Navigating the MAZE: Tactics, Techniques and Procedures Associated With MAZE Ransomware Incidents

Targeted ransomware incidents have brought a threat of disruptive and destructive attacks to organizations across industries and geographies. FireEye Mandiant Threat Intelligence has previously documented this threat in our investigations of trends across ransomware incidents, FIN6 activity,...

A Dozen Nation-Backed APTs Tap COVID-19 to Cover Spy Attacks

Cybercriminals have seized on the novel coronavirus as a theme in their attacks, and it turns out that the most sophisticated players on that scene are no exception. According to Google’s Threat Analysis Group TAG, more than a dozen nation-state-backed APTs are using the COVID-19 pandemic as a...

They Come in the Night: Ransomware Deployment Trends

Ransomware is a remote, digital shakedown. It is disruptive and expensive, and it affects all kinds of organizations, from cutting edge space technology firms, to the wool industry, to industrial environments. Infections have forced hospitals to turn away patients and law enforcement to drop case...

Abusing DLL Misconfigurations — Using Threat Intelligence to Weaponize R&D

DLL Abuse Techniques Overview Dynamic-link library DLL side-loading occurs when Windows Side-by-Side WinSxS manifests are not explicit about the characteristics of DLLs being loaded by a program. In layman’s terms, DLL side-loading can allow an attacker to trick a program into loading a malicious...

MESSAGETAP: Who’s Reading Your Text Messages?

FireEye Mandiant recently discovered a new malware family used by APT41 a Chinese APT group that is designed to monitor and save SMS traffic from specific phone numbers, IMSI numbers and keywords for subsequent theft. Named MESSAGETAP, the tool was deployed by APT41 in a telecommunications networ...

Mahalo FIN7: Responding to the Criminal Operators’ New Tools and Techniques

During several recent incident response engagements, FireEye Mandiant investigators uncovered new tools in FIN7’s malware arsenal and kept pace as the global criminal operators attempted new evasion techniques. In this blog, we reveal two of FIN7’s new tools that we have called BOOSTWRITE and...

Hard Pass: Declining APT34’s Invite to Join Their Professional Network

Background With increasing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, we expect Iran to significantly increase the volume and scope of its cyber espionage campaigns. Iran has a critical need for strategic intelligence and is likely to fill this gap by conducting espionage against decision makers a...

TRITON Actor TTP Profile, Custom Attack Tools, Detections, and ATT&CK Mapping

Overview FireEye can now confirm that we have uncovered and are responding to an additional intrusion by the attacker behind TRITON at a different critical infrastructure facility. In December 2017, FireEye publicly released our first analysis on the TRITON attack where malicious actors used the...

ICS Tactical Security Trends: Analysis of the Most Frequent Security Risks Observed in the Field

Introduction FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence compiled extensive data from dozens of ICS security health assessment engagements ICS Healthcheck performed by Mandiant, FireEye's consulting team, to identify the most pervasive and highest priority security risks in industrial facilities. The information...

DNP3 Implementation Vulnerability (Update B)

OVERVIEW This updated advisory is a follow-up to the updated advisory titled ICSA-13-291-01A DNP3 Implementation Vulnerability that was published November 21, 2013, on the NCCIC/ICS-CERT web site. Adam Crain of Automatak and Chris Sistrunk, Sr. Consultant for Mandiant, reported an improper input...

Bejtlich on the APT1 Report: No Hack Back

Before reading the rest of this post, I suggest reading Mandiant/FireEye's statement Doing Our Part -- Without Hacking Back. I would like to add my own color to this situation. First, at no time when I worked for Mandiant or FireEye, or afterwards, was there ever a notion that we would hack into...

A Totally Tubular Treatise on TRITON and TriStation

Introduction In December 2017, FireEye's Mandiant discussed an incident response involving the TRITON framework. The TRITON attack and many of the publicly discussed ICS intrusions involved routine techniques where the threat actors used only what is necessary to succeed in their mission. For bot...

Rooting a Logitech Harmony Hub: Improving Security in Today's IoT World

Introduction FireEye’s Mandiant Red Team recently discovered vulnerabilities present on the Logitech Harmony Hub Internet of Things IoT device that could potentially be exploited, resulting in root access to the device via SSH. The Harmony Hub is a home control system designed to connect to and...

ReelPhish: A Real-Time Two-Factor Phishing Tool

Social Engineering and Two-Factor Authentication Social engineering campaigns are a constant threat to businesses because they target the weakest chain in security: people. A typical attack would capture a victim’s username and password and store it for an attacker to reuse later. Two-Factor...

'LeakTheAnalyst' Hacker Who Claimed to Have Hacked FireEye Arrested

Remember the hacker who claimed to have breached FireEye late July this year? That alleged hacker has been arrested and taken into custody Thursday by international law enforcement, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia informed the media. Late July, the hacker, whose name has not yet been disclosed, managed ...

Insights into Iranian Cyber Espionage: APT33 Targets Aerospace and Energy Sectors and has Ties to Destructive Malware

When discussing suspected Middle Eastern hacker groups with destructive capabilities, many automatically think of the suspected Iranian group that previously used SHAMOON – aka Disttrack – to target organizations in the Persian Gulf. However, over the past few years, we have been tracking a...

Insights into Iranian Cyber Espionage: APT33 Targets Aerospace and Energy Sectors and has Ties to Destructive Malware

When discussing suspected Middle Eastern hacker groups with destructive capabilities, many automatically think of the suspected Iranian group that previously used SHAMOON – aka Disttrack – to target organizations in the Persian Gulf. However, over the past few years, we have been tracking a...

Equifax Suffered Earlier Breach in March

In addition to this summer’s massive attack, Equifax suffered an earlier breach of its systems in March, the company revealed Monday. While the company has been relatively transparent around May’s breach related to 143 million U.S. consumers, details around March’s breach, including how its syste...

Monitoring Windows Console Activity (Part 1)

Introduction While performing incident response, Mandiant encounters attackers actively using systems on a compromised network. This activity often includes using interactive console programs via RDP such as the command prompt, PowerShell, and sometimes custom command and control C2 console tools...

Monitoring Windows Console Activity (Part 1)

Introduction While performing incident response, Mandiant encounters attackers actively using systems on a compromised network. This activity often includes using interactive console programs via RDP such as the command prompt, PowerShell, and sometimes custom command and control C2 console tools...