Kimsuky (also known as Thallium, Black Banshee and Velvet Chollima) is a prolific and active threat actor primarily targeting Korea-related entities. Like other sophisticated adversaries, this group also updates its tools very quickly. In early 2022, we observed this group was attacking the media and a think-tank in South Korea and reported technical details to our threat intelligence customer.…
Tag: GOVERNMENT
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).…
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.…
Introduction
Recently Zscaler ThreatLabz observed a Grandoreiro campaign targeting organizations in the Spanish-speaking nations of Mexico and Spain that work across a variety of different industry verticals such as Automotive, Chemicals Manufacturing and others. In this campaign, the threat actors impersonate government officials from the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City and from the Public Ministry in the form of spear-phishing emails in order to lure victims to download and execute “Grandoreiro” a prolific banking trojan that has been active since at least 2016, and that specifically targets users in Latin America.…
Background
Read More Over the last year Mandiant has been tracking UNC3890, a cluster of activity targeting Israeli shipping, government, energy and healthcare organizations via social engineering lures and a potential watering hole. Mandiant assesses with moderate confidence this actor is linked to Iran, which is notable given the strong focus on shipping and the ongoing naval conflict between Iran and Israel.…
Whether you want to block ads, keep a to-do list or check your spelling, browser extensions allow you to do all of the above and more, improving convenience, productivity and efficiency for free, which is why they are so popular. Chrome, Safari, Mozilla — these and many other major Web browsers — have their own online stores to distribute thousands of extensions, and the most popular plug-ins there reach over 10 million users.…
The DoNot Team (a.k.a APT-C-35) are advanced persistent threat actors who’ve been active since at least 2016. They’ve targeted many attacks against individuals and organizations in South Asia. DoNot are reported to be the main developers and users of Windows and Android spyware frameworks [1][2][3].…
This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryBeginning 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.…
Taking its name from “Gwisin,” a Korean term for “ghost” or “spirit,” GwisinLocker is a new ransomware family that targets South Korean industrial and pharmaceutical companies. …
For each discovered drive, ROADSWEEP will initialize a new thread which is responsible for encrypting all files within that drive. This thread enumerates the file system using the Windows FindFirstFileW and FindNextFileW APIs. For each root directory, a ransomware note is created with the content and filename noted above.…
Executive Summary
Read More This paper investigates a recent Emotet intrusion and details how the final Emotet payload is installed onto the system. The key observations are:
Obfuscated Excel macros used to download and run the Emotet loader. Emotet loader executed using regsvr32.exe. Encrypted Emotet payload embedded in loader’s .rsrc…
Table of Contents
Read More In this blog, the Qualys Research Team explains the mechanics of a Linux malware variant named BPFdoor. We then demonstrate the efficacy of Qualys Custom Assessment and Remediation to detect it, and Qualys Multi-Vector EDR to protect against it.
BPFDoor is a Linux/Unix backdoor that allows threat actors to remotely connect to a Linux shell to gain complete access to a compromised device.…
Executive summary
Read More Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Ukrainians have been under a nearly constant barrage of cyber attacks. Working jointly with Ukrainian organizations, Cisco Talos has discovered a fairly uncommon piece of malware targeting Ukraine — this time aimed at a large software development company whose software is used in various state organizations within Ukraine.…
Execution
Read More Upon execution of Base-Update.exe, it proceeds to download, Base64-decode, and execute another time stomped downloader written in Go from http://194.31.98.124:443/i with the arguments –a 0CyCcrhI/6B5wKE8XLOd+w==:
%TEMP%java-sdk.exe (MD5: 36ff9ec87c458d6d76b2afbd5120dfae)Downloader written in Go Base64 encoded – MD5: 2f14b3d5ab01568e2707925783f8eafe Compile time: 1970-01-01 00:00:00 C&C: 194.31.98.124:443Java-sdk.exe sets persistence for itself via setting a Run registry key.…
Over the last month a crimeware group best known as 8220 Gang has expanded their botnet to roughly 30,000 hosts globally through the use of Linux and common cloud application vulnerabilities and poorly secured configurations. In a recent campaign, the group was observed making use of a new version of the IRC botnet, PwnRig cryptocurrency miner, and its generic infection script.…
Key FindingsWe discovered an extensive espionage campaign targeting Thai pro-democracy protesters, and activists calling for reforms to the monarchy.
We forensically confirmed that at least 30 individuals were infected with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
The observed infections took place between October 2020 and November 2021.…
Read More This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryOrganizations around the world rely on the use of trusted, reliable online storage services – such as DropBox and Google Drive – to conduct day-to-day operations. However, our latest research shows that threat actors are finding ways to take advantage of that trust to make their attacks extremely difficult to detect and prevent.…
Cisco Talos has been tracking a new malicious campaign operated by the Transparent Tribe APT group.
This campaign involves the targeting of educational institutions and students in the Indian subcontinent, a deviation from the adversary’s typical focus on government entities.
The attacks result in the deployment of CrimsonRAT, Transparent Tribe’s malware of choice for establishing long-term access into victim networks.…
Read More Summary
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to provide information on Maui ransomware, which has been used by North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors since at least May 2021 to target Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) Sector organizations.…
By Securonix Threat Labs, Threat Research: Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck
July 5, 2022
IntroductionA new malware loader named BumbleBee is actively being used to target businesses using mass phishing or spear-phishing campaigns as an initial attack vector. Malware loaders (or droppers) are commonly used by ransomware groups and other APTs to distribute payloads as they are extremely effective during the initial stages of compromise.…