SneakyChef espionage group targets government agencies with SugarGh0st and more infection techniques

Cisco Talos recently discovered an ongoing campaign from SneakyChef, a newly discovered threat actor using SugarGh0st malware, as early as August 2023. In the newly discovered campaign, we observed a wider scope of targets spread across countries in EMEA and Asia, compared with previous...

Russian Power Companies, IT Firms, and Govt Agencies Hit by Decoy Dog Trojan

Russian organizations are at the receiving end of cyber attacks that have been found to deliver a Windows version of a malware called Decoy Dog. Cybersecurity company Positive Technologies is tracking the activity cluster under the name Operation Lahat, attributing it to an advanced persistent...

Malware Delivery via Cloud Services Exploits Unicode Trick to Deceive Users

A new attack campaign dubbed CLOUDREVERSER has been observed leveraging legitimate cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox to stage malicious payloads. "The VBScript and PowerShell scripts in the CLOUDREVERSER inherently involves command-and-control-like activities by using Google...

North Korean Hackers Exploit Facebook Messenger in Targeted Malware Campaign

The North Korea-linked Kimsuky hacking group has been attributed to a new social engineering attack that employs fictitious Facebook accounts to targets via Messenger and ultimately delivers malware. "The threat actor created a Facebook account with a fake identity disguised as a public official...

Hackers Hit Indian Defense, Energy Sectors with Malware Posing as Air Force Invite

Indian government entities and energy companies have been targeted by unknown threat actors with an aim to deliver a modified version of an open-source information stealer malware called HackBrowserData and exfiltrate sensitive information in some cases by using Slack as command-and-control C2...

Nitrogen shelling malware from hacked sites

Nitrogen is the name given to a campaign and associated malware that have been distributed via malicious search ads. Its signature move is using Python and DLL side-loading to connect to the attackers command and control server. In this blog post, we look at a recent Nitrogen campaign and...

Russian COLDRIVER Hackers Expand Beyond Phishing with Custom Malware

The Russia-linked threat actor known as COLDRIVER has been observed evolving its tradecraft to go beyond credential harvesting to deliver its first-ever custom malware written in the Rust programming language. Google's Threat Analysis Group TAG, which shared details of the latest activity, said t...

PikaBot Malware Unleashes Threat via Malvertising

Summary: PikaBot, a recently identified malware family, has become a prominent threat in malvertising campaigns, particularly through search engine ads. Associated with the TA577 threat actor and linked to ransomware distribution, PikaBot employs advanced tactics, such as decoy websites and...

PikaBot distributed via malicious search ads

During this past year, we have seen an increase in the use of malicious ads malvertising and specifically those via search engines, to drop malware targeting businesses. In fact, browser-based attacks overall have been a lot more common if we include social engineering campaigns. Criminals have...

New Pierogi++ Malware by Gaza Cyber Gang Targeting Palestinian Entities

A pro-Hamas threat actor known as Gaza Cyber Gang is targeting Palestinian entities using an updated version of a backdoor dubbed Pierogi. The findings come from SentinelOne, which has given the malware the name Pierogi++ owing to the fact that it's implemented in the C++ programming language...

Chinese Hackers Using SugarGh0st RAT to Target South Korea and Uzbekistan

A suspected Chinese-speaking threat actor has been attributed to a malicious campaign that targets the Uzbekistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and South Korean users with a remote access trojan called SugarGh0st RAT. The activity, which commenced no later than August 2023, leverages two different...

New SugarGh0st RAT targets Uzbekistan government and South Korea

Cisco Talos recently discovered a malicious campaign that likely started as early as August 2023, delivering a new remote access trojan RAT we dubbed "SugarGh0st." We found evidence suggesting the threat actor is targeting the Uzbekistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and users in South Korea. We...

Iranian Group Tortoiseshell Launches New Wave of IMAPLoader Malware Attacks

The Iranian threat actor known as Tortoiseshell has been attributed to a new wave of watering hole attacks that are designed to deploy a malware dubbed IMAPLoader. "IMAPLoader is a .NET malware that has the ability to fingerprint victim systems using native Windows utilities and acts as a...

Malvertisers Using Google Ads to Target Users Searching for Popular Software

Details have emerged about a malvertising campaign that leverages Google Ads to direct users searching for popular software to fictitious landing pages and distribute next-stage payloads. Malwarebytes, which discovered the activity, said it's "unique in its way to fingerprint users and distribute...

WinRAR Remote Code Execution

This module requires Metasploit: https://metasploit.com/download Current source: https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework require 'zip' class MetasploitModule 'WinRAR CVE-2023-38831 Exploit', 'Description' = %q This module exploits a vulnerability in WinRAR CVE-2023-38831. When a user opens...

Ukraine's CERT Thwarts APT28's Cyberattack on Critical Energy Infrastructure

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine CERT-UA on Tuesday said it thwarted a cyber attack against an unnamed critical energy infrastructure facility in the country. The intrusion, per the agency, started with a phishing email containing a link to a malicious ZIP archive that activates th...

WoofLocker Toolkit Hides Malicious Codes in Images to Run Tech Support Scams

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed an updated version of an advanced fingerprinting and redirection toolkit called WoofLocker that's engineered to conduct tech support scams. The sophisticated traffic redirection scheme was first documented by Malwarebytes in January 2020, leveraging...

New Attack Alert: Freeze[.]rs Injector Weaponized for XWorm Malware Attacks

Malicious actors are using a legitimate Rust-based injector called Freeze.rs to deploy a commodity malware called XWorm in victim environments. The novel attack chain, detected by Fortinet FortiGuard Labs on July 13, 2023, is initiated via a phishing email containing a booby-trapped PDF file. It...

Attacks, Vulnerabilities and Actors 24 July to 30 July 2023

For a detailed threat digest, download the pdf file here Summary HiveForce Labs recently made several significant discoveries related to cybersecurity threats. Over the past week, We identified a total of six executed attacks, one adversary activities, and five zero-day vulnerabilities including...

Unmasking Decoy Dog Malware Toolkit Hiding in DNS Traffic

Threat Level Attack Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary Decoy Dog, a sophisticated malware toolkit uses DNS for C2 communication, evading detection with its wildcard-type behavior and encryption methods. Its origin remains mysterious, and the malwares...