To obtain a better perspective of attacks worldwide, Trustwave has implemented a network of honeypots located in multiple countries across the globe. By distributing honeypots in such a manner, we can gather a reliable set of information on the methods and techniques used by attackers and their botnets.…
Tag: CHINA
In the first half of 2023, Mandiant Managed Defense has observed a threefold increase in the number of attacks using infected USB drives to steal secrets. Mandiant tracked all of the cases and found that the majority of the incidents could be attributed to several active USB-based operation campaigns affecting both the public and private sectors globally.…
Introduction to Letscall
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In recent years, the rise of Vishing, also known as Voice over IP Phishing, has become so popular that it has eroded trust in calls from unknown numbers.…
We all have thoughts that keep us up at night.
Will the ticking noise the car made end up being an expensive repair? When will YouTube superstar John Hammond respond to my posted fanfiction? And are there user agents in Microsoft 365’s security telemetry that we can use to detect potential business email compromise (BEC)?…
Cisco Talos has identified multiple versions of an undocumented malicious driver named “RedDriver,” a driver-based browser hijacker that uses the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) to intercept browser traffic. RedDriver has been active since at least 2021.
RedDriver utilizes HookSignTool to forge its signature timestamp to bypass Windows driver-signing policies.…
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In this entry, we discuss the findings of our investigation into a piece of a signed rootkit, whose main binary functions as a universal loader that enables attackers to directly load a second-stage unsigned kernel module.
In one of our recent threat hunting investigations, we came across an interesting new threat activity cluster that we initially thought was a false positive detection for a Microsoft signed file.…
Rekoobe is a backdoor known to be used by APT31, a threat group based in China. AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC) has been receiving reports of the Rekoobe malware from tenants in Korea for several years, and will hereby share its brief analysis. Additionally, the Rekoobe variants will be categorized along with a summary of the ones used to target Korean companies.…
Introduction
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In the last couple of months, Check Point Research (CPR) has been tracking the activity of a Chinese threat actor targeting Foreign Affairs ministries and embassies in Europe. Combined with other Chinese activity previously reported by Check Point Research, this represents a larger trend within the Chinese ecosystem, pointing to a shift to targeting European entities, with a focus on their foreign policy.…
The Flea (aka APT15, Nickel) advanced persistent threat (APT) group continued to focus on foreign ministries in a recent attack campaign that ran from late 2022 into early 2023 in which it leveraged a new backdoor called Backdoor.Graphican.
This campaign was primarily focused on foreign affairs ministries in the Americas, although the group also targeted a government finance department in a country in the Americas and a corporation that sells products in Central and South America.…
Key Points
Mystic Stealer is a new information stealer that was first advertised in April 2023
Mystic steals credentials from nearly 40 web browsers and more than 70 browser extensions
The malware also targets cryptocurrency wallets, Steam, and Telegram
The code is heavily obfuscated making use of polymorphic string obfuscation, hash-based import resolution, and runtime calculation of constants
Mystic implements a custom binary protocol that is encrypted with RC4
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How do you know when something is in hot demand in the underground economy?…
On May 23, 2023, Barracuda announced that a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2023-2868) in the Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG) had been exploited in-the-wild as early as October 2022 and that they engaged Mandiant to assist in the investigation. Through the investigation, Mandiant identified a suspected China-nexus actor, currently tracked as UNC4841, targeting a subset of Barracuda ESG appliances to utilize as a vector for espionage, spanning a multitude of regions and sectors.…
Executive Summary
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The Cortex Threat Research team has recently identified multiple espionage attacks targeting governmental entities in the Middle East and Africa. According to our findings, the main goal of the attacks was to obtain highly confidential and sensitive information, specifically related to politicians, military activities, and ministries of foreign affairs.…
Chinese Threat Actor Used Modified Cobalt Strike Variant to Attack Taiwanese Critical Infrastructure
Executive Summary
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EclecticIQ researchers identified a malicious web server very likely operated by a Chinese threat actor used to target Taiwanese government entities, including critical infrastructure.
The command-and-control infrastructure was publicly exposed to the internet. Based on log and meta data found on the server, EclecticIQ analysts assess with high confidence the threat actor performed offensive cyber operations, including reconnaissance, malware delivery, and post-exploitation against selected targets.…
Threat Actors Utilize Undetected Loaders for Stealthy Attacks
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SharpPanda, an APT group originating from China, has seen a rise in its cyber-attack operations starting from at least 2018. The APT group utilizes spear-phishing techniques to obtain initial access, employing a combination of outdated Microsoft Office document vulnerabilities, novel evasion techniques, and highly potent backdoor malware.…
Microsoft has uncovered stealthy and targeted malicious activity focused on post-compromise credential access and network system discovery aimed at critical infrastructure organizations in the United States. The attack is carried out by Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored actor based in China that typically focuses on espionage and information gathering.…
AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC) has recently discovered SparkRAT being distributed within the installer of a certain VPN program. SparkRAT is a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) developed with GoLang. When installed on a user’s system, it can perform a variety of malicious behaviors, such as executing commands remotely, controlling files and processes, downloading additional payloads, and collecting information from the infected system like by taking screenshots.…
Water Orthrus has been active recently with two new campaigns. CopperStealth uses a rootkit to install malware on infected systems, while CopperPhish steals credit card information. This blog will provide the structure of the campaign and how they work.
Since 2021, we have been tracking the activities of a threat actor we called Water Orthrus, which distributed CopperStealer malware via pay-per-install (PPI) networks.…
We have spotted malicious DLL sideloading activity that builds on the classic sideloading scenario, but adds complexity and layers to its execution. Moreover, our investigation indicates that the responsible threat actor(s) fell so much in love with this adaptation of the original scenario that they used multiple variations of it, repeatedly swapping out a particular component in the process to evade detection at this step of the attack chain.…
AUKUS (Australia-United Kingdom-United States) is a strategic military alliance between these territories that became a reality in 2021, whose main objective is to build nuclear-powered submarines to counter the threat from China in the Indo-Pacific region. This agreement also includes the sharing of cyber capabilities and other submarine technologies.…
By Tom Hegel and Aleksandar Milenkoski
Executive Summary SentinelLabs has observed ongoing attacks from Kimsuky, a North Korean state-sponsored APT that has a long history of targeting organizations across Asia, North America, and Europe. Ongoing campaigns use a new malware component we call ReconShark, which is actively delivered to specifically targeted individuals through spear-phishing emails, OneDrive links leading to document downloads, and the execution of malicious macros.…