North Korean hackers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A new malware campaign has been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus software to distribute backdoors and cryptocurrency miners like XMRig through a long-standing threat codenamed GuptiMiner targeting large corporate networks. Cybersecurity firm Avast said the activity is the work of a threat actor with possible connections to a North Korean hacking group dubbed  Kimsuky , which is also known as Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet, and TA427. "GuptiMiner is a highly sophisticated threat that uses an interesting infection chain along with a couple of techniques that include performing DNS requests to the attacker's DNS servers, performing sideloading, extracting payloads from innocent-looking images, signing its payloads with a custom trusted root anchor certification authority, among others," Avast  said . The intricate and elaborate infection chain, at its core, leverages a security shortcoming in the update mechanism of Indian antivirus vendor eScan to

Microsoft has revealed that North Korea-linked state-sponsored cyber actors have begun to use artificial intelligence (AI) to make their operations more effective and efficient. "They are learning to use tools powered by AI large language models (LLM) to make their operations more efficient and effective," the tech giant  said  in its latest report on East Asia hacking groups. The company specifically highlighted a group named  Emerald Sleet  (aka Kimusky or TA427), which has been observed using LLMs to bolster spear-phishing efforts aimed at Korean Peninsula experts. The adversary is also said to have relied on the latest advancements in AI to research vulnerabilities and conduct reconnaissance on organizations and experts focused on North Korea, joining  hacking crews from China , who have turned to AI-generated content for influence operations. It further employed LLMs to troubleshoot technical issues, conduct basic scripting tasks, and draft content for spear-phishi

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An installer for a tool likely used by the Russian Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) has been backdoored to deliver a remote access trojan called  Konni RAT  (aka  UpDog ). The findings come from German cybersecurity company DCSO, which linked the activity as originating from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-nexus actors targeting Russia. The Konni (aka Opal Sleet, Osmium, or  TA406 ) activity cluster has an established pattern of deploying Konni RAT against Russian entities, with the threat actor also linked to  attacks directed against MID  at least since October 2021. In November 2023, Fortinet FortiGuard Labs  revealed  the use of Russian-language Microsoft Word documents to deliver malware capable of harvesting sensitive information from compromised Windows hosts. DCSO said the packaging of Konni RAT within software installers is a technique  previously adopted  by the group in October 2023, when it was found to leverage a backd

The North Korea-linked nation-state actor known as Kimsuky is suspected of using a previously undocumented Golang-based information stealer called  Troll Stealer . The malware steals "SSH, FileZilla, C drive files/directories, browsers, system information, [and] screen captures" from infected systems, South Korean cybersecurity company S2W  said  in a new technical report. Troll Stealer's links to Kimsuky stem from its similarities to known malware families, such as AppleSeed and AlphaSeed malware that have been attributed to the group. Kimsuky, also tracked under the names APT43, ARCHIPELAGO, Black Banshee, Emerald Sleet (previously Thallium), Nickel Kimball, and Velvet Chollima, is well known for its propensity to steal sensitive, confidential information in offensive cyber operations. In late November 2023, the threat actors were  sanctioned  by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for gathering intelligence to further North

Media organizations and high-profile experts in North Korean affairs have been at the receiving end of a new campaign orchestrated by a threat actor known as  ScarCruft  in December 2023. "ScarCruft has been experimenting with new infection chains, including the use of a technical threat research report as a decoy, likely targeting consumers of threat intelligence like cybersecurity professionals," SentinelOne researchers Aleksandar Milenkoski and Tom Hegel  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The North Korea-linked adversary, also known by the name APT37, InkySquid, RedEyes, Ricochet Chollima, and Ruby Sleet, is  assessed  to be part of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), placing it apart from Lazarus Group and Kimsuky, which are elements within the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). The group is  known  for its targeting of governments and defectors, leveraging  spear-phishing lures  to deliver  RokRAT and other backdoors  with the ultimate goal of  cove

Threat actors affiliated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (also known as North Korea) have plundered at least $600 million in cryptocurrency in 2023. The DPRK "was responsible for almost a third of all funds stolen in crypto attacks last year, despite a 30% reduction from the USD 850 million haul in 2022," blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs  said  last week. "Hacks perpetrated by the DPRK were on average ten times as damaging as those not linked to North Korea." There are indications that  additional breaches  targeting the crypto sector towards the end of 2023 could push this figure higher to around $700 million. The targeting of cryptocurrency companies is not new for North Korean state-sponsored actors, who have  stolen about $3 billion  since 2017. These financially motivated attacks are seen as a crucial revenue-generation mechanism for the sanctions-hit nation, funding its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile program

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Apple macOS backdoor called  SpectralBlur  that overlaps with a known malware family that has been attributed to North Korean threat actors. "SpectralBlur is a moderately capable backdoor that can upload/download files, run a shell, update its configuration, delete files, hibernate, or sleep, based on commands issued from the [command-and-control server]," security researcher Greg Lesnewich  said . The malware shares similarities with  KANDYKORN  (aka SockRacket), an advanced implant that functions as a remote access trojan capable of taking control of a compromised host. It's worth noting that the KANDYKORN activity also intersects with another campaign orchestrated by the Lazarus sub-group known as BlueNoroff (aka TA444) which culminates in the deployment of a backdoor referred to as  RustBucket  and a late-stage payload dubbed  ObjCShellz . In recent months, the threat actor has been observed  combining disparate pieces of t

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday sanctioned the North Korea-linked adversarial collective known as Kimsuky as well as eight foreign-based agents who are alleged to have facilitated sanctions evasion. The agents, the Treasury  said , helped in " revenue generation  and missile-related technology procurement that support the DPRK's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs." The sanctions against Kimsuky, which have been levied for gathering intelligence to support the regime's strategic objectives, come more than four years after the OFAC  imposed   similar measures  against the Lazarus Group and its offshoots  Andariel  and  BlueNoroff  in September 2019. The actions are in  response  to North Korea's launch of a military reconnaissance satellite late last month, the Treasury added. They also arrive a day after a virtual currency mixer service called Sinbad was  sanctioned  for processing stolen as

The North Korean threat actors behind macOS malware strains such as RustBucket and KANDYKORN have been observed "mixing and matching" different elements of the two disparate attack chains, leveraging RustBucket droppers to deliver KANDYKORN. The  findings  come from cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, which also tied a third macOS-specific malware called ObjCShellz to the RustBucket campaign. RustBucket  refers to an  activity cluster  linked to the Lazarus Group in which a backdoored version of a PDF reader app, dubbed SwiftLoader, is used as a conduit to load a next-stage malware written in Rust upon viewing a specially crafted lure document. The  KANDYKORN campaign , on the other hand, refers to a malicious cyber operation in which blockchain engineers of an unnamed crypto exchange platform were targeted via Discord to initiate a sophisticated multi-stage attack sequence that led to the deployment of the eponymous full-featured memory resident remote access trojan. The t

A North Korean state-sponsored threat actor tracked as  Diamond Sleet  is distributing a trojanized version of a legitimate application developed by a Taiwanese multimedia software developer called CyberLink to target downstream customers via a supply chain attack. "This malicious file is a legitimate CyberLink application installer that has been modified to include malicious code that downloads, decrypts, and loads a second-stage payload," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team  said  in an analysis on Wednesday. The poisoned file, the tech giant said, is hosted on the update infrastructure owned by the company while also including checks to limit the time window for execution and bypass detection by security products. The campaign is estimated to have impacted over 100 devices across Japan, Taiwan, Canada, and the U.S. Suspicious activity associated with the modified CyberLink installer file was observed as early as October 20, 2023. The links to North Korea stem from

North Korean threat actors have been linked to two campaigns in which they masquerade as both job recruiters and seekers to distribute malware and obtain unauthorized employment with organizations based in the U.S. and other parts of the world. The activity clusters have been codenamed Contagious Interview and Wagemole, respectively, by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42. While the first set of attacks aims to "infect software developers with malware through a fictitious job interview," the latter is designed for financial gain and espionage. "The first campaign's objective is likely cryptocurrency theft and using compromised targets as a staging environment for additional attacks," the cybersecurity company  said . The fraudulent job-seeking activity, on the other hand, involves the use of a GitHub repository to host resumes with forged identities that impersonate individuals of various nationalities. The Contagious Interview attacks pave the way for two hitherto undocumented cross-plat

Threat actors associated with North Korea are  continuing  to  target  the cybersecurity community using a zero-day bug in an unspecified software over the past several weeks to infiltrate their machines. The findings come from Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which found the adversary setting up fake accounts on social media platforms like  X  (formerly Twitter) and  Mastodon  to forge relationships with potential targets and build trust. "In one case, they carried on a months-long conversation, attempting to collaborate with a security researcher on topics of mutual interest," security researchers Clement Lecigne and Maddie Stone  said . "After initial contact via X, they moved to an encrypted messaging app such as Signal, WhatsApp, or Wire." The social engineering exercise ultimately paved the way for a malicious file containing at least one zero-day in a popular software package. The vulnerability is currently in the process of being fixed. The payload, for its part, perf

The North Korean threat actor known as  Andariel  has been observed employing an arsenal of malicious tools in its cyber assaults against corporations and organizations in the southern counterpart. "One characteristic of the attacks identified in 2023 is that there are numerous malware strains developed in the Go language," the AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC)  said  in a deep dive released last week. Andariel, also known by the names Nicket Hyatt or Silent Chollima, is a sub-cluster of the  Lazarus Group  that's known to be active since at least 2008. Financial institutions, defense contractors, government agencies, universities, cybersecurity vendors, and energy companies are among the top targets for the state-sponsored group to fund espionage activities and illegally generate revenue for the country. Attack chains mounted by the adversary have leveraged a variety of initial infection vectors, such as spear-phishing, watering holes, and supply chain attacks, as

North Korean nation-state actors affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) have been attributed to the  JumpCloud hack  following an operational security (OPSEC) blunder that exposed their actual IP address. Google-owned threat intelligence firm Mandiant attributed the activity to a threat actor it tracks under the name UNC4899, which likely shares overlaps with clusters already being monitored as Jade Sleet and TraderTraitor, a group with a history of striking blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors. UNC4899 also overlaps with  APT43 , another hacking crew associated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that was unmasked earlier this March as conducting a series of campaigns to gather intelligence and siphon cryptocurrency from targeted companies. The adversarial collective's modus operandi is characterized by the use of Operational Relay Boxes ( ORBs ) using L2TP IPsec tunnels along with commercial VPN providers to disguise the attacker's

The North Korean nation-state threat actor known as  Kimsuky  has been linked to a social engineering campaign targeting experts in North Korean affairs with the goal of stealing Google credentials and delivering reconnaissance malware. "Further, Kimsuky's objective extends to the theft of subscription credentials from NK News," cybersecurity firm SentinelOne  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "To achieve this, the group distributes emails that lure targeted individuals to log in on the malicious website nknews[.]pro, which masquerades as the authentic NK News site. The login form that is presented to the target is designed to capture entered credentials." NK News , established in 2011, is an American subscription-based news website that provides stories and analysis about North Korea. The disclosure comes days after U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies  issued an alert  warning of Kimsuky's use of social engineering tactics to strik