Since December 2022, Cisco Talos has been observing an unidentified actor deploying two relatively new threats, the recently discovered MortalKombat ransomware and a GO variant of the Laplas Clipper malware, to steal cryptocurrency from victims.

While tracking some prevalent commodity malware threat actors, Talos observed the popularization of malicious LNK files as their initial access method to download and execute payloads. A closer look at the LNK files illustrates how their metadata could be used to identify and track new campaigns.

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.

• The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is an emerging Web3 technology that is currently seeing widespread abuse by threat actors.
  • Cisco Talos has observed multiple ongoing campaigns that leverage the IPFS network to host their malware payloads and phishing kit infrastructure while facilitating other attacks.
  • IPFS is often used for legitimate

• Cisco Talos discovered a new attack framework including a command and control (C2) tool called "Alchimist" and a new malware "Insekt" with remote administration capabilities.
• The Alchimist has a web interface in Simplified Chinese with remote administration features.
• The attack framework is designed to target Windows, Linux and Mac machines.
• Alchimist and Insekt binaries are implemented in GoLang.
• This campaign consists of additional bespoke tools such as a MacOS exploitation tool, a custom backdoor and multiple off-the-shelf tools such as reverse proxies.

• Cisco Talos has discovered a new remote access trojan (RAT) we're calling "MagicRAT," developed and operated by the Lazarus APT group, which the U.S. government believes is a North Korean state-sponsored actor.
• Lazarus deployed MagicRAT after the successful exploitation of vulnerabilities in VMWare Horizon platforms.
• We've also found links between MagicRAT and another RAT known as "TigerRAT," disclosed and attributed to Lazarus by the Korean Internet & Security Agency (KISA) recently.
• TigerRAT has evolved over the past year to include new functionalities that we illustrate in this blog.

• On May 24, 2022, Cisco became aware of a potential compromise. Since that point, Cisco Security Incident Response (CSIRT) and Cisco Talos have been working to remediate.
• During the investigation, it was determined that a Cisco employee’s credentials were compromised after an attacker gained control of a personal Google account where credentials saved in the victim’s browser were being synchronized.

• Dark Utilities, released in early 2022, is a platform that provides full-featured C2 capabilities to adversaries.
• It is marketed as a means to enable remote access, command execution, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and cryptocurrency mining operations on infected systems.
• Payloads provided by the platform support Windows, Linux and
• Python-based implementations and are hosted within the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), making them resilient to content moderation or law enforcement intervention.
• Since its initial release, we've observed malware samples in the wild leveraging it to facilitate remote access and cryptocurrency mining.

• Cisco Talos recently discovered a new attack framework called "Manjusaka" being used in the wild that has the potential to become prevalent across the threat landscape. This framework is advertised as an imitation of the Cobalt Strike framework.
• The implants for the new malware family are written in the Rust language for Windows and Linux.
• A fully functional version of the command and control (C2), written in GoLang with a User Interface in Simplified Chinese, is freely available and can generate new implants with custom configurations with ease, increasing the likelihood of wider adoption of this framework by malicious actors.
• We recently discovered a campaign in the wild using lure documents themed around COVID-19 and the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. These maldocs ultimately led to the delivery of Cobalt Strike beacons on infected endpoints.
• We have observed the same threat actor using the Cobalt Strike beacon and implants from the Manjusaka framework.

Cisco Talos has observed new cyber attacks targeting Turkey and other Asian countries we believe with high confidence are from groups operating under the MuddyWater umbrella of APT groups. U.S. Cyber Command recently connected MuddyWater to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).