North Korean operatives that dupe job seekers into installing malicious code on their devices have been spotted using new malware strains and techniques, resulting in the theft of credentials or cryptocurrency and ransomware deployment, according to researchers from Cisco Talos and Google Threat Intelligence Group.

Cisco Talos said it observed an attack linked to Famous Chollima that involved the use of BeaverTail and OtterCookie — separate but complementary malware strains frequently used by the North Korea-aligned threat group. Researchers said their analysis determined the extent to which BeaverTail and OtterCookie have merged and displayed new functionality in recent campaigns. 

GTIG said it observed UNC5342 using EtherHiding, malicious code in the form of JavaScript payloads that turn a public blockchain into a decentralized command and control server. Researchers said UNC5342 incorporated EtherHiding into a North Korea-aligned social engineering campaign previously dubbed Contagious Interview by Palo Alto Networks. 

Cisco and Google both said North Korean threat groups’ use of more specialized and evasive malware underscores the efforts the nation-state attackers are taking to achieve multiple goals while avoiding more common forms of detection.

By installing EtherHiding on the blockchain, UNC5342 can remotely update the malware’s functionality and maintain continuous control over their operations without worry about infrastructure takedowns or disruptions.

“This development signals an escalation in the threat landscape, as nation-state threat actors are now utilizing new techniques to distribute malware that is resistant to law enforcement takedowns and can be easily modified for new campaigns,” Robert Wallace, consulting leader at Mandiant, Google’s incident response firm, said in an email. 

Google researchers described North Korea’s social engineering campaign as a sophisticated and ongoing effort to commit espionage, gain persistent access to corporate networks and steal sensitive data or cryptocurrency during the job application and interview process.

The crux of these attacks often occur during a fake technical assessment when job candidates are asked to download files that unbeknownst to them contain malicious code, according to Google. Researchers observed a multi-stage malware infection process involving JadeSnow, BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret. 

Cisco Talos researchers uncovered a Famous Chollima attack on an undisclosed organization based in Sri Lanka that likely originated from a user that fell for a fake job offer. The organization wasn’t targeted by the attackers, according to the report.

Researchers observed a previously undocumented keylogging and screenshotting module in the campaign that they traced to OtterCookie samples. The information-stealing malware contained a module that listens for keystrokes and periodically takes screenshots of the desktop session, which are automatically uploaded to the OtterCookie command and control server, Cisco Talos said.

Cisco and Google both shared indicators of compromise in their respective reports to help threat hunters find additional artifacts of the North Korea threat groups’ malicious activity.

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Federal cyber authorities sounded a rare alarm Thursday, issuing an emergency directive about an ongoing and widespread attack spree involving actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Cisco firewalls. 

Cisco said it began investigating attacks on multiple government agencies linked to the state-sponsored campaign in May. The vendor, which attributes the attacks to the same threat group behind an early 2024 campaign targeting Cisco devices it dubbed “ArcaneDoor,” said the new zero-days were exploited to “implant malware, execute commands, and potentially exfiltrate data from the compromised devices.” 

Cisco disclosed three vulnerabilities affecting its Adaptive Security Appliances  — CVE-2025-20333, CVE-2025-20363 and CVE-2025-20362 — but said “evidence collected strongly indicates CVE-2025-20333 and CVE-2025-20362 were used by the attacker in the current attack campaign.” 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said those two zero-days pose an “unacceptable risk” to federal agencies and require immediate action. 

Federal agencies are required to hunt for evidence of compromise, report findings and disconnect compromised devices by the end of Friday. Agencies running Cisco ASA firewalls are also required to apply Cisco’s patches or permanently disconnect end-of-life devices by the end of Friday.

“CISA is directing federal agencies to take immediate action due to the alarming ease with which a threat actor can exploit these vulnerabilities, maintain persistence on the device, and gain access to a victim’s network,” CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala said in a statement.

Cisco did not fully explain why it waited four months from its initial response to the attacks on federal agencies to disclose the malicious activity and patch the zero-day vulnerabilities. 

The attackers “employed advanced evasion techniques such as disabling logging, intercepting command-line interface commands, and intentionally crashing devices to prevent diagnostic analysis. The complexity and sophistication of this incident required an extensive, multi-disciplinary response across Cisco’s engineering and security teams,” the company said. 

CISA did not immediately respond to questions about why it waited four months to issue an emergency directive.

The agency described the campaign as widespread, resulting in remote-code execution and manipulation of read-only memory that persists through reboots and system upgrades. While CISA’s emergency directive only applies to federal agencies, the private sector often follows these urgent warnings closely.

“The same risks apply to any organizations using these devices. We strongly urge all entities to adopt the actions outlined in this emergency directive,” Gottumukkala said.

Cisco and CISA did not attribute the espionage attacks to a specific nation state, but Censys researchers previously said it found compelling evidence indicating a threat group based in China was behind the ArcaneDoor campaign last year. Censys noted it found evidence of multiple major Chinese networks and Chinese-developed anti-censorship software during its investigation into the early 2024 attacks.

The latest attacks initiated by the espionage group, tracked as UAT4356 by Cisco Talos and Storm-1849 by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, are a continuation or resurgence of that previous campaign involving new zero-days. 

Cisco said remote attackers can “gain full control of an affected device” by chaining together the vulnerabilities, two of which are designated as critical. 

When Storm-1849 was first identified in early 2024, the espionage group was targeting international entities, according to Sam Rubin, senior vice president of Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. Unit 42 also considers Storm-1849 to be affiliated with China.

“Over the past year, Unit 42 has observed them evolve their toolkit and in recent months their focus has shifted towards entities in the United States,” he said. “As we have seen before, now that patches are available, we can expect attacks to escalate as cybercriminal groups quickly figure out how to take advantage of these vulnerabilities.”

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A Russian state-sponsored espionage group has been systematically compromising network devices worldwide for over a decade, exploiting a seven-year-old vulnerability to steal sensitive data and establish persistent access to organizations across multiple sectors, according to new research from Cisco Talos Intelligence.

The group, designated “Static Tundra” by Cisco Talos, is linked to the Russian Federal Security Service’s Center 16 unit and operates as a likely sub-cluster of the broader “Energetic Bear” threat group. The operation represents one of the most persistent network device compromise campaigns documented to date, with the group maintaining undetected access to victim systems for multiple years.

According to the researchers, the group has been leveraging CVE-2018-0171, a vulnerability in Cisco IOS software’s Smart Install feature that was patched when initially disclosed in 2018. Despite the availability of patches, the group continues to find success targeting organizations that have left devices unpatched or are running end-of-life equipment that cannot be updated.

The vulnerability allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected devices or trigger denial-of-service conditions. 

Researchers believe the group has developed automated tooling to exploit the vulnerability at scale, likely identifying targets through publicly available network scanning data from services such as Shodan or Censys.

Once initial access is gained, the group employs sophisticated techniques to extract device configuration data, which often contains credentials and network information valuable for further compromise. The attackers use a combination of Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) servers and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) tools to maintain access and collect intelligence.

The espionage campaign has affected organizations in telecommunications, higher education, and manufacturing sectors across North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Victim selection appears to align with Russia’s strategic interests, with researchers noting a significant escalation in operations against Ukrainian entities following the onset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“One of the clearer targeting shifts we observed was that Static Tundra’s operations against entities in Ukraine escalated at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, and have remained high since then,” the Cisco Talos report states. The group expanded its targeting within Ukraine from selective, limited compromises to operations across multiple industry verticals.

The campaign exposes ongoing weaknesses in network infrastructure security, with attackers continuing to exploit a vulnerability patched in 2018. This persistence underscores widespread shortcomings in patch and device lifecycle management. The operation also illustrates the high strategic value nation-state actors place on compromising network devices, which offer access to broad organizational communications and facilitate further intrusions. 

Security researchers emphasize that Static Tundra is not unique in targeting network infrastructure. The report notes that “many other state-sponsored actors also covet the access these devices afford,” indicating that similar operations are likely being conducted by multiple nation-state groups.

Cisco Talos assesses with high confidence that Static Tundra operates as a Russian state-sponsored group specializing in network device exploitation based on tactical overlaps with previously identified Russian operations and targeting patterns consistent with Russian strategic interests. The FBI has corroborated connections between Static Tundra and the broader Energetic Bear group, which was formally linked to Russia’s FSB Center 16 unit in a 2022 Department of Justice indictment.

FSB Center 16 is a unit within Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The center is believed to oversee signals intelligence and cyber operations on behalf of the Russian government. Another group linked to the center known as Turla has been spotted waging its own espionage campaigns by Microsoft.

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Vietnamese-speaking hackers are carrying out a “highly evasive, multi-stage operation” to steal information from thousands of victims in more than 62 countries, researchers said in a report published Monday.

The attackers emerged late last year but have evolved with novel techniques this year, with SentinelLABS of SentinelOne and Beazley Security ultimately identifying 4,000 victims, most commonly in South Korea, the United States, the Netherlands, Hungary and Austria.

“The evolving tradecraft in these recent campaigns demonstrates that these adversaries have meticulously refined their deployment chains, making them increasingly more challenging to detect and analyze,” reads the report.

In particular, attacks just last month demonstrated tailored capabilities to bypass antivirus products and mislead security operations center analysts, according to the companies.

The hackers’ motives, apparently, are financial in nature.

“The stolen data includes over 200,000 unique passwords, hundreds of credit card records, and more than 4 million harvested browser cookies, giving actors ample access to victims’ accounts and financial lives,” according to the two companies.

The hackers have been known to make money off the stolen data through “a subscription-based ecosystem that efficiently automates resale and reuse” through the Telegram messaging platform. It’s sold to other cybercriminals who then engage in cryptocurrency theft or purchase access to infiltrate victims, the report states.

The infostealer they use, PaxStealer, first garnered the attention of cybersecurity analysts after Cisco Talos published a report on it last November. Cisco Talos concluded that the hackers were targeting governmental and educational organizations in Europe and Asia.

Both the November report and Monday’s report identified clues in the infostealer’s coding of the hackers’ use of the Vietnamese language. Cisco Talos wasn’t sure in the fall whether the attackers were affiliated with the CoralRaider group that materialized in early 2024, or another Vietnamese-speaking group.

Jim Walter, a senior threat researcher for SentinelOne, told CyberScoop the group was “a long-standing actor” and “appears to be out of Vietnam,” but “beyond that analysis is ongoing and we’ll refrain from further [attribution] comments on the specific actor. It’s the same actor that has been highlighted by Cisco Talos and others as well.”

In the activity highlighted in Monday’s report, Walter said the targeting “seems wide and indiscriminate / opportunistic. Corporate and home users, whole spectrum of ‘user types.’”
Other Vietnamese hackers have been known to target activists inside the country with spyware, lace AI generators with malware or carry out ransomware attacks.

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BlackSuit’s technical infrastructure was seized in a globally coordinated takedown operation last month that authorities touted as a significant blow in the fight against cybercrime. The ransomware group’s leak site has displayed a seizure notice since July 24.

The takedown followed a long investigation, which allowed authorities to confiscate “considerable amounts of data,” and identify 184 victims, German officials said in a news release last week. The group’s total extortion demands surpassed $500 million by August 2024, with demands typically in the range of $1 million to $10 million, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an advisory last year. 

U.S. authorities were heavily involved in the operation, but have yet to share details about the investigation or its results. BlackSuit’s extortion site was seized by the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigation department, a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

A spokesperson for ICE told CyberScoop the Justice Department has been waiting for court documents to be unsealed before releasing any information about the law enforcement action dubbed “Operation Checkmate.” The FBI, Secret Service, Europol and cyber authorities from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Ireland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Romania-based cybersecurity firm Bitdefender were also involved in the operation. 

German officials said the takedown prevented the spread of malware and disrupted BlackSuit’s servers and communication. BlackSuit’s data leak site contained more than 150 entries before the takedown, Bitdefender said in a blog post. 

The majority of BlackSuit’s victims were based in the U.S. and the industries most impacted by the ransomware group’s attacks included manufacturing, education, health care and construction, according to Bitdefender. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

While BlackSuit once commanded outsized attention for its consistent spree of attacks, researchers said the ransomware group’s activities significantly decreased starting in December and remained low until its infrastructure was disrupted last month.

BlackSuit associates were already dispersed prior to the global law enforcement action on the group’s operations. 

The impact from the takedown will be limited because members already abandoned the BlackSuit brand early this year, Yelisey Boguslavskiy, co-founder and partner at RedSense, told CyberScoop. 

BlackSuit’s reputation plummeted as victims learned of the group’s Russian cybercrime lineage and declined to pay extortion demands out of fear that any financial support would evade sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, he said.

As part of that pivot, former BlackSuit members have primarily used INC ransomware and its associated infrastructure this year. 

“It’s not that they were concisely preparing for the takedown. Instead, they just felt brand fatigue,” Boguslavskiy said. “They are very prone to rebranding often. It was two years without a rebrand, so the one was coming, and in the meantime, they were using INC as a newer name without baggage.”

BlackSuit emerged from the Conti ransomware group after a major leak of Conti’s internal messages led to a break up in 2022. Members of the Russian-language ransomware collective rebranded under three subgroups: Zeon, Black Basta and Quantum, which quickly rebranded to Royal before rebranding again to BlackSuit in 2024.

The empowerment of INC is the “most important development in the Russian-speaking ransomware landscape, and the fact that now BlackSuit will double down on using their infrastructure is very concerning,” Boguslavskiy said. 

The ransomware syndicate is composed of about 40 people, led by “Stern,” who has established a massive system of alliances, forming a decentralized collective with links to other ransomware groups, including Akira, ALPHV, REvil, Hive and LockBit, according to Boguslaviskiy. 

INC is currently the second largest Russian-speaking ransomware collective behind DragonForce, he said. 

BlackSuit was prolific, claiming more than 180 victims on its dedicated leak site dating back to May 2023, according to researchers at Sophos Counter Threat Unit. 

The ransomware group’s main members have demonstrated their ability to rebrand and relaunch operations with ease. “It is likely that this latest takedown will have minimal impact on the ability of the individuals behind it to reorganize under a new banner,” Sophos CTU said in a research note.

Former members of BlackSuit emerged under a new ransomware group, Chaos, as early as February, Cisco Talos Incident Response researchers said in a blog post released the same day BlackSuit’s technical infrastructure was seized. Chaos targets appear to be opportunistic and victims are primarily based in the U.S., according to Talos.

The FBI seized cryptocurrency allegedly controlled by a member of the Chaos ransomware group in April, the Justice Department said in a civil complaint seeking the forfeiture of the cryptocurrency last month. Officials said the seized cryptocurrency was valued at more than $1.7 million when it was seized in mid-April.

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