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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

Industrial Security Featuring Delta's enteliBUS Manager

ARCHIVED STORY From Building Control to Damage Control: A Case Study in Industrial Security Featuring Delta's enteliBUS Manager By Mark Bereza · August 09, 2019 Management. Control. It seems that you can’t stick five people in a room together without one of them trying to order the others around...

Shamoon Attackers Employ New Tool Kit to Wipe Infected Systems

ARCHIVED STORY Shamoon Attackers Employ New Tool Kit to Wipe Infected Systems By Thomas Roccia · December 19, 2018 Last week the McAfee Advanced Threat Research team posted an analysis of a new wave of Shamoon “wiper” malware attacks that struck several companies in the Middle East and Europe. In...

Safeguarding Election Integrity: Threat Hunting for the U.S. Elections

Safeguarding Election Integrity: Threat Hunting for the U.S. Elections By Ernesto Provecho and John Fokker · December 20, 2024 This blog was also written by Max Kersten With 2024 being a major election year globally, the stakes for election security were and remain high. More than 60 countries,...

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...

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...

Email Cyberattacks on Arab Countries Rise in Lead to Global Football Tournament

Email Cyberattacks on Arab Countries Rise in Lead to Global Football Tournament By Daksh Kapur · November 17, 2022 This story was also written by Sparsh Jain. Figure 1 Global eyes are soon to be turned to the first global football tournament to be held in the Arab world kicking off on November 20...

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...

DotDumper: Automatically Unpacking DotNet based Malware

DotDumper: Automatically Unpacking DotNet Based Malware By Trellix · August 11, 2022 This blog was written by Max Kersten The automatic detection and classification of any given file in a reliable manner is often considered the holy grail of malware analysis. The trials and tribulations to get...

Suspected DarkHotel APT Activity Update

Suspected DarkHotel APT activity update One Hotel to rule them all, One Hotel to find them, One Hotel to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. By John Fokker · March 17, 2022 This story was also written by Thibault Seret Introduction: Our advanced threat research team has discovered a...

See Ya Sharp: A Loaders Tale | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY See Ya Sharp: A Loader’s Tale Max Kersten · Aug 04, 2021 Introduction The DotNet based CyaX-Sharp loader, also known as ReZer0, is known to spread commodity malware, such as AgentTesla. In recent years, this loader has been referenced numerous times, as it was used in campaigns...

The evolution of the Kuiper ransomware

Kuiper Ransomware’s Evolution By Max Kersten · January 17, 2024 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 with operations can be provided...

Industrial and Manufacturing CVEs: Addressing the SCADA in the Room

Industrial and Manufacturing CVEs: Addressing the SCADA in the Room By Trellix · May 22, 2023 This blog was written by Charles McFarland The industrial and manufacturing spaces are critical to the global economy. They produce the goods and services we rely on every day, from food and clothing to...

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 –...

Nation-State Crosshairs: Australia, India & Japan

In The Nation-State Crosshairs: Australia, India & Japan 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’ mindsets...

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...

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...

Rhysida Ransomware

Rhysida Ransomware By Alexandre Mundo, Max Kersten, and Leandro Velasco · October 9, 2023 New ransomware victims are made every day by ransom gangs with a variety of ransomware malware families, one of which is the Rhysida ransomware family. Within this blog, an anonymised version of an attack by...

The Threat Lurking in Data Centers – Hack Power Management Systems, Take All the Power

The Threat Lurking in Data Centers – Hack Power Management Systems, Take All the Power By Trellix · August 12, 2023 This story was also written by Jesse Chick, Philippe Laulheret and Sam Quinn. Summary In a modern working environment where many employees are working from home or in hybrid office...

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...

Trucking on with DotDumper

Trucking on with DotDumper By Max Kersten · May 11, 2023 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 public update which supports unmanaged...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

OneClik: A ClickOnce-Based APT Campaign Targeting Energy, Oil and Gas Infrastructure By Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Pham Duy Phuc · June 24, 2025 The Trellix Advanced Research Center has uncovered a sophisticated APT malware campaign that we’ve dubbed OneClik. It specifically targets the energy, oil...

Uncover the Hidden Story of Ransomware Victims – They’re Not Who You Think

Uncover the Hidden Story of Ransomware Victims – They’re Not Who You Think By Trellix Advanced Research Center · July 31, 2023 Ransomware attacks against large corporations often dominate headlines. High-profile attacks against organizations like Kaseya, Colonial Pipeline, and MOVEit might make y...

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...

Trellix HAX 2023 CTF Competition

Trellix HAX 2023 CTF Competition Now Open for Registration! By Mark Bereza · February 17, 2023 This story was also written by John Dunlap. Introduction Trellix’s Advanced Research Center is happy to announce the launch of Trellix HAX 2023, our third annual capture the flag CTF competition! With 1...

5G: The Final Frontier

5G: The Final Frontier This story was written by Kevin Mcgrath · April 7th, 2022 Today Trellix Threat Labs is excited to announce the release of a whitepaper dedicated to 5G and its potential security concerns. As we look at the potential of 5G, we foresee it impacting nearly every facet of digit...

BlackMatter Ransomware Analysis; The Dark Side Returns

ARCHIVED STORY BlackMatter Ransomware Analysis; The Dark Side Returns By Alexandre Mundo and Marc Elias · September 22, 2021 BlackMatter is a new ransomware threat discovered at the end of July 2021. This malware started with a strong group of attacks and some advertising from its developers that...

Vulnerabilities in Globally Used B. Braun Infusion Pump

ARCHIVED STORY McAfee Enterprise ATR Uncovers Vulnerabilities in Globally Used B. Braun Infusion Pump Douglas McKee and Philippe Laulheret · Aug 24, 2021 Overview As part of our continued goal to provide safer products for enterprises and consumers, we at McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR...

Beyond Clubhouse: Vulnerable Agora SDKs Still in Widespread Use | McAfee Blogs

Beyond Clubhouse: Vulnerable Agora SDKs Still in Widespread Use Steve Povolny · FEB 18, 2021 On February 17th, 2021, McAfee disclosed findings based on a 10-month long disclosure process with major video conferencing vendor Agora, Inc. As we disclosed the findings to Agora in April 2020, this...

On Drovorub: Linux Kernel Security Best Practices | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY On Drovorub: Linux Kernel Security Best Practices By ATR Operational Intelligence Team/b · AUG 13, 2020 Intro In a U.S. government cyber security advisory released today, the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation warn of a previously undisclosed piece of Linu...

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...

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...

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 Door Isn’t a Door When It’s Ajar - Part 3

A Door Isn’t a Door When It’s Ajar - Part III By Trellix · August 25, 2022 This story was also written by Steve Povolny and Sam Quinn Contents Installing OnGuard by Third Party Vendor Exploitation and Hacking the Planet! Putting it all Together Building the Final Demo System The Demo Lessons and...