TAOTH Campaign Exploits End-of-Support Software to Target Traditional Chinese Users and Dissidents


In June, Terend Micro researchers identified and investigated an unusual security incident involving the installation of two malware families, C6DOOR and GTELAM, on a victim’s host. Trend Micro investigation determined that the malware was delivered through a legitimate input method editor (IME) software, Sogou Zhuyin.

As brief explanation, an IME is a tool that interprets sequences of keystrokes into complex characters for languages not suited to a standard QWERTY keyboard (like many East Asian languages). The software had stopped receiving updates in 2019; in October 2024 attackers took over the lapsed domain name and used it to distribute malicious payloads. Telemetry data indicates that at least several hundred victims were affected, with infections leading to additional post-exploitation activities.

Read more…
Source: Trend Micro


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Fortinet admits FortiGate SSO bug still exploitable despite December patch

    January 23, 2026

    Fortinet has confirmed that attackers are actively bypassing a December patch for a critical FortiCloud single sign-on (SSO) authentication flaw after customers reported suspicious logins on devices supposedly fully up to date. In a new advisory, Fortinet said it had identified a fresh attack path being used to abuse SAML-based SSO in FortiOS, even on systems ...

  • Researchers say Russian government hackers were behind attempted Poland power outage

    January 23, 2026

    A failed December effort to bring down parts of Poland’s energy grid was the work of Russian government hackers known for causing past energy disruptions, according to a security research firm that investigated the incident. Last week, Polish Energy Minister Milosz Motyka told reporters that the attempted cyberattack on December 29 and 30 saw hackers targeting ...

  • VMware vCenter Server bug fixed in 2024 under attack today

    January 23, 2026

    You’ve got to keep your software updated. Some unknown miscreants are exploiting a critical VMware vCenter Server bug more than a year after Broadcom patched the flaw. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-37079, is an out-of-bounds write flaw in vCenter Server’s implementation of the DCERPC protocol that earned a 9.8 out of 10 CVSS rating. In other ...

  • Data of 72 million Under Armour customers appears on the dark web

    January 22, 2026

    When reports first emerged in November 2025 that sportswear giant Under Armour had been hit by the Everest ransomware group, the story sounded depressingly familiar: a big brand, a huge trove of data, and a lot of unanswered questions. Since then, the narrative around what actually happened has split into two competing versions—cautious corporate statements on ...

  • The Next Frontier of Runtime Assembly Attacks: Leveraging LLMs to Generate Phishing JavaScript in Real Time

    January 22, 2026

    Imagine visiting a webpage that looks perfectly safe. It has no malicious code, no suspicious links. Yet, within seconds, it transforms into a personalized phishing page. This isn’t merely an illusion. It’s the next frontier of web attacks where attackers use generative AI (GenAI) to build a threat that’s loaded after the victim has already visited ...

  • Watering Hole Attack Targets EmEditor Users with Information-Stealing Malware

    January 22, 2026

    In late December 2025, EmEditor, a highly extensible and widely used text, code, and CSV editor developed by U.S.-based Emurasoft, published a security advisory warning users that its download page had been compromised. The attackers’ objective was to distribute a compromised version of the program to unsuspecting users. EmEditor has longstanding recognition within Japanese developer communities ...