Dark Web Roast - September 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - September 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · October 14, 2025 Executive Summary September 2025 brought us a delightful buffet of underground incompetence that makes one wonder if cybercriminals are actively competing for the "Most Spectacular Failure" award. From...

The Bug Report – September 2025 Edition

The Bug Report – September 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · October 7, 2025 Why am I here? Ah, September. When the leaves change colors, so do the threat landscapes! As summer fades into autumn, cybersecurity professionals are harvesting a bumper crop of vulnerabilities that would make any pumpk...

XWorm’s Evolving Infection Chain: From Predictable to Deceptive

XWorm’s Evolving Infection Chain: From Predictable to Deceptive By Prashanth A N and Satish Chimakurthi · September 3, 2025 A sophisticated and evolving prevalent XWorm backdoor campaign has recently been identified by the Trellix Advanced Research Center, marking a significant strategic shift in...

The Bug Report – August 2025 Edition

The Bug Report – August 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun, Tola Olawale · August 27, 2025 Why am I here? Welcome back to The Bug Report! Did you miss us? The Trellix Advanced Research Center has been playing a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole with this month's vulnerabilities. We've dug through all...

Dark Web Roast - July 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - July 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · August 19, 2025 Executive Summary July 2025 delivered a masterclass in cybercriminal mediocrity that would make even the most charitable threat intelligence analyst weep into their coffee. After extensive hunts across the da...

A Comprehensive Analysis of HijackLoader and its Infection Chain

A Comprehensive Analysis of HijackLoader and Its Infection Chain By Ryan Weil · August 14, 2025 Initial contact Dodi Repacks is a website that distributes pirated games. The site is listed as safe/trusted on various piracy forums, and users say that "as long as you have an adblocker installed suc...

Let’s Be Objective: A Deep Dive into 0bj3ctivityStealer's Features

Let’s Be Objective: A Deep Dive into 0bj3ctivityStealer's Features By Ernesto Fernández Provecho · July 28, 2025 The infostealer landscape keeps evolving year over year, and we are beginning to observe new features, targeting more applications and data, and the implementation of new obfuscation a...

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,...

Dark Web Roast - June 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - June 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · July 21, 2025 Executive Summary Welcome to the very first Dark Web Roast! Each month, we're going to take a peek into the shadowy world of cybercrime and playfully "roast" some of its characters, all with a little help from...

From Click to Compromise: Unveiling the Sophisticated Attack of DoNot APT Group on Southern European Government Entities

From Click to Compromise: Unveiling the Sophisticated Attack of DoNot APT Group on Southern European Government Entities By Aniket Choukde, Aparna Aripirala, Alisha Kadam, Pham Duy Phuc and Alex Lanstein · July 8, 2025 This blog was also written by Akhil Reddy Introduction The DoNot APT group, al...

The Bug Report - June 2025 Edition

The Bug Report - June 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · July 1, 2025 Why am I here? Welcome to the June 2025 edition of The Bug Report from the Trellix Advanced Research Center, where the only thing hotter than your CPU fan is the vulnerability feed. As the temperature rises and the air condition...

Understanding Iranian Capabilities and Hacktivist Activities

Understanding Iranian Capabilities and Hacktivist Activities By John Fokker · June 23, 2025 As geopolitical tensions flare again in the Middle East, cyber operations are increasingly becoming an extension of physical conflict. State-aligned threat actors, patriotic hackers, and ideologically...

Demystifying Myth Stealer: A Rust Based InfoStealer

Demystifying Myth Stealer: A Rust Based InfoStealer By Niranjan Hegde, Vasantha Lakshmanan Ambasankar and Adarsh S · June 5, 2025 Introduction During regular proactive threat hunting, the Trellix Advanced Research Center identified a fully undetected infostealer malware sample written in Rust. Up...

A Flyby on the CFO's Inbox: Spear-Phishing Campaign Targeting Financial Executives with NetBird Deployment

A Flyby on the CFO's Inbox: Spear-Phishing Campaign Targeting Financial Executives with NetBird Deployment By Trellix · May 28, 2025 This blog was written by Srini Seethapathy Trellix wants to acknowledge thequick response from NetBird following our initial findings. NetBird acted immediately to...

The Bug Report - March 2025 Edition

The Bug Report - March 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · April 3, 2025 Why am I here? Welcome to the March 2025 edition of The Bug Report—where the bracket-breaking isn’t just happening on the court. While US college basketball fans are busy filling out brackets and chasing Cinderella stories,...

Analysis of Black Basta Ransomware Chat Leaks

Analysis of Black Basta Ransomware Chat Leaks By Jambul Tologonov and John Fokker · March 18, 2025 Introduction On Feb 11, 2025 a Telegram user @ExploitWhispers shared via their Telegram channel ‘shopotbasta’ EN: ‘basta whisper’ Black Basta RaaS Ransomware as a Service Matrix chat leaks containin...

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...

The Iranian Cyber Capability

The Iranian Cyber Capability By Ernesto Fernández Provecho, Pham Duy Phuc, and John Fokker · September 19, 2024 Introduction In recent years, The Islamic Republic of Iran has extensively promoted the execution of cyber campaigns to protect its national interests, deter adversaries, and conduct...

Unmasking the Hidden Threat: Inside a Sophisticated Excel-Based Attack Delivering Fileless Remcos RAT

Unmasking the Hidden Threat: Inside a Sophisticated Excel-Based Attack Delivering Fileless Remcos RAT By Trellix · September 11, 2024 This blog was also written by Trishaan Kalra Introduction In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, attackers are continuously refining their methods to...

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,...

The Bug Report - August 2024 Edition

The Bug Report - August 2024 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · August 26, 2024 Why am I Here August isn’t just about heat waves and summer getaways for the Northern Hemisphere; it’s also when things get serious for students and cybersecurity pros. As organizations prep for the end of the fiscal year,...

No symbols? No problem!

No symbols? No problem! By Trellix · August 9, 2024 This blog was written by Max Kersten Malware analysts know it all too well: the ominous feeling that washes over you when opening an unknown file in your favorite analysis tool and being greeted with hundreds or thousands of unknown functions,...

OneDrive Pastejacking

OneDrive Pastejacking: The crafty phishing and downloader campaign By Rafael Pena · July 29, 2024 Over the past few weeks, the Trellix Advanced Research Center has observed a sophisticated Phishing/downloader campaign targeting Microsoft OneDrive users. This campaign heavily relies on social...

Handala’s Wiper Targets Israel

Handala’s Wiper Targets Israel By Tomer Shloman · July 26, 2024 This blog was also written by Mathanraj Thangaraju and Max Kersten CrowdStrike’s Falcon agent caused downtime for millions of computers across the globe beginning July 19. This event caused panic and chaos, which threat actors quickl...

Cactus Ransomware: New strain in the market

Cactus Ransomware: New strain in the market By Aishwarya Gentyal · July 11, 2024 Ransomware malware has been around for many years now and it continues to dominate the headlines. It's an attacker's top choice for cyber extortion and is one of the most active and profound threats facing...

The Bug Report - June 2024 Edition

The Bug Report - June 2024 Edition By Jonathan Omakun & Tobi Olawale · June 27, 2024 Why am I Here Welcome back to The Bug Report, the "so hot the server fans are sweating" edition! For those who are new to our monthly adventure, every month, our dedicated Advanced Research Center vulnerability...

Info Stealing Campaign Uses DLL Sideloading Through Legitimate Cisco Webex’s Binaries for Initial Execution and Defense Evasion

Info Stealing Campaign Uses DLL Sideloading Through Legitimate Cisco Webex’s Binaries for Initial Execution and Defense Evasion By Ale Houspanossian · June 17, 2024 Case Summary It was a quiet Monday morning in March 2024 when the EDR researchers with our Trellix Advanced Research Center identifi...

DarkGate again but... Improved?

DarkGate again but... Improved? By Ernesto Fernández Provecho · June 3, 2024 Executive summary During 2023, DarkGate made a comeback with a version full of new features, becoming one of the most preferred Remote Access Trojans RATs by malicious actors. However, this momentum also required...

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...

Pouring Acid Rain

Pouring Acid Rain By Trellix · April 30, 2024 This blog was written by Max Kersten In two recent major geopolitical conflicts, in Ukraine and in Israel, wipers - malware used to destroy access to files and commonly used to halt telecom operations - were used to destroy digital infrastructure. The...

The LockBit’s Attempt to Stay Relevant, Its Imposters and New Opportunistic Ransomware Groups

The LockBit’s Attempt to Stay Relevant, Its Imposters and New Opportunistic Ransomware Groups By Jambul Tologonov and John Fokker · April 11, 2024 The Trellix Advanced Research Center has recently observed an uptick of LockBit-related cyber activity surrounding vulnerabilities in ScreenConnect...

SuperSize Me

SuperSize Me By Floser Bacurio Jr., Bernadette Canubas, Michaelo Oliveros · April 02, 2024 Introduction Cyber attackers are always finding new ways to outsmart security systems and distribute malware effectively. We discovered an interesting detection evasion technique of delivering archive files...

The Dark Side of Innovation: Cybercriminals and Their Adoption of GenAI

The Dark Side of Innovation: Cybercriminals and Their Adoption of GenAI By Jambul Tologonov and John Fokker · March 06, 2024 In the ever-evolving threat landscape, the Trellix Advanced Research Center has been at the forefront of understanding and combating the dual-edged sword of Generative...

Cyberattack on Democracy: Escalating Cyber Threats Immediately Ahead of Taiwan’s 2024 Presidential Election

Cyberattack on Democracy: Escalating Cyber Threats Immediately Ahead of Taiwan’s 2024 Presidential Election By Anne An · February 13, 2024 Preface Cybersecurity has become an integral part of election security. Nation-state actors and other politically motivated groups are likely to try to...

The Ongoing Saga of Job-Themed Attacks

The Ongoing Saga of Job-Themed Attacks By Daksh Kapur and Alfred Alvarado · January 23, 2024 Figure 1 - Job Themed Cyberattacks Attribution at the Bottom In late 2023, Trellix Security Researchers identified an ongoing trend where cybercriminals exploit job-themed attack vectors to target both jo...

The evolution of the Kuiper ransomware

Kuiper Ransomware’s Evolution By Trellix · January 17, 2024 This blog was written by Max Kersten The Golang-based Kuiper ransomware is presented as an opportunity for other criminals to make money by ransoming one or more targets. Additionally, RobinHood, the actor behind Kuiper, states that help...

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...

Scanning Danger: Unmasking the Threats of Quishing

Scanning Danger: Unmasking the Threats of Quishing By Shyava Tripathi and Rohan Shah · December 7, 2023 This blog was also written by Raghav Kapoor Phishing, a prevalent cybercrime worldwide, is responsible for as much as 90 percent of data breaches, making it a significant avenue for the theft o...

Akira Ransomware

Akira Ransomware By Trellix · November 29, 2023 This blog was also written by Alexandre Mundo and Max Kersten First discovered in early 2023, Akira ransomware seemed to be just another ransomware family that entered the market. Its continued activity and numerous victims are our main motivators t...

CVE-2023-38831: Navigating the Threat Landscape of the Latest Security Vulnerability

CVE-2023-38831: Navigating the Threat Landscape of the Latest Security Vulnerability By Trellix · November 9, 2023 This blog was written by Neeraj Kumar Singh Executive Summary In August 2023, WinRAR released a security patch to address a remote code execution vulnerability in WinRAR's ZIP archiv...

Trellix 2024 Threat Predictions

Trellix 2024 Threat Predictions By Trellix · October 30, 2023 Introduction This last year we have seen upheaval across the cybersecurity landscape. The need for effective, worldwide threat intelligence continues to grow as geopolitical and economic developments create an increasingly complicated...

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...

Storm-0324: An access for the RaaS Threat Actor

Storm-0324 to Sangria Tempest Leads to Ransomware Capabilities By Trellix · October 5, 2023 This blog was written by Gurumoorthi Ramanathan Executive Summary: In early July 2023, the threat actor that Microsoft calls “Storm-0324” was observed sending a phishing message through Microsoft Teams...

The Bug Report – August 2023 Edition

The Bug Report – August 2023 Edition By Trellix · September 6, 2023 This blog was written by Charles McFarland Why am I here? Welcome back to The Bug Report, the hotter-than-hell Texas edition! For those still unfamiliar with our monthly escapades, every month our trusty Advanced Research Center...

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown By Daksh Kapur, Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Alfred Alvarado · September 06, 2023 Figure 1 Attribution at the bottom Qakbot, known under aliases like QBot, QuakBot, and Pinkslipbot, represents an intricately advanced malware strain that has...

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...

ICYMI: Emotet Reappeared Early This Year, Unfortunately

ICYMI: Emotet Reappeared Early This Year, Unfortunately By Adithya Chandra and Joao Marques · September 1, 2023 This blog was also written by Raghav Kapoor Executive Summary Emotet first appeared in 2014 and continues to be a dangerous and resilient malware, despite attempts by law enforcement...

Decoding the DNA of Ransomware Attacks: Unveiling the Anatomy Behind the Threat

Decoding the DNA of Ransomware Attacks: Unveiling the Anatomy Behind the Threat By Trellix Advanced Research Center · August 28, 2023 Introduction Ransomware, a malicious software that encrypts valuable data and demands a ransom for its release, has a notorious history marked by its evolution fro...

The Tale of Two Exploits - Breaking Down CVE-2023-36884 and the Infection Chain

The Tale of Two Exploits - Breaking Down CVE-2023-36884 and the Infection Chain By Trellix · August 24, 2023 This blog was written by Chintan Shah Executive Summary On July 11 2023, Microsoft released a patch fixing multiple actively exploited RCE vulnerabilities and disclosed a phishing campaign...

Scattered Spider: The Modus Operandi

Scattered Spider: The Modus Operandi By Trellix · August 17, 2023 This story was also written by Phelix Oluoch Executive Summary Scattered Spider, also referred to as UNC3944, Scatter Swine, and Muddled Libra, is a financially motivated threat actor group that has been active since May 2022...