Earlier this year, we started hunting for possible new DeftTorero (aka Lebanese Cedar, Volatile Cedar) artifacts. This threat actor is believed to originate from the Middle East and was publicly disclosed to the cybersecurity community as early as 2015. Notably, no other intelligence was shared until 2021, which led us to speculate on a possible shift by the threat actor to more fileless/LOLBINS techniques, and the use of known/common offensive tools publicly available on the internet that allows them to blend in.…
Tag: CREDENTIAL
Key Takeaways
Read More Sygnia recently investigated a Cheerscrypt ransomware attack which utilized Night Sky ransomware TTPs. Further analysis revealed that Cheerscrypt and Night Sky are both rebrands of the same threat group, dubbed ‘Emperor Dragonfly’ by Sygnia.
‘Emperor Dragonfly’ (A.K.A. DEV-0401 / BRONZE STARLIGHT) deployed open-source tools that were written by Chinese developers for Chinese users.…
Circa the beginning of August 2022, while doing security monitoring & incident response services, GTSC SOC team discovered that a critical infrastructure was being attacked, specifically to their Microsoft Exchange application. During the investigation, GTSC Blue Team experts determined that the attack utilized an unpublished Exchange security vulnerability, i.e.,…
CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523, and CVE-2021-31207) and ProxyLogon (CVE-2021-26855 and CVE-2021-27065) vulnerabilities to install web shells on public-facing servers before stealing credentials, moving laterally across networks, and installing malware on other computers.
Who is Witchetty?Witchetty was first documented by ESET in April 2022, who concluded that it was one of three sub-groups of TA410, a broad cyber-espionage operation with some links to the Cicada group (aka APT10).…
Executive Summary
Read More NullMixer is a dropper leading to an infection chain of a wide variety of malware families. NullMixer spreads via malicious websites that can be found mainly via search engines. These websites are often related to crack, keygen and activators for downloading software illegally, and while they may pretend to be legitimate software, they actually contain a malware dropper.…
In this intrusion from May 2022, the threat actors used BumbleBee as the initial access vector. BumbleBee has been identified as an initial access vector utilized by several ransomware affiliates.
In this intrusion, we see the threat actor use BumbleBee to deploy Cobalt Strike and Meterpreter.…
This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryCybercriminals compromise domain names to attack the owners or users of the domains directly, or use them for various nefarious endeavors, including phishing, malware distribution, and command and control (C2) operations. A special case of DNS hijacking is called domain shadowing, where attackers stealthily create malicious subdomains under compromised domain names.…
Summary
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory to provide information on recent cyber operations against the Government of Albania in July and September. This advisory provides a timeline of activity observed, from initial access to execution of encryption and wiper attacks.…
Fake Zoom Sites Spreading Vidar Stealer
Read More During a routine threat hunting exercise, Cyble Research and Intelligence Labs (CRIL) came across a tweet where a researcher mentioned the creation of multiple fake Zoom sites. All these sites have the same user interface. These sites are created with the express intent of spreading malware disguised as the legitimate Zoom application.…
Ransomware is unique in the malware world, as it deliberately makes its presence known to the victim. But while the online extortionists behind these attacks need to announce their intentions in order to achieve their nefarious ends, that does not mean they wish to draw undue attention to themselves.…
By: Cofense Intelligence
Threat actors are running a series of campaigns spoofing several departments of the United States government. The emails claim to request bids for government projects but lead victims to credential phishing pages instead. These campaigns have been ongoing since at least mid-2019 and were first covered in our Flash Alert in July 2019.…
Summary
Actions to take today to protect against ransom operations:
• Keep systems and software updated and prioritize remediating known exploited vulnerabilities.• Enforce MFA.• Make offline backups of your data.
This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is the result of an analytic effort among the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), U.S.…
Key TakeawaysArctic Wolf Labs assesses with medium confidence that the Lorenz ransomware group exploited CVE-2022-29499 to compromise Mitel MiVoice Connect to gain initial access
Lorenz waited nearly a month after obtaining initial access to conduct additional activity
Lorenz exfiltrated data via FileZilla
Encryption was done via BitLocker and Lorenz ransomware on ESXi
Lorenz employed a high degree of Operational Security (OPSEC)
Ransomware groups continue to use Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins) and gaining access to 0day exploits
Process and PowerShell Logging can significantly aid incident responders and potentially help decrypt encrypted filesBackground
Read More The Arctic Wolf Labs team recently investigated a Lorenz ransomware intrusion, which leveraged a Mitel MiVoice VoIP appliance vulnerability (CVE-2022-29499) for initial access and Microsoft’s BitLocker Drive Encryption for data encryption.…
a well-known technique that involves attackers placing a malicious DLL in a directory where a legitimate DLL is expected to be found. The attacker then runs the legitimate application themselves (having installed it themselves in most cases). The legitimate application then loads and executes the payload.…
Key TakeawaysIn mid-2022, TA453 deployed a social engineering impersonation technique informally called Multi-Persona Impersonation in which the threat actor uses at least two actor-controlled personas on a single email thread to convince targets of the legitimacy of the campaign.
This is an intriguing technique because it requires more resources be used per target—potentially burning more personas—and a coordinated approach among the various personalities in use by TA453.…
Read More In this intrusion from May 2022, we observed a domain-wide compromise that started from a malware ridden Excel document containing the never-dying malware, Emotet.
The post-exploitation started very soon after the initial compromise. The threat actors began enumerating the network once Emotet deployed a Cobalt Strike beacon on the beachhead host.…
This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryThere is a constant debate between usability and security in the software world. Many third-party programs can make their users’ lives easier and save them time by storing their credentials. However, as it turns out, this convenience often comes at the price of poor security, causing the risk of password theft.…
Cisco Talos has been tracking a new campaign operated by the Lazarus APT group, attributed to North Korea by the United States government.
This campaign involved the exploitation of vulnerabilities in VMWare Horizon to gain an initial foothold into targeted organizations.
Targeted organizations include energy providers from around the world, including those headquartered in the United States, Canada and Japan.…
Read More A ransomware victim called in the BlackBerry Incident Response (IR) team during this year’s 4th of July holiday weekend. We quickly realized we were investigating an attack by a previously unknown group, calling themselves “MONTI.” They encrypted nearly 20 user hosts along with a multi-host VMware ESXi cluster that brought down over 20 servers.…
Summary
Actions to take today to mitigate cyber threats from ransomware:
• Prioritize and remediate known exploited vulnerabilities.• Train users to recognize and report phishing attempts.• Enable and enforce multifactor authentication.
Note: This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is part of an ongoing #StopRansomware effort to publish advisories for network defenders that detail various ransomware variants and ransomware threat actors.…