‘Highly evasive’ Vietnamese-speaking hackers stealing data from thousands of victims in 62+ nations

SentinelOne and Beazley Security say the group has been evolving its techniques of late, all with the goal of making money off stolen data.

Vietnamese-speaking hackers are carrying out a “highly evasive, multi-stage operation” to steal information from thousands of victims in more than 62 countries, researchers said in a report published Monday.

The attackers emerged late last year but have evolved with novel techniques this year, with SentinelLABS of SentinelOne and Beazley Security ultimately identifying 4,000 victims, most commonly in South Korea, the United States, the Netherlands, Hungary and Austria.

“The evolving tradecraft in these recent campaigns demonstrates that these adversaries have meticulously refined their deployment chains, making them increasingly more challenging to detect and analyze,” reads the report.

In particular, attacks just last month demonstrated tailored capabilities to bypass antivirus products and mislead security operations center analysts, according to the companies.

The hackers’ motives, apparently, are financial in nature.

“The stolen data includes over 200,000 unique passwords, hundreds of credit card records, and more than 4 million harvested browser cookies, giving actors ample access to victims’ accounts and financial lives,” according to the two companies.

The hackers have been known to make money off the stolen data through “a subscription-based ecosystem that efficiently automates resale and reuse” through the Telegram messaging platform. It’s sold to other cybercriminals who then engage in cryptocurrency theft or purchase access to infiltrate victims, the report states.

The infostealer they use, PaxStealer, first garnered the attention of cybersecurity analysts after Cisco Talos published a report on it last November. Cisco Talos concluded that the hackers were targeting governmental and educational organizations in Europe and Asia.

Both the November report and Monday’s report identified clues in the infostealer’s coding of the hackers’ use of the Vietnamese language. Cisco Talos wasn’t sure in the fall whether the attackers were affiliated with the CoralRaider group that materialized in early 2024, or another Vietnamese-speaking group.

Jim Walter, a senior threat researcher for SentinelOne, told CyberScoop the group was “a long-standing actor” and “appears to be out of Vietnam,” but “beyond that analysis is ongoing and we’ll refrain from further [attribution] comments on the specific actor. It’s the same actor that has been highlighted by Cisco Talos and others as well.”

In the activity highlighted in Monday’s report, Walter said the targeting “seems wide and indiscriminate / opportunistic. Corporate and home users, whole spectrum of ‘user types.’”
Other Vietnamese hackers have been known to target activists inside the country with spyware, lace AI generators with malware or carry out ransomware attacks.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

• Dogged Russia-based botnet dismantled after 23-year run

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure