Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence - September 26–30

Weekly Threat Briefing • September 30, 2022
Weekly Threat Briefing • September 30, 2022
The explosion of IoT devices and services has called for additional security measures from government authorities. In this attempt, the Atlantic Council think tank has issued a set of recommended security measures to secure the IoT landscape across the U.K., the U.S., Singapore, and Australia. In other news, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has provided additional guidance on telehealth security and privacy risks.
Beware of fake job offers that are making rounds on the internet. Conducted by Lazarus, and its affiliate group ZINC, the campaigns use a variety of job lures to target employees in organizations across multiple industries including media, defense, aerospace, and crypto. Meanwhile, the Royal ransomware group has raised its stakes in the ever-evolving extortion scheme, demanding a ransom of up to $2 million from victim organizations.
Virtual machines (VMs) are again on the attack list of threat actors as Mandiant released technical details of two new backdoors. Dubbed VIRTUALPITA and VIRTUALPIE, the malware leverage a wide variety of VMs to evade detection during the infection process. A new Golang-based malware, named Chaos, which is believed to be an evolution of Kaiji malware, has also been found launching DDoS and cryptomining attacks.
A newly found NullMixer malware dropper is being used to drop a variety of malware such as RedLine Stealer, Vidar, SmokeLoader, PsuedoManuscrypt, and Danbot. The malware dropper spreads via malicious websites found on search engines. These websites are related to cracks, keygens, and activators for downloading software illegally.
Mandiant researchers have released details about two new malware that are targeting VMware ESXi servers, Linux-based VMware vCenter servers, and Windows virtual machines. Dubbed VIRTUALPITA and VIRTUALPIE, the malware are likely attributed to a China-backed threat actor group tracked as UNC3886.
A new Chaos malware, written in the Go language, is leveraging known security vulnerabilities to launch DDoS and cryptomining attacks. The malware is capable of targeting both Windows and Linux systems.
Multiple hacking attempts were discovered abusing remote code execution vulnerability in TP-Link routers. Researchers found that the leaked credentials of TP-Link products found on dark web forums were leveraged as a part of the attack.
Prilex has evolved from an ATM-focused malware to a PoS malware. The malware spreads via phishing emails from fake technicians, asking recipients to update their PoS software.
Researchers have encountered a new technique used by the Hello ransomware gang in the wild. The technique can enable attackers to delete volume shadow copies on systems they encrypted.
Sucuri discovered a campaign using fake Cloudflare CAPTCHA dialog boxes to trick users into downloading and installing malware on their devices. The malware used in the attack enabled threat actors to gain full access to systems, paving way for a ransomware infection or banking trojan attack.
Agent Tesla, using a builder named ‘Quantum Builder,’ was observed in a new campaign that leveraged Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins) to evade detection. The keylogger is executed on the targeted machine with administrative privileges.
A highly-targeted phishing attack campaign dubbed STEEP#MAVERICK was found deploying an unknown payload on compromised machines belonging to military and weapons contractor companies. The attacks were carried out in late summer 2022.
The Witchetty espionage group has been progressively updating its toolset to target government sectors in the Middle East and Africa. Among the new tools used by the group is a backdoor named Stegmap. The malware is distributed via the rarely used steganography technique.
Fancy Bear hacking group used a new code execution technique that exploits mouse movement in PowerPoint files to distribute the Graphite malware. The group leveraged the SyncAppvPublishingServer utility for this purpose.