Primary threat research from Elastic Security Labs
19 October 2023
Fall 2023 Global Threat Report Outro
This article highlights the essential contributions to the Global Threat Report from the Security Intelligence team, and describes three major phenomena impacting the threat landscape.
Featured
Security Research
View all
Signaling from within: how eBPF interacts with signals
This article explores some of the semantics of UNIX signals when generated from an eBPF program.
Streamlining ES|QL Query and Rule Validation: Integrating with GitHub CI
ES|QL is Elastic's new piped query language. Taking full advantage of this new feature, Elastic Security Labs walks through how to run validation of ES|QL rules for the Detection Engine.
Disclosing the BLOODALCHEMY backdoor
BLOODALCHEMY is a new, actively developed, backdoor that leverages a benign binary as an injection vehicle, and is a part of the REF5961 intrusion set.
Introducing the REF5961 intrusion set
The REF5961 intrusion set discloses three new malware families targeting ASEAN members. The threat actor leveraging this intrusion set continues to develop and mature their capabilities.
Malware Analysis
View all
Elastic catches DPRK passing out KANDYKORN
Elastic Security Labs exposes an attempt by the DPRK to infect blockchain engineers with novel macOS malware.
GHOSTPULSE haunts victims using defense evasion bag o' tricks
Elastic Security Labs reveals details of a new campaign leveraging defense evasion capabilities to infect victims with malicious MSIX executables.
Disclosing the BLOODALCHEMY backdoor
BLOODALCHEMY is a new, actively developed, backdoor that leverages a benign binary as an injection vehicle, and is a part of the REF5961 intrusion set.
Dancing the night away with named pipes - PIPEDANCE client release
In this publication, we will walk through this client application’s functionality and how to get started with the tool.
Campaigns
View all
Initial research exposing JOKERSPY
Explore JOKERSPY, a recently discovered campaign that targets financial institutions with Python backdoors. This article covers reconnaissance, attack patterns, and methods of identifying JOKERSPY in your network.
Elastic charms SPECTRALVIPER
Elastic Security Labs has discovered the P8LOADER, POWERSEAL, and SPECTRALVIPER malware families targeting a national Vietnamese agribusiness. REF2754 shares malware and motivational elements of the REF4322 and APT32 activity groups.
PHOREAL Malware Targets the Southeast Asian Financial Sector
Elastic Security discovered PHOREAL malware, which is targeting Southeast Asia financial organizations, particularly those in the Vietnamese financial sector.
Exploring the REF2731 Intrusion Set
The Elastic Security Labs team has been tracking REF2731, an 5-stage intrusion set involving the PARALLAX loader and the NETWIRE RAT.
Groups & Tactics
View allElastic catches DPRK passing out KANDYKORN
Elastic Security Labs exposes an attempt by the DPRK to infect blockchain engineers with novel macOS malware.
GHOSTPULSE haunts victims using defense evasion bag o' tricks
Elastic Security Labs reveals details of a new campaign leveraging defense evasion capabilities to infect victims with malicious MSIX executables.
The DPRK strikes using a new variant of RUSTBUCKET
Watch out! We’ve recently discovered a variant of RUSTBUCKET. Read this article to understand the new capabilities we’ve observed, as well as how to identify it in your own network.
Initial research exposing JOKERSPY
Explore JOKERSPY, a recently discovered campaign that targets financial institutions with Python backdoors. This article covers reconnaissance, attack patterns, and methods of identifying JOKERSPY in your network.
Perspectives
GenerativeAI
Accelerating Elastic detection tradecraft with LLMs
Learn more about how Elastic Security Labs has been focused on accelerating our detection engineering workflows by tapping into more generative AI capabilities.
Using LLMs and ESRE to find similar user sessions
In our previous article, we explored using the GPT-4 Large Language Model (LLM) to condense Linux user sessions. In the context of the same experiment, we dedicated some time to examine sessions that shared similarities. These similar sessions can subsequently aid the analysts in identifying related suspicious activities.
Using LLMs to summarize user sessions
In this publication, we will talk about lessons learned and key takeaways from our experiments using GPT-4 to summarize user sessions.
Exploring the Future of Security with ChatGPT
Recently, OpenAI announced APIs for engineers to integrate ChatGPT and Whisper models into their apps and products. For some time, engineers could use the REST API calls for older models and otherwise use the ChatGPT interface through their website.
Tools
View all
Into The Weeds: How We Run Detonate
Explore the technical implementation of the Detonate system, including sandbox creation, the supporting technology, telemetry collection, and how to blow stuff up.
Click, Click… Boom! Automating Protections Testing with Detonate
To automate this process and test our protections at scale, we built Detonate, a system that is used by security research engineers to measure the efficacy of our Elastic Security solution in an automated fashion.
Unpacking ICEDID
ICEDID is known to pack its payloads using custom file formats and a custom encryption scheme. We are releasing a set of tools to automate the unpacking process and help analysts and the community respond to ICEDID.
NETWIRE Configuration Extractor
Python script to extract the configuration from NETWIRE samples.