Virtual Currency Platform ‘Tornado Cash’ Accused of Aiding APTs

The U.S. government has slapped sanctions on virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash for laundering more than $7 billion in crypto cash derived from cybercriminal activity. At least $455 million of that was moved for state-sponsored Lazarus Group in part to help fund North Korea’s missile program,...

Nation-State Hackers Targeted Facebook in Cyber Espionage Attacks – Meta

By Deeba Ahmed Meta says the company sabotaged two cyber espionage campaigns against Facebook which originated from South Asia. Meta, Facebook’s… This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Nation-State Hackers Targeted Facebook in Cyber Espionage Attacks - Meta...

Chinese Hackers Targeted Dozens of Industrial Enterprises and Public Institutions

Over a dozen military-industrial complex enterprises and public institutions in Afghanistan and Europe have come under a wave of targeted attacks since January 2022 to steal confidential data by simultaneously making use of six different backdoors. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky attributed...

Meta Cracks Down on Cyber Espionage Operations in South Asia Abusing Facebook

Facebook parent company Meta disclosed that it took action against two espionage operations in South Asia that leveraged its social media platforms to distribute malware to potential targets. The first set of activities is what the company described as "persistent and well-resourced" and undertak...

Hackers Exploited Atlassian Confluence Bug to Deploy Ljl Backdoor for Espionage

A threat actor is said to have "highly likely" exploited a security flaw in an outdated Atlassian Confluence server to deploy a never-before-seen backdoor against an unnamed organization in the research and technical services sector. The attack, which transpired over a seven-day-period during the...

North Korean Hackers Using Malicious Browser Extension to Spy on Email Accounts

A threat actor operating with interests aligned with North Korea has been deploying a malicious extension on Chromium-based web browsers that's capable of stealing email content from Gmail and AOL. Cybersecurity firm Volexity attributed the malware to an activity cluster it calls SharpTongue, whi...

APT trends report Q2 2022

For five years, the Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT at Kaspersky has been publishing quarterly summaries of advanced persistent threat APT activity. These summaries are based on our threat intelligence research; and they provide a representative snapshot of what we have published and...

U.S. Offers $10 Million Reward for Information on North Korean Hackers

The U.S. State Department has announced rewards of up to $10 million for any information that could help disrupt North Korea's cryptocurrency theft, cyber-espionage, and other illicit state-backed activities. "If you have information on any individuals associated with the North Korean...

APT29 utilizes cloud storage service to deliver malicious payloads

Threat Level Actor Report For a detailed advisory, download the pdf file here Summary APT29, a cyber espionage gang uses cloud storage services such as Google Drive and Dropbox to distribute malware to compromised systems. The gang used a phishing campaign that targeted several Western diplomatic...

A week in security (July 11 – July 17)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Elden Ring maker Bandai Namco hit by ransomware and data leaks Predatory Sparrow massively disrupts steel factories while keeping workers safe New variant of Android SpyJoker malware removed from Play Store after 3 million+ installs China’s Tonto Team increases...

Former CIA Engineer Convicted of Leaking 'Vault 7' Hacking Secrets to WikiLeaks

Joshua Schulte, a former programmer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency CIA, has been found guilty of leaking a trove of classified hacking tools and exploits dubbed Vault 7 to WikiLeaks. The 33-year-old engineer had been charged in June 2018 with unauthorized disclosure of classified...

China’s Tonto Team increases espionage activities against Russia

According to analyses of several cybersecurity firms and CERT Computer Emergency Response Team Ukraine CERT-UA, the state-sponsored threat actor group Tonto Team, which has been linked to China-backed cyber operations, is ramping up its spying campaign against Russian government agencies. The...

State-Backed Hackers Targeting Journalists in Widespread Espionage Campaigns

Nation-state hacking groups aligned with China, Iran, North Korea, and Turkey have been targeting journalists to conduct espionage and spread malware as part of a series of campaigns since early 2021. "Most commonly, phishing attacks targeting journalists are used for espionage or to gain key...

Gun Database Breach Leaks Details on Thousands of Owners

Plus: Indian hacker-for-hire groups, Chinese student espionage efforts, and more...

The SessionManager IIS backdoor

Following on from our earlier Owowa discovery, we continued to hunt for more backdoors potentially set up as malicious modules within IIS, a popular web server edited by Microsoft. And we didnt come back empty-handed… In 2021, we noticed a trend among several threat actors for deploying a backdoo...

State-Backed Hackers Using Ransomware as a Decoy for Cyber Espionage Attacks

A China-based advanced persistent threat APT group is possibly deploying short-lived ransomware families as a decoy to cover up the true operational and tactical objectives behind its campaigns. The activity cluster, attributed to a hacking group dubbed Bronze Starlight by Secureworks, involves t...

Trellix Global Defenders: Defending against Cyber Espionage Campaigns – Operation Graphite

Trellix Global Defenders: Defending against Cyber Espionage Campaigns – Operation Graphite By Ben Marandel, Arnab Roy · June 20, 2022 Cyber Espionage campaigns by nature are targeted attacks that can go undetected for prolonged periods of time. Cyber Espionage campaigns often involve adversaries...

Trellix Global Defenders: Defending against Cyber Espionage Campaigns – Operation Graphite

Trellix Global Defenders: Defending against Cyber Espionage Campaigns – Operation Graphite By Ben Marandel, Arnab Roy · June 20, 2022 Cyber Espionage campaigns by nature are targeted attacks that can go undetected for prolonged periods of time. Cyber Espionage campaigns often involve adversaries...

China-linked APT Flew Under Radar for Decade

Researchers have identified a small yet potent China-linked APT that has flown under the radar for nearly a decade running campaigns against government, education and telecommunication organizations in Southeast Asia and Australia. Researchers from SentinelLabs said the APT, which they dubbed Aoq...

A Decade-Long Chinese Espionage Campaign Targets Southeast Asia and Australia

A previously undocumented Chinese-speaking advanced persistent threat APT actor dubbed Aoqin Dragon has been linked to a string of espionage-oriented attacks aimed at government, education, and telecom entities chiefly in Southeast Asia and Australia dating as far back as 2013. "Aoqin Dragon seek...