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A previously undocumented threat activity cluster dubbed Earth Minotaur is leveraging the MOONSHINE exploit kit and an unreported Android-cum-Windows backdoor called DarkNimbus to facilitate long-term surveillance operations targeting Tibetans and Uyghurs. "Earth Minotaur uses MOONSHINE to deliver the DarkNimbus backdoor to Android and Windows devices, targeting WeChat, and possibly making it a cross-platform threat," Trend Micro researchers Joseph C Chen and Daniel Lunghi said in an analysis published today. "MOONSHINE exploits multiple known vulnerabilities in Chromium-based browsers and applications, requiring users to update software regularly to prevent attacks." Countries affected by Earth Minotaur's attacks span Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Nepal, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the U.S. MOONSHINE first came to light in September 2019 as part of cyber attacks targeting t...

The China-linked threat actor known as MirrorFace has been attributed to a new spear-phishing campaign mainly targeting individuals and organizations in Japan since June 2024. The aim of the campaign is to deliver backdoors known as NOOPDOOR (aka HiddenFace) and ANEL (aka UPPERCUT), Trend Micro said in a technical analysis. "An interesting aspect of this campaign is the comeback of a backdoor dubbed ANEL, which was used in campaigns targeting Japan by APT10 until around 2018 and had not been observed since then," security researcher Hara Hiroaki said . It's worth noting that MirrorFace's use of ANEL was also documented by ESET last month as part of a cyber attack targeting a diplomatic organization in the European Union using lures related to the World Expo. MirrorFace, also known as Earth Kasha, is the name given to a Chinese threat actor that's known for its persistent targeting of Japanese entities. It's assessed to be a sub-cluster within APT10. ...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

The China-linked threat actor known as Earth Estries has been observed using a previously undocumented backdoor called GHOSTSPIDER as part of its attacks targeting Southeast Asian telecommunications companies.  Trend Micro, which described the hacking group as an aggressive advanced persistent threat (APT), said the intrusions also involved the use of another cross-platform backdoor dubbed MASOL RAT (aka Backdr-NQ) on Linux systems belonging to Southeast Asian government networks. In all, Earth Estries is estimated to have successfully compromised more than 20 entities spanning telecommunications, technology, consulting, chemical, and transportation industries, government agencies, and non-profit organization (NGO) sectors. Victims have been identified across over a dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, Eswatini, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.S., and Vietnam. Earth Estries shares overlap with clusters t...

U.S. telecoms giant T-Mobile has confirmed that it was also among the companies that were targeted by Chinese threat actors to gain access to valuable information. The adversaries, tracked as Salt Typhoon , breached the company as part of a "monthslong campaign" designed to harvest cellphone communications of "high-value intelligence targets." It's not clear what information was taken, if any, during the malicious activity. "T-Mobile is closely monitoring this industry-wide attack, and at this time, T-Mobile systems and data have not been impacted in any significant way, and we have no evidence of impacts to customer information," a spokesperson for the company was quoted as saying to The Wall Street Journal. "We will continue to monitor this closely, working with industry peers and the relevant authorities." With the latest development, T-Mobile has joined a list of major organizations like AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies that...

The threat actor tracked as Mustang Panda has refined its malware arsenal to include new tools in order to facilitate data exfiltration and the deployment of next-stage payloads, according to new findings from Trend Micro. The cybersecurity firm, which is monitoring the activity cluster under the name Earth Preta, said it observed "the propagation of PUBLOAD via a variant of the worm HIUPAN." PUBLOAD is a known downloader malware linked to Mustang Panda since early 2022, deployed as part of cyber attacks targeting government entities in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to deliver the PlugX malware . "PUBLOAD was also used to introduce supplemental tools into the targets' environment, such as FDMTP to serve as a secondary control tool, which was observed to perform similar tasks as that of PUBLOAD; and PTSOCKET, a tool used as an alternative exfiltration option," security researchers Lenart Bermejo, Sunny Lu, and Ted Lee said. Mustang Panda's use of re...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Linux variant of a ransomware strain known as Play (aka Balloonfly and PlayCrypt) that's designed to target VMware ESXi environments. "This development suggests that the group could be broadening its attacks across the Linux platform, leading to an expanded victim pool and more successful ransom negotiations," Trend Micro researchers said in a report published Friday. Play, which arrived on the scene in June 2022, is known for its double extortion tactics, encrypting systems after exfiltrating sensitive data and demanding payment in exchange for a decryption key. According to estimates released by Australia and the U.S., as many as 300 organizations have been victimized by the ransomware group as of October 2023. Statistics shared by Trend Micro for the first seven months of 2024 show that the U.S. is the country with the highest number of victims, followed by Canada, Germany, the U.K., and the Netherlands. Manufactu...

A threat activity cluster tracked as  Earth Freybug  has been observed using a new malware called UNAPIMON to fly under the radar. "Earth Freybug is a cyberthreat group that has been active since at least 2012 that focuses on espionage and financially motivated activities," Trend Micro security researcher Christopher So  said  in a report published today. "It has been observed to target organizations from various sectors across different countries." The cybersecurity firm has described Earth Freybug as a subset within  APT41 , a China-linked cyber espionage group that's also tracked as Axiom, Brass Typhoon (formerly Barium), Bronze Atlas, HOODOO, Wicked Panda, and Winnti. The adversarial collective is known to rely on a combination of living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) and custom malware to realize its goals. Also adopted are techniques like dynamic-link library (DLL) hijacking and application programming interface (API) unhooking. Trend Micro said th...

A DarkGate malware campaign observed in mid-January 2024 leveraged a recently patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows as a zero-day using bogus software installers. "During this campaign, users were lured using PDFs that contained Google DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) open redirects that led unsuspecting victims to compromised sites hosting the Microsoft Windows SmartScreen bypass CVE-2024-21412 that led to malicious Microsoft (.MSI) installers," Trend Micro  said . CVE-2024-21412 (CVSS score: 8.1) concerns an internet shortcut files security feature bypass vulnerability that permits an unauthenticated attacker to circumvent SmartScreen protections by tricking a victim into clicking on a specially crafted file. It was  fixed  by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, but not before it was weaponized by a threat actor called  Water Hydra  (aka DarkCasino) to deliver the DarkMe malware in attacks targeting financial instituti...

The China-linked threat actor known as Mustang Panda has targeted various Asian countries using a variant of the PlugX (aka Korplug) backdoor dubbed DOPLUGS. "The piece of customized PlugX malware is dissimilar to the general type of the PlugX malware that contains a completed backdoor command module, and that the former is only used for downloading the latter," Trend Micro researchers Sunny Lu and Pierre Lee  said  in a new technical write-up. Targets of DOPLUGS have been primarily located in Taiwan, and Vietnam, and to a lesser extent in Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, and even China. PlugX is a staple tool of  Mustang Panda , which is also tracked as BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, Red Lich, Stately Taurus, TA416, and TEMP.Hex. It's known to be active since at least 2012, although it first came to light in 2017. The threat actor's tradecraft entails carrying out well-forged spear-phishing campaigns that a...

A newly disclosed security flaw in the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen has been exploited as a zero-day by an advanced persistent threat actor called  Water Hydra  (aka DarkCasino) targeting financial market traders. Trend Micro, which began tracking the campaign in late December 2023, said it entails the exploitation of CVE-2024-21412, a security bypass vulnerability related to Internet Shortcut Files (.URL).  "In this attack chain, the threat actor leveraged CVE-2024-21412 to bypass Microsoft Defender SmartScreen and infect victims with the DarkMe malware," the cybersecurity firm  said  in a Tuesday report. Microsoft, which  addressed  the flaw in its February Patch Tuesday update, said an unauthenticated attacker could exploit the flaw by sending the targeted user a specially crafted file in order to bypass displayed security checks. However, successful exploitation banks on the prerequisite that the threat actor convinces the victim to click o...

European Union military personnel and political leaders working on gender equality initiatives have emerged as the target of a new campaign that delivers an updated version of RomCom RAT called  PEAPOD . Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro attributed the attacks to a threat actor it tracks under the name  Void Rabisu , which is also known as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, and UNC2596, and is also believed to be associated with Cuba ransomware. The adversarial collective is something of an unusual group in that it conducts both financial motivated and espionage attacks, blurring the line between their modes of operation. It's also exclusively linked to the use of RomCom RAT. Attacks  involving the use of the backdoor  have singled out Ukraine and countries that support Ukraine in its war against Russia over the past year. Earlier this July, Microsoft implicated Void Rabisu to the exploitation of  CVE-2023-36884 , a remote code execution flaw in Office and Window...

A piece of malware known as  DarkGate  has been observed being spread via instant messaging platforms such as Skype and Microsoft Teams. In these attacks, the messaging apps are used to deliver a Visual Basic for Applications ( VBA ) loader script that masquerades as a PDF document, which, when opened, triggers the download and execution of an AutoIt script designed to launch the malware. "It's unclear how the originating accounts of the instant messaging applications were compromised, however it is hypothesized to be either through leaked credentials available through underground forums or the previous compromise of the parent organization," Trend Micro  said  in a new analysis published Thursday. DarkGate, first documented by Fortinet in November 2018, is a  commodity malware  that incorporates a wide range of features to harvest sensitive data from web browsers, conduct cryptocurrency mining, and allow its operators to remotely control the infected ...

GitLab has shipped security patches to resolve a critical flaw that allows an attacker to run pipelines as another user. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-5009  (CVSS score: 9.6), impacts all versions of GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) starting from 13.12 and prior to 16.2.7 as well as from 16.3 and before 16.3.4. "It was possible for an attacker to  run pipelines  as an arbitrary user via scheduled security scan policies," GitLab  said  in an advisory. "This was a bypass of  CVE-2023-3932  showing additional impact." Successful exploitation of CVE-2023-5009 could allow a threat actor to access sensitive information or leverage the elevated permissions of the impersonated user to modify source code or run arbitrary code on the system, leading to severe consequences. Security researcher Johan Carlsson (aka joaxcar) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. CVE-2023-3932 was addressed by GitLab in early August 2023. The new vulne...

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has  released  patches and hotfixes to address a critical security flaw in Apex One and Worry-Free Business Security solutions for Windows that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Tracked as  CVE-2023-41179  (CVSS score: 9.1), it relates to a third-party antivirus uninstaller module that's bundled along with the software. The complete list of impacted products is as follows - Apex One - version 2019 (on-premise), fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) Apex One as a Service - fixed in SP1 Patch 1 (B12380) and Agent version 14.0.12637 Worry-Free Business Security - version 10.0 SP1, fixed in 10.0 SP1 Patch 2495 Worry-Free Business Security Services - fixed in July 31, 2023, Monthly Maintenance Release Trend Micro said that a successful exploitation of the flaw could allow an attacker to manipulate the component to execute arbitrary commands on an affected installation. However, it requires that the adversary already has ...

The China-linked threat actor known as  Earth Lusca  has been observed targeting government entities using a never-before-seen Linux backdoor called SprySOCKS. Earth Lusca was  first documented  by Trend Micro in January 2022, detailing the adversary's attacks against public and private sector entities across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America. Active since 2021, the group has relied on spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to pull off its cyber espionage schemes. Some activities of the group overlap with another threat cluster tracked by Recorded Future under the name  RedHotel . The latest findings from the cybersecurity firm show that Earth Lusca continues to be an active group, even expanding its operations to target organizations across the world during the first half of 2023. Primary targets include government departments that are involved in foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. The attacks are concentrated in Southeast Asia, Ce...