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CategoryAllMalware 112Ransomware 34Threat actor 28Vulnerability 21Exploit / PoC 11Phishing & fraud 6Data breach 4Policy & legal 1
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TrickBot Campaign Uses Fake Payroll Emails to Conduct Phishing Attacks

TrickBot phishing campaign used SendGrid, fake Google Docs, and Drive-hosted downloaders disguised as Word files to deliver a credential-stealing payload.

Unit 42 identified a TrickBot distribution campaign on November 7-8, 2019, using payroll and annual bonus-themed emails sent from likely compromised .edu addresses through the legitimate SendGrid email delivery service. Emails contained links to Google Docs documents linking to downloader executables hosted on Google Drive, further masked behind SendGrid click-tracking URLs. The downloaders, signed by PERISMOUNT LIMITED and displayed with Microsoft Word icons, show a decoy pop-up and retrieve TrickBot payloads from compromised legitimate domains such as savute[.]in and lindaspryinteriordesign[.]com. The newer TrickBot variant stores its files and configuration under %APPDATA%\cashcore.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Phishing & fraud

xHunt Campaign: New Watering Hole Identified for Credential Harvesting

Unit 42 tied the xHunt campaign to a watering hole on a Kuwait government website used to passively harvest visitors' NTLM credential hashes.

Palo Alto Unit 42 identified a Kuwait government organization's webpage injected with hidden HTML referencing image paths on domains (microsofte-update.com, learn-service.com) tied to xHunt/Hisoka C2 infrastructure. When visitors loaded the page, Windows would attempt SMB/NetBIOS authentication to the remote share, allowing the operators to capture NTLM hashes that could be cracked or relayed. Related DNS redirect activity on xHunt infrastructure in 2019 pointed to additional credential-harvesting interest against Kuwaiti government email servers.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wild

KRBanker Targets South Korea Through Adware and Exploit Kits

Unit 42 details KRBanker banking trojan targeting South Korean bank users via KaiXin exploit kit and NEWSPOT adware, using pharming and process hollowing.

KRBanker (aka Blackmoon) is a banking trojan targeting online banking users in the Republic of Korea, with roughly 2,000 unique samples and 200+ pharming servers observed by Unit 42 over six months. It is distributed through the KaiXin exploit kit exploiting Adobe Flash CVE-2014-0569 and CVE-2015-3133, and through the NEWSPOT adware update channel that also delivers the Venik trojan. The trojan uses process hollowing, retrieves pharming server IPs from Qzone profile nickname fields, and abuses Proxy Auto-Config with a local proxy to redirect banking traffic to forged sites.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wildCVE-2014-0569CVE-2015-3133

MILE TEA: Cyber Espionage Campaign Targets Asia Pacific Businesses and Government Agencies

Unit 42 names MILE TEA, a cyber-espionage campaign since 2011 targeting Japanese and Taiwanese businesses and government agencies with e-ticket phishing lures and Elirks-family malware.

Unit 42 tracks the MILE TEA espionage campaign, observed as early as 2011, targeting Japanese trading, petroleum, and mobile companies, a Beijing office of a Japanese public organization, and a Taiwanese government agency. The primary infection vector is spear-phishing emails with attachments, mostly custom executable installers posing as flight e-tickets, dropping Elirks, Micrass, or Logedrut as initial bridgehead malware. Elirks and Logedrut retrieve encrypted C2 addresses from attacker-posted blog articles, decoded with Base64 and TEA or DES ciphers. The campaign's focus shifted from Taiwan to Japan around 2013.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wild1

Banking Trojans: Ursnif Global Distribution Networks Identified

Unit 42 maps banking-trojan distribution networks: spam botnets push Shiotob downloaders and Ursnif, KINS, Tinba at Japan and European targets via compromised web servers.

Unit 42 identified the distribution networks behind banking trojan attacks against Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, and Germany. A spam botnet delivered 75 unique Shiotob (Bebloh/URLZone) variants across 7 million spam emails, with Shiotob acting mainly as a downloader that installs Ursnif and the Pushdo spam bot from C2 commands. Over 200 malicious files were hosted on 74 compromised, mostly European small-business web servers between April 2015 and January 2017, with localized invoice and photo-themed email lures per target country.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Malware in the wild

“Tick” Group Continues Attacks

Unit 42 tracks the Tick espionage group attacking Korean and Japanese defense and high-tech targets with Daserf, Minzen, 9002, Invader, and custom Gh0st RAT variants.

The Tick group has conducted long-running espionage attacks against organizations in the Republic of Korea and Japan, focusing on defense and high-tech companies holding intellectual property, and repeatedly attacked one high-profile Japanese target for three years. Unit 42 links the Daserf backdoor, the 9002 RAT, and the Invader backdoor through shared C2 infrastructure used between July 2012 and April 2013. Minzen samples install a "NamelessHdoor" backdoor derived from publicly available code over a decade old, modified with ReflectiveDLLLoader DLL injection, and the group also uses custom Gh0st RAT variants. Tick has shifted from privacy-protected domain registration to compromised websites for C2 infrastructure.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wild1

Patchwork Continues to Deliver BADNEWS to the Indian Subcontinent

Unit 42 details Patchwork APT campaigns against the Indian subcontinent using EPS exploits and an updated BADNEWS backdoor targeting Pakistani military and nuclear interests.

Unit 42 observed the Patchwork group (also known as Dropping Elephant and Monsoon) conducting campaigns against targets in the Indian subcontinent using weaponized documents that exploit CVE-2015-2545 and CVE-2017-0261. The documents deliver an updated BADNEWS backdoor that grants attackers full control of victim machines, using dead drop resolvers on legitimate third-party websites for C2 and HTTP for communications. Lures referenced Pakistan Army promotions, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the Ministry of the Interior, and in late January 2018 the group shifted from CVE-2017-0261 to the older CVE-2015-2545.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor in the wildCVE-2015-2545CVE-2017-0261

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.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · Aug 17, 2026Threat actor1