Vulnerable perimeter devices remain a popular target, and we do see consistent exploit attempts against them. This weekend, Guy wrote about some scans for Fortinet vulnerabilities [1], and Xavier notes that Crowdstrike observed attacks against EoL Sonicwalls [2]. Starting earlier this month, we did also observe a consistent trickle of requests looking for a relatively recent Sonicwall vulnerability:
Almost 4 years ago, I wrote a python version of mac-robber. I use it fairly regularly at &#;x26;#;x24;dayjob. This past week, one of my co-workers was using it, but realized that it hashes large files a little too slowly. He decided to use mac-robber.py to collect the MAC times and do the hashing separately so he could limit the hashes to to files under a certain size. That sounded reasonable, so I&#;x26;#;39;ve added a switch (-s or --size). If hashing is turned on the new switch will limit the hashing to files under the given size.
Over the past 60 days, I have observed scanning activity to discover FortiGate SSL VPN unpatched services. Fortinet has fixed several critical vulnerabilities in SSL VPN and web firewall this year from Remote Code Execution (RCE) to SQL Injection, Denial of Service (DoS) which impact the FortiProxy SSL VPN and FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) products [1][2]. Two weeks ago, US-CERT [4] released an alert re-iterating that APT actors are looking for Fortinet vulnerabilities to gain access to networks. Additional information to look for signs of this activity available here.
Devices and applications used to provide remote access are juicy targets. I&#;x26;#;39;ve already been involved in many ransomware cases and most of the time, the open door was an unpatched VPN device/remote access solution or weak credentials. A good example, the recent attack against the Colonial Pipeline that started with a legacy VPN profile[1].
With Python getting more and more popular, especially on Microsoft Operating systems, it&#;x26;#;39;s common to find malicious Python scripts today. I already covered some of them in previous diaries[1][2]. I like this language because it is very powerful: You can automate boring tasks in a few lines. It can be used for offensive as well as defensive purposes, and... it has a lot of 3rd party "modules" or libraries that extend its capabilities. For example, if you would like to use Python for forensics purposes, you can easily access the registry and extract data:
Victims in South Korea and the USA, suspects busted in Ukraine.
After nearly a decade as a US expat dubbed "The Face of Anoynmous", he's back in the US facing cybercrime charges from almost a decade ago.
Don't panic - this isn't another Heartbleed. But it's a fascinating reminder of why doing things the easy way isn't always the best way.
Latest episode - listen now!
Patch early. Patch often. Patch now!
But Bitcoins are anonymous! However could they get refunded?
Looking for contract programming work? You might be surprised at what's on offer out there.
Passwords - don't just pay them lip service.
Latest episode - listen now!
If your password gets stolen as part of a data breach, you'll probably be told. But what if your password gets pwned some other way?
Summer is just around the corner, and malicious actors don’t seem to be planning a vacation as cybercrime continues to ramp up. Learn some security recommendation you can implement to help minimize the risk of compromise.
Zero Trust is the key strategy moving forward to secure the always changing hybrid workplace. Listen in as two of our industry experts discuss how risk insights are key component of Zero Trust security.
The post-pandemic security landscape and the banning of ransomware payments could create new crisis situations
Blue-chip businesses are not the only ones that have been hit hard by the recent ransomware strikes. We outline some best practices and countermeasures to avert any shakedowns at the hands of cybercriminals.
This blog details the aspects of two major phishing fraud groups identified from the research and analysis. This study was also announced via separate press releases from Trend Micro Incorporated and JC3.
Let's Talk Security: Season 02 // Episode 01: Host, Rik Ferguson, interviews Business Information Security Officer from S&P Global Ratings, Alyssa Miller. Together they discuss transformational security.
The June 2021 Patch Tuesday cycle offers good news to both IT and website administrators.
One year into the pandemic, our team at Trend Micro discussed the lasting impact that Covid-19 will have on people’s way of life and what a post-pandemic “new normal” might look like.
Cyberattack hits JBS meat works in Australia, North America and DarkSide Targets Virtual Machines
We discovered a vulnerability in macOS, iOS, and iPadOS rooted in the CVMServer. The vulnerability, labeled CVE-2021-30724, can allow threat actors to escalate their privilege if exploited.
It’s 2021, and this rapidly evolving threat landscape requires partnership with a trusted cybersecurity expert, who can provide protection across distributed endpoints, networks, cloud infrastructure, and hybrid environments.
Nearly 50,000 IPs Compromised in Worm-like TeamTNT Attack and Misconfigurations are the Biggest Threat to Cloud Security
We focus on the behavior of the DarkSide variant that targets Linux. We discuss how it targets virtual machine-related files on VMware ESXI servers, parses its embedded configuration, kills virtual machines (VMs), encrypts files on the infected machine, collects system information, and sends it to the remote server.
5G acts as a catalyst for change for industrial environments. One part of its deployment is the 4G/5G campus network for some organizations. In our research we delve into the security risks and implications of this technology.
Open source code is in the vast majority of commercial softwares today. Learn best practices to mitigate the unique risks that accompany its use.
On the frontline: revealing the personal and professional challenges facing SecOps teams. New research shows that security teams are struggling with overwhelming workloads, and organizations are lacking the solution.
We have found and confirmed close to 50,000 IPs compromised by this attack perpetrated by TeamTNT across multiple clusters. Several IPs were repeatedly exploited during the timeframe of the episode, occurring between March and May.
ZDI Tops Omdia Vulnerability Disclosures Again and Robots May Take Over Cybercrime by 2030
Open Source Vulnerabilities can be challenging to the already strained DevOps and SecOps relationship. Learn how increased visibility from the right can help prevent and close the long-standing cultural gap between the teams.
The Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) again dominated the number of disclosed vulnerabilities for the 13th year in a row based on Omdia’s research into the vulnerability disclosure market. Read More.
We found new evidence that the cybercriminal group TeamTNT has extended its credential harvesting capabilities to include multiple cloud and non-cloud services.
The ongoing game of cat and mouse – cybercriminals vs security teams – continues with the latest evolution in ransomware.
May Patch Tuesday Offers Relative Respite and What We Know About DarkSide Ransomware and the US Pipeline Attack
While much of the EO may not be new or bold concepts, the potential for long term impact to federal cybersecurity is high and immediate.
Trend Micro Research found dozens of DarkSide ransomware samples in the wild and investigated how the ransomware group operates and what organizations it typically targets.
Compared to the previous months of 2021, this month’s Patch Tuesday cycle is a slight lull. Only 55 vulnerabilities were fixed this month, with only four of these classified as Critical.
Open source code is the gateway to quick application deployment – see how Trend Micro and Snyk have partnered up to create developer-friendly security for your open source components
There have been a lot of changes in ransomware over time. We want to help you protect your organization from this growing attack trend.
New Panda Stealer Targets Cryptocurrency Wallets and Apple Releases Urgent Security Patches for Zero-Day Bugs
Physical security may have more of an impact on cloud operations than you think
Our telemetry showed three malware families taking advantage of the ProxyLogon vulnerability beginning in March: the coinminer LemonDuck was sighted first, quickly followed by the ransomware BlackKingdom, then the Prometei botnet.
Scammers took advantage of the surge in online activity during the pandemic, targeting businesses and buyers that were settling into new ways of transacting.
The complexity of containers demands something to make sense of it all. Builders, operations teams and security teams need a single language to understand the risk associated with containers.
In early April, we observed a new information stealer called Panda Stealer being delivered via spam emails. Based on Trend Micro's telemetry, United States, Australia, Japan, and Germany were among the most affected countries during a recent spam wave.
Hacktivism’s reemergence explained and Hello ransomware uses updated China Chopper web shell
In this blog, we detail how cybercriminals exploit OpenBullet, a legitimate web-testing software, to brute-force their way into targeted accounts.
As technological innovations evolve, protecting companies from cyber threats tomorrow secures their businesses today. Read how Trend Micro protects customers from vulnerability exploits by blocking them as early as possible.
Since 2019, we have been tracking a threat campaign we dubbed as “Water Pamola.” The campaign initially compromised e-commerce online shops in Japan, Australia, and European countries via spam emails with malicious attachments.
The first malicious use of video deepfakes may have been observed, making one of Trend Micro’s long-standing predictions a looming reality.
We discuss the technical features of a Hello ransomware attack, including its exploitation of CVE-2019-0604 and the use of a modified version of the China Chopper web shell.
XCSSET Quickly Adapts to Macs and Babuk Ransomware Gang Claims Decryptor Repaired
Trend Micro released several patches last year to address known vulnerabilities. Since that time, an attempt was observed to leverage one of these vulnerabilities in a single unpatched customer system.
We found a botnet malware campaign targeting Linux systems, abusing the Tor network for proxies, and exploiting cloud infrastructure management tools for intrusion.
Read this year’s MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations story, which simulates techniques associated with notorious threat groups Carbanak and FIN7 to test solutions' ability to detect and stop APT & Targeted Attacks.
What happens in Carbanak and FIN7 attacks? Here are some techniques used by these financially motivated threat groups that target banks, retail stores, and other establishments.
A look at the latest Microsoft zero-day exploits and how Trend Micro could help protect you.
This latest update details our new research on XCSSET, including the ways in which it has adapted itself to work on both ARM64 and x86_x64 Macs.
April Patch Tuesday Sets Record High for 2021 and Fed Warns Cyber Threats Pose Danger to U.S Economy
With so many vendors in the market, the Marsh initiative has created the Cyber Catalyst to help IT buyers find the right option for them.
Cybersecurity Tech Accords has grown significantly in the past 3 years, today having 150 signatories across 5 continents, united in the fight against cybercrime.
April’s Patch Tuesday fixes 114 vulnerabilities in various Microsoft products, a slight increase from March’s 89. This is the most vulnerabilities fixed in a month for 2021 to date, as well as a slight increase from the same month last year.
We provide the technical details of a supply chain attack on an improperly configured Azure DevOps Server 2020, specifically in the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) Pipeline Agent communicating without TLS.
We discuss the cases of BazarCall and IcedID we observed in March. Both are known for the use of spam to deliver their payloads.
Microsoft Teams and Zoom Hacked In $1 Million Competition and Preventing Ransomware While Working from Home
This blog details how Iron Tiger threat actors have updated their toolkit with an updated SysUpdate malware variant that now uses five files in its infection routine instead of the usual three.
Alleged Members of Egregor Ransomware Cartel Arrested and Cybercriminals Home in on Manufacturers
We share some of our findings on malware, spam, phishing schemes, malicious websites, and illicit markets that use Covid-19 vaccines as a lure.
In the last article of our LoRaWAN series, we present dangerous hardware attacks that could affect organizations using this technology. These attacks are particularly worrying because many LoRaWAN devices are deployed in unsecured locations.
Tracking Conti Ransomware and Swiss Firm Accessed SolarWinds Hacker’s Servers
Trend Micro served as one of the cybersecurity partners of law enforcement authorities involved in the investigation.
We investigated pay-per-install (PPI) websites spreading multiple malware and adware, including CopperStealer and LNKR.
Joker’s Latest Ploy and NFT Digital Art Is Already Attracting Hackers
We show how the Trend Micro Vision One platform can be used to track Conti ransomware.
Trend Micro joins ROS-I Consortium to help accelerate the secure development of robotic Industry 4.0 applications.
Building in containers offers amazing benefits for development teams – speed, agility, flexibility, scalability, etc.
Verkada Hack Exposes 150,000 Security Cameras and Earth Vetala MuddyWater Continues to Target Organizations in the Middle East.
We found several new apps involving Joker, a persistent malware that subscribes unsuspecting mobile users to premium services without their consent.
We discuss how the involvement of P2P technology in IoT botnets can transform them into stronger threats that organizations and users need to watch out for.
This month’s Patch Tuesday includes fixes already released for the Microsoft Exchange Server zero-day flaws attributed to Hafnium attacks.
While investigating the team's activities, we found a binary containing a hardcoded shell script designed to steal AWS credentials, which provided us a lead on the scope of the attack.
Rarely do cyber-espionage campaigns appear on the scale of the current Microsoft Exchange Server situation. Four vulnerabilities were exploited by a state-backed threat group linked to China, according to Microsoft.
Povlsomware Ransomware Features Cobalt Strike Compatibility and High-Risk Email Security Threats Increased by 32% Last Year.
Trend Micro researchers recently detected activity suspected to be from MuddyWater. This campaign targets various organizations in the Middle East and neighboring regions.
We recently discovered two new ransomware variants, AlumniLocker and Humble, which exhibit different sophisticated behaviors and extortion techniques post-encryption.
Trend Micro Cloud App Security 2020 detection results and customer examples.
2021 got off to a fantastic start for the cybersecurity community with the news that the infamous botnet Emotet had been brought down in a coordinated global operation, "Operation Ladybird."
Povlsomware is a proof-of-concept (POC) ransomware first released in November 2020 which, according to their Github page, is used to “securely” test the ransomware protection capabilities of security vendor products.
Trend Micro 2020 Annual Cybersecurity Report and More Than 6,700 VMware Servers Exposed Online and Vulnerable to Major New Bug
Use of audio-only social media apps has been steadily capturing the interest of more users but just like any other technology, apps like these are not immune from security risks.
The new center square on the XDR buzzword bingo card.
As we head deeper into 2021, let’s take a look back on some of the most notable security stories and trends from the past year, all of which are covered in our 2020 annual cybersecurity report.
Nefilim is known for its double extortion capabilities and notable attacks in 2020. We give an overview of its techniques and tools in this entry.
This second part of our series on LoRaWAN will discuss the security of LoRaWAN communication and possible attacks on vulnerabilities.
Cybersecurity Risks of Connected Cars and SHAREit Flaw Could Lead to Remote Code Execution
We discuss the opportunities and risks brought about by technologies that connected cars use, such as 5G connectivity and the cloud. This entry highlights the findings from our paper “Cybersecurity for Connected Cars: Exploring Risks in 5G, Cloud, and Other Connected Technologies."
We discovered vulnerabilities in the SHAREit application. These vulnerabilities can be abused to leak a user’s sensitive data, execute arbitrary code, and possibly lead to remote code execution. The app has over 1 billion downloads.
Trend Micro Launches New XDR Platform and Threat Actors Now Target Docker via Container Escape Features
Microsoft fixed 56 vulnerabilities - 11 of them rated Critical - in the February Patch Tuesday cycle.
We provide a technical analysis of a container abuse attack that features a payload that’s specifically crafted to be able to escape privileged Docker containers.
Second SolarWinds Attack Group Breaks into USDA Payroll and Understanding Cloud Misconfigurations
In this entry, we give an overview of new ransomware discoveries. This includes a new ransomware family dubbed Seth-Locker, and developments in the variants Babuk Locker, Maoloa, TeslaCrypt, and CobraLocker.
Customers first: building out our Splunk partnership for a more secure 2021
We discuss how common cloud misconfigurations can lead to cybersecurity problems – using two classic favorites – and how to mitigate them.
Our investigation of an unusual DNS query by a command-line tool leads us to the discovery of a multi-step obfuscated malware.
Guest Blog, sponsored by Trend Micro - IDC analyst, Michael Suby, explains the importance of upgrading XDR security integrations.
Our CVE Story: Learning to Embrace Recognition and Mitigations of Vulnerabilities as a Strength
We dissect a targeted attack that made use of the Chopper ASPX web shell (Backdoor.ASP.WEBSHELL.UWMANA).
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days.
Trend Micro has been tracking a wide-spread phishing campaign since last year. The campaign distributors attempt to steal people’s credit card number by sending phishing emails related to deliveries from national postal systems.
On data privacy day, we would like to share some helpful tips in order for you to keep your data to yourself.
Ferocious Kitten is an APT group that has been targeting Persian-speaking individuals in Iran. Some of the TTPs used by this threat actor are reminiscent of other groups, such as Domestic Kitten and Rampant Kitten. In this report we aim to provide more details on these findings.
In April 2021, we observed a suspicious Word document with a Korean file name and decoy. It revealed a novel infection scheme and an unfamiliar payload. After a deep analysis, we came to a conclusion: the Andariel group was behind these attacks.
We detected a wave of highly targeted attacks against multiple companies. Closer analysis revealed that all these attacks exploited a chain of Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows zero-day exploits.
Gootkit is complex multi-stage banking malware capable of stealing data from the browser, performing man-in-the-browser attacks, keylogging, taking screenshots and lots of other malicious actions. Its loader performs various virtual machine and sandbox checks and uses sophisticated persistence algorithms.
This article analyzes different ways of the spoofing email addresses through changing the From header, which provides information about the sender's name and address.
In this report we try to understand what occupied children during the last year, from May 2020 to April 2021 inclusive.
SolarWinds attacks, MS Exchange vulnerabilities, fake adblocker distributing miner, malware for Apple Silicon platform and other threats in Q1 2021.
In the first quarter of 2021 we detected 1.45M mobile installation packages, of which 25K packages were related to mobile banking Trojans and 3.6K packages were mobile ransomware Trojans.
In Q1 2021, we blocked more than 2 billion attacks launched from online resources across the globe, detected 77.4M unique malicious and potentially unwanted objects, and recognized 614M unique URLs as malicious.
In the EU, 70% of user computers experienced at least one Malware-class attack, 115,452,157 web attacks and 86,584,675 phishing attempts were blocked.
A French court fined the furniture giant for illegal surveillance on 400 customers and staff.
Meanwhile, in a separate survey, 80 percent of organizations that paid the ransom said they were hit by a second attack.
Hank Schless, senior manager of security solutions at Lookout, notes basic steps that organizations can take to protect themselves as ransomware gangs get smarter.
The top easy-to-crack, football-inspired password in a database of 1 billion unique, clear-text, breached passwords? You probably guessed it: "Football."
Ransomware attacks are increasing in frequency, and the repercussions are growing more severe than ever. Here are 5 ways to prevent your company from becoming the next headline.
Ransomware group releases decryptors for nearly 3,000 victims, forfeiting millions in payouts.
Ransomware gangs are increasingly buying their way into corporate networks, purchasing access from 'vendors' that have previously installed backdoors on targets.
An attacker with initial physical access (say, at a gym) could gain root entry to the interactive tablet, making for a bevy of remote attack scenarios.
A supply-chain component lays open camera feeds to remote attackers thanks to a critical security vulnerability.
SolarMarker makers are using SEO poisoning, stuffing thousands of PDFs with tens of thousands of pages full of SEO keywords & links to redirect to the malware.
Matanbuchus Loader is a new malware-as-a-service created by a threat actor who references demonic themes in software and usernames.
The post Matanbuchus: Malware-as-a-Service with Demonic Intentions appeared first on Unit42.
Prometheus is a new player in the ransomware world that uses similar malware and tactics to ransomware veteran Thanos.
The post Prometheus Ransomware Gang: A Group of REvil? appeared first on Unit42.
We have identified indicators traditionally pointing to WatchDog operations being used by the TeamTNT cryptojacking group.
The post TeamTNT Using WatchDog TTPs to Expand Its Cryptojacking Footprint appeared first on Unit42.
The main purpose of Siloscape is to open a backdoor into poorly configured Kubernetes clusters in order to run malicious containers.
The post Siloscape: First Known Malware Targeting Windows Containers to Compromise Cloud Environments appeared first on Unit42.
TeamTNT is targeting the credentials of 16 additional applications for the purpose of enumerating cloud environments and infiltrating organizations.
The post TeamTNT Actively Enumerating Cloud Environments to Infiltrate Organizations appeared first on Unit42.
A Docker honeypot captured 33 types of attacks over a total of 850 attempts. Here’s what we learned about the cloud threat landscape.
The post Docker Honeypot Reveals Cryptojacking as Most Common Cloud Threat appeared first on Unit42.
We look at how digital forensics can be used to determine the extent to which data has been wiped, as well as to recover digital evidence.
The post What Can You Learn From a “Wiped” Computer With Digital Forensics? appeared first on Unit42.
Based on command and control (C2) traffic from malware, such as Sality and Emotet, this blog analyzes how deep learning models are further able to identify modified and incomplete C2 traffic packets.
The post Using AI to Detect Malicious C2 Traffic appeared first on Unit42.
Ransomware attacks can cause victims to feel powerless. Empower yourself with knowledge of how they typically play out and 12 tips for fighting them.
The post Breaking Down Ransomware Attacks appeared first on Unit42.
Call center operators offer to personally guide victims through a process designed to infect vulnerable computers with BazarLoader malware.
The post BazarCall Method: Call Centers Help Spread BazarLoader Malware appeared first on Unit42.
The DarkSide ransomware gang is responsible for an attack on a major U.S. pipeline company. Learn about their tactics and how to mitigate them.
The post DarkSide Ransomware Gang: An Overview appeared first on Unit42.
File transfer threats can open organizations up to data theft or data loss, but proper controls and network traffic visibility can mitigate them.
The post File Transfer Threats: Risk Factors and How Network Traffic Visibility Can Help appeared first on Unit42.
We describe a proactive detector for DNS Security that can identify malicious domains based on their registration records and other indicators.
The post Detecting and Preventing Malicious Domains Proactively with DNS Security appeared first on Unit42.
We analyze commodity malware WeSteal, detail its techniques and examine its customers, as well as sharing details of a newly observed RAT, WeControl.
The post New Shameless Commodity Cryptocurrency Stealer (WeSteal) and Commodity RAT (WeControl) appeared first on Unit42.
We discuss how malware and malicious activities can occur in unsecured Kubernetes instances and how better configuration can help.
The post Unsecured Kubernetes Instances Could Be Vulnerable to Exploitation appeared first on Unit42.
Executive Summary The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team (ATR) is committed to uncovering security issues in both software and hardware to help developers provide safer products for businesses and consumers. As security researchers, something that we always try to establish before looking at a target is what our scope should be. More specifically, we often assume well-vetted technologies like network stacks or the OS layers are […]
The post A New Program for Your Peloton – Whether You Like It or Not appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Introduction Virtualization technology has been an IT cornerstone for organization for years now. It revolutionized the way organizations can scale up IT systems in a heartbeat, allowing then to be more agile as opposed to investing into dedicated “bare-metal” hardware. To the outside untrained eye, it might seem that there are different machines on the […]
The post Are Virtual Machines the New Gold for Cyber Criminals? appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Summary points: Scammers are increasingly using Windows Push Notifications to impersonate legitimate alerts Recent campaigns pose as a Windows Defender Update Victims end up allowing the installation of a malicious Windows Application that targets user and system information Browser push notifications can highly resemble Windows system notifications. As recently discussed, scammers are abusing push notifications […]
The post Scammers Impersonating Windows Defender to Push Malicious Windows Apps appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Over the past week we have seen a considerable body of work focusing on DarkSide, the ransomware responsible for the recent gas pipeline shutdown. Many of the excellent technical write-ups will detail how it operates an affiliate model that supports others to be involved within the ransomware business model (in addition to the developers). While […]
The post DarkSide Ransomware Victims Sold Short appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Today, Microsoft released a highly critical vulnerability (CVE-2021-31166) in its web server http.sys. This product is a Windows-only HTTP server which can be run standalone or in conjunction with IIS (Internet Information Services) and is used to broker internet traffic via HTTP network requests. The vulnerability is very similar to CVE-2015-1635, another Microsoft vulnerability in […]
The post Major HTTP Vulnerability in Windows Could Lead to Wormable Exploit appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Preface Countries all over the world are racing to achieve so-called herd immunity against COVID-19 by vaccinating their populations. From the initial lockdown to the cancellation of events and the prohibition of business travel, to the reopening of restaurants, and relaxation of COVID restrictions on outdoor gatherings, the vaccine rollout has played a critical role […]
The post “Fool’s Gold”: Questionable Vaccines, Bogus Results, and Forged Cards appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The Roaming Mantis smishing campaign has been impersonating a logistics company to steal SMS messages and contact lists from Asian Android users since 2018. In the second half of 2020, the campaign improved its effectiveness by adopting dynamic DNS services and spreading messages with phishing URLs that infected victims with the fake Chrome application MoqHao. […]
The post Roaming Mantis Amplifies Smishing Campaign with OS-Specific Android Malware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
McAfee is tracking an increase in the use of deceptive popups that mislead some users into taking action, while annoying many others. A significant portion is attributed to browser-based push notifications, and while there are a couple of simple steps users can take to prevent and remediate the situation, there is also some confusion about […]
The post How to Stop the Popups appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Introduction Email is one of the primary ways of communication in the modern world. We use email to receive notifications about our online shopping, financial transaction, credit card e-statements, one-time passwords to authenticate registration processes, application for jobs, auditions, school admissions and many other purposes. Since many people around the globe depend on electronic mail […]
The post Steps to Discover Hidden Threat from Phishing Email appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Executive Summary Many malware attacks designed to inflict damage on a network are armed with lateral movement capabilities. Post initial infection, such malware would usually need to perform a higher privileged task or execute a privileged command on the compromised system to be able to further enumerate the infection targets and compromise more systems on […]
The post Access Token Theft and Manipulation Attacks – A Door to Local Privilege Escalation appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
A new wave of fraudulent apps has made its way to the Google Play store, targeting Android users in Southwest Asia and the Arabian Peninsula as well—to the tune of more than 700,000 downloads before detection by McAfee Mobile Research and co-operation with Google to remove the apps. Figure 1. Infected Apps on Google Play […]
The post Clever Billing Fraud Applications on Google Play: Etinu appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team today published the McAfee Labs Threats Report: April 2021. In this edition, we present new findings in our traditional threat statistical categories – as well as our usual malware, sectors, and vectors – imparted in a new, enhanced digital presentation that’s more easily consumed and interpreted. Historically, our reports […]
The post McAfee Labs Report Reveals Latest COVID-19 Threats and Malware Surges appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Recently, the McAfee Mobile Research Team uncovered several new variants of the Android malware family BRATA being distributed in Google Play, ironically posing as app security scanners. These malicious apps urge users to update Chrome, WhatsApp, or a PDF reader, yet instead of updating the app in question, they take full control of the device […]
The post BRATA Keeps Sneaking into Google Play, Now Targeting USA and Spain appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Executive Summary Cuba ransomware is an older ransomware, that has recently undergone some development. The actors have incorporated the leaking of victim data to increase its impact and revenue, much like we have seen recently with other major ransomware campaigns. In our analysis, we observed that the attackers had access to the network before the infection and were able to collect specific information […]
The post McAfee ATR Threat Report: A Quick Primer on Cuba Ransomware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Cuba Ransomware Overview Over the past year, we have seen ransomware attackers change the way they have responded to organizations that have either chosen to not pay the ransom or have recovered their data via some other means. At the end of the day, fighting ransomware has resulted in the bad actors’ loss of revenue. […]
The post McAfee Defender’s Blog: Cuba Ransomware Campaign appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Welcome to reality Ever since I started working in IT Security more than 10 years ago, I wondered, what helps defend against malware the best? This simple question does not stand on its own, as there are several follow-up questions to that: How is malware defined? Are we focusing solely on Viruses and Trojans, or […]
The post McAfee Defenders Blog: Reality Check for your Defenses appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee Labs Advanced Threat Research team is committed to uncovering security issues in both software and hardware to help developers provide safer products for businesses and consumers. We recently investigated software installed on computers used in K-12 school districts. The focus of this blog is on Netop Vision Pro produced by Netop. Our research […]
The post Netop Vision Pro – Distance Learning Software is 20/20 in Hindsight appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Operation Dianxun Overview In a recent report the McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) Strategic Intelligence team disclosed an espionage campaign, targeting telecommunication companies, named Operation Diànxùn. The tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used in the attack are like those observed in earlier campaigns publicly attributed to the threat actors RedDelta and Mustang Panda. Most probably […]
The post McAfee Defender’s Blog: Operation Dianxun appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
In this report the McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) Strategic Intelligence team details an espionage campaign, targeting telecommunication companies, dubbed Operation Diànxùn. In this attack, we discovered malware using similar tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to those observed in earlier campaigns publicly attributed to the threat actors RedDelta and Mustang Panda. While the initial vector […]
The post Operation Diànxùn: Cyberespionage Campaign Targeting Telecommunication Companies appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Overview For the March 2021 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released a set of seven DNS vulnerabilities. Five of the vulnerabilities are remote code execution (RCE) with critical CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring Standard) scores of 9.8, while the remaining two are denial of service (DoS). Microsoft shared detection guidance and proofs of concept with MAPP members for […]
The post Seven Windows Wonders – Critical Vulnerabilities in DNS Dynamic Updates appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
0. Introduction John Lambert, a distinguished researcher specializing in threat intelligence at Microsoft, once said these words that changed perspectives: “Defenders think in lists. Attackers think in graphs.” This is true and, while it remains that way, attackers will win most of the time. However, the true power of graphs does not only reside in […]
The post McAfee ATR Thinks in Graphs appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Executive Summary Babuk ransomware is a new ransomware threat discovered in 2021 that has impacted at least five big enterprises, with one already paying the criminals $85,000 after negotiations. As with other variants, this ransomware is deployed in the network of enterprises that the criminals carefully target and compromise. Using MVISION Insights, McAfee was able […]
The post Babuk Ransomware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
On February 17th, 2021, McAfee disclosed findings based on a 10-month long disclosure process with major video conferencing vendor Agora, Inc. As we disclosed the findings to Agora in April 2020, this lengthy disclosure timeline represents a nonstandard process for McAfee but was a joint agreement with the vendor to allow sufficient time for the […]
The post Beyond Clubhouse: Vulnerable Agora SDKs Still in Widespread Use appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team is committed to uncovering security issues in both software and hardware to help developers provide safer products for businesses and consumers. We recently investigated and published several findings on a personal robot called “temi”, which can be read about in detail here. A byproduct of our robotic research was […]
The post Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You: McAfee ATR Finds Vulnerability in Agora Video SDK appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The concept of a trail of breadcrumbs in the offensive security community is nothing new; for many years, researchers on both sides of the ethical spectrum have followed the compass based on industry-wide security findings, often leading to groundbreaking discoveries in both legacy and modern codebases alike. This happened in countless instances, from Java to […]
The post Researchers Follow the Breadcrumbs: The Latest Vulnerabilities in Windows’ Network Stack appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research team just completed its second annual capture the flag (CTF) contest for internal employees. Based on tremendous internal feedback, we’ve decided to open it up to the public, starting with a set of challenges we designed in 2019. We’ve done our best to minimize guesswork and gimmicks and instead of flashy graphics and games, we’ve distilled the kind of problems […]
The post McAfee ATR Launches Education-Inspired Capture the Flag Contest! appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Depending on your life experiences, the phrase (or country song by Eric Church) “two pink lines” may bring up a wide range of powerful emotions. I suspect, like many fathers and expecting fathers, I will never forget the moment I found out my wife was pregnant. You might recall what you were doing, or where […]
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As we gratefully move forward into the year 2021, we have to recognise that 2020 was as tumultuous in the digital realm as it has in the physical world. From low level fraudsters leveraging the pandemic as a vehicle to trick victims into parting with money for non-existent PPE, to more capable actors using malware […]
The post A Year in Review: Threat Landscape for 2020 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The December 2020 revelations around the SUNBURST campaigns exploiting the SolarWinds Orion platform have revealed a new attack vector – the supply chain – that will continue to be exploited. The ever-increasing use of connected devices, apps and web services in our homes will also make us more susceptible to digital home break-ins. This threat […]
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In a blog post released 13 Dec 2020, FireEye disclosed that threat actors compromised SolarWinds’s Orion IT monitoring and management software with a trojanized version of SoalrWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll delivered as part of a digitally-signed Windows Installer Patch. The trojanized file delivers a backdoor, dubbed SUNBURST by FireEye (and Solorigate by Microsoft), that communicates to third-party servers for […]
The post How A Device to Cloud Architecture Defends Against the SolarWinds Supply Chain Compromise appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Executive Summary There has been considerable focus on the recent disclosures associated with SolarWinds, and while existing analysis on the broader campaign has resulted in detection against specific IoCs associated with the Sunburst trojan, the focus within the Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team has been to determine the possibility of additional persistence measures. Our analysis […]
The post Additional Analysis into the SUNBURST Backdoor appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Part I of II Situation In a blog post released 13 Dec 2020, FireEye disclosed that threat actors compromised SolarWinds’s Orion IT monitoring and management software with a trojanized version of SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll. The trojanized file delivers the SUNBURST malware through a backdoor as part of a digitally-signed Windows Installer Patch. Use of a Compromised Software […]
The post SUNBURST Malware and SolarWinds Supply Chain Compromise appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
CVSS Score: 9.8 Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C Overview Microsoft released a patch today for a critical vulnerability (CVE-2020-17051) in the Windows NFSv3 (Network File System) server. NFS is typically used in heterogenous environments of Windows and Unix/Linux for file sharing. The vulnerability can be reproduced to cause an immediate BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) within the nfssvr.sys driver. Interestingly, the November patches from Microsoft also include a remote kernel data read […]
The post CVE-2020-17051: Remote kernel heap overflow in NFSv3 Windows Server appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Executive Summary It is rare to be provided an inside view on how major cyber espionage campaigns are conducted within the digital realm. The only transparency afforded is a limited view of victims, a malware sample, and perhaps the IP addresses of historical command and control (C2) infrastructure. The Operation North Star campaign we detailed […]
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McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research (ATR) today released research that uncovers previously undiscovered information on how Operation North Star evaluated its prospective victims and launched attacks on organizations in Australia, India, Israel and Russia, including defense contractors based in India and Russia. McAfee’s initial research into Operation North Star revealed a campaign that used social media […]
The post Operation North Star: Summary Of Our Latest Analysis appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team today published the McAfee Labs Threats Report: November 2020. In this edition, we follow our preceding McAfee Labs COVID-19 Threats Report with more research and data designed to help you better protect your enterprise’s productivity and viability during challenging times. What a year so far! The first quarter of […]
The post McAfee Labs Report Reveals Continuing Surge of COVID-19 Threats and Malware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
CVE-2020-16898: “Bad Neighbor” CVSS Score: 8.8 Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:P/RL:O/RC:C Overview Today, Microsoft announced a critical vulnerability in the Windows IPv6 stack, which allows an attacker to send maliciously crafted packets to potentially execute arbitrary code on a remote system. The proof-of-concept shared with MAPP (Microsoft Active Protection Program) members is both extremely simple and perfectly reliable. It results […]
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From June to August, part of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team participated in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere Research Challenge. Our research resulted in reporting multiple vulnerabilities classified by Microsoft as “important” or “critical” in the platform that, to date, have qualified for over $160,000 USD in bounty awards scheduled to be contributed to the ACLU ($100,000), St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital ($50,000) and PDX Hackerspace (approximately $20,000). With these contributions, we hope to support and give […]
The post Our Experiences Participating in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere Bounty Program appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) is collaborating with Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and its Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO) and the National Space Center (NSC) in Cork, Ireland The essence of Space 4.0 is the introduction of smaller, cheaper, faster-to-the-market satellites in low-earth-orbit into the value chain and the exploitation of the data they provide. […]
The post Securing Space 4.0 – One Small Step or a Giant Leap? Part 1 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) is collaborating with Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) and its Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO) and the National Space Center in Cork, Ireland In the first of this two-part blog series we introduced Space 4.0, its data value and how it looks set to become the next battleground in the defense […]
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Open Source projects are the building blocks of any software development process. As we indicated in our previous blog, as more and more products use open source code, the increase in the overall attack surface is inevitable, especially when open source code is not audited before use. Hence it is recommended to thoroughly test it […]
The post Vulnerability Discovery in Open Source Libraries: Analyzing CVE-2020-11863 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Intro In a U.S. government cyber security advisory released today, the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation warn of a previously undisclosed piece of Linux rootkit malware called Drovorub and attribute the threat to malicious actor APT28. The report is incredibly detailed and proposes several complementary detection techniques to effectively identify Drovorub malware […]
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Executive Summary Open source has become the foundation for modern software development. Vendors use open source software to stay competitive and improve the speed, quality, and cost of the development process. At the same time, it is critical to maintain and audit open source libraries used in products as they can expose a significant volume […]
The post Vulnerability Discovery in Open Source Libraries Part 1: Tools of the Trade appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Retired Marine fighter pilot and Top Gun instructor Dave Berke said “Every single thing you do in your life, every decision you make, is an OODA Loop.” OODA Loop? Observe–Orient–Decide–Act, the “OODA Loop” was originally developed by United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd and outlines that fundamentally all actions are first based on observations. […]
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Overview As part of our continued goal of helping developers provide safer products for businesses and consumers, we here at McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) recently investigated temi, a teleconference robot produced by Robotemi Global Ltd. Our research led us to discover four separate vulnerabilities in the temi robot, which this paper will describe in […]
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Co-authored with Jesse Chick, OSU Senior and Former McAfee Intern, Primary Researcher. Special thanks to Dr. Catherine Huang, McAfee Advanced Analytics Team Special thanks to Kyle Baldes, Former McAfee Intern “Face” the Facts There are 7.6 Billion people in the world. That’s a huge number! In fact, if we all stood shoulder to shoulder on […]
The post Dopple-ganging up on Facial Recognition Systems appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
This document has been prepared by McAfee Advanced Threat Research in collaboration with JSOF who discovered and responsibly disclosed the vulnerabilities. It is intended to serve as a joint research effort to produce valuable insights for network administrators and security personnel, looking to further understand these vulnerabilities to defend against exploitation. The signatures produced here […]
The post Ripple20 Critical Vulnerabilities – Detection Logic and Signatures appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Building Adaptable Security Architecture Against NetWalker NetWalker Overview The NetWalker ransomware, initially known as Mailto, was first detected in August 2019. Since then, new variants were discovered throughout 2019 and the beginning of 2020, with a strong uptick noticed in March of this year. NetWalker has noticeably evolved to a more stable and robust ransomware-as-a-service […]
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Executive Summary The NetWalker ransomware, initially known as Mailto, was first detected in August 2019. Since then, new variants were discovered throughout 2019 and the beginning of 2020, with a strong uptick noticed in March of this year. NetWalker has noticeably evolved to a more stable and robust ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, and our research suggests […]
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Executive Summary We are in the midst of an economic slump [1], with more candidates than there are jobs, something that has been leveraged by malicious actors to lure unwitting victims into opening documents laden with malware. While the prevalence of attacks during this unprecedented time has been largely carried out by low-level fraudsters, the […]
The post Operation (노스 스타) North Star A Job Offer That’s Too Good to be True? appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Building Adaptable Security Architecture Against the Operation North Star Campaign Operation North Star Overview Over the last few months, we have seen attackers take advantage of the pandemic as a cover to launch cyberattacks. One such example is a campaign that McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) observed as an increase in malicious cyber activity targeting […]
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Happy Birthday! Today we mark the fourth anniversary of the NoMoreRansom initiative with over 4.2 million visitors, from 188 countries, stopping an estimated $632 million in ransom demands from ending up in criminals’ pockets. It would be fair to say that the initiative, which started in a small meeting room in the Hague, has been […]
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Windows Subsystem for Linux Plan 9 Protocol Research Overview This is the final blog in the McAfee research series trilogy on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) implementation – see The Twin Journey (part 1) and Knock, Knock–Who’s There (part 2). The previous research discussed file evasion attacks when the Microsoft P9 server can be […]
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The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team today published the McAfee® Labs COVID-19 Threats Report, July 2020. In this “Special Edition” threat report, we delve deep into the COVID-19 related attacks observed by our McAfee Advanced Threats Research and McAfee Labs teams in the first quarter of 2020 and the early months of the pandemic. What […]
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On June 16th, the Department of Homeland Security and CISA ICS-CERT issued a critical security advisory warning covering multiple newly discovered vulnerabilities affecting Internet-connected devices manufactured by multiple vendors. This set of 19 vulnerabilities in a low-level TCP/IP software library developed by Treck has been dubbed “Ripple20” by researchers from JSOF. A networking stack is a software component […]
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In 2019, McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) disclosed a vulnerability in a product called BoxLock. Sometime after this, the CEO of iParcelBox, a U.K. company, reached out to us and offered to send a few of their products to test. While this isn’t the typical M.O. for our research we applaud the company for being […]
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Package delivery is just one of those things we take for granted these days. This is especially true in the age of Coronavirus, where e-commerce and at-home deliveries make up a growing portion of consumer buying habits. In 2019, McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) conducted a vulnerability research project on a secure home package delivery […]
The post What’s in the Box? Part II: Hacking the iParcelBox appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The RagnarLocker ransomware first appeared in the wild at the end of December 2019 as part of a campaign against compromised networks targeted by its operators. The ransomware code is small (only 48kb after the protection in its custom packer is removed) and coded in a high programming language (C/C++). Like all ransomware, […]
The post RagnarLocker Ransomware Threatens to Release Confidential Information appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
There are number of ways scammers use to target personal information and, currently, one example is, they are taking advantage of the fear around the virus pandemic, sending phishing and scam emails to Microsoft OneDrive users, trying to profit from Coronavirus/COVID-19. They will pretend to be emailing from government, consulting, or charitable organizations to steal […]
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Introduction This blog describes how McAfee ATP (Adaptive Threat Protection) rules are used within McAfee Endpoint Security products. It will help you understand how ATP Rules work and how you can utilize them to prevent infections from prevalent malware families such as Emotet, LemonDuck and PowerMiner. Please read through the recommendation section to effectively utilize […]
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Ransomware protection and incident response is a constant battle for IT, security engineers and analysts under normal circumstances, but with the number of people working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic that challenge reaches new heights. How do you ensure an equivalent level of adaptable malware protection on or off the corporate network? How do […]
The post ENS 10.7 Rolls Back the Curtain on Ransomware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many companies to enable their employees to work remotely and, in a large number of cases, on a global scale. A key component of enabling remote work and allowing employees to access internal corporate resources remotely is Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), which allows communication with a remote system. In order […]
The post Cybercriminals Actively Exploiting RDP to Target Remote Organizations appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Special thanks to Prajwala Rao, Oliver Devane, Shannon Cole, Ankit Goel and members of Malware Research for their contribution and monitoring of related threats As COVID-19 continues to spread across the world, it is no surprise that malware authors are exploiting the pandemic. McAfee recently released blogs around Covid-19 related threats – Staying safe while […]
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Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. In collaboration with Northwave As we highlighted previously across two blogs, targeted ransomware attacks have increased massively over the past months. In our first article, we discussed the growing pattern of targeted ransomware attacks where the primary infection stage is often an info-stealer kind of malware used to gain credentials/access to determine […]
The post Tales From the Trenches; a Lockbit Ransomware Story appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
McAfee Mobile Research team has found another variant of MalBus on an education application, developed by a South Korean developer. In the previous Malbus case, the author distributed the malware through Google Play, but new variants are distributed via the ONE Store in much the same way. ONE Store is a joint venture by the […]
The post MalBus Actor Changed Market from Google Play to ONE Store appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
While not a new practice, the sheer volume of people required to adhere to social distancing best practices means we now have a mass workforce working remotely. Most enterprises and SMBs can support working remotely today but many IT departments are not equipped to scale to the numbers currently required. In this blog we discuss […]
The post Transitioning to a Mass Remote Workforce – We Must Verify Before Trusting appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Although the use of global events as a vehicle to drive digital crime is hardly surprising, the current outbreak of COVID-19 has revealed a multitude of vectors, including one in particular that is somewhat out of the ordinary. In a sea of offers for face masks, a recent posting on a dark web forum reveals […]
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Executive Summary The McAfee Advanced Threat Research Team (ATR) observed a new ransomware family named ‘Nemty’ on 20 August 2019. We are in an era where ransomware developers face multiple struggles, from the great work done by the security community to protect against their malware, to initiatives such as the No More Ransom project that […]
The post Nemty Ransomware – Learning by Doing appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Maze ransomware, previously known in the community as “ChaCha ransomware”, was discovered on May the 29th 2019 by Jerome Segura[1]. The main goal of the ransomware is to crypt all files that it can in an infected system and then demand a ransom to recover the files. However, the most important characteristic […]
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Special thanks to Tim Hux and Sorcha Healy for their assistance. The demand for remote working as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will invariably place pressures on organizations to ensure the availability of corporate resources in geographic locations outside of corporate control. Such demands go beyond the provision of additional capacity, with potentially remote […]
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The Vulnerability The latest vulnerability in SMBv3 is a “wormable” vulnerability given its potential ability to replicate or spread over network shares using the latest version of the protocol (SMB 3.1.1). As of this writing, Microsoft have just released a patch for CVE-2020-0796 on the morning of March 12th. The bug was introduced very recently, […]
The post SMBGhost – Analysis of CVE-2020-0796 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee Mobile Research team has identified an Android malware family dubbed Android/LeifAccess.A that has been active since May 2019. This trojan was discovered globally with localized versions but has a much higher prevalence in the USA and Brazil. As part of the payload, this trojan can abuse OAuth leveraging accessibility services to automatically create […]
The post Android/LeifAccess.A is the Silent Fake Reviewer Trojan appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Thousands of HiddenAds Trojan Apps Masquerade as Google Play Apps The McAfee mobile research team has recently discovered a new variant of the HiddenAds Trojan. HiddenAds Trojan is an adware app used to display advertising and collect user data for marketing. The goal of such apps is to generate revenue by redirecting users to advertisements. […]
The post Multi-tricks HiddenAds Malware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
In our first article we discussed the growing pattern of targeted ransomware attacks where the first infection stage is often an info-stealer kind of malware used to gain credentials/access to determine if the target would be valuable for a ransomware attack. In this second part we will pick up where we left off: the attacker […]
The post CSI: Evidence Indicators for Targeted Ransomware Attacks – Part II appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The last several years have been fascinating for those of us who have been eagerly observing the steady move towards autonomous driving. While semi-autonomous vehicles have existed for many years, the vision of fleets of fully autonomous vehicles operating as a single connected entity is very much still a thing of the future. However, the […]
The post Model Hacking ADAS to Pave Safer Roads for Autonomous Vehicles appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Catherine Huang, Ph.D., and Shivangee Trivedi contributed to this blog. The term “Adversarial Machine Learning” (AML) is a mouthful! The term describes a research field regarding the study and design of adversarial attacks targeting Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and features. Even this simple definition can send the most knowledgeable security practitioner running! We’ve coined the […]
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For many years now I have been working and teaching in the field of digital forensics, malware analysis and threat intelligence. During one of the classes we always talk about Lockard’s exchange principle: “with contact between two items, there will be an exchange”. If we translate that to the digital world: “when an adversary breaches […]
The post CSI: Evidence Indicators for Targeted Ransomware Attacks – Part I appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
A Windows Linux Subsystem Interop Analysis Following our research from Evil Twins and Windows Linux Subsystem, interoperability between different WSL versions was something that caught our attention. The protocol and mechanism to do file management from/to WSL is a must for Blue and Red Teams whose research will provide new ways to execute known techniques […]
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Preface Because of its longevity and technical sophistication, the Russian cybercriminal underground has long been the benchmark for threat researchers focused on studying cybercrime tactics and techniques; there is a plethora of publications dedicated to analyzing its economy and hacking forums. However, only a handful of studies have centered on the emerging threats and trends […]
The post How Chinese Cybercriminals Use Business Playbook to Revamp Underground appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Intelligence became an integral military discipline centuries ago. More recently, this practice evolved into what is called Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield, or IPB. In both military and civilian agencies, the discipline uses information collection followed by analysis to provide guidance and direction to operators making tactical or organizational decisions. Used strategically, this type of intelligence puts an organization in […]
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Today McAfee released the results of a survey of county websites and county election administration websites in the 13 states projected as battleground states in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections. We found that significant majorities of these websites lacked the official government .GOV website validation and HTTPS website security measures to prevent malicious actors from […]
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There has been a dramatic shift in the platforms targeted by attackers over the past few years. Up until 2016, browsers tended to be the most common attack vector to exploit and infect machines but now Microsoft Office applications are preferred, according to a report published here during March 2019. Increasing use of Microsoft Office […]
The post An Inside Look into Microsoft Rich Text Format and OLE Exploits appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Enterprise customers looking for information on defending against Curveball can find information here. 2020 came in with a bang this year, and it wasn’t from the record-setting number of fireworks on display around the world to celebrate the new year. Instead, just over two weeks into the decade, the security world was rocked by a […]
The post CurveBall – An Unimaginative Pun but a Devastating Bug appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
By: Jan Schnellbächer and Martin Stecher, McAfee Germany GmbH This week security researches around the world were very busy working on Microsoft’s major crypto-spoofing vulnerability (CVE-2020-0601) otherwise known as Curveball. The majority of research went into attacks with malicious binaries that are signed with a spoofed Certificate Authority (CA) which unpatched Win10 systems would in […]
The post What CVE-2020-0601 Teaches Us About Microsoft’s TLS Certificate Verification Process appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Recent political tensions in the Middle East region have led to significant speculation of increased cyber-related activities. McAfee is on a heightened state of alert to monitor the evolving threats and rapidly implement coverage across all McAfee products as intelligence becomes available. Known campaigns associated with the threat actors from this region were integrated into […]
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The idea of controlling your garage door remotely and verifying that everything is secure at home, or having packages delivered directly into your garage is enticing for many people. The convenience that many of these IOT devices provide often persuades consumers away from thinking about the possible security concerns. McAfee Advanced Threat Research recently investigated […]
The post We Be Jammin’ – Bypassing Chamberlain myQ Garage Doors appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Steve Povolny contributed to this report. McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research team performs security analysis of products and technologies across nearly every industry vertical. Special interest in the consumer space and Internet of Things (IoT) led to the discovery of an insecure design with the McLear NFC Ring a household access control device. The NFC Ring […]
The post The Cloning of The Ring – Who Can Unlock Your Door? appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
This week McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) published new findings, uncovering security flaws in two popular IoT devices: a connected garage door opener and a “smart” ring, which, amongst many uses, utilizes near field communication (NFC) to open door locks. I’d like to use these cases as examples of a growing concern in the area […]
The post The Tradeoff Between Convenience and Security – A Balancing Act for Consumers and Manufacturers appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
There are number of ways scammers use to target your money or personal details. These scams include support sites for services such as Office365, iCloud, Gmail, etc. They will charge you for the service and steal your credit card details. Software activation scam sites will steal your activation code and they may resell it at a […]
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Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. Initial Discovery This year seems to again be the year for ransomware. Notorious attacks were made using ransomware and new families are being detected almost on a weekly basis. The McAfee ATR team has now analyzed a new ransomware family with some special features we would like to showcase. LooCipher represents […]
The post Analysis of LooCipher, a New Ransomware Family Observed This Year appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
With 2019’s headlines of ransomware, malware, and RDP attacks almost behind us, we shift our focus to the cybercrime threats ahead. Cybercriminals are increasing the complexity and volume of their attacks and campaigns, always looking for ways to stay one step ahead of cybersecurity practices – and more often using the world’s evolving technology against […]
The post McAfee Labs 2020 Threats Predictions Report appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez Initial Discovery This week the news hit that several companies in Spain were hit by a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks themselves are not new but, by interacting with one of the cases in Spain, we want to highlight in this blog how well prepared and targeted an attack can be and […]
The post Spanish MSSP Targeted by BitPaymer Ransomware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research Team observed how a new ransomware family named ‘Buran’ appeared in May 2019. Buran works as a RaaS model like other ransomware families such as REVil, GandCrab (now defunct), Phobos, etc. The author(s) take 25% of the income earned by affiliates, instead of the 30% – 40%, numbers from notorious malware […]
The post Buran Ransomware; the Evolution of VegaLocker appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Over the past few weeks McAfee Labs has been observing a new phishing campaign using a fake voicemail message to lure victims into entering their Office 365 email credentials. At first, we believed that only one phishing kit was being used to harvest the user’s credentials. However, during our investigation, we found three different malicious […]
The post Office 365 Users Targeted by Voicemail Scam Pages appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
A cost-effective way to detect targeted attacks in your enterprise While it is easy to get caught up in the many waves of new and exciting protection strategies, we have recently discovered an interesting approach to detect a targeted attack and the related actor(s). Quite surprisingly, a big part of the solution already exists in […]
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Expert Rules are text-based custom rules that can be created in the Exploit Prevention policy in ENS Threat Prevention 10.5.3+. Expert Rules provide additional parameters and allow much more flexibility than the custom rules that can be created in the Access Protection policy. It also allows system administration to control / monitor an endpoint system […]
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Episode 4: Crescendo This is the final installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) analysis of Sodinokibi and its connections to GandGrab, the most prolific Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Campaign of 2018 and mid 2019. In this final episode of our series we will zoom in on the operations, techniques and tools used by different affiliate […]
The post McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – Crescendo appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Episode 3: Follow the Money This is the third installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) analysis of Sodinokibi and its connections to GandCrab, the most prolific Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Campaign of 2018 and mid 2019. The Talking Heads once sang “We’re on a road to nowhere.” This expresses how challenging it can be when […]
The post McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – Follow The Money appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Episode 2: The All-Stars Analyzing Affiliate Structures in Ransomware-as-a-Service Campaigns This is the second installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) analysis of Sodinokibi and its connections to GandGrab, the most prolific Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Campaign of 2018 and mid-2019. GandCrab announced its retirement at the end of May. Since then, a new RaaS family […]
The post McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – The All-Stars appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Episode 1: What the Code Tells Us McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research team (ATR) observed a new ransomware family in the wild, dubbed Sodinokibi (or REvil), at the end of April 2019. Around this same time, the GandCrab ransomware crew announced they would shut down their operations. Coincidence? Or is there more to the story? In […]
The post McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – What The Code Tells Us appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The Artful and Dangerous Dynamics of Watering Hole Attacks A group of researchers recently published findings of an exploitation of multiple iPhone vulnerabilities using websites to infect final targets. The key concept behind this type of attack is the use of trusted websites as an intermediate platform to attack others, and it’s defined as a watering hole […]
The post How Visiting a Trusted Site Could Infect Your Employees appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Executive Summary Malware evasion techniques are widely used to circumvent detection as well as analysis and understanding. One of the dominant categories of evasion is anti-sandbox detection, simply because today’s sandboxes are becoming the fastest and easiest way to have an overview of the threat. Many companies use these kinds of systems to detonate malicious […]
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The recent discovery of exploit chains targeting Apple iOS is the latest example of how cybercriminals can successfully operate malicious campaigns, undetected, through the use of zero-day vulnerabilities. In this scenario, a threat actor or actors operated multiple compromised websites, using at least one or more zero-day vulnerabilities and numerous unique exploit chains and known vulnerabilities to […]
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Introduction As of July 2019, Microsoft has fixed around 43 bugs in the Jet Database Engine. McAfee has reported a couple of bugs and, so far, we have received 10 CVE’s from Microsoft. In our previous post, we discussed the root cause of CVE-2018-8423. While analyzing this CVE and patch from Microsoft, we found that […]
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In this series of 3 blogs (you can find part 1 here, and part 2 here), so far we have understood the implications of promoting files to “Evil Twins” where they can be created and remain in the system as different entities once case sensitiveness is enabled, and some issues that could be raised by […]
The post The Twin Journey, Part 3: I’m Not a Twin, Can’t You See my Whitespace at the End? appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Following on from the McAfee Protects against suspicious email attachments blog, this blog describes how the AMSI (Antimalware Scan Interface) is used within the various McAfee Endpoint products. The AMSI scanner within McAfee ENS 10.6 has already detected over 650,000 pieces of Malware since the start of 2019. This blog will help show you how […]
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Management. Control. It seems that you can’t stick five people in a room together without one of them trying to order the others around. This tendency towards centralized authority is not without reason, however – it is often more efficient to have one person, or thing, calling the shots. For an example of the latter, […]
The post From Building Control to Damage Control: A Case Study in Industrial Security Featuring Delta’s enteliBUS Manager appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee Labs Advanced Threat Research team is committed to uncovering security issues in both software and hardware to help developers provide safer products for businesses and consumers. We recently investigated an industrial control system (ICS) produced by Delta Controls. The product, called “enteliBUS Manager”, is used for several applications, including building management. Our research […]
The post HVACking: Understanding the Delta Between Security and Reality appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Avaya is the second largest VOIP solution provider (source) with an install base covering 90% of the Fortune 100 companies (source), with products targeting a wide spectrum of customers, from small business and midmarket, to large corporations. As part of the ongoing McAfee Advanced Threat Research effort into researching critical vulnerabilities in widely deployed software […]
The post Avaya Deskphone: Decade-Old Vulnerability Found in Phone’s Firmware appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The McAfee mobile research team has found a new type of Android malware for the MoqHao phishing campaign (a.k.a. XLoader and Roaming Mantis) targeting Korean and Japanese users. A series of attack campaigns are still active, mainly targeting Japanese users. The new spyware has very different payloads from the existing MoqHao samples. However, we found […]
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In the first of this 3-part blog series, we covered the implications of promoting files to “Evil Twins” where they can be created and remain in the system as different entities once case sensitiveness is enabled. In this 2nd post we try to abuse applications that do not work well with CS changes, abusing years […]
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CVE-2019-0547 CVE-2019-0547 was the first vulnerability patched by Microsoft this year. The dynamic link library, dhcpcore.dll, which is responsible for DHCP client services in a system, is vulnerable to malicious DHCP reply packets. This vulnerability allows remote code execution if the user tries to connect to a network with a rogue DHCP Server, hence making […]
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This new ransomware was discovered by Michael Gillespie on 8 February 2019 and it is still improving over time. This blog will explain the technical details and share information about how this new ransomware family is working. There are some variants of the Clop ransomware but in this report, we will focus on the main […]
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Summary and Introduction: The recent changes in Windows 10, aiming to add case sensitivity (CS) at directory level, have prompted our curiosity to investigate the potential to use CS as a mean of obfuscation or WYSINWYG (What You See is NOT What you Get). While CS was our entry point, we then ventured into other […]
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In September 2018, the Zero Day Initiative published a proof of concept for a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Jet Database Engine. Microsoft released a patch in October 2018. We investigated this flaw at that time to protect our customers. We were able to find some issues with the patch and reported that to Microsoft, which resulted […]
The post Jet Database Engine Flaw May Lead to Exploitation: Analyzing CVE-2018-8423 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The not-so Usual Suspects There is a growing trend for attackers to more heavily utilize tools that already exist on a system rather than relying totally on their own custom malware. Using .hta files or its partner in crime, mshta.exe, is an alternative to using macro enabled document for attacks and has been around a […]
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This blog was written by Charlie Feng. Briefing Over the years, McAfee researchers have observed that certain new top-level Domains (TLDs) are more likely to be abused by cyber criminals for malicious activities than others. Our investigations reveal a negative relationship between the likelihood for abuse and registration price of some TLDs, as reported by […]
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Collaborative Initiative Celebrates Helping More Than 200,000 Victims and Preventing More Than 100 million USD From Falling into Criminal Hands Three years ago, on this exact day, the public and private sectors drew a line in the sand against ransomware. At that time, ransomware was becoming one of the most prevalent cyber threats globally. We […]
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You have likely heard that blockchain will disrupt everything from banking to retail to identity management and more. You may have seen commercials for IBM touting the supply chain tracking benefits of blockchain.[i] It appears nearly every industry is investing in, adopting, or implementing blockchain. Someone has probably told you that blockchain can completely transform […]
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Everyday thousands of people receive emails with malicious attachments in their email inbox. Disguised as a missed payment or an invoice, a cybercriminal sender tries to entice a victim to open the document and enable the embedded macro. This macro then proceeds to pull in a whole array of nastiness and infect a victim’s machine. […]
The post McAfee ATR Aids Police in Arrest of Rubella & Dryad Office Macro Builder appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Since early November 2018 McAfee Labs have observed a phishing kit, dubbed 16Shop, being used by malicious actors to target Apple account holders in the United States and Japan. Typically, the victims receive an email with a pdf file attached. An example of the message within the email is shown below, with an accompanying translation: […]
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RDP on the Radar Recently, McAfee released a blog related to the wormable RDP vulnerability referred to as CVE-2019-0708 or “Bluekeep.” The blog highlights a particular vulnerability in RDP which was deemed critical by Microsoft due to the fact that it exploitable over a network connection without authentication. These attributes make it particularly ‘wormable’ – […]
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As this blog goes live, Eoin Carroll will be stepping off the stage at Hack in Paris having detailed the latest McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) findings on Process Reimaging. Admittedly, this technique probably lacks a catchy name, but be under no illusion the technique is significant and is worth paying very close attention to. […]
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Process Reimaging Overview The Windows Operating System has inconsistencies in how it determines process image FILE_OBJECT locations, which impacts non-EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) Endpoint Security Solution’s (such as Microsoft Defender Realtime Protection), ability to detect the correct binaries loaded in malicious processes. This inconsistency has led McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research to develop a new […]
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McAfee Advanced Threat Research recently released a blog detailing a vulnerability in the Mr. Coffee Coffee Maker with WeMo. Please refer to the earlier blog to catch up with the processes and techniques I used to investigate and ultimately compromise this smart coffee maker. While researching the device, there was always one attack vector that […]
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A much overlooked but essential part in financially motivated (cyber)crime is making sure that the origins of criminal funds are obfuscated or made to appear legitimate, a process known as money laundering. ’Cleaning’ money in this way allows the criminal to spend their loot with less chance of being caught. In the physical world, for […]
The post Cryptocurrency Laundering Service, BestMixer.io, Taken Down by Law Enforcement appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
During Microsoft’s May Patch Tuesday cycle, a security advisory was released for a vulnerability in the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). What was unique in this particular patch cycle was that Microsoft produced a fix for Windows XP and several other operating systems, which have not been supported for security updates in years. So why the […]
The post RDP Stands for “Really DO Patch!” – Understanding the Wormable RDP Vulnerability CVE-2019-0708 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Co-authored by Marc RiveroLopez. Initial discovery Once again, we have seen a significant new ransomware family in the news. LockerGoga, which adds new features to the tried and true formula of encrypting victims’ files and asking for payment to decrypt them, has gained notoriety for the targets it has affected. In this blog, we will […]
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Effective malware is typically developed with intention, targeting specific victims using either known or unknown vulnerabilities to achieve its primary functions. In this blog, we will explore a vulnerability submitted by McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) and investigate a piece of malware that recently incorporated similar vulnerabilities. The takeaway from this blog is the increasing […]
The post IoT Zero-Days – Is Belkin WeMo Smart Plug the Next Malware Target? appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
1. Introduction On March 1st, Google published an advisory [1] for a use-after-free in the Chrome implementation of the FileReader API (CVE 2019-5786). Clement Lecigne from Google Threat Analysis Group reported the bug as being exploited in the wild and targeting Windows 7, 32-bit platforms. The exploit leads to code execution in the Renderer process, […]
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Earlier this month Check Point Research reported discovery of a 19 year old code execution vulnerability in the wildly popular WinRAR compression tool. Rarlab reports that that are over 500 million users of this program. While a patched version, 5.70, was released on February 26, attackers are releasing exploits in an effort to reach vulnerable […]
The post Attackers Exploiting WinRAR UNACEV2.DLL Vulnerability (CVE-2018-20250) appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Email remains a top vector for attackers. Over the years, defenses have evolved, and policy-based protections have become standard for email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Mail. Such policies are highly effective, but only if they are maintained as attacker’s keep changing their tactics to evade defenses. For this reason, McAfee endpoint products […]
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The Adwind remote administration tool (RAT) is a Java-based backdoor Trojan that targets various platforms supporting Java files. For an infection to occur, the user must typically execute the malware by double-clicking on the .jar file that usually arrives as an email attachment. Generally, infection begins if the user has the Java Runtime Environment installed. […]
The post JAVA-VBS Joint Exercise Delivers RAT appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
IOT devices are notoriously insecure and this claim can be backed up with a laundry list of examples. With more devices “needing” to connect to the internet, the possibility of your WiFi enabled toaster getting hacked and tweeting out your credit card number is, amazingly, no longer a joke. With that in mind, I began […]
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2018 was another record-setting year in the continuing trend for consumer online shopping. With an increase in technology and efficiency, and a decrease in cost and shipping time, consumers have clearly made a statement that shopping online is their preferred method. Chart depicting growth of online, web-influenced and offline sales by year.1 In direct correlation […]
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In collaboration with Bill Siegel and Alex Holdtman from Coveware. At the beginning of 2019, McAfee ATR published an article describing how the hasty attribution of Ryuk ransomware to North Korea was missing the point. Since then, collective industry peers discovered additional technical details on Ryuk’s inner workings, the overlap between Ryuk and Hermes2.1, […]
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McAfee’s Mobile Research team recently learned of a new malicious Android application masquerading as a plugin for a transportation application series developed by a South Korean developer. The series provides a range of information for each region of South Korea, such as bus stop locations, bus arrival times and so on. There are a total […]
The post MalBus: Popular South Korean Bus App Series in Google Play Found Dropping Malware After 5 Years of Development appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
During our continuous hunt for new threats, we discovered a new ransomware family we call Anatova (based on the name of the ransom note). Anatova was discovered in a private peer-to-peer (p2p) network. After initial analysis, and making sure that our customers are protected, we decided to make this discovery public. Our telemetry showed that […]
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Microsoft recently patched a critical flaw in Internet Explorer’s scripting engine that could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability is being exploited in the wild and was originally reported by a researcher from Google’s Threat Analysis Group. Microsoft released an out-of-band patch to fix the vulnerability before the normal patch cycle. McAfee products received […]
The post IE Scripting Flaw Still a Threat to Unpatched Systems: Analyzing CVE-2018-8653 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Senior analyst Ryan Sherstobitoff contributed to this report. During the past week, an outbreak of Ryuk ransomware that impeded newspaper printing services in the United States has garnered a lot of attention. To determine who was behind the attack many have cited past research that compares code from Ryuk with the older ransomware Hermes to […]
The post Ryuk Ransomware Attack: Rush to Attribution Misses the Point appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Last week the McAfee Advanced Threat Research team posted an analysis of a new wave of Shamoon “wiper” malware attacks that struck several companies in the Middle East and Europe. In that analysis we discussed one difference to previous Shamoon campaigns. The latest version has a modular approach that allows the wiper to be used […]
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The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team today published the McAfee® Labs Threats Report, December 2018. In this edition, we highlight the notable investigative research and trends in threats statistics and observations gathered by the McAfee Advanced Threat Research and McAfee Labs teams in Q3 of 2018. We are very excited to present to you new […]
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Destructive malware has been employed by adversaries for years. Usually such attacks are carefully targeted and can be motivated by ideology, politics, or even financial aims. Destructive attacks have a critical impact on businesses, causing the loss of data or crippling business operations. When a company is impacted, the damage can be significant. Restoration can […]
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This post was written with contributions from the McAfee Advanced Threat Research team. The McAfee Advanced Threat Research team and McAfee Labs Malware Operations Group have discovered a new global campaign targeting nuclear, defense, energy, and financial companies, based on McAfee® Global Threat Intelligence. This campaign, Operation Sharpshooter, leverages an in-memory implant to download […]
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For the past 18 months, McAfee Labs has been investigating a pay-per-install developer, WakeNet AB, responsible for spreading prevalent adware such as Adware-Wajam and Linkury. This developer has been active for almost 20 years and recently has used increasingly deceptive techniques to convince users to execute its installers. Our report is now available online. During […]
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Our predictions for 2019 move away from simply providing an assessment on the rise or fall of a particular threat, and instead focus on current rumblings we see in the cybercriminal underground that we expect to grow into trends and subsequently threats in the wild.
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McAfee Labs researchers have discovered new Russian malware, dubbed WebCobra, which harnesses victims’ computing power to mine for cryptocurrencies.
The post WebCobra Malware Uses Victims’ Computers to Mine Cryptocurrency appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Malware that attacks industrial control systems (ICS), such as the Stuxnet campaign in 2010, is a serious threat. This class of cyber sabotage can spy on, disrupt, or destroy systems that manage large-scale industrial processes. An essential danger in this threat is that it moves from mere digital damage to risking human lives.
The post Triton Malware Spearheads Latest Attacks on Industrial Systems appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Alexandr Solad and Daniel Hatheway of Recorded Future are coauthors of this post. Read Recorded Future’s version of this analysis. Rising from the deep, Kraken Cryptor ransomware has had a notable development path in recent months. The first signs of Kraken came in mid-August on a popular underground forum. In mid-September it was reported that […]
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The McAfee Mobile Research team recently found an active phishing campaign using text messages (SMS) that tricks users into downloading and installing a fake voice-message app which allows cybercriminals to use infected devices as network proxies without users’ knowledge. If the fake application is installed, a background service starts a Socks proxy that redirects all […]
The post Android/TimpDoor Turns Mobile Devices Into Hidden Proxies appeared first on McAfee Blogs.