Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence - July 12–16

The Good

Collective action against persistent threat actors by law enforcement and government agencies always gets us super recharged. A Eurojust operation busted a $2.4 million online phishing scam. In the spirit of boosting defensive measures against ransomware threats, the U.S. set up a resource hub for victims to mitigate attacks. Now there’s another piece of positive news. The REvil ransomware gang has suddenly disappeared from the dark web. What’s going on?

• The REvil ransomware group has mysteriously disappeared from the dark web. The group’s Tor network infrastructure on the dark web included one leaked blog site and 22 data hosting sites.
• The U.S. government is offering up to $10 million for information leading to identifying or locating any suspect who has been indulged, directly or indirectly, in cyber activities against the country's critical infrastructure.
• Ukraine authorities confiscated roughly 3,800 PlayStation 4 gaming consoles that were allegedly stacked on metal racks to facilitate cryptocurrency mining.
• The DoJ, DHS, along with other federal partners, launched a new site StopRansomware.gov as part of the ongoing response to ransomware attacks.
• Under a Eurojust operation, Romanian and Greek authorities busted a $2.4 million phishing scam that duped online shoppers with fictitious advertisements, payment sites, and delivery partners.
• Following the footsteps of recent legislative enactments, the Ohio Personal Privacy Act (OPPA) was introduced. The Act delineates various consumer rights, such as the right to opt-out from the sale and rights to access and deletion of personal information.

The Bad

As if previous LinkedIn data leaks were not bad enough, now the data of 600 million profiles were once again dumped on a hacker forum. An APT group, reportedly affiliated with Mustang Panda, was discovered conducting a massive attack campaign in Southeast Asia. The week also witnessed escalating ransomware threats targeting SonicWall customers.

• The Cuba ransomware hit Forefront Dermatology and impacted the personal details of 2.4 million patients and employees. Around 47MB of data stolen was dumped on the threat actor’s darknet site.
• SonicWall notified its customers about a potential ransomware attack campaign that targets its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products. The campaign aims to steal credentials.
• Facebook took down 200 accounts used by Iranian hackers to catfish U.S. military personnel and defense and aerospace employees. Dubbed Tortoiseshell, the group tricked victims into downloading spyware.
• Dozens of phishing campaigns were found targeting Coinbase users. The campaign aimed to steal login credentials to gain access to cryptocurrency and financial and personal information.
• LuminousMoth APT was found conducting a widespread attack campaign against Southeast Asia users. The group displays affinity to the Mustang Panda threat actor.
• The official website of the Kazakhstan government (eGOV.kz) hosted malware-infused documents since January this year. These documents ultimately caused the installation of a version of Razy malware on users’ systems.
• Iran-linked TA453 threat actor group, also known as Charming Kitten, was found impersonating British scholars in a recent attack campaign. Dubbed Operation SpoofedScholars, the motive of the campaign was to steal credentials from senior professors from well-known academic institutions and experts focusing on the Middle East.
• Information from 600 million LinkedIn profiles was discovered on a hacker forum. The data includes full names, email addresses, and social media accounts, among other user data points.
• Facebook users were found receiving fake copyright complaint notifications with malicious links. The hackers are tagging politicians and celebrities.

New Threats

The notorious Trickbot is back. It got a new attack infrastructure that is capable of gathering intelligence in stealth mode. It seems that Magecart hackers can’t take a breath as they are so busy terrorizing businesses. Researchers found the Mespinoza ransomware gang acting smug and calling its victims ‘business partners’. Talk about turning criminal activities into professional enterprise!

• A never-seen-before SSH brute forcer—Diicot brute—was being used by a Romanian threat actor gang to crack passwords on Linux machines. The ultimate goal of the campaign was to deploy Monero miner.
• A spear-phishing campaign was spotted propagating Netwire RAT, targeting a wide range of organizations in Pakistan. The attackers used the email information stolen from a website of the Pakistani government to lure victims.
• A new variant of Joker malware was uncovered in a new Android malware campaign. The malware, disguised as a free QR Scanner app, is capable of functioning as both spyware and trojan.
• TrickBot got a makeover of its attack infrastructure, with a new VNC module to spy on its victims. The new version is named ‘tvncDll’ and can be used for monitoring and intelligence gathering.
• Magecart hackers came up with a new detection evasion technique. The attack was attributed to Magecart group 7 based on tactics, techniques, and procedures.
• An undocumented Python-based backdoor called BIOPASS RAT is taking advantage of Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio’s live-streaming app to pilfer the screen of its victims. The malware is under active development.
• The Mespinoza hacker group, also known as Pysa, was found using a new Gasket backdoor to target U.S. real estate, publishing, education, and industrial manufacturing firms.
• A new zero-day bug—CVE-2021-30563—is being exploited in the wild. The patch has been released by Google for the Chrome browser for Mac, Windows, and Linux.