In mid-2025, Kaspersky researchers identified a malicious driver file on computer systems in Asia. The driver file is signed with an old, stolen, or leaked digital certificate and registers as a mini-filter driver on infected machines. Its end-goal is to inject a backdoor Trojan into the system processes and provide protection for malicious files, user-mode processes, and registry keys.
Kaspersky analysis indicates that the final payload injected by the driver is a new sample of the ToneShell backdoor, which connects to the attacker’s servers and provides a reverse shell, along with other capabilities. The ToneShell backdoor is a tool known to be used exclusively by the HoneyMyte (aka Mustang Panda or Bronze President) APT actor and is often used in cyberespionage campaigns targeting government organizations, particularly in Southeast and East Asia.
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:
- Europcar’s Alleged Data Breach Wasn’t Done Using AI, Experts Argue
February 2, 2024
French car rental company Europcar made headlines earlier this week following reports of an alleged data breach affecting nearly 50 million customers. Cyber security platform HackManac reported the incident on January 30th, noting that the stolen database containing usernames, passwords, full names, addresses, and several other user-identifying information had been listed for sale on a hacking ...
- Cloudflare blames previous Okta breach for November 2023 cyberattack
February 2, 2024
Cloudflare is laying the blame for the cyberattack it suffered late last year the after-effects of the critical Okta breach. The content delivery service provider has published a blog post detailing the cybersecurity incident it suffered on Thanksgiving Day 2023, noting that on November 23, 2023, a threat actor accessed the company’s self-hosted Atlassian server. Read more… Source: ...
- There Are Too Many Damn Honeypots
February 2, 2024
Determining the number of internet-facing hosts affected by a new vulnerability is a key factor in determining if it will become a widespread or emergent threat. Are there a lot of hosts affected? Pretty good possibility things are about to pop off. Only a few hosts? Probably less likely. But actually, counting those hosts has become ...
- Former CIA employee sentenced to 40 years in prison after carrying out largest data leak in agency’s history
February 1, 2024
A former CIA employee was sentenced to 40 years in prison after carrying out the largest data leak in the agency’s history, the US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York announced Thursday. Joshua Schulte – who was accused of handing over reams of classified data to WikiLeaks in 2016 – was convicted in ...
- Ukraine says 2,000 computers of state firm were impacted in cyber attack
February 1, 2024
Ukraine’s state computer emergency response team CERT-UA said on Thursday around 2,000 computers had been affected in the recent cyber attack on an unnamed state-run company. “As part of the detailed study of the cyber threat, the obtained malware samples were examined, the peculiarities of the functioning of the infrastructure of control servers were established, and ...
- Volt Typhoon Actors Exploiting Insecure SOHO Routers
January 31, 2024
Threat actors—particularly the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—sponsored Volt Typhoon group—are compromising small office/home office (SOHO) routers by exploiting software defects that manufacturers must eliminate through secure software design and development. Specifically, Volt Typhoon actors are exploiting security defects in SOHO routers to use them as launching pads to further compromise U.S. critical infrastructure entities. CISA ...