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Cybersecurity experts have shed light on a new cybercrime group known as  ShadowSyndicate  (formerly Infra Storm) that may have leveraged as many as seven different ransomware families over the past year. "ShadowSyndicate is a threat actor that works with various ransomware groups and affiliates of ransomware programs," Group-IB and Bridewell  said  in a joint technical report. The actor, active since July 16, 2022, has linked to ransomware activity related to Quantum, Nokoyawa, BlackCat, Royal, Cl0p, Cactus, and Play strains, while also deploying off-the-shelf post-exploitation tools like  Cobalt Strike  and  Sliver  as well as loaders such as  IcedID  and  Matanbuchus . The findings are based on a distinct SSH fingerprint (1ca4cbac895fc3bd12417b77fc6ed31d) discovered on 85 servers, 52 of which have been used as command-and-control (C2) for Cobalt Strike. Among those servers are eight different Cobalt Strike license keys (or watermarks). A majority of the servers (23) a

A financially motivated threat actor has been outed as an initial access broker (IAB) that sells access to compromised organizations for other adversaries to conduct follow-on attacks such as ransomware. SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) has dubbed the e-crime group  Gold Melody , which is also known by the names Prophet Spider (CrowdStrike) and UNC961 (Mandiant). "This financially motivated group has been active since at least 2017, compromising organizations by exploiting vulnerabilities in unpatched internet-facing servers," the cybersecurity company  said . "The victimology suggests opportunistic attacks for financial gain rather than a targeted campaign conducted by a state-sponsored threat group for espionage, destruction, or disruption." Gold Melody has been  previously   linked  to  attacks  exploiting security flaws in JBoss Messaging (CVE-2017-7504), Citrix ADC (CVE-2019-19781), Oracle WebLogic (CVE-2020-14750 and CVE-2020-14882), GitLab (CVE-20

The threat actors behind RedLine and Vidar information stealers have been observed pivoting to ransomware through phishing campaigns that spread initial payloads signed with Extended Validation ( EV ) code signing certificates. "This suggests that the threat actors are streamlining operations by making their techniques multipurpose," Trend Micro researchers  said  in a new analysis published this week. In the incident investigated by the cybersecurity company, an unnamed victim is said to have first received a piece of info stealer malware with EV code signing certificates, followed by ransomware using the same delivery technique. In the past,  QakBot infections  have leveraged  samples signed with valid code signing certificates  to bypass security protections. The attacks start with phishing emails that employ well-worn lures to trick victims into running malicious attachments that masquerade as PDF or JPG images but are actually executables that jump-start the comprom

A new ransomware family called  3AM  has emerged in the wild after it was detected in a single incident in which an unidentified affiliate deployed the strain following an unsuccessful attempt to deliver LockBit (attributed to Bitwise Spider  or  Syrphid ) in the target network. "3AM is written in Rust and appears to be a completely new malware family," the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The ransomware attempts to stop multiple services on the infected computer before it begins encrypting files. Once encryption is complete, it attempts to delete Volume Shadow (VSS) copies." 3AM gets its name from the fact that it's referenced in the ransom note. It also appends encrypted files with the extension .threeamtime. That said, it's currently not known if the malware authors have any connections with known e-crime groups. In the attack spotted by Symantec, the adversary is said to have managed to

Threat actors are exploiting poorly secured Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers to deliver Cobalt Strike and a ransomware strain called FreeWorld. Cybersecurity firm Securonix, which has dubbed the campaign DB#JAMMER , said it stands out for the way the toolset and infrastructure is employed. "Some of these tools include enumeration software, RAT payloads, exploitation and credential stealing software, and finally ransomware payloads," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a technical breakdown of the activity. "The ransomware payload of choice appears to be a newer variant of Mimic ransomware called FreeWorld." Initial access to the victim host is achieved by brute-forcing the MS SQL server, using it to enumerate the database and leveraging the xp_cmdshell configuration option to run shell commands and conduct reconnaissance. The next stage entails taking steps to impair system firewall and establish persistence by connecting to a remote SMB share

An open-source .NET-based information stealer malware dubbed  SapphireStealer  is being used by multiple entities to enhance its capabilities and spawn their own bespoke variants. "Information-stealing malware like SapphireStealer can be used to obtain sensitive information, including corporate credentials, which are often resold to other threat actors who leverage the access for additional attacks, including operations related to espionage or ransomware/extortion," Cisco Talos researcher Edmund Brumaghin  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. An entire ecosystem has developed over time that allows both financially motivated and nation-state actors to use services from purveyors of stealer malware to carry out various kinds of attacks. Viewed in that light, such malware not only represents an evolution of the cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) model, they also offer other threat actors to monetize the stolen data to distribute ransomware, conduct data theft, and other maliciou

Recently disclosed security flaws impacting Juniper firewalls, Openfire, and Apache RocketMQ servers have come under active exploitation in the wild, according to multiple reports. The Shadowserver Foundation  said  that it's "seeing exploitation attempts from multiple IPs for Juniper J-Web CVE-2023-36844 (& friends) targeting /webauth_operation.php endpoint," the same day a proof-of-concept (PoC) became available. The  issues , tracked as CVE-2023-36844, CVE-2023-36845, CVE-2023-36846, and CVE-2023-36847, reside in the J-Web component of Junos OS on Juniper SRX and EX Series. They could be chained by an unauthenticated, network-based attacker to execute arbitrary code on susceptible installations. Patches for the flaw were released on August 17, 2023, a week after which watchTowr Labs published a proof-of-concept (PoC) by combining CVE-2023-36846 and CVE-2023-36845 to execute a PHP file containing malicious shellcode. Currently, there are  more than 8,200 Junip

The leak of the  LockBit 3.0 ransomware  builder last year has led to threat actors abusing the tool to spawn new variants. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said it detected a ransomware intrusion that deployed a version of LockBit but with a markedly different ransom demand procedure. "The attacker behind this incident decided to use a different ransom note with a headline related to a previously unknown group, called NATIONAL HAZARD AGENCY," security researchers Eduardo Ovalle and Francesco Figurelli  said . The revamped ransom note directly specified the amount to be paid to obtain the decryption keys, and directed communications to a Tox service and email, unlike the LockBit group, which doesn't mention the amount and uses its own communication and negotiation platform. NATIONAL HAZARD AGENCY is far from the only cybercrime gang to use the leaked LockBit 3.0 builder. Some of the other threat actors known to leverage it include  Bl00dy and Buhti . Kaspersk

A malicious toolset dubbed  Spacecolon  is being deployed as part of an ongoing campaign to spread variants of the Scarab ransomware across victim organizations globally. "It probably finds its way into victim organizations by its operators compromising vulnerable web servers or via brute forcing RDP credentials," ESET security researcher Jakub Souček  said  in a detailed technical write-up published Tuesday. The Slovak cybersecurity firm, which dubbed the threat actor CosmicBeetle, said the origins of the Spacecolon date back to May 2020. The highest concentration of victims has been detected in France, Mexico, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and Turkey. While the exact provenance of the adversary is unclear, several Spacecolon variants are said to contain Turkish strings, likely pointing to the involvement of a Turkish-speaking developer. There is no evidence currently linking it to any other known threat actor group. Some of the targets include a hospital and a tourist reso

Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that it found a new version of the  BlackCat  ransomware (aka ALPHV and Noberus) that embeds tools like Impacket and RemCom to facilitate lateral movement and remote code execution. "The  Impacket tool  has credential dumping and remote service execution modules that could be used for broad deployment of the BlackCat ransomware in target environments," the company's threat intelligence team  said  in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). "This BlackCat version also has the  RemCom hacktool  embedded in the executable for remote code execution. The file also contains hardcoded compromised target credentials that actors use for lateral movement and further ransomware deployment." RemCom, billed as an open-source alternative to PsExec, has been put to use by Chinese and Iranian nation-state threat actors like  Dalbit  and  Chafer  (aka Remix Kitten) to move across the victim environments in the past. Redmond said it started

An ongoing cyber attack campaign originating from China is targeting the Southeast Asian gambling sector to deploy Cobalt Strike beacons on compromised systems.  Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne said the tactics, techniques, and procedures point to the involvement of a threat actor tracked as  Bronze Starlight  (aka Emperor Dragonfly or Storm-0401), which has been linked to the use of  short-lived   ransomware families  as a smokescreen to conceal its espionage motives. "The threat actors abuse Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Edge, and McAfee VirusScan executables vulnerable to DLL hijacking to deploy Cobalt Strike beacons," security researchers Aleksandar Milenkoski and Tom Hegel  said  in an analysis published today. It also bears noting that the campaign exhibits overlaps with an intrusion set monitored by ESET under the name  Operation ChattyGoblin . This activity, in turn, shares commonalities with a  supply chain attack  that came to light last year leveraging a troja

The threat actors behind the Monti ransomware have resurfaced after a two-month break with a new Linux version of the encryptor in its attacks targeting government and legal sectors. Monti  emerged  in June 2022, weeks after the Conti ransomware group shut down its operations, deliberately imitating the tactics and tools associated with the latter, including its leaked source code. Not anymore. The new version, per Trend Micro, is a departure of sorts, exhibiting significant changes from its other Linux-based predecessors. "Unlike the earlier variant, which is primarily based on the leaked Conti source code, this new version employs a different encryptor with additional distinct behaviors," Trend Micro researchers Nathaniel Morales and Joshua Paul Ignacio  said . A  BinDiff analysis  has revealed that while the older iterations had a 99% similarity rate with Conti, the latest version has only a 29% similarity rate, suggesting an overhaul. Some of the crucial changes in

An unknown threat actor has been linked to a cyber attack on a power generation company in southern Africa with a new variant of the SystemBC malware called DroxiDat as a precursor to a suspected ransomware attack. "The proxy-capable backdoor was deployed alongside Cobalt Strike Beacons in a south African nation's critical infrastructure," Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher at Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT),  said . The Russian cybersecurity company said the attack, which took place in late March 2023, was in its early stages and involved the use of DroxiDat to profile the system and proxy network traffic using the  SOCKS5 protocol  to and from command-and-control (C2) infrastructure. SystemBC  is a C/C++-based commodity malware and remote administrative tool that was  first seen in 2019 . Its main feature is to set up  SOCKS5 proxies  on victim computers that can then be used by threat actors to tunnel malicious traffic associ

Tactical similarities have been unearthed between the double extortion ransomware group known as Rhysida and Vice Society , including in their targeting of education and healthcare sectors. "As Vice Society was observed deploying a variety of commodity ransomware payloads, this link does not suggest that Rhysida is exclusively used by Vice Society, but shows with at least medium confidence that Vice Society operators are now using Rhysida ransomware," Check Point  said  in a new report. Vice Society , tracked by Microsoft under the name Storm-0832, has a  pattern  of employing already existing ransomware binaries that are sold on criminal forums to pull off their attacks. The financially motivated gang has also been observed resorting to pure extortion-themed attacks wherein the data is exfiltrated without encrypting them. First observed in May 2023, the  Rhysida  ransomware group is known to rely on phishing attacks and Cobalt Strike to breach targets' networks and