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 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...

Detecting and Visualizing Lateral Movement Attacks with Trellix XDR - Part 2

Detecting and Visualizing Lateral Movement Attacks with Trellix Helix Connect - Part 2 By Maulik Maheta · May 21, 2023 This blog was also written by Chintan Shah Executive summary In the part 1 of this series we discussed in depth about the known Lateral movement attacks like abusing weak service...

Validate the Efficacy of your Endpoint Security Controls Continuously with Breach and Attack Simulations

Validate the efficacy of your Endpoint Security controls continuously with Breach and Attack Simulations By Nicolas Stricher, Trellix XDR solution Architect, EMEA and Doron RosenbergTrellix Senior Sales Engineer, Israel · March 4, 2022 Efficacy of Trellix Endpoint Security At Trellix we are proud...

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...

Detecting and Visualizing Lateral Movement Attacks with Trellix XDR

Detecting and Visualizing Lateral Movement Attacks with Trellix Helix Connect By Maulik Maheta and Adithya Chandra · July 17, 2025 Executive summary This blog marks the third installment in our series on detecting and visualizing lateral movement attacks with Trellix Helix Connect. A lateral...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Trellix Advanced Research Center patches 61,000 vulnerable open-source projects

Trellix Advanced Research Center Patches 61,000 Vulnerable Open-Source Projects By Trellix · January 23, 2023 This blog was written by Douglas McKee Late last year, the Trellix Advanced Research Center team uncovered a vulnerability in Python’s tarfile module. As we dug in, we realized this was...

Limiting the Software Supply Chain Attack Surface

Limiting the Software Supply Chain Attack Surface By Trellix · September 21, 2022 This blog was written by Douglas McKee We often discuss how the intentions of an action matter, and it's clear to see why they do. If I am walking down the sidewalk, distracted by my phone of course and run into a...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 - 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...

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...

Amadey Exploiting Self-Hosted GitLab to Distribute StealC

Amadey Exploiting Self-Hosted GitLab to Distribute StealC By Rahul Sharma · December 18, 2025 Executive summary Amadey is a malware loader that has been active since 2018, primarily used to distribute second-stage payloads and infostealers. While Amadey has been previously known to distribute...

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...

RansomHouse am See

RansomHouse am See By Pham Duy Phuc in collaboration with Noël Keijzer and Michaël Schrijver from Northwave · February 14, 2024 This blog was also written by Max Kersten Ransom gangs make big bucks by extorting victims, which sadly isn’t new. Their lucrative business allows them not only to live...

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...

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...

Yanluowang Ransomware Leaks Analysis: Organization, Collaboration with HelloKitty, Babuk and Conti

Yanluowang Ransomware Leaks Analysis: Organization, Collaboration with HelloKitty, Babuk and Conti By Jambul Tologonov· November 22, 2022 Introduction On October 31, 2022, Yanluowang’s TOR site was hacked displaying a message “check and mate!! Yanluowang Matrix chat hacked @yanluowangleaks Time’s...

‘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...

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 ...

The Bug Report - April 2025 Edition

The Bug Report - April 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · May 8, 2025 Why am I here? Ah, spring. The season of blossoms, allergies, and — apparently — auth bypasses, remote code execution, and buffer overflows is in full bloom. Welcome to The Bug Report – April 2025 Edition, where we roll up our...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Read The Manual Locker: A Private RaaS Provider

Read The Manual Locker: A Private RaaS Provider By Max Kersten · April 13, 2023 The underground intelligence was obtained by N074B07. Another day, another ransomware-as-a-service RaaS provider, or so it seems. We’ve observed the “Read The Manual” RTM Locker gang, previously known for their e-crim...

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...