Command and Control | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Google is warning of multiple threat actors sharing a public proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit that leverages its Calendar service to host command-and-control (C2) infrastructure. The tool, called Google Calendar RAT (GCR) , employs Google Calendar Events for C2 using a Gmail account. It was first published to GitHub in June 2023. "The script creates a 'Covert Channel' by exploiting the event descriptions in Google Calendar," according to its developer and researcher Valerio Alessandroni, who goes by the online alias MrSaighnal. "The target will connect directly to Google." The tech giant, in its eighth Threat Horizons Report [PDF], said it has not observed the use of the tool in the wild, but noted its Mandiant threat intelligence unit has detected several threat actors sharing the PoC on underground forums. "GCR, running on a compromised machine, periodically polls the Calendar event description for new commands, executes those commands on the t

As many as 85 command-and-control (C2) servers have been  discovered  supported by the ShadowPad malware since September 2021, with infrastructure detected as recently as October 16, 2022. That's according to VMware's Threat Analysis Unit (TAU), which  studied  three ShadowPad variants using TCP, UDP, and HTTP(S) protocols for C2 communications. ShadowPad , seen as a successor to  PlugX , is a modular malware platform privately shared among multiple Chinese state-sponsored actors since 2015. Taiwanese cybersecurity firm TeamT5, earlier this May, disclosed details of another China-nexus modular implant named  Pangolin8RAT , which is believed to be the successor of the PlugX and ShadowPad malware families, linking it to a threat group dubbed Tianwu. An analysis of the three ShadowPad artifacts, which have been previously put to use by  Winnti ,  Tonto Team , and an emerging threat cluster codenamed  Space Pirates , made it possible to discover the C2 servers by scanning th

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

A nascent service called Dark Utilities has already attracted 3,000 users for its ability to provide command-and-control (C2) services with the goal of commandeering compromised systems. "It is marketed as a means to enable remote access, command execution, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and cryptocurrency mining operations on infected systems," Cisco Talos  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Dark Utilities, which emerged in early 2022, is advertised as a "C2-as-a-Service" (C2aaS), offering access to infrastructure hosted on the clearnet as well as the TOR network and associated payloads with support for Windows, Linux, and Python-based implementations for a mere €9.99. Authenticated users on the platform are presented with a dashboard that makes it possible to generate new payloads tailored to a specific operating system that can then be deployed and executed on victim hosts. Additionally, users are provided an administrative panel