Cybersecurity

It Was Not Me! Malware-Initiated Vulnerability Scanning Is on the Rise

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary Our telemetry indicates a growing number of threat actors are turning to malware-initiated scanning attacks. This article reviews how attackers use infected hosts for malware-based scans of their targets instead of the more traditional approach using direct scans. Threat actors have been using scanning methods […]

Cybersecurity

The Art of Domain Deception: Bifrost’s New Tactic to Deceive Users

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary We recently found a new Linux variant of Bifrost (aka Bifrose), showcasing an innovative technique to evade detection. It uses a deceptive domain, download.vmfare[.]com, which mimics the legitimate VMware domain. This latest version of Bifrost aims to bypass security measures and compromise targeted systems. First […]

Cybersecurity

Diving Into Glupteba’s UEFI Bootkit

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary Glupteba is advanced, modular and multipurpose malware that, for over a decade, has mostly been seen in financially driven cybercrime operations. This article describes the infection chain of a new campaign that took place around November 2023. Despite being active for over a decade, certain […]

Cybersecurity

Exploring the Latest Mispadu Stealer Variant

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary Unit 42 researchers recently discovered activity attributed to Mispadu Stealer, a stealthy infostealer first reported in 2019. We found this activity as part of the Unit 42 Managed Threat Hunting offering. We discovered this threat activity while hunting for the SmartScreen CVE-2023-36025 vulnerability. When we […]

Cybersecurity

ApateWeb: An Evasive Large-Scale Scareware and PUP Delivery Campaign

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary Unit 42 researchers discovered a large-scale campaign we call ApateWeb that uses a network of over 130,000 domains to deliver scareware, potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) and other scam pages. Among these PUPs, we have identified several adware programs including a rogue browser and different browser […]

Cybersecurity

Threat Assessment: BianLian

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary Unit 42 researchers have been tracking the BianLian ransomware group, which has been in the top 10 of the most active groups based on leak site data we’ve gathered. From that leak site data, we’ve primarily observed activity affecting the healthcare and manufacturing sectors and […]

Cybersecurity

Financial Fraud APK Campaign

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese) Executive Summary During our research discovering threats in legitimate network traffic, activity generated by a certain type of Android Package Kit (APK) files kept hitting our radar. This activity led us to conduct an in-depth investigation on the associated APK files. Our research revealed a family of […]