Chinese Mustang Panda Used Fake Diplomatic Briefings to Spy on Officials

A new spy campaign by Mustang Panda uses fake US diplomatic briefings to target government officials. Discover how this silent surveillance operation works...

SentinelOne Uncovers Chinese Espionage Campaign Targeting Its Infrastructure and Clients

Cybersecurity company SentinelOne has revealed that a China-nexus threat cluster dubbed PurpleHaze conducted reconnaissance attempts against its infrastructure and some of its high-value customers. "We first became aware of this threat cluster during a 2024 intrusion conducted against an...

Chinese Silk Typhoon Group Targets IT Tools for Network Breaches

Microsoft warns that Chinese espionage group Silk Typhoon now exploits IT tools like remote management apps and cloud services to breach networks...

RA World Ransomware Attack in South Asia Links to Chinese Espionage Toolset

An RA World ransomware attack in November 2024 targeting an unnamed Asian software and services company involved the use of a malicious tool exclusively used by China-based cyber espionage groups, raising the possibility that the threat actor may be moonlighting as a ransomware player in an...

Nation-State Actors Weaponize Ivanti VPN Zero-Days, Deploying 5 Malware Families

As many as five different malware families were deployed by suspected nation-state actors as part of post-exploitation activities leveraging two zero-day vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure ICS VPN appliances since early December 2023. "These families allow the threat actors to circumvent...

Microsoft validation error allowed state actor to access user email of government agencies and others

Microsoft is getting criticized for the way in which it handled a serious security incident that allowed a suspected Chinese espionage group to access user email from approximately 25 organizations, including government agencies and related consumer accounts in the public cloud. The attacks were...

Actors, Threats and Vulnerabilities 27 March to 2 April 2023

For a detailed threat digest, download the pdf file here Summary For a detailed threat digest, download the pdf file here HiveForce Labs recently made several significant discoveries related to cybersecurity threats. Over the past week, they identified a total of Nine attacks that were executed...

Chinese Espionage Hackers Target Tibetans Using New LOWZERO Backdoor

A China-aligned advanced persistent threat actor known as TA413 weaponized recently disclosed flaws in Sophos Firewall and Microsoft Office to deploy a never-before-seen backdoor called LOWZERO as part of an espionage campaign aimed at Tibetan entities. Targets primarily consisted of organization...

Windows, Linux and macOS Users Targeted by Chinese Iron Tiger APT Group

By Deeba Ahmed Chinese Espionage Group called Iron Tiger aka LuckyMouse is targeting Windows, Linux, and macOS Users with trojanized MiMi… This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Windows, Linux and macOS Users Targeted by Chinese Iron Tiger APT Group...

A Decade-Long Chinese Espionage Campaign Targets Southeast Asia and Australia

A previously undocumented Chinese-speaking advanced persistent threat APT actor dubbed Aoqin Dragon has been linked to a string of espionage-oriented attacks aimed at government, education, and telecom entities chiefly in Southeast Asia and Australia dating as far back as 2013. "Aoqin Dragon seek...

A week in security (August 16 – August 22)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Podcast: Katie Moussouris hacked Clubhouse. Her emails went unanswered for weeks. How to troubleshoot hardware problems that look like malware problems. Analysts “strongly believe” the Russian state colludes with ransomware gangs. macOS 11’s hidden security...

ShadowPad Malware is Becoming a Favorite Choice of Chinese Espionage Groups

ShadowPad, an infamous Windows backdoor that allows attackers to download further malicious modules or steal data, has been put to use by five different Chinese threat clusters since 2017. "The adoption of ShadowPad significantly reduces the costs of development and maintenance for threat actors,...

UNC215: Spotlight on a Chinese Espionage Campaign in Israel

This blog post details the post-compromise tradecraft and operational tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs of a Chinese espionage group we track as UNC215. While UNC215’s targets are located throughout the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and North America, this report focuses on intrusion activity...

The FBI Is Now Securing Networks Without Their Owners’ Permission

In January, we learned about a Chinese espionage campaign that exploited four zero-days in Microsoft Exchange. One of the characteristics of the campaign, in the later days when the Chinese probably realized that the vulnerabilities would soon be fixed, was to install a web shell in compromised...

Facebook Moves Against ‘Evil Eye’ Hackers Targeting Uyghurs

The company’s investigation into a Chinese espionage campaign took researchers beyond Facebook’s own platforms...

Outgoing FCC Chair Issues Final Security Salvo Against China

Outgoing Federal Communications Chair Ajit Pai has issued a final warning about Chinese telcos at the end of a tenure spent cracking down on companies like Huawei, ZTE and China Telecom. Pai, a former telecommunications industry lobbyist and in-house counsel for Verizon, told Reuters that managin...

Chinese Hackers Compromise Telecom Servers to Spy on SMS Messages

A group of Chinese hackers carrying out political espionage for Beijing has been found targeting telecommunications companies with a new piece of malware designed to spy on text messages sent or received by highly targeted individuals. Dubbed "MessageTap," the backdoor malware is a 64-bit ELF dat...

MESSAGETAP: Who’s Reading Your Text Messages?

FireEye Mandiant recently discovered a new malware family used by APT41 a Chinese APT group that is designed to monitor and save SMS traffic from specific phone numbers, IMSI numbers and keywords for subsequent theft. Named MESSAGETAP, the tool was deployed by APT41 in a telecommunications networ...

Healthcare: Research Data and PII Continuously Targeted by Multiple Threat Actors

The healthcare industry faces a range of threat groups and malicious activity. Given the critical role that healthcare plays within society and its relationship with our most sensitive information, the risk to this sector is especially consequential. It may also be one of the major reasons why we...

APT41: A Dual Espionage and Cyber Crime Operation

Today, FireEye Intelligence is releasing a comprehensive report detailing APT41, a prolific Chinese cyber threat group that carries out state-sponsored espionage activity in parallel with financially motivated operations. APT41 is unique among tracked China-based actors in that it leverages...