Chinese cyber espionage hackers target Southeast Asian firms

Threat Level Attack Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary UNC4191, a threat actor with a suspected China affiliation, has been linked to a series of espionage assaults primarily in Southeast Asia that use USB sticks as an initial infection vector. A variety of...

North Korea Hackers Using New "Dolphin" Backdoor to Spy on South Korean Targets

The North Korea-linked ScarCruft group has been attributed to a previously undocumented backdoor called Dolphin that the threat actor has used against targets located in its southern counterpart. "The backdoor ... has a wide range of spying capabilities, including monitoring drives and portable...

Chinese Cyber Espionage Hackers Using USB Devices to Target Entities in Philippines

A threat actor with a suspected China nexus has been linked to a set of espionage attacks in the Philippines that primarily relies on USB devices as an initial infection vector. Mandiant, which is part of Google Cloud, is tracking the cluster under its uncategorized moniker UNC4191. An analysis o...

Bahamut Cyber Espionage Hackers Targeting Android Users with Fake VPN Apps

The cyber espionage group known as Bahamut has been attributed as behind a highly targeted campaign that infects users of Android devices with malicious apps designed to extract sensitive information. The activity, which has been active since January 2022, entails distributing rogue VPN apps...

Chinese APT Earth Preta runs spearphishing campaigns

Threat Level Actors Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary Earth Preta, an APT gang, staged a large-scale cyber espionage campaign in which the malware was transmitted via spear-phishing emails. The actors use various strategies to avoid detection and analysis,...

Billbug returns after two years to conduct an espionage campaign

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary After being widely active in the year 2018-2019, Billbug, a Chinese state-sponsored group, is back after almost two years. They have been attacking multiple government agencies in an Asian country since...

Researchers Say China State-backed Hackers Breached a Digital Certificate Authority

A suspected Chinese state-sponsored actor breached a digital certificate authority as well as government and defense agencies located in different countries in Asia as part of an ongoing campaign since at least March 2022. Symantec, by Broadcom Software, linked the attacks to an adversarial group...

New "Earth Longzhi" APT Targets Ukraine and Asian Countries with Custom Cobalt Strike Loaders

Entities located in East and Southeast Asia as well as Ukraine have been targeted at least since 2020 by a previously undocumented subgroup of APT41, a prolific Chinese advanced persistent threat APT. Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which christened the espionage crew Earth Longzhi, said the...

Experts Uncover Two Long-Running Android Spyware Campaigns Targeting Uyghurs

Two long-running surveillance campaigns have been found targeting the Uyghur community in China and elsewhere with Android spyware tools designed to harvest sensitive information and track their whereabouts. This encompasses a previously undocumented malware strain called BadBazaar and updated...

Microsoft Warns of Uptick in Hackers Leveraging Publicly-Disclosed 0-Day Vulnerabilities

Microsoft is warning of an uptick among nation-state and criminal actors increasingly leveraging publicly-disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities for breaching target environments. The tech giant, in its 114-page Digital Defense Report, said it has "observed a reduction in the time between the...

Researchers Detail New Malware Campaign Targeting Indian Government Employees

The Transparent Tribe threat actor has been linked to a new campaign aimed at Indian government organizations with trojanized versions of a two-factor authentication solution called Kavach. "This group abuses Google advertisements for the purpose of malvertising to distribute backdoored versions ...

Indian Government targeted by APT-36

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary APT 36, also known as Transparent Tribe, is an information theft and espionage gang that was last active in mid-July 2022. Recently, invasive advertising and the data exfiltration tool LimePad were used t...

Microsoft Security tips for mitigating risk in mergers and acquisitions

Sixty-two percent of organizations that undertake mergers and acquisitions face significant cybersecurity risks or consider cyber risks their biggest concern post-acquisition.1 Threat actors that focus on corporate espionage often target the acquiring company, which we will refer to as the Parent...

Microsoft Security tips for mitigating risk in mergers and acquisitions

Sixty-two percent of organizations that undertake mergers and acquisitions face significant cybersecurity risks or consider cyber risks their biggest concern post-acquisition.1 Threat actors that focus on corporate espionage often target the acquiring company, which we will refer to as the Parent...

SideWinder APT group’s new arsenal named WarHawk

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary The SideWinder APT gang operates espionage campaigns against government, military, and business sectors throughout Asia, primarily Pakistan, by employing the WarHawk backdoor to exfiltrate vulnerable syst...

Kimsuky Hackers Spotted Using 3 New Android Malware to Target South Koreans

The North Korean espionage-focused actor known as Kimsuky has been observed using three different Android malware strains to target users located in its southern counterpart. That's according to findings from South Korean cybersecurity company S2W, which named the malware families FastFire,...

The Spyder Loader malware targets organizations in Hong Kong

Threat Level Attack Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary The Spyder Loader malware was first publicly documented in March 2021. The recent Spyder Loader malware campaign appears to have had the ultimate goal of information theft, and the threat actor behind th...

Hackers Using New Version of FurBall Android Malware to Spy on Iranian Citizens

The Iranian threat actor known as Domestic Kitten has been attributed to a new mobile campaign that masquerades as a translation app to distribute an updated variant of an Android malware known as FurBall. "Since June 2021, it has been distributed as a translation app via a copycat of an Iranian...

Budworm Attackers Return with New Espionage Strikes Against the United States

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary The Budworm espionage group exploited Log4j vulnerabilities to jeopardize the Apache Tomcat service by integrating several custom and publicly available tools to exfiltrate sensitive information...

Earth Aughisky uses a new set of malware

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary Earth Aughisky, a well-known cyber espionage group is exploiting legitimate accounts, software, applications, and other weaknesses by conducting a spearphishing campaign to disrupt everyday activities of...