APT (Targeted attacks)

We want to familiarize the reader with the different stages of ransomware deployment and provide a visual guide to defending against targeted ransomware attacks.

ToddyCat is a relatively new APT actor responsible for multiple sets of attacks against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia. Its main distinctive signs are two formerly unknown tools that we call ‘Samurai backdoor’ and ‘Ninja Trojan’.

How is technical attribution carried out? What are the key challenges in conducting reliable technical attribution? How can this be more accessible to the multitude of stakeholders? Below are our reflections on these questions.

We have discovered that malware dubbed WinDealer, spread by Chinese-speaking APT actor LuoYu, has an ability to perform intrusions through a man-on-the-side attack.

Kaspersky IT threat review in Q1 2022: activity of APTs such as MoonBounce, BlueNoroff, Lazarus and Roaming Mantis, attacks against Ukraine, phishing kits, Okta hack and more.

The Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report is out, where Kaspersky collaborated as a contributor. The report provides interesting analysis of a full amount of global incident data.

With this article, our core aim is to share a threat landscape overview, which Kaspersky cybersecurity researchers are observing in relation to the conflict, with the wider international community and thus to contribute to broader ongoing cyber-stability discussions of threat-related insights.

This is our latest summary of advanced persistent threat (APT) activity, focusing on events that we observed during Q1 2022.

We recently discovered a Trojanized DeFi application that was compiled in November 2021. This application contains a legitimate program called DeFi Wallet that saves and manages a cryptocurrency wallet, but also implants a full-featured backdoor.

Last week, Kaspersky’s GReAT shared their insights into the current (and past) cyberattacks in Ukraine. In this post we address the questions that we did not have the time to answer and provide IoCs.

We present our analysis of HermeticRansom (aka Elections GoRansom) ransomware that was likely used as a smokescreen for the HermeticWiper attack.

At the end of 2021, we inspected UEFI firmware that was tampered with to embed a malicious code we dub MoonBounce. In this report we describe how the MoonBounce implant works and how it is connected to APT41.

It appears that BlueNoroff shifted focus from hitting banks and SWIFT-connected servers to solely cryptocurrency businesses as the main source of the group’s illegal income.

Kaspersky ICS CERT experts identified malware whose loader has some similarities to the Manuscrypt malware, which is part of the Lazarus APT group’s arsenal.

For this annual review, we have tried to focus on what we consider to be the most interesting trends and developments of the last 12 months.