Unmasking ViperSoftX: In-Depth Defense Strategies Against AutoIt-Powered Threats

Trellix Global Defenders: Unmasking ViperSoftX: In-Depth Defense Strategies Against AutoIt-Powered Threats By James Murphy · August 29, 2024 There’s a common misconception that threat actors must always write complicated and custom code in every piece of their malware, skilfully evading defenses,...

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...

ICYMI: Emotet Reappeared Early This Year, Unfortunately

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

Feeding Gophers to Ghidra

Feeding Gophers to Ghidra By Trellix · June 6, 2023 This blog was written by Max Kersten The scripts discussed in the article are based on the magnificent work ofDorka Palotay from CUJOai. Golang malware is becoming increasingly prevalent, requiring analysts to know how to effectively analyze the...

A Royal Analysis of Royal Ransom

A Royal Analysis of Royal Ransom By Trellix · April 3, 2023 This blog was also written by Alexandre Mundo and Max Kersten We would like to thank Advanced Cyber Services team within Trellix Professional Services for the incident response-related data. Emerging in early 2022 as a private group whic...

Cyber Tools and Foreign Policy: A False Flag Chinese “APT” and Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan

Cyber Tools and Foreign Policy: A False Flag Chinese “APT” and Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan By Anne An · September 29, 2022 Preface U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan led to an aftershock across the Taiwan Strait and through the Asia Pacific region. Immediately after Pelosi’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...

DotDumper: Automatically Unpacking DotNet based Malware

DotDumper: Automatically Unpacking DotNet Based Malware By Max Kersten · August 11, 2022 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 there are plenty, which is why the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Digging into HermeticWiper

Digging into HermeticWiper By Max Kersten · March 2, 2022 A special thanks to Marc 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 furth...

Securing Space 4.0 – One Small Step or a Giant Leap? - Part 2

ARCHIVED STORY Securing Space 4.0 – One Small Step or a Giant Leap? Part 2 By Eoin Carroll · September 30, 2020 McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR is collaborating with Cork Institute of Technology CIT and its Blackrock Castle Observatory BCO and the National Space Center in Cork, Ireland. In th...

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...

Iran Cyber Threat Update

ARCHIVED STORY Iran Cyber Threat Update By Trellix · January 08, 2020 Recent political tensions in the Middle East region have led to significant speculation of increased cyber-related activities. McAfee is on a heightened state of alert to monitor the evolving threats and rapidly implement...

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...

IoT Zero-Days – Is Belkin WeMo Smart Plug the Next Malware Target?

ARCHIVED STORY IoT Zero-Days – Is Belkin WeMo Smart Plug the Next Malware Target? By Steve Povolny · April 18, 2019 Effective malware is typically developed with intention, targeting specific victims using either known or unknown vulnerabilities to achieve its primary functions. In this blog, we...

Ryuk Ransomware Attack: Rush to Attribution Misses the Point

ARCHIVED STORY Ryuk Ransomware Attack: Rush to Attribution Misses the Point By John Fokker · January 09, 2019 Senior analyst Ryan Sherstobitoff contributed to this report. During the past week, an outbreak of Ryuk ransomware that impeded newspaper printing services in the United States has garner...

BIOS Boots What? Finding Evil in Boot Code at Scale! | Trellix

ARCHIVED STORY BIOS Boots What? Finding Evil in Boot Code at Scale! By Ryan Fisher, Andrew Davis · August 08, 2018 Malware continues to take advantage of a legacy component of modern systems designed in the 1980s. Despite the cyber threat landscape continuing to evolve at an ever-increasing pace,...

McAfee Labs Advanced Threat Research Aids Arrest of Suspected Cybercrime Gang Linked to Top Malware CTB Locker

ARCHIVED STORY McAfee Labs Advanced Threat Research Aids Arrest of Suspected Cybercrime Gang Linked to Top Malware CTB Locker By Trellix · December 20, 2017 In our recent research, we interviewed the actors behind ransomware campaigns. One of the interesting findings was cybercriminals seemed to...

Taiwan Bank Heist and the Role of Pseudo Ransomware

ARCHIVED STORY Taiwan Bank Heist and the Role of Pseudo Ransomware By Trellix · October 12, 2017 Widespread reports claim the Far Eastern International Bank in Taiwan has become a victim of hacking. The attacks demonstrate the global nature of cybercrime, with the cybercriminals attempting to wir...

‘Popcorn Time’ Ransomware Sure to Cause Indigestion

ARCHIVED STORY ‘Popcorn Time’ Ransomware Sure to Cause Indigestion By Tim Hux · December 19, 2016 In early December the new ransomware “Popcorn Time” was discovered. It gives the victim the option of paying the ransom or infecting two other individuals and getting them to pay. “Popcorn Time” is a...

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...

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,...

Dark Web Roast - July 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - July 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · August 19, 2025 Executive Summary July 2025 delivered a masterclass in cybercriminal mediocrity that would make even the most charitable threat intelligence analyst weep into their coffee. After extensive hunts across the da...

The Bug Report - June 2025 Edition

The Bug Report - June 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun · July 1, 2025 Why am I here? Welcome to the June 2025 edition of The Bug Report from the Trellix Advanced Research Center, where the only thing hotter than your CPU fan is the vulnerability feed. As the temperature rises and the air condition...

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,...

The Mechanics of ViperSoftX: Exploiting AutoIt and CLR for Stealthy PowerShell Execution

The Mechanics of ViperSoftX: Exploiting AutoIt and CLR for Stealthy PowerShell Execution By Sijo Jacob · July 9, 2024 This blog was also written by Mathanraj Thangaraju Threat Summary In the dynamic landscape of cyber threats, ViperSoftX has emerged as a highly sophisticated malware, adept at...

The Anatomy of HTML Attachment Phishing

The Anatomy of HTML Attachment Phishing: One Code, Many Variants By Mathanraj Thangaraju, Niranjan Hegde, and Sijo Jacob · June 14, 2023 Introduction Phishing is the malevolent practise of pretending to be a reliable entity in electronic communication to steal sensitive data, such as login...

Saints Turned Evil

Saints Turned Evil By Daksh Kapur and Rohan Shah · January 2, 2024 This blog was also written by Sushant Kumar Arya 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...

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...

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown

QakBot's Endgame: The Final Move Before the Takedown By Daksh Kapur, Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Alfred Alvarado · September 06, 2023 Figure 1 Attribution at the bottom Qakbot, known under aliases like QBot, QuakBot, and Pinkslipbot, represents an intricately advanced malware strain that has...

Supply Chain Security Leaders Collaborate to Help Developers Choose Open-Source

Supply Chain Security Leaders Collaborate to Help Developers Choose Open-Source By Trellix, Checkmarx and Illustria · September 05, 2023 Working together to keep open source safe At the beginning of 2023, top researchers from industry-leading companies established the Supply Chain Attack Research...

Cybercrime Takes Advantage of 2023-Recession with Job-Themed Scams

Cybercrime Takes Advantage of 2023 Recession with Job-Themed Scams By Daksh Kapur · February 28, 2023 Figure 1 image from freepik.com and flaticon.com The current economic climate globally is grim because of the ongoing recession. In this environment, job-themed emails have become a prime target...

Get to Know Fred House

Meet Fred House Senior Director, Product Detection and Research By Michael Alicea · July 12, 2022 At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. For a long time now, I’ve been looking forward to connecting with Fred House, a Senior Director at Trellix Threat Labs and a consummate and “driven”...

Trellix “Catmen Sanfrancisco” Capture the Flag Results!

Trellix “Catmen Sanfrancisco” Capture the Flag Results! By Trellix · February 28, 2022 This story was written by Steve Povolny. And just like that, it’s all over! Our annual Capture the Flag contest expired at 11:59pm PST, on February 25th. We wanted to take a moment to thank all of our...

Trellix Threat Report: Log4j Attack, Ransomware & APT Threats

Trellix Threat Report: Log4j Attack, Ransomware & APT Threats By Trellix · January 31, 2022 This story was written by Raj Samani. Ransomware continues to threaten enterprises and assets around the globe, but it was the discovery of a new vulnerability affecting widely used Log4j library that...

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...

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...

A New Program for Your Peloton – Whether You Like It or Not | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY A New Program for Your Peloton – Whether You Like It or Not Sam Quinn · JUN 15, 2021 Executive Summary For those that are not familiar with Peloton, it is a brand that has combined high end exercise equipment with cutting-edge technology. Its products are equipped with a large tabl...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Ryuk, Exploring the Human Connection

ARCHIVED STORY Ryuk, Exploring the Human Connection By John Fokker · Febraury 19, 2019 In collaboration with Bill Siegel and Alex Holdtman from Coveware At the beginning of 2019, McAfee ATR published an article describing how the hasty attribution of Ryuk ransomware to North Korea was missing the...

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...

BIOS Boots What? Finding Evil in Boot Code at Scale! | Trellix

ARCHIVED STORY BIOS Boots What? Finding Evil in Boot Code at Scale! By Ryan Fisher, Andrew Davis · August 08, 2018 Malware continues to take advantage of a legacy component of modern systems designed in the 1980s. Despite the cyber threat landscape continuing to evolve at an ever-increasing pace,...

Apply MITRE’s ‘ATT&CK’ Model to Check Your Defenses

ARCHIVED STORY Apply MITRE’s ‘ATT&CK’ Model to Check Your Defenses By Trellix · June 18, 2018 Every week we read about adversaries attacking their targets as part of online criminal campaigns. Information gathering, strategic advantage, and theft of intellectual property are some of the...