Evasion
US bans MEXC crypto exchange over sanctions evasion, cybercrime links
The US Department of the Treasury has cut off the MEXC Global crypto exchange from the US financial system over sanctions evasion and links with cybercrime gangs. Founded in 2018, the Seychelles-based MEXC is one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, giving more than 40 million users from more than 170 countries access to 3,000 […]
Volt Typhoon hides zero-day attacks using ‘Silent Train’ framework
Chinese state-sponsored hacking group Volt Typhoon has been using a framework that relies on rotating chains of connected devices compromised on demand, including for zero-day attacks targeting high-value systems. The framework has been dubbed Silent Train because the threat actor uses it against select targets, cleans it up after each operation, and refreshes it continuously. […]
PoeLLM malware infects exposed AI servers in cryptomining attacks
A cryptomining campaign targeting exposed AI services is using PoeLLM malware to turn compromised servers into scanners and exploit launchpads. The malware features an uncommon method to retrieve command-and-control (C2) addresses by extracting keywords in a poem hosted on GitHub. Researchers at Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs (BLL) tracking the botnet malware say it has compromised more […]
Attackers conceal phishing lures using invisible Unicode characters
Threat actors have adopted the ASCII smuggling technique in phishing campaigns, using invisible Unicode characters to evade email security filters. ASCII smuggling has been used in AI prompt injection attacks to conceal malicious instructions from users by encoding them with Unicode characters from the Tags block (U+E0000–U+E007F). Microsoft threat researchers discovered a large-scale phishing campaign using this […]
Akira hackers disable EDR with Safe Mode, steal data but fail to encrypt
An Akira ransomware affiliate disabled the endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution on a compromised system by restarting the machine into Safe Mode with Networking. The attack occurred on August 4 after the hacker obtained initial access through an exposed SonicWall VPN device without multi-factor authentication (MFA). Managed detection and response (MDR) services company Huntress […]
Ransomware gang abuses Microsoft Teams relays to hide malicious traffic
DragonForce ransomware used a custom malware named ‘Backdoor.Turn’ to hide command-and-control traffic inside Microsoft Teams relay infrastructure. The backdoor abuses the Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) protocol used by Microsoft Teams to distribute messages when a direct connection to the client is unavailable (e.g., clients on a private network). DragonForce is a ransomware operation active since […]
UK warns of Chinese hackers using proxy networks to evade detection
The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK) and international partners warned that China-nexus hackers are increasingly using large-scale proxy networks of hijacked consumer devices to evade detection and disguise their malicious activity. This joint advisory, co-signed by agencies from the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and Sweden, says […]
Payouts King ransomware uses QEMU VMs to bypass endpoint security
The Payouts King ransomware is using the QEMU emulator as a reverse SSH backdoor to run hidden virtual machines on compromised systems and bypass endpoint security. QEMU is an open-source CPU emulator and system virtualization tool that allows users to run operating systems on a host computer as virtual machines (VMs). Since security solutions on […]
Signed software abused to deploy antivirus-killing scripts
A digitally signed adware tool has deployed payloads running with SYSTEM privileges that disabled antivirus protections on thousands of endpoints, some in the educational, utilities, government, and healthcare sectors. In a single day, researchers observed more than 23,500 infected hosts in 124 countries trying to connect to the operator’s infrastructure, with hundreds of infected endpoints present in […]
Residential proxies evaded IP reputation checks in 78% of 4B sessions
Researchers warn that residential proxies used to route malicious traffic are a big problem for IP reputation systems, as there is no clear distinction between attackers and legitimate users. This occurs because residential proxies are too short-lived, uninvolved, or systematically rotated, preventing defense systems from cataloging them in time. Cybersecurity intelligence platform GreyNoise determined this after examining a […]