Bisonal Malware Used in Attacks Against Russia and South Korea
Unit 42 details a Bisonal malware variant, active since 2014, targeting Russian and South Korean defense organizations via PDF-disguised spearphishing emails.
In early May, Unit 42 discovered a campaign delivering a Bisonal malware variant against at least one Russian communications security and cryptography company and one unidentified organization in South Korea. The variant, in the wild since at least 2014, introduces a new C2 cipher and rewritten networking and persistence code, with only 14 samples collected to date. Attackers spoofed Russian state corporation Rostec in spearphishing emails carrying an executable disguised with a PDF icon; the dropper decrypts an RC4-encrypted DLL and establishes persistence via a registry Run key. Bisonal has been used since 2013 against government, military, and defense targets in South Korea, Russia, Japan, and India, alongside successors Bioazih and Dexbia.
Meta Ads Push StreamRat Android Trojan That Can Gain Near-Complete Device Control
ThreatFabric details StreamRat, a new Android banking trojan spread via Meta malvertising in Spain that reached about 571,000 EU accounts.
ThreatFabric reported that a fake TV-streaming malvertising campaign on Meta promoted StreamRat, a technically sophisticated Android banking trojan, targeting Spanish-speaking users; the ads reached an estimated 570,950 Meta accounts in the EU between June 11 and July 3, 2026. Once installed via sideloaded APKs, the trojan abuses Accessibility to log keystrokes, show credential-stealing overlays, capture screens, and remotely control devices, and was also promoted through TikTok. Its dropper requests default Home app and VPN permissions and was hosted via GitHub releases, closely resembling one used in the earlier Mirax campaign. C2 infrastructure includes IPs 45.147.28.59 and 193.32.2.245, and no named threat actor was attributed.
The Fractured Block Campaign: CARROTBAT Used to Deliver Malware Targeting Southeast Asia
Unit 42 uncovers the Fractured Block campaign using the CARROTBAT dropper to deliver SYSCON and OceanSalt malware in cryptocurrency-themed attacks across Southeast Asia.
Unit 42 identified 29 CARROTBAT dropper samples used in the Fractured Block campaign, delivering decoy documents on cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and Korean political topics. Early samples delivered the SYSCON RAT, which uses FTP for command and control, while later ones dropped the previously reported OceanSalt malware. CARROTBAT supports 11 decoy file formats and uses certutil to download and execute payloads. Initial discovery stemmed from a December 2017 spear phishing attack on a British government agency, with infrastructure overlap tying the campaign to KONNI activity.