Defenders have observed a sudden surge in the adversary activity of the UAC-0057 hacking group targeting Ukrainian local government agencies. Attackers distribute malicious files containing macros aimed at launching PICASSOLOADER on the targeted computers, which leads to the delivery of Cobalt Strike Beacon. Detect UAC-0057 Activity Covered in the CERT-UA#10340 Alert Since the full-scale war […]
On June 16, 2023, CERT-UA researchers issued a new alert covering the recently discovered malicious activity targeting the National Defense University of Ukraine, named after Ivan Cherniakhovskyi, the country’s leading military educational institution. In this ongoing campaign, threat actors spread PicassoLoader and Cobalt Strike Beacon on the compromised systems via a malicious file containing a […]
LockBit threat actors have been recently under the spotlight in the cyber domain. In July 2022, the hacking collective hit the headlines by introducing the first-ever bug bounty program launched by a ransomware gang. In the latest cyber-attacks, the notorious ransomware group applies Living-off-the-Land tools by abusing the legitimate Microsoft Defender’s command-line utility to deploy […]
Cybersecurity researchers have revealed a wave of new activity of the notorious BlackCat ransomware group deploying custom malware binaries for more sophisticated intrusions. In the latest attacks, threat actors have been leveraging Cobalt Strike beacons and a new penetration testing tool dubbed Brute Ratel, installing the latter as a Windows service on the compromised machines. […]
Hot on the heels of the cyber-attack on July 5 targeting Ukrainian state bodies and attributed to the notorious UAC-0056 hacking collective, yet another malicious campaign launched by this group causes a stir in the cyber domain. On July 11, 2022, cybersecurity researchers at CERT-UA warned the global community of an ongoing phishing attack leveraging […]
The notorious Cobalt Strike Beacon malware has been actively distributed by multiple hacking collectives in spring 2022 as part of the ongoing cyber war against Ukraine, mainly leveraged in targeted phishing attacks on Ukrainian state bodies. On July 6, 2022, CERT-UA released an alert warning of a new malicious email campaign targeting Ukrainian government entities. […]
Matanbuchus first surfaced in early 2021 as a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) project at a rental price of $2,500. Matanbuchus is a loader that uses two DLLs during the malware’s run cycle. This year the malware is delivered in phishing attacks aimed at deploying Cobalt Strike beacons. Detect Matanbuchus Malware For an efficient Matanbuchus malware detection, use […]
On June 20, 2022, CERT-UA issued two separate alerts that warn the global cybersecurity community of a new wave of cyber-attacks on Ukrainian organizations weaponizing the nefarious zero-day vulnerability actively exploited in the wild and tracked as CVE-2022-30190 aka Follina. In the CERT-UA#4842 alert, cybersecurity researchers unveiled the malicious activity by a hacking group identified […]
Just two days after the nefarious CVE-2022-30190 aka Follina was revealed, security researchers report in-the-wild attacks leveraging the exploits to target state institutions of Ukraine. On June 2, 2022, CERT-UA issued a heads-up warning of an ongoing campaign spreading Cobalt Strike Beacon malware by exploiting Windows CVE-2021-40444 and CVE-2022-30190 zero-day vulnerabilities, which have been recently in […]
Researchers warn the global InfoSec community of a new malware campaign aimed to spread the infamous Cobalt Strike Beacon malware via fake Proof of Concept (POC) exploits of the newly patched Windows vulnerabilities, including the critical RCE flaw tracked as CVE-2022-26809. The public availability of fake exploits in GitHub raises the stakes exposing millions of […]