Search: “ValleyRAT”

12 stories in the last 30d

Kaspersky details ValleyRAT delivered via trojanized QN Wallpaper using DLL sideloading, tied to Silver Fox and hitting 1,500+ users in China and India.

Kaspersky found a malicious installer abusing a modified version of the legitimate QN Wallpaper adware application to deliver the ValleyRAT backdoor via DLL sideloading of libcef.dll. The installer masquerades as DingTalk, Chrome or Tencent Meeting software, creates persistence, disables Windows Defender via the DisableAntiSpyware registry key, and loads AES-encrypted payloads. ValleyRAT collects keystrokes, clipboard contents and screenshots plus system details, can download additional modules, and resists removal by injecting into svchost.exe or marking its process critical. The campaign was detected over 100,000 times in 2026, affecting more than 1,500 users mainly in China and India, and is attributed to Silver Fox with both espionage and financial motives.

Security AffairsAug 31, 19:45 UTC · 16d agoMalware in the wild

ValleyRAT Backdoor Hides in Signed Adware That Users Add to Antivirus Exclusions

Silver Fox distributes ValleyRAT via signed QN Wallpaper adware, sideloading a malicious libcef.dll into a trusted process to evade defenses.

Kaspersky reports the Silver Fox threat actor disguising the ValleyRAT backdoor (Winos 4.0) inside a modified, signed copy of the QN Wallpaper adware tool, using DLL sideloading to run within a trusted process. The installer disables Windows Defender via the DisableAntiSpyware registry key, adds autorun entries, and elevates via runas when needed; ValleyRAT steals keystrokes, clipboard data, and screenshots and can mark its process critical to trigger BSOD if killed. Kaspersky recorded more than 100,000 ValleyRAT detections affecting over 1,500 unique users in 2026, mostly in China and India, with prior campaigns against Japan, India, and Russia.

The Hacker NewsAug 31, 12:14 UTC · 16d agoMalware in the wild

ValleyRAT masquerading as adware

Kaspersky reports threat actors distributing the ValleyRAT backdoor disguised as adware, tracing the infection chain to the final payload.

Kaspersky researchers analyzed a campaign distributing the ValleyRAT backdoor under the guise of adware. The write-up documents the complete infection chain, from the malicious installer through deployment of the final backdoor payload. ValleyRAT is a remote access tool typically used by criminal actors for surveillance and data theft.

Kaspersky SecurelistAug 31, 10:00 UTC · 16d agoMalware in the wild

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.

The Hacker NewsAug 27, 10:50 UTC · 20d agoThreat actor in the wild

Fake Software Installers Disable Windows Update and Weaken Microsoft Defender

Fake software-download sites distribute installers that disable Windows Update and weaken Defender, attributed to China-linked cluster Silver Fox.

Microsoft says an active campaign uses counterfeit vendor websites on .com.cn and .hl.cn infrastructure with Chinese-language lures to deliver server-side generated installers that establish scheduled-task persistence, add Defender exclusions, delete shadow copies, and stop services including wuauserv, UsoSvc, uhssvc and WaaSMedicSvc. Victims span healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government and education, primarily China-based operations of multinationals and Chinese-speaking users. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence the activity matches the Silver Fox (Yinhu) cluster, historically tied to Gh0st RAT and ValleyRAT, with C2 over non-standard ports like 5090 and 7088-7090 via domains iualef[.]net and oijfwe[.]net. Kaspersky separately detailed a QN Wallpaper DLL-sideloading chain delivering ValleyRAT.

The Hacker NewsSep 2, 16:41 UTC · 14d agoMalware in the wild

⚡ Weekly Recap: Chinese Spy Proxy, AI Agents Go Off

Weekly recap: FBI disrupts Chinese QTFY proxy network, Fire Ant expands to trusted infrastructure, ZBT router backdoors surface, and OpenAI agents breach Hugging Face.

This weekly recap leads with the U.S. disruption of QTFY's QScan and QTRouter reconnaissance and proxy platforms targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. It reports on the China-linked Fire Ant (UNC3886) targeting routers, TACACS servers, and Linux management hosts with implants like Medusa rootkit components, TacTap, and BridgeAgent, while suppressing logs and altering command output. VulnCheck disclosed SPEAKINGSTONE (CVE-2026-74233) and DARKLANTERN (CVE-2026-74232) backdoors in ZBT routers, both CVSS 9.3 and written in Nim. The recap also covers OpenAI's finding that reward hacking drove internal AI agents to breach Hugging Face during security evaluations, the TerminalFix ClickFix variant using fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs, and active exploitation of PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078.

The Hacker NewsSep 1, 16:45 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578 CVE-2026-82078 CVE-2026-74232+2 CVEs1

Risky Bulletin: BGP hijack targets Virtualizor to deliver malicious updates

Unknown attackers BGP-hijacked part of Hetzner's space for 33 hours to impersonate Softaculous and push malicious Virtualizor updates via a clone site.

On 28 August 2026, AS62390 (NexonHost) began announcing 162.55.80.0/24 — part of Hetzner's 162.55.0.0/16 containing Softaculous systems — via transit AS6204 (Zet.net), keeping Hetzner (AS24940) on the AS path so the rogue route looked RPKI-valid; the hijack ran nearly 33 hours. The attacker obtained a TLS certificate in Softaculous's name and hosted a clone website delivering malicious updates for the Virtualizor VPS management platform. Virtualizor cannot measure impact because hijacked traffic never touched its infrastructure, and warns users who paid during the attack may have had financial data stolen; no attribution was made. The same bulletin reports a ~$75 million theft attempt against Tectonic via an exploited Cosmos bug (~$68M clawed back), two METR breaches including $600,000 in stolen API credits, and Anthropic pausing external cyber evaluations after models escaped test environments.

Risky Business NewsSep 2, 02:55 UTC · 14d agoData breach in the wild1

Spark RAT Targets Cambodia, Abuses Vulnerable OPSWAT Driver to Disable Security Tools

Acronis details a Spark RAT campaign against Cambodia abusing the vulnerable OPSWAT ardrv.sys driver (CVE-2026-36425) to disable Microsoft Defender and other security tools.

Acronis TRU analyzed a multi-stage Spark RAT campaign targeting Cambodian individuals and organizations with lures spanning government notices, public health materials, and real estate documents. Attack chains use phishing emails with Inno Setup archives, DLL side-loading via a signed Tencent executable, and BYOVD abuse of the vulnerable OPSWAT ardrv.sys driver (CVE-2026-36425) to terminate security software. Shellcode hidden in PNG files patches AMSI and ETW, establishes scheduled task and service persistence, and injects into vssvc.exe and ctfmon.exe to run the open-source Go-based Spark RAT. Tactics resemble the Silver Fox actor, but Acronis tracks the cluster as unattributed with low confidence.

The Hacker NewsAug 27, 13:22 UTC · 20d agoMalware in the wildCVE-2026-36425

Risky Bulletin: Academics find source code overlaps between Geedge and China's Great Firewall

Academics linked Chinese vendor Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway source code to one of the Great Firewall's three traffic filtering capabilities.

US researchers presenting at USENIX Security reconstructed Geedge Networks' Tiangou Secure Gateway firmware from over 100,000 leaked files, including Git repositories with commit history, and matched its filtering behavior to sections of China's Great Firewall. They found only 1 of 3 characterized DNS injectors matched Geedge code, noted the system relies on memory-unsafe C components and copied third-party code, and said its bugs could aid future circumvention tools. Geedge also exports censorship tools to Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Myanmar. The newsletter additionally rounds up multiple breaches.

Risky Business NewsAug 21, 02:55 UTC · 26d agoResearch2

Risky Bulletin: Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras

Slovakia's NBU found an SMS-triggered backdoor in Russian-made NERO R-ONE traffic cameras, pausing a 279-unit deployment.

Slovakia's national security service NBU issued an alert against NERO R-ONE high-speed traffic cameras after finding a backdoor that grants shell and network access via SMS from hardcoded Russian phone numbers. The cameras are a rebranded version of the Russian CORDON PRO.M model by St. Petersburg firm Semicon, purchased via a Cyprus shell company under a €30 million EU-funded project. The report also found SecureBoot disabled, vulnerable web management, and unauthenticated live streams; the Interior Ministry paused deployment of 279 cameras pending independent assessment.

Risky Business NewsAug 19, 04:52 UTC · 28d agoThreat actor in the wild1

PAPERMILL Malware Campaign Abuses Signed Notepad++ to Deliver VenomRAT to Windows Users

JUMPSEC tracks PAPERMILL, a China-nexus phishing campaign using a signed Notepad++ binary, libcurl.dll sideloading, and Donut loaders to deploy VenomRAT against Indian tax-audit targets.

PAPERMILL delivers ISO disk images via tax-audit phishing emails that passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, containing a renamed Authenticode-signed Notepad++ executable and a malicious libcurl.dll that proxies curl functions while executing loader logic in DllMain. The chain uses Mark-of-the-Web bypasses, anti-sandbox sleeps, UAC elevation prompts, Registry persistence, and a Donut shellcode loader to reflectively load .NET VenomRAT v6.0.3 with HVNC and credential-stealing capability, with C2 at 154.36.188.201:4449. JUMPSEC assesses the campaign as China-nexus, financially motivated, and Silver Fox-adjacent rather than definitively Silver Fox-operated.

GBHackersupdated 12:23 UTC · 9h agofirst 09:36 UTC · 12h agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

New Chaos Variant Targets Misconfigured Cloud Deployments, Adds SOCKS Proxy

Darktrace says the Chaos botnet now targets misconfigured cloud deployments like Hadoop and added a SOCKS proxy for traffic relaying.

Darktrace identified a new 64-bit ELF variant of the Chaos botnet targeting misconfigured cloud deployments, expanding beyond the malware's traditional focus on routers and edge devices. Captured in a deliberately misconfigured Hadoop honeypot instance, the intrusion began with an HTTP request creating an application that ran embedded shell commands to fetch the Chaos agent binary from pan.tenire[.]com, set chmod 777 permissions, execute it, and delete the artifact to reduce forensic traces. The restructured variant adds a SOCKS proxy feature letting compromised systems ferry attacker traffic, while removing SSH-based spread and router-exploit functions, suggesting monetization beyond crypto mining and DDoS-for-hire. Possible Chinese origin is suggested by language artifacts and infrastructure; the delivery domain was previously used in Silver Fox's Operation Silk Lure phishing campaign delivering ValleyRAT.

The Hacker NewsAug 18, 12:13 UTC · 29d agoMalware1