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,...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service - The All-Stars | McAfee Blogs

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – The All-Stars John Fokker · OCT 02, 2019 Episode 2: The All-Stars Analyzing Affiliate Structures in Ransomware-as-a-Service Campaigns This is the second installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR analysis of Sodinokibi...

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...

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...

‘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...

DCSync Detection Without Signatures: Trellix NDR and the Power of Technique-Based Defense

DCSync Detection Without Signatures: Trellix NDR and the Power of Technique-Based Defense By Maulik Maheta and Chao Sun · April 14, 2026 Executive summary A DCSync attack is one of the most formidable techniques an adversary can deploy after gaining a foothold in an Active Directory AD environmen...

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 – 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 Coordinated Embassy Hunt: Unmasking the DPRK-linked GitHub C2 Espionage Campaign

The Coordinated Embassy Hunt: Unmasking the DPRK-linked GitHub C2 Espionage Campaign By Pham Duy Phuc and Alex Lanstein · August 18, 2025 The Trellix Advanced Research Center uncovered a sophisticated espionage operation targeting diplomatic missions across several regions in South Korea during...

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...

Trucking on with DotDumper

Trucking on with DotDumper By Max Kersten · May 11, 2023 On the 11th of August 2022, the initial public version of DotDumper was released. A brief refresh: DotDumper is an open-source automatic unpacker for DotNet Framework targeting files. This blog marks a public update which supports unmanaged...

No More Macros? Better Watch Your Search Results!

No More Macros? Better Watch Your Search Results! By Pham Duy Phuc · February 08, 2023 This blog was also written by Max Kersten Threat actors often rely on the same techniques until their hand is forced, usually due to defensive changes or chance-based opportunities, to leverage a new technique...

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 ...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

RagnarLocker Ransomware Threatens to Release Confidential Information | McAfee Blogs

ARCHIVED STORY RagnarLocker Ransomware Threatens to Release Confidential Information Alexandre Mundo · JUN 09, 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The RagnarLocker ransomware first appeared in the wild at the end of December 2019 as part of a campaign against compromised networks targeted by its operators. Th...

The Fake Domain Controller You Didn’t See Coming: Detecting DCShadow Attacks Using Trellix NDR

The Fake Domain Controller You Didn’t See Coming: Detecting DCShadow Attacks Using Trellix NDR By Maulik Maheta and Chao Sun · December 17, 2025 Executive summary DCShadow is a covert post-exploitation technique that enables an attacker to impersonate a domain controller and make unauthorized,...

Automagic Reverse Engineering

Automagic Reverse Engineering By Trellix · July 1, 2025 This blog was written by Max Kersten Over the last few years, I have looked into methods to improve the reverse engineering process. This saves essential time during the analysis, which helps while defending from well prepared threat actors...

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...

OneClik: A ClickOnce-Based APT Campaign Targeting Energy, Oil and Gas Infrastructure

OneClik: A ClickOnce-Based Red Team Campaign Simulating APT Tactics in Energy Infrastructure By Nico Paulo Yturriaga and Pham Duy Phuc · Updated : June 30, 2025 The Trellix Advanced Research Center previously uncovered what appeared to be a sophisticated APT malware campaign, which we dubbed...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Cyberattacks Rise Targeting Infrastructure and Geo Tensions

Trellix Threat Labs Research Report: Cyberattacks Targeting Critical Infrastructure Rise Along with Geopolitical Tensions By Trellix · April 27, 2022 The release of our Trellix Threat Labs Research Report: April 2022 examines cybercriminal behavior and activity related to cyber threats in the...

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...

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...

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 Dianxun Cyberespionage Campaign Targeting Telecommunication Companies

ARCHIVED STORY Operation Diànxùn: Cyberespionage Campaign Targeting Telecommunication Companies By Thomas Roccia · MAR 16, 2021 In this report the McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR Strategic Intelligence team details an espionage campaign, targeting telecommunication companies, dubbed Operation...

‘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...

‘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...

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...

When Agents Go Rogue: The OpenClaw Supply Chain Crisis

When Agents Go Rogue: The OpenClaw Supply Chain Crisis By Aniket Choukde, Vikas Mishra and Yadunadh · August 19, 2026 This blog was also written by Akhil Reddy and Pavan Kumar Podila Executive Summary The cybersecurity landscape is currently undergoing a seismic shift driven by the adoption of...

Getting Roasted? Trellix Helix sees through AS-REP Attack

Getting Roasted? Trellix Helix sees through AS-REP Attack By Adithya Chandra and Maulik Maheta · March 17, 2026 Executive summary Threat actors regularly target Active Directory environments, continuously refining their toolsets and modifying attack frameworks to bypass security controls. However...

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,...

SideWinder's Shifting Sands: Click Once for Espionage

SideWinder's Shifting Sands: Click Once for Espionage By Ernesto Fernández Provecho and Pham Duy Phuc · October 22, 2025 In September 2025, the Trellix Advanced Research Center ARC detected a campaign targeting a European embassy located in New Delhi, India. Further investigation led to the...