New LNK attack tied to Higaisa APT discovered

This post was authored by Hossein Jazi and Jérôme Segura On May 29th, we identified an attack that we believe is part of a new campaign from an Advanced Persistent Threat actor known as Higaisa. The Higaisa APT is believed to be tied to the Korean peninsula, and was first disclosed by Tencent...

TrickBot Adds BazarBackdoor to Malware Arsenal

A new module for the infamous trojan known as TrickBot has been deployed: A stealthy backdoor that researchers call “BazarBackdoor.” The binary was first spotted being delivered as part of a phishing campaign that began in March, according to an analysis from Panda Security this week. The campaig...

Valak Loader Revamped to Rob Microsoft Exchange Servers

Threat actors have revamped a popular malware loader into a stealthy infostealer that targets Microsoft Exchange servers to pilfer enterprise mailing information, passwords and enterprise certificates, researchers have found. Security researchers from Cybereason Nocturnus have discovered Valak, a...

Shining a light on “Silent Night” Zloader/Zbot

When it comes to banking Trojans, ZeuS is probably the most famous one ever released. Since its source code originally leaked in 2011, several new variants proliferated online. That includes a past fork called Terdot Zbot/Zloader, which we extensively covered in 2017. But recently, we observed...

ProLock Ransomware Teams Up With QakBot Trojan to Infect Victims

A relatively new ransomware, ProLock, has paired up with the QakBot banking trojan to access victims’ networks. ProLock’s leveraging of QakBot gives it bolstered persistence, anti-detection and credential-dumping techniques. ProLock ransomware first emerged in March as a successor to another rece...

US Government Exposes North Korean Malware

US Cyber Command has uploaded North Korean malware samples to the VirusTotal aggregation repository, adding to the malware samples it uploaded in February. The first of the new malware variants, COPPERHEDGE, is described as a Remote Access Tool RAT "used by advanced persistent threat APT cyber...

Threat Spotlight: Astaroth — Maze of obfuscation and evasion reveals dark stealer

By Nick Biasini, Edmund Brumaghin and Nick Lister. Cisco Talos is detailing an information stealer, Astaroth, that has been targeting Brazil with a variety of lures, including COVID-19 for the past nine to 12 months.Complex maze of obfuscation and anti-analysis/evasion techniques implemented by...

Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM

A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the...

Malicious USB Drives Infect 35,000 Computers With Crypto-Mining Botnet

Cybersecurity researchers from ESET on Thursday said they took down a portion of a malware botnet comprising at least 35,000 compromised Windows systems that attackers were secretly using to mine Monero cryptocurrency. The botnet, named "VictoryGate," has been active since May 2019, with infectio...

COVID-Themed Lures Target SCADA Sectors With Data Stealing Malware

A new malware campaign has been found using coronavirus-themed lures to strike government and energy sectors in Azerbaijan with remote access trojans RAT capable of exfiltrating sensitive documents, keystrokes, passwords, and even images from the webcam. The targeted attacks employ Microsoft Word...

49 New Google Chrome Extensions Caught Hijacking Cryptocurrency Wallets

Google has ousted 49 Chrome browser extensions from its Web Store that masqueraded as cryptocurrency wallets but contained malicious code to siphon off sensitive information and empty the digital currencies. The 49 browser add-ons, potentially the work of Russian threat actors, were identified fi...

Overlay Malware Exploits Chrome Browser, Targets Banks and Heads to Spain

Researchers are warning of a remote overlay malware attack that leverages a fake Chrome browser plugin to target the accounts of banking customers in Spain. Grandoreiro is a type of remote overlay banking trojan, designed to help attackers overtake devices and display a full-screen overlay image...

Government VPN Servers Targeted in Zero-Day Attack

As the Chinese government turns to virtual private networks VPNs to provide access to official resources for those working remotely amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the DarkHotel APT has seized the opportunity to target those VPNs in a zero-day attack, researchers said. According to security analysts...

Unknown 'WildPressure' Malware Campaign Lets Off Steam in Middle East

A malware campaign that shares no known similarities to previous attacks has been uncovered, targeting organizations in the Middle East. Dubbed “WildPressure,” the campaign used a previously unknown malware that researchers named Milum, after the C++ class names inside the code. According to...

What’s Coming in 2020: An RSA Recap

VMWare Carbon Black recently published our Outlook 2020 Threat Report largely fueled by the work of our amazing Threat Analysis Unit. Greg Foss @Heinzarelli and Andrew Costis @0x4143 did some in-depth research on Malware samples seen in 2019. As part of RSA, Greg and I had the chance to present o...

TrickBot Now Exploits Infected PCs to Launch RDP Brute Force Attacks

A new module for TrickBot banking Trojan has recently been discovered in the wild that lets attackers leverage compromised systems to launch brute-force attacks against selected Windows systems running a Remote Desktop Protocol RDP connection exposed to the Internet. The module, dubbed...

APT36 Taps Coronavirus as 'Golden Opportunity' to Spread Crimson RAT

A Pakistani-linked threat actor, APT36, has been using a decoy health advisory that taps into global panic around the coronavirus pandemic to spread the Crimson RAT. The functionalities of the Crimson RAT include stealing credentials from victims’ browsers, capturing screenshots, collecting...

Coronavirus-Themed APT Attack Spreads Malware

An advanced persistent threat APT group is leveraging the coronavirus pandemic to infect victims with a previously unknown malware, in a recently discovered campaign that researchers call “Vicious Panda.” Researchers identified two suspicious Rich Text Format files RTF — a text file format used b...

Android Cookie-Stealing Malware Found Hijacking Facebook Accounts

A new simple but dangerous strain of Android malware has been found in the wild that steals users' authentication cookies from the web browsing and other apps, including Chrome and Facebook, installed on the compromised devices. Dubbed "Cookiethief " by Kaspersky researchers, the Trojan works by...

2019: Looking Back at Malware

In 2019, attacker behavior evolved, becoming more evasive. The most common behaviors seen across all attack data—mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK™ Framework—were: Software Packing for Defense Evasion, Hidden Windows for Defense Evasion, Standard Application Layer Protocol for Command and Control C2,...