New Fileless Malware Uses Windows Registry as Storage to Evade Detection

A new JavaScript-based remote access Trojan RAT propagated via a social engineering campaign has been observed employing sneaky "fileless" techniques as part of its detection-evasion methods to elude discovery and analysis. Dubbed DarkWatchman by researchers from Prevailion's Adversarial...

Phorpiex morphs: How a longstanding botnet persists and thrives in the current threat environment

Phorpiex, an enduring botnet known for extortion campaigns and for using old-fashioned worms that spread via removable USB drives and instant messaging apps, began diversifying its infrastructure in recent years to become more resilient and to deliver more dangerous payloads. Today, the Phorphiex...

Phorpiex morphs: How a longstanding botnet persists and thrives in the current threat environment

Phorpiex, an enduring botnet known for extortion campaigns and for using old-fashioned worms that spread via removable USB drives and instant messaging apps, began diversifying its infrastructure in recent years to become more resilient and to deliver more dangerous payloads. Today, the Phorphiex...

What tracking an attacker email infrastructure tells us about persistent cybercriminal operations

From March to December 2020, we tracked segments of a dynamically generated email infrastructure that attackers used to send more than a million emails per month, distributing at least seven distinct malware families in dozens of campaigns using a variety of phishing lures and tactics. These...

QSnatch Data-Stealing Malware Infected Over 62,000 QNAP NAS Devices

Cybersecurity agencies in the US and UK yesterday issued a joint advisory about a massive ongoing malware threat infecting Taiwanese company QNAP's network-attached storage NAS appliances. Called QSnatch or Derek, the data-stealing malware is said to have compromised 62,000 devices since reports...

Necurs Botnet in Crosshairs of Global Takedown Offensive

A New York State court issued an order this week giving Microsoft control of the U.S.-based infrastructure used by the notorious Necurs botnet in an effort to stop the world’s most prolific and globally dispersed spam and malware infrastructure. The move came after Microsoft and partners across 3...

Necurs Botnet in Crosshairs of Global Takedown Offensive

A New York State court issued an order this week giving Microsoft control of the U.S.-based infrastructure used by the notorious Necurs botnet in an effort to stop the world’s most prolific and globally dispersed spam and malware infrastructure. The move came after Microsoft and partners across 3...

Microsoft Hijacks Necurs Botnet that Infected 9 Million PCs Worldwide

Microsoft today announced that it has successfully disrupted the botnet network of the Necurs malware, which has infected more than 9 million computers globally, and also hijacked the majority of its infrastructure. The latest botnet takedown was the result of a coordinated operation involving...

Backdoor in the nssock2.dll module of several products including NetSarang Xmanager and Xshell

NetSarang is a company that provides secure link solutions and Xshell is a terminal emulation software. The related nssock2.dll module, a component used for network communication, in the installation directories of Xshell, Xlpd, Xmanager, and Xftp has been found to contain backdoor-type code samp...

VulnCheck KEV: CVE-2017-20202

Web Developer for Chrome v0.4.9 contained malicious code that generated a domain via a DGA and fetched a remote script. The fetched script conditionally loaded follow-on modules that performed extensive ad substitution and malvertising, displayed fake “repair” alerts that redirected users to...

Tinba Variant Spotted Targeting Russian, Japanese Banks

Cybercriminals behind the Tinba banking Trojan have been homing in on some of the larger banks in Russia and Japan, experts claim. According to researchers with Dell SecureWorks, who looked at an instance of the malware last month, configuration files in one variant are targeting one of the...

CoreBot Credential-Stealing Malware

A new piece of data-stealing malware has a real thirst for credentials—and the potential for worse trouble down the line. IBM today published a report on CoreBot, generic information-stealing malware designed with enough flexibility to soon ramp up its capabilities to exfiltrate data in real time...

Updated DGA Changer Malware Generates Fake Domain Stream

LAS VEGAS — The group behind the DGA Changer downloader has been pretty adept in modifying the malware to elude sandbox detection in particular. Researchers at Seculert today published a report on the latest twist to DGA Changer, which now is able to generate a fake stream of domains if it detect...

Matsnu Botnet DGA Builds Domains From List of Nouns, Verbs

Domain generation algorithms have been botmasters’ favorite tool for keeping malware up and running—and for frustrating security researchers and detection technologies. Like malware, DGAs evolve, thus complicating an already tricky cat-and-mouse game between criminals and white hats. The latest i...

Rovnix Variant Surfaces With New DGA

Researchers have unearthed a new version of the Rovnix malware that has a couple of additional features, including a new domain generation algorithm and a secure transmission channel for communicating with the command-and-control servers. Rovnix is a malware variant that often has been distribute...

NewGOZ Gameover Zeus Botnet Rebuilds

It didn’t take long for an updated version of GameOver Zeus to make some headway in rebuilding itself. Research published today from Arbor Networks demonstrates that cybercriminals behind GameOver Zeus, which was taken down by law enforcement in early June, have renewed the botnet with at least...

New GameOver Zeus Botnet Malware Variant Surfaces

The GameOver Zeus takedown was trumpeted as a victory against cybercrime, and for all its success, even those involved understood it was likely a temporary win. Researchers at Seculert have spotted a new variant of GameOver Zeus that has spurned previous versions’ peer-to-peer communication...

New Pushdo Malware Hacks 11,000 Computers in Just 24 Hours

One of the oldest active malware families, Pushdo, is again making its way onto the Internet and has recently infected more than 11,000 computers in just 24 hours. Pushdo, a multipurpose Trojan, is primarily known for delivering financial malware such as ZeuS and SpyEye onto infected computers or...

Possible New Version of GameOver Zeus Malware Emerges

It’s only been a little more than a month since the FBI and Europol took down the GameOver Zeus botnet, taking control of its command-and-control infrastructure and effectively cutting off the malware’s head. But researchers say that there are some indications that a new strain of the malware may...

US-CERT Warns of More CryptoLocker Ransomware Infections

CryptoLocker is a devious evolution of now-familiar ransomware schemes in which the malware encrypts files it finds on a number of network resources and demands a ransom for the decryption key. US-CERT issued an advisory today warning businesses and consumers of the risks presented by CryptoLocke...