Background

Since the Log4J vulnerability was exposed, we see more and more malware jumped on the wagon, Elknot, Gafgyt, Mirai are all too familiar, on February 9, 2022, 360Netlab’s honeypot system captured an unknown ELF file propagating through the Log4J vulnerability. What stands out is that the network traffic generated by this sample triggered a DNS Tunnel alert in our system, We decided to take a close look, and indeed, it is a new botnet family, which we named B1txor20 based on its propagation using the file name “b1t”, the XOR encryption algorithm, and the RC4 algorithm key length of 20 bytes.…

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Summary

I came across a fairly interesting VBS-based DanaBot downloader the other day, and I figured it was worth doing a quick write-up on the obfuscation scheme and a few of the other TPPs I observed. The social engineering pretext used in this campaign was interesting as it leveraged an “unclaimed property” themed lure and required user interaction to deliver the first stage payload.…

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Over recent months, the CrowdStrike Falcon® OverWatch™ team has tracked an ongoing, widespread intrusion campaign leveraging bundled .msi installers to trick victims into downloading malicious payloads alongside legitimate software. These payloads and scripts were used to perform reconnaissance and ultimately download and execute NIGHT SPIDER’s Zloader trojan, as detailed in CrowdStrike CROWDSTRIKE FALCON® INTELLIGENCE™ Premium reporting.…

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Cisco Talos has observed new cyber attacks targeting Turkey and other Asian countries we believe with high confidence are from groups operating under the MuddyWater umbrella of APT groups. U.S. Cyber Command recently connected MuddyWater to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). These campaigns primarily utilize malicious documents (maldocs) to deploy downloaders and RATs implemented in a variety of languages, such as PowerShell, Visual Basic and JavaScript.…
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Update March 17, 2022: Cisco Talos has updated the IOC section with additional hashes and ClamAV coverage.

Executive summaryOpportunistic cybercriminals are attempting to exploit Ukrainian sympathizers by offering malware purporting to be offensive cyber tools to target Russian entities.…
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In March 2022, we came across evidence that another, relatively unknown, ransomware known as Nokoyawa is likely connected with Hive, as the two families share some striking similarities in their attack chain, from the tools used to the order in which they execute various steps.

Hive, which is one of the more notable ransomware families of 2021, made waves in the latter half of the year after breaching over 300 organizations in just four months — allowing the group to earn what could potentially be millions of US dollars in profit.…

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Since the dawn of phishing, fraudulent invoicing and purchasing schemes have been one of the most common lures. The usual modus operandi involves appealing to the recipient’s desire to avoid incurring a debt, especially where a business may be involved.

FortiGuard Labs recently came across an interesting phishing e-mail masquerading as a purchase order addressed to a Ukrainian manufacturing organization that deals with raw materials and chemicals.…

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8/24 Editor’s Note: Since the publication, SMTP2Go has updated its security measures.

Key TakeawaysProofpoint researchers have identified ongoing activity by the China-aligned APT actor TA416 in which the group is targeting European diplomatic entities, including an individual involved in refugee and migrant services. This targeting is consistent with other activity reported by Proofpoint, showing an interest in refugee policies and logistics across the APT actor landscape which coincides with increased tensions and now armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.…
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The ASEC analysis team has recently discovered the distribution of Cobalt Strike targeting unsecured MS-SQL servers.

MS-SQL server is a typical database server of the Windows environment, and it has consistently been a target of attack from the past. Attacks that target MS-SQL servers include attacks to the environment where its vulnerability has not been patched, brute forcing, and dictionary attack against poorly managed servers.…

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The ASEC analysis team has discovered that PseudoManuscrypt malware was being distributed in Korea since May 2021. Introduced in the previous ASEC blog, PseudoManuscrypt is disguised as an installer that is similar to a form of Cryptbot, and is being distributed. Not only is its file form similar to Cryptbot, but it is also distributed via malicious sites exposed on the top search page when users search commercial software-related illegal programs such as Crack and Keygen.…

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Executive SummaryOur research attributes a decade of activity to a threat actor we call ModifiedElephant. ModifiedElephant is responsible for targeted attacks on human rights activists, human rights defenders, academics, and lawyers across India with the objective of planting incriminating digital evidence. ModifiedElephant has been operating since at least 2012, and has repeatedly targeted specific individuals.…
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Despite being around for many years, blockchain captured the zeitgeist of the digital movement with the advent of Bitcoin. Digital currencies, however, are not the only application of this technology. Non-fungible tokens (NFT) entered the popular lexicon in 2021. An NFT is a digital token that uses blockchain to verify the authenticity of digital content and ownership, such as art, music, collectibles, and in-video-game items.…

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Research by: Aliaksandr Trafimchuk, Raman Ladutska

This research comes as a follow-up to our previous article on Trickbot,  “When Old Friends Meet Again: Why Emotet Chose Trickbot For Rebirth” where we provided an overview of the Trickbot infrastructure after its takedown. Check Point Research (CPR) now sheds some light on the technical details of key Trickbot modules.…

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