Cobalt Strike | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat actors have been observed targeting semiconductor companies in East Asia with lures masquerading as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) that are designed to deliver Cobalt Strike beacons. The intrusion set, per  EclecticIQ , leverages a backdoor called HyperBro, which is then used as a conduit to deploy the commercial attack simulation software and post-exploitation toolkit. An alternate attack sequence is said to have utilized a previously undocumented malware downloader to deploy Cobalt Strike, indicating that the threat actors devised multiple approaches to infiltrate targets of interest. The Dutch cybersecurity firm attributed the campaign to a China-linked threat actor owing to the use of HyperBro, which has been almost exclusively put to use by a threat actor known as  Lucky Mouse  (aka APT27, Budworm, and Emissary Panda). Tactical overlaps have also been unearthed between the adversary behind the attacks and another cluster tracked by RecordedFuture un

Threat actors are exploiting poorly secured Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) servers to deliver Cobalt Strike and a ransomware strain called FreeWorld. Cybersecurity firm Securonix, which has dubbed the campaign DB#JAMMER , said it stands out for the way the toolset and infrastructure is employed. "Some of these tools include enumeration software, RAT payloads, exploitation and credential stealing software, and finally ransomware payloads," security researchers Den Iuzvyk, Tim Peck, and Oleg Kolesnikov said in a technical breakdown of the activity. "The ransomware payload of choice appears to be a newer variant of Mimic ransomware called FreeWorld." Initial access to the victim host is achieved by brute-forcing the MS SQL server, using it to enumerate the database and leveraging the xp_cmdshell configuration option to run shell commands and conduct reconnaissance. The next stage entails taking steps to impair system firewall and establish persistence by connecting to a remote SMB share

An ongoing cyber attack campaign originating from China is targeting the Southeast Asian gambling sector to deploy Cobalt Strike beacons on compromised systems.  Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne said the tactics, techniques, and procedures point to the involvement of a threat actor tracked as  Bronze Starlight  (aka Emperor Dragonfly or Storm-0401), which has been linked to the use of  short-lived   ransomware families  as a smokescreen to conceal its espionage motives. "The threat actors abuse Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Edge, and McAfee VirusScan executables vulnerable to DLL hijacking to deploy Cobalt Strike beacons," security researchers Aleksandar Milenkoski and Tom Hegel  said  in an analysis published today. It also bears noting that the campaign exhibits overlaps with an intrusion set monitored by ESET under the name  Operation ChattyGoblin . This activity, in turn, shares commonalities with a  supply chain attack  that came to light last year leveraging a troja

A Golang implementation of Cobalt Strike called Geacon is likely to garner the attention of threat actors looking to target Apple macOS systems. That's according to findings from SentinelOne, which observed an increase in the number of Geacon payloads appearing on VirusTotal in recent months. "While some of these are likely red-team operations, others bear the characteristics of genuine malicious attacks," security researchers Phil Stokes and Dinesh Devadoss  said  in a report. Cobalt Strike  is a well-known red teaming and adversary simulation tool developed by Fortra. Owing to its myriad capabilities, illegally cracked versions of the software have been abused by threat actors over the years. While post-exploitation activity associated with Cobalt Strike has primarily singled out Windows, such attacks against macOS are something of a rarity. In May 2022, software supply chain firm Sonatype  disclosed  details of a rogue Python package called " pymafka "

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a new ransomware strain called CACTUS that has been found to leverage known flaws in VPN appliances to obtain initial access to targeted networks. "Once inside the network, CACTUS actors attempt to enumerate local and network user accounts in addition to reachable endpoints before creating new user accounts and leveraging custom scripts to automate the deployment and detonation of the ransomware encryptor via scheduled tasks," Kroll said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The ransomware has been observed targeting large commercial entities since March 2023, with attacks employing double extortion tactics to steal sensitive data prior to encryption. No data leak site has been identified to date. Following a successful exploitation of vulnerable VPN devices, an SSH backdoor is set up to maintain persistent access and a series of PowerShell commands are executed to conduct network scanning and identify a list of machines fo

Fortra, the company behind Cobalt Strike, shed light on a zero-day remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in its GoAnywhere MFT tool that has come under  active   exploitation  by ransomware actors to steal sensitive data. The high-severity flaw, tracked as  CVE-2023-0669  (CVSS score: 7.2), concerns a case of pre-authenticated command injection that could be abused to achieve code execution. The issue was patched by the company in version 7.1.2 of the software in February 2023, but not before it was weaponized as a zero-day since January 18. Fortra, which worked with Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, said it was made aware of suspicious activity associated with some of the file transfer instances on January 30, 2023. "The unauthorized party used CVE-2023-0669 to create unauthorized user accounts in some MFTaaS customer environments," the company  said . "For a subset of these customers, the unauthorized party leveraged these user accounts to download files from their h

Microsoft said it teamed up with Fortra and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) to tackle the abuse of Cobalt Strike by cybercriminals to distribute malware, including ransomware. To that end, the tech giant's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) revealed that it secured a  court order  in the U.S. to "remove illegal, legacy copies of Cobalt Strike so they can no longer be used by cybercriminals." While Cobalt Strike, developed and maintained by Fortra (formerly HelpSystems), is a legitimate post-exploitation tool used for adversary simulation, illegal cracked versions of the software have been weaponized by threat actors over the years. Ransomware groups, in particular, have leveraged Cobalt Strike after obtaining initial access to a target environment to escalate privileges, lateral move across the network, and deploy file-encrypting malware. "The ransomware families associated with or deployed by cracked copies of Cobalt Strike have been link

Threat activity clusters affiliated with the Chinese and Russian cybercriminal ecosystems have been observed using a new piece of malware that's designed to load Cobalt Strike onto infected machines. Dubbed  SILKLOADER  by Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure, the malware leverages  DLL side-loading techniques  to deliver the commercial adversary simulation software. The development comes as  improved detection capabilities  against Cobalt Strike, a legitimate post-exploitation tool used for red team operations, is forcing threat actors to  seek alternative options  or concoct new ways to propagate the framework to evade detection. "The most common of these include adding complexity to the auto-generated beacon or stager payloads via the utilization of packers, crypters, loaders, or similar techniques," WithSecure researchers  said . SILKLOADER joins other loaders such as KoboldLoader, MagnetLoader, and LithiumLoader that have been  recently discovered  incorpora

An open source command-and-control (C2) framework known as Havoc is being adopted by threat actors as an alternative to other well-known legitimate toolkits like  Cobalt Strike ,  Sliver , and  Brute Ratel . Cybersecurity firm Zscaler said it observed a new campaign in the beginning of January 2023 targeting an unnamed government organization that utilized  Havoc . "While C2 frameworks are prolific, the open-source Havoc framework is an advanced post-exploitation command-and-control framework capable of bypassing the most current and updated version of Windows 11 defender due to the implementation of advanced evasion techniques such as indirect syscalls and sleep obfuscation," researchers Niraj Shivtarkar and Shatak Jain  said . The attack sequence documented by Zscaler begins with a ZIP archive that embeds a decoy document and a screen-saver file that's designed to download and launch the Havoc Demon agent on the infected host. Demon is the implant generated via th

The Gootkit malware is prominently going after healthcare and finance organizations in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, according to new findings from Cybereason. The cybersecurity firm said it investigated a Gootkit incident in December 2022 that adopted a new method of deployment, with the actors abusing the foothold to deliver  Cobalt Strike  and  SystemBC  for post-exploitation. "The threat actor displayed fast-moving behaviors, quickly heading to control the network it infected, and getting elevated privileges in less than four hours," Cybereason  said  in an analysis published February 8, 2023. Gootkit, also called Gootloader, is exclusively attributed to a threat actor tracked by Mandiant as UNC2565. Starting its life in 2014 as a banking trojan, the malware has since morphed into a loader capable of delivering next-stage payloads. The shift in tactics was  first uncovered  by Sophos in March 2021. Gootloader takes the form of heavily-obfuscated JavaScript files th

The threat actors associated with the Gootkit malware have made "notable changes" to their toolset, adding new components and obfuscations to their infection chains. Google-owned Mandiant is  monitoring  the activity cluster under the moniker  UNC2565 , noting that the usage of the malware is "exclusive to this group." Gootkit , also called Gootloader, is spread through compromised websites that victims are tricked into visiting when searching for business-related documents like agreements and contracts via a technique called search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning. The purported documents take the form of ZIP archives that harbor the JavaScript malware, which, when launched, paves the way for additional payloads such as  Cobalt Strike Beacon , FONELAUNCH, and SNOWCONE. FONELAUNCH is a .NET-based loader designed to load an encoded payload into memory, whereas SNOWCONE is a downloader that's tasked with retrieving next-stage payloads, typically  IcedID ,

The legitimate command-and-control (C2) framework known as Sliver is  gaining   more traction  from threat actors as it emerges as an open source alternative to  Cobalt Strike  and Metasploit. The findings come from Cybereason, which  detailed  its inner workings in an exhaustive analysis last week. Sliver, developed by cybersecurity company BishopFox, is a Golang-based cross-platform post-exploitation framework that's designed to be used by security professionals in their red team operations. Its myriad features for adversary simulation – including dynamic code generation, in-memory payload execution, and process injection – have also made it an appealing tool for threat actors looking to gain elevated access to the target system upon gaining an initial foothold. In other words, the software is used as a second-stage to conduct next steps of the attack chain after already compromising a machine using one of the initial intrusion vectors such as spear-phishing or exploitatio

A nascent and legitimate penetration testing framework known as Nighthawk is likely to gain threat actors' attention for its Cobalt Strike-like capabilities. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said it detected the use of the software in mid-September 2022 by a red team with a number of test emails sent using generic subject lines such as "Just checking in" and "Hope this works2." However, there are no indications that a leaked or cracked version of Nighthawk is being weaponized by threat actors in the wild, Proofpoint researcher Alexander Rausch  said  in a write-up. Nighthawk, launched in December 2021 by a company called MDSec, is analogous to its counterparts  Cobalt Strike ,  Sliver , and  Brute Ratel , offering a red team toolset for adversary threat simulation. It's licensed for £7,500 (or $10,000) per user for a year. "Nighthawk is the most advanced and evasive command-and-control framework available on the market," MDSec  notes . &qu

Google Cloud last week disclosed that it identified 34 different hacked release versions of the Cobalt Strike tool in the wild, the earliest of which  shipped  in November 2012. The versions, spanning 1.44 to 4.7, add up to a total of 275 unique JAR files, according to findings from the Google Cloud Threat Intelligence (GCTI) team. The  latest version  of Cobalt Strike is version 4.7.2. Cobalt Strike, developed by  Fortra  (née HelpSystems), is a popular adversarial framework used by red teams to simulate attack scenarios and test the resilience of their cyber defenses. It comprises a Team Server that acts as the command-and-control (C2) hub to remotely commandeer infected devices and a stager that's designed to deliver a next-stage payload called the Beacon, a fully-featured implant that reports back to the C2 server. Given its wide-ranging suite of features, unauthorized versions of the software have been  increasingly   weaponized  by  many  a  threat   actor  to  advance

HelpSystems, the company behind the Cobalt Strike software platform, has released an out-of-band security update to address a remote code execution vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of targeted systems. Cobalt Strike is a commercial red-team framework that's mainly used for adversary simulation, but cracked versions of the software have been  actively   abused  by ransomware operators and espionage-focused advanced persistent threat (APT) groups alike. The  post-exploitation tool  consists of a team server, which functions as a command-and-control (C2) component, and a beacon, the default malware used to create a connection to the team server and drop next-stage payloads. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2022-42948 , affects Cobalt Strike version 4.7.1, and stems from an incomplete patch released on September 20, 2022, to rectify a cross-site scripting ( XSS ) vulnerability ( CVE-2022-39197 ) that could lead to remote code execution. "The XSS vulnerabi

The threat actors behind the  Black Basta   ransomware family  have been observed using the Qakbot trojan to deploy the Brute Ratel C4 framework as a second-stage payload in recent attacks. The development marks the first time the  nascent adversary simulation software  is being delivered via a Qakbot infection, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro  said  in a technical analysis released last week. The intrusion, achieved using a phishing email containing a weaponized link pointing to a ZIP archive, further entailed the use of Cobalt Strike for lateral movement. While these legitimate utilities are designed for conducting penetration testing activities, their ability to offer remote access has made them a lucrative tool in the hands of attackers looking to stealthily probe the compromised environment without attracting attention for extended periods of time. This has been compounded by the fact that a  cracked version  of Brute Ratel C4 (BRc4 v1.2.2) began circulating last month across