Trellix Launches Annual CTF Competition – Catmen Sanfrancisco!

Trellix Launches Annual CTF Competition – Catmen Sanfrancisco! By Trellix · February 1, 2022 This story was written by Steve Povolny. The Advanced Threat Research team, now with Trellix, is pleased to announce the return of our second annual Capture the Flag contest featuring 12 new challenges of...

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 - Part II | 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...

We Be Jammin’ – Bypassing Chamberlain myQ Garage Doors

ARCHIVED STORY We Be Jammin’ – Bypassing Chamberlain myQ Garage Doors Sam Quinn · JAN 06, 2020 The idea of controlling your garage door remotely and verifying that everything is secure at home, or having packages delivered directly into your garage is enticing for many people. The convenience tha...

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...

Skuld: The Infostealer that Speaks Golang

Skuld: The Infostealer that Speaks Golang By Ernesto Fernández Provecho · June 13, 2023 In May 2023, the Trellix Advanced Research Center discovered a new Golang stealer, known as Skuld, that compromised systems worldwide, something that security researchers had also noticed. The usage of Golang,...

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 –...

We Don’t Just Patch – We Hack

We Don’t Just Patch – We Hack By Trellix · February 1, 2023 This blog was written by Douglas McKee If you have read any security advisories, technology news articles or even our very own Bug Report, you have continually been bombarded with the message to patch, patch, patch! Patching is critical ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

ATR Team Finds Vulnerability in Agora Video SDK

ARCHIVED STORY Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You: McAfee ATR Finds Vulnerability in Agora Video SDK Douglas McKee · FEB 17, 2021 The McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR team is committed to uncovering security issues in both software and hardware to help developers provide safer products for businesse...

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...

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 - January 2026 Edition

The Bug Report – January 2026 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · February 12, 2026 Why am I here? Welcome back to The Bug Report, the post-holiday edition, where we realize that while our resolutions to "go to the gym" have already failed, hackers’ resolutions to "break everything" are going strong. Fo...

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...

Saints Turned Evil

Saints Turned Evil By Sushant Kumar Arya, Daksh Kapur and Rohan Shah · January 02, 2024 Attribution at the Bottom As technology advances, attackers are constantly developing new evasion mechanisms to bypass security products and stay one step ahead of security vendors and their products. We have...

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...

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...

LockBit3.0: A Threat that Persists

LockBit3.0: A Threat that Persists By Alexandre Mundo · November 17, 2022 LockBit is a very well-known family of ransomware that has created havoc worldwide over the last few years. In March 2022, a new variant of the ransomware was discovered. The LockBit3.0 variant presented with a mix of...

Get to Know Anne An

Meet Anne An Senior Security Researcher By Trellix · August 25, 2022 This blog was written by Michael Alicea At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. I’ve been hearing a lot recently about one of my colleagues, Anne An. My sources tell me she is a highly technical and “intuitive”...

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 Hermit Kingdom’s Ransomware Play

The Hermit Kingdom’s Ransomware play By Trellix · May 3, 2022 With a special thanks to @ValidHorizon who helped and shared information In February 2016, news broke about what is now known as the ‘Bangladesh Bank Heist’. Hackers attempted to transfer nearly one billion USD through the SWIFT system...

White House Executive Order – Navigating EDR Implementation

White House Executive Order – Navigating Endpoint Detection and Response EDR Implementation Tom Gann · March 08, 2022 This is the fourth in a series of blogs on the Biden Administration’s Executive Order EO on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. I encourage you to read those you may have missed...

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...

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...

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...

Detecting Credential Stealing Attacks Through Active In-Network Defense

ARCHIVED STORY Detecting Credential Stealing Attacks Through Active In-Network Defense By Trellix · September 22, 2021 This blog was written by Chintan Shah Executive Summary Today, enterprises tend to use multiple layers of security defenses, ranging from perimeter defense on network entry point...

Breaking the Security Barrier of a Globally Deployed Infusion Pump

ARCHIVED STORY Overmedicated: Breaking the Security Barrier of a Globally Deployed Infusion Pump By Douglas McKee, Steve Povolny and Philippe Laulheret · August 24, 2021 Cyberattacks on medical centers are one of the most despicable forms of cyber threat there is. For instance, on October 28th,...

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...

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...

LockerGoga Ransomware Family Used in Targeted Attacks

ARCHIVED STORY LockerGoga Ransomware Family Used in Targeted Attacks By ATR Operational Intelligence Team · April 29, 2019 Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. Initial discovery Once again, we have seen a significant new ransomware family in the news. LockerGoga, which adds new features to the tried...

Introducing pywintrace: A Python Wrapper for ETW

ARCHIVED STORY Introducing pywintrace: A Python Wrapper for ETW By Anthony Berglund, Kevin Boyd · September 19, 2017 Introduction Event tracing for Windows ETW is a lightweight logging facility first introduced with Windows 2000. Originally intended as a software diagnostic, troubleshooting and...

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...

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...

Trellix 2024 Threat Predictions

Trellix 2024 Threat Predictions By Trellix · October 30, 2023 Introduction This last year we have seen upheaval across the cybersecurity landscape. The need for effective, worldwide threat intelligence continues to grow as geopolitical and economic developments create an increasingly complicated...

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...

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 · August 10, 2023 This blog was also written by Antonio Ribeiro Trellix detected an ongoing campaign using fake Chrome browser updates to lure victims to install a remote administration software tool...

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...

2022 Election Phishing Attacks Target Election Workers

2022 Election Phishing Attacks Target Election Workers By Patrick Flynn, Fred House, Rohan Shah · October 12, 2022 Highly publicized campaign and political party breaches during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign raised election security as a critical issue among U.S. policy makers in the years...

Ukrainian Companies Targeted by Wipers - Impact & Prevention

War, weapons, and wipers By Max Kersten · March 31, 2022 In the recent weeks, Ukrainian companies have been targeted by wipers, likely created by pro-Russian actors. There has been a lot of talk about a “cyber war” and the usage of “cyber weapons.” Whereas the digital domain is certainly abused,...

PlugX: A Talisman to Behold

PlugX: A Talisman to Behold By Max Kersten, Marc Elias, Leandro Velasco, and Alexandre Mundo Alguacil · March 28, 2022 For over a decade, the PlugX malware has been observed internationally with different variants found around the world. This blog covers a PlugX variant that we have named Talisma...

Trellix Launches Annual CTF Competition – Catmen Sanfrancisco!

Trellix Launches Annual CTF Competition – Catmen Sanfrancisco! By Trellix · February 1, 2022 This story was written by Steve Povolny. The Advanced Threat Research team, now with Trellix, is pleased to announce the return of our second annual Capture the Flag contest featuring 12 new challenges of...

Is There Really Such a Thing as a Low-Paid Ransomware Operator?

ARCHIVED STORY Is There Really Such a Thing as a Low-Paid Ransomware Operator? By Thibault Seret · October 18, 2021 Introduction Going by recent headlines you could be forgiven for thinking all ransomware operators are raking in millions of ill-gotten dollars each year from their nefarious...

Dopple-Ganging Up on Facial Recognition

ARCHIVED STORY Dopple-ganging up on Facial Recognition Systems By Steve Povolny · August 25, 2020 Co-authored with Jesse Chick, OSU Senior and Former McAfee Intern, Primary Researcher. Special thanks to Dr. Catherine Huang, McAfee Advanced Analytics Team Special thanks to Kyle Baldes, Former McAf...