Netwalker

Incident response statistics and cases at educational institutions in Brazil | Securelist

Brazilian educational institutions faced a sustained wave of cyber incidents in incident-response cases reviewed from January 2025 through June 2026, with attackers most often gaining access through valid accounts, exploitation of public-facing applications, insider activity, and weak patch management. High-severity cases were dominated by ransomware, particularly DragonForce and LockBit 3, and private institutions were more frequently affected than public ones. Investigators also found that outdated and unpatched systems, including Windows 10 deployments kept past end of support and unpatched Windows Server 2016 hosts, materially increased exposure. Representative intrusions showed attackers relying on common but effective techniques rather than novel tradecraft. One LockBit case involved a custom deployment built from the leaked builder and spread with PsExec, aligning with the well-documented abuse of Windows service execution for lateral movement and payload launch. Another DragonForce intrusion used AnyDesk and log wiping to maintain access and hinder response, while a separate insider case involved a Python keylogger installed on a shared machine to capture credentials. The findings underscore the need for MFA, least privilege, removal of shared accounts, tighter control of remote-access tools, stronger backups, centralized logging, longer EDR retention, and faster patching.

DinDoor, DenoRAT, and NightshadeC2: Analyzing TAG-150's Evolving Tradecraft | eSentire

eSentire reported that a June 2026 intrusion against a finance-sector customer began with a ClickFix-style social engineering lure that triggered a malicious command, an MSI installer, and a multi-stage malware chain attributed to TAG-150. The infection sequence used an apparently AI-generated PowerShell script, Griffin20.ps1, to install the Deno runtime and launch the Deno-based loader DinDoor, which then deployed DenoRAT and ultimately NightshadeC2. Investigators said the malware communicated with command-and-control infrastructure including webstizkgao[.]com and used hard-coded JWTs carrying campaign identifiers such as buildId 0def066f14754be9 and buildNote LearnV7msi. The tooling provided broad post-compromise capability, with DenoRAT functioning as a RAT, loader, and stealer that supported command execution, persistence, host fingerprinting, file operations, screenshots, PTY and VNC-style remote control, and theft from browsers and cryptocurrency wallets. eSentire said the malware could also bypass Chromium App-Bound Encryption through DLL injection, a technique widely associated with in-memory execution, evasion, and abuse of legitimate Windows processes in ATT&CK T1055.001. The final NightshadeC2 payload was delivered through a PowerShell-driven Python in-memory loader, decrypted from an encrypted container using AES-256-CBC with a key derived from MoscauHighSmoke, and reflectively mapped into a Python process before the affected host was isolated and remediated.

Compromise Accounts, Technique T1586 - Enterprise | MITRE ATT&CK®