APT trends report Q2 2019

For two years, the Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT at Kaspersky has been publishing quarterly summaries of advanced persistent threat APT activity. The summaries are based on our threat intelligence research and provide a representative snapshot of what we have published and discussed in...

A mining multitool

Recently, an interesting miner implementation appeared on Kaspersky Lab's radar. The malware, which we dubbed PowerGhost, is capable of stealthily establishing itself in a system and spreading across large corporate networks infecting both workstations and servers. This type of hidden consolidati...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2020-2021. EU 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...

IT threat evolution Q3 2019. 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: Kaspersky solutions blocked 989,432,403 attacks launched from online resources in 203 countries across t...

IT threat evolution Q3 2020. Non-mobile 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, in Q3: Kaspersky solutions blocked 1,416,295,227 attacks launched from online resources across the globe...

BlackOasis APT and new targeted attacks leveraging zero-day exploit

More information about BlackOasis APT is available to customers of Kaspersky Intelligence Reporting Service. Contact: [email protected] Introduction Kaspersky Lab has always worked closely with vendors to protect users. As soon as we find new vulnerabilities we immediately inform the...

USB threats from malware to miners

Introduction In 2016, researchers from the University of Illinois left 297 unlabelled USB flash drives around the university campus to see what would happen. 98% of the dropped drives were picked up by staff and students, and at least half were plugged into a computer in order to view the content...

Honeypots and the Internet of Things

There were a number of incidents in 2016 that triggered increased interest in the security of so-called IoT or 'smart' devices. They included, among others, the record-breaking DDoS attacks against the French hosting provider OVH and the US DNS provider Dyn. These attacks are known to have been...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2022. Non-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 and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly...

IT threat evolution Q2 2018

Targeted attacks and malware campaigns Operation Parliament In April, we reported the workings of Operation Parliament, a cyber-espionage campaign aimed at high-profile legislative, executive and judicial organizations around the world – with its main focus in the MENA Middle East and North Afric...

CactusPete APT group’s updated Bisonal backdoor

CactusPete also known as Karma Panda or Tonto Team is an APT group that has been publicly known since at least 2013. Some of the groups activities have been previously described in public by multiple sources. We have been investigating and privately reporting on this groups activity for years as...

Skygofree: Following in the footsteps of HackingTeam

At the beginning of October 2017, we discovered new Android spyware with several features previously unseen in the wild. In the course of further research, we found a number of related samples that point to a long-term development process. We believe the initial versions of this malware were...

IT threat evolution Q2 2017. Statistics

Q2 figures According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 342, 566, 061 malicious attacks from online resources located in 191 countries all over the world. 33, 006, 783 unique URLs were recognized as malicious by web antivirus components. Attempted infections by malware tha...

IT threat evolution Q2 2021

Targeted attacks The leap of a Cycldek-related threat actor It is quite common for Chinese-speaking threat actors to share tools and methodologies: one such example is the infamous "DLL side-loading triad": a legitimate executable, a malicious DLL to be side-loaded by it and an encoded payload,...

A Slice of 2017 Sofacy Activity

Sofacy, also known as APT28, Fancy Bear, and Tsar Team, is a highly active and prolific APT. From their high volume 0day deployment to their innovative and broad malware set, Sofacy is one of the top groups that we monitor, report, and protect against. 2017 was not any different in this regard. O...

Spring4Shell (CVE-2022-22965): details and mitigations

Last week researchers found the critical vulnerability CVE-2022-22965 in Spring – the open source Java framework. Using the vulnerability, an attacker can execute arbitrary code on a remote web server, which makes CVE-2022-22965 a critical threat, given the Spring frameworks popularity. By analog...

Threat Landscape for Industrial Automation Systems in H2 2017

For many years, Kaspersky Lab experts have been uncovering and researching cyberthreats that target a variety of information systems – those of commercial and government organizations, banks, telecoms operators, industrial enterprises, and individual users. In this report, Kaspersky Lab Industria...

Zero-day in Windows Kernel Transaction Manager (CVE-2018-8611)

Executive summary In October 2018, our AEP Automatic Exploit Prevention systems detected an attempt to exploit a vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows operating system. Further analysis led us to uncover a zero-day vulnerability in ntoskrnl.exe. We reported it to Microsoft on October 29, 2018. T...

Fully equipped Spying Android RAT from Brazil: BRATA

"BRATA" is a new Android remote access tool malware family. We used this code name based on its description - "Brazilian RAT Android". It exclusively targets victims in Brazil: however, theoretically it could also be used to attack any other Android user if the cybercriminals behind it want to. I...

APT Trends Report Q2 2018

In the second quarter of 2017, Kaspersky Lab's Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT began publishing summaries of the quarter's private threat intelligence reports, in an effort to make the public aware of the research we have been conducting. This report serves as the latest installment,...

Spam and phishing in Q3 2021

Quarterly highlights Scamming championship: sports-related fraud This summer and early fall saw some major international sporting events. The delayed Euro 2020 soccer tournament was held in June and July, followed by the equally delayed Tokyo Olympics in August. Q3 2021 also featured several F1...

IT threat evolution Q1 2021

Targeted attacks Putting the A into APT In December, SolarWinds, a well-known IT managed services provider, fell victim to a sophisticated supply-chain attack. The companys Orion IT, a solution for monitoring and managing customers IT infrastructure, was compromised by threat actors. This resulte...

APT Trends report Q3 2017

Introduction Beginning in the second quarter of 2017, Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT began publishing summaries of the quarter's private threat intelligence reports in an effort to make the public aware of what research we have been conducting. This report serves as the next...

Investigation Report for the September 2014 Equation malware detection incident in the US

Background In early October, a story was published by the Wall Street Journal alleging Kaspersky Lab software was used to siphon classified data from an NSA employee's home computer system. Given that Kaspersky Lab has been at the forefront of fighting cyberespionage and cybercriminal activities ...

IT threat evolution Q1 2018. Statistics

Q1 figures According to KSN: Kaspersky Lab solutions blocked 796,806,112 attacks launched from online resources located in 194 countries across the globe. 282,807,433 unique URLs were recognized as malicious by Web Anti-Virus components. Attempted infections by malware designed to steal money via...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2022. Non-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 and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly...

A new exploit for zero-day vulnerability CVE-2018-8589

Yesterday, Microsoft published its security bulletin, which patches a vulnerability discovered by our technologies. We reported it to Microsoft on October 17, 2018. The company confirmed the vulnerability and assigned it CVE-2018-8589. In October 2018, our Automatic Exploit Prevention AEP systems...

Analyzing an exploit for СVE-2017-11826

The latest Patch Tuesday 17 October brought patches for 62 vulnerabilities, including one that fixed СVE-2017-11826 – a critical zero-day vulnerability used to launch targeted attacks – in all versions of Microsoft Office. The exploit for this vulnerability is an RTF document containing a DOCX...

Bizarro banking Trojan expands its attacks to Europe

Bizarro is yet another banking Trojan family originating from Brazil that is now found in other regions of the world. We have seen users being targeted in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. Attempts have now been made to steal credentials from customers of 70 banks from different European and Sou...

Black Kingdom ransomware

Black Kingdom ransomware appeared on the scene back in 2019, but we observed some activity again in 2021. The ransomware was used by an unknown adversary for exploiting a Microsoft Exchange vulnerability CVE-2021-27065. The complexity and sophistication of the Black Kingdom family cannot bear a...

APT trends report Q3 2022

For more than five years, the Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT at Kaspersky has been publishing quarterly summaries of advanced persistent threat APT activity. These summaries are based on our threat intelligence research; and they provide a representative snapshot of what we have publishe...

Zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server

What happened? On March 2, 2021 several companies released reports about in-the-wild exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities inside Microsoft Exchange Server. The following vulnerabilities allow an attacker to compromise a vulnerable Microsoft Exchange Server. As a result, an attacker will gain...

Owowa: the add-on that turns your OWA into a credential stealer and remote access panel

While looking for potentially malicious implants that targeted Microsoft Exchange servers, we identified a suspicious binary that had been submitted to a multiscanner service in late 2020. Analyzing the code, we determined that the previously unknown binary is an IIS module, aimed at stealing...

From Caribbean shores to your devices: analyzing Cuba ransomware

Introduction Knowledge is our best weapon in the fight against cybercrime. An understanding of how various gangs operate and what tools they use helps build competent defenses and investigate incidents. This report takes a close look at the history of the Cuba group, and their attack tactics,...

PuzzleMaker attacks with Chrome zero-day exploit chain

On April 14-15, 2021, Kaspersky technologies detected a wave of highly targeted attacks against multiple companies. Closer analysis revealed that all these attacks exploited a chain of Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows zero-day exploits. While we were not able to retrieve the exploit used for...

IT threat evolution Q3 2018. Statistics

These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky Lab products received from users who consented to provide statistical data. Q3 figures According to Kaspersky Security Network: Kaspersky Lab solutions blocked 947,027,517 attacks launched from online resources located in 203 countries...

Spam and phishing in Q2 2018

Quarterly highlights GDPR as a phishing opportunity In the first quarter, we discussed spam designed to exploit GDPR General Data Protection Regulation, which came into effect on May 25, 2018. Back then spam traffic was limited to invitations to participate in workshops and other educational even...

DDoS attacks in Q4 2021

News roundup Q4 2021 saw the appearance of several new DDoS botnets. A zombie network, named Abcbot by researchers, first hit the radar in July, but at the time it was little more than a simple scanner attacking Linux systems by brute-forcing weak passwords and exploiting known vulnerabilities. I...

Roaming Mantis, part III

In Q2 2018, Kaspersky Lab published two blogposts about Roaming Mantis sharing details of this new cybercriminal campaign. In the beginning, the criminals used DNS hijacking in vulnerable routers to spread malicious Android applications of Roaming Mantis aka MoqHao and XLoader, spoofing legitimat...

Recent Cloud Atlas activity

Also known as Inception, Cloud Atlas is an actor that has a long history of cyber-espionage operations targeting industries and governmental entities. We first reported Cloud Atlas in 2014 and we've been following its activities ever since. From the beginning of 2019 until July, we have been able...

Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response: interesting cases

Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response MDR provides advanced protection against the growing number of threats that bypass automatic security barriers. Its capabilities are backed by a high-professional team of security analysts operating all over the world. Each suspicious security event is...

The Slingshot APT FAQ

While analysing an incident which involved a suspected keylogger, we identified a malicious library able to interact with a virtual file system, which is usually the sign of an advanced APT actor. This turned out to be a malicious loader internally named 'Slingshot', part of a new, and highly...

Sodin ransomware exploits Windows vulnerability and processor architecture

When Sodin also known as Sodinokibi and REvil appeared in the first half of 2019, it immediately caught our attention for distributing itself through an Oracle Weblogic vulnerability and carrying out attacks on MSP providers. In a detailed analysis, we discovered that it also exploits the...

IT threat evolution Q2 2019. 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, Kaspersky solutions blocked 717,057,912 attacks launched from online resources in 203 countries across t...

An overview of targeted attacks and APTs on Linux

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot has been written about targeted attacks on Windows systems. Windows is, due to its popularity, the platform for which we discover most APT attack tools. At the same time, theres a widely held opinion that Linux is a secure-by-default operating system that isnt...

IT threat evolution Q3 2020

Targeted attacks MATA: Lazaruss multi-platform targeted malware framework The more sophisticated threat actors are continually developing their TTPs Tactics, Techniques and Procedures and the toolsets they use to compromise the systems of their targets. However, malicious toolsets used to target...

Razy in search of cryptocurrency

Last year, we discovered malware that installs a malicious browser extension on its victim's computer or infects an already installed extension. To do so, it disables the integrity check for installed extensions and automatic updates for the targeted browser. Kaspersky Lab products detect the...

ScarCruft continues to evolve, introduces Bluetooth harvester

Executive summary After publishing our initial series of blogposts back in 2016, we have continued to track the ScarCruft threat actor. ScarCruft is a Korean-speaking and allegedly state-sponsored threat actor that usually targets organizations and companies with links to the Korean peninsula. Th...

Spam and phishing in 2022

Figures of the year In 2022: 48.63% of all emails around the world and 52.78% of all emails in the Russian segment of the internet were spam As much as 29.82% of all spam emails originated in Russia Kaspersky Mail Anti-Virus blocked 166,187,118 malicious email attachments Our Anti-Phishing system...

Operation PowerFall: CVE-2020-0986 and variants

In August 2020, we published a blog post about Operation PowerFall. This targeted attack consisted of two zero-day exploits: a remote code execution exploit for Internet Explorer 11 and an elevation of privilege exploit targeting the latest builds of Windows 10. While we already described the...