Steam-powered scammers

Digital game distribution services have not only simplified the sale of games themselves, but provided developers with additional monetization levers. For example, in-game items, such as skins, equipment, and other character-enhancing elements as well as those that help one show up, can be sold f...

Digital Doppelgangers

Carding exists for over 20 years. And it is not dead yet. It is alive, and even more – it is being actively developed by cybercriminals. The "good" old method of entering stolen credit card information into online store forms to buy goods and services or using online payment system accounts for t...

ATM robber WinPot: a slot machine instead of cutlets

Automation of all kinds is there to help people with their routine work, make it faster and simpler. Although ATM fraud is a very peculiar sort of work, some cybercriminals spend a lot of effort to automate it. In March 2018, we came across a fairly simple but effective piece of malware named...

APT review of the year

What were the most interesting developments in terms of APT activity throughout the year and what can we learn from them? Not an easy question to answer; everybody has partial visibility and it's never possible to really understand the motivations of some attacks or the developments behind them...

The devil’s in the Rich header

In our previous blog, we detailed our findings on the attack against the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics. For this investigation, our analysts were provided with administrative access to one of the affected servers, located in a hotel based in Pyeongchang county, South Korea. In addition, we...

Operation ShadowHammer

Earlier today, Motherboard published a story by Kim Zetter on Operation ShadowHammer, a newly discovered supply chain attack that leveraged ASUS Live Update software. While the investigation is still in progress and full results and technical paper will be published during SAS 2019 conference in...

DDoS attacks in Q1 2018

News overview In early January, it was reported that an amateur hacker had come close to pulling off a botnet attack using "improvised" materials. Armed with information gleaned from hacker forums, the DIYer created a Trojan using a zero-day exploit in Huawei routers and released it online. The...

Comprehensive analysis of initial attack samples exploiting CVE-2023-23397 vulnerability

On March 14, 2023, Microsoft published a blogpost describing an Outlook Client Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVSS: 9.8 CRITICAL. The publication generated a lot of activity among white, grey and black hat researchers, as well as lots of publications and tweets about the vulnerability and i...

Spam and phishing in 2023

The year in figures 45.60% of all email sent worldwide and 46.59% of all email sent in the Runet the Russian web segment was spam 31.45% of all spam email was sent from Russia Kaspersky Mail Anti-Virus blocked 135,980,457 malicious email attachments Our Anti-Phishing system thwarted 709,590,011...

Unkillable xHelper and a Trojan matryoshka

It was the middle of last year that we detected the start of mass attacks by the xHelper Trojan on Android smartphones, but even now the malware remains as active as ever. The main feature of xHelper is entrenchment — once it gets into the phone, it somehow remains there even after the user delet...

An advertising dropper in Google Play

Recently, the popular CamScanner – Phone PDF creator app caught our attention. According to Google Play, it has been installed more than 100 million times. The developers position it as a solution for scanning and managing digitized documents, but negative user reviews that have been left over th...

A predatory tale: Who’s afraid of the thief?

In mid-February, Kaspersky Lab received a request for incident response from one of its clients. The individual who initially reported the issue to our client refused to disclose the origin of the indicator that they shared. What we do know is that it was a screenshot from one of the client's...

ATMii: a small but effective ATM robber

While some criminals blow up ATMs to steal cash, others use less destructive methods, such as infecting the ATM with malware and then stealing the money. We have written about this phenomenon extensively in the past and today we can add another family of malware to the list - Backdoor.Win32.ATMii...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2019. Statistics

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 product users from 203...

Targeted ransomware: it’s not just about encrypting your data!

When we talk about ransomware, we need to draw a line between what it used to be and what it currently is. Why? Because nowadays ransomware is not just about encrypting data – its primarily about data exfiltration. After that, its about data encryption and leaving convincing proof that the attack...

Looking for sophisticated malware in IoT devices

One of the motivations for this post is to encourage other researchers who are interested in this topic to join in, to share ideas and knowledge and to help build more capabilities in order to better protect our smart devices. Research background Smart watches, smart home devices and even smart...

COMpfun authors spoof visa application with HTTP status-based Trojan

You may remember that in autumn 2019 we published a story about how a COMpfun successor known as Reductor infected files on the fly to compromise TLS traffic. If you're wondering whether the actor behind the malware is still developing new features, the answer is yes. Later in November 2019 our...

Hiding in plain sight: PhantomLance walks into a market

In July 2019, Dr. Web reported about a backdoor trojan in Google Play, which appeared to be sophisticated and unlike common malware often uploaded for stealing victims' money or displaying ads. So, we conducted an inquiry of our own, discovering a long-term campaign, which we dubbed "PhantomLance...

MonitorMinor: vicious stalkerware?

Updated March 17th, 2020 The other day, our Android traps ensnared an interesting specimen of commercial software that is positioned as a parental control app, but may also be used to secretly monitor family members or colleagues – or, in other words, for stalking. Such apps are often called...

APT ToddyCat

ToddyCat is a relatively new APT actor that we have not been able to relate to other known actors, responsible for multiple sets of attacks detected since December 2020 against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia. We still have little information about this actor, but we know that its main...

Looking at Big Threats Using Code Similarity. Part 1

Today, we are announcing the release of KTAE, the Kaspersky Threat Attribution Engine. This code attribution technology, developed initially for internal use by the Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team, is now being made available to a wider audience. You can read more about KTAE in our...

Mokes and Buerak distributed under the guise of security certificates

The technique of distributing malware under the guise of legitimate software updates is not new. As a rule, cybercriminals invite potential victims to install a new version of a browser or Adobe Flash Player. However, we recently discovered a new approach to this well-known method: visitors to...

First Annual Cyberwarcon

Cyberwarcon is a brand new event organized yesterday in Arlington, Virginia, and delivered eight hours of fantastic content. "CyberwarCon is a one-day conference in the Washington D.C. area focused on the specter of destruction, disruption, and malicious influence on our society through cyber...

A patched Windows attack surface is still exploitable

On August 8, 2023, Microsoft finally released a kernel patch for a class of vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Windows since 2015. The vulnerabilities lead to elevation of privilege EoP, which allows an account with user rights to gain SYSTEM privileges on a vulnerable host. The root cause of th...

Digital Education: The cyberrisks of the online classroom

This past spring, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, online learning became the new norm as universities and classrooms around the world were forced to close their doors. By April 29, 2020, more than 1.2 billion children across 186 countries were impacted by school closures. Shortly after school...

Loncom packer: from backdoors to Cobalt Strike

The previous story described an unusual way of distributing malware under disguise of an update for an expired security certificate. After the story went out, we conducted a detailed analysis of the samples we had obtained, with some interesting findings. All of the malware we examined from the...

Windows CLFS and five exploits used by ransomware operators (Exploit #5 – CVE-2023-28252)

This is part six of our study about the Common Log File System CLFS and five vulnerabilities in this Windows OS component that have been used in ransomware attacks throughout the year. Please read the previous parts first if you havent already. You can go to other parts using this table of...

Remote spring: the rise of RDP bruteforce attacks

With the spread of COVID-19, organizations worldwide have introduced remote working, which is having a direct impact on cybersecurity and the threat landscape. Alongside the higher volume of corporate traffic, the use of third-party services for data exchange, and employees working on home...

Pirate matryoshka

The use of torrent trackers to spread malware is a well-known practice; cybercriminals disguise it as popular software, computer games, media files, and other sought-after content. We detected one such campaign early this year, when The Pirate Bay TPB tracker filled up with harmful files used to...

Satoshi Bomb

Let us discuss what defines the profitability of bitcoin mining, what principles for mining speed adaptation were initially embedded into it, and why these principles can lead to the failure of the cryptocurrency in the long run. We assume that the reader has an idea of basic Bitcoin mechanics su...

Data collectors

Who owns data owns the world. And with the Internet taking over much of our daily lives, it has become far easier and faster to receive, collect, and analyze data. The average user cannot even imagine how much data gets collected on them. Besides technical information for example, about a...

IT threat evolution Q3 2017

Targeted attacks and malware campaigns Re-enter the dragon In July, we reported on the recent activities of a targeted attack group called 'Spring Dragon' also known as LotusBlossom, whose activities data back to 2012. Spring Dragon makes extensive use of spear-phishing and watering-hole attacks...

Advanced threat predictions for 2025

We at Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team monitor over 900 APT advanced persistent threat groups and operations. At the end of each year, we take a step back to assess the most complex and sophisticated attacks that have shaped the threat landscape. These insights enable us to anticipat...

IT threat evolution Q2 2022

IT threat evolution in Q2 2022 IT threat evolution in Q2 2022. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q2 2022. Mobile statistics Targeted attacks New technique for installing fileless malware Earlier this year, we discovered a malicious campaign that employed a new technique for installing...

Windows CLFS and five exploits used by ransomware operators

In April 2023, we published a blog post about a zero-day exploit we discovered in ransomware attacks that was patched as CVE-2023-28252 after we promptly reported it to Microsoft. In that blog post, we mentioned that the zero-day exploit we discovered was very similar to other Microsoft Windows...

Octopus-infested seas of Central Asia

For the last two years we have been monitoring a Russian-language cyberespionage actor that focuses on Central Asian users and diplomatic entities. We named the actor DustSquad and have provided private intelligence reports to our customers on four of their campaigns involving custom Android and...

Neutralization reaction

Incident Response Guide PDF Despite there being no revolutionary changes to the cyberthreat landscape in the last few years, the growing informatization of business processes provides cybercriminals with numerous opportunities for attacks. They are focusing on targeted attacks and learning to use...

Bitscout – The Free Remote Digital Forensics Tool Builder

Being a malware researcher means you are always busy with the struggle against mountains of malware and cyberattacks around the world. Over the past decade, the number of daily new malware findings raised up to unimaginable heights: with hundreds of thousands of malware samples per day! However,...

-=TWELVE=- is back

In the spring of 2024, posts with real people's personal data began appearing on the -=TWELVE=- Telegram channel. Soon it was blocked for falling foul of the Telegram terms of service. The group stayed off the radar for several months, but as we investigated a late June 2024 attack, we found that...

XZ backdoor story – Initial analysis

On March 29, 2024, a single message on the Openwall OSS-security mailing list marked an important discovery for the information security, open source and Linux communities: the discovery of a malicious backdoor in XZ. XZ is a compression utility integrated into many popular distributions of Linux...

StripedFly: Perennially flying under the radar

Introduction Its just another cryptocurrency miner… Nobody would even suspect the mining malware was merely a mask, masquerading behind an intricate modular framework that supports both Linux and Windows. It comes equipped with a built-in TOR network tunnel for communication with command servers,...

The SessionManager IIS backdoor

Following on from our earlier Owowa discovery, we continued to hunt for more backdoors potentially set up as malicious modules within IIS, a popular web server edited by Microsoft. And we didnt come back empty-handed… In 2021, we noticed a trend among several threat actors for deploying a backdoo...

iOS exploit chain deploys LightSpy feature-rich malware

A watering hole was discovered on January 10, 2020 utilizing a full remote iOS exploit chain to deploy a feature-rich implant named LightSpy. The site appears to have been designed to target users in Hong Kong based on the content of the landing page. Since the initial activity, we released two...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2019. Advanced threat predictions for 2020

Nothing is more difficult than making predictions. Rather than trying to gaze into a crystal ball, we will be making educated guesses based on what has happened during the last 12 months, to see where we can see trends that might be exploited in the near future. This is what we think might happen...

Bots and botnets in 2018

Due to the wide media coverage of incidents involving Mirai and other specialized botnets, their activities have become largely associated with DDoS attacks. Yet this is merely the tip of the iceberg, and botnets are used widely not only to carry out DDoS attacks, but to steal various user...

KoffeyMaker: notebook vs. ATM

Despite CCTV and the risk of being caught by security staff, attacks on ATMs using a direct connection — so-called black box attacks — are still popular with cybercriminals. The main reason is the low "entry requirements" for would-be cyber-robbers: specialized sites offer both the necessary tool...

Windows CLFS and five exploits used by ransomware operators (Exploit #2 – September 2022)

This is the third part of our study about the Common Log File System CLFS and five vulnerabilities in this Windows OS component that have been used in ransomware attacks throughout the year. Please read the previous parts first if you havent already. You can skip to the other parts using this tab...

Introducing WhiteBear

As a part of our Kaspersky APT Intelligence Reporting subscription, customers received an update in mid-February 2017 on some interesting APT activity that we called WhiteBear. Much of the contents of that report are reproduced here. WhiteBear is a parallel project or second stage of the Skipper...

The return of Mamba ransomware

At the end of 2016, there was a major attack against San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency. The attack was done using Mamba ransomware. This ransomware uses a legitimate utility called DiskCryptor for full disk encryption. This month, we noted that the group behind this ransomware has...

CowerSnail, from the creators of SambaCry

We recently reported about SambaCry, a new family of Linux Trojans exploiting a vulnerability in the Samba protocol. A week later, Kaspersky Lab analysts managed to detect a malicious program for Windows that was apparently created by the same group responsible for SambaCry. It was the common C&C...