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New Malware 'Rover' Targets Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan
Unit 42 reports a spearphishing attack delivering the custom Rover Trojan to India's Ambassador to Afghanistan, exploiting CVE-2010-3333 in Word.
On December 24, 2015, Unit 42 identified a targeted spearphishing email spoofing Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, sent to India's Ambassador to Afghanistan. The RTF attachment exploited CVE-2010-3333 in Microsoft Word to download a downloader from newsumbrella.net, which retrieved the Rover Trojan and DLL plugins from 46.166.165.254. Rover uses OpenCV for webcam capture, OpenAL for audio recording and libsndfile for audio files, with data exfiltration over its C2 channel; separate payload versions target Windows XP and later systems.
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Gaming the system: how a Chinese-speaking actor turned Brazilian government sites into an SEO weapon
Check Point identifies Chinese-speaking group Gambling Goblin hijacking Brazilian government domains via malicious Apache modules for SEO-manipulated gambling phishing.
Check Point Research tracks a sustained campaign since mid-2025 against Brazilian government and educational organizations by Gambling Goblin, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime cluster linked to Earth Berberoka. Attackers compile and install malicious Apache modules that silently reverse-proxy visitors to phishing pages impersonating Google Play, Microsoft Store, and Amazon, chaining compromised high-reputation domains to inflate search rankings. The group deploys a heavily obfuscated Linux toolkit including DownPro, AlphaAgent, oRAT, a 3snake-based credential stealer, and SSH brute-forcers, with parallel phishing networks localized for Vietnamese, Spanish, and English victims.
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Silver Fox Targets Japanese Manufacturer with 3
Chinese group Silver Fox used new vulnerable drivers and DLL side-loading to deploy ValleyRAT at a Japanese industrial manufacturer.
Cato Networks detailed a Silver Fox campaign against a Japanese industrial manufacturing organization combining new vulnerable-driver abuse (BootRepair.sys and EnPortv.sys alongside wsftprm.sys), DLL side-loading via Zeon Corporation PDF binaries, and NTDLL unhooking to deliver ValleyRAT (Winos 4.0), a Gh0st RAT variant. The chain starts with an invoice-themed phishing lure hosting attacker-controlled content on legitimate QQ and Tencent Cloud services. Shellcode is injected into svchost.exe via thread-context hijacking, and a dual watchdog design pairs payload monitoring with a scheduled-task batch script for persistence. A separate 180-day VirusTotal retrohunt found 146 Atlas RAT samples across six PDB builds, though the Silver Fox link remains circumstantial.
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Nimbus Manticore Expands Toolset With TWOSTROKE
Group-IB found new infrastructure and TWOSTROKE-like malware used by IRGC-linked Nimbus Manticore, indicating expanded Middle East and Europe targeting.
Group-IB reported new Tortoiseshell infrastructure spanning Europe and the Middle East and two previously undocumented tools from IRGC-linked Nimbus Manticore (UNC1549): a reverse SSH tunneling utility connecting to 172.86.98.113 on port 443, and a C++ backdoor masquerading as wtsapi32.dll with three hard-coded C2 servers. The backdoor overlaps with TWOSTROKE and supports file transfer, execution, host information gathering, and persistence. Findings build on Kaspersky's report of the NightLedger backdoor and WebSocket tunnelers BridgeHead and ArcBridge, and suggest expanded targeting beyond the Middle East into Europe.
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RANCOR: Targeted Attacks in South East Asia Using PLAINTEE and DDKONG Malware Families
Unit 42 names RANCOR, a previously unidentified espionage group targeting Southeast Asian political entities with newly discovered PLAINTEE and DDKONG malware families.
Unit 42 tracks a previously unidentified group it dubs RANCOR conducting highly targeted espionage attacks in Singapore and Cambodia using two custom malware families, DDKONG and PLAINTEE. Attacks appear to have begun with spear phishing, with decoy political news documents hosted on legitimate sites including a Cambodian government website and Facebook. Infrastructure links to IP 89.46.222[.]97 and KHRAT-associated domains such as facebook-apps[.]com, and the activity is grouped into two clusters tied together by PLAINTEE usage and similar targeting.
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Multiple ArtraDownloader Variants Used by BITTER to Target Pakistan
BITTER used three ArtraDownloader variants since 2015 to target Pakistan, China, and Saudi Arabia, deploying BitterRAT and exploiting CVE-2017-11882 in one wave.
Palo Alto Unit 42 documents ArtraDownloader, a previously unreported downloader family used by the suspected South Asian group BITTER, with three variants and roughly 80 unique samples dating back to February 2015. Between September 2018 and January 2019, BITTER used spearphishing documents hosted on compromised Pakistani websites to target Pakistan and, for the first time, Saudi Arabia; one RTF sample exploited the EQNEDT vulnerability CVE-2017-11882. The downloader retrieves BitterRAT over HTTP, uses simple registry keys for persistence, and byte-level string obfuscation. Infrastructure overlap with the previously reported MY24 InPage-exploit payload was also observed.
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Mustang Panda Upgrades CoolClient With a Kernel Rootkit
Mustang Panda's updated CoolClient backdoor deploys a signed kernel driver to hide processes, files and network activity in Asian intrusions.
Kaspersky analysis shows Mustang Panda (HoneyMyte) upgraded its CoolClient espionage backdoor with a signed kernel-mode driver installed as a Windows service, communicating via IOCTL requests to hide processes, files and registry entries. In a Myanmar campaign the actor deployed PlugX first, then CoolClient via a fake Windows Defender directory and Sangfor defender.exe DLL sideloading, with scheduled task and AutoRun persistence and UAC bypass. The updated variant was observed in intrusions across Pakistan, Mongolia and Myanmar, with victims also in Russia including confirmed government entities.
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Iran Cyberattacks Against Minnesota Water Systems
Preliminarily attributed to Iran, cyberattacks hit Minnesota water systems as part of a campaign targeting at least seven US states.
A campaign of cyberattacks against water systems in Minnesota and at least six other US states has been preliminarily attributed to Iran, though no real damage has been reported so far. US President Trump publicly disputed the Iranian attribution, blaming Minnesota authorities instead. The incident underscores ongoing nation-state targeting of US water utilities.
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