Trickbot | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details about an early development version of a nascent ransomware strain called Diavol that has been linked to threat actors behind the infamous TrickBot syndicate. The latest  findings  from IBM X-Force show that the ransomware sample shares similarities to other malware that has been attributed to the cybercrime gang, thus establishing a clearer connection between the two. In early July, Fortinet  revealed  specifics of an unsuccessful ransomware attack involving Diavol payload targeting one of its customers, highlighting the malware's source code overlaps with that of Conti and its technique of reusing some language from Egregor ransomware in its ransom note. "As part of a rather unique encryption procedure, Diavol operates using user-mode Asynchronous Procedure Calls (APCs) without a symmetric encryption algorithm," Fortinet researchers previously said. "Usually, ransomware authors aim to complete the encryption oper

Cybersecurity researchers have opened the lid on the continued resurgence of the insidious Trickbot malware , making it clear that the Russia-based transnational cybercrime group is working behind the scenes to revamp its attack infrastructure in response to recent counter efforts from law enforcement. "The new capabilities discovered are used to monitor and gather intelligence on victims, using a custom communication protocol to hide data transmissions between [command-and-control] servers and victims — making attacks difficult to spot," Bitdefender  said  in a technical write-up published Monday, suggesting an increase in sophistication of the group's tactics. "Trickbot shows no sign of slowing down," the researchers noted. Botnets are formed when hundreds or thousands of hacked devices are enlisted into a network run by criminal operators, which are often then used to launch denial-of-network attacks to pummel businesses and critical infrastructure with

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Threat actors behind the infamous  TrickBot  malware have been linked to a new ransomware strain named "Diavol," according to the latest research. Diavol and Conti ransomware payloads were deployed on different systems in a case of an unsuccessful attack targeting one of its customers earlier this month, researchers from Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs said last week. TrickBot, a banking Trojan first detected in 2016, has been traditionally a Windows-based crimeware solution, employing different modules to perform a wide range of malicious activities on target networks, including credential theft and conduct ransomware attacks.  Despite efforts by law enforcement to neutralize the bot network, the ever-evolving malware has proven to be a  resilient threat , what with the Russia-based operators — dubbed " Wizard Spider " — quickly adapting new tools to carry out further attacks. Diavol is said to have been deployed in the wild in one incident to date. The sourc

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday charged a Latvian woman for her alleged role as a programmer in a cybercrime gang that helped develop TrickBot malware. The woman in question, Alla Witte , aka Max, 55, who resided in Paramaribo, Suriname, was arrested in Miami, Florida on February 6. Witte has been charged with 19 counts, including conspiracy to commit computer fraud and aggravated identity theft, wire and bank fraud affecting a financial institution, and money laundering. According to heavily redacted court documents released by the DoJ, Witte and 16 other unnamed cohorts have been accused of running a transnational criminal organization to develop and deploy a digital suite of malware tools with an aim to target businesses and individuals worldwide for theft and ransom. Since its origin as a banking Trojan in late 2015,  TrickBot  has evolved into a " crimeware-as-a-service " capable of pilfering valuable personal and financial information and even droppi

TrickBot , one of the most notorious and adaptable malware botnets in the world, is expanding its toolset to set its sights on firmware vulnerabilities to potentially deploy bootkits and take complete control of an infected system. The new functionality, dubbed " TrickBoot " by Advanced Intelligence (AdvIntel) and Eclypsium, makes use of readily available tools to check devices for well-known vulnerabilities that can allow attackers to inject malicious code in the UEFI/BIOS firmware of a device, granting the attackers an effective mechanism of persistent malware storage. "This marks a significant step in the evolution of TrickBot as UEFI level implants are the deepest, most powerful, and stealthy form of bootkits," the researchers said. "By adding the ability to canvas victim devices for specific UEFI/BIOS firmware vulnerabilities, TrickBot actors are able to target specific victims with firmware-level persistence that survives re-imaging or even device br

Efforts to disrupt TrickBot may have  shut down  most of its critical infrastructure, but the operators behind the notorious malware aren't sitting idle. According to new findings shared by cybersecurity firm  Netscout , TrickBot's authors have moved portions of their code to Linux in an attempt to widen the scope of victims that could be targeted. TrickBot, a financial Trojan first detected in 2016, has been traditionally a Windows-based crimeware solution, employing different modules to perform a wide range of malicious activities on target networks, including credential theft and perpetrate ransomware attacks. But over the past few weeks, twin efforts led by the US Cyber Command and Microsoft have helped to  eliminate 94%  of TrickBot's command-and-control (C2) servers that were in use and the new infrastructure the criminals operating TrickBot attempted to bring online to replace the previously disabled servers. Despite the steps taken to impede TrickBot, Microsof

Days after the US Government took steps to disrupt the notorious TrickBot botnet , a group of cybersecurity and tech companies has detailed a separate coordinated effort to take down the malware's back-end infrastructure. The joint collaboration, which involved Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit , Lumen's Black Lotus Labs , ESET , Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center ( FS-ISAC ), NTT , and Broadcom's Symantec , was undertaken after their request to halt TrickBot's operations was granted by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The development comes after the US Cyber Command mounted a campaign to thwart TrickBot's spread over concerns of ransomware attacks targeting voting systems ahead of the presidential elections next month. Attempts aimed at impeding the botnet were first reported by KrebsOnSecurity early this month. Microsoft and its partners analyzed over 186,000 TrickBot samples, using it to track down the m