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...

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...

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...

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...

Get to Know Patrick Flynn

Meet Patrick Flynn Head of Advanced Programs Group at Trellix Threat Labs By Trellix · May 24, 2022 This blog was written by Michael Alicea 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...

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...

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...

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...

Hiding in Plain Sight: Multi-Actor ahost.exe Attacks

Hiding in Plain Sight: Deconstructing the Multi-Actor DLL Sideloading Campaign abusing ahost.exe By Mallikarjun Wali and Mohideen Abdul Khader · January 14, 2026 Executive summary The Trellix Advanced Research Center has uncovered an active malware campaign that exploits a DLL sideloading...

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 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...

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...

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...

From the Shadows to the Headlines: A Decade of State-Sponsored Cyber Leaks

From the Shadows to the Headlines: A Decade of State-Sponsored Cyber Leaks By Ryan Slaney and Emma DeCarli · January 20, 2026 Executive summary The December 2, 2025, publication of a massive leak revealing the inner workings of the IRGC-linked Department 40 a.k.a. APT35, Charming Kitten, and Fres...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Update on WhisperGate, Destructive Malware Targeting Ukraine – Threat Intelligence & Protections Update

Update on WhisperGate, Destructive Malware Targeting Ukraine – Threat Intelligence & Protections Update By Taylor Mullins, Mo Cashman and Raj Samani · January 20, 2022 Recent news reports of a “ransomware” campaign targeting Ukraine has resulted in significant press coverage regarding not only...

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...

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...

CSI Evidence Indicators for Targeted Ransomware Attacks

ARCHIVED STORY CSI: Evidence Indicators for Targeted Ransomware Attacks – Part I By Trellix · Febraury 12, 2020 For many years now I have been working and teaching in the field of digital forensics, malware analysis and threat intelligence. During one of the classes we always talk about Lockard’s...

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...

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...

McAfee ATR Aids Police in Arrest of Rubella & Dryad Office Macro Builder

ARCHIVED STORY McAfee ATR Aids Police in Arrest of Rubella & Dryad Office Macro Builder By John Fokker · July 16, 2019 Everyday thousands of people receive emails with malicious attachments in their email inbox. Disguised as a missed payment or an invoice, a cybercriminal sender tries to entice a...

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...

Scanning Danger: Unmasking the Threats of Quishing

Scanning Danger: Unmasking the Threats of Quishing By Shyava Tripathi, Raghav Kapoor and Rohan Shah · December 07, 2023 Phishing, a prevalent cybercrime worldwide, is responsible for as much as 90 percent of data breaches, making it a significant avenue for the theft of sensitive credentials and...

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...

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...

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...

Get To Know John Fokker

Meet John Fokker Head of Cyber Investigations for Trellix Threat Labs By Trellix · April 28, 2022 This blog was written by Michael Alicea At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. This week, I sat down with John Fokker, Head of Cyber Investigations for Trellix Threat Labs and one of the...

Detection of ‘Leave Behinds’ From Nation-State Actors

Who left the backdoor open? By Trellix · March 28, 2022 In our recent report, In the Crosshairs: Companies and Nation-State Cyber Threats, over 800 IT decision makers from around the world were interviewed on their experiences with nation-state cyber attacks. One of the questions sought to...

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...

Operation North Star: Behind The Scenes | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY Operation North Star: Behind The Scenes Christiaan Beek · NOV 05, 2020 Executive Summary It is rare to be provided an inside view on how major cyber espionage campaigns are conducted within the digital realm. The only transparency afforded is a limited view of victims, a malware...

Spanish MSSP Targeted by BitPaymer Ransomware

ARCHIVED STORY Spanish MSSP Targeted by BitPaymer Ransomware By ATR Operational Intelligence Team · November 08, 2019 Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez Initial Discovery This week the news hit that several companies in Spain were hit by a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks themselves are not new...

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...

PureRAT: A Multi-Stage, Fileless RAT Utilizing Image Steganography and Process Hollowing

PureRAT: A Multi-Stage, Fileless RAT Utilizing Image Steganography and Process Hollowing By Prashanth A N and Mallikarjun Wali · April 20, 2026 PureRAT is an advanced remote access trojan RAT characterized by its complex infection stages. The intrusion sequence is initiated by a malicious .LNK fi...

Fileless Multi-Stage Remcos RAT: From Phishing to Memory-Resident Execution

Fileless Multi-Stage Remcos RAT: From Phishing to Memory-Resident Execution By Madhini Muralidharan · March 11, 2026 Traditional malware campaigns rely heavily on dropping executable files to disk—artifacts that defenders can scan, quarantine, and analyze with signature-based security tools. Mode...

Genesis Market No Longer Feeds The Evil Cookie Monster

Genesis Market No Longer Feeds The Evil Cookie Monster By John Fokker and Ernesto Fernández Provecho · April 05, 2023 This blog was also written by Max Kersten We would like to thank Steen Pedersen and Mo Cashman for their remediation advice. On the 4th and the 5th of April, a law enforcement...

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...

Conti Group Targets ESXi Hypervisors With its Linux Variant

Conti Group Targets ESXi Hypervisors With its Linux Variant By Marc Elias, Jambul Tologonov and Alexandre Mundo · Apr 20, 2022 Despite the leak of the conversations of the Conti members that happened in March 2022, which we analyzed and published recently, the group seems to continue its operatio...

What’s in the Box? Part II: Hacking the iParcelBox

ARCHIVED STORY What’s in the Box? Part II: Hacking the iParcelBox By Steve Povolny · June 18, 2020 Package delivery is just one of those things we take for granted these days. This is especially true in the age of Coronavirus, where e-commerce and at-home deliveries make up a growing portion of...

Our Experiences Participating in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere Bounty Program | McAfee Blogs

CSI: Evidence Indicators for Targeted Ransomware Attacks – Part II Christiaan Beek · FEB 20, 2020 In our first article we discussed the growing pattern of targeted ransomware attacks where the first infection stage is often an info-stealer kind of malware used to gain credentials/access to...

Avaya Deskphone: Decade-Old Vulnerability Found in Phone's Firmware

ARCHIVED STORY Avaya Deskphone: Decade-Old Vulnerability Found in Phone’s Firmware By Philippe Laulheret · August 08, 2019 Avaya is the second largest VOIP solution provider source with an install base covering 90% of the Fortune 100 companies source, with products targeting a wide spectrum of...

Hacktivist Groups: The Shadowy Links to Nation-State Agendas

Hacktivist Groups: The Shadowy Links to Nation-State Agendas By Ernesto Fernández Provecho · December 16, 2024 Introduction Hacktivism, the intersection of hacking and activism, has emerged as a potent force in the digital age. It involves using technology to achieve social or political goals,...

MacOS Malware Surges as Corporate Usage Grows

MacOS Malware Surges as Corporate Usage Grows By Ilya Kolmanovich, Prashant Kadam and Duy-Phuc Pham · October 30, 2024 This blog was also written by Joe Malenfant and Max Kersten An apple a day keeps the doctor away, While the age-old expression does have its merits, the malware landscape on...