HoneyMyte updates CoolClient and deploys multiple stealers in recent campaigns

Over the past few years, we've been observing and monitoring the espionage activities of HoneyMyte aka Mustang Panda or Bronze President within Asia and Europe, with the Southeast Asia region being the most affected. The primary targets of most of the group's campaigns were government entities. A...

From cheats to exploits: Webrat spreading via GitHub

In early 2025, security researchers uncovered a new malware family named Webrat. Initially, the Trojan targeted regular users by disguising itself as cheats for popular games like Rust, Counter-Strike, and Roblox, or as cracked software. In September, the attackers decided to widen their net:...

It didn’t take long: CVE-2025-55182 is now under active exploitation

On December 4, 2025, researchers published details on the critical vulnerability CVE-2025-55182, which received a CVSS score of 10.0. It has been unofficially dubbed React2Shell, as it affects React Server Components RSC functionality used in web applications built with the React library. RSC...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2025. Statistics

All statistics in this report come from Kaspersky Security Network KSN, a global cloud service that receives information from components in our security solutions voluntarily provided by Kaspersky users. Millions of Kaspersky users around the globe assist us in collecting information about...

Old tech, new vulnerabilities: NTLM abuse, ongoing exploitation in 2025

Just like the 2000s Flip phones grew popular, Windows XP debuted on personal computers, Apple introduced the iPod, peer-to-peer file sharing via torrents was taking off, and MSN Messenger dominated online chat. That was the tech scene in 2001, the same year when Sir Dystic of Cult of the Dead Cow...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q2 2025

Vulnerability registrations in Q2 2025 proved to be quite dynamic. Vulnerabilities that were published impact the security of nearly every computer subsystem: UEFI, drivers, operating systems, browsers, as well as user and web applications. Based on our analysis, threat actors continue to leverag...

Host-based logs, container-based threats: How to tell where an attack began

The risks associated with containerized environments Although containers provide an isolated runtime environment for applications, this isolation is often overestimated. While containers encapsulate dependencies and ensure consistency, the fact that they share the host system's kernel introduces...

Streamlining detection engineering in security operation centers

Security operations centers SOCs exist to protect organizations from cyberthreats by detecting and responding to attacks in real time. They play a crucial role in preventing security breaches by detecting adversary activity at every stage of an attack, working to minimize damage and enabling an...

Trojans disguised as AI: Cybercriminals exploit DeepSeek’s popularity

Introduction Among the most significant events in the AI world in early 2025 was the release of DeepSeek-R1 – a powerful reasoning large language model LLM with open weights. It's available both for local use and as a free service. Since DeepSeek was the first service to offer access to a reasoni...

Investors, Trump and the Illuminati: What the “Nigerian prince” scams became in 2024

"Nigerian" spam is a collective term for messages designed to entice victims with alluring offers and draw them into an email exchange with scammers, who will try to defraud them of their money. The original "Nigerian" spam emails were sent in the name of influential and wealthy individuals from...

Our secret ingredient for reverse engineering

Nowadays, a lot of cybersecurity professionals use IDA Pro as their primary tool for reverse engineering. While IDA is a complex tool that implements a multitude of features useful for dissecting binaries, many reverse engineers use various plugins to add further functionality to this software. W...

Stealer here, stealer there, stealers everywhere!

Introduction Information stealers, which are used to collect credentials to then sell them on the dark web or use in subsequent cyberattacks, are actively distributed by cybercriminals. Some of them are available through a monthly subscription model, thus attracting novice cybercriminals. Accordi...

EastWind campaign: new CloudSorcerer attacks on government organizations in Russia

In late July 2024, we detected a series of ongoing targeted cyberattacks on dozens of computers at Russian government organizations and IT companies. The threat actors infected devices using phishing emails with malicious shortcut attachments. These shortcuts were used to deliver malware that...

Indirect prompt injection in the real world: how people manipulate neural networks

What is prompt injection? Large language models LLMs – the neural network algorithms that underpin ChatGPT and other popular chatbots – are becoming ever more powerful and inexpensive. For this reason, third-party applications that make use of them are also mushrooming, from systems for document...

Black Hat USA 2022 and DEF CON 30

Black Hat 2022 USA Briefings wrapped up this past week, along with its sister conference DEF CON 30. The DEF CON theme was a "Hacker Homecoming", and it really was a fun one. Coming back from the COVID hiatus, the conferences were enthusiastically full compared to the 2021 ghost town. Many of the...

The hateful eight: Kaspersky’s guide to modern ransomware groups’ TTPs

These days ransomware analysis gets a lot of coverage in commercial and public reports, with vendors issuing dozens of ransomware-related publications each year. These reports provide analysis on specific malware families or new samples, describe the activities of a particular ransomware group,...

The Verizon 2022 DBIR

The Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report is out. We are proud to collaborate as a supporting contributor to this years data efforts once again and to have contributed for the past 8 years. The report provides interesting analysis of a full amount of global incident data. Several things...

Ztorg: from rooting to SMS

I've been monitoring Google Play Store for new Ztorg Trojans since September 2016, and have so far found several dozen new malicious apps. All of them were rooting malware that used exploits to gain root rights on the infected device. Then, in the second half of May 2017 I found one that wasn't...

How legitimate cloud platforms enable phishers to bypass MFA

Threat actors are increasingly exploiting legitimate cloud services to evade detection and streamline the deployment of their scam infrastructure. Cloud hosting services and decentralized networks have become primary platforms for hosting phishing pages and sites. Throughout 2025 and 2026, we hav...

From cause to cash: a cross-border look at hacktivist activity

While tracking the activities of 4BID we uncovered a new string of campaigns that appear to be the work of several interconnected actors. While politically motivated groups generally limit their scope to specific nations – for 4BID and its peers, primarily Russian and occasionally Belarusian...

CVE-2025-68670: discovering an RCE vulnerability in xrdp

In addition to KasperskyOS-powered solutions, Kaspersky offers various utility software to streamline business operations. For instance, users of Kaspersky Thin Client, an operating system for thin clients, can also purchase Kaspersky USB Redirector, a module that expands the capabilities of the...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q4 2025

The fourth quarter of 2025 went down as one of the most intense periods on record for high-profile, critical vulnerability disclosures, hitting popular libraries and mainstream applications. Several of these vulnerabilities were picked up by attackers and exploited in the wild almost immediately...

The game is over: when “free” comes at too high a price. What we know about RenEngine

We often describe cases of malware distribution under the guise of game cheats and pirated software. Sometimes such methods are used to spread complex malware that employs advanced techniques and sophisticated infection chains. In February 2026, researchers from Howler Cell announced the discover...

Notes of cyber inspector: three clusters of threat in cyberspace

Hacktivism and geopolitically motivated APT groups have become a significant threat to many regions of the world in recent years, damaging infrastructure and important functions of government, business, and society. In late 2022 we predicted that the involvement of hacktivist groups in all major...

Evolution of the PipeMagic backdoor: from the RansomExx incident to CVE-2025-29824

In April 2025, Microsoft patched 121 vulnerabilities in its products. According to the company, only one of them was being used in real-world attacks at the time the patch was released: CVE-2025-29824. The exploit for this vulnerability was executed by the PipeMagic malware, which we first...

TookPS: DeepSeek isn’t the only game in town

In early March, we published a study detailing several malicious campaigns that exploited the popular DeepSeek LLM as a lure. Subsequent telemetry analysis indicated that the TookPS downloader, a malware strain detailed in the article, was not limited to mimicking neural networks. We identified...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems in Q4 2024

Statistics across all threats In Q4 2024, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked decreased by 0.1 pp from the previous quarter to 21.9%. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, by quarter, 2022–2024 Compared to Q4 2023, the percentage...

The SOC files: Chasing the web shell

Web shells have evolved far beyond their original purpose of basic remote command execution, and many now function more like lightweight exploitation frameworks. These tools often include features such as in-memory module execution and encrypted command-and-control C2 communication, giving...

Scam Information and Event Management

While trying to deliver malware on victims' devices and stay on them as long as they can, sometimes attackers are using quite unusual techniques. In a recent campaign starting in 2022, unknown malicious actors have been trying to mine cryptocurrency on victims' devices without user consent; they'...

Web tracking report: who monitored users’ online activities in 2023–2024 the most

Web tracking has become a pervasive aspect of our online experience. Whether we're browsing social media, playing video games, shopping for products, or simply reading news articles, trackers are silently monitoring our online behavior, fueling the ceaseless hum of countless data centers worldwid...

The nature of cyberincidents in 2022

Kaspersky offers various services to organizations that have been targeted by cyberattackers, such as incident response, digital forensics, and malware analysis. In our annual incident response report, we share information about the attacks that we investigated during the reporting period. Data...

Black Friday shoppers beware: online threats so far in 2022

The shopping event of the year, Black Friday, is almost here, and while the big day does not officially arrive until Friday, November 25th, deals are already starting. The day kickstarts the frenzied holiday shopping season with eye-catching promotional deals that lure shoppers into spending more...

External attack surface and ongoing cybercriminal activity in APAC region

To prevent a cyberattack, it is vital to know what the attack surface for your organization is. To be prepared to repel the attacks of cybercriminals, businesses around the world collect threat intelligence themselves or subscribe for threat intelligence services. Continuous threat research enabl...

Webinar on cyberattacks in Ukraine – summary and Q&A

About the webinar On March 10, 2022 Kasperskys Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT shared their insights into the current and past cyberattacks in Ukraine. In this post we address the questions that we did not have the time to answer and provide the Indicators of Compromise IoCs that can help...

Black Friday 2021: How to Have a Scam-Free Shopping Day

Fact 1: cybercriminals love to exploit big holidays for personal gain. Case in point: were already seeing scams targeting World Cup fans more than a year out from the event. Fact 2: the retail sector, particularly e-commerce, has always been popular with cybercriminals. In Q3 2021, online stores...

Extracting type information from Go binaries

During the 2021 edition of the SAS conference, I had the pleasure of delivering a workshop focused on reverse-engineering Go binaries. The goal of the workshop was to share basic knowledge that would allow analysts to immediately start looking into malware written in Go. A YouTube version of the...

FIFA public Wi-Fi guide: which host cities have the most secure networks?

We all know how easy it is for users to connect to open Wi-Fi networks in public places. Well, it is equally straightforward for criminals to position themselves near poorly protected access points – where they can intercept network traffic and compromise user data. A lack of essential traffic...

Jack of all trades

Nowadays, it's all too easy to end up with malicious apps on your smartphone, even if you're using the official Google Play app store. The situation gets even worse when you go somewhere other than the official store – fake applications, limited security checks, and so on. However, the spread of...

Schroedinger’s Pet(ya)

UPDATE June 28th, 2017: After an analysis of the encryption routine of the malware used in the Petya/ExPetr attacks, we have thought that the threat actor cannot decrypt victims' disk, even if a payment was made. It appears this malware campaign was designed as a wiper pretending to be ransomware...

Dvmap: the first Android malware with code injection

In April 2017 we started observing new rooting malware being distributed through the Google Play Store. Unlike other rooting malware, this Trojan not only installs its modules into the system, it also injects malicious code into the system runtime libraries. Kaspersky Lab products detect it as...

Pirates in the crosshairs: how one cybercrime gang has been infecting book, movie, and TV show fans for years

Introduction In late April 2026, a client reached out to us for incident response support after discovering a miner running on users' computers. We later discovered that the malware was being distributed via illegal movie and TV show streaming sites. The infection chain leveraged a fake update fo...

Yet another DCOM object for lateral movement

Introduction If you're a penetration tester, you know that lateral movement is becoming increasingly difficult, especially in well-defended environments. One common technique for remote command execution has been the use of DCOM objects. Over the years, many different DCOM objects have been...

Turn me on, turn me off: Zigbee assessment in industrial environments

We all encounter IoT and home automation in some form or another, from smart speakers to automated sensors that control water pumps. These services appear simple and straightforward to us, but many devices and protocols work together under the hood to deliver them. One of those protocols is Zigbe...

Crypto wasted: BlueNoroff’s ghost mirage of funding and jobs

Introduction Primarily focused on financial gain since its appearance, BlueNoroff aka. Sapphire Sleet, APT38, Alluring Pisces, Stardust Chollima, and TA444 has adopted new infiltration strategies and malware sets over time, but it still targets blockchain developers, C-level executives, and...

Batavia spyware steals data from Russian organizations

Introduction Since early March 2025, our systems have recorded an increase in detections of similar files with names like договор-2025-5.vbe, приложение.vbe, and dogovor.vbe translation: contract, attachment among employees at various Russian organizations. The targeted attack begins with bait...

Take my money: OCR crypto stealers in Google Play and App Store

Update 07.02.2025: Google removed malicious apps from Google Play. Update 06.02.2025: Apple removed malicious apps from the App Store. In March 2023, researchers at ESET discovered malware implants embedded into various messaging app mods. Some of these scanned users' image galleries in search of...

IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. 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 Quarterly figures According to Kaspersky Security Network, in Q3 2024: As many as 6.7 million attacks involving malware, adware or potentially unwanted mobile app...

Whispers from the Dark Web Cave. Cyberthreats in the Middle East

The Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence team analyzed cybersecurity threats coming from dark web cybercriminals who targeted businesses and governments in the Middle East in H1 2024. Our research highlights the most severe and pervasive threats, and identifies potential risks and consequence...

HZ Rat backdoor for macOS attacks users of China’s DingTalk and WeChat

In June 2024, we discovered a macOS version of the HZ Rat backdoor targeting users of the enterprise messenger DingTalk and the social network and messaging platform WeChat. The samples we found almost exactly replicate the functionality of the Windows version of the backdoor and differ only in t...

When spear phishing met mass phishing

Introduction Bulk phishing email campaigns tend to target large audiences. They use catch-all wordings and simplistic formatting, and typos are not uncommon. Targeted attacks take greater effort, with attackers sending personalized messages that include personal details and might look more like...