A Catalog of Hazardous AV Sites – A Tale of Malware Hosting
In mid-April 2024, Trellix Advanced Research Center team members observed multiple fake AV sites hosting highly sophisticated malicious files such as APK, EXE and Inno setup installer that includes Spy and Stealer capabilities. Hosting malicious software through sites which look legitimate is predatory to general consumers, especially those who look to protect their devices from cyber-attacks. The hosted websites made to look legitimate are listed below.
“SubdoMailing” — Thousands of Hijacked Major-Brand Subdomains Found Bombarding Users With Millions of Malicious Emails
Guardio Labs uncovers a sprawling campaign of subdomain hijacking, compromising already over 8,000 domains from esteemed brands and institutions, including MSN, VMware, McAfee, The Economist, Cornell University, CBS, Marvel, eBay and others. This malicious activity, dubbed “SubdoMailing”, leverages the trust associated with these domains to circulate spam and malicious phishing emails by the Millions each day, cunningly using their credibility and stolen resources to slip past security measures. In our detailed analysis, we disclose how we detected this extensive subdomain hijacking effort, its mechanisms, its unprecedented scale and the main threat actor behind it. Furthermore, we developedthe “SubdoMailing” checker — a website designed to empower domain owners to reclaim control over their compromised assets and shield themselves against such pervasive threats. This report not only sheds light on the magnitude of the issue but also serves as a call to action for enhancing domain security against future exploits.
Disrupting malicious uses of AI by state-affiliated threat actors
We terminated accounts associated with state-affiliated threat actors. Our findings show our models offer only limited, incremental capabilities for malicious cybersecurity tasks.
Analyzing a pirated application, that contains a (malicious) surprise A few days ago, malwrhunterteam tweeted about pirated macOS application that appeared to contain malware And even though as noted in the tweet the sample appeared to be from 2023, it was new to me so I decided to take some time to dig in deeper. Plus, I’m always interested in seeing if Objective-See’s free open-source tools can provide protection against recent macOS threats. In this blog post we’ll start with the disk image, then hone in on a malicious dynamic library, which turns out just to be the start!
The evolutionary tale of a persistent Python threat
Since early April 2023, an attacker has been relentlessly deploying hundreds of malicious packages through various usernames, accumulating nearly 75,000 downloads. Our team at Checkmarx’s Supply Chain Security has been on this malicious actor’s trail since early April, documenting each step of its evolution. We have been actively observing an attacker who seems to be evermore refining their craft.
Fake CVE-2023-40477 Proof of Concept Leads to VenomRAT
A phony proof-of-concept (PoC) code for CVE-2023-40477 delivered a payload of VenomRAT. We detail our findings, including an analysis of the malicious code.
An Ongoing Open Source Attack Reveals Roots Dating Back To 2021
Developers in the cryptocurrency sphere are being targeted once again, as yet another threat actor has been exposed. This user has been publishing malicious NPM packages with the purpose of exfiltrating sensitive data such as source code and configuration files from the victim’s machines. The threat actor behind this campaign has been linked to malicious activity dating back to 2021. Since then, they have continuously published malicious code.
The Rust Security Response WG and the crates.io team were notified on 2022-05-02 of the existence of the malicious crate rustdecimal, which contained malware. The crate name was intentionally similar to the name of the popular rust_decimal crate, hoping that potential victims would misspell its name (an attack called "typosquattin
Microsoft Revokes Malicious Drivers in Patch Tuesday Culling
In December 2022, Microsoft published their monthly Windows Update packages that included an advisory about malicious drivers, signed by Microsoft and other code-signing authorities, that Sophos X-…
“Write once, infect everywhere” might be the new cybercrime motto, with newly discovered campaigns showing malicious npm packages powering phishing kits and supply chain attacks.
How malicious extensions hide running arbitrary code
Eight malicious extensions still remain in Chrome Web Store. These use some interesting tricks to keep running arbitrary code despite restrictions of Manifest V3.
Web3 technologies are seeing widespread adoption — including by TAs. We discuss Web3 technology InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and malicious use of it.
A Noteworthy Threat: How Cybercriminals are Abusing OneNote
Threat actors are taking advantage of Microsoft OneNote's ability to embed files and use social engineering techniques, such as phishing emails and lures inside the OneNote document, to get unsuspecting users to download and open malicious files.
A Noteworthy Threat: How Cybercriminals are Abusing OneNote
Threat actors are taking advantage of Microsoft OneNote's ability to embed files and use social engineering techniques, such as phishing emails and lures inside the OneNote document, to get unsuspecting users to download and open malicious files.
At the end of November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, the new interface for its Large Language Model (LLM), which instantly created a flurry of interest in AI and its possible uses. However, ChatGPT has also added some spice to the modern cyber threat landscape as it quickly became apparent that code generation can help less-skilled threat actors effortlessly launch cyberattacks. In Check Point Research’s (CPR) previous blog, we described how ChatGPT successfully conducted a full infection flow, from creating a convincing spear-phishing email to running a reverse shell, capable of accepting commands in English. The question at hand is whether this is just a hypothetical threat or if there are already threat actors using OpenAI technologies for malicious purposes. CPR’s analysis of several major underground hacking communities shows that there are already first instances of cybercriminals using OpenAI to develop malicious tools. As we suspected, some of the cases clearly showed that many cybercriminals using OpenAI have no development skills at all. Although the tools that we present in this report are pretty basic, it’s only a matter of time until more sophisticated threat actors enhance the way they use AI-based tools for bad.
At the end of November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, the new interface for its Large Language Model (LLM), which instantly created a flurry of interest in AI and its possible uses. However, ChatGPT has also added some spice to the modern cyber threat landscape as it quickly became apparent that code generation can help less-skilled threat actors effortlessly launch cyberattacks. In Check Point Research’s (CPR) previous blog, we described how ChatGPT successfully conducted a full infection flow, from creating a convincing spear-phishing email to running a reverse shell, capable of accepting commands in English. The question at hand is whether this is just a hypothetical threat or if there are already threat actors using OpenAI technologies for malicious purposes. CPR’s analysis of several major underground hacking communities shows that there are already first instances of cybercriminals using OpenAI to develop malicious tools. As we suspected, some of the cases clearly showed that many cybercriminals using OpenAI have no development skills at all. Although the tools that we present in this report are pretty basic, it’s only a matter of time until more sophisticated threat actors enhance the way they use AI-based tools for bad.
Threat Spotlight: XLLing in Excel - threat actors using malicious add-ins
As more and more users adopt new versions of Microsoft Office, it is likely that threat actors will turn away from VBA-based malicious documents to other formats such as XLLs or rely on exploiting newly discovered vulnerabilities to launch malicious code.
Threat Spotlight: XLLing in Excel - threat actors using malicious add-ins
As more and more users adopt new versions of Microsoft Office, it is likely that threat actors will turn away from VBA-based malicious documents to other formats such as XLLs or rely on exploiting newly discovered vulnerabilities to launch malicious code.
