North Korea Exploited VPN Flaw to Hack South's Nuclear Research Institute

South Korea's state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute KAERI on Friday disclosed that its internal network was infiltrated by suspected attackers operating out of its northern counterpart. The intrusion is said to have taken place on May 14 through a vulnerability in an unnamed virtual...

Cyber espionage by Chinese hackers in neighbouring nations is on the rise

A string of cyber espionage campaigns dating all the way back to 2014 and likely focused on gathering defense information from neighbouring countries have been linked to a Chinese military-intelligence apparatus. In a wide-ranging report published by Massachusetts-headquartered Recorded Future th...

Molerats Hackers Return With New Attacks Targeting Middle Eastern Governments

A Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat APT group has resurfaced after a two-month hiatus to target government institutions in the Middle East and global government entities associated with geopolitics in the region in a rash of new campaigns observed earlier this month. Sunnyvale-based...

IKEA Fined $1.2M for Elaborate ‘Spying System’

IKEA’s French subsidiary was just hit with a $1.2 million fine after it was found guilty of a creepy systematic snooping scheme targeting customers, employees and even prospective hires. Prosecutors said in all, the company illegally surveilled about 400 people in total, according to the BBC. IKE...

Ferocious Kitten: 6 years of covert surveillance in Iran

Ferocious Kitten is an APT group that since at least 2015 has been targeting Persian-speaking individuals who appear to be based in Iran. Although it has been active for a long time, the group has mostly operated under the radar and has not been covered by security researchers to the best of our...

NoxPlayer Supply-Chain Attack is Likely the Work of Gelsemium Hackers

A new cyber espionage group named Gelsemium has been linked to a supply chain attack targeting the NoxPlayer Android emulator that was disclosed earlier this year. The findings come from a systematic analysis of multiple campaigns undertaken by the APT crew, with evidence of the earliest attack...

Novel ‘Victory’ Backdoor Spotted in Chinese APT Campaign

An ongoing surveillance operation has been uncovered that targets a Southeast Asian government, researchers said – using a previously unknown espionage malware. According to Check Point Research, the attack involves spear-phishing emails with malicious Word documents to gain initial access, along...

Experts Uncover Yet Another Chinese Spying Campaign Aimed at Southeast Asia

An ongoing cyber-espionage operation with suspected ties to China has been found targeting a Southeast Asian government to deploy spyware on Windows systems while staying under the radar for more than three years. "In this campaign, the attackers utilized the set of Microsoft Office exploits and...

Researchers Uncover Hacking Operations Targeting Government Entities in South Korea

A North Korean threat actor active since 2012 has been behind a new espionage campaign targeting high-profile government officials associated with its southern counterpart to install an Android and Windows backdoor for collecting sensitive information. Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes attributed t...

US Seizes Domains Used by SolarWinds Hackers in Cyber Espionage Attacks

Days after Microsoft, Secureworks, and Volexity shed light on a new spear-phishing activity unleashed by the Russian hackers who breached SolarWinds IT management software, the U.S. Department of Justice DoJ Tuesday said it intervened to take control of two command-and-control C2 and malware...

Kimsuky APT continues to target South Korean government using AppleSeed backdoor

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi. The Kimsuky APT—also known as Thallium, Black Banshee, and Velvet Chollima—is a North Korean threat actor that has been active since 2012. The group conducts cyber espionage operations to target government entities mainly in South Korea. On December...

A week in security (May 24 -30)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs we discussed VPN Android apps, how even the FBI has to deal with insider threats, Chromes Incognito mode, new rules for critical infrastructure spurred by the Colonial Pipeline attack, how to delete your Twitter account, what encryption is, how healthcare service...

A New Bug in Siemens PLCs Could Let Hackers Run Malicious Code Remotely

Siemens on Friday shipped firmware updates to address a severe vulnerability in SIMATIC S7-1200 and S7-1500 programmable logic controllers PLCs that could be exploited by a malicious actor to remotely gain access to protected areas of the memory and achieve unrestricted and undetected code...

Chinese Cyber Espionage Hackers Continue to Target Pulse Secure VPN Devices

Cybersecurity researchers from FireEye unmasked additional tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs adopted by Chinese threat actors who were recently found abusing Pulse Secure VPN devices to drop malicious web shells and exfiltrate sensitive information from enterprise networks. FireEye's...

Re-Checking Your Pulse: Updates on Chinese APT Actors Compromising Pulse Secure VPN Devices

On April 20, 2021, Mandiant published detailed results of our investigations into compromised Pulse Secure devices by suspected Chinese espionage operators. This blog post is intended to provide an update on our findings, give additional recommendations to network defenders, and discuss potential...

Data Wiper Malware Disguised As Ransomware Targets Israeli Entities

Researchers on Tuesday disclosed a new espionage campaign that resorts to destructive data-wiping attacks targeting Israeli entities at least since December 2020 that camouflage the malicious activity as ransomware extortions. Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne attributed the attacks to a nation-stat...

Pakistan-Linked Hackers Added New Windows Malware to Its Arsenal

Cybercriminals with suspected ties to Pakistan continue to rely on social engineering as a crucial component of its operations as part of an evolving espionage campaign against Indian targets, according to new research. The attacks have been linked to a group called Transparent Tribe, also known ...

Fresh Loader Targets Aviation Victims with Spy RATs

A cyberattack campaign that goes after aviation targets has been uncovered, which is spreading remote access trojan RAT malware bent on cyber-espionage. Researchers from Microsoft said this week on Twitter that spear-phishing emails are the main attack vector. Individuals in the aerospace and...

iPhone Hack Allegedly Used to Spy on China’s Uyghurs

In 2019, a Chinese security researcher working with the internet security and antivirus company Qihoo 360 unveiled an intricately woven exploit: One that would allegedly let a remote attacker easily jailbreak an iPhone X iOS 12.1. The researcher, Qixun Zhao, dubbed the exploit Chaos, for good...

New Stealthy Rootkit Infiltrated Networks of High-Profile Organizations

An unknown threat actor with the capabilities to evolve and tailor its toolset to target environments infiltrated high-profile organizations in Asia and Africa with an evasive Windows rootkit since at least 2018. Called 'Moriya,' the malware is a "passive backdoor which allows attackers to inspec...