The Kimsuky APT—also known as Thallium, Black Banshee, and Velvet Chollima— continues to target the South Korean government, according to the Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team, who is actively monitoring this actor and has been able to spot phishing websites, malicious documents, and scripts that have been used to target high profile people within the government of South Korea. The structure and TTPs used in these recent activities align with what has been reported in KISA’s report.

A web server hosting the domain for a local government in the United States was recently breached by advanced hackers taking advantage of old vulnerabilities in firewalls sold by Fortinet, according to an FBI Flash Alert issued. After gaining access to the local government organization's server, the advanced persistent threat (APT) actors moved laterally through the network and created new domain controller, server, and workstation user accounts mimicking already existing ones.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security, and CISA have released a Joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) addressing Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) cyber actors—also known as Advanced Persistent Threat 29 (APT 29), the Dukes, CozyBear, and Yttrium—continued targeting of U.S and foreign entities. The SVR activity—which includes the recent SolarWinds Orion supply chain compromise—primarily targets government networks, think tank and policy analysis organizations, and information technology companies and seeks to gather intelligence information.

Malwarebytes’ Threat Intelligence analysts  introduced a new APT group they have named LazyScripter, presenting in-depth analysis of the tactics, techniques, procedures, and infrastructure employed by this actor group.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have observed persistent continued cyber intrusions by advanced persistent threat (APT) actors targeting U.S. think tanks. This malicious activity is often, but not exclusively, directed at individuals and organizations that focus on international affairs or national security policy. The following guidance may assist U.S. think tanks in developing network defense procedures to prevent or rapidly detect these attacks.

ESET researchers discovered a previously undocumented backdoor and document stealer used for cyber-espionage. ESET has been able to attribute the program, dubbed Crutch by its developers, to the infamous Turla APT group. It was in use from 2015 until at least early 2020. ESET has seen Crutch on the network of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a country of the European Union, suggesting that this malware family is only used against very specific targets. These tools were designed to exfiltrate sensitive documents and other files to Dropbox accounts controlled by Turla operators.

Sophos uncovered attackers using DLL side-loading to execute malicious code and install backdoors in the networks of targeted organizations. A report published, “A New APT uses DLL Side-loads to Killl Someone,” outlines the discovery of four different DLL side-loading scenarios, which all share the same program database path and some of which carry a file named “KilllSomeOne.”

Digital Shadows, throughout the years, has tracked SandWorm, and has now revisited the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) behind the SandWorm APT.