Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security & Trust for Microsoft, explains: Today we took action to disrupt a botnet called Trickbot, one of the world’s most infamous botnets and prolific distributors of ransomware. As the United States government and independent experts have warned, ransomware is one of the largest threats to the upcoming elections. Adversaries can use ransomware to infect…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Report: U.S. Cyber Command Behind Trickbot Tricks
Brian Krebs reports: A week ago, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that someone was attempting to disrupt the Trickbot botnet, a malware crime machine that has infected millions of computers and is often used to spread ransomware. A new report Friday says the coordinated attack was part of an operation carried out by the U.S. military’s Cyber Command. Read more…
The most common malicious email attachments infecting Windows
Lawrence Abrams reports: To stay safe online, everyone needs to recognize malicious attachments that are commonly used in phishing emails to distribute malware. When distributing malware, threat actors create spam campaigns that pretend to be invoices, invites, payment information, shipping information, eFaxes, voicemails, and more. Included in these emails are malicious Word and Excel attachments,…
Hacker groups chain VPN and Windows bugs to attack US government networks
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Hackers have gained access to government networks by combining VPN and Windows bugs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a joint security alert published on Friday. Attacks have targeted federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) government networks. Attacks against non-government…
Ryuk’s Return
From The DFIR Report: The Ryuk group went from an email to domain wide ransomware in 29 hours and asked for over $6 million to unlock our systems. They used tools such as Cobalt Strike, AdFind, WMI, vsftpd, PowerShell, PowerView, and Rubeus to accomplish their objective. Ryuk has been one of the most proficient ransomware…
This stealthy hacker-for-hire group is using phishing, malicious apps and zero-day attacks against its victims
Danny Palmer reports: An extensive cyber-espionage operation by a hacker-for-hire group that uses phishing, social engineering, malicious apps, custom malware and zero-day attacks has been secretly targeting governments, private industry and individuals for years in what’s described as a diverse, patient and elusive hacking enterprise. Dubbed Bahamut, the mercenary hacking group has been carrying out extensive operations against…