, as well as government organizations. The Read More …

Grayling: Previously unseen threat actor targets multiple organizations in Taiwan

A previously unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) group used custom malware and multiple publicly available tools to target a number of organizations in the manufacturing, IT, and biomedical sectors in Taiwan. A government agency located in the Pacific Islands, as Read More …