CVE-2025-8088, a WinRAR flaw, is still exploited by Russia-aligned groups against Ukraine. SHADOW-EARTH-066 (UAC-0226) deploys an evolved GIFTEDCROOK infostealer. Earth Dahu (Gamaredon) uses HTA + Cloudflare Workers. The flaw keeps on working (no WinRAR auto-update). trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Old WinRAR Flaw Fuels Attacks on Ukraine: How Unmanaged Software Keeps the Door Open

Two separate Russia-aligned campaigns are still exploiting the WinRAR flaw CVE-2025-8088 against Ukrainian organizations nearly a year after it was patched, showing how unmanaged software keeps an exp...

trendmicro.com

When TrendAI detects a C&C, we don't just block it for our customers, we get it removed from the internet. We send an evidence package to CleanDNS, who validates it independently and files a takedown request with the registrar. Domain removed, often within days. www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/sec...

TrendAI™ and CleanDNS: From Blocking Attacker Infrastructure to Removing It From the Internet

TrendAI™ and CleanDNS have partnered to go beyond blocking malicious domains. Learn how we are actively dismantling the infrastructure that cybercriminals depend on and removing attacker domains from ...

trendmicro.com

We investigated a China-aligned #APT that targeted multiple governments and companies with government contracts in Asia. In half of the targets we found a second group with different malware toolkit but sharing the infection vector and some post-exploitation tools. www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

New research by @thehellu.bsky.social and Lucas Silva: SHADOW-EARTH-053, a China-aligned group exploiting unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers to deploy ShadowPad, web shells, and NOODLERAT against government and defense targets across countries in Asia and EU: www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Inside Shadow-Earth-053: A China-Aligned Cyberespionage Campaign Against Government and Defense Sectors in Asia

A China-aligned threat group is exploiting unpatched Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities to conduct cyberespionage against government and critical infrastructure targets across Asia and beyond.

trendmicro.com

Edge devices are now the #1 entry point for state-sponsored espionage. Exploits cost $30K-$100K vs millions for mobile. China-aligned groups are burning through zero-days, seemingly in a coordinated way. Your edge devices are the new front door for attackers: www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/sec...

Edge Under Siege: How State-Sponsored Actors Exploit Your Perimeter

Edge devices have become a primary entry point for state-sponsored espionage, giving attackers a cheaper, faster path to network access, credential theft, and traffic interception. Our report examines...

trendmicro.com

The APT threat landscape is shaped by the "Digital Autocracy" bloc: an axis between CN, RU, DPRK and IR using AI as a force multiplier. AI is no longer experimental for APT. It is operational. The next 24 months will be a race for "resilience at machine speed." www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/sec...

It is not often the public gets to see the impact of Russia-aligned cyber operations. This article by Raphael Satter provides exactly that: Russia-aligned actors compromised 170+ accounts of Ukrainian officials tasked with fighting corruption and unmasking spies. www.reuters.com/world/russia...

Exclusive: Russia-linked hackers compromised scores of Ukrainian prosecutors’ email accounts, data shows

Russia-linked hackers broke into more than 170 email accounts belonging to prosecutors and investigators across Ukraine during the last several ​months, according to data reviewed by Reuters, a campai...

reuters.com

Scoop: Allegedly Russian hackers have broken into more than 170 inboxes belonging to Ukrainian prosecutors and investigators. Could help Moscow keep tabs on Ukrainian counterintelligence and sensitive corruption investigations. www.reuters.com/world/russia...

Exclusive: Russia-linked hackers compromised scores of Ukrainian prosecutors’ email accounts, data shows

Russia-linked hackers broke into more than 170 email accounts belonging to prosecutors and investigators across Ukraine during the last several ​months, according to data reviewed by Reuters, a campai...

reuters.com

In our most recent report on the Russia-aligned APT group Pawn Storm (APT28, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard), we explain how they have been using PRISMEX, a collection of interconnected malware components, to target the defense supply chain of Ukraine and its allies - www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Pawn Storm Campaign Deploys PRISMEX, Targets Government and Critical Infrastructure Entities

This blog discusses the steganography, cloud abuse, and email-based backdoors used against the Ukrainian defense supply chain in the latest Pawn Storm campaign that TrendAI™ Research observed and anal...

trendmicro.com

We published this article on "Cyber Considerations for Organizations During Times of Conflict" in 2024. It is worth a read again - www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/sec...

Cyber Considerations for Organizations During Times of Conflict

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the necessary adjustments and strategies CISOs need to implement to safeguard their organizations’ assets, maintain business continuity, and uphold pu...

trendmicro.com

Spammers abused Atlassian Jira’s notifications to bypass email security filters and target government and corporate entities with spam. In one of the campaigns highly skilled Russians working abroad were targeted, even though the motivation looks to be financial - www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Navalny was poisoned with exotic frog toxin, five Western nations confirm Multiple labs have independently analyzed biological samples taken from Alexei Navalny’s body and found epibatidine, a highly toxic alkaloid sourced from a South American poisonous frog.

Navalny was poisoned with exotic frog toxin, five Western nations confirm

Five European countries have confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with epibatidine — a high-potency neurotoxin derived from South American poison dart frogs. Traces of the toxin were found in tissue sa...

theins.press

TrendAI formalizes threat attribution as a structured, repeatable discipline by combining standardized evidence scoring, relationship mapping, and bias testing, with a temporary stage that separates clustering from final naming. Article on how we attribute: www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/sec...

Threat Attribution Framework: How TrendAI™ Applies Structure Over Speculation

TrendAI™ brings structure and discipline to threat attribution, helping security leaders and teams make informed decisions about cyber risk, incident response, and overall defensive posture.

trendmicro.com

#BREAKING #ESETresearch identified the wiper #DynoWiper used in an attempted disruptive cyberattack against the Polish energy sector on Dec 29, 2025. At this point, no successful disruption is known, but the malware’s design clearly indicates destructive intent. 1/5

Trend Micro tracks SHADOW-VOID-042 spear-phishing (Nov 2025) using Trend Micro-themed lures and a decoy site mimicking Trend’s corporate style, targeting defence, energy, chemicals, cybersecurity and ICT sectors. www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

We investigated an #APT with links to Void Rabisu (Romcom) that used Trend Micro updates as a lure in a recent campaign involving vulnerability exploitation. There were at least 4 stages before the final payload, some of them being tailored to the targeted machine www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Recently various industries, including Trend Micro, were targeted by a Trend Micro-themed campaign. Trend Vision One™ stopped it early in the kill chain. The campaign somewhat aligns with Void Rabisu (ROMCOM). For now we track this temporarily under SHADOW-VOID-042 www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

SHADOW-VOID-042 Targets Multiple Industries with Void Rabisu-like Tactics

trendmicro.com

Cyberespionage campaigns are becoming increasingly complex due to the close collaboration between distinct APT groups. Learn how China-aligned Earth Estries provides initial access to compromised assets for Earth Naga (Flax Typhoon) to continue exploitation: www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear....

The Rise of Collaborative Tactics Among China-aligned Cyber Espionage Campaigns

trendmicro.com

Residential proxies are a key enabler of cybercrime today. This creates a growing need for connection and session-based access control. We used Ja4T fingerprinting that successfully tagged incoming connections from residential proxies to 1,500 IDS systems. www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/sec...

The Rise of Residential Proxies as a Cybercrime Enabler

This research discusses how residential proxies help cybercriminals bypass antifraud and IT security systems, and how vulnerabilities in the IoT supply chain are exploited where Android-based devices ...

trendmicro.com

DPRK cybercrime uses Russian infrastructure in Khasan and Khabarovsk, masked by VPNs, proxies, and RDPs. One fictitious DPRK company to lure IT professionals with interviews was BlockNovas. FBI seized BlockNovas' site and a related C&C on April 23, 2025. Read more: www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Russian Infrastructure Plays Crucial Role in North Korean Cybercrime Operations

trendmicro.com

Roman Dobrokhotov and Christo Grozev have extensively reported on FSB and GRU. Read this to learn about their ordeal when a team, led by Marsalek, was hunting them down. The story has fun elements and close calls. It highlights the dangers journalists face as they inform us: theins.ru/en/inv/279034

“Let’s hire an ISIS suicide bomber to blow him up in the street!”: Europe’s most wanted man plotted my murder — and that of my colleague

A jury at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, has just found six of my compatriots — citizens of Bulgaria — guilty of conspiring with the Kremlin to kidnap and possibly murder me and my c...

theins.ru

Updated Shadowpad malware used in recent attacks against the manufacturing industry led to ransomware in some incidents. Research by @thehellu.bsky.social : www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Updated Shadowpad Malware Leads to Ransomware Deployment

trendmicro.com

Yet another suspected case of publicly disclosed red team tools being used by an intelligence agency — allegedly the SVR — to conduct a sweeping surveillance operation. (ht @feikeh.bsky.social) www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Earth Koshchei Coopts Red Team Tools in Complex RDP Attacks

trendmicro.com

Earth Koshchei (APT29): A cyberespionage group targeting critical sectors with stealthy techniques. Here’s what you need to know: www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear... #Cybersecurity #ThreatIntel with @feikeh.bsky.social

Earth Koshchei Coopts Red Team Tools in Complex RDP Attacks

trendmicro.com

Since Aug 2024 Earth Koshchei (APT29, Midnight Blizzard) used 193 RDP relays and 34 rogue backends against military, MFAs and others. The campaign peak was likely preceded by barely audible campaigns that ended with a bang in Oct 2024. Details and indicators here: www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Earth Koshchei Coopts Red Team Tools in Complex RDP Attacks

trendmicro.com

Our latest report presents Earth Minotaur, a threat actor targeting Tibetans and Uyghurs using Moonshine, an exploitation framework for Android apps described in 2019 by @citizenlab.ca leveraging vulnerabilities in applications embedding old versions of Chromium trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

One week ago Lumen/Shadowserver sinkholed Water Barghest C&Cs. Nsocks (alleged seller of Ngioweb bots) apparently suffers from this: US proxies down to 4494 (was 14037), EU proxies down to 2038 (was 9092). I expected a faster recovery. Still expect Water Barghest will make their botnet more robust.

Water Barghest automated each step between finding vulnerable IoT devices to offering them for rent on a commercial residential proxy provider. Water Barghest's infrastructure was used to exploit Cisco IOS XE devices with a 0-day in October 2023. Read more here: www.trendmicro.com/en_us/resear...

Inside Water Barghest’s Rapid Exploit-to-Market Strategy for IoT Devices

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