HazyBeacon Hijinks: How Cloudy C2 Tactics Pulled a Fast One on Southeast Asia’s Governments
Since late 2024, Unit 42 researchers have been tracking CL-STA-1020, a cluster of suspicious activity targeting Southeast Asian governments. The highlight? A sneaky Windows backdoor named HazyBeacon, using AWS Lambda URLs as its covert command and control channel. Forget espionage movies—this cyber drama is streaming live!
Hot Take:
Who knew that the cloud could be the perfect place for cybercriminals to play hide and seek? Hackers have turned AWS Lambda URLs into their personal C2 playground, and it looks like government agencies in Southeast Asia are the unlucky kids in this game. Move over, traditional backdoors; HazyBeacon is here to shine a foggy light on your sneaky ways!
Key Points:
- HazyBeacon is a new, undocumented Windows backdoor exploiting AWS Lambda URLs for command and control (C2).
- Threat actors are targeting Southeast Asian government entities to gather sensitive information.
- The campaign employs DLL sideloading for deploying the backdoor.
- Legitimate cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox are used for data exfiltration.
- Palo Alto Networks offers protection through various products and services.
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