cyber espionage | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Aquatic Panda has been linked to a "global espionage campaign" that took place in 2022 targeting seven organizations. These entities include governments, Catholic charities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and think tanks across Taiwan, Hungary, Turkey, Thailand, France, and the United States. The activity, which took place over a period of 10 months between January and October 2022, has been codenamed Operation FishMedley by ESET. "Operators used implants – such as ShadowPad, SodaMaster, and Spyder – that are common or exclusive to China-aligned threat actors," security researcher Matthieu Faou said in an analysis. Aquatic Panda , also called Bronze University, Charcoal Typhoon, Earth Lusca, and RedHotel, is a cyber espionage group from China that's known to be active since at least 2019. The Slovakian cybersecurity company is tracking the hacking crew under the name FishMonger. Sai...

An unpatched security flaw impacting Microsoft Windows has been exploited by 11 state-sponsored groups from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia as part of data theft, espionage, and financially motivated campaigns that date back to 2017. The zero-day vulnerability, tracked by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) as ZDI-CAN-25373 , refers to an issue that allows bad actors to execute hidden malicious commands on a victim's machine by leveraging crafted Windows Shortcut or Shell Link (.LNK) files. "The attacks leverage hidden command line arguments within .LNK files to execute malicious payloads, complicating detection," security researchers Peter Girnus and Aliakbar Zahravi said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News. "The exploitation of ZDI-CAN-25373 exposes organizations to significant risks of data theft and cyber espionage." Specifically, this involves the padding of the arguments with Space (0x20), Horizontal Tab (0x09), Line Feed (0x0A),...

Threat hunters have shed more light on a previously disclosed malware campaign undertaken by the China-aligned MirrorFace threat actor that targeted a diplomatic organization in the European Union with a backdoor known as ANEL. The attack, detected by ESET in late August 2024, singled out a Central European diplomatic institute with lures related to Word Expo , which is scheduled to kick off in Osaka, Japan, next month. The activity has been codenamed Operation AkaiRyū (Japanese for RedDragon). Active since at least 2019, MirrorFace is also referred to as Earth Kasha. It's assessed to be a subgroup within the APT10 umbrella. While known for its exclusive targeting of Japanese entities, the threat actor's attack on a European organization marks a departure from its typical victimology footprint. That's not all. The intrusion is also notable for deploying a heavily customized variant of AsyncRAT and ANEL (aka UPPERCUT), a backdoor previously linked to APT10. The use ...

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as ScarCruft is said to have been behind a never-before-seen Android surveillance tool named KoSpy targeting Korean and English-speaking users. Lookout, which shared details of the malware campaign, said the earliest versions date back to March 2022. The most recent samples were flagged in March 2024. It's not clear how successful these efforts were. "KoSpy can collect extensive data, such as SMS messages, call logs, location, files, audio, and screenshots via dynamically loaded plugins," the company said in an analysis. The malicious artifacts masquerade as utility applications on the official Google Play Store, using the names File Manager, Phone Manager, Smart Manager, Software Update Utility, and Kakao Security to trick unsuspecting users into infecting their own devices. All the identified apps offer the promised functionality to avoid raising suspicion while stealthily deploying spyware-related components in the backg...

The China-nexus cyber espionage group tracked as UNC3886 has been observed targeting end-of-life MX Series routers from Juniper Networks as part of a campaign designed to deploy custom backdoors, highlighting their ability to focus on internal networking infrastructure. "The backdoors had varying custom capabilities, including active and passive backdoor functions, as well as an embedded script that disables logging mechanisms on the target device," Google-owned Mandiant said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The threat intelligence firm described the development as an evolution of the adversary's tradecraft, which has historically leveraged zero-day vulnerabilities in Fortinet, Ivanti, and VMware devices to breach networks of interest and establish persistence for remote access. First documented in September 2022, the hacking crew is assessed to be "highly adept" and capable of targeting edge devices and virtualization technologies with the ultima...

Maritime and logistics companies in South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have become the target of an advanced persistent threat (APT) group dubbed SideWinder. The attacks, observed by Kaspersky in 2024, spread across Bangladesh, Cambodia, Djibouti, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam. Other targets of interest include nuclear power plants and nuclear energy infrastructure in South Asia and Africa, as well as telecommunication, consulting, IT service companies, real estate agencies, and hotels. In what appears to be a wider expansion of its victimology footprint, SideWinder has also targeted diplomatic entities in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bulgaria, China, India, the Maldives, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uganda. The targeting of India is significant as the threat actor was previously suspected to be of Indian origin. "It is worth noting that SideWinder constantly works to improve its toolsets, stay ahead of security software detections, extend per...

Threat actors of unknown provenance have been attributed to a malicious campaign predominantly targeting organizations in Japan since January 2025. "The attacker has exploited the vulnerability CVE-2024-4577 , a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in the PHP-CGI implementation of PHP on Windows, to gain initial access to victim machines," Cisco Talos researcher Chetan Raghuprasad said in a technical report published Thursday. "The attacker utilizes plugins of the publicly available Cobalt Strike kit 'TaoWu' for-post exploitation activities." Targets of the malicious activity encompass companies across technology, telecommunications, entertainment, education, and e-commerce sectors in Japan. It all starts with the threat actors exploiting the CVE-2024-4577 vulnerability to gain initial access and run PowerShell scripts to execute the Cobalt Strike reverse HTTP shellcode payload to grant themselves persistent remote access to the compromised endpoint. Th...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced charges against 12 Chinese nationals for their alleged participation in a wide-ranging scheme designed to steal data and suppress free speech and dissent globally. The individuals include two officers of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Ministry of Public Security (MPS), eight employees of an ostensibly private PRC company, Anxun Information Technology Co. Ltd. (安洵信息技术有限公司) also known as i-Soon , and members of Advanced Persistent Threat 27 ( APT27 , aka Budworm, Bronze Union, Emissary Panda, Lucky Mouse, and Iron Tiger) - Wu Haibo (吴海波), Chief Executive Officer Chen Cheng (陈诚), Chief Operating Officer Wang Zhe (王哲), Sales Director Liang Guodong (梁国栋), Technical Staff Ma Li (马丽), Technical Staff Wang Yan (王堰), Technical Staff Xu Liang (徐梁), Technical Staff Zhou Weiwei (周伟伟), Technical Staff Wang Liyu (王立宇), MPS Officer Sheng Jing (盛晶), MPS Officer Yin Kecheng (尹可成), APT27 actor aka "YKC" Zhou Sh...

The threat actor known as Dark Caracal has been attributed to a campaign that deployed a remote access trojan called Poco RAT in attacks targeting Spanish-speaking targets in Latin America in 2024. The findings come from Russian cybersecurity company Positive Technologies, which described the malware as loaded with a "full suite of espionage features." "It could upload files, capture screenshots, execute commands, and manipulate system processes," researchers Denis Kazakov and Sergey Samokhin said in a technical report published last week. Poco RAT was previously documented by Cofense in July 2024, detailing the phishing attacks aimed at mining, manufacturing, hospitality, and utilities sectors. The infection chains are characterized by the use of finance-themed lures that trigger a multi-step process to deploy the malware. While the campaign was not attributed to any threat at that time, Positive Technologies said it identified tradecraft overlaps with Dar...

The threat actor known as Lotus Panda has been observed targeting government, manufacturing, telecommunications, and media sectors in the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Taiwan with updated versions of a known backdoor called Sagerunex . "Lotus Blossom has been using the Sagerunex backdoor since at least 2016 and is increasingly employing long-term persistence command shells and developing new variants of the Sagerunex malware suite," Cisco Talos researcher Joey Chen said in an analysis published last week. Lotus Panda, also known as Billbug, Bronze Elgin, Lotus Blossom, Spring Dragon, and Thrip, is a suspected Chinese hacking crew that's active since at least 2009. The threat actor was first exposed by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 in June 2015 and later by Broadcom-owned Symantec three years later. In late 2022, Symantec detailed the threat actor's attack on a digital certificate authority as well as government and defense agencies located in different c...

Threat hunters are calling attention to a new highly-targeted phishing campaign that singled out "fewer than five" entities in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) to deliver a previously undocumented Golang backdoor dubbed Sosano. The malicious activity was specifically directed against aviation and satellite communications organizations, according to Proofpoint, which detected it in late October 2024. The enterprise security firm is tracking the emerging cluster under the moniker UNK_CraftyCamel . A noteworthy aspect of the attack chain is the fact that the adversary took advantage of its access to a compromised email account belonging to the Indian electronics company INDIC Electronics to send phishing messages. The entity is said to have been in a trusted business relationship with all the targets, with the lures tailored to each of them. "UNK_CraftyCamel leveraged a compromised Indian electronics company to target fewer than five organizations in the United Arab E...

The threat actor known as Sticky Werewolf has been linked to targeted attacks primarily in Russia and Belarus with the aim of delivering the Lumma Stealer malware by means of a previously undocumented implant. Cybersecurity company Kaspersky is tracking the activity under the name Angry Likho, which it said bears a "strong resemblance" to Awaken Likho (aka Core Werewolf, GamaCopy, and PseudoGamaredon). "However, Angry Likho's attacks tend to be targeted, with a more compact infrastructure, a limited range of implants, and a focus on employees of large organizations, including government agencies and their contractors," the Russian company said . It's suspected that the threat actors are likely native Russian speakers given the use of fluent Russian in the bait files used to trigger the infection chain. Last month, cybersecurity company F6 (formerly F.A.C.C.T.) described it as a "pro-Ukrainian cyberspy group." The attackers have been found...

A new campaign is targeting companies in Taiwan with malware known as Winos 4.0 as part of phishing emails masquerading as the country's National Taxation Bureau. The campaign, detected last month by Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, marks a departure from previous attack chains that have leveraged malicious game-related applications . "The sender claimed that the malicious file attached was a list of enterprises scheduled for tax inspection and asked the receiver to forward the information to their company's treasurer," security researcher Pei Han Liao said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The attachment mimics an official document from the Ministry of Finance, urging the recipient to download the list of enterprises scheduled for tax inspection. But in reality, the list is a ZIP file containing a malicious DLL ("lastbld2Base.dll") that lays the groundwork for the next attack stage, leading to the execution of shellcode that's responsible for d...

The threat actor known as Space Pirates has been linked to a malicious campaign targeting Russian information technology (IT) organizations with a previously undocumented malware called LuckyStrike Agent. The activity was detected in November 2024 by Solar, the cybersecurity arm of Russian state-owned telecom company Rostelecom. It's tracking the activity under the name Erudite Mogwai. The attacks are also characterized by the use of other tools like Deed RAT , also called ShadowPad Light, and a customized version of proxy utility named Stowaway , which has been previously used by other China-linked hacking groups. "Erudite Mogwai is one of the active APT groups specializing in the theft of confidential information and espionage," Solar researchers said . "Since at least 2017, the group has been attacking government agencies, IT departments of various organizations, as well as enterprises related to high-tech industries such as aerospace and electric power....

Opposition activists in Belarus as well as Ukrainian military and government organizations are the target of a new campaign that employs malware-laced Microsoft Excel documents as lures to deliver a new variant of PicassoLoader .  The threat cluster has been assessed to be an extension of a long-running campaign mounted by a Belarus-aligned threat actor dubbed Ghostwriter (aka Moonscape, TA445, UAC-0057, and UNC1151) since 2016. It's known to align with Russian security interests and promote narratives critical of NATO. "The campaign has been in preparation since July-August 2024 and entered the active phase in November-December 2024," SentinelOne researcher Tom Hegel said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. "Recent malware samples and command-and-control (C2) infrastructure activity indicate that the operation remains active in recent days." The starting point of the attack chain analyzed by the cybersecurity company is a Google Drive shar...

A previously unknown threat activity cluster targeted European organizations, particularly those in the healthcare sector, to deploy PlugX and its successor, ShadowPad, with the intrusions ultimately leading to deployment of a ransomware called NailaoLocker in some cases. The campaign, codenamed Green Nailao by Orange Cyberdefense CERT, involved the exploitation of a now-patched security flaw in Check Point network gateway security products ( CVE-2024-24919 , CVSS score: 7.5). The attacks were observed between June and October 2024. "The campaign relied on DLL search-order hijacking to deploy ShadowPad and PlugX – two implants often associated with China-nexus targeted intrusions," the company said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. The initial access afforded by exploitation of vulnerable Check Point instances is said to have allowed the threat actors to retrieve user credentials and to connect to the VPN using a legitimate account. In the next stage,...