A high-profile hacking collective is offering for sale information allegedly stolen from three top anti-virus companies located in the United States, cybersecurity company Advanced Intelligence reveals.
Operating under the moniker of Fxmsp, the threat actor appears to have a long-standing reputation of selling verifiable corporate breaches. Advanced Intelligence (AdvIntel) is confident that the hackers’ claims are credible and that past breaches brought them a profit close to $1 million.
The Russian- and English-speaking hacking collective, AdvIntel believes, has targeted high-profile global government and corporate entities to steal sensitive information.
In March 2019, Fxmsp claimed to be in possession of information apparently stolen from top anti-virus companies in the U.S., including exclusive source code related to the companies’ software development.
The actor is offering the stolen information and network access for over $300,000.
Fxmsp has operated in various top-tier Russian and English-speaking underground communities since 2017 and is believed to have established a network of trusted proxy resellers to promote their stolen data.
Known for accessing network environments through externally available remote desktop protocol (RDP) servers and exposed active directory, the hackers also claim to have built a credential-stealing botnet capable to steal sensitive usernames and passwords from high-profile targets.
In late April, the actor claimed to have secured access to three leading antivirus companies and to have extracted sensitive source code from antivirus software, AI, and security plugins.
“Fxmsp also commented on the capabilities of the different companies’ software and assessed their efficiency,” AdvIntel says.
The collective provided indicators to identify the company even when a seller is not disclosing its name and offered “screenshots of folders purported to contain 30 terabytes of data, which they allegedly extracted from these networks.”
The folders appear to contain information about development documentation, artificial intelligence model, web security software, and antivirus software base code, AdvIntel notes.
The hackers claim to have focused on compromising the anti-virus companies for the last six months. This period falls in line with a period (October 2018 – April 2019) during which they maintained silence on underground forums where they normally post.
ShadowRunTeam, a high-profile Russian threat actor operating on Telegram, claims that Fxmsp is a Moscow resident named Andrey, who has been involved in cybercrime since mid-2000, and who is specialized in social engineering.
“Our subject matter experts assess with high confidence that Fxmsp is a credible hacking collective that has a history of selling verifiable corporate breaches returning them profit close to $1,000,000,” AdvIntel notes.
The company says it alerted law enforcement in the United States regarding the purported intrusions.
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