Good old malware for the new Apple Silicon platform

Introduction A short while ago, Apple released Mac computers with the new chip called Apple M1. The unexpected release was a milestone in the Apple hardware industry. However, as technology evolves, we also observe a growing interest in the newly released platform from malware adversaries. This...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems. H1 2020 highlights

Overall downward trend for percentages of attacked computers globally Beginning in H2 2019 we have observed a tendency for decreases in the percentages of attacked computers, both in the ICS and in the corporate and personal environments. In H1 2020 the percentage of ICS computers on which...

Unwanted notifications in browser

When, back in 2015, push notifications were just appearing in browsers, very few people wondered how this tool would be used in the future: once a useful technology made to keep regular readers informed about updates, today it is often used to shell website visitors with unsolicited ads. To achie...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Statistics

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Top security stories Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Story of the year: miners Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Threat Predictions for 2019 All the statistics used in this report were obtained using Kaspersky Security Network KSN, a distributed antivirus netwo...

Cyberthreats to financial institutions 2019: overview and predictions

Kaspersky Security Bulletin: Threat Predictions for 2019 Threat predictions for industrial security in 2019 Cryptocurrency threat predictions for 2019 Introduction – key events in 2018 The past year has been extremely eventful in terms of the digital threats faced by financial institutions:...

Android commercial spyware

There's certainly no shortage of commercial spying apps for Android, with most positioned as parental control tools. In reality, however, these apps barely differ from spyware, with the exception perhaps of the installation method. There's no need to even resort to Tor Browser or other darknet...

Kaspersky Lab – Beyond Black Friday Threat Report, November 2017

Introduction The festive holiday shopping season, which covers Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November as well as Christmas in December, now accounts for a significant share of annual sales for retailers, particularly in the U.S., Europe and APAC. Those selling clothing,...

Lumma Stealer – Tracking distribution channels

Introduction The evolution of Malware-as-a-Service MaaS has significantly lowered the barriers to entry for cybercriminals, with information stealers becoming one of the most commercially successful categories in this underground economy. Among these threats, Lumma Stealer has emerged as a...

IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. Non-mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q3 2024 IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. Mobile statistics The statistics presented here are based on detection verdicts by Kaspersky products and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data...

Analysis of the Crypt Ghouls group: continuing the investigation into a series of attacks on Russia

Last December, we discovered a new group targeting Russian businesses and government agencies with ransomware. Further investigation into this group's activity suggests a connection to other groups currently targeting Russia. We have seen overlaps not only in indicators of compromise and tools, b...

IT threat evolution Q2 2024

Targeted attacks XZ backdoor: a supply chain attack in the making On March 29, a message on the Openwall oss-security mailing list announced the discovery of a backdoor in XZ, a compression utility included in many popular Linux distributions. The backdoored library is used by the OpenSSH server...

CloudWizard APT: the bad magic story goes on

In March 2023, we uncovered a previously unknown APT campaign in the region of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that involved the use of PowerMagic and CommonMagic implants. However, at the time it was not clear which threat actor was behind the attack. Since the release of our report about...

How to train your Ghidra

Getting started with Ghidra For about two decades, being a reverse engineer meant that you had to master the ultimate disassembly tool, IDA Pro. Over the years, many other tools were created to complement or directly replace it, but only a few succeeded. Then came the era of decompilation, adding...

The State of Stalkerware in 2021

The state of stalkerware in 2021 PDF Main findings of 2021 Every year Kaspersky analyzes the use of stalkerware around the world to better understand the threat it poses. We partner with stakeholders across public and private sectors to raise awareness and find solutions to best tackle this...

Shlayer Trojan attacks one in ten macOS users

For close to two years now, the Shlayer Trojan has been the most common threat on the macOS platform: in 2019, one in ten of our Mac security solutions encountered this malware at least once, and it accounts for almost 30% of all detections for this OS. The first specimens of this family fell int...

The Rotexy mobile Trojan – banker and ransomware

On the back of a surge in Trojan activity, we decided to carry out an in-depth analysis and track the evolution of some other popular malware families besides Asacub. One of the most interesting and active specimens to date was a mobile Trojan from the Rotexy family. In a three-month period from...

Threat Predictions for Industrial Security in 2018

The landscape in 2017 2017 was one of the most intense in terms of incidents affecting the information security of industrial systems. Security researchers discovered and reported hundreds of new vulnerabilities, warned of new threat vectors in ICS and technological processes, provided data on...

Using legitimate tools to hide malicious code

The authors of malware use various techniques to circumvent defensive mechanisms and conceal harmful activity. One of them is the practice of hiding malicious code in the context of a trusted process. Typically, malware that uses concealment techniques injects its code into a system process, e.g...

The Magala Trojan Clicker: A Hidden Advertising Threat

One large group will slowly conquer another large group, reduce its numbers, and thus lessen its chance of further variation and improvement. … Small and broken groups and sub-groups will finally tend to disappear. Charles Darwin. 'On the Origin of Species' The golden age of Trojans and viruses h...

Trusted relationship attacks: trust, but verify

IT outsourcing market continues to demonstrate strong growth globally – such services are becoming increasingly popular. But along with the advantages, such as saved time and resources, delegating non-core tasks creates new challenges in terms of information security. By providing third-party...

ToddyCat is making holes in your infrastructure

We continue covering the activities of the APT group ToddyCat. In our previous article, we described tools for collecting and exfiltrating files LoFiSe and PcExter. This time, we have investigated how attackers obtain constant access to compromised infrastructure, what information on the hosts th...

Stealer for PIX payment system, new Lumar stealer and Rhysida ransomware

Introduction As a cybersecurity company, Kaspersky is constantly dealing with known and brand-new malware samples. As part of our crimeware reporting service, we provide our customers with technical reports on the evolution of existing crimeware families, as well as newly emerging ones. In this...

Overview of Google Play threats sold on the dark web

In 2022, Kaspersky security solutions detected 1,661,743 malware or unwanted software installers, targeting mobile users. Although the most common way of distributing such installers is through third-party websites and dubious app stores, their authors every now and then manage to upload them to...

OilRig’s Poison Frog – old samples, same trick

After we wrote our private report on the OilRig leak, we decided to scan our archives with our YARA rule, to hunt for new and older samples. Aside from finding some new samples, we believe we also succeeded in finding some of the first Poison Frog samples. Poison Frog We're not quite sure whether...

DarkVishnya: Banks attacked through direct connection to local network

While novice attackers, imitating the protagonists of the U.S. drama Mr. Robot, leave USB flash drives lying around parking lots in the hope that an employee from the target company picks one up and plugs it in at the workplace, more experienced cybercriminals prefer not to rely on chance. In...

DDoS Attacks in Q3 2018

News Overview The third quarter 2018 turned out relatively quiet in terms of DDoS attacks. "Relatively" because there were not very many high-level multi-day DDoS onslaughts on major resources. However, the capacities employed by cybercriminals keep growing year after year, while the total number...

LuckyMouse signs malicious NDISProxy driver with certificate of Chinese IT company

What happened? Since March 2018 we have discovered several infections where a previously unknown Trojan was injected into the lsass.exe system process memory. These implants were injected by the digitally signed 32- and 64-bit network filtering driver NDISProxy. Interestingly, this driver is sign...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin. Overall statistics for 2017

All the statistics used in this report were obtained using Kaspersky Security Network KSN, a distributed antivirus network that works with various anti-malware protection components. The data was collected from KSN users who agreed to provide it. Millions of Kaspersky Lab product users from 213...

Developing an incident response playbook

An incident response playbook is a predefined set of actions to address a specific security incident such as malware infection, violation of security policies, DDoS attack, etc. Its main goal is to enable a large enterprise security team to respond to cyberattacks in a timely and effective manner...

APT10: Tracking down LODEINFO 2022, part II

In the previous publication Tracking down LODEINFO 2022, part I, we mentioned that the initial infection methods vary in different attack scenarios and that the LODEINFO shellcode was regularly updated for use with each infection vector. In this article, we discuss improvements made to the LODEIN...

Arrests of members of Tetrade seed groups Grandoreiro and Melcoz

Spains Ministry of the Interior has announced the arrest of 16 individuals connected to the Grandoreiro and Melcoz also known as Mekotio cybercrime groups. Both are originally from Brazil and form part of the Tetrade umbrella, operating for a few years now in Latin America and Western Europe...

COVID-19: Examining the threat landscape a year later

A year ago — everything changed. In an effort to stem the tide of a rapidly spreading pandemic, the world shut down. Shops were forced to shut their doors, and whole countries were placed on stringent lockdowns. Schools were closed around the world, with more than one billion children affected, a...

Threats in the Netherlands

Introduction On October 4, 2018, the MIVD held a press conference about an intercepted cyberattack on the OPWC in the Netherlands, allegedly by the advanced threat actor Sofacy also known as APT28 or Fancy Bear, among others. According to the MIVD, four suspects were caught red handed trying to...

2018 Fraud World Cup

There are only two weeks to go before the start of the massive soccer event — FIFA World Cup. This championship has already attracted the attention of millions worldwide, including a fair few cybercriminals. Long before kick-off, email accounts began bulging with soccer-related spam, and scammers...

Not just an infostealer: Gopuram backdoor deployed through 3CX supply chain attack

On March 29, Crowdstrike published a report about a supply chain attack conducted via 3CXDesktopApp, a popular VoIP program. Since then, the security community has started analyzing the attack and sharing their findings. The following has been discovered so far: The infection is spread via...

Bad magic: new APT found in the area of Russo-Ukrainian conflict

Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Kaspersky researchers and the international community at large have identified a significant number of cyberattacks executed in a political and geopolitical context. We previously published an overview of cyber activities and the threat landscape...

The state of stalkerware in 2022

The state of stalkerware in 2022 PDF Main findings of 2022 The State of Stalkerware is an annual report by Kaspersky which contributes to a better understanding of how many people in the world are affected by digital stalking. Stalkerware is a commercially available software that can be discretel...

A new secret stash for “fileless” malware

In February 2022 we observed the technique of putting the shellcode into Windows event logs for the first time "in the wild" during the malicious campaign. It allows the "fileless" last stage Trojan to be hidden from plain sight in the file system. Such attention to the event logs in the campaign...

Do cybercriminals play cyber games in quarantine? A look one year later

Last year, we decided to take a look at how the pandemic influenced the gaming industry and what new threats gamers could be facing. What we found was that, with the transition to remote work and remote learning, the number of blocked attempts to visit malicious game-related websites or follow...

Remotely controlled EV home chargers – the threats and vulnerabilities

We are now seeing signs of a possible shift in the field of personal transport. Recent events such as the 'dieselgate' scandal undermine customer and government confidence in combustion engines and their environmental safety. At the same time there has been a big step forward in the development o...

Modern OSs for embedded systems

At Kaspersky Lab we analyze the technologies available on cybersecurity market and this time we decided to look at what OS developers are offering for embedded systems or, in other words, the internet of things. Our primary interest is how and to what degree these OSs can solve...

Mobile malware evolution 2017

The year in figures In 2017, Kaspersky Lab detected the following: 5,730,916 malicious installation packages 94,368 mobile banking Trojans 544,107 mobile ransomware Trojans Trends of the year Rooting malware: no surrender For the last few years, rooting malware has been the biggest threat to...

New multi platform malware/adware spreading via Facebook Messenger

One good thing about having a lot of Facebook friends is that you simply act as a honey pot when your friends click on malicious things. A few days ago I got a message on Facebook from a person I very rarely speak to, and I knew that something fishy was going on. After just a few minutes analyzin...

The Notepad++ supply chain attack — unnoticed execution chains and new IoCs

UPD 11.02.2026: added recommendations on how to use the Notepad++ supply chain attack rules package in our SIEM system. Introduction On February 2, 2026, the developers of Notepad++, a text editor popular among developers, published a statement claiming that the update infrastructure of Notepad++...

IronHusky updates the forgotten MysterySnail RAT to target Russia and Mongolia

Day after day, threat actors create new malware to use in cyberattacks. Each of these new implants is developed in its own way, and as a result gets its own destiny – while the use of some malware families is reported for decades, information about others disappears after days, months or several...

Cloud Atlas seen using a new tool in its attacks

Introduction Known since 2014, Cloud Atlas targets Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We're shedding light on a previously undocumented toolset, which the group used heavily in 2024. Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formul...

APT trends report Q2 2024

For over six years now, Kasperskys Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT has been sharing quarterly updates on advanced persistent threats APTs. These summaries draw on our threat intelligence research, offering a representative overview of what weve published and discussed in more detail in ou...

New macOS Trojan-Proxy piggybacking on cracked software

Illegally distributed software historically has served as a way to sneak malware onto victims devices. Oftentimes, users are not willing to pay for software tools they need, so they go searching the Web for a "free lunch". They are an excellent target for cybercriminals who realize that an...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2023. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q2 2023 IT threat evolution in Q2 2023. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q2 2023. Mobile statistics These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly figures Accordin...

What does ChatGPT know about phishing?

Can ChatGPT detect phishing links? Hearing all the buzz about the amazing applications of ChatGPT and other language models, our team could not help but ask this question. We work on applying machine learning technologies to cybersecurity tasks, specifically models that analyze websites to detect...