Key InsightsAPT29’s pace of operations and emphasis on Ukraine increased in the first half of 2023 as Kyiv launched its counteroffensive, pointing to the SVR’s central role in collecting intelligence concerning the current pivotal phase of the war. During this period, Mandiant has tracked substantial changes in APT29’s tooling and tradecraft, likely designed to support the increased frequency and scope of operations and hinder forensic analysis. …
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The deployment of file-encrypting ransomware by organized cybercriminal gangs is one of the largest cybersecurity risks facing organizations. A network breach that culminates with a ransomware infection often starts with an infection with a type of malware called a loader. This malware acts as a foothold into an organization’s network and is subsequently used to install other payloads such as malware or tools.…

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Since February 2023, Microsoft has observed password spray activity against thousands of organizations carried out  by an actor we track as Peach Sandstorm (HOLMIUM). Peach Sandstorm is an Iranian nation-state threat actor who has recently pursued organizations in the satellite, defense, and pharmaceutical sectors around the globe.…

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In early August, ReversingLabs identified a malicious supply chain campaign that the research team dubbed “VMConnect.” That campaign consisted of two dozen malicious Python packages posted to the Python Package Index (PyPI) open-source repository. The packages mimicked popular open-source Python tools, including vConnector, a wrapper module for pyVmomi VMware vSphere bindings; eth-tester, a collection of tools for testing Ethereum-based applications; and databases, a tool that gives asynchronous support for a range of databases. …

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On June 15, 2023, Mandiant released a blog post detailing an 8-month-long global espionage campaign conducted by a Chinese-nexus threat group tracked as UNC4841. In this follow-up blog post, we will detail additional tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by UNC4841 that have since been uncovered through Mandiant’s incident response engagements, as well as through collaborative efforts with Barracuda Networks and our International Government partners. …

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Executive Summary 

The Key Group ransomware family was first revealed on January 6, 2023, continuing their operations since then. EclecticIQ researchers assess with high confidence, the Key Group ransomware gang is primarily a Russian speaking, financially motivated threat group using Telegram channel keygroup777Tg for the negotiation of ransoms.[1] …

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We’ve previously reported on a Nokoyawa ransomware case in which the initial access was via an Excel macro and IcedID malware. This case, which also ended in Nokoyawa Ransomware, involved the threat actor deploying the final ransomware only 12 hours after the initial compromise.

This threat actor delivered a password protected ZIP file via HTML smuggling to organizations back in late October, early November 2022.…

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Summary

Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Flax Typhoon, based in China, that is targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the likely intention of performing espionage. Flax Typhoon gains and maintains long-term access to Taiwanese organizations’ networks with minimal use of malware, relying on tools built into the operating system, along with some normally benign software to quietly remain in these networks.…

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In this entry, we detail our analysis of how the TargetCompany ransomware abused an iteration of fully undetectable (FUD) obfuscator engine BatCloak to infect vulnerable systems.

We found active campaign deployments combining remote access trojan (RAT) Remcos and the TargetCompany ransomware earlier this year. We compared these deployments with previous samples and found that these deployments are implementing fully undetectable (FUD) packers to their binaries.…

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