2022 Year in Review
As we move into the new year, it’s important to reflect on some of the key changes and developments we observed and reported on in 2022. This year’s year-in-review report … Read More
Collect, Exfiltrate, Sleep, Repeat
In this intrusion from August 2022, we observed a compromise that was initiated with a Word document containing a malicious VBA macro, which established persistence and communication to a command … Read More
ShareFinder: How Threat Actors Discover File Shares
Many of our reports focus on adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) along with the tools associated with them. After gaining a foothold in an environment, one challenge for all … Read More
Unwrapping Ursnifs Gifts
In late August 2022, we investigated an incident involving Ursnif malware, which resulted in Cobalt Strike being deployed. This was followed by the threat actors moving laterally throughout the environment … Read More
Emotet Strikes Again – LNK File Leads to Domain Wide Ransomware
In June of 2022, we observed a threat actor gaining access to an environment via Emotet and operating over a eight day period. During this time period, multiple rounds of … Read More
BumbleBee Zeros in on Meterpreter
In this intrusion from May 2022, the threat actors used BumbleBee as the initial access vector from a Contact Forms campaign. We have previously reported on two BumbleBee intrusions (1, … Read More
Follina Exploit Leads to Domain Compromise
In early June 2022, we observed an intrusion where a threat actor gained initial access by exploiting the CVE-2022-30190 (Follina) vulnerability which triggered a Qbot infection chain. Qbot, also known … Read More
BumbleBee: Round Two
In this intrusion from May 2022, the threat actors used BumbleBee as the initial access vector. BumbleBee has been identified as an initial access vector utilized by several ransomware affiliates. … Read More
Dead or Alive? An Emotet Story
In this intrusion from May 2022, we observed a domain-wide compromise that started from a malware ridden Excel document containing the never-dying malware, Emotet. The post-exploitation started very soon after … Read More
BumbleBee Roasts Its Way to Domain Admin
In this intrusion from April 2022, the threat actors used BumbleBee as the initial access vector. BumbleBee is a malware loader that was first reported by Google Threat Analysis Group … Read More
SELECT XMRig FROM SQLServer
In March 2022, we observed an intrusion on a public-facing Microsoft SQL Server. The end goal of this intrusion was to deploy a coin miner. Although deploying a coin miner … Read More
SANS Ransomware Summit 2022, Can You Detect This?
This report is a companion to the SANS Ransomware Summit 2022 “Can You Detect This” presentation today 6/16/22 @ 14:40 UTC (10:40 AM ET). Slides: SANS Ransomware Summit 2022 – … Read More
Will the Real Msiexec Please Stand Up? Exploit Leads to Data Exfiltration
In this multi-day intrusion, we observed a threat actor gain initial access to an organization by exploiting a vulnerability in ManageEngine SupportCenter Plus. The threat actor, discovered files on the … Read More
SEO Poisoning – A Gootloader Story
In early February 2022, we witnessed an intrusion employing Gootloader (aka GootKit) as the initial access vector. The intrusion lasted two days and comprised discovery, persistence, lateral movement, collection, defense … Read More
Quantum Ransomware
In one of the fastest ransomware cases we have observed, in under four hours the threat actors went from initial access, to domain wide ransomware. The initial access vector for … Read More
Stolen Images Campaign Ends in Conti Ransomware
In this intrusion from December 2021, the threat actors utilized IcedID as the initial access vector. IcedID is a banking trojan that first appeared in 2017, usually, it is delivered … Read More
PHOSPHORUS Automates Initial Access Using ProxyShell
In December 2021, we observed an adversary exploiting the Microsoft Exchange ProxyShell vulnerabilities to gain initial access and execute code via multiple web shells. The overlap of activities and tasks … Read More
2021 Year In Review
As we come to the end of the first quarter of 2022, we want to take some time to look back over our cases from 2021, in aggregate, and look … Read More
Qbot and Zerologon Lead To Full Domain Compromise
In this intrusion (from November 2021), a threat actor gained its initial foothold in the environment through the use of Qbot (a.k.a. Quakbot/Qakbot) malware. Soon after execution of the Qbot … Read More
Qbot Likes to Move It, Move It
Qbot (aka QakBot, Quakbot, Pinkslipbot ) has been around for a long time having first been observed back in 2007. More info on Qbot can be found at the following … Read More
Cobalt Strike, a Defender’s Guide – Part 2
Our previous report on Cobalt Strike focused on the most frequently used capabilities that we had observed. In this report, we will focus on the network traffic it produced, and provide … Read More