ZeroHour

Source: The Register · Security

3 stories in the last 30d

Cops, CrowdStrike disrupt Sality botnet by poisoning the network and diverting into sinkholes

Law enforcement and CrowdStrike disrupted the 23-year-old Sality P2P botnet, isolating 15,000+ infected machines and seizing linked domains.

International law enforcement, working with CrowdStrike and the Shadowserver Foundation, executed a peer-to-peer sinkhole operation against Sality, a botnet active since 2003 that delivered malware to more than 15,000 machines worldwide. Sality's primary payload for eight years was EggJagger, a clipboard hijacker that swaps copied bitcoin and ethereum wallet addresses with attacker-controlled ones, yielding at least $150,000 in stolen cryptocurrency. The US Justice Department, FBI, and DoD Office of Inspector General's Defense Criminal Investigative Service seized Sality-linked domains, with parallel action in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. The Shadowserver Foundation is coordinating with ISPs and CSIRTs to identify infections and notify victims.

The Register · Security · 14d agoMalware in the wild

Attack hides malware in PNGs and drops custom reverse tunnel on victims' machines

A ClickFix social engineering wave delivers a multi-stage attack that hides malware in PNG files and installs a custom reverse tunnel.

The Register reports a new wave of ClickFix social engineering attacks that trigger a multi-stage infection chain on victim machines. The attack reportedly conceals malware inside PNG image files and deploys a custom reverse tunnel tool for attacker access. Further technical details are limited in the available text.

The Register · Security · 15d agoMalware in the wild

Anthropic cracks down on hijacked user accounts mining AI tokens

Commodity infostealer malware hijacked Anthropic user accounts, letting criminals mine AI tokens on victims' paid usage; Anthropic cracked down on affected accounts.

The Register reports that Anthropic is cracking down on user accounts hijacked through commodity malware that steals authenticated browser sessions. With the stolen sessions, thieves ran AI workloads to mine tokens, freeloading on victims' paid usage allowances. The campaign illustrates how infostealer operators now monetize AI platform credentials and sessions, not just financial accounts.

The Register · Security · 15d agoMalware in the wild