Category Archives: IBM X-Force Research

Threat intelligence to protect vulnerable communities

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Key members of civil society—including journalists, political activists and human rights advocates—have long been in the cyber crosshairs of well-resourced nation-state threat actors but have scarce resources to protect themselves from cyber threats. On May 14, 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a High-Risk Communities Protection (HRCP) report developed through the Joint […]

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Exploiting GOG Galaxy XPC service for privilege escalation in macOS

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Being part of the Adversary Services team at IBM, it is important to keep your skills up to date and learn new things constantly. macOS security was one field where I decided to put more effort this year to further improve my exploitation and operation skills in macOS environments. During my research, I decided to […]

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Hive0051’s large scale malicious operations enabled by synchronized multi-channel DNS fluxing

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Recent analysis of Hive0051 has identified three key changes to capabilities: an improved multi-channel approach to DNS fluxing, obfuscated multi-stage scripts, and the use of fileless PowerShell variants of the Gamma malware.

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Critically Close to Zero(Day): Exploiting Microsoft Kernel Streaming Service

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Last month Microsoft patched a vulnerability in the Microsoft Kernel Streaming Server, a Windows kernel component used in the virtualization and sharing of camera devices. The vulnerability, CVE-2023-36802, allows a local attacker to escalate privileges to SYSTEM. This blog post details my process of exploring a new attack surface in the Windows kernel, finding a […]

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Reflective call stack detections and evasions

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In a blog published this March, we explored reflective loading through the lens of an offensive security tool developer, highlighting detection and evasion opportunities along the way. This time we are diving into call stack detections and evasions, and how BokuLoader reflectively loads call stack spoofing capabilities into beacon. We created this blog and public […]

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“Authorized” to break in: Adversaries use valid credentials to compromise cloud environments

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Overprivileged plaintext credentials left on display in 33% of X-Force adversary simulations Adversaries are constantly seeking to improve their productivity margins, but new data from IBM X-Force suggests they aren’t exclusively leaning on sophistication to do so. Simple yet reliable tactics that offer ease of use and often direct access to privileged environments are still […]

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Email campaigns leverage updated DBatLoader to deliver RATs, stealers

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IBM X-Force has identified new capabilities in DBatLoader malware samples delivered in recent email campaigns, signaling a heightened risk of infection from commodity malware families associated with DBatLoader activity. Explore the analysis.

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Databases beware: Abusing Microsoft SQL Server with SQLRecon

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Over the course of my career, I’ve had the privileged opportunity to peek behind the veil of some of the largest organizations in the world. In my experience, most industry verticals rely on enterprise Windows networks. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a decentralized zero-trust network, […]

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Bringing threat intelligence and adversary insights to the forefront: X-Force Research Hub

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Today defenders are dealing with both a threat landscape that’s constantly changing and attacks that have stood the test of time. Innovation and best practices co-exist in the criminal world, and one mustn’t distract us from the other. IBM X-Force is continuously observing new attack vectors and novel malware in the wild, as adversaries seek […]

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MSMQ QueueJumper (RCE Vulnerability): An In-Depth Technical Analysis

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The security updates released by Microsoft on April 11, 2023, addressed over 90 individual vulnerabilities. Of particular note was CVE-2023-21554, dubbed QueueJumper, a remote code execution vulnerability affecting the Microsoft Message Queueing (MSMQ) service. MSMQ is an optional Windows component that enables applications to exchange messages via message queues that are reachable both locally and […]

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