IAmTheKing and the SlothfulMedia malware family

On October 1, 2020, the DHS CISA agency released information about a malware family called SlothfulMedia, which they attribute to a sophisticated threat actor. We have been tracking this set of activity through our private reporting service, and we would Read More …

Two New IoT Vulnerabilities Identified with Mirai Payloads

Palo Alto Networks is proactively trying to safeguard its customers from attacks however possible. By leveraging its Next-Generation Firewall as sensors on the perimeter to detect malicious payloads and attack patterns, Unit 42 researchers are able to hunt down the Read More …

MontysThree: Industrial espionage with steganography and a Russian accent on both sides

In summer 2020 we uncovered a previously unknown multi-module C++ toolset used in highly targeted industrial espionage attacks dating back to 2018. Initially the reason for our interest in this malware was its rarity, the obviously targeted nature of the Read More …

Researchers use ‘fingerprints’ to track Windows exploit developers

More to the point, Check Point security researchers Itay Cohen and Eyal Itkin were able to track 16 Windows Kernel Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) exploits to two different exploit developers known as Volodya (or BuggiCorp) and PlayBit (or luxor2008). 15 Read More …

Cross-Platform / Modular Glupteba Malware Uses ManageX

We recently encountered a variant of Glupteba (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.Win32.GLUPTEBA.WLDR). Glupteba is a trojan type that has been involved with Operation Windigo in the past. We also reported its attacks on MikroTik routers and updates on its Read More …

Case Study: Emotet Thread Hijacking, an Email Attack Technique

Malicious spam (malspam) pushing Emotet malware is the most common email-based threat, far surpassing other malware families, with only a few other threats coming close. In recent weeks, we have seen significantly more Emotet malspam using a technique called “thread Read More …

Looking for sophisticated malware in IoT devices

Smart watches, smart home devices and even smart cars – as more and more connected devices join the IoT ecosystem, the importance of ensuring their security becomes patently obvious. It’s widely known that the smart devices which are now inseparable Read More …

Fileless Malware Tops Critical Endpoint Threats for 1H 2020

In the first half of 2020, the most common critical-severity cybersecurity threat to endpoints was fileless malware, according to a recent analysis of telemetry data from Cisco. Fileless threats consist of malicious code that runs in memory after initial infection, Read More …