ZeroHour
DashboardNewsCVEsExploitsIncidentsAIBriefAnalyticsEntitiesWatchlistIOCsAsk the feedSourcesFeeds & APIKiosk mode
Country

South Korea

1 mentions in 7 days · 17 in 30 days · 21 total · first seen · last

Search everything

Timeline

Korea raises data breach fines to 10% of revenue

South Korea's privacy regulator will impose fines up to 10% of revenue for data breaches leaking personal data of 10 million or more people.

South Korea's privacy regulator is sharply raising penalties for data breaches, with fines reaching 10% of a company's revenue. The higher fines take effect Friday for companies found to have leaked personal data of 10 million or more people through intent or gross negligence. The regulator aims to push companies to treat data protection as a preventive investment rather than a routine cost of doing business.

DataBreaches.net · 5d agoPolicy & legal

North Korea-linked Hackers Hide a Backdoor Inside HAProxy

Rapid7 reports North Korea-linked hackers implanted a backdoor compiled into HAProxy at South Korean automotive and media firms, enabling covert C2 and credential theft.

Rapid7 documented a previously undocumented Linux toolkit hitting South Korean automotive and media organizations, centered on a backdoor compiled directly into victims' HAProxy 2.8.12. The 'ted backdoor' uses HAProxy's native filter API to intercept HTTP traffic, receive C2 commands hidden in requests to a fake image path, and erase all traces from logs and counters; the toolkit also trojanizes crond, agetty, atd, sshd, and polkitd, adds an SSH keylogger, and runs curlRAT with virtualization checks. It can inject scripts or replace page content for selected victims, turning the load balancer into a watering hole. Attribution sits at medium confidence toward North Korean state actors, with overlaps to APT37-linked infrastructure and a concurrent Lazarus campaign; the campaign's command domains have since gone dark.

Security Affairs · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild

Hackers Spend Nearly $7 Million on Expired Domains to Redirect Traffic to Scams and Malware

Infoblox reports Sable Squirrel spent nearly $7 million on expired domains to redirect traffic to illegal sports streaming, gambling, and malware infrastructure.

Infoblox tracked 50,400 dropcatch domains re-registered daily in gTLDs during H1 2026, nearly 20% of all registrations, with .net and .xyz leading. The threat actor Sable Squirrel has acquired more than 10,000 expired domains supporting Asian sports piracy brands such as Xoilac, Cakhia, 90phut, Socolive, and MiTom while promoting betting services like VSBet, ColaScore, and 8xbet. The operation, assessed as Vietnam-based and overlapping the dismantled Xoi Lac TV streaming network, targets users in Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Australia via a traffic distribution system, publishes Android apps through suspected compromised Google Play developer accounts, and deployed over 31,000 malware samples including Quasar RAT, AsyncRAT, DCRat, NanoCore, Remcos RAT, and njRAT.

The Hacker News · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild

Personal Data of Approximately 220,000 Domestic and International Gangnam Unni Users Leaked

Healing Paper's Gangnam Unni beauty platform leaked personal data of roughly 220,000 domestic and international users via abnormal API access on September 4.

Healing Paper, operator of the beauty medical platform Gangnam Unni, announced on September 7 that personal information of approximately 220,000 domestic and international users was leaked. The incident involved abnormal access on September 4 to the integration API used to view consultation records. The company disclosed the event through a public notice.

DataBreaches.net · 8d agoData breach

Weverse Data Leak Affects More Than 422,000 K-Pop Fan Accounts

HYBE-affiliated Weverse confirmed a leak affecting 422,584 K-pop fan accounts, exposing mainly internal identifiers unusable outside the platform.

Weverse, the fan platform operated by HYBE-affiliated Weverse Company, confirmed a security incident affecting 422,584 user accounts. The exposed information consisted mainly of internal identifiers that cannot be used outside the platform. The company was notified by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) on September 3.

DataBreaches.net · 8d agoData breach

North Korean Hackers Deploy New Linux Espionage Toolkit

Rapid7 says North Korea-aligned actors use a new Linux espionage toolkit (ted HAProxy backdoor, CurlRAT) against South Korean automotive and media targets.

Rapid7 reports a stealthy Linux framework comprising a custom HAProxy backdoor ('ted'), trojanized system binaries (agetty, atd, crond, polkitd, sshd), an SSH keylogger, and CurlRAT that polls C&C every 12 hours. Initial access came via a Groupware login portal flaw, with credential harvesting enabling lateral movement to internal systems. The toolkit supports long-term surveillance, HTTP traffic interception/injection, and drive-by downloads, likely in use since late 2024. Infrastructure and artifacts overlap Operation SyncHole, suggesting Lazarus or APT37 involvement.

SecurityWeek · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Multi-Step Tool-Calling over Korean Open Public APIs: A Benchmark and a Data-Synthesis Recipe

Researchers introduce KOPA-Bench, a 145-task Korean public API tool-calling benchmark, and EDGE, an execution-grounded data synthesis method.

An arXiv paper presents KOPA-Bench, a benchmark of 145 real-world tasks chaining multiple tool-calls across live Korean government APIs, motivated by data-sovereignty requirements for on-premise open-source LLM agents. It also introduces EDGE, an execution-grounded dynamic graph that keeps only tool-output-to-input links verified by live API calls before synthesizing executable multi-step trajectories. A 9B model fine-tuned with GRPO on the resulting dataset nearly matches its untuned 27B family sibling on KOPA-Bench and improves on the BFCL benchmark.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 11d agoAI research1

New Ted Backdoor Hides Inside Victims' Own HAProxy Builds to Intercept Web Traffic

Rapid7 found a new backdoor, ted, compiled into trojanized HAProxy at two South Korean organizations, with medium-confidence attribution to North Korean actors.

Rapid7 documented a previously undocumented Linux toolkit named ted compiled into the HAProxy load balancer binaries of two South Korean organizations in the automotive and media sectors. The implant intercepts web traffic, serves altered pages only to filtered visitors, and hides C2 exchanges from backend logs and HAProxy statistics; a companion RAT, curlRAT, beacons on a default 12-hour schedule. The toolkit also trojanizes crond, sshd, agetty, atd, and polkitd binaries and sanitizes logs and bash history. Rapid7 attributes the activity with medium confidence to North Korean state-sponsored actors, with domain infrastructure overlapping APT37 listings in maltrail and delivery resembling the Operation SyncHole campaign.

The Hacker News · 11d agoThreat actor in the wild

DPRK APTs: Ted backdoor and curlRAT target South Korean media and automotive sectors

Rapid7 uncovered a DPRK-linked Linux toolkit using a HAProxy-embedded ted backdoor, SSH keylogger, and curlRAT against South Korean media and automotive firms.

Rapid7 Labs identified a previously undocumented framework attributed with medium confidence to DPRK actors, targeting South Korean automotive and media organizations likely since early 2025. The toolkit embeds a backdoor compiled into HAProxy 2.8.12 using its filter API, plus trojanized crond, agetty, atd, sshd, and polkitd, an SSH keylogger storing credentials under /var/lib/sshd/, and a curl-based RAT with a watchdog thread. It enables remote command execution, malicious script injection into served webpages (a watering-hole loop), credential harvesting, and long-term surveillance. Hardcoded C2s are associated with APT37 via ThreatFox, and exposed groupware portals and mail servers align with Kimsuky tradecraft; the initial access vector and any CVE remain unconfirmed.

Rapid7 Blog · 11d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Risky Bulletin: Expired cards can be used for new transactions

Researchers show expired Visa contactless cards can be revived via NFC man-in-the-middle relay to run fraudulent transactions; roundup also covers major breaches.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers built an NFC man-in-the-middle rig that updates a card's expiration date in transit and relays the modified payment to POS terminals, reviving expired contactless cards; Visa terminals and the backends of all five banks studied failed to catch the manipulation. The same roundup reports Iranian hackers shut down a small UK power plant for four days, Lazarus breached South Korea's Presidential Office as part of a campaign exceeding 100 victims, and French telecom SFR suffered a breach affecting over 2.1 million customers.

Risky Business News · 22d agoResearch

KRBanker Targets South Korea Through Adware and Exploit Kits

Unit 42 details KRBanker banking trojan targeting South Korean bank users via KaiXin exploit kit and NEWSPOT adware, using pharming and process hollowing.

KRBanker (aka Blackmoon) is a banking trojan targeting online banking users in the Republic of Korea, with roughly 2,000 unique samples and 200+ pharming servers observed by Unit 42 over six months. It is distributed through the KaiXin exploit kit exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2014-0569 and CVE-2015-3133, and through the NEWSPOT adware update channel that also delivers the Venik trojan. The trojan uses process hollowing, retrieves pharming server IPs from Qzone profile nickname fields, and abuses Proxy Auto-Config with a local proxy to redirect banking traffic to forged sites.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2014-0569CVE-2015-3133

UBoatRAT Navigates East Asia

Unit 42 discovers UBoatRAT, a new custom RAT targeting South Korean and video-game industry personnel, delivered via Google Drive with GitHub-based C2 and BITS persistence.

Unit 42 identified UBoatRAT, a new custom remote access trojan first found in May 2017, whose initial version used a public Hong Kong blog service and a compromised Japanese web server for command and control. The latest variants target personnel or organizations related to South Korea or the video games industry, are delivered through Google Drive, and masquerade as Microsoft Word, Excel, or folder icons. The RAT checks for virtualization software and domain join, retrieves its C2 address from a Base64-encoded string in a GitHub-hosted file, uses a custom XOR-encrypted C2 protocol, and maintains persistence via Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) jobs that survive reboots.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware in the wild1

“Tick” Group Continues Attacks

Unit 42 tracks the Tick espionage group attacking Korean and Japanese defense and high-tech targets with Daserf, Minzen, 9002, Invader, and custom Gh0st RAT variants.

The Tick group has conducted long-running espionage attacks against organizations in the Republic of Korea and Japan, focusing on defense and high-tech companies holding intellectual property, and repeatedly attacked one high-profile Japanese target for three years. Unit 42 links the Daserf backdoor, the 9002 RAT, and the Invader backdoor through shared C2 infrastructure used between July 2012 and April 2013. Minzen samples install a "NamelessHdoor" backdoor derived from publicly available code over a decade old, modified with ReflectiveDLLLoader DLL injection, and the group also uses custom Gh0st RAT variants. Tick has shifted from privacy-protected domain registration to compromised websites for C2 infrastructure.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoThreat actor in the wild

Tick Group Weaponized Secure USB Drives to Target Air

Unit 42 says the Tick group weaponized South Korean certified secure USB drives with SymonLoader malware to reach air-gapped Windows XP systems.

Unit 42 discovered that the Tick cyberespionage group, which targets Japan and South Korea, compromised an ITSCC-certified secure USB drive made by a South Korean defense company and used a new loader named SymonLoader to extract a hidden executable from these drives. SymonLoader only infects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, suggesting deliberate targeting of legacy air-gapped systems used by government and defense organizations. The group also delivered HomamDownloader and SymonLoader via Trojanized Korean and Japanese software sent as spearphishing attachments. Unit 42 believes the attacks occurred multiple years ago and that this malware is not part of an active campaign.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoThreat actor in the wild

Bisonal Malware Used in Attacks Against Russia and South Korea

Unit 42 details a Bisonal malware variant, active since 2014, targeting Russian and South Korean defense organizations via PDF-disguised spearphishing emails.

In early May, Unit 42 discovered a campaign delivering a Bisonal malware variant against at least one Russian communications security and cryptography company and one unidentified organization in South Korea. The variant, in the wild since at least 2014, introduces a new C2 cipher and rewritten networking and persistence code, with only 14 samples collected to date. Attackers spoofed Russian state corporation Rostec in spearphishing emails carrying an executable disguised with a PDF icon; the dropper decrypts an RC4-encrypted DLL and establishes persistence via a registry Run key. Bisonal has been used since 2013 against government, military, and defense targets in South Korea, Russia, Japan, and India, alongside successors Bioazih and Dexbia.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware in the wild

NOKKI Almost Ties the Knot with DOGCALL: Reaper Group Uses New Malware to Deploy RAT

Unit 42 links NOKKI malware to North Korea's Reaper group, uncovering the Final1stspy dropper that deploys the DOGCALL RAT in politically motivated attacks.

Unit 42 analyzed the NOKKI malware family used in politically themed attacks against Russian and Cambodian speakers since July 2018. The researchers linked NOKKI to the Reaper group, publicly attributed to North Korea, whose custom DOGCALL RAT uses third-party hosting services to upload data and receive commands. A previously unreported family, Final1stspy, was found deploying DOGCALL, sharing a unique base64-to-hex deobfuscation routine with NOKKI droppers. Attacks used malicious Microsoft Word macros that download and execute payloads while opening decoy documents.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware

The Fractured Block Campaign: CARROTBAT Used to Deliver Malware Targeting Southeast Asia

Unit 42 uncovers the Fractured Block campaign using the CARROTBAT dropper to deliver SYSCON and OceanSalt malware in cryptocurrency-themed attacks across Southeast Asia.

Unit 42 identified 29 CARROTBAT dropper samples used in the Fractured Block campaign, delivering decoy documents on cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and Korean political topics. Early samples delivered the SYSCON RAT, which uses FTP for command and control, while later ones dropped the previously reported OceanSalt malware. CARROTBAT supports 11 decoy file formats and uses certutil to download and execute payloads. Initial discovery stemmed from a December 2017 spear phishing attack on a British government agency, with infrastructure overlap tying the campaign to KONNI activity.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 29d agoMalware

Crooks Are Buying Your Expired Domains and Using Them to Deliver Malware

Infoblox finds dropcatch expired domains fuel malware delivery and C2, with actor Sable Squirrel spending ~$7M on 10,000+ domains.

Infoblox Threat Intel reports that in H1 2026 dropcatch (re-registered expired) domains made up nearly 20% of all new registrations, about 65,000 per day, inheriting reputation and traffic that attackers exploit. Threat actor Sable Squirrel spent nearly $7 million on 10,000+ expired domains, running Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Australian streaming platforms (Xoilac, Cakhia, 90phut) that double as C2 servers for Quasar RAT, AsyncRAT, DCRat and Remcos RAT. Scavenger actors like Shady Squirrel acquire previously compromised domains and feed inherited traffic to SocGholish and tech support scam networks.

Security Affairs · Aug 16, 2026Threat actor

Ai Seoul Summit Safety Commitments

The AI Seoul Summit produced safety commitments on frontier AI development from participating governments and AI companies.

Held in Seoul, South Korea, the summit continued the intergovernmental AI safety process launched at Bletchley Park in 2023. Participating governments and AI labs announced safety commitments covering frontier model development, risk thresholds, and evaluation practices. The commitments are voluntary but signal coordinated international expectations for AI developers.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 16, 2026AI policy

Gunra Ransomware Exploits Fortinet Flaws to Target Critical Infrastructure

US and Korean agencies warn Gunra ransomware actors exploit Fortinet flaws and stealthily exfiltrate large data volumes, targeting critical infrastructure.

US and Korean authorities warned that Gunra ransomware actors exploit Fortinet vulnerabilities to gain access and use stealthy techniques to exfiltrate vast volumes of data, including from Microsoft services. The group is targeting critical infrastructure organizations. Defenders should prioritize Fortinet patching and watch for large, quiet data egress.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 12, 2026Ransomware in the wild

Gunra Ransomware Exploits Fortinet FortiOS, FortiProxy Flaws to Breach Networks

CISA, FBI, and South Korean agencies warn Gunra ransomware, with 51 victims since April 2025, exploits Fortinet flaws for double-extortion attacks on critical infrastructure.

CISA, the FBI, and South Korean agencies warned of Gunra ransomware attacks targeting healthcare, financial services, government, and professional services worldwide. The Conti-derived operation exploits internet-facing Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy flaws CVE-2024-55591 and CVE-2025-24472 for initial access, then deploys double extortion with Salsa20/ChaCha20 encryption and publishes non-payers on a leak site within five to seven days. Ransomware.Live lists 51 victims since April 2025, mostly in South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The group uses Impacket tools for SMB lateral movement and NTDS credential dumping, tampers with VDI authentication to accept a designated OTP value to bypass MFA, and launched a RaaS affiliate program in January 2026 under the new alias Golden Community.

The Hacker News · Aug 12, 2026Ransomware in the wildCVE-2024-55591CVE-2025-24472

Related CVEs

  • CVE-2024-555919.898%
    Unauthenticated Super-Admin Bypass in Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy
    CVE-2024-55591 is an authentication bypass (CWE-288) in the Node.js websocket module of Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy that lets a remote, unauthenticated attacker gain super-admin privileges via crafted websocket requests. It affects FortiOS 7.0.0 through 7.0.16 and FortiProxy 7.0.0 through 7.0.19 and 7.2.0 through 7.2.12, and is trivially triggerable from the network with no user interaction given network access to the management/websocket interface. Successful exploitation gives full super-admin control of the appliance, which attackers can use to pivot, create persistent access, and deploy ransomware. Any organization running the affected FortiOS or FortiProxy versions, especially with admin interfaces reachable from the internet, is affected. Exploitation is confirmed in the wild: CISA added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2025-01-14, and multiple ransomware crews (reported as Gunra, SuperBlack, and Mora_001) are actively exploiting it.
    · Fortinet FortiOS 7.0.0 through 7.0.16 · Fortinet FortiProxy 7.0.0 through 7.0.19 and 7.2.0 through 7.2.12 KEV ransomwarelarge
  • CVE-2025-244728.17%
    Authentication Bypass in Fortinet FortiOS and FortiProxy Grants Super-Admin Access
    CVE-2025-24472 is an authentication bypass (CWE-288) in the Fortinet Security Fabric of FortiOS and FortiProxy. A remote, unauthenticated attacker who already knows the serial numbers of both the upstream and downstream devices can send crafted CSF proxy requests to gain super-admin privileges on the downstream device; the attack only works where the Security Fabric is enabled, and the need for serial-number knowledge raises attack complexity. An attacker gains full super-admin control of the downstream Fortinet device, which can serve as a foothold for network-wide compromise. Organizations running affected FortiOS 7.0.x or FortiProxy 7.0.x/7.2.x builds with Security Fabric enabled are in scope. The flaw was added to CISA's KEV catalog on 2025-03-18 with known ransomware use, and multiple ransomware groups (including Gunra, SuperBlack, Mora_001 and Qilin operators) have been reported exploiting Fortinet firewall flaws in recent campaigns.
    · Fortinet FortiOS 7.0.0 through 7.0.16 · Fortinet FortiProxy 7.0.0 through 7.0.19 KEV ransomwaremass
  • CVE-2014-0569—92%
    —
  • CVE-2015-3133—5%
    —

Appears with

vendor Palo Alto Networks 7vendor Rapid7 4malware curlRAT 4threat actor APT37 4malware ted backdoor 3product HAProxy 3organization Palo Alto Networks 3organization Unit 42 2organization Rapid7 2product AsyncRAT 2threat actor Lazarus Group 2malware Minzen 2threat actor Tick 2threat actor Gunra 2threat actor Lazarus 2malware Nioupale 2
Entities are extracted by the model from each article. Watching an entity keeps it in this browser only (no account); the watchlist page and dashboard alerts use it.