Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy) levels its campaigns against Taiwanese, Philippine, and Hong Kong targets, focusing on their government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries. Its operators are believed to be very organized and develop their own cyberespionage tools that they fine-tuned in their recent campaigns. Many of the tools they use now feature new behaviors, including a change in the way they maintain a foothold in the targeted network.
Read More In today’s online chat and dating scene, romance scams are not uncommon, what with catfishers and West African cybercriminals potently toying with their victims’ emotions to cash in on their bank accounts. It’s quite odd (and probably underreported), however, to see it used as a vector for cyberespionage.
We stumbled upon the Confucius hacking group while delving into Patchwork’s cyberespionage operations, and found a number of similarities. Code in their custom malware bore similarities, for instance. And like Patchwork, Confucius targeted a particular set of individuals in South Asian countries, such as military personnel and businessmen, among others.
Read MoreThe Cobalt hacking group was one of the first to promptly and actively exploit CVE-2017-11882 (patched last November) in their cybercriminal campaigns. We uncovered several others following suit in early December, delivering a plethora of threats that included Pony/FAREIT, FormBook, ZBOT, and Ursnif. Another stood out to us: a recent campaign that used the same vulnerability to install a “cracked” version of the information-stealing Loki.
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