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The largest collection of malware source, samples, and papers on the internet. Password: infected https://vx-underground.org/
just received an email from my ISP saying downloading illegally is illegal
Wtf since when???
My post about the Russian dude visiting North Korea has escaped my core audience and I've got a bunch of random people being like, "PfffT tHaT dIdNt HaPpEn"
What the fuck?
Do you think I'm some kind of anti-North Korean account and I'm dedicating my free time to anti-North Korean posts?
Why would I (or anyone for the matter) go out of their way to lie about something visually documented on YouTube?
Whenever I didn't IMMEDIATELY respond for requests to a link for the video, people began being like, "sEe? iT dIdNt HaPpEn!". Yeah, bro. Let me drop everything I'm doing with my work, and my family, to argue with you fucking dorks on the internet.
I know I shouldn't be this annoyed... but there has been a few occasions now where when I mention North Korea I've got a bunch of schizos trying to disprove anything remotely critical of North Korea. I can't tell if it's unironically a psyop or deranged basement dwellers.
Here's the video, you jackass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inebLA3HqPo
I was watching this YouTube video of this Russian dude who traveled to North Korea to go sightseeing.
North Korea is notoriously strict on what visitors can and cannot do. Throughout most of the trip he risked his own safety by illegally filming around North Korea on his cell phone.
At one point during the trip he managed to sneak away from his appointed North Korean tour guide. He approached a group of people sitting down, ... just kind of hanging around ..., doing something.
They were very friendly to him.
During the conversation he asked them what they'd like to do in the future. One of the men said, "I hope some day to travel. I really want to see Yugoslavia"
The fuckin' Russian guy looked at him like this when he said "Yugoslavia"
My baby boy is the difficult age where he is learning several things simultaneously:
- How to grow teeth
- How to crawl
- Proto-communication
If you've never had a child, around 7 - 9 months (or later, each baby is different, but that's the average-average) babies will begin proto-communication.
They've picked up on people talking, and communicating back and forth, they understand the concept of sentence structure and vocal inflection being indicative of a question. They—understand—you—pausing—between—words, or pausing and waiting for someone to reply back verbally.
My baby boy now tries to join in conversations because he doesn't want to feel left out. He doesn't understand we're having a conversation, he doesn't even understand words, but he understands the "prototype of communication", hence now, seemingly out of nowhere, he inserts himself into our conversations by screaming like a psychopath and babbling incoherent nonsense.
He favorite "word" is blowing raspberries (pressing your lips together and blowing) and "ge-ge-ge" (think of the GE in "geese") or quite literally screaming as loud as he can.
Another interesting thing about proto-communication is he tries to initiate conversations now. Unfortunately, he does not possess manners. Additionally, he does not respect me as a person, place, or thing. This results in him attempting to start conversations with me, while I'm asleep, at 3 in the morning.
It's very interesting watching my baby boy grow. I remember when my wife first got pregnant and we confirmed the pregnancy visually via ultrasound. He was tiny, probably no greater than the size of a pea. His fetus kind of looked like a little sea horse, or something, and under the ultra sound we could see his little heart beating.
Now we look at him. He is much larger than a pea. He no longer looks like a sea horse (thankfully). He is screaming in my face at 3 in the morning because he wants to "talk". If he isn't screaming at my face at 3 in the morning, he's practicing his hand-eye coordination by trying to feed himself ... by putting food all over his face ... or in his pants ... or in his hair ...
As difficult as it can be being a parent, and as much as you "suffer", there is something oddly rejuvenating about the experience and it somehow (in ways I don't understand yet) makes you feel young again.
Iran has had a complete internet blackout for 300 hours now (12.5 days).
Imagine not having anime for 12.5 days
Yes, Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, the alleged leader of Lockbit ransomware group, FBI Most Wanted, and sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury, was attempting to contact me online.
For months I believed him to be an imposter.
This is what I kept sending him:
I've been receiving messages from both Lockbit ransomware group and ALPHV ransomware group for months.
I've been so preoccupied with my newborn son I thought it was an imposter.
They've been trying to tell me stuff, and I just kept sending cat pictures. They eventually gave up and started replying with pictures of cats too.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Look at this and tell there is a God
https://gist.github.com/vxunderground/52cd17f363f83792243be814c1e85b30
I deleted previous post and decided to do a mini-write-up for people too lazy to explore themselves, provide key insights, and also give Harrris0n credit for his work.
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Big news coming later today. It'll be the slopocalypse.
I don't feel like writing about it right now, because I'm tired from a teething baby with sleep regression, but basically all these fucking AI vibe coders are using Firebase and like, 22,000,000 records are exposed, or something, an outrageously high number.
Also, a disgustingly high amount of people trying to use AI for CSAM.
It's not my research, it's someone else's, but I want to give them a proper shout out and explanation of their work.
I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT TRUST VIBE CODERS. DO NOT DO IT. AI CODE IS NOT SECURE. DO NOT DO IT. STOP THE SLOP.
We've solved the mystery. Who's That Pokemon? It's CastleRAT a/k/a TAG-150!
Okay, here is the drama and scoop, or whatever. I don't know if anyone cares, but this has been a really interesting puzzle with lots of twists and turns.
Previously malwrhunterteam discovered an unusual malicious .MSI file called "TopWebComics". It dropped an obfuscated .JS file.
nullableVoidPtr deobfuscated the malicious .JS, I reverse engineered it and named it "Smokest Stealer". However, Kali3ndo went off my research notes and discovered that Smokest drops an additional malicious .PS1 file when Smokest connects to the C2.
The malicious .PS1 file drops a malicious .PY file, encoded with PyArmor. The Python script extracts a payload from a .JPEG.
After reviewing it, poking it with a stick, and having all sorts of fun, it turns out this payload was first noted by YungBinary in August, 2025. This payload is CastleRAT (and tracked as TAG-150 by RecordedFuture).
CastleRAT payload found January, 18th:
8d2e77912e2e1d9d8cafb76d4562686cfaad556ca1df1919bfba304b31193402
"Smokest Stealer" MSI:
5a1c14335d0a8b007ff2813e6ef738e8836be38257cc82fe03c02b71d71e1b01
"Smokest Stealer" JS:
29e13df9547d4e85e7ca3fc5b95eab90f56a233aabc406638bee2ded368acd3d
Thank you to my peers and colleagues for reversing this with me throughout the day and having fun with it. This was a very silly malware sample.
It should probably be noted their C2 leaks information (don't tell them that). It shows Smokest has stolen 5,850 passwords, 23,085 cookies, 0 wallets.
https://gist.github.com/vxunderground/87ce045ddfa57f05e53e65e423b51f49
Discussion on the internet today on the origins of traffic on the highway and the accordion effect it produces.
People were critical toward others who intentionally slowed down to be "nosey" about car accidents.
Let me be totally clear: I am one of those people.
I want to see the aftermath of a violent car accident. I am curious who is involved. I want to see a dead body. I 100% will slow down and take my time to inspect the scene. If possible, I will take out my phone and try to record it so I can show my friends later.
There is so much to reverse with their "SwissKnife", internal COM stuff, their internal protocol, their VPN technology, their hooking mechanisms.
I don't know if I got that dog in me to finish this. It's really interesting, but I want to do something else now.
I remember when Bitcoin first appeared.
I thought, "cryptocurrency seems like made up internet money."
Fast forward, it's the year 2026. I think, "cryptocurrency seems like made up internet money."
Hello,
I appreciate everyone who offers to buy me a beer, or something, if I ever attend a cybersecurity conference. I understand the gesture and I understand it is in good faith.
Unfortunately, in a past life I had a pretty bad drinking problem (and kind of a gambling problem). I've been sober for 11 years.
Thank you
Pic unrelated
For those who don't get it because they're unfamiliar with Europe, or history, or live under a rock like Patrick Star: Yugoslavia hasn't existed since 1992.
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Okay, I'm done schizo ranting about being a Dad.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming of malware and kitty cats.
I just wanted to share this with someone, even if it means screaming into the void of the internet, because I don't have many friends in real life anymore who I can schizo rant about stuff to (I'm old).
This one year old post has been bothering me.
I felt great discomfort someone hasn't been demented enough to do HTTP stuff as close to the metal as possible with the Windows sockets API (in regards to malware stuff).
I'm not done yet, this code is ... sort of(?) ... in a debug state.
This code connects to HTTPBin, performs a TLS handshake, verifies the web certificate, then performs a simple HTTP GET. The way my code is organized the stage is set to perform HTTP POST to demonstrate data exfiltration to a remote HTTP host.
The next step is basically taking a file, reading it to memory, then uploading it to a remote host and ensuring it was received successfully.
Following the completion of the HTTP post, I'll transform the entire code base into being more position independent. In other words, trying to recreate Windows APIs (like QueryContextAttributesW) to avoid unnecessary (not really "unnecessary", but less hooking opportunities, looks unusual) abstractions. I'll also manually recreate GetProcAddress and do string hashing because ???
When I'm done with this low-level Windows socket C HTTP post example, this code base will probably be well over 3,000 lines of code.
tl;dr 3,000 lines of C or 12 lines of Python code (I tested it, it's literally 12 lines of Python code).
The code so far:
https://gist.github.com/vxunderground/f55edb02b0dbda148f9a3b88669b23c8
> be Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev
> bounty of $10,000,000 by FBI
> believed to possess of $4,000,000,000 as a result of criminal extortion
> linked to botnets, money laundering, the russian government, bullet proof hosting
> tries to contact me
> send weird cat videos
imagine unironically being like, a fucking cyber cartel boss and some fucking retard american just keeps sending you cats
Today ALPHV ransomware group (who swears they've never rebranded) informed me they've made a new ransomware group with a new and cool and badass name.
I learned a few things.
1. ALPHV follows me on social media. They pay attention to my posts (including kitty cat pictures).
2. ALPHV informed me that they're no longer going to use TOR for ransomware leaks or negotiations because "the FBI can fuck it". Instead everything they do will be stored on the blockchain.
Using the blockchain for malware, and malware accessories, isn't a new malware concept, however it is a relatively ... rare ... or more exotic TTP. If my memory serves me correctly (which it rarely does), the North Korean government has used cryptocurrency blockchains for malware delivery mechanisms and C2 persistence.
They told me they'll be using ICP (Internet Computer Protocol) blockchain.
I initially thought they meant "Insane Clown Posse" blockchain. For a brief moment in time I thought the Juggalos were getting involved in ransomware.
I'm not a cryptocurrency nerd, but they said they use ICP blockchain because ICP can "run smartcontract on server". I have no idea what this means.
What does all of this mean? I don't know. I've been out of the loop on cybercrime TMZ.
> It's the year 2026
> Future_af_boi.exe
> Anyone can make anything, or something
> Can bring ideas to life easily
> Vibe coded app leaks these magical ideas
> Look inside
Troy Hunt from HaveIBeenPwned seeing 198 vulnerable apps (and counting) exposing user PII (he's going to be busy for months)
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It's the slopocalypse.
OSINT nerd Harrris0n has created "Firehound". He (or others, I don't know) have begun the daunting task of hunting AI slop in the Apple app store.
They have identified (as of this writing) 198 iOS apps which leak information on users (in some capacity). Unsurprisingly, the top are all related to AI.
The top currently leaking user data is "Chat & Ask AI by Codeway" which has exposed 18M users information including:
- Name
- Email
- Creation date
- Messages (sent, received, content, etc)
- Voice chats
... anything you've said to this AI agent is exposed. It is 400,000,000+ messages... (Image 1, redacted)
Next up up on the slop-o-meter is "YPT - Study Group" which currently exposes over 2M users information including:
- AI tokens
- User ID
- User Key
- Chats (sent, received, content
This is all AI slop for things under education, entertainment, graphic design, health and fitness, "lifestyle", social networking, and more.
Some of the stuff is present is absurd. Harrris0n notes the presence of people doing CSAM (child pornography) related things with the AI agents. (tl;dr pedophiles identifying information currently leaking online) ... as well as "LooksMaxxing" stuff (???).
It's an infinite blackhole of user personable identifiable information, beside just names, emails, etc, but also their personal conversations with AI agents.
It's the slopocalypse.
See for yourself:
https://firehound.covertlabs.io/
More information about Threat Actor Group (TAG) 150:
https://www.recordedfuture.com/research/from-castleloader-to-castlerat-tag-150-advances-operations
FYI: Security research pedro2sudo (I have no idea who they are, they just randomly send me pictures of cats) has noted the discovery of malware targeting HyTale
What does this mean? I don't know. I'm not a NERD.
A few days ago malwrhunterteam discovered a new malware family (I think, I couldn't find any family overlap, vendors please confirm).
I poked it with a stick. I've named it Smokest.
It was deobfuscated by nullableVoidPtr. It's neato.
https://malwaresourcecode.com/home/my-projects/write-ups/smokest-stealer-a-new-malware-family-maybe
One of my biggest weaknesses is writing. I hate writing.
My cybersecurity peers, colleagues, friends, who have the willpower to sit down and write and explain their work (or discoveries) is truly amazing.
I'd argue the process of writing is actually more difficult than the actual reverse engineering and/or development part. Partially because it's really boring, partially because it requires you to put structure and coherency on the madness floating around in your brain.
Huge shout-out to the nerds who have written big ass blog posts (or books).
I have continued to poke MalwareBytes with a stick. I've written a little article about it.
I discuss their main executable, some of their minifilter stuff, their proprietary file format ... I haven't even scratched the surface. I am TIRED
https://malwaresourcecode.com/home/my-projects/write-ups/malwarebytes-internals-incomplete
One time we got home and found a children's bicycle lodged in the grill of the car. Did we brag about it? No
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