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Iranian cyber spies target aviation, fintech developers with new malware
Kaspersky links Iranian espionage group Mirage Kitten to fake job offers delivering new NodeRabbit and PollCat malware at aviation and fintech targets.
Kaspersky attributes the campaign to Iran-linked Mirage Kitten (also tracked as UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm and Nimbus Manticore), which targeted developers and specialists in Egypt, Ethiopia and Afghanistan via fake recruiter contacts on LinkedIn and job platforms. Victims were lured into running malicious coding assessments that deployed two previously unknown families: NodeRabbit, a cross-platform RAT for Windows, Linux and macOS, and PollCat, which provides persistence and delivers additional payloads. The group masks activity behind legitimate Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare infrastructure, sometimes embedding victim organization names in Azure subdomains. The group has been active since at least 2022, focusing on aviation, aerospace and financial technology sectors in Africa and the Middle East.
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Mirage Kitten targeting aviation and FinTech sectors across the Middle East and Africa with a new malware set
Kaspersky reports Mirage Kitten targeting aviation and fintech organizations across the Middle East and Africa with new NodeRabbit and PollCat backdoors.
Kaspersky researchers documented new Mirage Kitten operations against aviation and fintech organizations in the Middle East and Africa. The campaign uses two previously undocumented backdoors: NodeRabbit, written in Node.js, and PollCat, written in JavaScript. The findings expand the group's known toolset and TTPs.
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Cardinal RAT Sins Again, Targets Israeli Fin
Unit 42 documents updated Cardinal RAT attacks against Israeli FinTech firms, using BMP steganography, MD5-hash obfuscation, and process injection to hinder analysis and detection.
Unit 42 tracked a series of attacks using an updated Cardinal RAT (version 1.7.2) targeting the Israeli financial technology sector. The .NET loader hides a second-stage DLL inside an embedded BMP image decrypted with a single-byte XOR key, and the payload renames functions, methods, and variables to MD5 hashes for obfuscation. The malware installs a startup-folder LNK file and injects its final payload into RegSvcs.exe or RegAsm.exe, communicating with affiliatecollective[.]club over port 443. A possible relationship with the EVILNUM JavaScript malware used against similar organizations was also noted.
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