The Bug Report December 2022 Edition

The Bug Report — December 2022 Edition By Trellix · January 4, 2023 This story was also written by John Borrero Rodriguez Everyone gets it Why am I here? Ho Ho Ho! Welcome back to the Bug Report, or a more fitting name for this time of year: The NAUGHTY List! Yes, we checked it twice. It is no...

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...

Growling Bears Make Thunderous Noise

Growling Bears Make Thunderous Noise By Trellix · June 6, 2022 Per public attribution, Russian cybercriminal groups have always been active. Their tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs have not significantly evolved over time, although some changes have been observed. Lately, the threat...

The Bug Report - March 2022 Edition

The Bug Report - March 2022 By Charles McFarland · April 6, 2022 Your Cybersecurity Comic Relief Comic from https://geek-and-poke.com/ and remains unedited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Use of this comic does not indicate endorsement by the creator. Why am I here? Welcome back the...

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...

Introduction and Application of Model Hacking

ARCHIVED STORY Introduction and Application of Model Hacking By Steve Povolny · Febraury 19, 2020 Catherine Huang, Ph.D., and Shivangee Trivedi contributed to this blog. The term “Adversarial Machine Learning” AML is a mouthful! The term describes a research field regarding the study and design o...

Trellix Global Defenders: Analysis and Protections for Destructive Wipers

Trellix Global Defenders: Analysis and Protections for Destructive Wipers By Ayed Al Qartah · November 17, 2022 Modern cyber warfare involves the actions of a nation-state or their proxies organized crime and hacker groups to attack and attempt to damage other nations’ computers or information...

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...

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,...

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...

CVE-2023-0286: The OpenSSL Who Cried “Severity: High

CVE-2023-0286: The OpenSSL Who Cried “Severity: High” By Mark Bereza · February 9, 2023 This story was also written by John Dunlap. Background It feels like just yesterday that OpenSSL was the subject of widespread scrutiny over two buffer overflow vulnerabilities rated Severity: High. Fortunatel...

Demystifying Qbot Malware

Demystifying Qbot Malware By Adithya Chandra · August 24, 2022 This blog was also written by Sushant Kumar Arya Executive summary The Trellix SecOps Team has observed an uptick in the Qbot malware infections in recent months. Qbot has been an active threat for over 14 years and continues to evolv...

The Bug Report - February 2022 Edition

The Bug Report - February 2022 By Jesse Chick · March 2, 2022 Your Cybersecurity Comic Relief Image courtesy of https://toggl.com/ Why am I here? Welcome back to the Bug Report, stubby-month edition! For those in the audience unfamiliar with our shtick, every month we compile a shortlist of the t...

Ransomware Maze

ARCHIVED STORY Ransomware Maze Alexandre Mundo · MAR 26, 2020 Overview The Maze ransomware, previously known in the community as “ChaCha ransomware”, was discovered on May the 29th 2019 by Jerome Segura1. The main goal of the ransomware is to crypt all files that it can in an infected system and...

The Bug Report - October 2025 Edition

The Bug Report – October 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · October 31, 2025 Why am I here? Welcome to October's cybersecurity horror show, where the tricks are malicious and the treats are... Well, there aren't any treats. Just vulnerabilities that would make even the most seasoned security...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

Five Eyes Alliance Advisory & Using Threat Intelligence

Trellix Global Defenders: Five Eyes Alliance Advisory and Using Threat Intelligence to Protect Against Future Attacks By Taylor Mullins · May 6, 2022 Evolving intelligence continues to indicate that the Russian government is exploring options to launch cyberattacks in retaliation against...

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...

In NTDLL I Trust – Process Reimaging and Endpoint Security Solution Bypass

ARCHIVED STORY In NTDLL I Trust – Process Reimaging and Endpoint Security Solution Bypass By Eoin Carroll · June 20, 2019 Process Reimaging Overview The Windows Operating System has inconsistencies in how it determines process image FILEOBJECT locations, which impacts non-EDR Endpoint Detection 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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

AI is the Solution, Not the Problem

AI is the Solution, Not the Problem By Trellix · August 07, 2023 This story was also written by Oded Margalit. AI Artificial Intelligence / ML Machine Learning has recently been painted as the master evil. In this blog I would like to suggest a different view, where we can use it to make a better...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Netop Vision Pro - Distance Learning Software is 20/20 in Hindsight

ARCHIVED STORY Netop Vision Pro – Distance Learning Software is 20/20 in Hindsight By Sam Quinn · MAR 21, 2021 · 27 MIN READ The McAfee Labs Advanced Threat Research team is committed to uncovering security issues in both software and hardware to help developers provide safer products for...

Tales From the Trenches; a Lockbit Ransomware Story

ARCHIVED STORY Tales From the Trenches; a Lockbit Ransomware Story By ATR Operational Intelligence Team · APR 30, 2020 Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. In collaboration with Northwave As we highlighted previously across two blogs, targeted ransomware attacks have increased massively over the past...

The Unfriending Truth: How to Spot a Facebook Phishing Scam Before It's Too Late

The Unfriending Truth: How to Spot a Facebook Phishing Scam Before It's Too Late By Mark Joseph Marti · January 12, 2026 Introduction As one of the world's largest social media platforms, with over 3 billion active users, Facebook is a frequent target for phishing scams. Hackers aim to hijack use...

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,...

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...

Trucking on with DotDumper

Trucking on with DotDumper By Trellix · May 11, 2023 This blog was written by Max Kersten On the 11th of August 2022, the initial public version of DotDumper was released. A brief refresh: DotDumper is an open-source automatic unpacker for DotNet Framework targeting files. This blog marks a publi...

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...

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...

Dismantling a Prolific Cybercriminal Empire: REvil Arrests and Reemergence

Dismantling a Prolific Cybercriminal Empire: REvil Arrests and Reemergence By John Fokker · September 29, 2022 We’ve recently seen reports that the REvil ransomware gang is back online after the January 2022 arrests of several its members by Russian authorities claiming to dismantle the group and...

Digging into HermeticWiper

Digging into HermeticWiper By Max Kersten · March 2, 2022 A special thanks toMarc Elias for his help during my analysis. Additionally, I’d like to commend all researchers who have publicly shared their initial findings to help incident response teams; I hope this deep dive contributes to a furthe...

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...

Stitching the Kill Chain: Detecting NTDS.dit Exfiltration with Trellix Helix Correlation

Stitching the Kill Chain: Detecting NTDS.dit Exfiltration with Trellix Helix Correlation By Adithya Chandra and Maulik Maheta · August 18, 2026 Executive Summary While attackers continuously cycle through new tooling, their underlying techniques remain remarkably consistent. Credential theft from...

Exploring New Techniques of Fake Browser Updates Leading to NetSupport RAT

Exploring New Techniques of Fake Browser Updates Leading to NetSupport RAT By Jonell Baltazar and Antonio Ribeiro · August 10, 2023 Trellix detected an ongoing campaign using fake Chrome browser updates to lure victims to install a remote administration software tool called NetSupport Manager...

Trellix HAX 2023 Capture the Flag Results!

Trellix HAX 2023 Capture the Flag Results! By Mark Bereza · March 17, 2023 This story was also written by Jesse Chick. All good things must come to an end, and our annual CTF is unfortunately no exception. When this competition began, we asked each of you to try your hand at 12 new challenges –...

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...

Get to Know Patrick Flynn

Meet Patrick Flynn Head of Advanced Programs Group at Trellix Threat Labs By Michael Alicea · May 24, 2022 At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. This week, I sat down with Pat Flynn, Head of Advanced Programs Group for Trellix Threat Labs. His job is a critical one and how he goes abo...