Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

The JDY botnet, a malware network previously associated with Chinese threat actors like Volt Typhoon, has significantly expanded its targeting scope and reconnaissance efforts. [...]

A court-authorized international law enforcement operation has dismantled a criminal proxy service named SocksEscort that enslaved thousands of residential routers worldwide into a botnet for committing large-scale fraud

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware called KadNap that's primarily targeting Asus routers to enlist them into a botnet for proxying malicious traffic

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced charges against the alleged developer and administrator of the "Rapper Bot" DDoS-for-hire botnet. [...]

The U.S. government has indicted Russian national Rustam Rafailevich Gallyamov, the leader of the Qakbot botnet malware operation that compromised over 700,000 computers and enabled ransomware attacks. [...]

Experts Express Surprise Over Major Social Platform Falling Victim to DDoS AttacksOne of the world's biggest social networks continued to face intermittent outages Tuesday, apparently due to unsophisticated, distributed denial-of-service attacks. Experts said the attacks were traced to malware-infected devices - many based in the U.S. - and pro-Palestinian hacktivists.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today unveiled sanctions against three Chinese nationals for allegedly operating 911 S5, an online anonymity service that for many years was the easiest and cheapest way to route one's Web traffic through malware-infected computers around the globe. KrebsOnSecurity identified one of the three men in a July 2022 investigation into 911 S5, which was massively hacked and then closed ten days later.

GRU Hackers Commandeered 'Moobot' for CyberespionageThe U.S. federal government says it disrupted a criminal botnet that Russian military intelligence had converted into a platform for global cyberespionage. The malware targets Linux-based IoT devices - in this case, routers made by New York manufacturer Ubiquiti.

Volume of Poorly Secured, Legacy IoT That Can Be Turned Against Us Keeps GrowingThe FBI announcing that it has forcibly removed "KV Botnet" Chinese nation-state malware from "hundreds" of poorly secured SOHO routers across America highlights the risk posed by the growing volume of outdated IoT devices. The FBI's fix is temporary, and we need a more permanent solution.

The FBI has disrupted the KV Botnet used by Chinese Volt Typhoon state hackers to evade detection during attacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. [...]

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that threat actors deploying the AndroxGh0st malware are creating a botnet for "victim identification and exploitation in target networks." A Python-based malware, AndroxGh0st was first documented by Lacework in December 2022, with the malware

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI recently collaborated in a multinational operation to dismantle the notorious Qakbot malware and botnet. While the operation was successful in disrupting this long-running threat, concerns have arisen as it appears that Qakbot may still pose a danger in a reduced form. This article discusses the aftermath of the takedown, provides mitigation

The U.S. government today announced a coordinated crackdown against QakBot, a complex malware family used by multiple cybercrime groups to lay the groundwork for ransomware infections. The international law enforcement operation involved seizing control over the botnet's online infrastructure, and quietly removing the Qakbot malware from tens of thousands of infected Microsoft Windows computer systems.

Spanish-speaking users in Latin America have been at the receiving end of a new botnet malware dubbed Horabot since at least November 2020

A previously unknown campaign involving the Hotabot botnet malware has targeted Spanish-speaking users in Latin America since at least November 2020, infecting them with a banking trojan and spam tool. [...]

Denis Emelyantsev, a 36-year-old Russian man accused of running a massive botnet called RSOCKS that stitched malware into millions of devices worldwide, pleaded guilty to two counts of computer crime violations in a California courtroom this week. The plea comes just months after Emelyantsev was extradited from Bulgaria, where he told investigators, “America is looking for me because I have enormous information and they need it.”

A Ukrainian national who has been wanted by the U.S for over a decade has been arrested by Swiss authorities for his role in a notorious cybercriminal ring that stole millions of dollars from victims' bank accounts using malware called Zeus

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the disruption of the Russian RSocks malware botnet used to hijack millions of computers, Android smartphones, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices worldwide for use as proxy servers. [...]

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it neutralized Cyclops Blink, a modular botnet controlled by a threat actor known as Sandworm, which has been attributed to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU)

The Emotet malware botnet is taking advantage of the 2022 U.S. tax season by sending out malicious emails pretending to be the Internal Revenue Service sending tax forms or federal returns. [...]