RagnarLocker Ransomware Threatens to Release Confidential Information | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY RagnarLocker Ransomware Threatens to Release Confidential Information Alexandre Mundo · JUN 09, 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The RagnarLocker ransomware first appeared in the wild at the end of December 2019 as part of a campaign against compromised networks targeted by its operators. Th...

Analysis of LooCipher, a New Ransomware Family Observed This Year

ARCHIVED STORY Analysis of LooCipher, a New Ransomware Family Observed This Year By ATR Operational Intelligence Team · December 05, 2019 Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. Initial Discovery This year seems to again be the year for ransomware. Notorious attacks were made using ransomware and new...

Introducing pywintrace: A Python Wrapper for ETW

ARCHIVED STORY Introducing pywintrace: A Python Wrapper for ETW By Anthony Berglund, Kevin Boyd · September 19, 2017 Introduction Event tracing for Windows ETW is a lightweight logging facility first introduced with Windows 2000. Originally intended as a software diagnostic, troubleshooting and...

SideWinder's Shifting Sands: Click Once for Espionage

SideWinder's Shifting Sands: Click Once for Espionage By Ernesto Fernández Provecho and Pham Duy Phuc · October 22, 2025 In September 2025, the Trellix Advanced Research Center ARC detected a campaign targeting a European embassy located in New Delhi, India. Further investigation led to the...

Automagic Reverse Engineering

Automagic Reverse Engineering By Trellix · July 1, 2025 This blog was written by Max Kersten Over the last few years, I have looked into methods to improve the reverse engineering process. This saves essential time during the analysis, which helps while defending from well prepared threat actors...

Tale of Greatness: Journey Through Dark Roads

Tale of Greatness: Journey Through Dark Roads By Daksh Kapur, Vihar Shah, Pooja Khyadgi · May 22, 2024 Cybercriminals have a new weapon in their arsenal: Greatness, a PaaS tool specifically designed to steal your Microsoft 365 login credentials. First detected in mid-2022, it allows attackers to...

Discord, I Want to Play a Game

Discord, I Want to Play a Game By Ernesto Fernández Provecho and David Pastor Sanz Threatray · October 16, 2023 Discord is the first choice for gamers when they want to chat with some friends while playing an online computer game. Moreover, it is also a major choice for users that simply want to...

Supply Chain Security Leaders Collaborate to Help Developers Choose Open-Source

Supply Chain Security Leaders Collaborate to Help Developers Choose Open-Source By Trellix, Checkmarx and Illustria · September 05, 2023 Working together to keep open source safe At the beginning of 2023, top researchers from industry-leading companies established the Supply Chain Attack Research...

ChatGPT: A tool for offensive cyber operations?! Not so fast!

ChatGPT: A tool for offensive cyber operations?! Not so fast! By Trellix · March 09, 2023 This story was also written by John Rodriguez. To ChatGPT or to not ChatGPT? That is a predominant question in the cyber landscape these days. It’s no surprise that AI bots have taken society by storm. On th...

Exploiting Tragedy: Fake Donation Scams Amid Earthquake in Turkey & Syria

Exploiting Tragedy: Fake Donation Scams Amid Earthquake in Turkey & Syria By Daksh Kapur · February 23, 2023 Figure 1 image from freepik.com & flaticon.com The recent earthquake that shook Syria and Turkey left a devastating trail of destruction. The whole world has shown its support and...

LockBit3.0: A Threat that Persists

LockBit3.0: A Threat that Persists By Trellix · November 17, 2022 This blog was written by Alexandre Mundo LockBit is a very well-known family of ransomware that has created havoc worldwide over the last few years. In March 2022, a new variant of the ransomware was discovered. The LockBit3.0...

Cyber Tools and Foreign Policy: A False Flag Chinese “APT” and Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan

Cyber Tools and Foreign Policy: A False Flag Chinese “APT” and Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan By Anne An · September 29, 2022 Preface U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan led to an aftershock across the Taiwan Strait and through the Asia Pacific region. Immediately after Pelosi’s...

Get to Know Anne An

Meet Anne An Senior Security Researcher By Michael Alicea · August 25, 2022 At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. I’ve been hearing a lot recently about one of my colleagues, Anne An. My sources tell me she is a highly technical and “intuitive” researcher embedded on our frontlines as...

Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine and HermeticWiper Protections

Trellix Global Defenders: Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine and HermeticWiper Protections By Taylor Mullins · February 28, 2022 Trellix is monitoring the ongoing cyberattacks targeting the Ukraine and any threat activity targeting entities outside of the Ukraine. Trellix is continuing to add...

Trellix Global Defenders: BlackCat Ransomware as a Service - The Cat is certainly out of the bag!

Trellix Global Defenders: BlackCat Ransomware as a Service - The Cat is certainly out of the bag! By Trellix · February 8, 2022 Research Contributions and Analysis: Filippo Sitzia This story was written by Arnab Roy Threat Summary Blackcat also known as ALPHV/Noberus is a Ransomware as a Service...

Trellix Threat Report: Log4j Attack, Ransomware & APT Threats

Trellix Threat Report: Log4j Attack, Ransomware & APT Threats By Trellix · January 31, 2022 This story was written by Raj Samani. Ransomware continues to threaten enterprises and assets around the globe, but it was the discovery of a new vulnerability affecting widely used Log4j library that...

Return of Pseudo Ransomware

Return of Pseudo Ransomware By Trellix, Max Kersten and Raj Samani · January 20, 2022 Arnab Roy, Filippo Sitzia and Mo Cashman contributed to the research supporting this blog Recent news reports of a “ransomware” campaign targeting Ukraine has resulted in significant press coverage regarding not...

Finding 0-days with Jackalope

ARCHIVED STORY Finding 0-days with Jackalope By Douglas McKee · September 16, 2021 Overview On March 21st, 2021, the McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Research ATR team released several vulnerabilities it discovered in the Netop Vision Pro Education software, a popular schooling software used by...

Our Experiences Participating in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere Bounty Program | McAfee Blogs

CSI: Evidence Indicators for Targeted Ransomware Attacks – Part II Christiaan Beek · FEB 20, 2020 In our first article we discussed the growing pattern of targeted ransomware attacks where the first infection stage is often an info-stealer kind of malware used to gain credentials/access to...

Iran Cyber Threat Update

ARCHIVED STORY Iran Cyber Threat Update By Trellix · January 08, 2020 Recent political tensions in the Middle East region have led to significant speculation of increased cyber-related activities. McAfee is on a heightened state of alert to monitor the evolving threats and rapidly implement...

Clop Ransomware

ARCHIVED STORY Clop Ransomware Alexandre Mundo · AUG 01, 2019 This new ransomware was discovered by Michael Gillespie on 8 February 2019 and it is still improving over time. This blog will explain the technical details and share information about how this new ransomware family is working. There a...

What’s in the Box?

ARCHIVED STORY What’s in the Box? By Sam Quinn · February 25, 2019 2018 was another record-setting year in the continuing trend for consumer online shopping. With an increase in technology and efficiency, and a decrease in cost and shipping time, consumers have clearly made a statement that...

DDoS Attacks in the Netherlands Reveal Teen Gamers on Troublesome Path

ARCHIVED STORY DDoS Attacks in the Netherlands Reveal Teen Gamers on Troublesome Path By John Fokker · Febraury 22, 2018 At the end of January, the Netherlands was plagued by distributed denial of service DDoS attacks targeting various financial institutions, tech sites, and the Dutch tax...

DCSync Detection Without Signatures: Trellix NDR and the Power of Technique-Based Defense

DCSync Detection Without Signatures: Trellix NDR and the Power of Technique-Based Defense By Maulik Maheta and Chao Sun · April 14, 2026 Executive summary A DCSync attack is one of the most formidable techniques an adversary can deploy after gaining a foothold in an Active Directory AD environmen...

From Digital Innovation to Patient Harm: Why Healthcare Cybersecurity Is Now a C-Suite Imperative

From Digital Innovation to Patient Harm: Why Healthcare Cybersecurity Is Now a C-Suite Imperative By John Fokker · January 27, 2026 For decades, healthcare systems were designed with one core principle: patient safety. Clinical devices operated in largely closed environments, disconnected from th...

Dark Web Roast December 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - December 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · January 15, 2026 Executive summary December 2025 delivered a spectacular finale to the year's cybercriminal comedy show, featuring Global Ransomware-as-a-Service RaaS operator liquidating their empire for pocket change,...

Silent Domain Hijack: Detecting DCSync with Trellix NDR

Silent Domain Hijack: Uncovering the DCSync Attack and Detecting with Trellix NDR By Maulik Maheta and Chao Sun · December 10, 2025 Executive summary DCSync is one of the most powerful and stealthy techniques an attacker can use once they have gained access to an Active Directory AD environment...

The Silent Threat in Active Directory: How AS-REP Roasting Steals Passwords Without a Trace and Trellix NDR’s Rapid Detection

The Silent Threat in Active Directory: How AS-REP Roasting Steals Passwords Without a Trace and Trellix NDR’s Rapid Detection By Maulik Maheta · October 15, 2025 Executive summary Adversaries use AS-REP Roasting to extract and crack password hashes from Active Directory AD accounts with Kerberos...

npm Account Hijacking and the Rise of Supply Chain Attacks

npm Account Hijacking and the Rise of Supply Chain Attacks By Trellix Advanced Research Center · September 26, 2025 Contributed by John Fokker, Ilya Kolmanovich, Pavan Podila, Mo Cashman and Jeffrey Sman Key Takeaways Software Supply Chain Attacks are on the Rise: The "Shai-Hulud" worm targeting...

Critical SharePoint Vulnerabilities Under Active Exploitation

Critical SharePoint Vulnerabilities Under Active Exploitation By Jeffrey Sman, Mo Cashman and Marc Bolz Robinson · July 23, 2025 On-premises Microsoft SharePoint servers are currently facing high-impact, ongoing threat activity due to a set of critical vulnerabilities, notably CVE-2025-49704,...

Unmasking ViperSoftX: In-Depth Defense Strategies Against AutoIt-Powered Threats

Trellix Global Defenders: Unmasking ViperSoftX: In-Depth Defense Strategies Against AutoIt-Powered Threats By James Murphy · August 29, 2024 There’s a common misconception that threat actors must always write complicated and custom code in every piece of their malware, skilfully evading defenses,...

Cracking Cobalt Strike: Taking Down Malicious Cybercriminal Infrastructure with Threat Intelligence

Cracking Cobalt Strike Taking Down Malicious Cybercriminal Infrastructure with Threat Intelligence By Joao Marques, John Fokker and Leandro Velasco · July 3, 2024 Introduction In a significant global effort to combat cybercrime, law enforcement agencies from around the world have joined forces to...

Cybercrooks leveraging anti automation toolkit for phishing campaigns

Cybercrooks Leveraging Anti Automation Toolkit for Phishing Campaigns By Vihar Shah and Rohan Shah · December 18, 2023 Threat actors have a track record of abusing tools hosted on GitHub for malicious purposes. Last year we showed how attackers abused Python’s tarfile module. Trellix Advanced...

Feeding Gophers to Ghidra

Feeding Gophers to Ghidra By Trellix · June 6, 2023 This blog was written by Max Kersten The scripts discussed in the article are based on the magnificent work ofDorka Palotay from CUJOai. Golang malware is becoming increasingly prevalent, requiring analysts to know how to effectively analyze the...

China-Taiwan Tensions Spark Surge in Cyberattacks on Taiwan

China-Taiwan Tensions Spark Surge in Cyberattacks on Taiwan By Daksh Kapur, Leandro Velasco · May 17, 2023 Figure 1 image from freepik.com “In the past few years, we noticed that geopolitical conflicts are one of the main drivers for cyber-attacks on a variety of industries and institutions...

Shining Light on Dark Power: Yet Another Ransomware Gang

Shining Light on Dark Power: Yet Another Ransomware Gang By Pham Duy Phuc and Tomer Shloman · March 23, 2023 This blog was also written by Max Kersten Another day, another ransomware gang. The Dark Power ransomware gang is new on the block, and is trying to make a name for itself. This blog dives...

Get to Know Fred House

Meet Fred House Senior Director, Product Detection and Research By Michael Alicea · July 12, 2022 At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. For a long time now, I’ve been looking forward to connecting with Fred House, a Senior Director at Trellix Threat Labs and a consummate and “driven”...

Utilizing the Adaptive Defense Model Against Information Stealers

Trellix Global Defenders: Utilizing the Adaptive Defense Model Against Information Stealers By Taylor Mullins · May 23, 2022 Trellix is continuing to observe the continued growth in usage and general availability of Information Stealers that have the functionality to collect passwords, cookies,...

Nation-State Crosshairs: France, Germany & United Kingdom

In the Nation-State Crosshairs: France, Germany & the United Kingdom By Trellix · March 28, 2022 Today Trellix and the Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS released a global report, In the Crosshairs: Organizations and Nation-State Cyber Threats, examining security professionals’...

Is There Really Such a Thing as a Low-Paid Ransomware Operator?

ARCHIVED STORY Is There Really Such a Thing as a Low-Paid Ransomware Operator? By Thibault Seret · October 18, 2021 Introduction Going by recent headlines you could be forgiven for thinking all ransomware operators are raking in millions of ill-gotten dollars each year from their nefarious...

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service - Crescendo

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – Crescendo By Jessica Saavedra-Morales · October 20, 2019 Episode 4: Crescendo This is the final installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR analysis of Sodinokibi and its connections to GandGrab, the most prolific...

Your Smart Coffee Maker is Brewing Up Trouble

ARCHIVED STORY Your Smart Coffee Maker is Brewing Up Trouble By Sam Quinn · Febraury 25, 2019 IOT devices are notoriously insecure and this claim can be backed up with a laundry list of examples. With more devices “needing” to connect to the internet, the possibility of your WiFi enabled toaster...

Ryuk, Exploring the Human Connection

ARCHIVED STORY Ryuk, Exploring the Human Connection By John Fokker · Febraury 19, 2019 In collaboration with Bill Siegel and Alex Holdtman from Coveware At the beginning of 2019, McAfee ATR published an article describing how the hasty attribution of Ryuk ransomware to North Korea was missing the...

Operation Dragonfly Analysis Suggests Links to Earlier Attacks

ARCHIVED STORY Operation Dragonfly Analysis Suggests Links to Earlier Attacks By Trellix · December 17, 2017 On September 6, Symantec published details of the Dragonfly campaign, which targeted dozens of energy companies throughout 2017. This attack was effectively Dragonfly 2.0, an update to a...

‘BadRabbit’ Ransomware Burrows Into Russia, Ukraine

ARCHIVED STORY ‘BadRabbit’ Ransomware Burrows Into Russia, Ukraine By Raj Samani · October 24, 2017 This post was researched and written by Tim Hux, David Marcus, Charles McFarland, Douglas McKee, and Raj Samani. McAfee is currently investigating a ransomware campaign known as BadRabbit, which...

When Agents Go Rogue: The OpenClaw Supply Chain Crisis

When Agents Go Rogue: The OpenClaw Supply Chain Crisis By Aniket Choukde, Vikas Mishra and Yadunadh · August 19, 2026 This blog was also written by Akhil Reddy and Pavan Kumar Podila Executive Summary The cybersecurity landscape is currently undergoing a seismic shift driven by the adoption of...

Dark Web Roast - October 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - October 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · November 13, 2025 Executive Summary Welcome to October 2025, where the cybercrime underground has officially become more absurd than a fever dream. This month’s headline was xltshirt being royally fleeced out of $3,000 fo...

Transforming Threat Actor Research into a Strong Defense Strategy

Transforming Threat Actor Research into a Strong Defense Strategy By James Murphy, Ale Houspanossian, Leandro Velasco LV and Ilya Kolmanovich · November 14, 2024 What does it take to transform threat actor research into detection engineering? If we look at threat intelligence at its core, then we...

Supply Chain Security Leaders Collaborate to Help Developers Choose Open-Source

Supply Chain Security Leaders Collaborate to Help Developers Choose Open-Source By Trellix, Checkmarx and Illustria · September 05, 2023 Working together to keep open source safe At the beginning of 2023, top researchers from industry-leading companies established the Supply Chain Attack Research...

Cybercrime Takes Advantage of 2023-Recession with Job-Themed Scams

Cybercrime Takes Advantage of 2023 Recession with Job-Themed Scams By Daksh Kapur · February 28, 2023 Figure 1 image from freepik.com and flaticon.com The current economic climate globally is grim because of the ongoing recession. In this environment, job-themed emails have become a prime target...