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...

Google Takes Down Glupteba Botnet; Files Lawsuit Against Operators

Google’s Threat Analysis Group TAG has disrupted the blockchain-enabled botnet known as Glupteba, which is made up of around 1 million compromised Windows and internet of things IoT devices. In tandem, Google also filed a lawsuit against the botnet’s operators. Glupteba, already a formidable...

New EwDoor Botnet Targeting Unpatched AT&T Network Edge Devices

A newly discovered botnet capable of staging distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks targeted unpatched Ribbon Communications formerly Edgewater Networks EdgeMarc appliances belonging to telecom service provider AT&T by exploiting a four-year-old flaw in the network appliances. Chinese tech...

TrickBot helps Emotet come back from the dead

Probably one of the best known threats for the past several years, Emotet has always been under intense scrutiny from the infosec community. On several occasions, it appeared to take an early retirement, but then again it came back. However, when multiple law enforcement agencies seized control o...

Notorious Emotet Botnet Makes a Comeback with the Help of TrickBot Malware

The notorious Emotet malware is staging a comeback of sorts nearly 10 months after a coordinated law enforcement operation dismantled its command-and-control infrastructure in late January 2021. According to a new report from security researcher Luca Ebach, the infamous TrickBot malware is being...

DCOM abuse and lateral movement with Cobalt Strike

Introduction When researching lateral movement techniques I came across a post from Raphael Mudge of Cobalt Strike fame. He details scripting an Aggressor Script for Matt Nelson’s MMC20.Application Lateral Movement technique. Reading that post spurred me to make my own DCOM based lateral movement...

Trickbot module descriptions

Trickbot aka TrickLoader or Trickster, is a successor of the Dyre banking Trojan that was active from 2014 to 2016 and performed man-in-the-browser attacks in order to steal banking credentials. Trickbot was first discovered in October 2016. Just like Dyre, its main functionality was initially th...

Researchers Warn of FontOnLake Rootkit Malware Targeting Linux Systems

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a new campaign that likely targets entities in Southeast Asia with a previously unrecognized Linux malware that's engineered to enable remote access to its operators, in addition to amassing credentials and function as a proxy server. The malware family,...

ESPecter Bootkit Malware Haunts Victims with Persistent Espionage

A rare Windows UEFI bootkit malware has been discovered, offering attackers a path to cyber-espionage, researchers are warning. According to ESET, the bootkit’s goal is to install a full featured backdoor on a target PC, which “supports a rich set of commands and contains various automatic data...

Russian Turla APT Group Deploying New Backdoor on Targeted Systems

State-sponsored hackers affiliated with Russia are behind a new series of intrusions using a previously undocumented implant to compromise systems in the U.S., Germany, and Afghanistan. Cisco Talos attributed the attacks to the Turla advanced persistent threat APT group, coining the malware...

Turla APT Plants Novel Backdoor In Wake of Afghan Unrest

The Turla advanced persistent threat APT group is back with a new backdoor used to infect systems in Afghanistan, Germany and the U.S., researchers have reported. On Tuesday, Cisco Talos researchers said that they’ve spotted infections they attributed to the Turla group aka Snake, Venomous Bear,...

Malware Attack on Aviation Sector Uncovered After Going Unnoticed for 2 Years

A targeted phishing campaign aimed at the aviation industry for two years may be spearheaded by a threat actor operating out of Nigeria, highlighting how attackers can carry out small-scale cyber offensives for extended periods of time while staying under the radar. Cisco Talos dubbed the malware...

Operation ‘Harvest’: A Deep Dive into a Long-term Campaign

ARCHIVED STORY Operation ‘Harvest’: A Deep Dive into a Long-term Campaign By Christiaan Beek · September 14, 2021 A special thanks to our Professional Services’ IR team,ShadowServer, for historical context on C2 domains, and Thomas Roccia/Leandro Velasco for malware analysis support. Executive...

SOVA, Worryingly Sophisticated Android Trojan, Takes Flight

A new Android banking trojan named SOVA “owl” in Russian is under active development, researchers said, and it has big dreams even in its infancy stage. The malware is looking to incorporate distributed denial of service DDoS, man in the middle MiTM and ransomware functionality into its arsenal –...

BeaconEye - Hunts Out CobaltStrike Beacons And Logs Operator Command Output

BeaconEye scans running processes for active CobaltStrike beacons. When processes are found to be running beacon, BeaconEye will monitor each process for C2 activity. How it works BeaconEye will scan live processes or MiniDump files for suspected CobaltStrike beacons. In live process mode,...

CVE-2021-33191

From Apache NiFi MiNiFi C++ version 0.5.0 the c2 protocol implements an "agent-update" command which was designed to patch the application binary. This "patching" command defaults to calling a trusted binary, but might be modified to an arbitrary value through a "c2-update" command. Said command ...

CVE-2021-33191

From Apache NiFi MiNiFi C++ version 0.5.0 the c2 protocol implements an "agent-update" command which was designed to patch the application binary. This "patching" command defaults to calling a trusted binary, but might be modified to an arbitrary value through a "c2-update" command. Said command ...

Effective Threat-Hunting Queries in a Redacted World

A decade ago, hunting for adversary infrastructure was often as simple as monitoring a domain registrant’s name or phone number in public WHOIS records. As bad actors have moved first toward privacy protection services and then gained further obscurity behind laws such as the General Data...

CVE-2021-33191 MiNiFi CPP arbitrary script execution is possible on the agent's host machine through the c2 protocol

From Apache NiFi MiNiFi C++ version 0.5.0 the c2 protocol implements an "agent-update" command which was designed to patch the application binary. This "patching" command defaults to calling a trusted binary, but might be modified to an arbitrary value through a "c2-update" command. Said command ...

InkySquid State Actor Exploiting Known IE Bugs

The InkySquid advanced persistent threat APT group, which researchers have linked to the North Korean government, was caught launching watering hole attacks against a South Korean newspaper using known Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. New analysis from Volexity reported its team of researchers...