• Analysis of an open directory found a Chinese speaking threat actor’s toolkit and history of activity.
• The threat actor displayed extensive scanning and exploitation using WebLogicScan, Vulmap, and Xray, targeting organizations in South Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, and Iran.
• The Viper C2 framework was present as well as a Cobalt Strike kit which included TaoWu and Ladon extensions.
• The Leaked LockBit 3 builder was used to create a LockBit payload with a custom ransom note that included reference to a Telegram group which we investigated further in the report.

It's hard enough creating one air-gap-jumping tool. Researchers say the group GoldenJackal did it twice in five years.

An operation labeled TAG-100 by Insikt Group researchers deploys two types of backdoor malware — SparkRAT and Pantegana — that have only been spotted in limited ways previously.

Cheap ransomware is being sold for one-time use on dark web forums, allowing inexperienced freelancers to get into cybercrime without any interaction with affiliates.

Researchers at the intelligence unit at the cybersecurity firm Sophos found 19 ransomware varieties being offered for sale or advertised as under development on four forums from June 2023 to February 2024.

Google has confirmed a new security scheme which, it says, will help “secure, empower and advance our collective digital future” using AI. Part of this AI Cyber Defence Initiative includes open-sourcing the new, AI-powered, Magika tool that is already being used to help protect Gmail users from potentially problematic content.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence presents cases of threat actors misusing OAuth applications as automation tools in financially motivated attacks.

Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), cybersecurity software company Fortra™ and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) are taking technical and legal action to disrupt cracked, legacy copies of Cobalt Strike and abused Microsoft software, which have been used by cybercriminals to distribute malware, including ransomware. This is a change in the way DCU has...

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.