A comprehensive analysis of the year's new malware

I monitor (in an amateur, clueless way) ransomware groups in my spare time, to see what intelligence can be gained from looking at victim orgs and what went wrong.

Basically, I’m a giant big dork with too much free time.

I’ve discovered two organisations with ransomware incidents, where the entry point appears to have been Exchange Server 2013 with Outlook Web Access enabled, where all available security updates were applied.

ThreatFabric discovers a new variant of the Chameleon banking trojan distributed via Zombinder with features to bypass any biometric authentication.

Reconstructing the Attack from a 4th party collector’s point of view
Hamid Kashfi

[Update: December 18th, 2023]: On 18th December, Predator Sparrows launched a second
attack against the fuel distribution system in Iran, similar to their previous operation in 2021.
Since 2021, Iranian officials or third-party security vendors have not published any analysis or
technical details about the original attack, which is not unusual. Their screenshots from the
latest attacks provide some clues that only confirm our previous work, indicating connections to
the “Yaas Arghavani” company, a VSAT and POS service provider for the fuel distribution
system. The following is an old draft from December 2021, which I wrote for peer eyes rather
than public view. The original draft focused on the first attack against the fuel distribution
system. Still, some remarks remain valid and relevant to the recent attack on 18 Dec 2023, as
little has changed regarding how the system works. The same infrastructure, same suppliers,
and same 3rd party vendors, so we are likely just talking about a different attack vector and
entry point from the previous case. I will probably draft a new note about the recent attack from
scratch soon and when more details are gathered rather than updating the old speculative work.

• The Rhadamanthys stealer is a multi-layer malware, sold on the black market, and frequently updated. Recently the author released a new major version, 0.5.0.
• In the new version, the malware expands its stealing capabilities and also introduces some general-purpose spying functions.
• A new plugin system makes the malware expandable for specific distributor needs.
• The custom executable formats, used for modules, are unchanged since our last publication (XS1 and XS2 formats are still in distribution).
• Check Point Research (CPR) provides a comprehensive review of the agent modules, presenting their capabilities and implementation, with a focus on how the stealer components are loaded and how they work.

Apache Struts is a popular Java web application framework. On December 7, 2023 Apache published an advisory for CVE-2023-50164, a Struts parameter pollution vu…

In this blog, we explore the modus operandi of threat actors utilizing QR code attacks, by examining recent and widespread quishing campaigns detected by Trellix.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence continues to track and disrupt malicious activity attributed to a Russian state-sponsored actor we track as Star Blizzard, who has improved their detection evasion capabilities since 2022 while remaining focused on email credential theft against targets.

Credit union technology firm Trellance own Ongoing Operations LLC, and provide a platform called Fedcomp — used by double digit number of other credit unions across the United States. This Fedcomp…

In the heart of International Geneva, a diverse ecosystem thrives, housing 38 international organizations (IOs), 432 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and several hundred associations active at an international level, all united by a shared mission: to make the world a place of peace and justice. NGOs are the unsung heroes, addressing armed conflicts, natural disasters, and humanitarian crises, championing human rights, and advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Like many other organizations, NGOs heavily rely on technology, which is critical for projecting their activities globally in real time. Yet, in today’s digital landscape, this reality brings its own set of challenges.

Gamaredon, also known as Primitive Bear, ACTINIUM, and Shuckworm, is a unique player in the Russian espionage ecosystem that targets a wide variety of almost exclusively Ukrainian entities. While researchers often struggle to uncover evidence of Russian espionage activities, Gamaredon is notably conspicuous. The group behind it conducts large-scale campaigns while still primarily focusing on regional targets. The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) identified the Gamaredon personnel as Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.

Cisco Talos identified the most prolific Phobos variants, TTPs and affiliate structure, based on their activity and analysis of over 1,000 samples from VirusTotal dating back to 2019. We assess with moderate confidence Eking, Eight, Elbie, Devos and Faust are the most common variants

There are several malicious fake updates campaigns being run across thousands of compromised websites. Here I will walk through one with a pattern that doesn’t match with others I’ve been tracking. This campaign appears to have started around July 19th, 2023. Based on a search on PublicWWW of the injection base64 there are at least 434 infected sites.

I’m calling this one ClearFake until I see a previously used name for it. The name is a reference to the majority of the Javascript being used without obfuscation. I say majority because base64 is used three times. That’s it. All the variable names are in the clear, no obfuscation on them.

One noticeable difference from SocGholish is that there appears to be no tracking of visits by IP or cookies. As an analyst you can you go back to the compromised site over and over coming from the same IP and not clearing your browser cache. This also means the site owner is more likely to see the infection as well.

This report is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained herein. The DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this bulletin or otherwise.

This document is marked TLP:CLEAR--Recipients may share this information without restriction. Sources may use TLP:CLEAR when information carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:CLEAR information may be shared without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP), see http://www.cisa.gov/tlp.

Redline Dropped Through MSIX Package, Author&colon

Learn how threat actors are exploiting Confluence CVE-2023-22518 to deploy Cerber ransomware on Linux and Windows hosts.

Python’s e-mail libraries smtplib, imaplib, and poplib do not verify server certificates unless a proper SSL context is passed to the API. This leads to security problems.

Newly discovered later-stage malware from BlueNoroff APT group targets macOS with characteristics similar to their RustBucket campaign.

Microsoft has been tracking activity related to the financially motivated threat actor Octo Tempest, whose evolving campaigns represent a growing concern for many organizations across multiple industries.

Apache ActiveMQ is a message broker service, designed to act as a communication bridge between disparate services. Developed in Java, it can broker multiple pr…