AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC) has recently discovered SparkRAT being distributed within the installer of a certain VPN program. SparkRAT is a Remote Administration Tool (RAT) developed with GoLang. When installed on a user’s system, it can perform a variety of malicious behaviors, such as executing commands remotely, controlling files and processes, downloading additional payloads, and collecting information from the infected system like by taking screenshots.…

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Introduction

Infoblox analyzes over 70 billion DNS records each day, along with millions of domain-related records from other sources, to identify suspicious and malicious domains throughout the internet. Our algorithms work in series, making near-real time decisions on some domains using our Threat Insight infrastructure, while other decisions are made over time, leveraging a longitudinal profile of the domain.…

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Identifying Connected Infrastructure and Management Activities

Introduction

This blog post seeks to build on recent public reporting on campaigns attributed to SideCopy, a Pakistani-linked threat group. SideCopy has been active since 2019, primarily targeting South Asian countries, with a focus on India and Afghanistan. The group’s name comes from its use of an infection chain that mimics that of SideWinder APT, an Indian-linked threat group.…

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Using malicious Google Ads or SEO poisoning to distribute malware has become a common tactic for cybercriminals. For example, in the Secureworks® 2022 State of the Threat report, Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) researchers described legitimate web searches being hijacked by SEO poisoning to infect victims’ systems with Gootloader, and malicious Google Ads bundling infostealers like RedLine in trojanized installers for messaging apps such as Signal.…

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

Executive Summary

Unit 42 recently discovered a malware campaign targeting Portuguese speakers, which aims to redirect cryptocurrency away from legitimate users’ wallets and into wallets controlled by threat actors instead. To do this, the campaign uses a type of malware known as a cryptocurrency clipper, which monitors the victim’s clipboard for signs that a cryptocurrency wallet address is being copied.…

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April 2023 update – Microsoft Threat Intelligence has shifted to a new threat actor naming taxonomy aligned around the theme of weather. MERCURY is now tracked as Mango Sandstorm and DEV-1084 is now tracked as Storm-1084.

To learn more about the new taxonomy represents the origin, unique traits, and impact of threat actors, to get complete mapping of threat actor names, read this blog: Microsoft shifts to a new threat actor naming taxonomy.…

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We would like to thank Steen Pedersen and Mo Cashman for their remediation advice.

On the 4th and the 5th of April, a law enforcement taskforce spanning agencies across 17 countries – including the FBI, Europol and the Dutch Police – have disrupted the infamous browser cookie market known as Genesis Market and approached hundreds of its users.…

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On December 10, 2021, the Apache Software Foundation disclosed CVE-2021-44228, aka “Log4Shell”, a critical vulnerability in Apache’s Log4j version 2.14.1 and earlier that affects a large number of products that utilize this logging library.

Through our Consulting and Managed Defense clients, Mandiant observed four unique applications targeted and exploited using CVE-2021-44228.…

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Rhadamanthys is an advanced infostealer which debuted on the dark web in September of last year to a warm critical reception by cybercriminals. A maximalist approach to features: functionality is added for its own sake, never mind the effort required or expected payoff. Campaigns by default target countries indiscriminately, excluding the commonwealth of independent states.…
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We discovered a new malware, which we named “OpcJacker” (due to its opcode configuration design and its cryptocurrency hijacking ability), that has been distributed in the wild since the second half of 2022.

We discovered a new malware, which we named “OpcJacker” (due to its opcode configuration design and its cryptocurrency hijacking ability), that has been distributed in the wild since the second half of 2022.…

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Executive SummaryOur insights into a recent NullMixer malware operation revealed Italy and France are the favorite European countries from the opportunistic attackers’ perspective. In thirty days, the operation we monitored was capable to establish initial access to over 8 thousand endpoints and steal sensitive data that are now reaching the underground black markets.…
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February 15, 2024 update – On January 20, 2024, the US government conducted a disruption operation against infrastructure used by a threat actor we track as Forest Blizzard (STRONTIUM), a Russian state-sponsored threat actor, as detailed here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-conducts-court-authorized-disruption-botnet-controlled-russian

December 4, 2023 update – Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Forest Blizzard (STRONTIUM), based in Russia, actively exploiting CVE-2023-23397 to provide secret, unauthorized access to email accounts within Exchange servers.…

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Recently, InQuest Labs analysts responded to a credential phishing attack discovered by a municipal government organization. The following threat sequence was observed:

The email arrived from a compromised sender account address. The sender organization in the observed samples is the municipality’s county health agency.

The email is a lure posing as a payment invoice, with subjects including:Payment Due PaymentThe HTML email contains a URL pointing to a PDF document stored on Raven (app.raven[.]com),…
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Cyber espionage threat actors continue to target technologies that do not support endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions such as firewalls, IoT devices, hypervisors and VPN technologies (e.g. Fortinet, SonicWall, Pulse Secure, and others). Mandiant has investigated dozens of intrusions at defense industrial base (DIB), government, technology, and telecommunications organizations over the years where suspected China-nexus groups have exploited zero-day vulnerabilities and deployed custom malware to steal user credentials and maintain long-term access to the victim environments.…

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Last February a Blackberry report alluded to one of APT-C-36 campaigns (Blind Eagle). The APT-C-36 group has many similarities in terms of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) with the group Hagga / Aggah, as we have been able to observe at Lab52. Particularly, this article describes one of the campaigns that has been linked to APT-C-36, where the artefacts used are noticeable Hagga artefacts. …

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