DLL (Dynamic-Link Library) sideloading is a technique used by Threat Actors to infect users using legitimate applications which load malicious DLL files that spoof legitimate ones. Recently published a blog about Qakbot malware that leverages a calculator to perform DLL Sideloading.

Similarly, we came across a Twitter post wherein researchers mentioned a document file that performs DLL Sideloading using Microsoft applications such as “Teams.exe”…

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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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By Securonix Threat Labs, Threat Research: D. Iuzvyk, T. Peck, O. Kolesnikov

Last Updated: July 20, 2022

Introduction

The Securonix Threat Research (STR) team has been observing and investigating a new attack campaign exploiting high-value targets, including Czech Republic, Poland, and other countries. The attack campaign has been tracked by STR as STIFF#BIZON.…

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Execution

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: 194.31.98.124:443

Java-sdk.exe sets persistence for itself via setting a Run registry key.…

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By Jim Walter & Aleksandar Milenkoski

LockBit 3.0 ransomware (aka LockBit Black) is an evolution of the prolific LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) family, which has roots that extend back to BlackMatter and related entities. After critical bugs were discovered in LockBit 2.0 in March 2022, the authors began work on updating their encryption routines and adding several new features designed to thwart researchers.…

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In April 2022, ESET researchers discovered a previously unknown macOS backdoor that spies on users of the compromised Mac and exclusively uses public cloud storage services to communicate back and forth with its operators. Following analysis, we named it CloudMensis. Its capabilities clearly show that the intent of its operators is to gather information from the victims’ Macs by exfiltrating documents, keystrokes, and screen captures.…

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Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs captured a phishing email as part of a phishing campaign spreading a new variant of QakBot. Also known as QBot, QuackBot, or Pinkslipbot, QakBot is an information stealer and banking Trojan that has been captured and analyzed by security researchers since 2007.

I performed a deep analysis on this phishing campaign and the new QakBot variant using the captured email.…

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Redeemer 2.0 being distributed via Affiliate Program

Cyble Research Labs has constantly been tracking emerging threats as well as their delivery mechanisms from Ransomware groups, RATs, etc. During a routine threat-hunting exercise, we came across the latest version of Redeemer ransomware on darkweb cybercrime forums. The below figure shows a post made by the Redeemer Ransomware Developer named “Cerebrate” on a cybercrime forum.…

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

Executive Summary

Organizations 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.…

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Cybercriminals are always looking for innovative techniques to evade security solutions. Based on the Resecurity® HUNTER assessment, attackers are actively leveraging tools allowing them to generate malicious shortcut files (.LNK files) for payload delivery.

Resecurity, Inc. (USA), a Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company protecting Fortune 500’s worldwide, has detected an update to one of them most popular tools used by cybercriminals.…

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This research was conducted by Michael Mullen and Nikolaos Pantazopoulos from NCC Group Cyber Incident Response Team. You can find more here Incident Response – NCC Group

Summary tl;dr

In the Threat Pulse released in November 2021 we touched on Everest Ransomware group. This latest blog documents the TTPs employed by a group who were observed deploying Everest ransomware during a recent incident response engagement.…

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During our routine threat-hunting exercise, Cyble Research Labs came across a Twitter post wherein a researcher mentioned an interesting infection chain of Xloader malware.

The malware uses multiple file types such as PDF, XLSX, and RTF for its initial infection and execution. It is also designed to drop three modules in memory and execute the final payload using the Process-Hollowing technique.…

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Following on from our earlier Owowa discovery, we continued to hunt for more backdoors potentially set up as malicious modules within IIS, a popular web server edited by Microsoft. And we didn’t come back empty-handed…

In 2021, we noticed a trend among several threat actors for deploying a backdoor within IIS after exploiting one of the ProxyLogon-type vulnerabilities within Microsoft Exchange servers.…

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