QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown By Daksh Kapur, Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Alfred Alvarado · September 06, 2023 Figure 1 Attribution at the bottom Qakbot, known under aliases like QBot, QuakBot, and Pinkslipbot, represents an intricately advanced malware strain that has...

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown By Daksh Kapur, Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Alfred Alvarado · September 06, 2023 Figure 1 Attribution at the bottom Qakbot, known under aliases like QBot, QuakBot, and Pinkslipbot, represents an intricately advanced malware strain that has...

A week in security (August 28 - September 3)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: 2.6 million DuoLingo users have scraped data released Google strengthens its Workplace suite protection Meal delivery service PurFoods announces major data breach Cisco VPNs without MFA are under attack by ransomware operator "An influx of Elons," a hospital visit,...

Qakbot Takedown: The Road Ahead is Long and Winding

A long and challenging journey against cybercrime around the world...

Qakbot botnet infrastructure suffers major takedown

The Qakbot botnet has suffered a major setback after its infrastructure was heavily disrupted by US and European law enforcement agencies. Operation DuckHunt, as it was codenamed, is possibly the largest US-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure. Not only did the agenci...

Qakbot Botnet Disrupted, Infected 700,000 Computers Globally

By Deeba Ahmed The Qakbot malware is also known as “Qbot” and “Pinkslipbot,” and was used to target critical industries worldwide. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Qakbot Botnet Disrupted, Infected 700,000 Computers Globally...

CISA and FBI Publish Joint Advisory on QakBot Infrastructure

Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA, Identification and Disruption of QakBot Infrastructure, to help organizations detect and protect against newly identified QakBot-related activity a...

Identification and Disruption of QakBot Infrastructure

SUMMARY The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA to disseminate QakBot infrastructure indicators of compromise IOCs identified through FBI investigations as of August 2023. On August 25, F...

FBI Dismantles QakBot Malware, Frees 700,000 Computers, Seizes $8.6 Million

A coordinated law enforcement effort codenamed Operation Duck Hunt has felled QakBot, a notorious Windows malware family that's estimated to have compromised over 700,000 computers globally and facilitated financial fraud as well as ransomware. To that end, the U.S. Justice Department DoJ said th...

U.S. Hacks QakBot, Quietly Removes Botnet Infections

The U.S. government today announced a coordinated crackdown against QakBot, a complex malware family used by multiple cybercrime groups to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. The international law enforcement operation involved seizing control over the botnets online infrastructure, and...

QakBot Malware Operators Expand C2 Network with 15 New Servers

The operators associated with the QakBot aka QBot malware have set up 15 new command-and-control C2 servers as of late June 2023. The findings are a continuation of the malware's infrastructure analysis from Team Cymru, and arrive a little over two months after Lumen Black Lotus Labs revealed tha...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2023. Non-mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q1 2023 IT threat evolution in Q1 2023. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q1 2023. Mobile statistics These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly...

Evasive QBot Malware Leverages Short-lived Residential IPs for Dynamic Attacks

An analysis of the "evasive and tenacious" malware known as QBot has revealed that 25% of its command-and-control C2 servers are merely active for a single day. What's more, 50% of the servers don't remain active for more than a week, indicating the use of an adaptable and dynamic C2...

Threat Roundup for May 19 to May 26

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between May 19 and May 26. As with previous roundups, this post isnt meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats weve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics,...

Pikabot A Stealthy Backdoor with Ingenious Evasion Tactics

Threat Level Attack Report For a detailed threat advisory, download the pdf file here Summary Pikabot, a sophisticated backdoor evades analysis with anti-analysis measures like the "sleep" function, uses NtContinue API, employs language-based execution cessation, and shows connections to Qakbot...

Rheinmetall attacked by BlackBasta ransomware

On Friday May 19, 2023, the German arms producer Rheinmetall acknowledged a cyber-incident at one of its subsidiaries in the private sector. The BlackBasta ransomware group has already claimed responsibility for the attack through its leak-site. Entry for Rheinmetall on BlackBasta leak site...

Quarterly Report: Incident Response Trends in Q1 2023

Web shell usage spikes in Q1 compared to previous quarters, correlating with higher instances of exploitation of public-facing applications. In a novel increase compared to previous quarters, Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR reports that web shells were the most-observed threat in the first...

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor

In this blog, you will learn a practical methodology to extract configuration data from recent Qakbot samples. I will provide some background on Qakbot, then walk through decode themes in an easy to visualize manner. Additionally, I'll share a Velociraptor artifact to detect and automate the deco...

Automating Qakbot decode at scale

This is a technical post covering practical methodology to extract configuration data from recent Qakbot samples. In this blog, I will provide some background on Qakbot, then walk through decode themes in an easy to visualize manner. I will then share a Velociraptor artifact to detect and automat...

Emotet Rises Again: Evades Macro Security via OneNote Attachments

The notorious Emotet malware, in its return after a short hiatus, is now being distributed via Microsoft OneNote email attachments in an attempt to bypass macro-based security restrictions and compromise systems. Emotet, linked to a threat actor tracked as Gold Crestwood, Mummy Spider, or TA542,...