Connect with us

Cyber Security

Chinese Malware Appears in Earnest Across Cybercrime Threat Landscape

Published

2 years ago

on

Since early 2023, Proofpoint has observed an increase in the email distribution of malware associated with suspected Chinese cybercrime activity. This includes the attempted delivery of the Sainbox Remote Access Trojan (RAT) – a variant of the commodity trojan Gh0stRAT – and the newly identified ValleyRAT malware. After years of this malware not appearing in Proofpoint threat data, its appearance in multiple campaigns over the last six months is notable.

The phrase “Chinese-themed” is used to describe content related to this malicious activity, including lures, malware, targeting, and metadata that contains Chinese language usage. Campaigns are generally low-volume and are typically sent to global organizations with operations in China. The email subjects and content are usually written in Chinese and are typically related to business themes like invoices, payments, and new products. The targeted users have Chinese-language names spelled with Chinese-language characters, or specific company email addresses that appear to align with businesses’ operations in China. Although most campaigns have targeted Chinese-speaking users, Proofpoint observed one campaign targeting Japanese organizations, suggesting a potential expansion of activity.

These recently identified activity clusters have demonstrated flexible delivery methods, leveraging both simple and moderately complex techniques. Commonly, the emails contain URLs linking to compressed executables that are responsible for installing the malware. Proofpoint has also observed Sainbox RAT and ValleyRAT delivered via Excel and PDF attachments containing URLs linking to compressed executables.

Research into additional activity clusters utilizing this malware demonstrates enough variety in infrastructure, sender domains, email content, targeting, and payloads that researchers currently conclude that all use of these malware and associated campaigns are not attributable to the same cluster, but likely multiple distinct activity sets.

The emergence and uptick of both novel and older Chinese-themed malware demonstrates a new trend in the overall 2023 threat landscape. A blend of historic malware such as Sainbox – a variant of the older Gh0stRAT malware – and the newly uncovered ValleyRAT may challenge the dominance that the Russian-speaking cybercrime market has on the threat landscape. However, the Chinese-themed malware is currently mostly targeted toward users who likely speak Chinese. Proofpoint continues to monitor for evidence of increasing adoption across other languages.

With this resurgence of Chinese-themed malware, the question arises: is the impact of older malware easier to detect due to its age? Does mature detection always mean mature security? Based on Proofpoint’s analysis, the answer is not necessary, as older malware can still be effective, especially when threat actors constantly change tactics by rotating IPs, domains, encoding, and obfuscation. Consequently, even though these malware families are not new, organizations cannot afford to underestimate the risk they pose.

Proofpoint research suggests that this activity does not seem to be related to a single entity but rather appears to be a cluster of activities based on temporal patterns. The appearance of ValleyRAT alongside the older families hints at the possibility of their relationship in terms of timing. Proofpoint anticipates ValleyRAT will be used more frequently in the future.

Raising awareness in 2023 about the reappearance of these threats serves as an informational bulletin for the community. While new and sophisticated threats seemingly dominate the daily threat landscape, it is essential to maintain a balanced perspective by acknowledging seemingly less significant risks that persist. Despite being neither new nor advanced, Sainbox RAT still poses a threat in 2023, and ValleyRAT is an emerging threat in this space.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Cloud

SentinelOne Simplifies Secure Cloud Migrations on AWS

Published

10 hours ago

on

June 13, 2025

By

SentinelOne today announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Workload Migration Program. This initiative supports AWS Partner Network (APN) members with SaaS offerings on AWS to accelerate and streamline workload migrations.

Through the program, SentinelOne will provide AWS customers with accelerated, secure cloud migration support, leveraging modern AI-powered CNAPP capabilities to ensure rapid and protected transitions. With access to AWS funding, technical resources, and go-to-market support, SentinelOne will help organizations reduce migration timelines and costs while maintaining robust security.

SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security delivers real-time visibility and protection throughout the migration journey—whether from on-premises or another cloud—enabling a secure, seamless transition to AWS.

“Through our participation in the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program, SentinelOne is helping customers accelerate secure cloud migrations with end-to-end protection and visibility,” said Ric Smith, President of Product, Technology, and Operations at SentinelOne. “Whether moving from on-prem or another cloud to AWS, organizations can count on us to deliver the security they need throughout their journey—realizing the performance, speed, agility, and cost benefits of the cloud.”

Singularity Cloud Security combines agentless and agent-based protection for deep visibility, continuous posture management, and real-time threat detection across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By collaborating with AWS and ecosystem partners, SentinelOne ensures seamless integration into migration projects, helping customers move faster, reduce risk, and scale confidently in the cloud.

Availability: SentinelOne’s solutions are available globally.

Continue Reading

Cyber Security

Beyond Blocklists: How Behavioural Intent Analysis Can Safeguard Middle East Businesses from Rising AI-Driven Bot Threats

Published

3 days ago

on

June 10, 2025

By

The Middle East is facing an unprecedented surge in AI-driven bot attacks, with malicious automation now outpacing traditional defenses. Mohammad Ismail, Vice President for EMEA at Cequence Security, warns that legacy tools like IP blocklists and rate limiting are no match for today’s sophisticated threats (more…)

Continue Reading

Cyber Security

Sophos Boosts Firewall with New Protection and Incident Response Features

Published

3 days ago

on

June 10, 2025

By

Sophos has announced a significant update to its Sophos Firewall software, introducing enhanced protection and incident response capabilities. This update notably includes Sophos NDR Essential, a new feature now available free of charge to all customers holding an XStream Protection license for Sophos Firewall.

This integration empowers Sophos Firewall with two dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) engines specifically designed to detect both malware communications and those utilizing algorithmically generated domain names. This advanced functionality, derived from the Sophos Network Detection and Response (NDR) probe, aims to identify sophisticated malware communications even if they are previously unknown or not yet indexed. It serves as a powerful complement to the Active Threat Response capabilities already embedded within Sophos firewalls.

Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos

Addressing the technical demands of such advanced detection, Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos, explained the strategic approach, “NDR traffic analysis requires substantial processing power. That’s why we’ve adopted a new approach by deploying an NDR solution in Sophos Cloud to offload the heaviest tasks from the firewall.” This cloud-centric design ensures optimal performance without burdening the firewall’s on-device resources.

Beyond network detection, the update also brings significant improvements to connectivity and user authentication. Sophos Connect now integrates EntraID for Single Sign-On (SSO). This new feature for the VPN client, bundled with Sophos Firewall, is set to enhance both the security and user experience for SSL and IPsec VPN connections. The integration with EntraID (Azure AD) enables users to authenticate and leverage multi-factor authentication for both Sophos Connect and access to the user portal hosted by the firewall, streamlining secure access.

Further VPN-related enhancements include:

  • Improved user interface and usability: Connection types have been renamed for greater clarity, with “site-to-site” now referred to as “policy-based” and tunnel interfaces as “route-based,” making configurations more intuitive.
  • Dynamic validation of the IP address pool: For VPN connections (SSL VPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP), the system now dynamically validates the allocated IP address pool, helping to better resolve potential IP address conflicts.
  • Strict profile enforcement: IPsec profiles now exclude default values to ensure algorithm synchronization, effectively eliminating potential fragmentation of session negotiation packets that could otherwise prevent site-to-site VPN tunnels from being established.
  • Route-based VPN and SD-RED scalability: The system has been optimized to support up to 3,000 simultaneously established tunnels. Specifically, Sophos Firewall solutions can now manage up to 1,000 SD-RED site-to-site tunnels and connect up to 650 concurrent SD-RED devices.

Additional management improvements enhance administrative flexibility and search capabilities:

  • More flexible DHCP Prefix Delegation (IPv6 DHCP-PD): The system now supports a broader range of prefixes, from /48 to /64, improving compatibility with various internet service providers.
  • Router Advertisement (RA) and DHCPv6 server: These features are now enabled by default, simplifying IPv6 network setup.
  • Resizable table columns: The web admin interface continues its adaptation for ultra-wide screens, with many configuration pages now allowing users to resize columns as needed for improved usability.
  • Enhanced object search functionality: The search field within the SD-WAN routing configuration screen now supports more granular criteria, including route name, ID, objects, and object values like IP addresses and domains. Similarly, local ACL rules now also support object name and value searches, extending to content-based searches for more precise results.
  • Default configuration changes: To streamline initial setups, default firewall rules and rule groups previously created during new firewall deployments have been removed. The initial configuration now only includes the default network rule and MTA rules. Furthermore, the default firewall rule group and the default gateway probe for custom gateways are now set to “None” by default.

Sophos continues its commitment to cybersecurity through a “Secure by Design” approach, enhancing the intrinsic security of its firewalls. This methodology involves the containerization of specific features and rigorous integrity checks on critical operating system files using mathematical checksums. Any detected checksum mismatch triggers a potential compromise alert, enabling monitoring teams to proactively identify possible security incidents affecting the firewall OS integrity. This proactive detection allows incident response and development teams to react swiftly to critical security events.

This update is now available for manual download and deployment by customers with any Sophos Firewall equipped with a valid license.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Follow Us

Trending

Copyright © 2021 Security Review Magazine. Rysha Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.