A week in security (January 3 – 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Ransomware attacks Finalsite, renders 8,000 school sites unreachable for days Patchwork APT caught in its own web Sophisticated phishing scheme spent years robbing authors of their unpublished work Google and Facebook fined $240 million for making cookies hard to...

BADNEWS! Patchwork APT Hackers Score Own Goal in Recent Malware Attacks

Threat hunters have shed light on the tactics, techniques, and procedures embraced by an Indian-origin hacking group called Patchwork as part of a renewed campaign that commenced in late November 2021, targeting Pakistani government entities and individuals with a research focus on molecular...

Patchwork APT caught in its own web

Patchwork is an Indian threat actor that has been active since December 2015 and usually targets Pakistan via spear phishing attacks. In its most recent campaign from late November to early December 2021, Patchwork has used malicious RTF files to drop a variant of the BADNEWS Ragnatela Remote...

New rootkit iLOBleed targets HP servers

THREAT LEVEL: Red. For a detailed advisory, download the pdf file here. The rootkit known as iLOBleed has been active since 2020 that is targeting Hewlett-Packard HP enterprises Integrated Lights-Out iLO server management technology to delete data from infected machines and corrupt firmware. The...

Experts Detail Logging Tool of DanderSpritz Framework Used by Equation Group Hackers

Cybersecurity researchers have offered a detailed glimpse into a system called DoubleFeature that's dedicated to logging the different stages of post-exploitation stemming from the deployment of DanderSpritz, a full-featured malware framework used by the Equation Group. DanderSpritz came to light...

FBI: Another Zoho ManageEngine Zero-Day Under Active Attack

Another Zoho ManageEngine zero-day vulnerability is under active attack from an APT group, this time looking to override legitimate functions of servers running ManageEngine Desktop Central and elevate privileges — with an ultimate goal of dropping malware onto organizations’ networks, the FBI ha...

Experts Discover Backdoor Deployed on the U.S. Federal Agency's Network

A U.S. federal government commission associated with international rights has been targeted by a backdoor that reportedly compromised its internal network in what the researchers described as a "classic APT-type operation." "This attack could have given total visibility of the network and complet...

New PseudoManuscrypt Malware Infected Over 35,000 Computers in 2021

Industrial and government organizations, including enterprises in the military-industrial complex and research laboratories, are the targets of a new malware botnet dubbed PseudoManyscrypt that has infected roughly 35,000 Windows computers this year alone. The name comes from its similarities to...

‘PseudoManuscrypt’ Mass Spyware Campaign Targets 35K Systems

Researchers have tracked new spyware – dubbed “PseudoManuscrypt” because it’s similar to “Manuscrypt” malware from the Lazarus advanced persistent threat APT group – that’s attempted to scribble itself across more than 35,000 targeted computers in 195 countries. Kaspersky researchers said in a...

PseudoManuscrypt: a mass-scale spyware attack campaign

In June 2021, Kaspersky ICS CERT experts identified malware whose loader has some similarities to the Manuscrypt malware, which is part of the Lazarus APT groups arsenal. In 2020, the group used Manuscrypt in attacks on defense enterprises in different countries. These attacks are described in th...

Relentless Log4j Attacks Include State Actors, Possible Worm

Call it a “logjam” of threats: Attackers including nation-state actors have already targeted half of all corporate global networks in security companies’ telemetry using at least 70 distinct malware families — and the fallout from the Log4j vulnerability is just beginning. Researchers manning...

Log4Shell Exploit Detection and Response with Qualys Multi-Vector EDR

Author: Hiep Dang & Malware Threat Research Team On Dec 9, 2021, the world first learned about the Log4Shell vulnerability aka Log4J CVE-2021-44228 found in the Log4j2 library commonly used by Java applications. Since then, everyone in the cybersecurity industry has been scrambling to understand...

Not with a Bang but a Whisper: The Shift to Stealthy C2

As defensive tools have evolved to detect more and more traditional attack techniques, it should come as no surprise that attackers have shifted tactics. This ever-evolving arms race between offensive security toolsets, bespoke advanced persistent threat APT malware and the billion-dollar infosec...

SolarWinds Hackers Targeting Government and Business Entities Worldwide

Nobelium, the threat actor attributed to the massive SolarWinds supply chain compromise, has been once again linked to a series of attacks targeting multiple cloud solution providers, services, and reseller companies, as the hacking group continues to refine and retool its tactics at an alarming...

APT Actors Exploiting CVE-2021-44077 in Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

Summary This joint Cybersecurity Advisory uses the MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge ATT &CK® framework, Version 9. See the ATT&CK for Enterprise framework for referenced threat actor techniques and for mitigations. This joint advisory is the result of analytic efforts...

Researchers Detail How Pakistani Hackers Targeting Indian and Afghan Governments

A Pakistani threat actor successfully socially engineered a number of ministries in Afghanistan and a shared government computer in India to steal sensitive Google, Twitter, and Facebook credentials from its targets and stealthily obtain access to government portals. Malwarebytes' latest findings...

Threat Group Takes Aim Again at Cloud Platform Provider Zoho

State-backed adversaries expanded attacks against cloud platform company Zoho and its ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus software, a help desk and asset management solution. A recent campaign marks an uptick in attacks against the firm’s platform, which have also included past targeting of Zoho’s...

CISA Warns of Actively Exploited Critical Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Vulnerability

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA are warning of active exploitation of a newly patched flaw in Zoho's ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus product to deploy web shells and carry out an array of malicious activities. Tracked as...

SideCopy APT: Connecting lures to victims, payloads to infrastructure

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi and the Threat Intelligence Team. Last week, Facebook announced that back in August it had taken action against a Pakistani APT group known as SideCopy. Facebook describes how the threat actors used romantic lures to compromise targets in Afghanistan. I...

Researches Detail 17 Malicious Frameworks Used to Attack Air-Gapped Networks

Four different malicious frameworks designed to attack air-gapped networks were detected in the first half of 2020 alone, bringing the total number of such toolkits to 17 and offering adversaries a pathway to cyber espionage and exfiltrate classified information. "All frameworks are designed to...