Director, Global Research & Analysis Team, Europe
Marco was appointed Director of Europe for the company’s Global Research & Analysis Team in March 2013. Prior to becoming Director of Europe, Marco served as the Head of Kaspersky's Global Research & Analysis Team in Germany and Senior Security Researcher. Marco has been working in the area of networking and IT security since the early 2000s. Having a long time experience in his role, he is responsible for monitoring the threat landscape in Europe while specializing in threat intelligence, darknet research, password security, IoT security and privacy. In addition to research-related projects, Marco is a regular speaker at both closed and public events, and maintains close contact with security partners. Marco began his career with Kaspersky back in 2004 as a Technical Consultant, providing expert knowledge on Linux and Unix-based systems. He has also been involved in corporate sales management, before moving on to become the technical contact for the OEM department, supporting customized solutions. Marco worked extensively with the company’s product design and development teams and joined the research team as a Virus Analyst in 2009.At the end of 2021, we inspected UEFI firmware that was tampered with to embed a malicious code we dub MoonBounce. In this report we describe how the MoonBounce implant works and how it is connected to APT41.
It appears that BlueNoroff shifted focus from hitting banks and SWIFT-connected servers to solely cryptocurrency businesses as the main source of the group’s illegal income.
The ScarCruft group (also known as APT37 or Temp.Reaper) is a nation-state sponsored APT actor. Recently, we had an opportunity to perform a deeper investigation on a host compromised by this group.
In this report we provide details on a malicious VBS implant distributed via MS Excel droppers and a fake “Kaspersky Update Agent” which we attribute to WIRTE APT who may be linked to Gaza Cybergang.