Research Saturday

Today we are joined by Geoff White, host of Cyber Hack and BBC journalist, taking a deep dive into the Conti ransomware gang. Geoff explores an in-depth investigation into the notorious Conti ransomware gang, drawing from thousands of leaked internal messages to reveal how the group operated behind the scenes. The research uncovers surprising internal debates over targeting healthcare organization...

While we take a break this 4th of July weekend, please enjoy this encore of AI Security Brief. Your enterprise AI strategy isn’t as far along as you think. The reality for most organizations today is that AI is disrupting existing processes more than it’s delivering outcomes… so far. And according to Dr. Grace Trinidad, Research Director at IDC, that’s how it should be. In this episode, host Johnn...

This week we are joined by Daniel Schwalbe, Chief Information Security Officer & Head of Investigations at DomainTools, discussing their work on "ZionSiphon OT Malware First Attempts? Psyops? Both?" Researchers at DomainTools take a closer look at ZionSiphon, a purported operational technology malware sample targeting the water sector, and find that despite its alarming appearance, it lacks many o...

This week, we are joined by Tom Kellermann, TrendAI's VP of AI Security and Threat Research, discussing their work on "Inside SHADOW-WATER-063’s Banana RAT: From Build Server to Banking Fraud." Researchers from TrendAI's MDR team uncovered the full operation behind Banana RAT, a sophisticated banking trojan they track as SHADOW-WATER-063, by analyzing both attacker infrastructure and infected vict...

Martin Zugec, Technical Solutions Director at Bitdefender, discussing their work on "FamousSparrow APT Targets Azerbaijani Oil and Gas Industry." Bitdefender researchers uncovered a sustained cyber espionage campaign by the China-linked FamousSparrow group targeting an Azerbaijani oil and gas company, highlighting the growing focus on critical energy infrastructure in the South Caucasus. The attac...

Ismael Valenzuela, Arctic Wolf’s VP of Labs, Threat Research and Intelligence, discusses their work on "BlueNoroff Uses ClickFix, Fileless PowerShell, and AI-Generated Fake Zoom Meetings to Target Web3 Sector." Arctic Wolf researchers uncovered a sophisticated campaign by North Korean threat group Lazarus Group subgroup BlueNoroff that targets cryptocurrency and Web3 executives through fake Zoom a...

Today we are joined by Marco Giuliani, Vice President & Head of Research at ThreatDown, discussing their work on "GachiLoader adopts AI skill lure." Threat actors are now using fake AI agent “skills” as highly convincing social engineering lures, with a new campaign disguising the GachiLoader malware as a legitimate OpenClaw tool for automated Polymarket betting. Victims are tricked through fake i...

Today we are joined by ⁠Sasi Levi⁠, Security Research Lead at ⁠Noma Security⁠, sharing their team's work on "GrafanaGhost: The Phantom Stealing Your Data." Researchers at Noma Security disclosed “GrafanaGhost,” a vulnerability that could allow attackers to silently exfiltrate sensitive business data from Grafana dashboards using indirect prompt injection techniques. The attack chains together mult...

⁠⁠Thomas Elkins⁠⁠, SOC L3 Analyst from ⁠⁠BlueVoyant⁠⁠, is discussing "Unpacking Augmented Marauder’s Multi-Pronged Casbaneiro Campaigns." BlueVoyant researchers uncovered a large-scale phishing campaign by a Brazil-linked threat group targeting Spanish-speaking users across Latin America and Europe, using fake judicial summons emails, WhatsApp attacks, ClickFix tactics, and email phishing to sprea...

Mark Kelly, Staff Threat Researcher at Proofpoint, is discussing their work on "I’d come running back to EU again: TA416 resumes European government espionage campaigns." China-linked threat group TA416 has resumed large-scale phishing and malware campaigns targeting European governments, diplomatic missions tied to the EU and NATO, and more recently Middle Eastern entities following the outbreak...

Today we are joined by Justin Albrecht, Principal Researcher at Lookout, discussing "Attackers Wielding DarkSword Threaten iOS Users." DarkSword is a highly sophisticated iOS exploit chain discovered by Lookout that targets iPhones (iOS 18.4–18.6.2), enabling near zero-click compromise and rapid theft of sensitive data, including credentials and cryptocurrency wallet information. Likely deployed b...

This week, we are joined by Juliana Testa, Senior Security Engineer from 7AI, sharing their work on "Quish Splash - When the QR Code Is the Weapon: A Multi-Wave Phishing Campaign That Slipped Past Every Filter." A large-scale “quishing” campaign used QR codes embedded in image attachments to hide phishing URLs, allowing 28 out of 33 emails to bypass SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and Microsoft Defender and lan...

Today we are joined by Dr. Darren Williams, Founder and CEO of BlackFog, to discuss his team's work on "Steaelite RAT Enables Double Extortion Attacks from a Single Panel." A new remote access trojan, Steaelite, is being marketed on underground forums as an all-in-one platform that combines remote access, credential theft, surveillance, and ransomware deployment through a single browser-based dash...

Today we are joined by Selena Larson, Threat Researcher from Proofpoint research team and co-host of Only Malware in the Building, talking about their work on "(Don't) TrustConnect: It's a RAT in an RMM hat." Proofpoint uncovered TrustConnect, a malware-as-a-service platform posing as a legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, but actually functioning as a remote access trojan (RAT)...

This week, we are joined by Santiago Pontiroli, Threat Intelligence Research Lead from Acronis TRU team, discussing their work on "New year, new sector: Transparent Tribe targets India’s startup ecosystem." The Acronis Threat Research Unit uncovered a new campaign by Transparent Tribe showing the group has expanded beyond traditional government and defense targets to India’s startup ecosystem, esp...

Omer Ninburg, CTO of Novee Security, joins us on this episode of Research Saturday to discuss their work on "From PDF to Pwn: Scalable 0day Discovery in PDF Engines and Services Using Multi-Agent LLMs." Historically, Portable Document Formats – the immutable, localized PDF – was once considered a “safe” component inside enterprise environments. That is no longer the case. To demonstrate how PDF se...

Yuval Avrahami from Wiz joins to share their work on "CodeBreach: Infiltrating the AWS Console Supply Chain and Hijacking AWS GitHub Repositories via CodeBuild." Wiz Research uncovered “CodeBreach,” a critical supply chain vulnerability caused by a subtle misconfiguration in AWS CodeBuild pipelines that allowed attackers to take over key GitHub repositories, including the widely used AWS JavaScrip...

This week, we are joined by Or Eshed, Co-Founder and CEO from LayerX Security, discussing their work on "How We Discovered A Campaign of 16 Malicious Extensions Built to Steal ChatGPT Accounts." Researchers uncovered a coordinated campaign of 16 malicious browser extensions posing as ChatGPT productivity tools while secretly stealing user accounts. The extensions intercept ChatGPT session authenti...

This week we are joined by Marcelle Lee, cybersecurity consultant and researcher, discussing "CTI tradecraft: Investigating a mobile scareware campaign." She details how a routine click on a Google News story led to a mobile scareware pop-up—and a deeper investigation into a broader campaign. Using free tools like Censys, URLScan, VirusTotal, and CyberChef, she pivoted from two domains to uncover...

This week we are joined by Dr. Renée Burton, Vice President of Infoblox Threat Intel, discussing "Parked Domains and Direct Search: An Underreported Security Risk." Parked domains are no longer harmless ad pages — new research finds that in today’s “direct search” or zero-click parking ecosystem, more than 90% of visits to certain parked lookalike domains lead to scams, malware, or deceptive conte...

Today we have Tomer Bar, VP of Security Research at SafeBreach Labs, discussing their work on "Prince of Persia: A Decade of Iranian Nation-State APT Campaign Activity under the Microscope". In this first installment of SafeBreach’s deep dive into the Iranian-linked APT known as “Prince of Persia,” originally exposed by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, researchers reveal that the group never truly went...

Today we have Ziv Mador, VP of Security Research from LevelBlue SpiderLabs discussing their work on "SpiderLabs IDs New Banking Trojan Distributed Through WhatsApp." Researchers at LevelBlue SpiderLabs have identified a new Brazilian banking Trojan dubbed Eternidade Stealer, spread through WhatsApp hijacking and social engineering campaigns that use a Python-based worm to steal contacts and distri...

Piotr Wojtyla, Head of Threat Intel and Platform at Abnormal AI, is discussing their work on "InboxPrime AI: New Phishing Kit Fueling Scalable, AI-Powered Cybercrime." A new AI-powered phishing kit called InboxPrime AI is rapidly gaining traction in underground forums, automating the creation and delivery of highly believable phishing emails that mimic legitimate business communications and levera...

Muhammad Danish, University of New Mexico lead author and cybersecurity researcher, discussing his team's work on "Private Links, Public Leaks: Consequences of Frictionless User Experience on the Security and Privacy Posture of SMS-Delivered URLs". This paper examines how the push for frictionless user experiences has led many services to rely on SMS-delivered, single-click URLs—an inherently inse...

Today we have Andrew Northern, Principal Security Researcher at Censys, discussing "From Evasion to Evidence: Exploiting the Funneling Behavior of Injects". This research explains how modern web malware campaigns use multi-stage JavaScript injections, redirects, and fake CAPTCHAs to selectively deliver payloads and evade detection. It shows that these attack chains rely on stable redirect and traf...