X-Industry

FortiGuard Labs researchers have been tracking a quickly evolving IoT malware family known as “RapperBot” since mid-June 2022.  This family borrows heavily from the original Mirai source code, but what separates it from other IoT malware families is its built-in capability to brute force credentials and gain access to SSH servers instead of Telnet as implemented in Mirai.  In addition, recent samples show that its developers have started adding code to maintain persistence, which is rarely done

The Ukrainian energy agency responsible for the oversight and safe operation of the nation’s nuclear power plants said earlier this week that Russian hackers had launched their most ambitious effort yet on the company’s official website.  The attack appeared to fail and there was no indication that it threatened to disrupt the Ukrainian power grid or the company’s oversight of the nation’s 15 working  nuclear reactors.

The company, Energoatom,[1] said it had managed to keep the attack from being

Activity Summary - Week Ending on 19 August 2022:

• Red Sky Alliance identified 23,756 connections from new IP’s checking in with our Sinkholes
• com x18
• Analysts identified 2,529 new IP addresses participating in various Botnets
• Redeemer, Beamed, and Araicrypt
• Mars Stealer
• Chinese Porn
• DSE
• Lapsus$ Group
• Seaborgium and NATO
• Bitter APT & APT36

Link to full report: IR-22-231-001_weekly231.pdf

Red Sky Alliance regularly queries our backend databases, identifying all new data containing Motor Vessel (MV) and Motor Tanker (MT) in the subject line of malicious emails.  Malicious actors use emails with Motor Vessel (MV) or Motor Tanker (MT) in the subject line as a lure to entice users in the maritime industry to open emails containing malicious attachments.  Red Sky Alliance is providing this list of Motor Vessels in which we directly observed the vessel being impersonated, with assoc

We do not recommend this, but if you happened to be sneaking onto Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in late July 2022, you would have had a short visit.  Space Force conducted a demonstration where two robot dogs, built by Ghost Robotics, conducted patrols in advance of potential broader adoption of the platforms for critical perimeter security. The robot dogs are known as Vision 60 Q-UGVs, for quadruped unmanned ground vehicles. Bearing more than a passing similarity to Boston Dynamics' quadru

Security researchers have identified more than 20 malicious PyPI packages designed to steal passwords and other sensitive information from the victims’ machines.   Investigators are warning of two such packages ‘ultrarequests’ and ‘pyquest’ that were masquerading as ‘requests’, a highly popular open source package.  The malicious repositories copied the description from the legitimate package and contained fake statistics.  PyPI as an index which allows users to search for packages by keywords o

Attacks on educational facilities continue to plague the .edu world.  A local US, Kentucky university was hit with a cyberattack that has left it with embarrassing and inappropriate pictures on their social media account that they cannot take down.  Thomas More University’s Facebook account was hacked, and all of their account managers are locked out.  “About three weeks ago we got a notice that told us all of the university administrators, who are admins on the page, have been removed,” said vi

The US Department of Treasury placed sanctions on 08 August 2022 regarding Tornado Cash, a leading "crypto mixer" for transactions in virtual currency that US officials describe as a hub for laundering stolen funds, including by North Korean hackers.   The Treasury Department reported Tornado Cash had been used to transfer at least $96 million of funds stolen in June from crypto exchange service Harmony Bridge and another $7.8 million of the nearly $200 million in cryptocurrency hacked from Noma

Are Zombies real?  According to a recent report, they may very well be real.   In a tongue-in-cheek report, Kevin Sheridan offers his observations and recommendations on the real “Working Dead.”  “Several years ago, I got wrapped up in the TV Show AMC called ‘The Walking Dead.’  For those who have not seen it, the show is about the world being taken over by Zombies who savagely bite living people and transform them into fellow Zombies.  While doing keynote speeches at national and international

With criminals beginning to use deepfake video technology[1] to spoof an identity in live online job interviews, security researchers have highlighted one simple way to spot a deepfake: just ask the person to turn their face sideways.  The reason for this as a potential handy authentication check is that deepfake AI models, while good at recreating front-on views of a person's face are not adequate for presenting side-on or profile views like those seen in a mug shot.

Camera apps have become inc

During the current proxy ‘WWIII,’ Russia and Ukraine continue to battle on the cyber side of the war between the two nations.  Both sides have launched cyber-attacks against each other in offensive ways, such as Russian threat actors taking over radio stations to spread misinformation of Ukraine’s President.  Current events show that the hacking might be getting a lot more serious and could cost more lives.

Pro-Russia hacking groups claim that they have developed "a new type of attack" that can

It was once the case that only governments had the technical ability to penetrate secure data, telecoms networks and the devices connected to them.  The threat now posed by private firms with cyber capabilities that rival the world’s most skilled spy agencies, is not widely known.  The lucrative spy-for-hire industry targets people and organizations with aims to collect their intelligence information and monitor/analyze them to infiltrate their tech devices.  These operations will silently get t

The threat actor who recently breached Twilio systems also targeted Cloudflare, and a few of the web security company’s employees fell for the phishing messages.   Twilio recently revealed that it became aware of unauthorized access to some of its systems on 04 August 2022.  An investigation showed that the attackers had tricked some of its employees into providing their credentials, which they then used to access internal systems and obtain customer data.[1]   The threat actor sent phishing tex

Activity Summary - Week Ending on 12 August 2022:

• Red Sky Alliance identified 23,968 connections from new IP’s checking in with our Sinkholes
• ril.com Hit
• Analysts identified 765 new IP addresses participating in various Botnets
• Zeppelin Ransomware
• Exim
• SmokeLoader
• RapperBot
• AiTM Phishing
• BlenderBot
• PortDoor & CotSam

Link to full report: IR-22-224-001_weekly224.pdf

There was once an unwritten moral code among cyber hackers that they would never attack vulnerable businesses like health care.  Well, those disingenuous hacker ethics are out the door; have been for awhile.  After dealing with the hack of the UK’s NHS controlled ambulance service last week[1], malicious hackers are now holding an IT firm that supplies NHS ‘trusts’ to ransom following a cyber-attack.  NHS trusts are public sector bodies established by parliamentary order through the UK Secretary

Finland’s parliament website was temporarily shut down on Tuesday, 9 August, following a cyber-attack that coincided with the US’s move to admit the Nordic country to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  The Finnish parliament said in a statement on Twitter that a denial-of-service attack hit the parliament’s external websites at around 2:30 pm local time.  “The Parliament takes steps to limit the attack together with service providers and the Cybersecurity Center,” the statement said

We have cautioned on numerous times to, “Let’s the Buyer Beware.”  Online financial scams continue to run rampant, and people keep falling for them.  Researchers have uncovered a huge network of more than 11,000 domains used to promote numerous fake investment schemes to users in Europe.  The platforms show fabricated evidence of enrichment and falsified celebrity endorsements to create an image of legitimacy and lure in a larger number of victims.  The goal of the operation is to trick users in

According to cyber threat researchers, phishing incidents are on the rise and will not wane due to their effectiveness as the first step to injecting malware into a target’s network.  A recent report shows that phishing was the most popular attack vector in 2021, resulting in one in five employees falling victim to phishing hacking techniques.  Although technical solutions protect against phishing threats, no solution is 100% effective.  This is the reason why; companies should involve their emp

A suspected cyber-attack on 7-Eleven stores, pervasive in large towns and at rail stations across Denmark, is reporting that “we cannot use cash registers and/or receive payments.”  This the company wrote on its Facebook page.  “We are therefore closed until we know the extent [of the attack].  We hope to be able to open stores again soon,” it wrote.

There are 176 7-Eleven stores in Denmark.  The company’s CEO told a Danish broadcaster that cash registers “suddenly” began to malfunction in store

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) have picked 11 malware families as their top threats.    The list comprises malware that has evolved over the past ten years as banking trojans, remote access trojans, information stealers, and ransomware delivery tools.

The agencies listed the top malware strains of 2022:

• Agent Tesla (information stealer)
• AZORult (information stealer)
• Formbook (information stealer)
• Ursnif (banking Tro