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...

Hacker Leaks Data From Mandiant (FireEye) Senior Security Analyst

Reportedly, at least one senior cyber security analyst working with Mandiant, a Virginia-based cybersecurity firm owned by the FireEye, appears to have had its system compromised by hackers, exposing his sensitive information on the Internet. On Sunday, an anonymous group of hackers posted some...

Revoke-Obfuscation: PowerShell Obfuscation Detection Using Science

Many attackers continue to leverage PowerShell as a part of their malware ecosystem, mostly delivered and executed by malicious binaries and documents. Of malware that uses PowerShell, the most prevalent use is the garden-variety stager: an executable or document macro that launches PowerShell to...

Obfuscation in the Wild: Targeted Attackers Lead the Way in Evasion Techniques

Throughout 2017 we have observed a marked increase in the use of command line evasion and obfuscation by a range of targeted attackers. Cyber espionage groups and financial threat actors continue to adopt the latest cutting-edge application whitelisting bypass techniques and introduce innovative...

Back That App Up: Gaining Root on the Lenovo Vibe

In May of 2016, Mandiant’s Red Team discovered a series of vulnerabilities present on Lenovo’s Vibe P1 Android-based mobile device that allow local privilege escalation to the user “root”. Mandiant disclosed these vulnerabilities to Lenovo in May of 2016. Lenovo advised Mandiant that it should wo...

Back That App Up: Gaining Root on the Lenovo Vibe

In May of 2016, Mandiant’s Red Team discovered a series of vulnerabilities present on Lenovo’s Vibe P1 Android-based mobile device that allow local privilege escalation to the user “root”. Mandiant disclosed these vulnerabilities to Lenovo in May of 2016. Lenovo advised Mandiant that it should wo...

Breach at Sabre Corp.’s Hospitality Unit

Breaches involving major players in the hospitality industry continue to pile up. Today, travel industry giant Sabre Corp. disclosed what could be a significant breach of payment and customer data tied to bookings processed through a reservations system that serves more than 32,000 hotels and oth...

Evolving Analytics for Execution Trace Data

Five years ago, Mandiant released a proof of concept tool named ShimCacheParser, along with a blog post titled “Leveraging the Application Compatibility Cache in Forensic Investigations”. Since then, ShimCache metadata has become increasingly popular as a source of forensic evidence, both for...

Evolving Analytics for Execution Trace Data

Five years ago, Mandiant released a proof of concept tool named ShimCacheParser, along with a blog post titled “Leveraging the Application Compatibility Cache in Forensic Investigations”. Since then, ShimCache metadata has become increasingly popular as a source of forensic evidence, both for...

Dissecting One of APT29’s Fileless WMI and PowerShell Backdoors (POSHSPY)

Mandiant has observed APT29 using a stealthy backdoor that we call POSHSPY. POSHSPY leverages two of the tools the group frequently uses: PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation WMI. In the investigations Mandiant has conducted, it appeared that APT29 deployed POSHSPY as a secondary...

APT29 Domain Fronting With TOR

Mandiant has observed Russian nation-state attackers APT29 employing domain fronting techniques for stealthy backdoor access to victim environments for at least two years. There has been considerable discussion about domain fronting following the release of a paper detailing these techniques...

APT29 Domain Fronting With TOR

Mandiant has observed Russian nation-state attackers APT29 employing domain fronting techniques for stealthy backdoor access to victim environments for at least two years. There has been considerable discussion about domain fronting following the release of a paper detailing these techniques...

WMImplant – A WMI Based Agentless Post-Exploitation RAT Developed in PowerShell

Just over one year ago November 2015, I released WMIOps, a PowerShell script that enables a user to carry out different actions via Windows Management Instrumentation WMI on the local machine or a remote machine. WMIOps can: Start or stop a process. Return a list of all running processes. Power...

Bejtlich Moves On

Exactly six years ago today I announced that I was joining Mandiant to become the company's first CSO. Today is my last day at FireEye, the company that bought Mandiant at the very end of 2013. The highlights of my time at Mandiant involved two sets of responsibilities. First, as CSO, I enjoyed...

M-Trends 2017: A View From the Front Lines

Every year Mandiant responds to a large number of cyber attacks, and 2016 was no exception. For our M-Trends 2017 report, we took a look at the incidents we investigated last year and provided a global and regional the Americas, APAC and EMEA analysis focused on attack trends, and defensive and...

Using the Registry to Discover Unix Systems and Jump Boxes

On red team engagements, Mandiant consultants are often tasked with identifying and obtaining access to critical Unix systems within our client’s environments. The objectives may include obtaining payment card data on point of sale terminals or accessing intellectual property residing on Apple...

Using the Registry to Discover Unix Systems and Jump Boxes

On red team engagements, Mandiant consultants are often tasked with identifying and obtaining access to critical Unix systems within our client’s environments. The objectives may include obtaining payment card data on point of sale terminals or accessing intellectual property residing on Apple...