Evasion
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 […]
LeakNet ransomware uses ClickFix, Deno runtime in stealthy attacks
The LeakNet ransomware gang is now using the ClickFix technique for initial access into corporate environments and deploys a malware loader based on the open-source Deno runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. The attacker is using the legitimate Deno to decode and execute a malicious payload directly into system memory, minimizing forensic evidence on the disk and […]
New ‘BlackSanta’ EDR killer spotted targeting HR departments
For more than a year, a Russian-speaking threat actor targeted human resource (HR) departments with malware that delivers a new EDR killer named BlackSanta. Described as “sophisticated,” the campaign mixes social engineering with advanced evasion techniques to steal sensitive information from compromised systems. It is unclear how the attack begins, but researchers at Aryaka, a network […]
New ‘Zombie ZIP’ technique lets malware slip past security tools
A new technique dubbed “Zombie ZIP” helps conceal payloads in compressed files specially created to avoid detection from security solutions such as antivirus and endpoint detection and response (EDR) products. Trying to extract the files with standard utilities like WinRAR or 7-Zip results in errors or corrupted data. The technique works by manipulating ZIP headers to trick parsing engines into […]