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An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor known as  Dragon Breath  has been observed adding new layers of complexity to its attacks by adopting a novel  DLL side-loading  mechanism. "The attack is based on a classic side-loading attack, consisting of a clean application, a malicious loader, and an encrypted payload, with various modifications made to these components over time," Sophos researcher Gabor Szappanos  said . "The latest campaigns add a twist in which a first-stage clean application 'side'-loads a second clean application and auto-executes it. The second clean application side-loads the malicious loader DLL. After that, the malicious loader DLL executes the final payload." Operation Dragon Breath, also tracked under the names APT-Q-27 and Golden Eye, was  first   documented  by QiAnXin in 2020, detailing a watering hole campaign designed to trick users into downloading a trojanized Windows installer for Telegram. A  subsequen...

The Chinese nation-state group known as  Camaro Dragon  has been linked to yet another backdoor that's designed to meet its intelligence-gathering goals. Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point, which  dubbed  the Go-based malware TinyNote, said it functions as a first-stage payload capable of "basic machine enumeration and command execution via PowerShell or Goroutines." What the malware lacks in terms of sophistication, it makes up for it when it comes to establishing redundant methods to retain access to the compromised host by means of multiple persistency tasks and varied methods to communicate with different servers. Camaro Dragon overlaps with a threat actor widely tracked as Mustang Panda, a state-sponsored group from China that is known to be active since at least 2012. The adversarial collective was recently in the spotlight for a custom bespoke firmware implant called  Horse Shell  that co-opts TP-Link routers into a mesh network capable of ...

The Chinese cyber espionage actor known as  Camaro Dragon  has been observed leveraging a new strain of self-propagating malware that spreads through compromised USB drives. "While their primary focus has traditionally been Southeast Asian countries, this latest discovery reveals their global reach and highlights the alarming role USB drives play in spreading malware," Check Point said in new research shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company, which found evidence of USB malware infections in Myanmar, South Korea, Great Britain, India, and Russia, said the findings are the result of a cyber incident that it investigated at an unnamed European hospital in early 2023. The probe found that the entity was not directly targeted by the adversary but rather suffered a breach via an employee's USB drive, which became infected when it was plugged into a colleague's computer at a conference in Asia. "Consequently, upon returning to the healthcare institu...

The China-linked threat actor known as Sharp Panda has expanded their targeting to include governmental organizations in Africa and the Caribbean as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. "The campaign adopts Cobalt Strike Beacon as the payload, enabling backdoor functionalities like C2 communication and command execution while minimizing the exposure of their custom tools," Check Point said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This refined approach suggests a deeper understanding of their targets." The Israeli cybersecurity firm is tracking the activity under a new name  Sharp Dragon , describing the adversary as careful in its targeting, while at the same time broadening its reconnaissance efforts. The adversary  first came to light  in June 2021, when it was detected targeting a Southeast Asian government to deploy a backdoor on Windows systems dubbed VictoryDLL. Subsequent attacks mounted by Sharp Dragon have set their sights on high-profile gov...

Telecommunications and manufacturing sectors in Central and South Asian countries have emerged as the target of an ongoing campaign distributing a new variant of a known malware called PlugX (aka Korplug or SOGU). "The new variant's features overlap with both the RainyDay and Turian backdoors, including abuse of the same legitimate applications for DLL side-loading, the XOR-RC4-RtlDecompressBuffer algorithm used to encrypt/decrypt payloads and the RC4 keys used," Cisco Talos researchers Joey Chen and Takahiro Takeda said in an analysis published this week. The cybersecurity company noted that the configuration associated with the PlugX variant diverges significantly from the usual PlugX configuration format, instead adopting the same structure used in RainyDay , a backdoor associated with a China-linked threat actor known as Lotus Panda (aka Naikon APT). It's also likely tracked by Kaspersky as FoundCore and attributed to a Chinese-speaking threat group it calls...

A Chinese-aligned cyberespionage group has been observed striking the telecommunication sector in Central Asia with versions of malware such as ShadowPad and PlugX. Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne tied the intrusions to an actor it tracks under the name "Moshen Dragon," with tactical overlaps between the collective and another threat group referred to as Nomad Panda (aka  RedFoxtrot ). "PlugX and ShadowPad have a well-established history of use among Chinese-speaking threat actors primarily for espionage activity," SentinelOne's Joey Chen  said . "Those tools have flexible, modular functionality and are compiled via shellcode to easily bypass traditional endpoint protection products." ShadowPad , labeled a "masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage," emerged as a successor to PlugX in 2015, even as variants of the latter have continually popped up as part of different campaigns associated with Chinese threat actors. Alth...

A threat actor with ties to North Korea has been linked to a prolific wave of credential theft campaigns targeting research, education, government, media and other organizations, with two of the attacks also attempting to distribute malware that could be used for intelligence gathering. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint  attributed  the infiltrations to a group it tracks as  TA406 , and by the wider threat intelligence community under the monikers  Kimsuky  ( Kaspersky ), Velvet Chollima ( CrowdStrike ), Thallium ( Microsoft ), Black Banshee ( PwC ), ITG16 ( IBM ), and the Konni Group ( Cisco Talos ). Policy experts, journalists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were targeted as part of weekly campaigns observed between from January through June 2021, Proofpoint researchers Darien Huss and Selena Larson disclosed in a technical report detailing the actor's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), with the attacks spread across North America, Russi...

The Chinese nation-state actor known as  Mustang Panda  has been linked to a new set of sophisticated and targeted attacks aimed at European foreign affairs entities since January 2023. An analysis of these intrusions, per Check Point researchers Itay Cohen and Radoslaw Madej, has revealed a custom firmware implant designed explicitly for TP-Link routers. "The implant features several malicious components, including a custom backdoor named 'Horse Shell' that enables the attackers to maintain persistent access, build anonymous infrastructure, and enable lateral movement into compromised networks," the company said . "Due to its firmware-agnostic design, the implant's components can be integrated into various firmware by different vendors." The Israeli cybersecurity firm is tracking the threat group under the mythical creature name Camaro Dragon,  which  is  also known as  BASIN, Bronze President, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, and Red Lich. The ...

A threat actor tracked under the moniker Webworm is taking advantage of bespoke variants of already existing Windows-based remote access trojans to fly under the radar, some of which are said to be in pre-deployment or testing phases. "The group has developed customized versions of three older remote access trojans (RATs), including  Trochilus RAT ,  Gh0st RAT , and  9002 RAT ," the Symantec Threat Hunter team, part of Broadcom Software,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm said at least one of the indicators of compromise (IOCs) was used in an attack against an IT service provider operating in multiple Asian countries. It's worth pointing out that all the three backdoors are primarily associated with Chinese threat actors such as Stone Panda (APT10), Aurora Panda (APT17), Emissary Panda (APT27), and Judgement Panda (APT31), among others, although they have been put to use by other hacking groups. Symantec said the Webworm...

China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) has doubled down on claims that the threat actor known as Volt Typhoon is a fabrication of the U.S. and its allies. The agency, in collaboration with the National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention Technology, went on to accuse the U.S. federal government, intelligence agencies, and Five Eyes countries of conducting cyber espionage activities against China, France, Germany, Japan, and internet users globally. It also said there's "ironclad evidence" indicating that the U.S. carries out false flag operations in an attempt to conceal its own malicious cyber attacks, adding it's inventing the "so-called danger of Chinese cyber attacks" and that it has established a "large-scale global internet surveillance network." "And the fact that the U.S. adopted supply chain attacks, implanted backdoors in internet products and 'pre-positioned' has completely...

The China-aligned threat actor known as Mustang Panda has been observed using an updated version of a backdoor called TONESHELL and a previously undocumented USB worm called SnakeDisk. "The worm only executes on devices with Thailand-based IP addresses and drops the Yokai backdoor," IBM X-Force researchers Golo Mühr and Joshua Chung said in an analysis published last week. The tech giant's cybersecurity division is tracking the cluster under the name Hive0154, which is also broadly referred to as BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, Polaris, RedDelta, Stately Taurus, and Twill Typhoon. The state-sponsored threat actor is believed to have been active since at least 2012. TONESHELL was first publicly documented by Trend Micro way back in November 2022 as part of cyber attacks targeting Myanmar, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan between May and October. Typically executed via DLL side-loading, its primary responsibility is to d...

Google on Tuesday said it took steps to disrupt the operations of a sophisticated "multi-component" botnet called Glupteba that approximately infected more than one million Windows computers across the globe and stored its command-and-control server addresses on Bitcoin's blockchain as a resilience mechanism. As part of the efforts, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said it partnered with the CyberCrime Investigation Group over the past year to terminate around 63 million Google Docs that were observed to have distributed the malware, alongside 1,183 Google Accounts, 908 Cloud Projects, and 870 Google Ads accounts that were associated with its distribution. Google TAG further said it worked with internet infrastructure providers and hosting providers, such as Cloudflare, to dismantle the malware by taking down servers and placing interstitial warning pages in front of the malicious domains. In tandem, the internet giant also announced a lawsuit against two Russ...

A suspected Chinese state-sponsored actor breached a digital certificate authority as well as government and defense agencies located in different countries in Asia as part of an ongoing campaign since at least March 2022. Symantec, by Broadcom Software, linked the attacks to an adversarial group it tracks under the name  Billbug , citing the use of tools previously attributed to this actor. The activity appears to be driven by espionage and data-theft, although no data is said to have been stolen to date. Billbug , also called Bronze Elgin, Lotus Blossom, Lotus Panda,  Spring Dragon , and  Thrip , is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that is believed to operate on behalf of Chinese interests. Primary targets include government and military organizations in South East Asia. Attacks mounted by the adversary in 2019 involved the use of backdoors like  Hannotog and Sagerunex , with the intrusions observed in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philip...

A Chinese nation-state group has been observed targeting Foreign Affairs ministries and embassies in Europe using  HTML smuggling techniques  to deliver the PlugX remote access trojan on compromised systems. Cybersecurity firm Check Point said the activity, dubbed  SmugX , has been ongoing since at least December 2022, adding it's part of a broader trend of Chinese adversaries shifting their focus to Europe. "The campaign uses new delivery methods to deploy (most notably – HTML Smuggling) a new variant of PlugX, an implant commonly associated with a wide variety of Chinese threat actors," Check Point  said . "Although the payload itself remains similar to the one found in older PlugX variants, its delivery methods result in low detection rates, which until recently helped the campaign fly under the radar." The exact identity of the threat actor behind the operation is a little hazy, although existing clues point in the direction of  Mustang Panda , which a...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday disclosed that a court-authorized operation allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to delete PlugX malware from over 4,250 infected computers as part of a "multi-month law enforcement operation." PlugX, also known as Korplug, is a remote access trojan (RAT) widely used by threat actors associated with the People's Republic of China (PRC), allowing for information theft and remote control of compromised devices. An affidavit filed by the FBI noted that the identified PlugX variant is linked to a state-sponsored hacking group called Mustang Panda , which is also referred to as BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, Red Lich, Stately Taurus, TA416, and Twill Typhoon. "Since at least 2014, Mustang Panda hackers then infiltrated thousands of computer systems in campaigns targeting U.S. victims, as well as European and Asian governments and businesses, and Chinese dissident...

The China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Mustang Panda has been observed weaponizing Visual Studio Code software as part of espionage operations targeting government entities in Southeast Asia. "This threat actor used Visual Studio Code's embedded reverse shell feature to gain a foothold in target networks," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Tom Fakterman said in a report, describing it as a "relatively new technique" that was first demonstrated in September 2023 by Truvis Thornton. The campaign is assessed to be a continuation of a previously documented attack activity aimed at an unnamed Southeast Asian government entity in late September 2023. Mustang Panda , also known by the names BASIN, Bronze President, Camaro Dragon, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, Red Lich, and Stately Taurus, has been operational since 2012, routinely conducting cyber espionage campaigns targeting government and religious entities across Europe an...