The infections are propagated either through a malicious backdoor in a Visual Studio Project or via an infected website, he wrote. And moreover, those infected were running fully patched and up-to-date Windows 10 and Chrome browser versions – a signal that hackers likely are using zero-day vulnerabilities in the campaign, the researcher concluded.
They’ve used these Twitter profiles for posting links to their blog, posting videos of their claimed exploits, and for amplifying and retweeting posts from other accounts that they control.
Their blog contains write-ups and analysis of vulnerabilities that have been publicly disclosed, including ‘guest’ posts from unwitting legitimate security researchers, likely in an attempt to build additional credibility with other security researchers.
In addition to Twitter, threat actors also used other platforms, including LinkedIn, Telegram, Discord, Keybase and email to communicate with potential target.
Attackers initiate contact by asking a researcher if he or she wants to collaborate on vulnerability research together. Threat actors appear to be credible researchers in their own right because they have already posted videos of exploits they’ve worked on, including faking the success of a working exploit for an existing and recently patched Windows Defender vulnerability, CVE-2021-1647, on YouTube.
The vulnerability received notoriety as one that has been exploited for the past three months and leveraged by hackers as part of the massive SolarWinds attack.
If an unsuspecting targeted researcher agrees to collaborate, attackers then provide the researcher with a Visual Studio Project infected with malicious code.
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