As endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions improve malware detection efficacy on Windows systems, certain state-sponsored threat actors have shifted to developing and deploying malware on systems that do not generally support EDR such as network appliances, SAN arrays, and VMware ESXi servers.

Earlier this year, Mandiant identified a novel malware ecosystem impacting VMware ESXi, Linux vCenter servers, and Windows virtual machines that enables a threat actor to take the following actions:

Maintain persistent administrative access to the hypervisor Send commands to the hypervisor that will be routed to the guest VM for execution Transfer files between the ESXi hypervisor and guest machines running beneath it Tamper with logging services on the hypervisor Execute arbitrary commands from one guest VM to another guest VM running on the same hypervisor

This malware ecosystem was initially detected when Mandiant Managed Defense identified attacker commands sourced from the legitimate VMware Tools process, vmtoolsd.exe,…

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Avast releases a MafiaWare666 ransomware decryption tool. MafiaWare666 is also known as JCrypt, RIP Lmao, BrutusptCrypt or Hades.

Skip to how to use the MafiaWare666 ransomware decryptor.

MafiaWare666’s Behavior

MafiaWare666 is a ransomware strain written in C# which doesn’t contain any obfuscation or anti-analysis techniques. It encrypts files using the AES encryption.…

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Earlier this year, we started hunting for possible new DeftTorero (aka Lebanese Cedar, Volatile Cedar) artifacts. This threat actor is believed to originate from the Middle East and was publicly disclosed to the cybersecurity community as early as 2015. Notably, no other intelligence was shared until 2021, which led us to speculate on a possible shift by the threat actor to more fileless/LOLBINS techniques, and the use of known/common offensive tools publicly available on the internet that allows them to blend in.…

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Key Takeaways

Sygnia recently investigated a Cheerscrypt ransomware attack which utilized Night Sky ransomware TTPs. Further analysis       revealed that Cheerscrypt and Night Sky are both rebrands of the same threat group, dubbed ‘Emperor Dragonfly’ by Sygnia.

‘Emperor Dragonfly’ (A.K.A. DEV-0401 / BRONZE STARLIGHT) deployed open-source tools that were written by Chinese developers for Chinese users.…

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Circa the beginning of August 2022, while doing security monitoring & incident response services, GTSC SOC team discovered that a critical infrastructure was being attacked, specifically to their Microsoft Exchange application. During the investigation, GTSC Blue Team experts determined that the attack utilized an unpublished Exchange security vulnerability, i.e.,…

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Editor’s Note: The following post is an excerpt of a full report. To read the entire analysis, click here to download the report as a PDF.

This report details multiple campaigns conducted by the likely Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group TA413. The activity was identified through a combination of large-scale automated network traffic analytics and expert analysis.…

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Summary

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory to provide information on recent cyber operations against the Government of Albania in July and September. This advisory provides a timeline of activity observed, from initial access to execution of encryption and wiper attacks.…

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Users are advised to patch immediately: We found exploit samples abusing the Atlassian Confluence vulnerability (CVE-2022-26134) in the wild for malicious cryptocurrency mining.

We observed the active exploitation of CVE-2022-26134, an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability with a critical rating of 9.8 in the collaboration tool Atlassian Confluence.…

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Summary

Actions to take today to protect against ransom operations:

• Keep systems and software updated and prioritize remediating known exploited vulnerabilities.• Enforce MFA.• Make offline backups of your data.

This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is the result of an analytic effort among the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), U.S.…

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This blog entry details how Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Workload Security and Trend Micro Vision One™ effectively detected and blocked the abuse of the CVE-2020-14882 WebLogic vulnerability in affected endpoints.

We have recently observed malicious actors exploiting both recently disclosed and older Oracle WebLogic Server vulnerabilities to deliver cryptocurrency-mining malware.…

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Key TakeawaysArctic Wolf Labs assesses with medium confidence that the Lorenz ransomware group exploited CVE-2022-29499 to compromise Mitel MiVoice Connect to gain initial access Lorenz waited nearly a month after obtaining initial access to conduct additional activity Lorenz exfiltrated data via FileZilla Encryption was done via BitLocker and Lorenz ransomware on ESXi Lorenz employed a high degree of Operational Security (OPSEC) Ransomware groups continue to use Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins) and gaining access to 0day exploits Process and PowerShell Logging can significantly aid incident responders and potentially help decrypt encrypted filesBackground

The Arctic Wolf Labs team recently investigated a Lorenz ransomware intrusion, which leveraged a Mitel MiVoice VoIP appliance vulnerability (CVE-2022-29499) for initial access and Microsoft’s BitLocker Drive Encryption for data encryption.…

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Cisco Talos has been tracking a new campaign operated by the Lazarus APT group, attributed to North Korea by the United States government. This campaign involved the exploitation of vulnerabilities in VMWare Horizon to gain an initial foothold into targeted organizations. Targeted organizations include energy providers from around the world, including those headquartered in the United States, Canada and Japan.…
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