Emotet botnet now pushes Quantum and BlackCat ransomware
While monitoring the Emotet botnet's current activity, security researchers found that the malware is now being used by the Quantum and BlackCat ransomware gang to deploy their payloads. [...]
The Malware tag covers malware families, infrastructure analysis, incident impact, disruption efforts, and defensive guidance to reduce cybersecurity risk.
Search across headline titles and summaries.
Background for this topic.
Malware is software intentionally created or modified to perform unauthorized or harmful actions on a computer, device, or network. The term covers distinct families and functions, including viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, botnet clients, and ransomware; a single sample may combine several capabilities. Its behavior—not its label—determines the security concern: it may execute code, persist, alter or encrypt data, steal credentials, or provide unauthorized remote access.
For practitioners, malware reporting is most useful when it identifies the family or tool conservatively and provides evidence such as affected platforms, samples, infrastructure, or observed behavior. Defenses include promptly patching vulnerable software, restricting execution and privileges, monitoring endpoints and networks, maintaining tested backups, and isolating suspected systems for analysis. Detection should use behavior and verified indicators rather than names alone, since variants change. If malware processes personal or regulated data, investigations should also address privacy, evidence preservation, and applicable reporting obligations.
While monitoring the Emotet botnet's current activity, security researchers found that the malware is now being used by the Quantum and BlackCat ransomware gang to deploy their payloads. [...]
North Korean hackers are using trojanized versions of the PuTTY SSH client to deploy backdoors on targets' devices as part of a fake Amazon job assessment. [...]
A new malware bundle uses victims' YouTube channels to upload malicious video tutorials advertising fake cheats and cracks for popular video games to spread the malicious package further. [...]
Russian hackers have been targeting Ukrainian entities with previously unseen info-stealing malware during a new espionage campaign that is still active. [...]
Chinese cyberespionage hackers of the 'Webworm' group are undergoing experimentation, using modified decade-old RATs (remote access trojans) in the wild. [...]
State-backed Chinese hackers have developed a Linux variant for the SideWalk backdoor used against Windows systems belonging to targets in the academic sector. [...]
Hackers have injected malware in multiple extensions from FishPig, a vendor of Magento-WordPress integrations that count over 200,000 downloads. [...]
Security researchers have identified new cyber-espionage activity focusing on government entities in Asia, as well as state-owned aerospace and defense firms, telecom companies, and IT organizations. [...]