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...

Operation ‘Harvest’: A Deep Dive into a Long-term Campaign

ARCHIVED STORY Operation ‘Harvest’: A Deep Dive into a Long-term Campaign By Christiaan Beek · September 14, 2021 A special thanks to our Professional Services’ IR team, ShadowServer, for historical context on C2 domains, and Thomas Roccia/Leandro Velasco for malware analysis support. Executive...

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...

Robot Character Analysis Reveals Trust Issues

ARCHIVED STORY Robot Character Analysis Reveals Trust Issues By Douglas McKee · August 05, 2020 Retired Marine fighter pilot and Top Gun instructor Dave Berke said “Every single thing you do in your life, every decision you make, is an OODA Loop.” OODA Loop? Observe–Orient–Decide–Act, the “OODA...

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...

Analysis of LooCipher, a New Ransomware Family Observed This Year

ARCHIVED STORY Analysis of LooCipher, a New Ransomware Family Observed This Year By ATR Operational Intelligence Team · December 05, 2019 Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. Initial Discovery This year seems to again be the year for ransomware. Notorious attacks were made using ransomware and new...

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...

Technical Deep Dive: The Monero Mining Campaign

Technical Deep Dive: The Monero Mining Campaign By Aswath A · February 17, 2026 Executive summary In the contemporary threat landscape, while ransomware grabs headlines with high-impact disruptions, cryptojacking operations have quietly evolved into sophisticated, persistent threats. This report...

Dark Web Roast - January 2026 Edition

Dark Web Roast - January 2026 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · February 11, 2026 Executive Summary Welcome to January 2026's underground intelligence roundup, where criminal masterminds continue to demonstrate that the phrase "honour among thieves" remains the greatest oxymoron in...

The Crown Jewels of Active Directory: How Trellix Helix Detects NTDS.dit Theft

The Crown Jewels of Active Directory: How Trellix Helix Detects NTDS.dit Theft By Adithya Chandra and Maulik Maheta · February 2, 2026 Executive summary Active Directory serves as the central repository for an organization's authentication infrastructure. Malicious actors frequently focus on...

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...

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...

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 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...

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 ...

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...

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...

Targeted attack on Government Agencies

Targeted Attack on Government Agencies By Sushant Kumar Arya, Mohsin Dalla · July 13, 2022 Executive summary The Trellix Email Security Research Team has discovered a malicious campaign targeting government agencies of Afghanistan, India, Italy, Poland, and the United States since 2021. The attac...

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...

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 Global Defenders: LAPSUS$ Data Breaches and Proactive Protections

Trellix Global Defenders: LAPSUS$ Data Breaches and Proactive Protections By Taylor Mullins · March 23, 2022 Trellix is continuing to monitor the threat activity related to the LAPSUS$ threat group and their recent breaches of large organizations such as NVIDIA, Samsung, Microsoft, and Okta. This...

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...

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...

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...

‘Insight’ into Home Automation Reveals Vulnerability in Simple IoT Product

ARCHIVED STORY ‘Insight’ into Home Automation Reveals Vulnerability in Simple IoT Product By Douglas McKee · August 18, 2020 Eoin Carroll, Charles McFarland, Kevin McGrath, and Mark Bereza contributed to this report. The Internet of Things promises to make our lives easier. Want to remotely turn...

Six Hundred Million Reasons to Celebrate: No More Ransom Turns FOUR!!

ARCHIVED STORY Six Hundred Million Reasons to Celebrate: No More Ransom Turns FOUR!! By John Fokker · July 27, 2020 Happy Birthday! Today we mark the fourth anniversary of the NoMoreRansom initiative with over 4.2 million visitors, from 188 countries, stopping an estimated $632 million in ransom...

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...

APT28’s Stealthy Multi-Stage Campaign Leveraging CVE‑2026‑21509 and Cloud C2 Infrastructure

APT28’s Stealthy Multi-Stage Campaign Leveraging CVE‑2026‑21509 and Cloud C2 Infrastructure By Pham Duy Phuc and Alex Lanstein · February 4, 2026 Updated February 9, 2026: This analysis has been updated to clarify malware naming conventions. Introduction Russian state-sponsored threat group APT28...

Inside LockBit's Admin Panel Leak

Inside the LockBit's Admin Panel Leak: Affiliates, Victims and Millions in Crypto By Jambul Tologonov · June 12, 2025 Introduction On May 7, 2025, the LockBit admin panel was hacked by an anonymous actor who replaced their TOR website with the text ‘ Don’t do crime CRIME IS BAD xoxo from Prague ’...

Phobos: Stealthy Ransomware That Operated Under the Radar - Until Now

Phobos: Stealthy Ransomware That Operated Under the Radar - Until Now By Jambul Tologonov, John Fokker and Duy-Phuc Pham · November 20, 2024 On November 18th, the US Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against a Russian national for allegedly administering the sale, distribution, and...

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,...

Using Data Loss Prevention to Prevent Data Leakage via ChatGPT

Using Data Loss Prevention to Prevent Data Leakage via ChatGPT By Zak Krider · April 17, 2023 The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence AI technology has garnered much attention in recent weeks for its potential to enhance workplace productivity and efficiency. However, this focus on AI...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Digging Up the Past: Windows Registry Forensics Revisited

ARCHIVED STORY Digging Up the Past: Windows Registry Forensics Revisited By David Via · Jan 08, 2019 Introduction FireEye consultants frequently utilize Windows registry data when performing forensic analysis of computer networks as part of incident response and compromise assessment missions. Th...

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...

Attacks on SWIFT Banking System Benefit From Insider Knowledge

ARCHIVED STORY Attacks on SWIFT Banking System Benefit From Insider Knowledge By Trellix · May 20, 2016 In recent months, we’ve seen headlines about the compromise of a bank in Bangladesh from which cybercriminals attempted to steal US$951 million. The malware they used was able to manipulate and...

Dark Web Roast February 2026 Edition

Dark Web Roast - February 2026 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · March 18, 2026 Executive Summary February 2026 delivered another stellar month in the ongoing theatre of the absurd that is the cybercriminal underground, where ransomware gangs bulk-scheduled their extortion like a...

Malware-As-A-Service Redefined: Why XWorm is outpacing every other RAT in the underground malware market

Malware-As-A-Service Redefined: Why XWorm is outpacing every other RAT in the underground malware market By Boggavarapu R S S Srinivas Gupta and Ravishankar N C · March 12, 2026 Introduction In the evolving landscape of cybercrime, threat actors are constantly pursuing the "perfect" weapon: malwa...

The Bug Report - July 2025 Edition

The Bug Report – July 2025 Edition By Jonathan Omakun and Tola Olawale · August 6, 2025 Why am I here? July usually means barbecues, fireworks and pool parties—but this year, it brought something far more explosive: unauthenticated remote code execution, deserialization chaos, and an old-school...

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...

Understanding Iranian Capabilities and Hacktivist Activities

Understanding Iranian Capabilities and Hacktivist Activities By John Fokker · June 23, 2025 As geopolitical tensions flare again in the Middle East, cyber operations are increasingly becoming an extension of physical conflict. State-aligned threat actors, patriotic hackers, and ideologically...

JAVA-based Sophisticated Stealer Using Discord Bot as EventListener

JAVA-Based Sophisticated Stealer Using Discord Bot as EventListener By Trellix · January 18, 2024 This blog was written by Gurumoorthi Ramanathan Executive Summary: In mid-November 2023, Trellix Advanced Research Center team members observed a Java-based stealer being spread through cracked...

Targeted attack on Government Agencies

Targeted Attack on Government Agencies By Sushant Kumar Arya, Mohsin Dalla · July 13, 2022 Executive summary The Trellix Email Security Research Team has discovered a malicious campaign targeting government agencies of Afghanistan, India, Italy, Poland, and the United States since 2021. The attac...

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...