Threat Round up for November 11 to 18

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Nov. 11 and Nov. 18. As with previous roundups, this post isnt meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats weve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics,...

Deep Packet Inspection vs. Metadata Analysis of Network Detection & Response (NDR) Solutions

Today, most Network Detection and Response NDR solutions rely on traffic mirroring and Deep Packet Inspection DPI. Traffic mirroring is typically deployed on a single-core switch to provide a copy of the network traffic to a sensor that uses DPI to thoroughly analyze the payload. While this...

Malicious Google Play Store App Spotted Distributing Xenomorph Banking Trojan

Google has removed two new malicious dropper apps that have been detected on the Play Store for Android, one of which posed as a lifestyle app and was caught distributing the Xenomorph banking malware. "Xenomorph is a trojan that steals credentials from banking applications on users' devices,"...

Server-side attacks, C&C in public clouds and other MDR cases we observed

Introduction This report describes several interesting incidents observed by the Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response MDR team. The goal of the report is to inform our customers about techniques used by attackers. We hope that learning about the attacks that took place in the wild helps you t...

Fodcha DDoS Botnet Resurfaces with New Capabilities

The threat actor behind the Fodcha distributed denial-of-service DDoS botnet has resurfaced with new capabilities, researchers reveal. This includes changes to its communication protocol and the ability to extort cryptocurrency payments in exchange for stopping the DDoS attack against a target,...

Point-of-sale malware used to steal 167,000 credit cards

In the 19 months between February 2021 and September 2022, two point-of-sale POS malware operators have stolen more than 167,000 payment records, mainly from the US, according to researchers at Group-IB. The researchers were able to retrieve information about infected machines and compromised...

What Does The Fox Hack? Breaking Down the Anonymous Fox F-Automatical Script

While performing routine security research, one of our threat analysts discovered the latest version of a Command and Control C2 script, which is referred to as F-Automatical within the script’s code and was commonly known as FoxAuto in older versions. This is the seventh version of this automati...

Critical RCE Vulnerability Discovered in Popular Cobalt Strike Hacking Software

HelpSystems, the company behind the Cobalt Strike software platform, has released an out-of-band security update to address a remote code execution vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of targeted systems. Cobalt Strike is a commercial red-team framework that's mainly used f...

New Chinese Cyberespionage Group Targeting IT Service Providers and Telcos

Telecommunications and IT service providers in the Middle East and Asia are being targeted by a previously undocumented Chinese-speaking threat group dubbed WIP19. The espionage-related attacks are characterized by the use of a stolen digital certificate issued by a Korean company called DEEPSoft...

CISA Releases RedEye: Red Team Campaign Visualization and Reporting Tool

CISA has released RedEye, an interactive open-source analytic tool to visualize and report Red Team command and control activities. RedEye allows an operator to quickly assess complex data, evaluate mitigation strategies, and enable effective decision making. For more information, CISA encourages...

Hunting for Cobalt Strike: Mining and plotting for fun and profit

Introduction Cobalt Strike is a commercial Command and Control framework built by Helpsystems. You can find out more about Cobalt Strike on the MITRE ATT&CK page. But it can also be used by real adversaries. In this post we describe how to use RiskIQ and other Microsoft technologies to see if you...

New Chinese Malware Attack Framework Targets Windows, macOS, and Linux Systems

A previously undocumented command-and-control C2 framework dubbed Alchimist is likely being used in the wild to target Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. "Alchimist C2 has a web interface written in Simplified Chinese and can generate a configured payload, establish remote sessions, deploy payloa...

Researchers Uncover Custom Backdoors and Spying Tools Used by Polonium Hackers

A threat actor tracked as Polonium has been linked to over a dozen highly targeted attacks aimed at Israelian entities with seven different custom backdoors since at least September 2021. The intrusions were aimed at organizations in various verticals, such as engineering, information technology,...

Hunting for Cobalt Strike: Mining and plotting for fun and profit

Introduction Introduction Cobalt Strike is a commercial Command and Control framework built by Helpsystems. You can find out more about Cobalt Strike on the MITRE ATT&CK page. But it can also be used by real adversaries. In this post we describe how to use RiskIQ and other Microsoft technologies ...

Hunting for Cobalt Strike: Mining and plotting for fun and profit

Introduction Cobalt Strike is a commercial Command and Control framework built by Helpsystems. You can find out more about Cobalt Strike on the MITRE ATT&CK page. But it can also be used by real adversaries. In this post we describe how to use RiskIQ and other Microsoft technologies to see if you...

POLONIUM employs backdoors to target Israel

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary POLONIUM is a cyber espionage gang that leverages OneDrive and Dropbox cloud services for command and control C&C by employing a custom toolkit that includes seven backdoors and various spying modules to...

LofyGang Distributed ~200 Malicious NPM Packages to Steal Credit Card Data

Multiple campaigns that distributed trojanized and typosquatted packages on the NPM open source repository have been identified as the work of a single threat actor dubbed LofyGang. Checkmarx said it discovered 199 rogue packages totaling thousands of installations, with the group operating for...

Bogus job offers hide trojanised open-source software

Microsoft researchers are warning of fake job offers where the only actual compensation available is a golden handshake of malware and trickery. The campaign targets those with technical know-how because, despite what some may think, scams are for everybody, not just people unfamiliar with tech...

Popular YouTube Channel Caught Distributing Malicious Tor Browser Installer

A popular Chinese-language YouTube channel has emerged as a means to distribute a trojanized version of a Windows installer for the Tor Browser. Kaspersky dubbed the campaign OnionPoison, with all of the victims located in China. The scale of the attack remains unclear, but the Russian...

North Korea's Lazarus Hackers Targeting macOS Users Interested in Crypto Jobs

The infamous Lazarus Group has continued its pattern of leveraging unsolicited job opportunities to deploy malware targeting Apple's macOS operating system. In the latest variant of the campaign observed by cybersecurity company SentinelOne last week, decoy documents advertising positions for the...