Cisco Talos discovered a sophisticated attack on critical infrastructure by ToyMaker and Cactus, using the LAGTOY backdoor to orchestrate a relentless double extortion scheme.

• In 2023, Cisco Talos discovered an extensive compromise in a critical infrastructure enterprise consisting of a combination of threat actors.
• From initial access to double extortion, these actors slowly and steadily compromised a multitude of hosts in the network using a combination of various dual-use remote administration, SSH and file transfer tools.
• The initial access broker (IAB), whom Talos calls “ToyMaker” and assesses with medium confidence is a financially motivated threat actor, exploits vulnerable systems exposed to the internet. They deploy their custom-made backdoor we call “LAGTOY” and extract credentials from the victim enterprise. LAGTOY can be used to create reverse shells and execute commands on infected endpoints.
• A compromise by LAGTOY may result in access handover to a secondary threat actor. Specifically, we’ve observed ToyMaker handover access to Cactus, a double extortion gang who employed their own tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to carry out malicious actions across the victim’s network.

Cisco Talos has been closely monitoring reports of widespread intrusion activity against several major U.S. telecommunications companies, by a threat actor dubbed Salt Typhoon. This blog highlights our observations on this campaign and identifies recommendations for detection and prevention.

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.

As the Akira ransomware group continues to evolve its operations, Talos has the latest research on the group's attack chain, targeted verticals, and potential future TTPs.

A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the OpenPLC Runtime EtherNet/IP parser functionality of OpenPLC _v3 b4702061dc14d1024856f71b4543298d77007b88. A specially crafted EtherNet/IP request can lead to remote code execution. An attacker can send a series of EtherNet/IP requests to trigger this vulnerability.

Many spammers have elected to attack web pages and mail servers of legitimate organizations, so they may use these “pirated” resources to send unsolicited email.

An adversary could exploit these vulnerabilities by injecting malicious libraries into Microsoft's applications to gain their entitlements and user-granted permissions.

In recent months, a surge in cryptodrainer phishing attacks has been observed, targeting cryptocurrency holders with sophisticated schemes aimed at tricking them into divulging their valuable credentials.

Multiple TTPs utilized in this campaign bear some overlap with North Korean APT groups.

ArcaneDoor is a campaign that is the latest example of state-sponsored actors targeting perimeter network devices from multiple vendors. Coveted by these actors, perimeter network devices are the perfect intrusion point for espionage-focused campaigns.

Cisco Talos observed a surge in GhostSec, a hacking group’s malicious activities since this past year. GhostSec has evolved with a new GhostLocker 2.0 ransomware, a Golang variant of the GhostLocker ransomware.

Talos IR has responded to several recent incidents in which threat actors used legitimate digital document publishing sites such as Publuu and Marq to host phishing documents as part of ongoing credential and session harvesting attacks.

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

Cisco has identified active exploitation of a previously unknown vulnerability in the Web User Interface (Web UI) feature of Cisco IOS XE software (CVE-2023-20198) when exposed to the internet or untrusted networks.

This is the third documented campaign attributed to this actor in less than a year, with the actor reusing the same infrastructure throughout these operations.

Cisco Talos discovered 12 memory corruption vulnerabilities in MSRPC implementations on Apple macOS and VMWare vCenter.
      - Seven vulnerabilities affect Apple macOS only.
      - Two vulnerabilities affect VMWare vCenter.
      - Three vulnerabilities affect both.

We would like to thank The Citizen Lab for their cooperation, support and inputs into this research.

• Commercial spyware use is on the rise, with actors leveraging these sophisticated tools to conduct surveillance operations against a growing number of targets. Cisco Talos has new details of a commercial spyware product sold by the spyware firm Intellexa (formerly known as Cytrox).
• Our research specifically looks at two components of this mobile spyware suite known as “ALIEN” and “PREDATOR,” which compose the backbone of the spyware implant. Our findings include an in-depth walkthrough of the infection chain, including the implants’ various information-stealing capabilities.
• A deep dive into both spyware components indicates that ALIEN is more than just a loader for PREDATOR and actively sets up the low-level capabilities needed for PREDATOR to spy on its victims.
• We assess with high confidence that the spyware has two additional components — tcore (main component) and kmem (privilege escalation mechanic) — but we were unable to obtain and analyze these modules.
• If readers suspect their system(s) may have been compromised by commercial spyware, please consider notifying Talos’ research team at talos-mercenary-spyware-help@external.cisco.com to assist in furthering the community’s knowledge of these threats.

• A previously unreported phishing-as-a-service (PaaS) offering named “Greatness” has been used in several phishing campaigns since at least mid-2022. Greatness incorporates features seen in some of the most advanced PaaS offerings, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) bypass, IP filtering and integration with Telegram bots.
• Greatness, for now, is only focused on Microsoft 365 phishing pages, providing its affiliates with an attachment and link builder that creates highly convincing decoy and login pages. It contains features such as having the victim’s email address pre-filled and displaying their appropriate company logo and background image, extracted from the target organization’s real Microsoft 365 login page. This makes Greatness particularly well-suited for phishing business users.
• An analysis of the domains targeted in several ongoing and past campaigns revealed the victims were almost exclusively companies in the U.S., U.K., Australia, South Africa, and Canada, and the most commonly targeted sectors were manufacturing, health care and technology. The exact distribution of victims in each country and sector varies slightly between campaigns.
• To use Greatness, affiliates must deploy and configure a provided phishing kit with an API key that allows even unskilled threat actors to easily take advantage of the service’s more advanced features. The phishing kit and API work as a proxy to the Microsoft 365 authentication system, performing a “man-in-the-middle” attack and stealing the victim’s authentication credentials or cookies.

• Emotet resumed spamming operations on March 7, 2023, after a months-long hiatus.
• Initially leveraging heavily padded Microsoft Word documents to attempt to evade sandbox analysis and endpoint protection, the botnets switched to distributing malicious OneNote documents on March 16.
• Since returning, Emotet has leveraged several distinct infection chains, indicating that they are modifying their approach based on their perceived success in infecting new systems.
• The initial emails delivered to victims are consistent with what has been observed from Emotet over the past several years.

The high-profile botnet, focused on mining cryptocurrency, is back with new Linux versions.