The effectiveness of a zero-day quickly deteriorates as an attack tool after it gets discovered and patched by the affected software vendors. Within the time between the discovery of the vulnerability and the release of the fix, a bad actor might try to get the most out of his previously valuable attack assets. This is exactly what we saw in late October and early November 2016, when the espionage group Pawn Storm (also known as Fancy Bear, APT28, Sofacy, and STRONTIUM) ramped up its spear-phishing campaigns against various governments and embassies around the world. In these campaigns, Pawn Storm used a previously unknown zero-day in Adobe’s Flash (CVE-2016-7855, fixed on October 26, 2016 with an emergency update) in combination with a privilege escalation in Microsoft’s Windows Operating System (CVE-2016-7255) that was fixed on November 8, 2016.
Read MoreIn the discussion of targeted attacks, it is usually taken for granted that they arrived via some sort of spear-phishing attack. The discussion then goes into an analysis of the malware involved and/or the servers used or compromised in the attack. However, to avoid attacks in the first place, it is of value to look…
Read MoreToday, we are publishing a research paper on an ongoing operation launched by a threat actor group known as Rocket Kitten. Rocket Kitten Campaigns We have been able to observe two different campaigns launched by the group, one after the other, which reveal an evolution in the skills of this group. The first of these campaigns…
Read MoreWhile new threats are emerging that hit new avenues or targets like PoS systems and cryptocurrencies, old threats like phishing remains to be an effective means of gathering user data. A simple spam email that leverages holidays, online shopping, release of anticipated gadgets, and hot/current news items can redirect unsuspecting users to survey scams and phishing pages that…
Read MoreTrend Micro threat analysts found several phishing sites registered in China that target specific people or companies. The said email can customize phishing URLs using the names of intended recipients via a technique called “spear phishing.” Spear phishing has been used by cybercriminals before in attacks that involved specific targets. In the previous post, “So Is It Twitter…
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