@BushidoToken Threat Intel

  Introduction A Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) contractor called  iSOON (also known as Anxun Information) that  specializes in network penetration research and related services has had its data leaked to GitHub. Based on the level of detail, leaked chat logs, amount of data, and corroboration from overlaps indicators of compromise (IOCs), there is a high level of confidence it is legit. Preliminary findings from less than one week since the leak revealed that it contains unprecedented insights into how the Chinese MPS operates by using Chinese commercial surveillance vendors and what their technical capabilities are. The Chinese MPS is China’s internal security service that primarily focuses on  internal and border security, counter-terrorism, surveillance. The MPS is comparable to the  Russian FSB, the US DHS or the UK’s MI5. The most interesting findings have come from iSOON’s product whitepapers and confidential slide deck presentations given to t...

  What happened? On 8 November 2023, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) was attacked by the LockBit ransomware group. The ICBC is one of the world’s largest banks and is a Chinese state-owned asset. Financial media sources, such as the Financial Times and Bloomberg reported that the wider financial system was impacted as certain trades on the US Treasury market were unable to clear because of the LockBit attack. Reuters also reported that the impact on ICBC’s network was significant enough that the bank had to resort to manual processes to perform trades in the billions of US dollars. At the time of writing, ICBC has not appeared on LockBit’s data leak site. However, in a conversation over the TOX messaging application with VX-Underground , a LockBit representative did confirm that they attacked ICBC. Additional context LockBit is currently the most prolific ransomware group in the world . They claim to be a “multinational” organization and the thre...

  Welcome to the final BushidoToken blog of 2022. Over the last year or so, an associate of mine in the UK has been targeted by a persistent Chinese-speaking scammer. The scammer often calls once or twice a month from a unique UK-based phone number and, if left unanswered, leaves an unusual automated voicemail.  I got the recorded voicemails and identified that they are almost certainly scam calls from Chinese-speaking fraudsters targeting Chinese international students at universities in the UK.  I have tracked this campaign for over a year and built a profile on the group's activities based on just the calls and voicemails they have left. I am now disclosing these attempts and subsequently tracking this activity group as "RedZei" (aka "RedThief"). The RedZei fraudsters have chosen their targets carefully, researched them and realized it was a rich victim group that is ripe for exploitation. A quick OSINT search found several recent articles about this apparent...

UPDATE - 29.06.2022: On 28 June 2022, NKNews.org cited this blog in their research on DarkHotel. In November 2021, I decided to revisit this blog and rethink some of the things I said. Parts of this blog are not what I would currently consider analytically sound. This was written over 2 years ago and my skills and my perspective on this group have changed a lot since then. 📝 I decided to review and rethink some of the things I wrote in one of my more popular blogs, which was received well(ish) but was not what I would currently consider analytically sound. This was written nearly 1.5 yrs ago and my perspective has changed 1/7 https://t.co/Nk3amxHHiQ — Will (@BushidoToken) November 29, 2021 Originally published on 14.06.2020 PART 1: DARKHOTEL DarkHotel is a sophisticated and active advanced persistent threat (APT) group. It’s highly capable and is known for finding and taking advantage of previously unknown vulnerabilities in common software also known as a 0day. It is a well-est...