State of ransomware in 2025

Global ransomware trends and numbers With the International Anti-Ransomware Day just around the corner on May 12, Kaspersky explores the ever-changing ransomware threat landscape and its implications for cybersecurity. According to Kaspersky Security Network data, the number of ransomware...

Outlaw cybergang attacking targets worldwide

Introduction In a recent incident response case in Brazil, we dealt with a relatively simple, yet very effective threat focused on Linux environments. Outlaw also known as "Dota" is a Perl-based crypto mining botnet that typically takes advantage of weak or default SSH credentials for its...

Triada strikes back

Introduction Older versions of Android contained various vulnerabilities that allowed gaining root access to the device. Many malicious programs exploited these to elevate their system privileges and gain persistence. The notorious Triada Trojan also used this attack vector. With time, the...

Operation SyncHole: Lazarus APT goes back to the well

We have been tracking the latest attack campaign by the Lazarus group since last November, as it targeted organizations in South Korea with a sophisticated combination of a watering hole strategy and vulnerability exploitation within South Korean software. The campaign, dubbed "Operation SyncHole...

Russian organizations targeted by backdoor masquerading as secure networking software updates

As we were looking into a cyberincident in April 2025, we uncovered a rather sophisticated backdoor. It targeted various large organizations in Russia, spanning the government, finance, and industrial sectors. While our investigation into the attack associated with the backdoor is still ongoing, ...

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...

Phishing attacks leveraging HTML code inside SVG files

With each passing year, phishing attacks feature more and more elaborate techniques designed to trick users and evade security measures. Attackers employ deceptive URL redirection tactics, such as appending malicious website addresses to seemingly safe links, embed links in PDFs, and send HTML...

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...

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...

GOFFEE continues to attack organizations in Russia

GOFFEE is a threat actor that first came to our attention in early 2022. Since then, we have observed malicious activities targeting exclusively entities located in the Russian Federation, leveraging spear phishing emails with a malicious attachment. Starting in May 2022 and up until summer of...

Attackers distributing a miner and the ClipBanker Trojan via SourceForge

Recently, we noticed a rather unique scheme for distributing malware that exploits SourceForge, a popular website providing software hosting, comparison, and distribution services. The site hosts numerous software projects, and anyone can upload theirs. One such project, officepackage , on the ma...

How ToddyCat tried to hide behind AV software

To hide their activity in infected systems, APT groups resort to various techniques to bypass defenses. Most of these techniques are well known and detectable by both EPP solutions and EDR threat-monitoring and response tools. For example, to hide their activity in Windows systems, cybercriminals...

A journey into forgotten Null Session and MS-RPC interfaces, part 2

In the first part of our research, I demonstrated how we revived the concept of no authentication null session after many years. This involved enumerating domain information, such as users, without authentication. I walked you through the entire process, starting with the difference between no-au...

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...

Operation ForumTroll: APT attack with Google Chrome zero-day exploit chain

In mid-March 2025, Kaspersky technologies detected a wave of infections by previously unknown and highly sophisticated malware. In all cases, infection occurred immediately after the victim clicked on a link in a phishing email, and the attackers' website was opened using the Google Chrome web...

Financial cyberthreats in 2024

As more and more financial transactions are conducted in digital form each year, financial threats comprise a large piece of the global cyberthreat landscape. That's why Kaspersky researchers analyze the trends related to these threats and share an annual report highlighting the main dangers to...

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...

Arcane stealer: We want all your data

At the end of 2024, we discovered a new stealer distributed via YouTube videos promoting game cheats. What's intriguing about this malware is how much it collects. It grabs account information from VPN and gaming clients, and all kinds of network utilities like ngrok, Playit, Cyberduck, FileZilla...

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...

Incident response analyst report 2024

Kaspersky provides rapid and fully informed incident response services to organizations, ensuring impact analysis and effective remediation. Our annual report shares anonymized data about the investigations carried out by the Kaspersky Global Emergency Response Team GERT, as well as statistics an...

DCRat backdoor returns

Since the beginning of the year, we've been tracking in our telemetry a new wave of DCRat distribution, with paid access to the backdoor provided under the Malware-as-a-Service MaaS model. The cybercriminal group behind it also offers support for the malware and infrastructure setup for hosting t...

SideWinder targets the maritime and nuclear sectors with an updated toolset

Last year, we published an article about SideWinder, a highly prolific APT group whose primary targets have been military and government entities in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, and Nepal. In it, we described activities that had mostly happened in the first half of the year. We tried to draw...

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...

Undercover miner: how YouTubers get pressed into distributing SilentCryptoMiner as a restriction bypass tool

In recent months, we've seen an increase in the use of Windows Packet Divert drivers to intercept and modify network traffic in Windows systems. This technology is used in various utilities, including ones for bypassing blocks and restrictions of access to resources worldwide. Over the past six...

Mobile malware evolution in 2024

These statistics are based on detection alerts from Kaspersky products, collected from users who consented to provide statistical data to Kaspersky Security Network. The statistics for previous years may differ from earlier publications due to a data and methodology revision implemented in 2024...

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...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q4 2024

Q4 2024 saw fewer published exploits for Windows and Linux compared to the first three quarters. Although the number of registered vulnerabilities continued to rise, the total number of Proof of Concept PoC instances decreased compared to 2023. Among notable techniques in Q4, attackers leveraged...

The GitVenom campaign: cryptocurrency theft using GitHub

In our modern world, it's difficult to underestimate the impact that open-source code has on software development. Over the years, the global community has managed to publish a tremendous number of projects with freely accessible code that can be viewed and enhanced by anyone on the planet. Very...

Angry Likho: Old beasts in a new forest

Angry Likho referred to as Sticky Werewolf by some vendors is an APT group we've been monitoring since 2023. It bears a strong resemblance to Awaken Likho, which we've analyzed before, so we classified it within the Likho malicious activity cluster. However, Angry Likho's attacks tend to be...

Managed detection and response in 2024

Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response service MDR provides round-the-clock monitoring and threat detection, based on Kaspersky technologies and expertise. The annual MDR analyst report presents insights based on the analysis of incidents detected by Kaspersky's SOC team. It sheds light on the...

Spam and phishing in 2024

The year in figures 27% of all emails sent worldwide and 48.57% of all emails sent in the Russian web segment were spam 18% of all spam emails were sent from Russia Kaspersky Mail Anti-Virus blocked 125,521,794 malicious email attachments Our Anti-Phishing system thwarted 893,216,170 attempts to...

StaryDobry ruins New Year’s Eve, delivering miner instead of presents

Introduction On December 31, cybercriminals launched a mass infection campaign, aiming to exploit reduced vigilance and increased torrent traffic during the holiday season. Our telemetry detected the attack, which lasted for a month and affected individuals and businesses by distributing the XMRi...

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...

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...

One policy to rule them all

Windows group policies are a powerful management tool that allows administrators to define and control user and computer settings within a domain environment in a centralized manner. While group policies offer functionality and utility, they are unfortunately a prime target for attackers. In...

No need to RSVP: a closer look at the Tria stealer campaign

Introduction Since mid-2024, we've observed a malicious Android campaign leveraging wedding invitations as a lure to social-engineer victims into installing a malicious Android app APK, which we have named "Tria Stealer" after unique strings found in campaign samples. The primary targets of the...

Threat predictions for industrial enterprises 2025

Key global cyberthreat landscape development drivers Hunt for innovations Innovations are changing our lives. Today, the world is on the threshold of another technical revolution. Access to new technologies is a ticket to the future, a guarantee of economic prosperity and political sovereignty...

Mercedes-Benz Head Unit security research report

Introduction This report covers the research of the Mercedes-Benz Head Unit, which was made by our team. Mercedes-Benz's latest Head Unit infotainment system is called Mercedes-Benz User Experience MBUX. We performed analysis of the first generation MBUX. MBUX was previously analysed by KeenLab...

EAGERBEE, with updated and novel components, targets the Middle East

Introduction In our recent investigation into the EAGERBEE backdoor, we found that it was being deployed at ISPs and governmental entities in the Middle East. Our analysis uncovered new components used in these attacks, including a novel service injector designed to inject the backdoor into a...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems in Q3 2024

Statistics across all threats In the third quarter of 2024, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked decreased by 1.5 pp to 22% when compared to the previous quarter. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, by quarter, 2022–2024 Compared...

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...

BellaCPP: Discovering a new BellaCiao variant written in C++

Introduction BellaCiao is a .NET-based malware family that adds a unique twist to an intrusion, combining the stealthy persistence of a webshell with the power to establish covert tunnels. It surfaced for the first time in late April 2023 and has since been publicly attributed to the APT actor...

Attackers exploiting a patched FortiClient EMS vulnerability in the wild

Introduction During a recent incident response, Kaspersky's GERT team identified a set of TTPs and indicators linked to an attacker that infiltrated a company's networks by targeting a Fortinet vulnerability for which a patch was already available. This vulnerability is an improper filtering of S...

Lazarus group evolves its infection chain with old and new malware

Over the past few years, the Lazarus group has been distributing its malicious software by exploiting fake job opportunities targeting employees in various industries, including defense, aerospace, cryptocurrency, and other global sectors. This attack campaign is called the DeathNote campaign and...

Analysis of Cyber Anarchy Squad attacks targeting Russian and Belarusian organizations

About C.A.S C.A.S Cyber Anarchy Squad is a hacktivist group that has been attacking organizations in Russia and Belarus since 2022. Besides data theft, its goal is to inflict maximum damage, including reputational. To this end, the group's attacks exploit vulnerabilities in publicly available...

Download a banker to track your parcel

In late October 2024, a new scheme for distributing a certain Android banking Trojan called "Mamont" was uncovered. The victim would receive an instant message from an unknown sender asking to identify a person in a photo. The attackers would then send what appeared to be the photo itself but was...

Dark web threats and dark market predictions for 2025

Review of last year's predictions The number of services providing AV evasion for malware cryptors will increase We continuously monitor underground markets for the emergence of new "cryptors," which are tools specifically designed to obfuscate the code within malware samples. The primary purpose...

Careto is back: what’s new after 10 years of silence?

During the first week of October, Kaspersky took part in the 34th Virus Bulletin International Conference, one of the longest-running cybersecurity events. There, our researchers delivered multiple presentations, and one of our talks focused on newly observed activities by the Careto threat actor...

Story of the Year: global IT outages and supply chain attacks

A faulty update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered one of the largest IT outages in history, impacting approximately 8.5 million systems worldwide. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the critical risks posed by global IT disruptions and supply chain weaknesses. With large-scale...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q3 2024

Q3 2024 saw multiple vulnerabilities discovered in Windows and Linux subsystems that are not standard for cyberattacks. This is because operating system developers have been releasing new security mitigations for whole sets of vulnerabilities in commonly used subsystems. For example, a log...