Black Basta Ransomware: What You Need to Know

Overview Black Basta is a ransomware group operating as ransomware-as-a-service RaaS, first spotted in April 2022. It is known to use double extortion techniques where the group demands payment for the decryption and non-release of stolen data. Earlier versions of Black Basta share many...

Chinese-Speaking Hacker Group Targets Human Rights Studies in Middle East

Unnamed government entities in the Middle East and Malaysia are the target of a persistent cyber campaign orchestrated by a threat actor known as Tropic Trooper since June 2023. "Sighting this group's Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures in critical governmental entities in the Middle East,...

New Cyberattack Targets Chinese-Speaking Businesses with Cobalt Strike Payloads

Chinese-speaking users are the target of a "highly organized and sophisticated attack" campaign that is likely leveraging phishing emails to infect Windows systems with Cobalt Strike payloads. "The attackers managed to move laterally, establish persistence and remain undetected within the systems...

Vietnamese Human Rights Group Targeted in Multi-Year Cyberattack by APT32

A non-profit supporting Vietnamese human rights has been the target of a multi-year campaign designed to deliver a variety of malware on compromised hosts. Cybersecurity company Huntress attributed the activity to a threat cluster tracked as APT32, a Vietnamese-aligned hacking crew that's also...

APT41 Hackers Use ShadowPad, Cobalt Strike in Taiwanese Institute Cyber Attack

A Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute that specializes in computing and associated technologies was breached by nation-state threat actors with ties to China, according to new findings from Cisco Talos. The unnamed organization was targeted as early as mid-July 2023 to deliver a...

There is no real fix to the security issues recently found in GitHub and other similar software

A recently discovered security issue in GitHub and other, similar, control system products seem to fit into the classic "its a feature, not a bug" category. Security researchers last week published their findings into some research of how deleted forks in GitHub work, potentially leaving the door...

APT41 likely compromised Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute with ShadowPad and Cobalt Strike

Cisco Talos discovered a malicious campaign that compromised a Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute that started as early as July 2023, delivering the ShadowPad malware, Cobalt Strike and other customized tools for post-compromise activities. The activity conducted on the victim...

Chinese APT41 Upgrades Malware Arsenal with DodgeBox and MoonWalk

The China-linked advanced persistent threat APT group codenamed APT41 is suspected to be using an "advanced and upgraded version" of a known malware called StealthVector to deliver a previously undocumented backdoor dubbed MoonWalk. The new variant of StealthVector – which is also referred to as...

A week in security (July 1 – July 7)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Ticketmaster hackers release stolen ticket barcodes for Taylor Swift Eras Tour Authy phone numbers accessed by cybercriminals, warns Twilio Affirm says Evolve Bank data breach also compromised some of its customers Prudential Financial data breach impacts 2.5 milli...

GootLoader Malware Still Active, Deploys New Versions for Enhanced Attacks

The malware known as GootLoader continues to be in active use by threat actors looking to deliver additional payloads to compromised hosts. "Updates to the GootLoader payload have resulted in several versions of GootLoader, with GootLoader 3 currently in active use," cybersecurity firm Cybereason...

Operation Morpheus Disrupts 593 Cobalt Strike Servers Used for Ransomware

Global Operation Morpheus dismantles Cobalt Strike network: Law enforcement takes down criminal infrastructure used for ransomware and data…...

Global Police Operation Shuts Down 600 Cybercrime Servers Linked to Cobalt Strike

A coordinated law enforcement operation codenamed MORPHEUS has felled close to 600 servers that were used by cybercriminal groups and were part of an attack infrastructure associated with the Cobalt Strike tool. The crackdown targeted older, unlicensed versions of the Cobalt Strike red teaming...

Israeli Entities Targeted by Cyberattack Using Donut and Sliver Frameworks

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an attack campaign that targets various Israeli entities with publicly-available frameworks like Donut and Sliver. The campaign, believed to be highly targeted in nature, "leverage target-specific infrastructure and custom WordPress websites as a payload...

Chinese and N. Korean Hackers Target Global Infrastructure with Ransomware

Threat actors with suspected ties to China and North Korea have been linked to ransomware and data encryption attacks targeting government and critical infrastructure sectors across the world between 2021 and 2023. While one cluster of activity has been associated with the ChamelGang aka CamoFei,...

New Attack Technique Exploits Microsoft Management Console Files

Threat actors are exploiting a novel attack technique in the wild that leverages specially crafted management saved console MSC files to gain full code execution using Microsoft Management Console MMC and evade security defenses. Elastic Security Labs has codenamed the approach GrimResource after...

Cybercriminals Employ PhantomLoader to Distribute SSLoad Malware

The nascent malware known as SSLoad is being delivered by means of a previously undocumented loader called PhantomLoader, according to findings from cybersecurity firm Intezer. "The loader is added to a legitimate DLL, usually EDR or AV products, by binary patching the file and employing...

Ukraine Hit by Cobalt Strike Campaign Using Malicious Excel Files

Beware Macro! Ukrainian users and cyberinfrastructure are being hit by a new malware campaign in which hackers are…...

Hackers Use MS Excel Macro to Launch Multi-Stage Malware Attack in Ukraine

A new sophisticated cyber attack has been observed targeting endpoints geolocated to Ukraine with an aim to deploy Cobalt Strike and seize control of the compromised hosts. The attack chain, per Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, involves a Microsoft Excel file that carries an embedded VBA macro to initia...

Ransomware Attacks Exploit VMware ESXi Vulnerabilities in Alarming Pattern

Ransomware attacks targeting VMware ESXi infrastructure follow an established pattern regardless of the file-encrypting malware deployed, new findings show. "Virtualization platforms are a core component of organizational IT infrastructure, yet they often suffer from inherent misconfigurations an...

New Frontiers, Old Tactics: Chinese Espionage Group Targets Africa & Caribbean Govts

The China-linked threat actor known as Sharp Panda has expanded their targeting to include governmental organizations in Africa and the Caribbean as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. "The campaign adopts Cobalt Strike Beacon as the payload, enabling backdoor functionalities like C2...