Getting Back on the Field

Growing up as a foreign service brat, I was obsessed with security. Living in Guatemala in the 80s you had to adapt and become resilient as child. As there was no TV in our household, 10-year-old Tom began to tinker with my father’s computer and soon it became my oasis from the stress of living i...

Dark Caracal: Global Espionage Malware from Lebanon

The EFF and Lookout are reporting on a new piece of spyware operating out of Lebanon. It primarily targets mobile devices compromised by fake secure messaging clients like Signal and WhatsApp. From the Lookout announcement: Dark Caracal has operated a series of multi-platform campaigns starting...

Researchers Uncover Government-Sponsored Mobile Hacking Group Operating Since 2012

A global mobile espionage campaign collecting a trove of sensitive personal information from victims since at least 2012 has accidentally revealed itself—thanks to an exposed server on the open internet. It's one of the first known examples of a successful large-scale hacking operation of mobile...

Sprawling Mobile Espionage Campaign Targets Android Devices

A massive mobile espionage campaign has been collecting troves of sensitive personal information since 2012, according to a new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and security firm Lookout. Dubbed Dark Caracal, the advanced persistent threat APT campaign has managed to steal hundreds ...

New Targeted Attack in the Middle East by APT34, a Suspected Iranian Threat Group, Using CVE-2017-11882 Exploit

Less than a week after Microsoft issued a patch for CVE-2017-11882 on Nov. 14, 2017, FireEye observed an attacker using an exploit for the Microsoft Office vulnerability to target a government organization in the Middle East. We assess this activity was carried out by a suspected Iranian cyber...

Bad romance: catphishing explained

You've heard or read about some variant of this story before: Girl meets Boy on a dating website. Girl falls in love. Boy claims he does, too. Girl is excited to meet Boy soon. But at the last minute, Girl finds out that Boy 1 had an accident and broke a hip; 2 has a very sick relative he needs t...

APT Trends report Q3 2017

Introduction Beginning in the second quarter of 2017, Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT began publishing summaries of the quarter's private threat intelligence reports in an effort to make the public aware of what research we have been conducting. This report serves as the next...

#CbChats: Eric O’ Neill Chats About Hacking as Espionage, His Time at the FBI & Ryan Phillippe

Today on CbChats, Carbon Black National Security Strategist Eric O' Neill talks about his time at the FBI, his relationship with "Breach" star Ryan Phillippe and how hacking is just the latest iteration of espionage. https://www.carbonblack.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/EONCbchats.mp3 About Eric...

Newly Uncovered 'SowBug' Cyber-Espionage Group Stealing Diplomatic Secrets Since 2015

A previously unknown hacking and cyber-espionage group that has been in operation since at least 2015 have conducted a series of highly targeted attacks against a host of government organizations in South America and Southeast Asia to steal their sensitive data. Codenamed Sowbug, the hacking grou...

Hunting Threats Before Threats Hunt Us

Remember file cabinets? Most businesses have auctioned them off or sent them home with employees. For many, paper is a thing of the past. An expansive communication network has collapsed a once-massive Earth into smartphones that fit into our pockets. Cloud computing has made all information...

Latest Sofacy Campaign Targeting Security Researchers

Sofacy, the Russian-speaking APT group connected to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has been targeting researchers, admins and others interested in cybersecurity. Cisco’s security research arm Talos published a report on Sunday describing a campaign linked to Sofacy, also kno...

Microsoft Kept Secret That Its Bug-Tracking Database Was Hacked In 2013

It was not just Yahoo among "Fortune 500" companies who tried to keep a major data breach incident secret. Reportedly, Microsoft had also suffered a data breach four and a half years ago in 2013, when a "highly sophisticated hacking group" breached its bug-reporting and patch-tracking database, b...

Adobe Patches Flash Zero Day Exploited by Black Oasis APT

Adobe today released an out-of-band Flash Player update addressing a zero-day vulnerability being exploited by a little-known Middle Eastern APT group. The group known as Black Oasis was, as recently as this month, using exploits for the flaw to drop FinSpy as a payload. Sold by the controversial...

North Korean Actors Spear Phish U.S. Electric Companies

We can confirm that FireEye devices detected and stopped spear phishing emails sent on Sept. 22, 2017, to U.S. electric companies by known cyber threat actors likely affiliated with the North Korean government. This activity was early-stage reconnaissance, and not necessarily indicative of an...

Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Caught Russian Spies Hacking American Spies, But...

The cold cyber war has just turned hot. According to a story published today by the New York Times, Israeli government hackers hacked into Kaspersky’s network in 2015 and caught Russian government hackers red-handed hacking US government hackers with the help of Kaspersky. In other words — Russia...

North Korean Actors Spear Phish U.S. Electric Companies

We can confirm that FireEye devices detected and stopped spear phishing emails sent on Sept. 22, 2017, to U.S. electric companies by known cyber threat actors likely affiliated with the North Korean government. This activity was early-stage reconnaissance, and not necessarily indicative of an...

North Korean Actors Spear Phish U.S. Electric Companies

We can confirm that FireEye devices detected and stopped spear phishing emails sent on Sept. 22, 2017, to U.S. electric companies by known cyber threat actors likely affiliated with the North Korean government. This activity was early-stage reconnaissance, and not necessarily indicative of an...

Inside the CCleaner Backdoor Attack

MADRID—As the investigation continues into the backdoor planted inside CCleaner, two members of parent company Avast’s threat intelligence team said today the desktop and cloud versions of the popular software contained different payloads. The revelation was made during a talk at Virus Bulletin...

HP Shared ArcSight Source Code with Russians

Reuters is reporting that HP Enterprise gave the Russians a copy of the ArcSight source code. The article highlights that ArcSight is used by the Pentagon to protect classified networks, but the security risks are much broader. Any weaknesses the Russians discover could be used against any ArcSig...

A week in security (September 25 – October 01)

Recently, we talked about the hacking incident at Deloitte, one of the 'big four' global accounting firms. It was reported that client email addresses, usernames, and passwords were exposed. This also brought to light weaknesses in their policies and lack of threat intelligence to recover leaked...