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...

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...

Dark Web Roast December 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast - December 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · January 15, 2026 Executive summary December 2025 delivered a spectacular finale to the year's cybercriminal comedy show, featuring Global Ransomware-as-a-Service RaaS operator liquidating their empire for pocket change,...

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...

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 Growing Threat of Vishing: How Cybercriminals Are Using Multimedia to Target You

The Growing Threat of Vishing: How Cybercriminals Are Using Multimedia to Target You By Mark Joseph Marti and Sandra Pagkaliwagan · May 8, 2025 Introduction Imagine being hacked through a phone call, and you can't even complain because you were the one who provided your sensitive information or...

Closing the Security Gap From Threat Hunting to Detection Engineering

Closing the Security Gap From Threat Hunting to Detection Engineering By Ilya Kolmanovich, Alejandro Houspanossian, Joe Malenfant and Tomer Shloman · April 16, 2025 In today's rapidly evolving AI-fueled threat landscape, every organization is trying to stop threats as early as possible. Threat...

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...

The evolution of the Kuiper ransomware

Kuiper Ransomware’s Evolution By Trellix · January 17, 2024 This blog was written by Max Kersten The Golang-based Kuiper ransomware is presented as an opportunity for other criminals to make money by ransoming one or more targets. Additionally, RobinHood, the actor behind Kuiper, states that help...

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...

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...

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...

China-Taiwan Tensions Spark Surge in Cyberattacks on Taiwan

China-Taiwan Tensions Spark Surge in Cyberattacks on Taiwan By Daksh Kapur, Leandro Velasco · May 17, 2023 Figure 1 image from freepik.com “In the past few years, we noticed that geopolitical conflicts are one of the main drivers for cyber-attacks on a variety of industries and institutions...

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 –...

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 Anne An

Meet Anne An Senior Security Researcher By Michael Alicea · August 25, 2022 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” researcher embedded on our frontlines as...

Get to Know Steve Povolny

Meet Steve Povolny Head of Advanced Threat Research for Trellix Threat Labs By Trellix · May 17, 2022 This blog was written by Michael Alicea At Trellix, we celebrate and champion our people. This week, I sat down with Steve Povolny, Head of Advanced Threat Research for Trellix Threat Labs. As he...

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...

Finding 0-days with Jackalope

ARCHIVED STORY Finding 0-days with Jackalope By Douglas McKee · September 16, 2021 Overview On March 21st, 2021, the McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Research ATR team released several vulnerabilities it discovered in the Netop Vision Pro Education software, a popular schooling software used by...

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...

Babuk: Biting off More than they Could Chew by Aiming to Encrypt VM and *nix Systems? | McAfee Blogs

Babuk: Biting off More than they Could Chew by Aiming to Encrypt VM and nix Systems? Thibault Seret · JUL 28, 2021 Co-written with Northwave’s Noël Keijzer. Executive Summary For a long time, ransomware gangs were mostly focused on Microsoft Windows operating systems. Yes, we observed the...

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...

Babuk Ransomware

ARCHIVED STORY Babuk Ransomware By Alexandre Mundo · February 23, 2021 Executive Summary Babuk ransomware is a new ransomware threat discovered in 2021 that has impacted at least five big enterprises, with one already paying the criminals $85,000 after negotiations. As with other variants, this...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Your Smart Coffee Maker is Brewing Up Trouble

ARCHIVED STORY Your Smart Coffee Maker is Brewing Up Trouble By Sam Quinn · Febraury 25, 2019 IOT devices are notoriously insecure and this claim can be backed up with a laundry list of examples. With more devices “needing” to connect to the internet, the possibility of your WiFi enabled toaster...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Dark Web Roast – November 2025 Edition

Dark Web Roast – November 2025 Edition By Trellix Advanced Research Center · December 9, 2025 Executive summary November 2025 delivered a masterclass in underground incompetence that would make any cybersecurity professional simultaneously laugh and cry. From the Silent data-extortion group getti...

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...

Exposing PathWiper: DCOM Abuse and Network Erasure

Exposing PathWiper: A Deep Dive into DCOM Abuse and Network Erasure With Trellix NDR By Maulik Maheta and Lishoy Mathew · August 12, 2025 Executive summary Ukraine’s national energy and telecommunications infrastructure was the primary targets of the PathWiper attack in 2025. The attack was...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Looking Over the Nation-State Actors’ Shoulders

Looking over the nation-state actors’ shoulders: Even they have a difficult day sometimes By Trellix and Marc Elias · Febraury 17, 2022 Have you ever been curious about how nation-state actors operate and what their day-to-day work looks like? This blog reveals some of these details observed base...

Looking Over the Nation-State Actors’ Shoulders

Looking over the nation-state actors’ shoulders: Even they have a difficult day sometimes By Trellix and Marc Elias · Febraury 17, 2022 Have you ever been curious about how nation-state actors operate and what their day-to-day work looks like? This blog reveals some of these details observed base...

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...

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...

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...

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...