Memento Labs on DanSec Daily

Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-10-29

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

Dentsu Data Breach: Japanese advertising giant Dentsu disclosed a cybersecurity incident at its U.S. subsidiary Merkle, resulting in the exposure of staff and client data.
Oracle EBS Attacks: Numerous organizations, including Schneider Electric and Emerson, have been identified as victims of attacks exploiting Oracle E-Business Suite zero-day CVE-2025-61882. Data stolen from these companies has been made available on the Cl0p ransomware leak site.
Swedish Power Grid Incident: Hackers targeted a Swedish power grid operator, stealing information from a file transfer solution. The country’s power supply was not affected.
183 Million Credentials Traded: Cybercriminals are trading 183 million stolen credentials on Telegram and dark web forums, with 16.4 million email addresses not previously seen in data breaches.

Newly Discovered Vulnerabilities

TEE.Fail Side-Channel Attack: Academic researchers disclosed TEE.Fail, a side-channel attack enabling extraction of secrets from trusted execution environments in Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA CPUs, undermining confidential computing.
QNAP NetBak PC Agent Vulnerability: The software is affected by a recent critical ASP.NET Core flaw that allows HTTP request smuggling, data access, server file modification, or denial-of-service.
Dassault Systèmes DELMIA Apriso: CISA warned of two actively exploited vulnerabilities in this manufacturing operations management platform.
Chrome Zero-Day: A now-patched Chrome zero-day was exploited to deliver Memento Labs’ LeetAgent spyware.
BiDi Swap Phishing Technique: Attackers are abusing bidirectional text to craft fake URLs that appear legitimate, reviving a browser flaw for phishing.
Atroposia Malware: A new malware-as-a-service platform, Atroposia, includes a built-in local vulnerability scanner for post-compromise exploitation.

Notable Threat Actor Activity

BlueNoroff (North Korea): The BlueNoroff APT group is running twin campaigns (GhostCall and GhostHire) targeting Web3 and blockchain sectors with cross-platform malware, using fake business collaboration and job recruitment lures.
Qilin Ransomware: The Qilin operation is abusing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to run Linux encryptors on Windows systems, evading traditional security tools.
Herodotus Android Trojan: A new banking trojan, Herodotus, is targeting Italy and Brazil, using random delay injection to mimic human typing and bypass anti-fraud and security detection mechanisms.
Aisuru Botnet: The Aisuru botnet, previously responsible for massive Mirai-class DDoS attacks exceeding 20 Tbps, has shifted to operating as a residential proxy network for more sustainable monetization.
YouTube Ghost Network: This malware operation leverages compromised YouTube accounts and botnets to distribute infostealers, with activity tripling in 2025.

Trends, Tools, or Tactics of Interest

AI-Powered Attacks in Africa: Cybersecurity firms report a surge in AI-driven phishing, deepfakes, and impersonation attacks across Africa, with adversaries testing new techniques on government and enterprise targets.
Deepfake-as-a-Service: The emergence of voice cloning and synthetic media fraud services is impacting enterprise security, with documented cases of business compromise and evolving detection tactics.
Invisible Characters in Phishing: Attackers are using invisible characters in email subject lines to bypass detection and trick recipients.
Grok Abuse for Phishing: Attackers are exploiting the Grok platform to distribute phishing links.
Surge in Credential Theft: Large-scale credential theft and trading continues unabated, with significant numbers of newly compromised emails.
Chrome HTTP Warnings: Google Chrome will begin warning users before connecting to insecure HTTP sites starting with version 154 in October 2026.

Regulatory or Policy Developments

UN Cybercrime Convention: Around 70 countries have signed a new UN cybercrime convention, though concerns have been raised about expanded surveillance and potential criminalization of security research.
Python Software Foundation Grant Rejection: The PSF withdrew a $1.5 million U.S. National Science Foundation grant proposal due to terms that conflicted with its diversity and inclusion commitments.
Microsoft Copilot Lawsuit: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has filed suit against Microsoft, alleging the company misled 2.7 million Australians into subscribing to Copilot M365.
Windows 11 Security Update: Microsoft released the KB5067036 preview update, introducing the Administrator Protection cybersecurity feature for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2.

Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-10-28

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

A database containing information on individuals with ‘Top Secret’ clearance who applied for jobs with US House Democrats was left openly accessible online.
Toys “R” Us Canada suffered a data breach, as noted in recent threat intelligence reporting.

Newly Discovered Vulnerabilities

A new vulnerability in OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas web browser allows attackers to inject persistent, hidden commands into the AI platform.
QNAP warned customers of a critical ASP.NET Core vulnerability affecting its NetBak PC Agent Windows backup utility, urging immediate patching.
A zero-day vulnerability in Google Chrome, exploited in Operation ForumTroll, was used to deliver spyware linked to Italian vendor Memento Labs (formerly IntheCyber Group/Hacking Team).
Mass exploitation of year-old critical WordPress plugin vulnerabilities has resumed, with roughly 9 million exploit attempts observed this month.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ordered federal agencies to patch a critical Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) vulnerability actively exploited in attacks.

Notable Threat Actor Activity

The BlueNoroff APT, linked to North Korea, was observed conducting GhostCall and GhostHire campaigns targeting the cryptocurrency sector, using malware chains against macOS and deploying stealer suites and fake job/funding lures.
The SideWinder group launched a new campaign targeting South Asian diplomats and a European embassy in New Delhi, using a ClickOnce-based attack chain.
Qilin ransomware (aka Agenda, Gold Feather, Water Galura) continues to combine Linux payloads with BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) exploits in hybrid attacks, targeting both Linux and Windows hosts, with over 40 victims per month in 2025 (excluding January).
A large-scale China-linked smishing campaign used 194,000 domains to harvest sensitive information, including Social Security numbers.
A Morocco-based group is conducting a significant gift card fraud campaign (“Jingle Thief”), targeting retailers.
Threat actors are exploiting old vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins for mass website compromise.
Phishing campaigns are targeting LastPass users with fake death notices to capture master passwords via the digital will feature.

Trends, Tools, or Tactics of Interest

Ransomware profits have declined, with only 23% of breached organisations paying ransoms, attributed to large enterprises increasingly refusing to pay and lower payments from mid-market firms.
Attackers are leveraging AI to weaponise old vulnerabilities, while defenders face expanding attack surfaces and resource limitations.
Malware continues to use DNS tunneling (e.g., BASE64 over DNS) for command and control communications.
Chatbots, including ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok, are serving users Russian state-backed propaganda in response to queries about the Ukraine invasion.
The Qilin ransomware group demonstrates cross-platform evasion by deploying Linux-based ransomware on Windows hosts.
Smishing and phishing campaigns are increasingly sophisticated, leveraging large domain infrastructures and social engineering lures (e.g., fake job offers, death notices).

Regulatory or Policy Developments Affecting the Security Industry

X (formerly Twitter) is requiring users to re-enrol their two-factor authentication (2FA) security keys or passkeys by 10 November to avoid account lockout.
Mozilla now requires all new Firefox extensions to declare data collection practices in their manifest files.
Microsoft has introduced a policy enabling IT administrators to remove pre-installed Microsoft Store apps from Windows systems.
Microsoft is testing a feature in Windows 11 that prompts users to run a memory scan following a blue screen of death (BSOD) crash.
CISA has mandated patching of the actively exploited WSUS vulnerability across US federal agencies.

Cybersecurity Brief – 2025-10-27

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Major Incidents or Breaches

Kaspersky researchers have attributed previously unidentified commercial spyware, known as Dante and developed by Memento Labs (formerly Hacking Team), to ForumTroll APT attacks. The spyware was observed in recent campaigns, indicating renewed activity from this threat actor.

Notable Threat Actor Activity

The ForumTroll APT group has been linked to the deployment of Dante spyware in recent operations. Memento Labs, the developer behind Dante, is the rebranded entity of the defunct Hacking Team, suggesting a resurgence of the group’s offensive cyber capabilities.

Trends, Tools, or Tactics of Interest

Reaper, a new open-source unified application security testing framework, has been released. It integrates reconnaissance, proxying, fuzzing, and AI-driven workflows, targeting penetration testers and red teams.
Kaitai Struct was highlighted as a useful tool for binary file analysis, alongside other utilities like 010 Editor and format-bytes.py, reflecting ongoing interest in structured approaches to reverse engineering and binary parsing.