Play is a new ransomware that takes a page out of Hive and Nokoyawa’s playbook. The many similarities among them indicate that Play, like Nokoyawa, are operated by the same people.

In July, we investigated a spate of ransomware cases in the Latin American region that targeted government entitles, which was initially attributed to a new player known as Play ransomware.…

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The ASEC analysis team has recently identified a malicious HWP file that exploits OLE objects and flash vulnerabilities. The file uses a malicious URL identified in 2020. This URL contains a flash vulnerability (CVE-2018-15982) file, which requires users to take caution.

The identified HWP file includes OLE objects, and the corresponding files are generated in the %TEMP% folder when the HWP file is opened.…

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Earlier this year, [redacted] encountered a relatively new ransomware threat actor that called themselves BianLian. We observed the actor deploying custom malware that was written in the Go programming language, which posed some initial, but not insurmountable, reverse-engineering challenges. 

BianLian used subtle techniques to exploit, enumerate, and move laterally in victim networks to remain undetected and aggressively worked to counter Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) protections during the encryption phase of their operations.…

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BlueSky ransomware is an emerging threat that researchers have been paying increasing attention to since its initial discovery in late June 2022. The ransomware has been observed being spread via trojanized downloads from questionable websites as well as in phishing emails.

Although infections at this time remain low, the ransomware’s characteristics, described below, suggest it has been carefully developed for a sustained campaign.…

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Summary

Actions for ZCS administrators to take today to mitigate malicious cyber activity:

• Patch all systems and prioritize patching known exploited vulnerabilities.

• Deploy detection signatures and hunt for indicators of compromise (IOCs).

• If ZCS was compromised, remediate malicious activity.

Updated November 10, 2022: This product was written by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) with contributions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).…

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Recently, a simple and short email with a suspicious RTF attachment that had been sent to a telecommunications agency in South Asia caught the attention of FortiGuard Labs. The email was disguised as having come from a Pakistan government division and delivered the PivNoxy malware.

Affected Platforms: WindowsImpacted Parties: Windows usersImpact: Controls victim’s machine and collects sensitive informationSeverity Level: Medium

This blog describes how the attack works, suggests who the threat actor behind the operation might be, and details the techniques used by the attacker.…

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Key Findings:TA558 is a likely financially motivated small crime threat actor targeting hospitality, hotel, and travel organizations. Since 2018, this group has used consistent tactics, techniques, and procedures to attempt to install a variety of malware including Loda RAT, Vjw0rm, and Revenge RAT. TA558’s targeting focus is mainly on Portuguese and Spanish speakers, typically located in the Latin America region, with additional targeting observed in Western Europe and North America.…
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CVE-2022-30190 (aka Follina) is a 0-day vulnerability that was disclosed on Twitter last May 27th by the nao_sec Cyber Security Research Team. According to their announcement, this vulnerability was found in (at the time) recently uploaded sample to VirusTotal from Belarus, which suggested it was actively being exploited.…

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This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)

Executive Summary

BlueSky ransomware is an emerging family that has adopted modern techniques to evade security defenses.

Ransomware is a malicious program designed to encrypt a user’s data and demand a ransom for the decryption. BlueSky ransomware predominantly targets Windows hosts and utilizes multithreading to encrypt files on the host for faster encryption.…

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This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)

Executive Summary

Beginning in early May 2022, Unit 42 observed a threat actor deploying Cuba Ransomware using novel tools and techniques. Using our naming schema, Unit 42 tracks the threat actor as Tropical Scorpius.

Here, we start with an overview of the ransomware and focus on an evolution of behavior observed leading up to deployment of Cuba Ransomware.…

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Vulnerability management and remediation are some of the most difficult problems to tackle within an organization. Multiple solutions, watchlists, and warnings are designed to ensure that companies and end users patch their software against known security vulnerabilities.

Unfortunately, even with tools available and teams forewarned with up-to-date information, this often does not happen in a timely manner or even at all.…

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On July 7, 2022, the CISA published an alert, entitled, “North Korean State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Use Maui Ransomware To Target the Healthcare and Public Health Sector,” related to a Stairwell report, “Maui Ransomware.” Later, the Department of Justice announced that they had effectively clawed back $500,000 in ransom payments to the group, partly thanks to new legislation.…

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In this intrusion from April 2022, the threat actors used BumbleBee as the initial access vector.

BumbleBee is a malware loader that was first reported by Google Threat Analysis Group in March 2022. Google TAG attributes this malware to an initial access broker (IAB) dubbed EXOTIC LILY, working with the cybercrime group FIN12/WIZARD SPIDER/DEV-0193.…

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This blog post was authored by Ankur Saini and Hossein Jazi

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team has identified a new Remote Access Trojan we are calling Woody Rat that has been in the wild for at least one year.

This advanced custom Rat is mainly the work of a threat actor that targets Russian entities by using lures in archive file format and more recently Office documents leveraging the Follina vulnerability.…

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Our X-Ops teams – SophosLabs, SecOps (Sophos Managed Threat Response [MTR] and Sophos Rapid Response), and Sophos AI – operate in a virtuous Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, building on each teams’ work to improve customer protections. A recent set of investigations illustrates our OODA-loop process: Attacks against a pair of vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL were researched, documented, and addressed proactively.…

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