Evil Corp | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A Russian cybercriminal wanted in the U.S. in connection with LockBit and Hive ransomware operations has been arrested by law enforcement authorities in the country. According to a news report from Russian media outlet RIA Novosti, Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev has been accused of developing a malicious program designed to encrypt files and seek ransom in return for a decryption key. "At present, the investigator has collected sufficient evidence, the criminal case with the indictment signed by the prosecutor has been sent to the Central District Court of the city of Kaliningrad for consideration on the merits," the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement. Matveev has been charged under Part 1 of Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which relates to the creation, use, and distribution of computer programs that can cause "destruction, blocking, modification or copying of computer information." He was previously charged and ...

A new wave of international law enforcement actions has led to four arrests and the takedown of nine servers linked to the LockBit (aka Bitwise Spider) ransomware operation, marking the latest salvo against what was once a prolific financially motivated group. This includes the arrest of a suspected LockBit developer in France while on holiday outside of Russia, two individuals in the U.K. who allegedly supported an affiliate, and an administrator of a bulletproof hosting service in Spain used by the ransomware group, Europol said in a statement. In conjunction, authorities outed a Russian national named Aleksandr Ryzhenkov (aka Beverley, Corbyn_Dallas, G, Guester, and Kotosel) as one of the high-ranking members of the Evil Corp cybercrime group, while simultaneously painting him as a LockBit affiliate. Sanctions have also been announced against seven individuals and two entities linked to the e-crime gang. "The United States, in close coordination with our allies and part...

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A surge in TrueBot activity was observed in May 2023, cybersecurity researchers disclosed. "TrueBot is a downloader trojan botnet that uses command and control servers to collect information on compromised systems and uses that compromised system as a launching point for further attacks," VMware's Fae Carlisle  said . Active since at least 2017, TrueBot is linked to a group known as Silence that's believed to share overlaps with the notorious Russian cybercrime actor known as  Evil Corp . Recent  TrueBot infections  have leveraged a critical flaw in Netwrix Auditor ( CVE-2022-31199 , CVSS score: 9.8) as well as  Raspberry Robin  as delivery vectors. The attack chain documented by VMware, on the other hand, starts off with a drive-by-download of an executable named " update.exe " from Google Chrome, suggesting that users are lured into downloading the malware under the pretext of a software update. Once run, update.exe establishes connections with a ...

Researchers have identified functional similarities between a malicious component used in the Raspberry Robin infection chain and a Dridex malware loader, further strengthening the operators' connections to the Russia-based Evil Corp group. The findings suggest that "Evil Corp is likely using Raspberry Robin infrastructure to carry out its attacks," IBM Security X-Force researcher Kevin Henson  said  in a Thursday analysis. Raspberry Robin (aka QNAP Worm), first  discovered  by cybersecurity company Red Canary in September 2021, has remained something of a mystery for nearly a year, partly owing to the noticeable lack of post-exploitation activities in the wild. That changed in July 2022 when Microsoft  revealed  that it observed the  FakeUpdates  (aka SocGholish) malware being delivered via existing Raspberry Robin infections, with potential connections identified between DEV-0206 and DEV-0243 (aka Evil Corp). The malware is known to be del...

Microsoft on Friday disclosed a potential connection between the Raspberry Robin USB-based worm and an infamous Russian cybercrime group tracked as Evil Corp. The tech giant  said  it observed the  FakeUpdates  (aka SocGholish) malware being delivered via existing Raspberry Robin infections on July 26, 2022. Raspberry Robin, also called QNAP Worm, is  known  to spread from a compromised system via infected USB devices containing a malicious .LNK file to other devices in the target network. The campaign, which was first spotted by Red Canary in September 2021, has been elusive in that no later-stage activity has been documented nor has there been any concrete link tying it to a known threat actor or group. The disclosure, therefore, marks the first evidence of post-exploitation actions carried out by the threat actor upon leveraging the malware to gain initial access to a Windows machine. "The DEV-0206-associated FakeUpdates activity on affected ...

The threat cluster dubbed UNC2165, which shares numerous overlaps with a Russia-based cybercrime group known as Evil Corp, has been linked to multiple LockBit ransomware intrusions in what's seen as an attempt by the latter to get around  sanctions  imposed by the U.S. Treasury in December 2019. "These actors have shifted away from using exclusive ransomware variants to LockBit — a well-known ransomware as a service (RaaS) — in their operations, likely to hinder attribution efforts in order to evade sanctions," threat intelligence firm Mandiant  noted  in an analysis last week. Active since 2019, UNC2165 is known to obtain initial access to victim networks via stolen credentials and a JavaScript-based downloader malware called  FakeUpdates  (aka SocGholish), leveraging it to previously deploy  Hades  ransomware. Hades is the work of a financially motivated hacking group named Evil Corp, which is also called by the monikers Gold Drake and Indr...