APT41 | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a "renewed" cyber espionage campaign targeting users in South Asia with the aim of delivering an Apple iOS spyware implant called  LightSpy . "The latest iteration of LightSpy, dubbed 'F_Warehouse,' boasts a modular framework with extensive spying features," the BlackBerry Threat Research and Intelligence Team  said  in a report published last week. There is evidence to suggest that the campaign may have targeted India based on  VirusTotal   submissions  from within its borders. First documented in 2020 by Trend Micro and Kaspersky,  LightSpy  refers to an advanced iOS backdoor that's distributed via watering hole attacks through compromised news sites. A subsequent analysis from ThreatFabric in October 2023  uncovered  infrastructure and functionality overlaps between the malware and DragonEgg, a fully-featured Android spyware attributed to the Chinese nation-state group APT41 (aka Winnti). The initial in

Entities located in East and Southeast Asia as well as Ukraine have been targeted at least since 2020 by a previously undocumented subgroup of  APT41 , a prolific Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT). Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which  christened  the espionage crew  Earth Longzhi , said the actor's long-running campaign can be split into two based on the toolset deployed to attack its victims. The first wave from May 2020 to February 2021 is said to have targeted government, infrastructure, and healthcare industries in Taiwan and the banking sector in China, whereas the succeeding set of intrusions from August 2021 to June 2022 infiltrated high-profile victims in Ukraine and several countries in Asia. This included defense, aviation, insurance, and urban development industries in Taiwan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ukraine. The victimology patterns and the targeted sectors overlap with attacks mounted by a distinct subordinate group of  APT41

The Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) actor tracked as Winnti has targeted at least 13 organizations geographically spanning across the U.S, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, and China against the backdrop of four different campaigns in 2021. "The targeted industries included the public sector, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, hospitality, education, as well as the media and aviation," cybersecurity firm Group-IB  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. This also included the attack on Air India that came to light in June 2021 as part of a campaign codenamed  ColunmTK . The other three campaigns have been assigned the monikers DelayLinkTK, Mute-Pond, and Gentle-Voice based on the domain names used in the attacks. APT41, also known as Barium, Bronze Atlas, Double Dragon, Wicked Panda, or Winnti, is a  prolific   Chinese   cyber threat group  that's known to carry out state-sponsored espionage activity in parallel with financially motivated operations at least

There's a natural human desire to avoid threatening scenarios. The irony, of course, is if you hope to attain any semblance of security, you've got to remain prepared to confront those very same threats. As a decision-maker for your organization, you know this well. But no matter how many experts or trusted cybersecurity tools your organization has a standing guard, you're only as secure as your weakest link. There's still one group that can inadvertently open the gates to unwanted threat actors—your own people. Security must be second nature for your first line of defense For your organization to thrive, you need capable employees. After all, they're your source for great ideas, innovation, and ingenuity. However, they're also human. And humans are fallible. Hackers understand no one is perfect, and that's precisely what they seek to exploit. This is why your people must become your first line of defense against cyber threats. But to do so, they need to learn how to defend thems

The United States government today announced charges against 5 alleged members of a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group and 2 Malaysian hackers that are responsible for hacking more than 100 companies throughout the world. Named as APT41 and also known as 'Barium,' 'Winnti, 'Wicked Panda,' and 'Wicked Spider,' the cyber-espionage group has been operating since at least 2012 and is not just involved in strategic intelligence collection from valuable targets in many sectors, but also behind financially motivated attacks against online gaming industry. According to a press release published by the U.S. Justice Department, two of the five Chinese hackers—Zhang Haoran (张浩然) and Tan Dailin (谭戴林)—were charged back in August 2019, and the other three of them—Jiang Lizhi (蒋立志), Qian Chuan (钱川) and Fu Qiang (付强)—and two Malaysian co-conspirators were in separate indictments in August 2020. The later indicted three Chinese hackers are associated with a netw