Tropic Trooper’s Back: USBferry Attack Targets Air-gapped Environments

We found that Tropic Trooper’s latest activities center on targeting Taiwanese and the Philippine military’s physically isolated networks through a USBferry attack. We also observed targets among military/navy agencies, government institutions, military hospitals, and even a national bank. The group employs USBferry, a USB malware that performs different commands on specific targets, maintains stealth in environments, and steals critical data through USB storage. We started tracking this particular campaign in 2018, and our analysis shows that it uses a fake executable decoy and a USB trojan strategy to steal information.