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...

Evil Corp Cybercrime Group Shifts to LockBit Ransomware to Evade Sanctions

The threat cluster dubbed UNC2165, which shares numerous overlaps with a Russia-based cybercrime group known as Evil Corp, has been linked to multiple LockBit ransomware intrusions in what's seen as an attempt by the latter to get around sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury in December 2019...

Growling Bears Make Thunderous Noise

Growling Bears Make Thunderous Noise By Trellix · June 6, 2022 Per public attribution, Russian cybercriminal groups have always been active. Their tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs have not significantly evolved over time, although some changes have been observed. Lately, the threat...

How the Saitama backdoor uses DNS tunnelling

Thanks to the Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence Team for the information they provided for this article. Understandably, a lot of cybersecurity research and commentary focuses on the act of breaking into computers undetected. But threat actors are often just as concerned with the act of breaking o...

Chinese "Twisted Panda" Hackers Caught Spying on Russian Defense Institutes

At least two research institutes located in Russia and a third likely target in Belarus have been at the receiving end of an espionage attack by a Chinese nation-state advanced persistent threat APT. The attacks, codenamed "Twisted Panda," come in the backdrop of Russia's military invasion of...

OilRig is back with another Phishing Email attack, delivering the Saitama Backdoor

THREAT LEVEL: Amber. For a detailed advisory, download the pdf file here An Iranian cyber espionage gang known as OilRig has began delivering malicious email to a Jordanian government employee at the foreign ministry. The email includes a malicious Excel sheet that installs the Saitama backdoor...

New Saitama backdoor Targeted Official from Jordan's Foreign Ministry

A spear-phishing campaign targeting Jordan's foreign ministry has been observed dropping a new stealthy backdoor dubbed Saitama. Researchers from Malwarebytes and Fortinet FortiGuard Labs attributed the campaign to an Iranian cyber espionage threat actor tracked under the moniker APT34, citing...

Bitter APT Hackers Add Bangladesh to Their List of Targets in South Asia

An espionage-focused threat actor known for targeting China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia has expanded to set its sights on Bangladeshi government organizations as part of an ongoing campaign that commenced in August 2021. Cybersecurity firm Cisco Talos attributed the activity with moderate...

Experts Uncover New Espionage Attacks by Chinese 'Mustang Panda' Hackers

The China-based threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been observed refining and retooling its tactics and malware to strike entities located in Asia, the European Union, Russia, and the U.S. "Mustang Panda is a highly motivated APT group relying primarily on the use of topical lures and social...

Ukraine War Themed Files Become the Lure of Choice for a Wide Range of Hackers

A growing number of threat actors are using the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war as a lure in various phishing and malware campaigns, even as critical infrastructure entities continue to be heavily targeted. "Government-backed actors from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, as well as various...

Chinese "Override Panda" Hackers Resurface With New Espionage Attacks

A Chinese state-sponsored espionage group known as Override Panda has resurfaced in recent weeks with a new phishing attack with the goal of stealing sensitive information. "The Chinese APT used a spear-phishing email to deliver a beacon of a Red Team framework known as 'Viper,'" Cluster25 said i...

Microsoft Issues Report of Russian Cyberattacks against Ukraine

Microsoft has a comprehensive report on the dozens of cyberattacks -- and even more espionage operations -- Russia has conducted against Ukraine as part of this war: At least six Russian Advanced Persistent Threat APT actors and other unattributed threats, have conducted destructive attacks,...