Dark web threats and dark market predictions for 2024

An overview of last years predictions 1. Increase in personal data leaks; corporate email at risk A data leakage is a broad term encompassing various types of information that become publicly available, or published for sale on the dark web or other shadow web sites. Leaked information may includ...

How cybercrime is impacting SMBs in 2023

According to the United Nations, small and medium-sized businesses SMBs constitute 90 percent of all companies and contribute 60 to 70 percent of all jobs in the world. They generate 50 percent of global gross domestic product and form the backbone of most countries economies. Hit hardest by the...

DeathStalker targets legal entities with new Janicab variant

Just to clarify, the above subheading isnt a normal quote, but a message that Janicab malware attempted to decode in its newest use of YouTube dead-drop resolvers DDRs. While hunting for less common Deathstalker intrusions that use the Janicab malware family, we identified a new Janicab variant...

A Bad Luck BlackCat

In early December 2021, a new ransomware actor started advertising its services on a Russian underground forum. They presented themselves as ALPHV, a new generation Ransomware-as-a-Service RaaS group. Shortly afterwards, they dialed up their activity, infecting numerous corporate victims around t...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems, H2 2021

2021 is the second year we have spent living and working in the pandemic. By 2021 everyone got used to pandemic limitations – industrial organization employees and IT security professionals and threat actors. If we compare the numbers from 2020 and 2021, we see that 2021 looks more stable,...

Threats to ICS and industrial enterprises in 2022

Continuing trends In recent years, we have observed various trends in the changing threat landscape for industrial enterprises, most of which have been evolving for some time. We can say with high confidence that many of these trends will not only continue, but gain new traction in the coming yea...

5G technology predictions 2020

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2019. Advanced threat predictions for 2020 Cybersecurity of connected healthcare 2020: Overview and predictions Corporate security prediction 2020 Cyberthreats to financial institutions 2020: Overview and predictions It is estimated that data will reach 175 zettabytes...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Story of the year: miners

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Statistics Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Top security stories Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Threat Predictions for 2019 Cryptocurrency miners that infect the computers of unsuspecting users essentially operate according to the same business model as...

The return of Fantomas, or how we deciphered Cryakl

In early February this year, Belgian police seized the C&C servers of the infamous Cryakl cryptor. Soon afterwards, they handed over the private keys to our experts, who used them to update the free RakhniDecryptor tool for recovering files encrypted by the malware. The ransomware, which for year...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin: Review of the Year 2017

Introduction The end of the year is a good time to take stock of the main cyberthreat incidents that took place over the preceding 12 months or so. To reflect on the impact these events had on organizations and individuals, and consider what they could mean for the overall evolution of the threat...

The SOC files: Rumble in the jungle or APT41’s new target in Africa

Introduction Some time ago, Kaspersky MDR analysts detected a targeted attack against government IT services in the African region. The attackers used hardcoded names of internal services, IP addresses, and proxy servers embedded within their malware. One of the C2s was a captive SharePoint serve...

An educational robot security research

In the modern world, we are surrounded by a multitude of smart devices that simplify our daily lives: smart speakers, robotic vacuum cleaners, automatic pet feeders and even entire smart homes. Toy manufacturers are striving to keep up with these trends, releasing more and more models that can al...

Lockbit leak, research opportunities on tools leaked from TAs

Lockbit is one of the most prevalent ransomware strains. It comes with an affiliate ransomware-as-a-service RaaS program offering up to 80% of the ransom demand to participants, and includes a bug bounty program for those who detect and report vulnerabilities that allow files to be decrypted...

IT threat evolution Q1 2023. Mobile statistics

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

DTrack activity targeting Europe and Latin America

Introduction DTrack is a backdoor used by the Lazarus group. Initially discovered in 2019, the backdoor remains in use three years later. It is used by the Lazarus group against a wide variety of targets. For example, weve seen it being used in financial environments where ATMs were breached, in...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2022. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q2 2022 IT threat evolution in Q2 2022. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q2 2022. Mobile statistics These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly figures Accordin...

Telehealth: a new frontier in medicine—and security

Telehealth today doesnt just involve chatting with a doctor via a video-conferencing application. Its become an entire collection of rapidly developing technologies and products that includes specialized applications, wearable devices, implantable sensors, and cloud databases, many of which have...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2020. Statistics

All statistics in this report are from the global cloud service Kaspersky Security Network KSN, which receives information from components in our security solutions. The data was obtained from users who have given their consent to it being sent to KSN. Millions of Kaspersky users around the globe...

Healthcare security in 2021

The pandemic has turned 2020 into a year of medicine and information technology. The remarkable surge in the criticality level of medical infrastructure, coupled with feasible across-the-board digitalization, led to many of our last years predictions coming true much sooner than expected. As we...

IT threat evolution Q2 2020. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution Q2 2020. Review IT threat evolution Q2 2020. PC statistics These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products received from users who consented to provide statistical data. Quarterly figures According to Kaspersky Security Network, the second quarter saw:...

Cryptocurrency threat predictions for 2019

Kaspersky Security Bulletin: Threat Predictions for 2019 Threat predictions for industrial security in 2019 Cyberthreats to financial institutions 2019: overview and predictions Introduction – key events in 2018 2018 saw cryptocurrency become an established part of many people's lives, and a more...

A study of car sharing apps

The growing popularity of car sharing services has led some experts to predict an end to private car ownership in big cities. The statistics appear to back up this claim: for example, in 2017 Moscow saw the car sharing fleet, the number of active users and the number of trips they made almost...

Stan Ghouls targeting Russia and Uzbekistan with NetSupport RAT

Introduction Stan Ghouls also known as Bloody Wolf is an cybercriminal group that has been launching targeted attacks against organizations in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan since at least 2023. These attackers primarily have their sights set on the manufacturing, finance, and IT...

SoumniBot: the new Android banker’s unique techniques

The creators of widespread malware programs often employ various tools that hinder code detection and analysis, and Android malware is no exception. As an example of this, droppers, such as Badpack and Hqwar, designed for stealthily delivering Trojan bankers or spyware to smartphones, are very...

Evil Telegram doppelganger attacks Chinese users

UPDATE 11.09.2023. Google has informed us that all the apps were deleted from the Google Play store A while ago we discovered a bunch of Telegram mods on Google Play with descriptions in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and Uighur. The vendor says these are the fastest apps which use a...

Anomaly detection in certificate-based TGT requests

One of the most complex yet effective methods of gaining unauthorized access to corporate network resources is an attack using forged certificates. Attackers create such certificates to fool the Key Distribution Center KDC into granting access to the target companys network. An example of such an...

Ransomware and wiper signed with stolen certificates

Introduction On July 17, 2022, Albanian news outlets reported a massive cyberattack that affected Albanian government e-services. A few weeks later, it was revealed that the cyberattacks were part of a coordinated effort likely intended to cripple the countrys computer systems. On September 10,...

DDoS attacks in Q2 2022

News overview Politically-motivated cyberattacks dominated the DDoS landscape in the second quarter of 2022 just as they did in the previous reporting period. ALtahrea Team, a group targeting NATO and its partners, attacked public transportation websites in Israel and the United Kingdom. Israel s...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2022. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q1 2022 IT threat evolution in Q1 2022. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q1 2022. Mobile statistics These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly figures Accordin...

DDoS attacks in Q1 2022

News overview The DDoS landscape in Q1 2022 was shaped by the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine: a significant part of all DDoS-related news concerned these countries. In mid-January, the website of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko was hit by a DDoS attack, and the websites of a number of...

SAS 2021: Operation Software Concepts

During the Operation Software Concepts: A Beautiful Envelope for Wrapping Weapon talk on SAS-at-Home 2021, Rintaro Koike, Shogo Hayashi and Ryuichi Tanabe from NTT Security Japan will cover a new APT campaign named Operation Software Concepts. They will share details about this multi-stage attack...

Ghimob: a Tétrade threat actor moves to infect mobile devices

Guildma, a threat actor that is part of the Tétrade family of banking trojans, has been working on bringing in new techniques, creating new malware and targeting new victims. Recently, their new creation, the Ghimob banking trojan, has been a move toward infecting mobile devices, targeting...

RansomEXX Trojan attacks Linux systems

We recently discovered a new file-encrypting Trojan built as an ELF executable and intended to encrypt data on machines controlled by Linux-based operating systems. After the initial analysis we noticed similarities in the code of the Trojan, the text of the ransom notes and the general approach ...

How we hacked our colleague’s smart home

In this article, we publish the results of our study of the Fibaro Home Center smart home. We identified vulnerabilities in Fibaro Home Center 2 and Fibaro Home Center Lite version 4.540, as well as vulnerabilities in the online API. An offer you cannot refuse The backbone of any technology compa...

OkoBot: new sophisticated malware framework targets cryptocurrency users

Introduction In January 2026, we identified multiple attacks involving unknown malware that captures the contents of cryptocurrency wallet windows. During the investigation, we reconstructed the complete infection chain, which consisted of four tightly linked stages initiated by the execution of...

A VBScript campaign distributed through WhatsApp deploying RMM software

In June 2026, we observed a malware campaign distributing malicious VBScript files through direct messages in WhatsApp. The campaign affected users across multiple countries and territories, including Malaysia, Brazil, India, Mexico, Singapore, UK, Spain, Taiwan, Australia, Russia and Vietnam, wi...

BlueNoroff: new Trojan attacking macOS users

We recently discovered a new variety of malicious loader that targets macOS, presumably linked to the BlueNoroff APT gang and its ongoing campaign known as RustBucket. The threat actor is known to attack financial organizations, particularly companies, whose activity is in any way related to...

HrServ – Previously unknown web shell used in APT attack

Introduction In the course of our routine investigation, we discovered a DLL file, identified as hrserv.dll, which is a previously unknown web shell exhibiting sophisticated features such as custom encoding methods for client communication and in-memory execution. Our analysis of the sample led t...

Following the Lazarus group by tracking DeathNote campaign

The Lazarus group is a high-profile Korean-speaking threat actor with multiple sub-campaigns. We have previously published information about the connections of each cluster of this group. In this blog, well focus on an active cluster that we dubbed DeathNote because the malware responsible for...

Reassessing cyberwarfare. Lessons learned in 2022

At this point, it has become cliché to say that nothing in 2022 turned out the way we expected. We left the COVID-19 crisis behind hoping for a long-awaited return to normality and were immediately plunged into the chaos and uncertainty of a twentieth-century-style military conflict that posed...

Self-spreading stealer attacks gamers via YouTube

UPD: A notice on Googles response to the issue was added. An unusual malicious bundle a collection of malicious programs distributed in the form of a single installation file, self-extracting archive or other file with installer-type functionality recently caught our eye. Its main payload is the...

ISaPWN – research on the security of ISaGRAF Runtime

In early 2020, we notified the Rockwell Automation Product Security Incident Response Team RA PSIRT of several vulnerabilities we had identified in the ISaGRAF Runtime execution environment. According to public sources of information, ISaGRAF Runtime is used as an automation framework in multiple...

ScarCruft surveilling North Korean defectors and human rights activists

The ScarCruft group also known as APT37 or Temp.Reaper is a nation-state sponsored APT actor we first reported in 2016. ScarCruft is known to target North Korean defectors, journalists who cover North Korea-related news and government organizations related to the Korean Peninsula, between others...

A vulnerable driver: lesson almost learned

Recently, we started receiving suspicious events from our internal sandbox Exploit Checker plugin. Our heuristics for supervisor mode code execution in the user address space were constantly being triggered, and an executable file was being flagged for further analysis. At first, it looked like...

Cybercriminals vs financial institutions in 2018: what to expect

Introduction – key events in 2017 2017 was a year of great changes in the world of cyberthreats facing financial organizations. Firstly, in 2017 we witnessed a continuation of cyberattacks targeting systems running SWIFT — a fundamental part of the world's financial ecosystem. Attackers were able...

Neutrino modification for POS-terminals

From time to time authors of effective and long-lived Trojans and viruses create new modifications and forks of them, like any other software authors. One of the brightest examples amongst them is Zeus Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot, based on classification of "Kaspersky Lab", which continues to spawn new...

Hunting for Mythic in network traffic

Post-exploitation frameworks Threat actors frequently employ post-exploitation frameworks in cyberattacks to maintain control over compromised hosts and move laterally within the organization's network. While they once favored closed-source frameworks, such as Cobalt Strike and Brute Ratel C4,...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q1 2025

The first quarter of 2025 saw the continued publication of vulnerabilities discovered and fixed in 2024, as some researchers were previously unable to disclose the details. This partially shifted the focus away from vulnerabilities that received new CVE-2025-NNNNN identifiers. The nature of the C...

Head Mare and Twelve join forces to attack Russian entities

Introduction In September 2024, a series of attacks targeted Russian companies, revealing indicators of compromise and tactics associated with two hacktivist groups: Head Mare and Twelve. Our investigation showed that Head Mare relied heavily on tools previously associated with Twelve...

Financial cyberthreats in 2023

Money is what always attracts cybercriminals. A significant share of scam, phishing and malware attacks is about money. With trillions of dollars of digital payments made every year, it is no wonder that attackers target electronic wallets, online shopping accounts and other financial assets,...