Originated by the ‘Wizard Spider’ Russian hacking group, CONTI ransomware is an evolution of one of the group’s most successful ransomware – Ryuk. CONTI is a more accessible version of Ryuk, built for distribution by affiliates in a ‘Ransomware as a service’ model. CONTI ransomware was first spotted by cybersecurity teams in May 2020 and […]
In early 2020, suspicious network activities and hacking tools were found in a range of companies. Comprehensive forensic research of the infected systems revealed a strong connection to a threat actor we call ‘Lebanese Cedar’, ‘Lebanese Cedar’ APT has been operating since 2012. These operations were first discovered by Check-Point researchers and Kaspersky labs in 2015. […]
Introduction ClearSky researchers identified a malicious “.docx” file that was uploaded to VirusTotal from Russia in mid-December. The file contains an obfuscated URL to a remote template which contains malicious VBA, eventually leading to the execution of VBS on the infected machine. The attack’s purpose is to stealthily exfiltrate information without running any external executables […]
During the past four months a wave of cyber-attacks has been targeting Israeli companies. The attacks are conducted by different means and target a range of sectors. We estimate with medium to high confidence that Pay2Key is a new operation conducted by Fox Kitten, an Iranian APT group that began a new wave of attacks […]
During September 2020, we identified a new campaign targeting many prominent Israeli organizations. The campaign was attributed to the Iranian threat actor ‘MuddyWater’ (also known as TEMP.Zagros, Static Kitten and Seedworm). MuddyWater was previously exposed as a contractor for the IRGC (Islamic Republic Guard Corps). ClearSky and Profero comprehensively researched this campaign. During the campaign, […]
During 2017-2019, Clearsky had published several reports about the Iranian APT group “Charming Kitten”. One of the group’s most common attack vectors is impersonating journalists, particularly those from the German “Deutsche Welle” broadcasting company and the “Jewish Journal” magazine. Starting July 2020, we have identified a new TTP of the group, impersonating “Deutsche Welle” and […]
During June-August of 2020, ClearSky’s analysis team had investigated an offensive campaign attributed with high probability to North Korea, which we call “Dream Job”. This campaign has been active since the beginning of the year and it succeeded, in our assessment, to infect several dozens of companies and organizations in Israel and globally. Its main […]
A Threat Actor Targeting Cryptocurrency Exchanges In this research, we present a hidden and persistent group, that has been targeting crypto-exchanges, mainly in the US and Japan since as early as 2018. The actor has successfully stolen millions’ worth of cryptocoins. We named it as “CryptoCore” (or “Crypto-gang”), aka “Dangerous Password”, “Leery Turtle”. The CryptoCore […]
We have published our quarterly report for the first quarter of 2020. We mark the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus as a systematic change for most businesses around the world. The immense pressure felt by many companies and organizations has the potential of evolving into “The perfect storm” in terms of ripe conditions for cyber-attacks, combining […]
During the last quarter of 2019, ClearSky research team has uncovered a widespread Iranian offensive campaign which we call “Fox Kitten Campaign”; this campaign is being conducted in the last three years against dozens of companies and organizations in Israel and around the world. Read the full Report: Fox Kitten – Widespread Iranian Espionage-Offensive Campaign […]