Cyware Weekly Cyber Threat Intelligence July 16 - July 20, 2018

Cyware Weekly Cyber Threat Intelligence July 16 - July 20, 2018 - Featured Image

Weekly Threat Briefing • July 20, 2018

The Good

Friday has come around again and it’s time to round up the biggest breaches, attacks and sneaky new malware that popped up this week. It is also worth mentioning some cybersecurity wins made by law enforcement and researchers. Japan is strengthening its cybersecurity ahead of the Olympics. The author of LuminosityLink RAT pleaded guilty while a Silk Road admin was extradited to the US. Instagram is building a non-SMS 2FA system. Meanwhile, researchers are working on a program to stop hacking by supercomputers.

  • Japan and the European Union are strengthening their cybersecurity cooperation ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. To tackle cyber attacks and threats, Japan is acquiring and exchanging knowledge and best practices on cybersecurity with EU, as well as making collaborative efforts in developing new capabilities.

  • Colton Grubbs, the 21-year-old malware author behind the infamous LuminosityLink RAT, has pleaded guilty in federal court. He admitted to creating the RAT in April 2015 and later sold it online via hacking forums under the online moniker KFC Watermelon. US authorities secretly arrested Grubb in July 2017.

  • Irish resident and alleged administrator of the now-defunct Silk Road, Gary Davis, has been extradited to the US to face charges over his involvement with the Dark Web marketplace. Facing charges of computer intrusion, money laundering and narcotics distribution, Davis could face life in prison if convicted.

  • The Girl Scouts of the USA have unveiled a new set of 30 STEM badges that girls aged 5 to 18 can earn for efforts, completing activities and advocacy in “some of society’s most pressing needs.” The new STEM badges will help girls hone their skills in coding, robotics, cybersecurity, mechanical engineering and more.

  • Instagram is upgrading its two-factor authentication (2FA) that would not require a user’s phone number to better guard against SIM hacking. The social media company confirmed it is building a token-based 2FA system that works with security apps like Google Authenticator or Duo. Users can receive a special code to log in that can’t be generated on a different phone used by a hacker in a SIM porting attack .

  • Researchers at Australia’s Monash University have developed a post-quantum secure algorithm to help stop cyberattacks by supercomputers. The Lattice-Based One Time Ring Signature (L2RS) deploys cryptographical techniques designed to protect the privacy of users, large transactions and transfer of data without risk of being hacked by quantum computers.

The Bad

The past week was peppered with several security breaches, data leaks and cyberattacks coming to light. Thousands of Dahua DVR passwords were exposed via ZoomEye. LabCorp was hit by the SamSam ransomware while Robocent leaked thousands of US voter records. Millions were impacted in the Telefonica breach. Ubisoft was also hit with DDoS attacks.

  • Login passwords for over 30,000 vulnerable Dahua DVRs running old firmware were cached by IoT search engine ZoomEye. Although many Dahua devices could be hijacked by exploiting a 5-year-old vulnerability, hackers could have simply used the search engine to unearth thousands of Dahua DVR credentials.
  • LabCorp, one of the largest clinical labs in the US, disclosed that it suffered a security incident that forced it to take part of its systems offline. It was later revealed that the firm was hit by the SamSam ransomware. The firm said it has found “no evidence of theft or misuse of data” so far.
  • Virginia-based political robocall firm Robocent left hundreds of thousands of voter records exposed on a public, unprotected Amazon S3 bucket. The repository contained both audio files with pre-recorded political messages and voter data such as names, phone numbers, addresses, jurisdiction breakdown and political leanings.
  • Spanish telecom giant Telefonica suffered a breach that possibly compromised the personal data of millions of customers. Compromised data included customers’ full names, fixed line and mobile numbers, national ID numbers, banks and call records. The company said the flaw has since has been fixed.
  • Gaming giant Ubisoft’s servers were hit by DDoS attacks causing connection and login issues for gamers. The connectivity issues began last Thursday, preventing gamers from signing into their favorite games like Far Cry 5, For Honor and Ghost Recon Wildlands for days.

New Threats

Hackers are developing new sophisticated techniques to exploit victims as well as upgrading older ware with new capabilities. Magniber ransomware is now a global threat while Upatre has new evasion techniques. Fancy Bear hackers are behind the ‘Roman Holiday’ campaign. Meanwhile, a malware author built a massive botnet in a day.

  • North Korea-linked Andariel, a hacking group associated with the infamous Lazarus Group, has been active over the past few months targeting South Korean victims. Researchers said the group has been leveraging an exploit on Microsoft’s ActiveX software framework to enable watering-hole attacks on South Korean websites for reconnaissance purposes.
  • Magniber ransomware is becoming a global threat as it expands beyond South Korea to target other Asian countries as well. Malwarebytes researchers said its source code is now more refined, comes with multiple obfuscation techniques and is no longer dependent on a C&C server or hard coded key for its encryption process.
  • Cisco Talos researchers discovered a highly targeted malware campaign targeting just 13 iPhones located in India. The campaign has been in operation since August 2015 with attackers using an open-source mobile device management (MDM) protocol to carry out the attack and control enrolled devices.
  • Researchers at Palo Alto Networks said the Upatre malware downloader has been upgraded with new detection evasion techniques. First discovered back in 2013, the popular downloader has been previously used by cybercriminals for various malware like Locky, Dridex, Zeus, GameOver and others.
  • CSE Cybesec’s Z-Lab said Russian threat group Fancy Bear seems to be behind a new malware campaign that targeted Italy’s Navy. The multi-stage cyberespionage campaign named Roman Holiday features an initial dropper and an updated version of the group’s X-Agent backdoor.
  • A malware author going by the pseudonym “Anarchy” managed to build a massive botnet comprised of more than 18,000 routers in just a day. Security researchers from NewSky Security spotted the new botnet built by exploiting the CVE-2017-17215 vulnerability in Huawei HG532 routers.

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Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence, June 09–13, 2025

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Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence, May 19–23, 2025

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Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence, April 21–25, 2025

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Apr 18, 2025

Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence, April 14–18, 2025

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Apr 11, 2025

Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence, April 07–11, 2025

The U.K. government rolled out a Cyber Governance Code of Practice aimed at directors and board members, not just CISOs. Backed by the NCSC and other national bodies, the code includes practical actions, modular training, and a board-level toolkit. Startups building the future of cyber defense are getting serious backing. The British Business Bank has committed most of a £50 million fund to Osney Capital, which will invest in early-stage cybersecurity companies across the U.K. A torrent download might be doing more than delivering cracked software. A campaign has been distributing ViperSoftX to Korean users, likely run by Arabic-speaking threat actors. Invasive spyware campaigns are zeroing in on high-risk communities. MOONSHINE and BADBAZAAR are being deployed through trojanized mobile apps to surveil Uyghur, Tibetan, and Taiwanese individuals, as well as civil society groups. Search for QuickBooks during tax season, and you might land on a trap. Threat actors are placing deceptive Google Ads that link to phishing pages almost identical to the real QuickBooks login portal. It starts with a PDF search and ends with malware on your machine. A new campaign is using fake CAPTCHAs and Cloudflare Turnstile to lure users into downloading LegionLoader. Seed phrases aren’t supposed to come from strangers. The PoisonSeed campaign is targeting crypto holders and enterprise users by compromising bulk email services. Victims are lured with fake wallet setup instructions that embed attacker-controlled recovery phrases - giving threat actors full access once the wallets are used. A Chinese-linked threat group, ToddyCat, has been exploiting a security vulnerability in ESET's software to deliver a new malware, TCESB, in Asia.