White Papers

ESET researchers have uncovered a new version of ComRAT, a backdoor that the Turla APT group has been using since at least 2007. This white paper analyzes this latest addition to the toolkit of a cyberespionage group that is known to have breached major public and private targets on multiple continents.

ESET researchers discovered a previously unknown vulnerability in Wi-Fi chips and named it KrØØk. This serious flaw, assigned CVE-2019-15126, affects devices with Wi-Fi chips by Broadcom and Cypress that haven’t been patched yet. These are the most common Wi-Fi chips used in contemporary Wi-Fi-capable devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and IoT gadgets. In a successful attack, this vulnerability allows an adversary to decrypt some wireless network packets transmitted by a vulnerable device.

As devices are undeniably getting smarter all the time, the question arises: Are we “smart” enough to derive maximum benefit from these devices without suffering repercussions? With 2019 ending, ESET experts offer their insights into how new innovations will impact our privacy, security and lives in the not so distant future.

This white paper provides a technical analysis of recent malware used by the Winnti Group. The group is well known for its supply-chain attacks and for compromising multiple high-profile targets – while staying under the radar for many months before they were found and disrupted. This analysis further refines our understanding of the group's techniques and allows us to infer relationships between the different supply-chain incidents.

ESET researchers reveal their findings about Operation Ghost, newly-uncovered campaigns conducted by an APT group known as The Dukes since as far back as 2013. Our research shows that the Dukes has compromised government targets, including three European Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Washington DC embassy of a European Union country, all without drawing attention to their activities.

Building on their earlier work on UEFI threats, ESET experts describe how they trained a machine-learning model to recognize a handful of unwanted UEFI components within a flood of millions of harmless samples. Besides showing strong capabilities in identifying suspicious UEFI executables, this system offers real-time monitoring of the UEFI landscape and was found to reduce the workload of ESET analysts by up to 90 percent.

ESET researchers have discovered a previously unreported cyberespionage platform used in targeted attacks since at least 2013. Focusing on diplomatic missions and governmental institutions, Attor is designed specifically to attack privacy-concerned targets. Its most interesting features are a complex modular architecture, elaborate network communications, and a unique plugin to fingerprint GSM devices.

This white paper presents ESET research into a new version of Machete, a cyberespionage toolset developed by a Spanish-speaking group that has been operating since at least 2010. ESET researchers have detected an ongoing, highly targeted campaign by the group, with a majority of its targets being government organizations in Latin America. In 2019, ESET has seen more than 50 computers compromised by Machete. More than 75% of the compromised computers were part of Venezuelan government organizations, including the military forces, education, police, and foreign affairs sectors.

In this white paper, we will take a deep technical look at this previously undocumented malware family and the other Ke3chang malware families detected from 2015 to 2019. We will provide evidence that the latter are evolved versions of known malware families attributed to Ke3chang group and explain how Okrum is linked to them – in terms of code, modus operandi and shared targets.