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Threat actors have been leveraging fake websites advertising popular video conferencing software such as Google Meet, Skype, and Zoom to deliver a variety of malware targeting both Android and Windows users since December 2023. "The threat actor is distributing Remote Access Trojans (RATs) including  SpyNote RAT  for Android platforms, and  NjRAT  and  DCRat  for Windows systems," Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers  said . The spoofed sites are in Russian and are hosted on domains that closely resemble their legitimate counterparts, indicating that the attackers are using typosquatting tricks to lure prospective victims into downloading the malware. They also come with options to download the app for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms. While clicking on the button for Android downloads an APK file, clicking on the Windows app button triggers the download of a batch script. The malicious batch script is responsible for executing a PowerShell script, ...

Ukrainian entities based in Finland have been targeted as part of a malicious campaign distributing a commercial remote access trojan known as Remcos RAT using a malware loader called IDAT Loader. The attack has been attributed to a threat actor tracked by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) under the moniker UAC-0184. "The attack, as part of the IDAT Loader, used steganography as a technique," Morphisec researcher Michael Dereviashkin said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "While steganographic, or 'Stego' techniques are well-known, it is important to understand their roles in defense evasion, to better understand how to defend against such tactics." IDAT Loader , which overlaps with another loader family called Hijack Loader, has been used to serve additional payloads like DanaBot, SystemBC, and RedLine Stealer in recent months. It has also been used by a threat actor tracked as TA544 to distribute Remcos RAT and SystemBC...

The Russia-linked threat actor known as Turla has been observed using a new backdoor called  TinyTurla-NG  as part of a three-month-long campaign targeting Polish non-governmental organizations in December 2023. "TinyTurla-NG, just like TinyTurla, is a small 'last chance' backdoor that is left behind to be used when all other unauthorized access/backdoor mechanisms have failed or been detected on the infected systems," Cisco Talos  said  in a technical report published today. TinyTurla-NG is so named for exhibiting similarities with TinyTurla, another implant used by the adversarial collective in intrusions aimed at the U.S., Germany, and Afghanistan since at least 2020. TinyTurla was  first documented  by the cybersecurity company in September 2021. Turla, also known by the names Iron Hunter, Pensive Ursa, Secret Blizzard (formerly Krypton), Snake, Uroburos, and Venomous Bear, is a Russian state-affiliated threat actor linked to the Federal Security S...

The infamous malware loader and initial access broker known as  Bumblebee  has resurfaced after a four-month absence as part of a new phishing campaign observed in February 2024. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said the activity targets organizations in the U.S. with voicemail-themed lures containing links to OneDrive URLs. "The URLs led to a Word file with names such as "ReleaseEvans#96.docm" (the digits before the file extension varied)," the company  said  in a Tuesday report. "The Word document spoofed the consumer electronics company Humane." Opening the document leverages VBA macros to launch a PowerShell command to download and execute another PowerShell script from a remote server that, in turn, retrieves and runs the Bumblebee loader. Bumblebee,  first spotted  in March 2022, is mainly designed to download and execute follow-on payloads such as ransomware. It has been put to use by multiple crimeware threat actors that previously observe...

A financially motivated threat actor known as  UNC4990  is leveraging weaponized USB devices as an initial infection vector to target organizations in Italy. Google-owned Mandiant said the attacks single out multiple industries, including health, transportation, construction, and logistics. "UNC4990 operations generally involve widespread USB infection followed by the deployment of the EMPTYSPACE downloader," the company  said  in a Tuesday report. "During these operations, the cluster relies on third-party websites such as GitHub, Vimeo, and Ars Technica to host encoded additional stages, which it downloads and decodes via PowerShell early in the execution chain." UNC4990, active since late 2020, is assessed to be operating out of Italy based on the extensive use of Italian infrastructure for command-and-control (C2) purposes. It's currently not known if UNC4990 functions only as an initial access facilitator for other actors. The end goal of the threat ...

The threat actor known as UAC-0050 is leveraging phishing attacks to distribute Remcos RAT using new strategies to evade detection from security software. "The group's weapon of choice is Remcos RAT, a notorious malware for remote surveillance and control, which has been at the forefront of its espionage arsenal," Uptycs security researchers Karthickkumar Kathiresan and Shilpesh Trivedi  said  in a Wednesday report. "However, in their latest operational twist, the UAC-0050 group has integrated a pipe method for  interprocess communication , showcasing their advanced adaptability." UAC-0050, active since 2020, has a  history  of targeting Ukrainian and Polish entities via social engineering campaigns that impersonate legitimate organizations to trick recipients into opening malicious attachments. In February 2023, the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) attributed the adversary to a phishing campaign designed to deliver Remcos RAT. Over t...

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new phishing campaign orchestrated by the  Russia-linked APT28 group  to deploy previously undocumented malware such as OCEANMAP, MASEPIE, and STEELHOOK to harvest sensitive information. The activity, which was  detected  by the agency between December 15 and 25, 2023, targeted Ukrainian government entities and Polish organizations with email messages urging recipients to click on a link to view a document. However, to the contrary, the links redirect to malicious web resources that abuse JavaScript and the  "search-ms:" URI protocol handler  to drop a Windows shortcut file (LNK) that launches PowerShell commands to activate an infection chain for a new malware known as MASEPIE. MASEPIE is a Python-based tool to download/upload files and execute commands, with communications with the command-and-control (C2) server taking place over an encrypted channel using the TCP pr...

The Iranian nation-state actor known as  MuddyWater  has leveraged a newly discovered command-and-control (C2) framework called MuddyC2Go in its attacks on the telecommunications sector in Egypt, Sudan, and Tanzania. The Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, is  tracking  the activity under the name Seedworm, which is also tracked under the monikers Boggy Serpens, Cobalt Ulster, Earth Vetala, ITG17, Mango Sandstorm (formerly Mercury), Static Kitten, TEMP.Zagros, and Yellow Nix. Active since at least 2017,  MuddyWater  is assessed to be affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), primarily singling out entities in the Middle East. The cyber espionage group's use of  MuddyC2Go  was first highlighted by Deep Instinct last month, describing it as a Golang-based replacement for  PhonyC2 , itself a successor to MuddyC3. However, there is evidence to suggest that it may have been employed as early as 2020. Whi...

Microsoft on Monday said it detected Kremlin-backed nation-state activity exploiting a now-patched critical security flaw in its Outlook email service to gain unauthorized access to victims' accounts within Exchange servers. The tech giant  attributed  the intrusions to a threat actor it called  Forest Blizzard  (formerly Strontium), which is also widely tracked under the monikers APT28, BlueDelta, Fancy Bear, FROZENLAKE, Iron Twilight, Sednit, Sofacy, and TA422. The security vulnerability in question is  CVE-2023-23397  (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical privilege escalation bug that could allow an adversary to access a user's Net-NTLMv2 hash that could then be used to conduct a relay attack against another service to authenticate as the user. It was patched by Microsoft in March 2023. The goal, according to the Polish Cyber Command (DKWOC), is to obtain unauthorized access to mailboxes belonging to public and private entities in the country. "In the next...

The Vietnamese threat actors behind the Ducktail stealer malware have been linked to a new campaign that ran between March and early October 2023, targeting marketing professionals in India with an aim to hijack Facebook business accounts. "An important feature that sets it apart is that, unlike previous campaigns, which relied on .NET applications, this one used Delphi as the programming language," Kaspersky  said  in a report published last week. Ducktail , alongside  Duckport  and  NodeStealer , is part of a  cybercrime ecosystem  operating out of Vietnam, with the attackers primarily using sponsored ads on Facebook to propagate malicious ads and deploy malware capable of plundering victims' login cookies and ultimately taking control of their accounts. Such attacks primarily single out users who may have access to a Facebook Business account. The fraudsters then use the unauthorized access to place advertisements for financial gain, perpetuatin...

An advanced strain of malware masquerading as a cryptocurrency miner has managed to fly the radar for over five years, infecting no less than one million devices around the world in the process. That's according to findings from Kaspersky, which has codenamed the threat  StripedFly , describing it as an "intricate modular framework that supports both Linux and Windows." The Russian cybersecurity vendor, which first detected the samples in 2017, said the miner is part of a much larger entity that employs a custom  EternalBlue SMBv1 exploit  attributed to the Equation Group in order to infiltrate publicly-accessible systems. The malicious shellcode, delivered via the exploit, has the ability to download binary files from a remote Bitbucket repository as well as execute PowerShell scripts. It also supports a collection of plugin-like expandable features to harvest sensitive data and even uninstall itself. The platform's shellcode is injected in the  wininit.exe pro...

A new cyber attack campaign is leveraging the PowerShell script associated with a legitimate red teaming tool to plunder  NTLMv2 hashes  from compromised Windows systems primarily located in Australia, Poland, and Belgium. The activity has been codenamed Steal-It by Zscaler ThreatLabz. "In this campaign, the threat actors steal and exfiltrate NTLMv2 hashes using customized versions of Nishang's  Start-CaptureServer PowerShell script , executing various system commands, and exfiltrating the retrieved data via Mockbin APIs," security researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Avinash Kumar said. Nishang  is a framework and collection of PowerShell scripts and payloads for offensive security, penetration testing, and red teaming. The attacks leverage as many as five different infection chains, although they all leverage phishing emails containing ZIP archives as the starting point to infiltrate specific targets using geofencing techniques - NTLMv2 hash stealing infection...

Active flaws in the PowerShell Gallery could be weaponized by threat actors to pull off supply chain attacks against the registry's users. "These flaws make typosquatting attacks inevitable in this registry, while also making it extremely difficult for users to identify the true owner of a package," Aqua security researchers Mor Weinberger, Yakir Kadkoda, and Ilay Goldman said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Maintained by Microsoft,  PowerShell Gallery  is a  central repository  for sharing and acquiring PowerShell code, including PowerShell modules, scripts, and Desired State Configuration (DSC) resources. The registry boasts of 11,829 unique packages and 244,615 packages in total. The issues identified by the cloud security firm have to do with the service's lax policy surrounding package names, lacking protections against typosquatting attacks, as a result enabling attackers to upload malicious PowerShell modules that appear genuine to unsuspecting u...

A new custom backdoor dubbed  Stealth Soldier  has been deployed as part of a set of highly-targeted espionage attacks in North Africa. "Stealth Soldier malware is an undocumented backdoor that primarily operates surveillance functions such as file exfiltration, screen and microphone recording, keystroke logging and stealing browser information," cybersecurity company Check Point  said  in a technical report. The ongoing operation is characterized by the use of command-and-control (C&C) servers that mimic sites belonging to the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The earliest artifacts associated with the campaign date back to October 2022. The attacks commence with potential targets downloading bogus downloader binaries that are delivered via social engineering attacks. The intermediate payloads act as a conduit for retrieving Stealth Soldier, while simultaneously displaying a decoy empty PDF file. The custom modular implant, which is believed to be used s...

An unknown threat actor has been observed targeting the U.S. aerospace industry with a new PowerShell-based malware called PowerDrop . "PowerDrop uses advanced techniques to evade detection such as deception, encoding, and encryption," according to Adlumin, which  found the malware  implanted in an unnamed domestic aerospace defense contractor in May 2023. "The name is derived from the tool, Windows PowerShell, used to concoct the script, and 'Drop' from the DROP (DRP) string used in the code for padding." PowerDrop is also a post-exploitation tool, meaning it's designed to gather information from victim networks after obtaining initial access through other means. The malware employs Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request messages as beacons to initiate communications with a command-and-control (C2) server. The server, for its part, responds back with an encrypted command that's decoded and run on the compromised host. A similar...

An unnamed government entity associated with the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) was targeted by a likely Iranian threat actor to breach the victim's Microsoft Exchange Server with a "simple yet effective" backdoor dubbed  PowerExchange . According to a new report from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, the intrusion relied on email phishing as an initial access pathway, leading to the execution of a .NET executable contained with a ZIP file attachment. The binary, which masquerades as a PDF document, functions as a dropper to execute the final payload, which then launches the backdoor. PowerExchange, written in PowerShell, employs text files attached to emails for command-and-control (C2) communication. It allows the threat actor to run arbitrary payloads and upload and download files from and to the system. The custom implant achieves this by making use of the Exchange Web Services ( EWS ) API to connect to the victim's Exchange Server and uses a mailbox on the server to...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an ongoing phishing campaign that makes use of a unique attack chain to deliver the  XWorm malware  on targeted systems. Securonix, which is tracking the activity cluster under the name  MEME#4CHAN , said some of the attacks have primarily targeted manufacturing firms and healthcare clinics located in Germany. "The attack campaign has been leveraging rather unusual meme-filled PowerShell code, followed by a heavily obfuscated XWorm payload to infect its victims," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News. The report builds on  recent findings  from Elastic Security Labs, which revealed the threat actor's reservation-themed lures to deceive victims into opening malicious documents capable of delivering XWorm and Agent Tesla payloads. The attacks begin with phishing attacks to distribute decoy Microsoft Word documents that, instead of using macr...