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...

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...

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...

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,...

McAfee ATR Thinks in Graphs | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY McAfee ATR Thinks in Graphs By Valentine Mairet · MAR 08, 2021 · 19 MIN READ 0. Introduction John Lambert, a distinguished researcher specializing in threat intelligence at Microsoft, once said these words that changed perspectives: “Defenders think in lists. Attackers think in...

Triton Malware Spearheads Latest Attacks on Industrial Systems | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY Triton Malware Spearheads Latest Attacks on Industrial Systems Alexandre Mundo · MAR 26, 2020 Malware that attacks industrial control systems ICS, such as the Stuxnet campaign in 2010, is a serious threat. This class of cyber sabotage can spy on, disrupt, or destroy systems that...

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...

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – Follow The Money

ARCHIVED STORY McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – Follow The Money By John Fokker · October 14, 2019 Episode 3: Follow the Money This is the third installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR analysis of Sodinokibi and its connections to GandCrab, the mos...

How A Simple Misconfiguration Can Fuel Offline Attacker Tools

How A Simple Misconfiguration Can Fuel Offline Attacker Tools By Grant McDonald · April 9, 2026 It’s no secret that misconfigurations are a gateway for attackers. But that doesn’t mean misconfigurations won’t happen or that attackers won’t attempt to exploit them. In the latest research from our...

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...

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 –...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

The Iranian Cyber Capability 2026

The Iranian Cyber Capability 2026 By John Fokker and Ernesto Fernández Provecho · March 5, 2026 Introduction In 2024, we published an assessment of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s cyber capabilities, outlining the structure, tradecraft, and strategic intent of Iranian-aligned threat actors. The co...

Dark Web Roast - September 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - September 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · October 14, 2025 Executive Summary September 2025 brought us a delightful buffet of underground incompetence that makes one wonder if cybercriminals are actively competing for the "Most Spectacular Failure" award. From...

XWorm V6: Exploring Pivotal Plugins

XWorm V6: Exploring Pivotal Plugins By Niranjan Hegde and Sijo Jacob · October 2, 2025 Introduction In the constantly evolving world of cyber threats, staying informed is not just an advantage; it's a necessity. First observed in 2022, XWorm quickly gained notoriety as a highly effective malware,...

When AD Gets Breached: Detecting NTDS.dit Dumps and Exfiltration with Trellix NDR

When AD Gets Breached: Detecting NTDS.dit Dumps and Exfiltration with Trellix NDR By Maulik Maheta · September 25, 2025 Executive summary Active Directory AD stores the digital keys to an organization's kingdom. When attackers gain access to a network, they often target the NTDS.dit file, which...

The Democratization of Phishing: Popularity of PhaaS platforms on the rise

The Democratization of Phishing: Popularity of PhaaS Platforms on the Rise By Ryan Slaney · June 30, 2025 The phishing industry is being profoundly reshaped by the surge of Phishing-as-a-Service PhaaS platforms. These accessible, often Artificial Intelligence AI-powered, offerings are democratizi...

ICYMI: Emotet Reappeared Early This Year, Unfortunately

ICYMI: Emotet Reappeared Early This Year, Unfortunately By Adithya Chandra, Joao Marques, and Raghav Kapoor · September 1, 2023 Executive Summary Emotet first appeared in 2014 and continues to be a dangerous and resilient malware, despite attempts by law enforcement agencies to take it down in...

Genesis Market No Longer Feeds The Evil Cookie Monster

Genesis Market No Longer Feeds The Evil Cookie Monster By John Fokker, Ernesto Fernández Provecho and Max Kersten · April 05, 2023 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 taskforce spanning agencies acro...

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...

Evolution of BazarCall Social Engineering Tactics

Evolution of BazarCall Social Engineering Tactics By Daksh Kapur · October 6, 2022 What is BazarCall? As nicely defined in this article by Microsoft: BazarCall campaigns forgo malicious links or attachments in email messages in favor of phone numbers that recipients are misled into calling. It’s ...

Get To Know John Fokker

Meet John Fokker Head of Cyber Investigations for Trellix Threat Labs By Michael Alicea · April 28, 2022 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 leading cybersecurity experts in t...

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...

Trellix Global Defenders: BlackCat Ransomware as a Service - The Cat is certainly out of the bag!

Trellix Global Defenders: BlackCat Ransomware as a Service - The Cat is certainly out of the bag! By Trellix · February 8, 2022 Research Contributions and Analysis: Filippo Sitzia This story was written by Arnab Roy Threat Summary Blackcat also known as ALPHV/Noberus is a Ransomware as a Service...

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...

Detecting Credential Stealing Attacks Through Active In-Network Defense

ARCHIVED STORY Detecting Credential Stealing Attacks Through Active In-Network Defense By Chintan Shah · September 22, 2021 Executive Summary Today, enterprises tend to use multiple layers of security defenses, ranging from perimeter defense on network entry points to host based security solution...

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...

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...

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...

HVACking: Understanding the Delta Between Security and Reality

ARCHIVED STORY HVACking: Understanding the Delta Between Security and Reality By Douglas McKee · August 09, 2019 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 businesses and...

Signed, sealed, injected: The mechanics of DCRat in 2026

Signed, sealed, injected: The mechanics of DCRat in 2026 By Madhini Muralidharan, Shalaka Patil and Kaushal Sarda · August 13, 2026 Introduction In early 2026, the Trellix Advanced Research Center ARC identified and analyzed an active DarkCrystal RAT DCRat campaign following a critical customer...

Masjesu Rising: The Commercial IoT Botnet Built for Stealth, DDoS, and IoT Evasion

Masjesu Rising: The Commercial IoT Botnet Built for Stealth, DDoS, and IoT Evasion By Mohideen Abdul Khader F · April 7, 2026 Botnet overview The Masjesu botnet, a sophisticated, commercially-run Internet of Things IoT threat, has been operational and evolving since early 2023, continuing into...

The Developer's Newest Bug: Speed

The Developer's Newest Bug: Speed By Tola Olawale · December 2, 2025 Artificial intelligence AI has unequivocally entered its “main character” era, moving from a niche tool to a universal creator. This massive shift has given rise to "vibe coding ": the practice of using AI to generate functional...

How Trellix Helix detects AS-REP Roasting in Active Directory

How Trellix Helix detects AS-REP Roasting in Active Directory By Adithya Chandra and Maulik Maheta · November 13, 2025 Executive Summary Adversaries use AS-REP Roasting to extract and crack password hashes from Active Directory AD accounts with Kerberos preauthentication disabled, a...

Gang Wars: Breaking Trust Among Cyber Criminals

Gang Wars: Breaking Trust Among Cyber Criminals By John Fokker and Jambul Tologonov · August 5, 2025 Introduction In the final, unforgettable scene of the film Reservoir Dogs , a group of criminals — once united by a common goal — stand in a Mexican standoff, guns drawn, hearts pounding. Suspicio...

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...

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...

Rhysida Ransomware

Rhysida Ransomware By Leandro Velasco · October 9, 2023 This blog was also written by Alexandre Mundo and Max Kersten 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...

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...

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...

Wipermania: An All You Can Wipe Buffet

Wipermania: An All You Can Wipe Buffet By Trellix · November 15, 2022 This blog was written by Max Kersten In early 2022, Ukrainian companies were struck by multiple destructive wipers, attacking various organizations across sectors. This raised questions about the usage and impact of “digital...

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...

Keeping A Critical Eye on IoT Devices

Keeping a Critical Eye on IoT Devices By Sam Quinn · April 21, 2022 Trellix Labs is excited to announce the beginning of a new video series which captures one of our senior vulnerability researchers work on hacking an IoT device from beginning to end. This will conclude with the releasing of a ne...

2022 Threat Predictions

Trellix 2022 Threat Predictions By Trellix · January 19, 2022 Ransomware, nation states, social media, and a shifting reliance on a remote workforce made headlines in 2021, proving that bad actors only continue to rise to the challenge. Defiantly, they thwart solution stacks and gain momentum eac...

Nation States Will Weaponize Social and Recruit Bad Guys with Benefits in 2022

ARCHIVED STORY Nation States Will Weaponize Social and Recruit Bad Guys with Benefits in 2022 By Raj Samani · October 31, 2021 McAfee Enterprise and FireEye recently released its 2022 Threat Predictions. In this blog, we take a deeper dive into the continuingly aggressive role Nation States will...

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...