Research Saturday

Today we are joined by Crystal Morin, Cybersecurity Strategist from Sysdig, as she is sharing their work on "UNC5174’s evolution in China’s ongoing cyber warfare: From SNOWLIGHT to VShell." UNC5174, a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor, has resurfaced with a stealthy cyber campaign using a new arsenal of customized and open-source tools, including a variant of their SNOWLIGHT malware and the VSh...

This week, we are joined by Nick Cerne, Security Consultant from Bishop Fox, to discuss "Rust for Malware Development." In pursuit of simulating real adversarial tactics, this blog explores the use of Rust for malware development, contrasting it with C in terms of binary complexity, detection evasion, and reverse engineering challenges. The author demonstrates how Rust's inherent anti-analysis tra...

This week, we are sharing an episode of our monthly show, Only Malware in the Building. We invite you to join Dave Bittner and cohost Selena Larson as they explore "The new malware on the block." Welcome in! You’ve entered, Only Malware in the Building. Join us each month to sip tea and solve mysteries about today’s most interesting threats. Your host is Selena Larson, Proofpoint intelligence anal...

Zach Edwards from Silent Push is discussing their work on "New Lazarus Group Infrastructure, Acquires Sensitive Intel Related to $1.4B ByBit Hack and Past Attacks." Silent Push analysts uncovered significant infrastructure used by the Lazarus APT Group, linking them to the $1.4 billion Bybit crypto heist through the domain bybit-assessment[.]com registered just hours before the attack. The investi...

This week, we are joined by Jon Williams, Vulnerability Researcher from Bishop Fox, discussing "Tearing Down (Sonic)Walls: Decrypting SonicOSX Firmware." Bishop Fox researchers reverse-engineered the encryption protecting SonicWall SonicOSX firmware, enabling them to access its underlying file system for security research. They presented their process and findings at DistrictCon Year 0 and release...

This week, we are joined by Tom Hegel, Principal Threat Researcher from SentinelLabs research team, to discuss their work on "Ghostwriter | New Campaign Targets Ukrainian Government and Belarusian Opposition." The latest Ghostwriter campaign, linked to Belarusian government espionage, is actively targeting Ukrainian military and government entities as well as Belarusian opposition activists using...

Jim Walter, Senior Threat Researcher on SentinelLabs research team, to discuss their work on "HellCat and Morpheus | Two Brands, One Payload as Ransomware Affiliates Drop Identical Code." Over the past six months, new ransomware groups like FunkSec, Nitrogen, and Termite have emerged, while established threats such as Cl0p and LockBit 4.0 have resurfaced. Two prominent Ransomware-as-a-Service (Raa...

This week we are joined by Silas Cutler, Principal Security Researcher at Censys, asking the important question of "Will the Real Volt Typhoon Please Stand Up?" The FBI's disruption of the KV Botnet in December 2023, attributed to the Chinese threat group Volt Typhoon, targeted infected systems but did not affect the botnet's control infrastructure. Despite law enforcement efforts and technical ex...

This week we are joined by Phil Stokes, threat researcher at SentinelOne's SentinelLabs, discussing their work on "macOS FlexibleFerret | Further Variants of DPRK Malware Family Unearthed." Apple recently pushed an update to its XProtect tool, blocking several variants of the DPRK-linked Ferret malware family, which targets victims through the "Contagious Interview" campaign. The malware uses fake...

This week, we are joined by Selena Larson from Proofpoint, and co-host of the "Only Malware in the Building" podcast, as she discusses the research on "Why Biasing Advanced Persistent Threats over Cybercrime is a Security Risk." The cybersecurity industry has historically prioritized Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) from nation-state actors over cybercrime, but this distinction is outdated as cy...

Nati Tal, Head of Guardio Labs, discussing their work on "“DeceptionAds” — Fake Captcha Driving Infostealer Infections and a Glimpse to the Dark Side of Internet Advertising." Guardio has uncovered a large-scale malvertising campaign dubbed “DeceptionAds,” which tricks users into running a malicious PowerShell command under the guise of proving they’re human. This fake CAPTCHA scheme delivers Lumm...

Mark Manglicmot, SVP of Security Services from Arctic Wolf, is sharing their research on "Cleopatra’s Shadow: A Mass Exploitation Campaign Deploying a Java Backdoor Through Zero-Day Exploitation of Cleo MFT Software." Arctic Wolf Labs discovered an ongoing exploitation campaign targeting Cleo Managed File Transfer (MFT) products, beginning on December 7, 2024. Threat actors used a malicious PowerS...

This week, Dave Bittner is joined by Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (JAGS) from SentinelOne's SentinelLabs to discuss the work his team and Tinexta Cyber did on "Operation Digital Eye | Chinese APT Compromises Critical Digital Infrastructure via Visual Studio Code Tunnels." Tinexta Cyber and SentinelLabs have been tracking threat activities targeting business-to-business IT service providers in Southe...

This week, we are joined by Ismael Valenzuela, VP of Threat Research & Intelligence, and Jacob Faires, Principal Threat Researcher, from Blackberry discussing the team's work on "LightSpy: APT41 Deploys Advanced DeepData Framework In Targeted Southern Asia Espionage Campaign." In April 2024, BlackBerry uncovered a significant evolution of the LightSpy malware campaign, attributed to Chinese cyber-...

Nati Tal, Head of Guardio Labs, sits down to share their work on “CrossBarking” — Exploiting a 0-Day Opera Vulnerability with a Cross-Browser Extension Store Attack. Guardio Labs has uncovered a critical vulnerability in the Opera browser, enabling malicious extensions to exploit Private APIs for actions like screen capturing, browser setting changes, and account hijacking. Highlighting the ease o...

This week, we are joined by Kyla Cardona and Aurora Johnson from SpyCloud discussing their research "China’s Surveillance State Is Selling Citizen Data as a Side Hustle." Chinese technology companies, under CCP mandate, collect vast amounts of data on citizens, creating opportunities for corrupt insiders to steal and resell this information on dark markets. These stolen datasets, aggregated into "...

Karlo Zanki, Reverse Engineer at ReversingLabs, discussing their work on "Malicious PyPI crypto pay package aiocpa implants infostealer code." ReversingLabs' machine learning-based threat hunting system identified a malicious PyPI package, aiocpa, designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency wallet information. Unlike typical attacks involving typosquatting, the attackers published a seemingly legitimate...

This week, we are joined by Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura from Cisco Talos, and they are discussing "Operation Celestial Force employs mobile and desktop malware to target Indian entities." Cisco Talos revealed Operation Celestial Force, an espionage campaign by the Pakistani threat group "Cosmic Leopard," targeting Indian defense, government, and technology sectors. Active for at least six ye...

Adam Khan, VP of Security Operations at Barracuda, joins to discuss his team's work on "The evolving use of QR codes in phishing attacks." Cybercriminals are evolving phishing tactics by embedding QR codes, or “quishing,” into PDF documents attached to emails, tricking recipients into scanning them to access malicious websites that steal credentials. Barracuda researchers found over half a million...

This week, we are joined by Andrew Morris, Founder and CTO of GreyNoise, to discuss their work on "GreyNoise Intelligence Discovers Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Live Streaming Cameras with the Help of AI." GreyNoise discovered two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in IoT-connected live streaming cameras, used in sensitive environments like healthcare and industrial operations, by leveraging its AI-...

Shawn Kanady, Global Director of Trustwave SpiderLabs, to discuss their work on "Pronsis Loader: A JPHP-Driven Malware Diverging from D3F@ck Loader." Trustwave SpiderLabs has uncovered Pronsis Loader, a new malware variant using the rare programming language JPHP and stealthy installation tactics to evade detection. The malware is capable of delivering high-risk payloads like Lumma Stealer and Lat...

Please enjoy this encore episode: Noah Pack, a SANS Internet Storm Center Intern, sits down to discuss research on "What happens when you accidentally leak your AWS API keys?" This research is a guest diary from Noah and shares a project he worked on after seeing an online video of someone who created a python script that emailed colleges asking for free swag to be shipped to him. The research sta...

This week, we are joined by Ami Luttwak, Co-Founder and CTO from Wiz, sharing their work on "Wiz Research Finds Critical NVIDIA AI Vulnerability Affecting Containers Using NVIDIA GPUs, Including Over 35 percent of Cloud Environments." A critical vulnerability in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit, widely used for GPU access in AI workloads, could allow attackers to escape containers and gain full access...

This week we are joined by, Blake Darché, Head of Cloudforce One at Cloudflare, to discuss their work on "Unraveling SloppyLemming’s Operations Across South Asia." Cloudforce One's investigation into the advanced threat actor "SloppyLemming" reveals an extensive espionage campaign targeting South and East Asia, with a focus on Pakistan's government, defense, telecommunications, and energy sectors....

Enjoy this special encore episode, where we are joined by Jon Williams from Bishop Fox, as he is sharing their research on "It’s 2024 and Over 178,000 SonicWall Firewalls are Publicly Exploitable." SonicWall published advisories for CVE-2022-22274 and CVE-2023-0656 a year apart after finding that NGFW series 6 and 7 devices are affected by two unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The...