From 12 to 21: how we discovered connections between the Twelve and BlackJack groups

While analyzing attacks on Russian organizations, our team regularly encounters overlapping tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs among different cybercrime groups, and sometimes even shared tools. We recently discovered one such overlap: similar tools and tactics between two hacktivist groups...

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...

How the Necro Trojan infiltrated Google Play, again

Introduction We sometimes come across modified applications when analyzing suspicious files. These are created in response to user requests for more customization options within the app or for new features that the official versions don't have. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for popular mods to...

-=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...

Exotic SambaSpy is now dancing with Italian users

Introduction In May 2024, we detected a campaign exclusively targeting victims in Italy. We were rather surprised by this, as cybercriminals typically select a broader target to maximize their profits. For example, a certain type of malware might target users in France and Spain, with the phishin...

Loki: a new private agent for the popular Mythic framework

In July 2024, we discovered the previously unknown Loki backdoor, which was used in a series of targeted attacks. By analyzing the malicious file and open sources, we determined that Loki is a private version of an agent for the open-source Mythic framework. One of the agent's decrypted strings O...

Tropic Trooper spies on government entities in the Middle East

Executive summary Tropic Trooper also known as KeyBoy and Pirate Panda is an APT group active since 2011. This group has traditionally targeted sectors such as government, healthcare, transportation and high-tech industries in Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong. Our recent investigation has...

Mallox ransomware: in-depth analysis and evolution

Mallox is a sophisticated and dangerous family of malicious software that has been causing significant damage to organizations worldwide. In 2023, this ransomware strain demonstrated an uptick in attacks, the overall number of discovered Mallox samples exceeding 700. In the first half of 2024, th...

A deep dive into the most interesting incident response cases of last year

In 2023, Kasperskys Global Emergency Response Team GERT participated in services around the world that allowed our experts to gain insight into various threats and techniques used by APT groups, common crimeware and, in some cases, internal adversaries. As we highlighted in our annual report, the...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2024. Non-mobile statistics

The statistics presented here are based on detection verdicts by Kaspersky products and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly figures In Q2 2024: Kaspersky solutions blocked over 664 million attacks from various internet sources. The web antivirus...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2024. Mobile statistics

Quarterly figures According to Kaspersky Security Network, in Q2 2024: 7 million attacks using malware, adware or unwanted mobile software were blocked. The most common threat to mobile devices was RiskTool software – 41% of all detected threats. A total of 367,418 malicious installation packages...

IT threat evolution Q2 2024

Targeted attacks XZ backdoor: a supply chain attack in the making On March 29, a message on the Openwall oss-security mailing list announced the discovery of a backdoor in XZ, a compression utility included in many popular Linux distributions. The backdoored library is used by the OpenSSH server...

Head Mare: adventures of a unicorn in Russia and Belarus

Head Mare is a hacktivist group that first made itself known in 2023 on the social network X formerly Twitter1. In their public posts, the attackers reveal information about some of their victims, including organization names, internal documents stolen during attacks, and screenshots of desktops...

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...

Memory corruption vulnerabilities in Suricata and FreeRDP

As a cybersecurity company, before we release our products, we perform penetration tests on them to make sure they are secure. Recently, new versions of KasperskyOS-based products were released, namely Kaspersky Thin Client KTC and Kaspersky IoT Secure Gateway KISG. As part of the pre-release...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q2 2024

Q2 2024 was eventful in terms of new interesting vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques for applications and operating systems. Attacks through vulnerable drivers have become prevalent as a general means of privilege escalation in the operating system. Such attacks are notable in that the...

Approach to mainframe penetration testing on z/OS

Information technology is developing at a rapid pace, with completely new areas emerging, such as DevOps and DevSecOps – and were striving to keep up. However, in some projects, you may encounter systems built on rather outdated principles. Such systems must be approached with care, since a singl...

BlindEagle flying high in Latin America

BlindEagle, also known as "APT-C-36", is an APT actor recognized for employing straightforward yet impactful attack techniques and methodologies. The group is known for their persistent campaigns targeting entities and individuals in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Panama and other countries in Latin...

Tusk: unraveling a complex infostealer campaign

Summary Kaspersky Global Emergency Response Team GERT has identified a complex campaign, consisting of multiple sub-campaigns orchestrated by Russian-speaking cybercriminals. The sub-campaigns imitate legitimate projects, slightly modifying names and branding and using multiple social media...

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...

APT trends report Q2 2024

For over six years now, Kasperskys Global Research and Analysis Team GReAT has been sharing quarterly updates on advanced persistent threats APTs. These summaries draw on our threat intelligence research, offering a representative overview of what weve published and discussed in more detail in ou...

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...

LianSpy: new Android spyware targeting Russian users

In March 2024, we discovered a campaign targeting individuals in Russia with previously unseen Android spyware we dubbed LianSpy. Our analysis indicates that the malware has been active since July 2021. This threat is equipped to capture screencasts, exfiltrate user files, and harvest call logs a...

How “professional” ransomware variants boost cybercrime groups

Introduction Cybercriminals who specialize in ransomware do not always create it themselves. They have many other ways to get their hands on ransomware samples: buying a sample on the dark web, affiliating with other groups or finding a leaked ransomware variant. This requires no extraordinary...

Mandrake spyware sneaks onto Google Play again, flying under the radar for two years

Introduction In May 2020, Bitdefender released a white paper containing a detailed analysis of Mandrake, a sophisticated Android cyber-espionage platform, which had been active in the wild for at least four years. In April 2024, we discovered a suspicious sample that appeared to be a new version ...

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...

Developing and prioritizing a detection engineering backlog based on MITRE ATT&CK

Detection is a traditional type of cybersecurity control, along with blocking, adjustment, administrative and other controls. Whereas before 2015 teams asked themselves what it was that they were supposed to detect, as MITRE ATT&CK evolved, SOCs were presented with practically unlimited space for...

CloudSorcerer – A new APT targeting Russian government entities

In May 2024, we discovered a new advanced persistent threat APT targeting Russian government entities that we dubbed CloudSorcerer. Its a sophisticated cyberespionage tool used for stealth monitoring, data collection, and exfiltration via Microsoft Graph, Yandex Cloud, and Dropbox cloud...

Cybersecurity in the SMB space — a growing threat

Small and medium-sized businesses SMBs are increasingly targeted by cybercriminals. Despite adopting digital technology for remote work, production, and sales, SMBs often lack robust cybersecurity measures. SMBs face significant cybersecurity challenges due to limited resources and expertise. The...

XZ backdoor: Hook analysis

Part 1: XZ backdoor story – Initial analysis Part 2: Assessing the Y, and How, of the XZ Utils incident social engineering Part 3: XZ backdoor. Hook analysis In our first article on the XZ backdoor, we analyzed its code from initial infection to the function hooking it performs. As we mentioned...

Analysis of user password strength

The processing power of computers keeps growing, helping users to solve increasingly complex problems faster. A side effect is that passwords that were impossible to guess just a few years ago can be cracked by hackers within mere seconds in 2024. For example, the RTX 4090 GPU is capable of...

Cinterion EHS5 3G UMTS/HSPA Module Research

Modems play an important role in enabling connectivity for a wide range of devices. This includes not only traditional mobile devices and household appliances, but also telecommunication systems in vehicles, ATMs and Automated Process Control Systems APCS. When integrating the modem, many product...

QR code SQL injection and other vulnerabilities in a popular biometric terminal

Biometric scanners offer a unique way to resolve the conflict between security and usability. They help to identify a person by their unique biological characteristics – a fairly reliable process that does not require the user to exert any extra effort. Yet, biometric scanners, as any other tech,...

Bypassing 2FA with phishing and OTP bots

Introduction Two-factor authentication 2FA is a security feature we have come to expect as standard by 2024. Most of todays websites offer some form of it, and some of them wont even let you use their service until you enable 2FA. Individual countries have adopted laws that require certain types ...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2024. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution Q1 2024 IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Mobile statistics IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Non-mobile statistics Quarterly figures According to Kaspersky Security Network, in Q1 2024: 10.1 million attacks using malware, adware, or unwanted mobile software were blocked. The most commo...

IT threat evolution Q1 2024

IT threat evolution Q1 2024 IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Mobile statistics IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Non-mobile statistics Targeted attacks Operation Triangulation: the final mystery Last June, we published a series of reports on Operation Triangulation, a previously unknown iOS malware platfo...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2024. Non-mobile statistics

IT threat evolution Q1 2024 IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Mobile statistics IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Non-mobile statistics The statistics presented here are based on detection verdicts by Kaspersky products and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly...

Trusted relationship attacks: trust, but verify

IT outsourcing market continues to demonstrate strong growth globally – such services are becoming increasingly popular. But along with the advantages, such as saved time and resources, delegating non-core tasks creates new challenges in terms of information security. By providing third-party...

Message board scams

Marketplace fraud is nothing new. Cybercriminals swindle money out of buyers and sellers alike. Lately, weve seen a proliferation of cybergangs operating under the Fraud-as-a-Service model and specializing in tricking users of online marketplaces, in particular, message boards. Criminals are...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems, Q1 2024

Global statistics Statistics across all threats In the first quarter of 2024, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked decreased by 0.3 pp from the previous quarter to 24.4%. Compared to the first quarter of 2023, the percentage decreased by 1.3 pp. Percentage of IC...

ShrinkLocker: Turning BitLocker into ransomware

Introduction Attackers always find creative ways to bypass defensive features and accomplish their goals. This can be done with packers, crypters, and code obfuscation. However, one of the best ways of evading detection, as well as maximizing compatibility, is to use the operating systems own...

A journey into forgotten Null Session and MS-RPC interfaces

A journey into forgotten Null Session and MS-RPC interfaces PDF It has been almost 24 years since the null session vulnerability was discovered. Back then, it was possible to access SMB named pipes using empty credentials and collect domain information. Most often, attackers leveraged null sessio...

Stealers, stealers and more stealers

Introduction Stealers are a prominent threat in the malware landscape. Over the past year we published our research into several stealers see here, here and here, and for now, the trend seems to persist. In the past months, we wrote several private reports on stealers as we discovered Acrid a new...

QakBot attacks with Windows zero-day (CVE-2024-30051)

In early April 2024, we decided to take a closer look at the Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-36033, which was previously discovered as a zero-day exploited in the wild. While searching for samples related to this exploit and attacks that used it, we found a...

Incident response analyst report 2023

Incident response analyst report 2023 As an information security company, our services include incident response and investigation, and malware analysis. Our customer base spans Russia, Europe, Asia, South and North America, Africa and the Middle East. Our annual Incident Response Report presents...

APT trends report Q1 2024

For more than six 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. They provide a representative snapshot of what we have published and...

State of ransomware in 2024

Ransomware attacks continue to be one of the biggest contemporary cybersecurity threats, affecting organizations and individuals alike on a global scale. From high-profile breaches in healthcare and industrial sectors – compromising huge volumes of sensitive data or halting production entirely – ...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q1 2024

We at Kaspersky continuously monitor the evolving cyberthreat landscape to ensure we respond promptly to emerging threats, equipping our products with detection logic and technology. Software vulnerabilities that threat actors can exploit or are already actively exploiting are a critical componen...

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,...

Managed Detection and Response in 2023

Managed Detection and Response in 2023 PDF Alongside other security solutions, we provide Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response MDR to organizations worldwide, delivering expert monitoring and incident response 24/7. The task involves collecting telemetry for analysis by both machine-learning ...