LuckyMouse Hackers Target Banks, Companies and Governments in 2020

An adversary known for its watering hole attacks against government entities has been linked to a slew of newly detected intrusions targeting various organizations in Central Asia and the Middle East. The malicious activity, collectively named "EmissarySoldier," has been attributed to a threat...

US Sanctions Russia and Expels 10 Diplomats Over SolarWinds Cyberattack

The U.S. and U.K. on Thursday formally attributed the supply chain attack of IT infrastructure management company SolarWinds with "high confidence" to government operatives working for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service SVR. "Russia's pattern of malign behaviour around the world – whether in...

British Court Rejects U.S. Request to Extradite WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

A British court has rejected the U.S. government's request to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the country on charges pertaining to illegally obtaining and sharing classified material related to national security. In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court today, Judge Vanessa...

The future of cyberconflicts

The ever-increasing role of technology in every aspect of our society has turned cybersecurity into a major sovereignty issue for all states. Due to their asymmetrical nature, offensive cyber-capabilities have been embraced by many countries that wouldnt otherwise have the resources to compete on...

Healthcare 2021: Cyberattacks to Center on COVID-19 Spying, Patient Data

Sophisticated cybercriminals have been trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research – and researchers say there’s more of that to come going into 2021. Intellectual property theft will join ransomware, cloud-stored patient data theft and advanced phishing efforts as the main hallmarks of...

TA416 APT Rebounds With New PlugX Malware Variant

The TA416 advanced persistent threat APT actor is back with a vengeance: After a month of inactivity, the group was spotted launching spear-phishing attacks with a never-before-seen Golang variant of its PlugX malware loader. TA416, which is also known as “Mustang Panda” and “RedDelta,” was spott...

North Korea-Backed Spy Group Poses as Reporters in Spearphishing Attacks, Feds Warn

The North Korean advanced persistent threat APT group known as Kimsuky is actively attacking commercial-sector businesses, often by posing as South Korean reporters, according to an alert from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA. Kimsuky a.k.a. Hidden Cobra has been...

Swiss-Swedish Diplomatic Row Over Crypto AG

Previously I have written about the Swedish-owned Swiss-based cryptographic hardware company: Crypto AG. It was a CIA-owned Cold War operation for decades. Today it is called Crypto International, still based in Switzerland but owned by a Swedish company. Its back in the news: Late last week,...

Microcin is here

In February 2020, we observed a Trojan injected into the system process memory on a particular host. The target turned out to be a diplomatic entity. What initially attracted our attention was the enterprise-grade API-like application programming interface programming style. Such an approach is n...

InvisiMole Hackers Target High-Profile Military and Diplomatic Entities

Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered the modus operandi of an elusive threat group that hacks into the high-profile military and diplomatic entities in Eastern Europe for espionage. The findings are part of a collaborative analysis by cybersecurity firm ESET and the impacted firms, resulting...

Turla APT Revamps One of Its Go-To Spy Tools

The Turla APT group has been spotted using an updated version of the ComRAT remote-access trojan RAT to attack governmental targets. Turla a.k.a. Snake, Venomous Bear, Waterbug or Uroboros, is a Russian-speaking threat actor known since 2014, but with roots that go back to 2004 and earlier,...

HTTP Status Codes Command This Malware How to Control Hacked Systems

A new version of COMpfun remote access trojan RAT has been discovered in the wild that uses HTTP status codes to control compromised systems targeted in a recent campaign against diplomatic entities in Europe. The cyberespionage malware—traced to Turla APT with "medium-to-low level of confidence"...

HTTP Status Codes Command This Malware How to Control Hacked Systems

A new version of COMpfun remote access trojan RAT has been discovered in the wild that uses HTTP status codes to control compromised systems targeted in a recent campaign against diplomatic entities in Europe. The cyberespionage malware—traced to Turla APT with "medium-to-low level of confidence"...

Innovative Spy Trojan Targets European Diplomatic Targets

A fresh malware trojan has emerged, built from the same code base as the stealthy COMPFun remote access trojan RAT. The malware is using spoofed visa applications to hit diplomatic targets in Europe and may be the work of the Turla APT. According to researchers at Kaspersky, the fake visa...

COMpfun authors spoof visa application with HTTP status-based Trojan

You may remember that in autumn 2019 we published a story about how a COMpfun successor known as Reductor infected files on the fly to compromise TLS traffic. If you're wondering whether the actor behind the malware is still developing new features, the answer is yes. Later in November 2019 our...

How the US Prepares Its Embassies for Potential Attacks

In addition to securing physical structures, the Diplomatic Security Service runs simulations of protests in a model city in Virginia...

Exploit for Out-of-bounds Write in Google Android

AutomatedRoot !GitHubhttps://img.shields.io/github/license/...

Ke3chang APT Linked to Previously Undocumented Backdoor

The Ke3chang cyberespionage group, a.k.a. APT15, Mirage, Playful Dragon or Vixen Panda, has been tied to a backdoor called Okrum that has been used to target diplomatic missions throughout Europe and Latin America. The attribution widens the scope of known Ke3chang activity, an APT believed to be...

Iran-linked APT33 Shakes Up Cyberespionage Tactics

Following a recent report detailing APT33’s infrastructure and tactics, the Iranian state-sponsored threat actor shook up its cyberespionage efforts by adopting new tools and reassigning key domain infrastructure. The infrastructure overhaul stems from a March 2019 Symantec report exposing the...

U.S. Charges WikiLeaks' Julian Assange With Violating Espionage Act

The United States Justice Department has unveiled charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 new counts on the alleged violation of the Espionage Act by publishing classified information through WikiLeaks website. If convicted for all counts, Assange could face a maximum sentence of...