The Continued Evolution of the DarkGate Malware-as-a-Service

The Continued Evolution of the DarkGate Malware-as-a-Service By Ernesto Fernández Provecho, Pham Duy Phuc, Ciana Driscoll and Vinoo Thomas · November 21, 2023 On September 2023, the Trellix Security Operations Center SOC successfully detected and stopped an attack against Musarubra, the holding...

Trellix Threat Labs Uncovers Critical Flaws in Widely Used Building Access Control System

Trellix Threat Labs Uncovers Critical Flaws in Widely Used Building Access Control System By Trellix · June 9, 2022 This story was also written by Steve Povolny and Sam Quinn. Today at the Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference, Trellix Threat Labs is sharing new research into...

Digging Up the Past: Windows Registry Forensics Revisited

ARCHIVED STORY Digging Up the Past: Windows Registry Forensics Revisited By David Via · Jan 08, 2019 Introduction FireEye consultants frequently utilize Windows registry data when performing forensic analysis of computer networks as part of incident response and compromise assessment missions. Th...

The Psychology of Phishing: Unraveling the Success Behind Phishing Attacks and Effective Countermeasures

The Psychology of Phishing: Unraveling the Success Behind Phishing Attacks and Effective Countermeasures By Tomer Shloman · February 1, 2024 Phishing is one of the most sneaky and widespread attacks in the constantly changing world of cybersecurity threats. This form of cyber attack, deceiving...

Shining Light on Dark Power: Yet Another Ransomware Gang

Shining Light on Dark Power: Yet Another Ransomware Gang By Pham Duy Phuc, Max Kersten and Tomer Shloman · March 23, 2023 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 into the specifics of the...

Small Business, Mighty Attack Surface

Small Business, Mighty Attack Surface By Trellix · August 3, 2022 This blog was written by Douglas McKee If given the chance to name the first five businesses that come to mind, what would they be? Maybe if you're close to the security industry you might suggest names like Microsoft, Apple or...

Take a "NetWalk" on the Wild Side

ARCHIVED STORY Take a “NetWalk” on the Wild Side ATR Operational Intelligence Team · AUG 03, 2020 · 25 MIN READ Executive Summary The NetWalker ransomware, initially known as Mailto, was first detected in August 2019. Since then, new variants were discovered throughout 2019 and the beginning of...

The Anatomy of HTML Attachment Phishing

The Anatomy of HTML Attachment Phishing: One Code, Many Variants By Niranjan Hegde and Sijo Jacob · June 14, 2023 This blog was also written by Mathanraj Thangaraju Introduction Phishing is the malevolent practise of pretending to be a reliable entity in electronic communication to steal sensitiv...

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...

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 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...

The Bug Report - July 2023 Edition

The Bug Report – July 2023 Edition By Trellix · August 02, 2023 This story was also written by John Dunlap. A Storm is Brewing! Why am I here? Summer is now in full swing, and our July Bug Report is similarly coming out swinging. This month comes with a red-hot list of software vulnerabilities...

The Art of Information Disclosure: A Deep Dive into CVE-2022-37985, a Unique Information Disclosure Vulnerability in Windows Graphics Component

The Art of Information Disclosure: A Deep Dive into CVE-2022-37985, a Unique Information Disclosure Vulnerability in Windows Graphics Component By Bing Sun · May 03, 2023 Overview In October 2022, Microsoft released a security patch to address a unique information disclosure vulnerability in the...

A Door Isn’t a Door When It’s Ajar- Part 1

A Door Isn’t a Door When It’s Ajar - Part 1 By Trellix · August 11, 2022 This story was also written by Steve Povolny and Sam Quinn Contents Executive Summary Target Selection What is it? Reconnaissance & Standard Operations Recon Standard Operations Hardware Hacking Hardware Hacking Shopping Lis...

The Bug Report – July 2022 Edition

The Bug Report – July 2022 Edition By Trellix · August 3, 2022 This story was also written by Kasimir Schulz and Jesse Chick Your Cybersecurity Comic Relief Why am I here? Welcome to the Bug Report, Heat Wave Edition! In the face of chronic irritability and soggy-pants syndrome, we are back at it...

Trellix Global Defenders: Invasion of the Information Snatchers - Protecting against RedLine Infostealer

Trellix Global Defenders: Invasion of the Information Snatchers - Protecting against RedLine Infostealer By Taylor Mullins · February 7, 2022 What information are you storing in your Browsers? Storing credentials and other important information in web browsers is a helpful method to not have to...

Rapidly Evolving Ransomware Gandcrab Version

ARCHIVED STORY Ransomware GandCrab Version 5 Partners With Crypter Service for Obfuscation By Alexandre Mundo · October 10, 2018 The GandCrab ransomware, which first appeared in January, has been updated rapidly during its short life, with Version 5.0.2 appearing this month. In this post we will...

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...

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...

Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine Increase 20-fold at End of 2022 Fueled by Russia-linked Gamaredon Activity

Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine Increase 20-fold at End of 2022 Fueled by Russia-linked Gamaredon Activity By Daksh Kapur, Tomer Shloman, Robert Venal and John Fokker · January 24, 2023 Figure 1 It has been almost a year since Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War...

The Bug Report – August 2022 Edition

The Bug Report — August 2022 Edition By Philippe Laulheret · September 7, 2022 Your Cybersecurity Comic Relief Figure 0: CVE-2022-38392 redefines “destructive interference” Why am I here? Indeed, why are we here? School is back in session, there’s a chill in the air that says fall is around the...

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...

Detecting and Visualizing Lateral Movement Attacks with Trellix XDR

Detecting and Visualizing Lateral Movement Attacks with Trellix XDR By Chintan Shah, Maulik Maheta, Ajeeth S · December 13, 2023 Executive summary With Organizations deploying multiple security controls and solutions on their network and endpoints, there is a significant gap in the way threat...

Anatomy of Celestial Stealer: Malware-as-a-Service Revealed

Anatomy of Celestial Stealer: Malware-as-a-Service Revealed By Niranjan Hegde, Adarsh S and Shashikala Piddannavar · December 3, 2024 Introduction During proactive hunting, Trellix Advanced Research Center found samples belonging to Celestial Stealer, a JavaScript-based infostealer which is...

Old Loader, New Threat: Exploring XWorm RAT's Distribution and Tactics 

Old Loader, New Threat: Exploring XWorm RAT's Distribution and Tactics By Pratik Pachpor and Adarsh S · July 31, 2023 Executive Summary: In March-April 2023, we detected a malicious email campaign delivering .Net based XWorm RAT in which embedded blogspot.com URLs were used as an entry point. Thi...

Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine Increase 20-fold at End of 2022 Fueled by Russia-linked Gamaredon Activity

Cyberattacks Targeting Ukraine Increase 20-fold at End of 2022 Fueled by Russia-linked Gamaredon Activity By Daksh Kapur, Tomer Shloman, Robert Venal and John Fokker · January 24, 2023 Figure 1 It has been almost a year since Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War...

CVE-2020-16898: Bad Neighbor | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY CVE-2020-16898: “Bad Neighbor” Steve Povolny · OCT 13, 2020 CVE-2020-16898: “Bad Neighbor” CVSS Score: 8.8 Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:P/RL:O/RC:C Overview Today, Microsoft announced a critical vulnerability in the Windows IPv6 stack, which allows an...

Ripple20 Critical Vulnerabilities – Detection Logic and Signatures

ARCHIVED STORY Ripple20 Critical Vulnerabilities – Detection Logic and Signatures By Steve Povolny · August 05, 2020 This document has been prepared by McAfee Advanced Threat Research in collaboration with JSOF who discovered and responsibly disclosed the vulnerabilities. It is intended to serve ...

‘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...

A Deep Dive into the Latest Version of Lumma InfoStealer

Unmasking the Evolving Threat: A Deep Dive into the Latest Version of Lumma InfoStealer with Code Flow Obfuscation By Mohideen Abdul Khader · April 21, 2025 Summary Lumma Stealer, first identified in 2022, remains a significant threat to this day, continuously evolving its tactics, techniques, an...

Midnight Blizzard Attack Detection in Trellix Helix

Midnight Blizzard Attack Detection in Trellix Helix By Ian Shefferman · March 18, 2024 On January 25, 2024, Microsoft reported a breach of their systems by the Russian APT group Midnight Blizzard, also known as APT29 and Cozy Bear. The attackers performed a password spray, compromised a Microsoft...

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...

A Royal Analysis of Royal Ransom

A Royal Analysis of Royal Ransom By Alexandre Mundo, and Max Kersten · April 3, 2023 We would like to thank Advanced Cyber Services team within Trellix Professional Services for the incident response-related data. Emerging in early 2022 as a private group which used multiple strains of ransomware...

Qakbot Evolves to OneNote Malware Distribution

Qakbot Evolves to OneNote Malware Distribution By Pham Duy Phuc, John Fokker J.E. and Alejandro Houspanossian · March 07, 2023 This blog was also written by Raghav Kapoor and Mathanraj Thangaraju Qakbot aka QBot, QuakBot, and Pinkslipbot is a sophisticated piece of malware that has been active...

Ripple20 Vulnerability Mitigation Best Practices

ARCHIVED STORY Ripple20 Vulnerability Mitigation Best Practices By Kevin McGrath · June 22, 2020 On June 16th, the Department of Homeland Security and CISA ICS-CERT issued a critical security advisory warning covering multiple newly discovered vulnerabilities affecting Internet-connected devices...

OneClik: A ClickOnce-Based APT Campaign Targeting Energy, Oil and Gas Infrastructure

OneClik: A ClickOnce-Based Red Team Campaign Simulating APT Tactics in Energy Infrastructure By Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Pham Duy Phuc · Updated : June 30, 2025 The Trellix Advanced Research Center previously uncovered what appeared to be a sophisticated APT malware campaign, which we dubbed...

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...

JAVA-based Sophisticated Stealer Using Discord Bot as EventListener

JAVA-Based Sophisticated Stealer Using Discord Bot as EventListener By Gurumoorthi Ramanathan · January 18, 2024 Executive Summary: In mid-November 2023, Trellix Advanced Research Center team members observed a Java-based stealer being spread through cracked software zip files using JDABuilder...

The Continued Evolution of the DarkGate Malware-as-a-Service

The Continued Evolution of the DarkGate Malware-as-a-Service By Ernesto Fernández Provecho, Pham Duy Phuc, Ciana Driscoll and Vinoo Thomas · November 21, 2023 On September 2023, the Trellix Security Operations Center SOC successfully detected and stopped an attack against Musarubra, the holding...

CVE-2020-16898: Bad Neighbor | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY CVE-2020-16898: “Bad Neighbor” Steve Povolny · OCT 13, 2020 CVE-2020-16898: “Bad Neighbor” CVSS Score: 8.8 Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:P/RL:O/RC:C Overview Today, Microsoft announced a critical vulnerability in the Windows IPv6 stack, which allows an...

CurveBall – An Unimaginative Pun but a Devastating Bug

ARCHIVED STORY CurveBall – An Unimaginative Pun but a Devastating Bug By Steve Povolny · June 17, 2020 Enterprise customers looking for information on defending against Curveball can find information here. 2020 came in with a bang this year, and it wasn’t from the record-setting number of firewor...

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...

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,...

Peeling off QR Code Phishing Onion

Peeling off QR Code Phishing Onion: Revealing the Hidden Layers of Deceit By Neel H. Pathak and Pratik Sunil Kadam · October 10, 2023 Introduction: Malicious actors always seek innovative ways to bypass detection. The Trellix Advanced Research Center recently noticed an attack campaign with an...

When Pwning Cisco Persistence Is Key When Pwning Supply Chain Cisco Is Key

When Pwning Cisco, Persistence is Key - When Pwning Supply Chain, Cisco is Key By Trellix · February 1, 2023 This story was also written by Kasimir Schulz and Sam Quinn. Unlike those of the past, modern routers now function like high-powered servers with many ethernet ports running not only routi...

GuLoader: The NSIS Vantage Point

GuLoader: The NSIS Vantage Point By Nico Paulo Yturriaga · January 24, 2023 GuLoader is an advanced shellcode downloader infamous for using anti-analysis tricks to evade detection and obstruct reverse engineering. As of this writing, the GuLoader campaign is aggressively ongoing. Trellix’s...

Threat Analysis: SquidLoader - Still Swimming Under the Radar

Threat Analysis: SquidLoader - Still Swimming Under the Radar By Charles Crofford · July 15, 2025 Executive summary A new wave of SquidLoader malware samples are actively targeting financial services institutions in Hong Kong. This sophisticated malware exhibits significant evasion capabilities,...

The Bug Report - January 2025 Edition

The Bug Report - January 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · January 30, 2025 Why am I here? Ah, January—the month of resolutions, regrets, and, apparently, really bad code. While you’re trying to get back to the gym or cut down on caffeine, attackers have been busy exploiting vulnerabilities faste...

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...

A Door Isn’t a Door When It’s Ajar - Part 2

A Door Isn’t a Door When It’s Ajar - Part II By Trellix · August 18, 2022 This story was also written by Steve Povolny and Sam Quinn Contents Introduction Software Hacking Software Hacking Shopping List Vulnerabilities Discovered CVE-2022-31479: Command injection via the web interface Vulnerable...