Authorities on Thursday disrupted a botnet, a malware framework and seized infrastructure that Evil Corp and other cybercrime groups used to steal data and break into various networks.

The globally coordinated effort targeted SocGholish, multi-stage malware that has compromised websites, redirected users to traffic distribution systems (TDS) and slipped malware into their networks since 2017.

“The malware establishes an initial foothold into victim computers, collectively known as a botnet, and is then used by threat actors for further targeting with ransomware campaigns and espionage,” the FBI’s cyber division said in a statement. 

Cybersecurity firms, researchers and officials from the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Europol took down 106 servers and remediated nearly 15,000 sites that were infected with the malware. Officials also disabled the botnet and notified victims.

Sites infected with SocGholish, which are primarily hosted on WordPress, were widespread and provided everyday services including restaurants and auto repair shops, according to the Dutch National Police. 

The botnet, also known as “FakeUpdates,” is linked to the Russian cybercrime group Evil Corp. It also provided initial access to other ransomware variants, including DoppelPaymer, WastedLoocker, Hades Ransomware, LockBit, RansomHub and others, according to Infoblox, which participated in the takedown. 

Proofpoint, which also participated in the disruption, described Evil Corp as one of the most prominent cybercrime groups in operation and the “grandfather” of a threat type that compromises websites and uses TDS to redirect users to malware.

Following the takedown, the FBI issued a public service announcement warning about cybercriminals using TDS to break into victim networks for ransomware or other financial scams. 

Cybercriminals redirect traffic from sites to bypass firewalls, obscure their activity, identify potential victims and send them to phishing pages to steal credentials, initiate financial scams, access networks, deliver other malware, and sell access to other cybercriminals, officials said.

The law enforcement action was part of Operation Endgame, a multinational effort targeting cybercrime since 2024, and more narrowly for the FBI part of Operation Riptide, an ongoing campaign targeting cybercriminals and the infrastructure and financial networks they use to commit fraud.

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The platform used more than 9,000 phishing sites, stealing nearly 4 million credit cards and causing roughly $1.9 billion in losses.

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The FBI, along with Google and Lumen Technologies, took down a major cybercrime network based in China that was responsible for an estimated $1.9 billion in losses, officials said Friday. 

Outsider, which provided phishing kits and hosted infrastructure for cybercriminals since July 2023, facilitated a wave of phishing attacks against people and businesses in 55 countries, including the United States, the FBI said in a LinkedIn post.

The jointly coordinated effort dubbed “Operation Ghost Hook” netted the seizure of several domains of the group’s core admin servers, a Shopify storefront, roughly $100,000 from Outsider payment wallets and thousands of domains registered through U.S.-based providers, officials said.

The FBI said it also used an Outsider Telegram bot to access information on the cybercrime network’s customers.

“The criminals behind Outsider Enterprise built a business out of impersonating trusted brands to defraud hundreds of thousands of victims,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said in a statement.

Authorities traced Outsider’s phishing domains to nearly 3.9 million stolen credit cards.

Google, one of the vendors impersonated by the phishing kits, described Outsider as a massive AI-powered operation. 

Outsider provided its phishing kit, which allowed cybercriminals to create fake sites and phishing campaigns to steal credit cards, bank account credentials and personal data, for a weekly subscription as low as $88 per week, the company said in a civil lawsuit it filed to dismantle the cybercrime network’s infrastructure. 

The China-based group behind the operation encouraged and provided step-by-step instructions for customers to use Gemini and other AI platforms to generate custom code for phishing lures and corresponding sites for illegitimate missed packages, overdue highway tolls, parking violations, issues with a brokerage account or wireless carrier rewards.

“The Outsider software allows scammers to request multiple types of verification from victims, including SMS, PIN, email and app verification,” Google wrote in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York. “This flexibility enables the enterprise to defeat various forms of authentication security.”

Google said it’s working with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to intercept the spam messages before they reach customers, but these types of phishing attacks are prevalent and have been spreading for years. 

Google is also pushing for legislative action, including a series of bills, to combat these scams, General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado wrote in a blog post.

“Litigation alone won’t end this,” she wrote. “As threats evolve, our laws must, too.”

Google said it doesn’t know the real names of the people or entities involved in Outsider, but said the operation is supported by multiple cybercrime groups providing different roles with overlapping infrastructure.

The FBI said the takedown was part of Operation Riptide, an ongoing campaign targeting cybercriminals and the infrastructure and financial networks they use to commit fraud.

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The 13 websites purported to be affiliated with consulting companies that advertised job openings for current and former holders of security clearances

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is urging critical infrastructure owners and operators to plan for delivering essential services under emergency conditions – potentially for months at a time.

The federal government’s top cybersecurity agency warned that state-sponsored hackers, particularly two Chinese groups known as Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, continue to threaten critical sectors like electricity, water, and internet. 

The agency is now working with the private sector to protect operational technology – the systems that control the heavy machinery and equipment that powers most critical infrastructure – from attacks that enter through business IT systems or third-party vendor products.

The initiative  — known as CI Fortify – will include CISA conducting targeted technical assessments of critical infrastructure entities and aims to create plans that “allow for safe operations for weeks to months while isolated” from IT networks and third-party tools, according to the agency’s website.

Nick Andersen, CISA’s acting director, told reporters that the goal is “service delivery [that] can still reach critical infrastructure after the asset owner has disconnected with IT and OT, disconnected from third party vendors and service provider connections and disconnected from third party telecommunications equipment.”

Over the past two years, wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and elsewhere have seen water plants, power substations, data centers and other critical infrastructure targeted by kinetic or cyberattacks.

Andersen said the agency has already begun engaging with some companies to pilot the assessments and expects that work to ramp up considerably as CISA hires additional staff in the coming months.

He declined to name the entities involved in the pilot program, but said they will focus on organizations that support national security, defense, public health and safety and economic continuity. He added that CISA’s assessments will vary from sector to sector depending on their unique needs.

“Water isn’t necessarily designed to prioritize specific customer needs outside of recovery periods, while energy and transportation have more immediate tradeoffs for selecting one load or one set of cargo over another,” Andersen said as an example.

One pillar of CISA’s strategy is isolation: essentially turning off all third-party and business network connections to an OT network when facing an emergency or unknown vulnerability.

Organizations also need to develop an internal plan for what acceptable service levels look like under those conditions and reach understandings with their critical customers, like U.S. military installations and lifeline services.

The second pillar, recovery, involves best practices for organizations: backing up files, documenting systems and having manual backups for operations when normal computer systems are down.

In conversations with cybersecurity specialists who focus on critical infrastructure and operational technology, it is widely assumed that China is not the only nation to have broadly compromised Americans critical infrastructure. That hacking groups tied to other nations have almost surely noticed and exploited the same basic vulnerabilities and hygiene issues found by the Typhoons.

Agencies like the FBI and Federal Communications Commission have touted efforts to purge Chinese hackers and work voluntarily with telecoms to harden their network security. But U.S. national security officials and cybersecurity defenders have consistently said both Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon remain active threats to U.S. critical infrastructure.

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A new alert from the FBI says criminal enterprises are hacking both brokers and carriers to steal cargo for resale.

The post FBI Warns of Surge in Hacker-Enabled Cargo Theft appeared first on SecurityWeek.

A Chinese national allegedly involved in a massive, pandemic-era attack spree that compromised nearly 13,000 U.S. organizations was extradited from Italy to the United States and formally charged in federal court, the Justice Department said Monday.

Xu Zewei and his co-conspirators are accused of exploiting a string of zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server to steal research on COVID-19 vaccines, treatment and testing during the initial wave and subsequent height of the pandemic.

His alleged crimes, directed by China’s intelligence services, were part of a broader espionage campaign known as HAFNIUM, which targeted infectious disease experts, law firms, universities, defense contractors and policy think tanks, according to an indictment filed against Xu and Zhang Yu, who remains at large. 

The China state-sponsored threat group behind those attacks against Microsoft customers, and many other vendors’ customers since, is now more widely known as Silk Typhoon.

“Xu will now answer for his alleged role in HAFNIUM, a group responsible for a vast intrusion campaign directed by China’s Ministry of State Security that compromised more than 12,700 U.S. organizations,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a statement.

“He is one of many contractors the Chinese government uses to obscure its hand in cyber operations, and others who do the same face the same risk,” he added.

Xu allegedly committed the attacks while working for Shanghai Powerock Network, one of many companies that conducted attacks for China’s various intelligence services, according to court records.

Italian authorities arrested Xu at the United States’ request in Milan in July. His capture underscores a window of opportunity U.S. officials and allies can take when nation-state attackers travel to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Italy extradited Xu to the United States Saturday but didn’t release his extradition orders until Monday, Simona Candido, his attorney in Italy, told CyberScoop.

Officials said Monday marked Xu’s first appearance in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is currently being held at a federal prison in Houston.

“We have pursued this moment across years and continents, and the message this office sends today is the same one we sent when we first unsealed this indictment: we will work to protect the American people,” John G.E. Marck, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said in a statement.

Xu allegedly worked under the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security’s Shanghai State Security Bureau to break into U.S. organizations’ networks, steal data and implant webshells for persistent remote access. Officials also accuse Xu of stealing information regarding U.S. policymakers and government agencies from a global law firm with offices in Washington. 

Microsoft first warned customers about the HAFNIUM campaign in March 2021. The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency followed soon after with a joint advisory about the widespread compromise of Microsoft Exchange Server. 

“Today’s law enforcement action demonstrates the real-world consequences of this state-led activity, which is fueled by a vast network of private companies operating under the direction of the Chinese government,” Aaron Shraberg, senior team lead of global intelligence at Flashpoint, told CyberScoop.

“Extraditing these individuals from countries in coordination with international law enforcement demonstrates a united stance on these actions, and the importance of bringing real-world consequences to China’s notorious targeting of not just the American people and their businesses, but individuals globally as well,” Shraberg added.

Xu is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud; two counts of wire fraud; conspiracy to cause damage to and obtain information by unauthorized access to protected computers, to commit wire fraud, and to commit identity theft; two counts of obtaining information by unauthorized access to protected computers; two counts of intentional damage to a protected computer; and aggravated identity theft. 

The 34-year-old faces up to 62 years in prison for his alleged crimes.

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