APT Group Sends Spear Phishing Emails to Indian Government Officials

Introduction On May 18, 2016, FireEye Labs observed a suspected Pakistan-based APT group sending spear phishing emails to Indian government officials. This threat actor has been active for several years and conducting suspected intelligence collection operations against South Asian political and...

Wekby APT Gang Seen Using DNS Tunneling for Command and Control

Palo Alto Networks is reporting a shift in malware tactics used by the APT group Wekby that has added a rare but effective new tool to its bag of tricks. The security firm reported on Tuesday that over the past week, Wekby attackers are turning to the technique known as DNS tunneling in lieu of...

PLATINUM Hackers Hijack Windows Hotpatching to Stay Hidden

In Brief The Microsoft’s Windows Defender Advanced Threat Hunting team detected that a cyber espionage group of hackers, known as PLATINUM, has found a way to turn the Windows's Hotpatching technique a way of updating the operating system without requiring a restart to hide its malware from...

Platinum APT Group Abuses Windows Hotpatching

An obscure Windows feature known as hotpatching, missing in the OS since the introduction of Windows 8, is a preferred tool used by a resourced attack group called Platinum that was uncovered by Microsoft. The group has carried out targeted attacks in South and Southeast Asia since at least 2009,...

Operation Blockbuster Ties Destructive Attacks to Lazarus Group

The nation-state sponsored hacker group allegedly behind the 2014 attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment has been linked to similar intrusions against a number of companies in South Korea including the Dark Seoul and Operation Troy attacks. A coalition of security companies called Operation...

On BlackEnergy, Ransomware Hitting an Israeli Energy Consortium, Amazon as a CA, and More

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week, including the latest on the BlackEnergy APT Group, Amazon getting into the SSL certificate game, and government agencies being told to audit their systems for the Juniper backdoor. Download: ThreatpostNewsWrapJanuary292016.mp3 Music by Chr...

BlackEnergy APT Group Spreading Malware via Tainted Word Docs

Attackers have begun using rigged Microsoft Word documents propagated via spearphishing emails to spread the BlackEnergy Trojan. Researchers with Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team discovered a malicious Word document last week that appears to stem from a campaign against one of th...

The EPS Awakens - Part 2

On Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015, FireEye published The EPS Awakens, detailing an exploit targeting a previously unknown Microsoft Encapsulated Postscript EPS dict copy use-after-free vulnerability that was silently patched by Microsoft on November 10, 2015. The blog described the technical details of...

Emergency Adobe Flash Zero Day Patch Arrives Ahead of Schedule

Adobe has decided to patch the zero day vulnerability that was disclosed in Flash Player earlier this week today — instead of next week as originally scheduled. According to a security bulletin Adobe posted this morning the update actually fixes three vulnerabilities in the software, but the most...

Outlook Web Access Targeted Attack

Attackers aiming for lateral movement inside an enterprise network have done well in the past to target domain controller credentials. Researchers at Cybereason, however, have uncovered a targeted attack in which hackers were able to burrow onto the corporate network and steal thousands of...

Emissary Panda APT Group Gets Selective About Data it Steals

LAS VEGAS – The Emissary Panda APT group has a long history of invading Western organizations—be they enterprises, government or political outfits—hungry for reams of intellectual property. Lately the group, however, has become a little more selective about what it steals. Researchers at Dell...

New Campaign Targeting Japanese with Hacking Team Zero Day

Yet another group of attackers has quickly cashed in on one of the Adobe Flash zero days uncovered in the HackingTeam leak and is leveraging it to target Japanese organizations. Last week researchers determined that attackers were able to compromise two Japanese websites, the country’s...

Java Zero-day vulnerability exploited in the Wild

Really a bad weekend for Internet users. Three previously unknown critical zero-day vulnerabilities were revealed in Adobe’s Flash Player over the weekend, thanks to Hacking team data Breach in which 400GB of internal data were leaked over the Internet. Now, a new zero-day vulnerability has been...

Volatile Cedar APT Group First Operating Out of Lebanon

An APT group with its sights on selective targets, most of those in Israel, has been using an elusive malware implant to steal data from groups with state and political interests. The gang, called Volatile Cedar by researchers at Check Point Software Systems, has been working since 2012 and could...

AntLabs InnGate security vulnerability patch

ANTLabs today is expected to roll out patches for a vulnerability in its InnGate Internet gateways that are popular in hospitality and convention locations. The gateways provide temporary Internet access to hotel guests or conference attendees using kiosks, for example. The vulnerability...

Darkhotel APT Group Targeting Top Executives in Long-Term Campaign

APT groups tend to be grouped together in a large amorphous blob of sinister intentions and similar targets, but not all APT crews are created equal. Researchers have identified a group that’s been operating in Asia for at least seven years and has been using hotel networks as key infection point...

Attackers Exploiting Windows OLE Vulnerability

Attackers are using a zero day vulnerability in nearly all supported versions of Windows in a series of targeted attacks. The flaw is in the OLE technology in Windows and can be used for remote code execution is a targeted user opens a rigged Office file. Microsoft is warning customers that there...

Heartbleed Exploit Linked to Community Health Data Breach

Update: The Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability is now the centerpiece of the Community Health Systems data breach. Dave Kennedy, CEO of security consultancy TrustedSec, said yesterday that three sources close to the CHS investigation told him that a Heartbleed exploit was the hackers’ initial way i...

Community Health Systems APT Data Breach Medical Espionage

At first blush, the Community Health Systems data breach by Chinese hackers seems to be an anomaly. State-sponsored attackers generally target intellectual property for the purposes of military or economic gain; stealing healthcare credentials and personal patient records seems incongruous. But...

New Internet Explorer Zero Day Used in Targeted Attacks

There’s a new zero-day vulnerability in many of the current versions of Internet Explorer and is being used in active attacks right now. The exploit that’s in use has the ability to bypass both DEP and ASLR and researchers say it’s being used by a known APT group. Microsoft has issued an advisory...