Key PointsAvast discovered an in-the-wild admin-to-kernel exploit for a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in the appid.sys AppLocker driver.  Thanks to Avast’s prompt report, Microsoft addressed this vulnerability as CVE-2024-21338 in the February Patch Tuesday update.  The exploitation activity was orchestrated by the notorious Lazarus Group, with the end goal of establishing a kernel read/write primitive. …
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By Securonix Threat Labs, Threat Research: D. Iuzvyk, T. Peck, O. Kolesnikov

tldr: In order for malware to successfully infect its target, code obfuscation passed into cmd.exe is frequently used. Let’s look at some real-world examples of what threat actors are doing, and how they can be detected.…

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Today Mandiant is releasing a blog post about suspected Iran-nexus espionage activity targeting the aerospace, aviation and defense industries in Middle East countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and potentially Turkey, India, and Albania. 

Mandiant attributes this activity with moderate confidence to the Iranian actor UNC1549, which overlaps with Tortoiseshell—a threat actor that has been publicly linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).…

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Table of Contents: 

Since February 19, Huntress has been sharing technical details of the ScreenConnect vulnerability we’re calling “SlashAndGrab.” In previous posts, we shared the details of this vulnerability, its exploit, and shared detection guidance.

In this article, we’ve collected and curated threat actor activity fresh from the Huntress Security Operations Center (SOC), where our team has detected and kicked out active adversaries leveraging ScreenConnect access for post-exploitation tradecraft.…

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DarkVNC is a hidden utility based on the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) technology, initially promoted on an Exploit forum in 2016. The primary distinction between hVNC and VNC lies in their intended usage and the degree of transparency: VNC can serve as a legitimate tool for remote desktop sharing, while hVNC is associated with stealthy or potentially malicious activities, often operating without the user’s knowledge or consent.…

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Authors: Tejaswini Sandapolla, Shilpesh Trivedi

The 8220 Gang, a notorious Chinese-based threat actor group, has once again surfaced in the spotlight with a renewed assault on cloud based infrastructure. This latest campaign, unfolding from May 2023 through February 2024, showcases the gang’s strategic pivot towards more sophisticated tactics and techniques, targeting both Linux and Windows platforms.…

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Originating in the latter part of 2023, this Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation has drawn attention due to its technical lineage and operational tactics resembling those of the notorious Hive ransomware group. With law enforcement agencies previously disrupting Hive, Hunters International’s rise just after the operation underscores the persistent and adaptive nature of cybercriminal networks.…

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SUMMARY

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) conducted an incident response assessment of a state government organization’s network environment after documents containing host and user information, including metadata, were posted on a dark web brokerage site.…

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DarkGate is a commodity loader written in Borland Delphi that was first identified in 2018 and has been advertised under the Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) business model on popular cybercrime forums since June 2023.

It has a wide range of capabilities, such as the ability to download and execute files in memory, environment reconnaissance and information gathering, privilege escalation, remote access software deployment, and a Hidden Virtual Network Computing (HVNC) module.…

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Affected Platforms: Microsoft WindowsImpacted Users: Microsoft Windows UsersImpact: This loader has been used to load multiple RATs and info stealers, which can lead to compromised credentials and enable further malicious activitiesSeverity Level: Medium

Executive Summary

While analyzing malware samples collected from several victims, the FortiGuard team identified a grouping of malware droppers used to deliver various final-stage payloads throughout 2023.…

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Through its managed security services offerings, Volexity routinely identifies spear-phishing campaigns targeting its customers. One persistent threat actor, whose campaigns Volexity frequently observes, is the Iranian-origin threat actor CharmingCypress (aka Charming Kitten, APT42, TA453). Volexity assesses that CharmingCypress is tasked with collecting political intelligence against foreign targets, particularly focusing on think tanks, NGOs, and journalists.…

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