Category: research

Introduction  Nowadays ransomware operators have consolidated the double extortion practice by mastering data exfiltration techniques. From time to time, we observed many threat actors approach the data theft in diverse ways, some prefeed to rely on legit services and tools such as RClone, FTP sites, and some through VPN channels, but others also with customized tools.   Also, during the last months the LockBit gang (TH-276) decided to develop and evolve a custom tool specialized in data exfiltration and used as a peculiar element to distinguish their criminal brand. In fact, the StealBit 2.0 tool is part of the […]

Introduction  When threat actors evolve, their tools do so. Observing the evolution of the threats we track during our cyber defense operations is part of what we do to secure our customers. Back in 2019, the Yoroi’s Malware ZLAB unit discovered a complete new malware implant named “JsOutProx” (TH-264), a complex JavaScript-based RAT used to attack financial institutions in the APAC area.   In the last two years, the evolution of this implant was clear. After our initial discovery, many security research teams started monitoring this elusive […]

Introduction  Tracking threat actors in the long run is a fundamental part of the cyber threat intelligence program we run at Yoroi, few years ago we began monitoring a particular actor who started offensive operations even in the Italian landscape: Aggah (TH-157), who launched malicious campaign such as the  Roma225 and the RG ones against the Italian manufacturing vertical. At that time, even UNIT42 was closely monitoring that actor, unveiling a large scale operation threatening also United States, Europe and Asia.  The recent operation we tracked was designed […]

Introduction  During the last months, a huge interest from security researchers was directed to Microsoft Exchange Server, one of the most adopted email technologies worldwide. In fact, starting from March 2021, when the ProxyLogon vulnerability has been publicly disclosed, we identified and kept track of many opportunistic attacks hitting this kind of services and we noticed that in some way Exchange services have been targeted by attacks both in APT and cyber-crime […]

Introduction  Ransomware confirms to be one of the most pervasive threats of the last years. We saw during these last years the infamous phenomenon of Double Extorsion, where well-organized cyber-criminal groups perform highly sophisticated red team operations to achieve the highest level of privileges inside the perimeter of victim networks and, before releasing the ransomware, they steal all the sensitive data to extort the target the payment […]

Introduction Nowadays malware attacks work like a complex industry based on their own supply chains, data providers, access brokers and craftsmen developing and maintaining intrusion tools. During our monitoring operations we frequently face malware samples based on known families and code-bases, mangled and then used to conduct even more sophisticated attacks.  Recently, we intercepted a […]

Introduction Cyber criminals are always looking for new ways to infiltrate companies, new techniques, or maybe only creative arrangement of known tricks to achieve their objective. In some of our previous blog posts, we documented how cyber criminals are investing their efforts on creating more and sophisticated code protectors to hide malicious software, and in […]

Introduction The news of the hack of one of the major strategic Italian companies circulated in the first half of December 2020 shocked a huge part of the national security community: Leonardo SpA (formerly Finmeccanica) runs critical services and projects directly related to the Italian defense industry and military corps.  On 5th December 2020, the […]

Introduction 2020 was a really intense year in terms of APT activities, in fact it brought us new evidence of sophisticated campaigns targeting Enterprises organization across Europe and also Italy. In particular the threat group we track as TH-239, also mentioned as UNC1945 by FireEye security researchers, has been one of the sneakiest.  We discussed […]

Introduction The modern cyber threat landscape hides nasty surprises for companies, especially for the most structured and complex companies. Many times, threat actors develop very dangerous and effective techniques using tools and technologies in a smart, unattended way.  This is the case of a particular cyber criminal group operating cyber intrusion against one of the […]

Introduction Info stealer malware confirms to be one of the most adopted weapons of cyber actors. One of them is Netwire (MITRE S0198), a multiplatform remote administration tool (RAT) that has been used by criminals and espionage groups at least since 2012. During our Cyber Threat Intelligence monitoring we spotted a particular Office document weaponized […]

 Introduction During our Cyber Defense monitoring activities we intercepted waves of incoming emails directed to many companies under our protective umbrella. These messages were leveraging FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) requests related to the ongoing CoronaVirus pandemics. These emails were weaponized with two versatile cyber-criminal tools: Himera and Absent-Loader.   Figure1: Email vector example Loaders […]