Intro One of the most important “innovations” in malware in the past decade is what’s called a Domain Generation Algorithm (“DGA”)”. DGA is an automation technique that attackers use to make it harder for defenders to protect against attacks. While DGA has been in use for over 10 years now, it’s still a potent technique

On December 20, 2018 the US Department of Justice indicted two Chinese nationals on charges of computer hacking, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The two are alleged members of a hacking group known as menuPass (aka APT10/Stone Panda/Red Apollo/CVNX/Potassium) which according to the indictment, allegedly carried out the illegal activity at

OceanLotus (AKA APT32) is a threat actor group known to be one of the most sophisticated threat actors originating out of south east Asia. Multiple attack campaigns have been reported by number of security organizations in the last couple of years, documenting the tools and tactics used by the threat actor. While OceanLotus’ targets are global, their operations are mostly active within the APAC region which encompasses

Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 recently discovered malware that we believe has been developed from OSX.DarthMiner, a malware known to target the Mac platform. This malware is capable of stealing browser cookies associated with mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet service websites visited by the victims. It also steals saved passwords in Chrome. Finally, it seeks

Redaman is banking malware first noted in 2015 that targets recipients who conduct transactions using Russian financial institutions. First reported as the RTM banking Trojan, vendors like Symantec and Microsoft described an updated version of this malware as Redaman in 2017. We have found versions of Redaman in Russian language mass-distribution campaigns during the last

The DarkHydrus group has begun using a new version of the RogueRobin backdoor. This version is written in C# and in addition to using DNS Tunneling for command and control, can also use Google Drive.

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 recently captured and investigated new samples of the Linux coin mining malware used by the Rocke group. The family was suspected to be developed by the Iron cybercrime group and it’s also associated with the Xbash malware we reported on in September of 2018. The threat actor Rocke was originally

At Palo Alto Networks, we use various methods to detect malicious web pages and malicious JavaScript on websites our customers visit online. In addition to static approaches such as signature matching, our security crawlers execute all scripts discovered on web pages and observe their dynamic behavior. Then, we apply special behavioral signatures based on different indicators,

As a Threat Intelligence Analyst for Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, I often use Wireshark to review packet captures (pcaps) of network traffic generated by malware samples. To better accomplish this work, I use a customized Wireshark column display as described my previous blog about using Wireshark. Today’s post provides more tips for analysts to

Our Email Link Analysis (ELINK) system is routinely reviewed by our Unit 42 research team. In examining the data it collects, patterns and trends are discovered which helps us discern prevalent web threats. This blog is the third (3rd quarter of 2018) in a series of posts tracking web-based threats throughout the year, specifically statistics pertaining to malicious URLs, domains, exploit kits, and CVEs.

Unit 42’s research on Smoke Loader, a malware that encrypts network traffic and files with various keys to avoid analysis

Unit 42 has continued researching the Shamoon 3 attacks that impacted an oil and gas organization and identified another wiper Trojan

We proudly present to you the new Unit 42 website

The Sofacy group continues to use variants of the Zebrocy payload in its attack campaigns.

On December 10, a new variant of the Disttrack malware was submitted to VirusTotal that shares a considerable amount of code with the Disttrack malware used in the Shamoon 2 attacks in 2016 and 2017.