New TorNet backdoor seen in widespread campaign
Cisco Talos discovered an ongoing malicious campaign operated by a financially motivated threat actor targeting users, predominantly in Poland and Germany. The actor has delivered different payloads, including Agent Tesla, Snake Keylogger, and a new undocumented backdoor we are calling TorNet, dropped by PureCrypter malware. The actor is running a Windows scheduled task on victim machines—including on endpoints with a low battery—to achieve persistence. The actor also disconnects the victim machine from the network before dropping the payload and then connects it back to the network, allowing them to evade detection by cloud antimalware solutions. We also found that the actor connects the victim’s machine to the TOR network using the TorNet backdoor for stealthy command and control (C2) communications and detection evasion.
Mysterious backdoor found on select Juniper routers
Someone has been quietly backdooring selected Juniper routers around the world in key sectors including semiconductor, energy, and manufacturing, since at least mid-2023. The devices were infected with what appears to be a variant of cd00r, a publicly available "invisible backdoor" designed to operate stealthily on a victim's machine by monitoring network traffic for specific conditions before activating.
RansomHub Affiliate leverages Python-based backdoor
In an incident response in Q4 of 2024, GuidePoint Security identified evidence of a threat actor utilizing a Python-based backdoor to maintain access to compromised endpoints. The threat actor later leveraged this access to deploy RansomHub encryptors throughout the entire impacted network. ReliaQuest documented an earlier version of this malware on their website in February 2024.
Backdooring Your Backdoors - Another $20 Domain, More Governments
After the excitement of our .MOBI research, we were left twiddling our thumbs. As you may recall, in 2024, we demonstrated the impact of an unregistered domain when we subverted the TLS/SSL CA process for verifying domain ownership to give ourselves the ability to issue valid and trusted TLS/
OpenSSH Backdoors
Imagine this: an OpenSSH backdoor is discovered, maintainers rush to push out a fixed release package, security researchers trade technical details on mailing lists to analyze the backdoor code. Speculation abounds on the attribution and motives of the attacker, and the tech media pounces on the story. A near miss of epic proportions, a blow to the fabric of trust underlying open source development, a stark reminder of the risks of supply-chain attacks. Equal measures brilliant and devious.
MIFARE Classic: exposing the static encrypted nonce variant... and a few hardware backdoors
We studied the most secure static encrypted nonce variant of "MIFARE Classic compatible" cards -- meant to resist all known card-only attacks -- and developed new attacks defeating it, uncovering a hardware backdoor in the process. And that's only the beginning...
xz-utils backdoor situation
This is still a new situation. There is a lot we don't know. We don't know if there are more possible exploit paths. We only know about this one path. Please update your systems regardless. Unknown unknowns are safer than known unknowns. This is a living document. Everything in this document is made in good faith of being accurate, but like I just said; we don't know much about what's going on.