First publicly reported in 2018, DarkGate is a Windows-based malware with a wide-range of capabilities including credential stealing and remote access to victim endpoints. Until recently, it was only seen being delivered through traditional email malspam campaigns. In late August 2023, however, researchers at Trusec found evidence of a campaign using external Teams messages to deliver the DarkGate Loader.
In recent weeks, we have noted an increase in malvertising campaigns via Google searches. Several of the threat actors we are tracking have improved their techniques to evade detection throughout the delivery chain.
We believe this evolution will have a real world impact among corporate users getting compromised via malicious ads eventually leading to the deployment of malware and ransomware.
In this blog post, we look at a malvertising campaign that seems to have flown under the radar entirely for at least several months. It is unique in its way to fingerprint users and distribute time sensitive payloads.
While the official conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in February 2022, there is a long history of physical conflict between the two nations, including the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia and when the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk declared themselves independent from Ukraine and came under Russia's umbrella. Given this context, it would not be surprising that the cybersecurity landscape between these two countries has also been tense.
To ensnare new victims, criminals will often devise schemes that attempt to look as realistic as possible. Having said that, it is not every day that we see the fraudulent copy exceed the original piece.
While following up on an ongoing Magecart credit card skimmer campaign, we were almost fooled by a payment form that looked so well done we thought it was real. The threat actor used original logos from the compromised store and customized a web element known as a modal to perfectly hijack the checkout page.
A family of malicious apps from developer Mobile apps Group are listed on Google Play and infected with Android/Trojan.HiddenAds.BTGTHB. In total, four apps are listed, and together they have amassed at least one million downloads.
Older versions of these apps have been detected in the past as different variants of Android/Trojan.HiddenAds. Yet, the developer is still on Google Play dispensing its latest HiddenAds malware.
Ransomware attacks are becoming more frequent and costlier—breaches caused by ransomware grew 41 percent in the last year, the average cost of a destructive attack rising to $5.12 milllion. What’s more, a good chunk of the cyber criminals doing these attacks operate on a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model.