Automate Forensics to Eliminate Uncertainty

CAMEL - The First And The Best Multi-Agent Framework. Finding The Scaling Law Of Agents

CAMEL Framework Design Principles

🧬 Evolvability

📈 Scalability

The framework is designed to support systems with millions of agents, ensuring efficient coordination, communication, and resource management at scale.

💾 Statefulness

Agents maintain stateful memory, enabling them to perform multi-step interactions with environments and efficiently tackle sophisticated tasks.

📖 Code-as-Prompt

Every line of code and comment serves as a prompt for agents. Code should be written clearly and readably, ensuring both humans and agents can interpret it effectively.

Why Use CAMEL for Your Research?

We are a community-driven research collective comprising over 100 researchers dedicated to advancing frontier research in Multi-Agent Systems. Researchers worldwide choose CAMEL for their studies based on the following reasons.

What Can You Build With CAMEL?

1. Data Generation

2. Task Automation

3. World Simulation

Quick Start

Installing CAMEL is a breeze thanks to its availability on PyPI. Simply open your terminal and run:

pip install camel-ai

Starting with ChatAgent

This example demonstrates how to create a ChatAgent using the CAMEL framework and perform a search query using DuckDuckGo.

1. Install the tools package:

bash pip install 'camel-ai[web_tools]'

1. Set up your OpenAI API key:

bash export OPENAI_API_KEY='your_openai_api_key'

1. Run the following Python code:

```python from camel.models import ModelFactory from camel.types import ModelPlatformType, ModelType from camel.agents import ChatAgent from camel.toolkits import SearchToolkit

model = ModelFactory.create( model_platform=ModelPlatformType.OPENAI, model_type=ModelType.GPT_4O, model_config_dict={"temperature": 0.0}, )

search_tool = SearchToolkit().search_duckduckgo

agent = ChatAgent(model=model, tools=[search_tool])

response_1 = agent.step("What is CAMEL-AI?") print(response_1.msgs[0].content) # CAMEL-AI is the first LLM (Large Language Model) multi-agent framework # and an open-source community focused on finding the scaling laws of agents. # ...

response_2 = agent.step("What is the Github link to CAMEL framework?") print(response_2.msgs[0].content) # The GitHub link to the CAMEL framework is # https://github.com/camel-ai/camel. ```

For more detailed instructions and additional configuration options, check out the installation section.

After running, you can explore our CAMEL Tech Stack and Cookbooks at docs.camel-ai.org to build powerful multi-agent systems.

We provide a demo showcasing a conversation between two ChatGPT agents playing roles as a python programmer and a stock trader collaborating on developing a trading bot for stock market.

Explore different types of agents, their roles, and their applications.

• Creating Your First Agent
• Creating Your First Agent Society
• Embodied Agents
• Critic Agents

Seeking Help

Please reach out to us on CAMEL discord if you encounter any issue set up CAMEL.

Tech Stack

Key Modules

Core components and utilities to build, operate, and enhance CAMEL-AI agents and societies.

Research

We believe that studying these agents on a large scale offers valuable insights into their behaviors, capabilities, and potential risks.

Explore our research projects:

Research with US

We warmly invite you to use CAMEL for your impactful research.

Rigorous research takes time and resources. We are a community-driven research collective with 100+ researchers exploring the frontier research of Multi-agent Systems. Join our ongoing projects or test new ideas with us, reach out via email for more information.

Synthetic Datasets

1. Utilize Various LLMs as Backends

For more details, please see our Models Documentation.

Data (Hosted on Hugging Face)

2. Visualizations of Instructions and Tasks

Cookbooks (Usecases)

Practical guides and tutorials for implementing specific functionalities in CAMEL-AI agents and societies.

1. Basic Concepts

2. Advanced Features

3. Model Training & Data Generation

4. Multi-Agent Systems & Applications

5. Data Processing

Contributing to CAMEL

For those who'd like to contribute code, we appreciate your interest in contributing to our open-source initiative. Please take a moment to review our contributing guidelines to get started on a smooth collaboration journey.🚀

We also welcome you to help CAMEL grow by sharing it on social media, at events, or during conferences. Your support makes a big difference!

Community & Contact

For more information please contact camel-ai@eigent.ai

• GitHub Issues: Report bugs, request features, and track development. Submit an issue

• Discord: Get real-time support, chat with the community, and stay updated. Join us

• X (Twitter): Follow for updates, AI insights, and key announcements. Follow us

• Ambassador Project: Advocate for CAMEL-AI, host events, and contribute content. Learn more

Citation

@inproceedings{li2023camel,
  title={CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society},
  author={Li, Guohao and Hammoud, Hasan Abed Al Kader and Itani, Hani and Khizbullin, Dmitrii and Ghanem, Bernard},
  booktitle={Thirty-seventh Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems},
  year={2023}
}

Acknowledgment

Special thanks to Nomic AI for giving us extended access to their data set exploration tool (Atlas).

We would also like to thank Haya Hammoud for designing the initial logo of our project.

We implemented amazing research ideas from other works for you to build, compare and customize your agents. If you use any of these modules, please kindly cite the original works: - TaskCreationAgent, TaskPrioritizationAgent and BabyAGI from Nakajima et al.: Task-Driven Autonomous Agent. [Example]

• PersonaHub from Tao Ge et al.: Scaling Synthetic Data Creation with 1,000,000,000 Personas. [Example]

• Self-Instruct from Yizhong Wang et al.: SELF-INSTRUCT: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructions. [Example]

License

The source code is licensed under Apache 2.0.

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QuickResponseC2 - A Command & Control Server That Leverages QR Codes To Send Commands And Receive Results From Remote Systems

QuickResponseC2 is a stealthy Command and Control (C2) framework that enables indirect and covert communication between the attacker and victim machines via an intermediate HTTP/S server. All network activity is limited to uploading and downloading images, making it an fully undetectable by IPS/IDS Systems and an ideal tool for security research and penetration testing.

Capabilities:

• Command Execution via QR Codes:
  Users can send custom commands to the victim machine, encoded as QR codes.
  Victims scan the QR code, which triggers the execution of the command on their system.
  The command can be anything from simple queries to complex operations based on the test scenario.

• Result Retrieval:
  Results of the executed command are returned from the victim system and encoded into a QR code.
  The server decodes the result and provides feedback to the attacker for further analysis or follow-up actions.

• Built-in HTTP Server:
  The tool includes a lightweight HTTP server that facilitates the victim machine's retrieval of command QR codes.
  Results are sent back to the server as QR code images, and they are automatically saved with unique filenames for easy management.
  The attacker's machine handles multiple requests, with HTTP logs organized and saved separately.

• Stealthy Communication:
  QuickResponseC2 operates under the radar, with minimal traces, providing a covert way to interact with the victim machine without alerting security defenses.
  Ideal for security assessments or testing command-and-control methodologies without being detected.

• File Handling:
  The tool automatically saves all QR codes (command and result) to the server_files directory, using sequential filenames like command0.png, command1.png, etc.
  Decoding and processing of result files are handled seamlessly.

• User-Friendly Interface:
  The tool is operated via a simple command-line interface, allowing users to set up a C2 server, send commands, and receive results with ease.
  No additional complex configurations or dependencies are needed.

Usage

1. First, install the Dependencies - pip3 install -r requirements.txt
2. Then, run the main.py python3 main.py
3. Choose between the options:

1 - Run the C2 Server

2 - Build the Victim Implant

1. Enjoy!

Demonstration

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/382e9350-d650-44e5-b8ef-b43ec90b315d

Workflow Overview

1. Initialization of the C2 Server

• The attacker launches QuickResponseC2, which creates a lightweight HTTP server (default port: 8080).
• This server serves as the intermediary between the attacker and victim, eliminating any direct connection between them.

2. Command Delivery via QR Codes

• The attacker encodes a command into a QR code and saves it as commandX.png on the HTTP server.
• The victim machine periodically polls the server (e.g., every 1 second) to check for the presence of a new command file.

3. Victim Command Execution

• Once the victim detects a new QR code file (commandX.png), it downloads and decodes the image to retrieve the command.
• The decoded command is executed on the victim's system.

4. Result Encoding and Uploading

• The victim encodes the output of the executed command into a QR code and saves it locally as resultX.png.
• The result file is then uploaded to the HTTP server.

5. Result Retrieval by the Attacker

• The attacker periodically checks the server for new result files (resultX.png).
• Once found, the result file is downloaded and decoded to retrieve the output of the executed command.

TODO & Contribution

• [x] Generate a Template for the Implant
• [ ] Compile the implant as an .exe automatically
• [x] Save the generated QR Code as bytes in a variable instead of a file - VICTIM Side
• [ ] Add an obfuscation on the commands decoded from the QR Codes automatically

Feel free to fork and contribute! Pull requests are welcome.

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Who’s Behind the Seized Forums ‘Cracked’ & ‘Nulled’?

The FBI joined authorities across Europe last week in seizing domain names for Cracked and Nulled, English-language cybercrime forums with millions of users that trafficked in stolen data, hacking tools and malware. An investigation into the history of these communities shows their apparent co-founders quite openly operate an Internet service provider and a pair of e-commerce platforms catering to buyers and sellers on both forums.

In this 2019 post from Cracked, a forum moderator told the author of the post (Buddie) that the owner of the RDP service was the founder of Nulled, a.k.a. “Finndev.” Image: Ke-la.com.

On Jan. 30, the U.S. Department of Justice said it seized eight domain names that were used to operate Cracked, a cybercrime forum that sprang up in 2018 and attracted more than four million users. The DOJ said the law enforcement action, dubbed Operation Talent, also seized domains tied to Sellix, Cracked’s payment processor.

In addition, the government seized the domain names for two popular anonymity services that were heavily advertised on Cracked and Nulled and allowed customers to rent virtual servers: StarkRDP[.]io, and rdp[.]sh.

Those archived webpages show both RDP services were owned by an entity called 1337 Services Gmbh. According to corporate records compiled by Northdata.com, 1337 Services GmbH is also known as AS210558 and is incorporated in Hamburg, Germany.

The Cracked forum administrator went by the nicknames “FlorainN” and “StarkRDP” on multiple cybercrime forums. Meanwhile, a LinkedIn profile for a Florian M. from Germany refers to this person as the co-founder of Sellix and founder of 1337 Services GmbH.

Northdata’s business profile for 1337 Services GmbH shows the company is controlled by two individuals: 32-year-old Florian Marzahl and Finn Alexander Grimpe, 28.

An organization chart showing the owners of 1337 Services GmbH as Florian Marzahl and Finn Grimpe. Image: Northdata.com.

Neither Marzahl nor Grimpe responded to requests for comment. But Grimpe’s first name is interesting because it corresponds to the nickname chosen by the founder of Nulled, who goes by the monikers “Finn” and “Finndev.” NorthData reveals that Grimpe was the founder of a German entity called DreamDrive GmbH, which rented out high-end sports cars and motorcycles.

According to the cyber intelligence firm Intel 471, a user named Finndev registered on multiple cybercrime forums, including Raidforums [seized by the FBI in 2022], Void[.]to, and vDOS, a DDoS-for-hire service that was shut down in 2016 after its founders were arrested.

The email address used for those accounts was f.grimpe@gmail.com. DomainTools.com reports f.grimpe@gmail.com was used to register at least nine domain names, including nulled[.]lol and nulled[.]it. Neither of these domains were among those seized in Operation Talent.

Intel471 finds the user FlorainN registered across multiple cybercrime forums using the email address olivia.messla@outlook.de. The breach tracking service Constella Intelligence says this email address used the same password (and slight variations of it) across many accounts online — including at hacker forums — and that the same password was used in connection with dozens of other email addresses, such as florianmarzahl@hotmail.de, and fmarzahl137@gmail.com.

The Justice Department said the Nulled marketplace had more than five million members, and has been selling stolen login credentials, stolen identification documents and hacking services, as well as tools for carrying out cybercrime and fraud, since 2016.

Perhaps fittingly, both Cracked and Nulled have been hacked over the years, exposing countless private messages between forum users. A review of those messages archived by Intel 471 showed that dozens of early forum members referred privately to Finndev as the owner of shoppy[.]gg, an e-commerce platform that caters to the same clientele as Sellix.

Shoppy was not targeted as part of Operation Talent, and its website remains online. Northdata reports that Shoppy’s business name — Shoppy Ecommerce Ltd. — is registered at an address in Gan-Ner, Israel, but there is no ownership information about this entity. Shoppy did not respond to requests for comment.

Constella found that a user named Shoppy registered on Cracked in 2019 using the email address finn@shoppy[.]gg. Constella says that email address is tied to a Twitter/X account for Shoppy Ecommerce in Israel.

The DOJ said one of the alleged administrators of Nulled, a 29-year-old Argentinian national named Lucas Sohn, was arrested in Spain. The government has not announced any other arrests or charges associated with Operation Talent.

Indeed, both StarkRDP and FloraiN have posted to their accounts on Telegram that there were no charges levied against the proprietors of 1337 Services GmbH. FlorainN told former customers they were in the process of moving to a new name and domain for StarkRDP, where existing accounts and balances would be transferred.

“StarkRDP has always been operating by the law and is not involved in any of these alleged crimes and the legal process will confirm this,” the StarkRDP Telegram account wrote on January 30. “All of your servers are safe and they have not been collected in this operation. The only things that were seized is the website server and our domain. Unfortunately, no one can tell who took it and with whom we can talk about it. Therefore, we will restart operation soon, under a different name, to close the chapter [of] ‘StarkRDP.'”

FBI, Dutch Police Disrupt ‘Manipulaters’ Phishing Gang

The FBI and authorities in The Netherlands this week seized dozens of servers and domains for a hugely popular spam and malware dissemination service operating out of Pakistan. The proprietors of the service, who use the collective nickname “The Manipulaters,” have been the subject of three stories published here since 2015. The FBI said the main clientele are organized crime groups that try to trick victim companies into making payments to a third party.

One of several current Fudtools sites run by the principals of The Manipulators.

On January 29, the FBI and the Dutch national police seized the technical infrastructure for a cybercrime service marketed under the brands Heartsender, Fudpage and Fudtools (and many other “fud” variations). The “fud” bit stands for “Fully Un-Detectable,” and it refers to cybercrime resources that will evade detection by security tools like antivirus software or anti-spam appliances.

The Dutch authorities said 39 servers and domains abroad were seized, and that the servers contained millions of records from victims worldwide — including at least 100,000 records pertaining to Dutch citizens.

A statement from the U.S. Department of Justice refers to the cybercrime group as Saim Raza, after a pseudonym The Manipulaters communally used to promote their spam, malware and phishing services on social media.

“The Saim Raza-run websites operated as marketplaces that advertised and facilitated the sale of tools such as phishing kits, scam pages and email extractors often used to build and maintain fraud operations,” the DOJ explained.

The core Manipulaters product is Heartsender, a spam delivery service whose homepage openly advertised phishing kits targeting users of various Internet companies, including Microsoft 365, Yahoo, AOL, Intuit, iCloud and ID.me, to name a few.

The government says transnational organized crime groups that purchased these services primarily used them to run business email compromise (BEC) schemes, wherein the cybercrime actors tricked victim companies into making payments to a third party.

“Those payments would instead be redirected to a financial account the perpetrators controlled, resulting in significant losses to victims,” the DOJ wrote. “These tools were also used to acquire victim user credentials and utilize those credentials to further these fraudulent schemes. The seizure of these domains is intended to disrupt the ongoing activity of these groups and stop the proliferation of these tools within the cybercriminal community.”

Manipulaters advertisement for “Office 365 Private Page with Antibot” phishing kit sold via Heartsender. “Antibot” refers to functionality that attempts to evade automated detection techniques, keeping a phish deployed and accessible as long as possible. Image: DomainTools.

KrebsOnSecurity first wrote about The Manipulaters in May 2015, mainly because their ads at the time were blanketing a number of popular cybercrime forums, and because they were fairly open and brazen about what they were doing — even who they were in real life.

We caught up with The Manipulaters again in 2021, with a story that found the core employees had started a web coding company in Lahore called WeCodeSolutions — presumably as a way to account for their considerable Heartsender income. That piece examined how WeCodeSolutions employees had all doxed themselves on Facebook by posting pictures from company parties each year featuring a large cake with the words FudCo written in icing.

A follow-up story last year about The Manipulaters prompted messages from various WeCodeSolutions employees who pleaded with this publication to remove stories about them. The Saim Raza identity told KrebsOnSecurity they were recently released from jail after being arrested and charged by local police, although they declined to elaborate on the charges.

The Manipulaters never seemed to care much about protecting their own identities, so it’s not surprising that they were unable or unwilling to protect their own customers. In an analysis released last year, DomainTools.com found the web-hosted version of Heartsender leaked an extraordinary amount of user information to unauthenticated users, including customer credentials and email records from Heartsender employees.

Almost every year since their founding, The Manipulaters have posted a picture of a FudCo cake from a company party celebrating its anniversary.

DomainTools also uncovered evidence that the computers used by The Manipulaters were all infected with the same password-stealing malware, and that vast numbers of credentials were stolen from the group and sold online.

“Ironically, the Manipulaters may create more short-term risk to their own customers than law enforcement,” DomainTools wrote. “The data table ‘User Feedbacks’ (sic) exposes what appear to be customer authentication tokens, user identifiers, and even a customer support request that exposes root-level SMTP credentials–all visible by an unauthenticated user on a Manipulaters-controlled domain.”

Police in The Netherlands said the investigation into the owners and customers of the service is ongoing.

“The Cybercrime Team is on the trail of a number of buyers of the tools,” the Dutch national police said. “Presumably, these buyers also include Dutch nationals. The investigation into the makers and buyers of this phishing software has not yet been completed with the seizure of the servers and domains.”

U.S. authorities this week also joined law enforcement in Australia, France, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain in seizing a number of domains for several long-running cybercrime forums and services, including Cracked and Nulled. According to a statement from the European police agency Europol, the two communities attracted more than 10 million users in total.

Other domains seized as part of “Operation Talent” included Sellix, an e-commerce platform that was frequently used by cybercrime forum members to buy and sell illicit goods and services.

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File-Unpumper - Tool That Can Be Used To Trim Useless Things From A PE File Such As The Things A File Pumper Would Add

file-unpumper is a powerful command-line utility designed to clean and analyze Portable Executable (PE) files. It provides a range of features to help developers and security professionals work with PE files more effectively.

Features

• PE Header Fixing: file-unpumper can fix and align the PE headers of a given executable file. This is particularly useful for resolving issues caused by packers or obfuscators that modify the headers.

• Resource Extraction: The tool can extract embedded resources from a PE file, such as icons, bitmaps, or other data resources. This can be helpful for reverse engineering or analyzing the contents of an executable.

• Metadata Analysis: file-unpumper provides a comprehensive analysis of the PE file's metadata, including information about the machine architecture, number of sections, timestamp, subsystem, image base, and section details.

• File Cleaning: The core functionality of file-unpumper is to remove any "pumped" or padded data from a PE file, resulting in a cleaned version of the executable. This can aid in malware analysis, reverse engineering, or simply reducing the file size.

• Parallel Processing: To ensure efficient performance, file-unpumper leverages the power of parallel processing using the rayon crate, allowing it to handle large files with ease.

• Progress Tracking: During the file cleaning process, a progress bar is displayed, providing a visual indication of the operation's progress and estimated time remaining.

Installation

file-unpumper is written in Rust and can be easily installed using the Cargo package manager:

cargo install file-unpumper

Usage

• <INPUT>: The path to the input PE file.

Options

• --fix-headers: Fix and align the PE headers of the input file.
• --extract-resources: Extract embedded resources from the input file.
• --analyze-metadata: Analyze and display the PE file's metadata.
• -h, --help: Print help information.
• -V, --version: Print version information.

Examples

1. Clean a PE file and remove any "pumped" data:

bash file-unpumper path/to/input.exe

1. Fix the PE headers and analyze the metadata of a file:

bash file-unpumper --fix-headers --analyze-metadata path/to/input.exe

1. Extract resources from a PE file:

bash file-unpumper --extract-resources path/to/input.exe

1. Perform all available operations on a file:

bash file-unpumper --fix-headers --extract-resources --analyze-metadata path/to/input.exe

Contributing

Contributions to file-unpumper are welcome! If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please open an issue or submit a pull request on the GitHub repository.

Changelog

The latest changelogs can be found in CHANGELOG.md

License

file-unpumper is released under the MIT License.

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The Not-So-Secret Network Access Broker x999xx

Most accomplished cybercriminals go out of their way to separate their real names from their hacker handles. But among certain old-school Russian hackers it is not uncommon to find major players who have done little to prevent people from figuring out who they are in real life. A case study in this phenomenon is “x999xx,” the nickname chosen by a venerated Russian hacker who specializes in providing the initial network access to various ransomware groups.

x999xx is a well-known “access broker” who frequently sells access to hacked corporate networks — usually in the form of remote access credentials — as well as compromised databases containing large amounts of personal and financial data.

In an analysis published in February 2019, cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint called x999xx one of the most senior and prolific members of the top-tier Russian-language cybercrime forum Exploit, where x999xx could be seen frequently advertising the sale of stolen databases and network credentials.

In August 2023, x999xx sold access to a company that develops software for the real estate industry. In July 2023, x999xx advertised the sale of Social Security numbers, names, and birthdays for the citizenry of an entire U.S. state (unnamed in the auction).

A month earlier, x999xx posted a sales thread for 80 databases taken from Australia’s largest retail company. “You may use this data to demand a ransom or do something different with it,” x999xx wrote on Exploit. “Unfortunately, the flaw was patched fast. [+] no one has used the data yet [+] the data hasn’t been used to send spam [+] the data is waiting for its time.”

In October 2022, x999xx sold administrative access to a U.S. healthcare provider.

ALIAS: MAXNM

The oldest account by the name x999xx appeared in 2009 on the Russian language cybercrime forum Verified, under the email address maxnm@ozersk.com. Ozersk is a city in the Chelyabinsk region of west-central Russia.

According to the breach tracking service Constella Intelligence, the address maxnm@ozersk.com was used more than a decade ago to create an account at Vktontakte (the Russian answer to Facebook) under the name Maxim Kirtsov from Ozersk. Mr. Kirtsov’s profile — “maxnm” — says his birthday is September 5, 1991.

Personal photos Maxnm shared on Vktontakte in 2016. The caption has been machine translated from Russian.

The user x999xx registered on the Russian language cybercrime community Zloy in 2014 using the email address maxnmalias-1@yahoo.com. Constella says this email address was used in 2022 at the Russian shipping service cdek.ru by a Maksim Georgievich Kirtsov from Ozersk.

Additional searches on these contact details reveal that prior to 2009, x999xx favored the handle Maxnm on Russian cybercrime forums. Cyber intelligence company Intel 471 finds the user Maxnm registered on Zloy in 2006 from an Internet address in Chelyabinsk, using the email address kirtsov@telecom.ozersk.ru.

That same email address was used to create Maxnm accounts on several other crime forums, including Spamdot and Exploit in 2005 (also from Chelyabinsk), and Damagelab in 2006.

A search in Constella for the Russian version of Kirtsov’s full name — Кирцов Максим Георгиевич — brings up multiple accounts registered to maksya@icloud.com.

A review of the digital footprint for maksya@icloud.com at osint.industries reveals this address was used a decade ago to register a still-active account at imageshack.com under the name x999xx. That account features numerous screenshots of financial statements from various banks, chat logs with other hackers, and even hacked websites.

x999xx’s Imageshack account includes screenshots of bank account balances from dozens of financial institutions, as well as chat logs with other hackers and pictures of homegrown weed.

Some of the photos in that Imageshack account also appear on Kirtsov’s Vkontakte page, including images of vehicles he owns, as well as pictures of potted marijuana plants. Kirtsov’s Vkontakte profile says that in 2012 he was a faculty member of the Ozersk Technological Institute National Research Nuclear University.

The Vkontakte page lists Kirtsov’s occupation as a website called ozersk[.]today, which on the surface appears to be a blog about life in Ozersk. However, in 2019 the security firm Recorded Future published a blog post which found this domain was being used to host a malicious Cobalt Strike server.

Cobalt Strike is a commercial network penetration testing and reconnaissance tool that is sold only to vetted partners. But stolen or ill-gotten Cobalt Strike licenses are frequently abused by cybercriminal gangs to help lay the groundwork for the installation of ransomware on a victim network.

In August 2023, x999xx posted a message on Exploit saying he was interested in buying a licensed version of Cobalt Strike. A month earlier, x999xx filed a complaint on Exploit against another forum member named Cobaltforce, an apparent onetime partner whose sudden and prolonged disappearance from the community left x999xx and others in the lurch. Cobaltforce recruited people experienced in using Cobalt Strike for ransomware operations, and offered to monetize access to hacked networks for a share of the profits.

DomainTools.com finds ozersk[.]today was registered to the email address dashin2008@yahoo.com, which also was used to register roughly two dozen other domains, including x999xx[.]biz. Virtually all of those domains were registered to Maxim Kirtsov from Ozersk. Below is a mind map used to track the identities mentioned in this story.

A visual depiction of the data points connecting x999xx to Max Kirtsov.

x999xx is a prolific member of the Russian webmaster forum “Gofuckbiz,” with more than 2,000 posts over nearly a decade, according to Intel 471. In one post from 2016, x999xx asked whether anyone knew where he could buy a heat lamp that simulates sunlight, explaining that one his pet rabbits had recently perished for lack of adequate light and heat. Mr. Kirtsov’s Vkontakte page includes several pictures of caged rabbits from 2015 and earlier.

CONFIRMATION

Reached via email, Mr. Kirtsov acknowledged that he is x999xx. Kirtsov said he and his team are also regular readers of KrebsOnSecurity.

“We’re glad to hear and read you,” Kirtsov replied.

Asked whether he was concerned about the legal and moral implications of his work, Kirtsov downplayed his role in ransomware intrusions, saying he was more focused on harvesting data.

“I consider myself as committed to ethical practices as you are,” Kirtsov wrote. “I have also embarked on research and am currently mentoring students. You may have noticed my activities on a forum, which I assume you know of through information gathered from public sources, possibly using the new tool you reviewed.”

“Regarding my posts about selling access, I must honestly admit, upon reviewing my own actions, I recall such mentions but believe they were never actualized,” he continued. “Many use the forum for self-serving purposes, which explains why listings of targets for sale have dwindled — they simply ceased being viable.”

Kirtsov asserted that he is not interested in harming healthcare institutions, just in stealing their data.

“As for health-related matters, I was once acquainted with affluent webmasters who would pay up to $50 for every 1000 health-themed emails,” Kirtsov said. “Therefore, I had no interest in the more sensitive data from medical institutions like X-rays, insurance numbers, or even names; I focused solely on emails. I am proficient in SQL, hence my ease with handling data like IDs and emails. And i never doing spam or something like this.”

On the Russian crime forums, x999xx said he never targets anything or anyone in Russia, and that he has little to fear from domestic law enforcement agencies provided he remains focused on foreign adversaries.

x999xx’s lackadaisical approach to personal security mirrors that of Wazawaka, another top Russian access broker who sold access to countless organizations and even operated his own ransomware affiliate programs.

“Don’t shit where you live, travel local, and don’t go abroad,” Wazawaka said of his own personal mantra. “Mother Russia will help you. Love your country, and you will always get away with everything.”

In January 2022, KrebsOnSecurity followed clues left behind by Wazawaka to identify him as 32-year-old Mikhail Matveev from Khakassia, Russia. In May 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Matveev as a key figure in several ransomware groups that collectively extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from victim organizations. The U.S. State Department is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture and/or prosecution of Matveev.

Perhaps in recognition that many top ransomware criminals are largely untouchable so long as they remain in Russia, western law enforcement agencies have begun focusing more on getting inside the heads of those individuals. These so-called “psyops” are aimed at infiltrating ransomware-as-a-service operations, disrupting major cybercrime services, and decreasing trust within cybercriminal communities.

When authorities in the U.S. and U.K. announced in February 2024 that they’d infiltrated and seized the infrastructure used by the infamous LockBit ransomware gang, they borrowed the existing design of LockBit’s victim shaming website to link instead to press releases about the takedown, and included a countdown timer that was eventually replaced with the personal details of LockBit’s alleged leader.

In May 2024, law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe announced Operation Endgame, a coordinated action against some of the most popular cybercrime platforms for delivering ransomware and data-stealing malware. The Operation Endgame website also included a countdown timer, which served to tease the release of several animated videos that mimic the same sort of flashy, short advertisements that established cybercriminals often produce to promote their services online.

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‘Operation Endgame’ Hits Malware Delivery Platforms

Law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe today announced Operation Endgame, a coordinated action against some of the most popular cybercrime platforms for delivering ransomware and data-stealing malware. Dubbed “the largest ever operation against botnets,” the international effort is being billed as the opening salvo in an ongoing campaign targeting advanced malware “droppers” or “loaders” like IcedID, Smokeloader and Trickbot.

A frame from one of three animated videos released today in connection with Operation Endgame.

Operation Endgame targets the cybercrime ecosystem supporting droppers/loaders, slang terms used to describe tiny, custom-made programs designed to surreptitiously install malware onto a target system. Droppers are typically used in the initial stages of a breach, and they allow cybercriminals to bypass security measures and deploy additional harmful programs, including viruses, ransomware, or spyware.

Droppers like IcedID are most often deployed through email attachments, hacked websites, or bundled with legitimate software. For example, cybercriminals have long used paid ads on Google to trick people into installing malware disguised as popular free software, such as Microsoft Teams, Adobe Reader and Discord. In those cases, the dropper is the hidden component bundled with the legitimate software that quietly loads malware onto the user’s system.

Droppers remain such a critical, human-intensive component of nearly all major cybercrime enterprises that the most popular have turned into full-fledged cybercrime services of their own. By targeting the individuals who develop and maintain dropper services and their supporting infrastructure, authorities are hoping to disrupt multiple cybercriminal operations simultaneously.

According to a statement from the European police agency Europol, between May 27 and May 29, 2024 authorities arrested four suspects (one in Armenia and three in Ukraine), and disrupted or took down more than 100 Internet servers in Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, United States and Ukraine. Authorities say they also seized more than 2,000 domain names that supported dropper infrastructure online.

In addition, Europol released information on eight fugitives suspected of involvement in dropper services and who are wanted by Germany; their names and photos were added to Europol’s “Most Wanted” list on 30 May 2024.

A “wanted” poster including the names and photos of eight suspects wanted by Germany and now on Europol’s “Most Wanted” list.

“It has been discovered through the investigations so far that one of the main suspects has earned at least EUR 69 million in cryptocurrency by renting out criminal infrastructure sites to deploy ransomware,” Europol wrote. “The suspect’s transactions are constantly being monitored and legal permission to seize these assets upon future actions has already been obtained.”

There have been numerous such coordinated malware takedown efforts in the past, and yet often the substantial amount of coordination required between law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity firms involved is not sustained after the initial disruption and/or arrests.

But a new website erected to detail today’s action — operation-endgame.com — makes the case that this time is different, and that more takedowns and arrests are coming. “Operation Endgame does not end today,” the site promises. “New actions will be announced on this website.”

A message on operation-endgame.com promises more law enforcement and disruption actions.

Perhaps in recognition that many of today’s top cybercriminals reside in countries that are effectively beyond the reach of international law enforcement, actions like Operation Endgame seem increasingly focused on mind games — i.e., trolling the hackers.

Writing in this month’s issue of Wired, Matt Burgess makes the case that Western law enforcement officials have turned to psychological measures as an added way to slow down Russian hackers and cut to the heart of the sweeping cybercrime ecosystem.

“These nascent psyops include efforts to erode the limited trust the criminals have in each other, driving subtle wedges between fragile hacker egos, and sending offenders personalized messages showing they’re being watched,” Burgess wrote.

When authorities in the U.S. and U.K. announced in February 2024 that they’d infiltrated and seized the infrastructure used by the infamous LockBit ransomware gang, they borrowed the existing design of LockBit’s victim shaming website to link instead to press releases about the takedown, and included a countdown timer that was eventually replaced with the personal details of LockBit’s alleged leader.

The feds used the existing design on LockBit’s victim shaming website to feature press releases and free decryption tools.

The Operation Endgame website also includes a countdown timer, which serves to tease the release of several animated videos that mimic the same sort of flashy, short advertisements that established cybercriminals often produce to promote their services online. At least two of the videos include a substantial amount of text written in Russian.

The coordinated takedown comes on the heels of another law enforcement action this week against what the director of the FBI called “likely the world’s largest botnet ever.” On Wednesday U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the arrest of YunHe Wang, the alleged operator of the ten-year-old online anonymity service 911 S5. The government also seized 911 S5’s domains and online infrastructure, which allegedly turned computers running various “free VPN” products into Internet traffic relays that facilitated billions of dollars in online fraud and cybercrime.

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Feds Seize LockBit Ransomware Websites, Offer Decryption Tools, Troll Affiliates

U.S. and U.K. authorities have seized the darknet websites run by LockBit, a prolific and destructive ransomware group that has claimed more than 2,000 victims worldwide and extorted over $120 million in payments. Instead of listing data stolen from ransomware victims who didn’t pay, LockBit’s victim shaming website now offers free recovery tools, as well as news about arrests and criminal charges involving LockBit affiliates.

Investigators used the existing design on LockBit’s victim shaming website to feature press releases and free decryption tools.

Dubbed “Operation Cronos,” the law enforcement action involved the seizure of nearly three-dozen servers; the arrest of two alleged LockBit members; the unsealing of two indictments; the release of a free LockBit decryption tool; and the freezing of more than 200 cryptocurrency accounts thought to be tied to the gang’s activities.

LockBit members have executed attacks against thousands of victims in the United States and around the world, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). First surfacing in September 2019, the gang is estimated to have made hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in ransom demands, and extorted over $120 million in ransom payments.

LockBit operated as a ransomware-as-a-service group, wherein the ransomware gang takes care of everything from the bulletproof hosting and domains to the development and maintenance of the malware. Meanwhile, affiliates are solely responsible for finding new victims, and can reap 60 to 80 percent of any ransom amount ultimately paid to the group.

A statement on Operation Cronos from the European police agency Europol said the months-long infiltration resulted in the compromise of LockBit’s primary platform and other critical infrastructure, including the takedown of 34 servers in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, France, Switzerland, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Europol said two suspected LockBit actors were arrested in Poland and Ukraine, but no further information has been released about those detained.

The DOJ today unsealed indictments against two Russian men alleged to be active members of LockBit. The government says Russian national Artur Sungatov used LockBit ransomware against victims in manufacturing, logistics, insurance and other companies throughout the United States.

Ivan Gennadievich Kondratyev, a.k.a. “Bassterlord,” allegedly deployed LockBit against targets in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan, and Lebanon. Kondratyev is also charged (PDF) with three criminal counts arising from his alleged use of the Sodinokibi (aka “REvil“) ransomware variant to encrypt data, exfiltrate victim information, and extort a ransom payment from a corporate victim based in Alameda County, California.

With the indictments of Sungatov and Kondratyev, a total of five LockBit affiliates now have been officially charged. In May 2023, U.S. authorities unsealed indictments against two alleged LockBit affiliates, Mikhail “Wazawaka” Matveev and Mikhail Vasiliev.

Vasiliev, 35, of Bradford, Ontario, Canada, is in custody in Canada awaiting extradition to the United States (the complaint against Vasiliev is at this PDF). Matveev remains at large, presumably still in Russia. In January 2022, KrebsOnSecurity published Who is the Network Access Broker ‘Wazawaka,’ which followed clues from Wazawaka’s many pseudonyms and contact details on the Russian-language cybercrime forums back to a 31-year-old Mikhail Matveev from Abaza, RU.

An FBI wanted poster for Matveev.

In June 2023, Russian national Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov was charged in New Jersey for his participation in the LockBit conspiracy, including the deployment of LockBit against victims in Florida, Japan, France, and Kenya. Astamirov is currently in custody in the United States awaiting trial.

LockBit was known to have recruited affiliates that worked with multiple ransomware groups simultaneously, and it’s unclear what impact this takedown may have on competing ransomware affiliate operations. The security firm ProDaft said on Twitter/X that the infiltration of LockBit by investigators provided “in-depth visibility into each affiliate’s structures, including ties with other notorious groups such as FIN7, Wizard Spider, and EvilCorp.”

In a lengthy thread about the LockBit takedown on the Russian-language cybercrime forum XSS, one of the gang’s leaders said the FBI and the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) had infiltrated its servers using a known vulnerability in PHP, a scripting language that is widely used in Web development.

Several denizens of XSS wondered aloud why the PHP flaw was not flagged by LockBit’s vaunted “Bug Bounty” program, which promised a financial reward to affiliates who could find and quietly report any security vulnerabilities threatening to undermine LockBit’s online infrastructure.

This prompted several XSS members to start posting memes taunting the group about the security failure.

“Does it mean that the FBI provided a pentesting service to the affiliate program?,” one denizen quipped. “Or did they decide to take part in the bug bounty program? :):)”

Federal investigators also appear to be trolling LockBit members with their seizure notices. LockBit’s data leak site previously featured a countdown timer for each victim organization listed, indicating the time remaining for the victim to pay a ransom demand before their stolen files would be published online. Now, the top entry on the shaming site is a countdown timer until the public doxing of “LockBitSupp,” the unofficial spokesperson or figurehead for the LockBit gang.

“Who is LockbitSupp?” the teaser reads. “The $10m question.”

In January 2024, LockBitSupp told XSS forum members he was disappointed the FBI hadn’t offered a reward for his doxing and/or arrest, and that in response he was placing a bounty on his own head — offering $10 million to anyone who could discover his real name.

“My god, who needs me?,” LockBitSupp wrote on Jan. 22, 2024. “There is not even a reward out for me on the FBI website. By the way, I want to use this chance to increase the reward amount for a person who can tell me my full name from USD 1 million to USD 10 million. The person who will find out my name, tell it to me and explain how they were able to find it out will get USD 10 million. Please take note that when looking for criminals, the FBI uses unclear wording offering a reward of UP TO USD 10 million; this means that the FBI can pay you USD 100, because technically, it’s an amount UP TO 10 million. On the other hand, I am willing to pay USD 10 million, no more and no less.”

Mark Stockley, cybersecurity evangelist at the security firm Malwarebytes, said the NCA is obviously trolling the LockBit group and LockBitSupp.

“I don’t think this is an accident—this is how ransomware groups talk to each other,” Stockley said. “This is law enforcement taking the time to enjoy its moment, and humiliate LockBit in its own vernacular, presumably so it loses face.”

In a press conference today, the FBI said Operation Cronos included investigative assistance from the Gendarmerie-C3N in France; the State Criminal Police Office L-K-A and Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany; Fedpol and Zurich Cantonal Police in Switzerland; the National Police Agency in Japan; the Australian Federal Police; the Swedish Police Authority; the National Bureau of Investigation in Finland; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and the National Police in the Netherlands.

The Justice Department said victims targeted by LockBit should contact the FBI at https://lockbitvictims.ic3.gov/ to determine whether affected systems can be successfully decrypted. In addition, the Japanese Police, supported by Europol, have released a recovery tool designed to recover files encrypted by the LockBit 3.0 Black Ransomware.

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Caracal - Static Analyzer For Starknet Smart Contracts

Caracal is a static analyzer tool over the SIERRA representation for Starknet smart contracts.

Features

• Detectors to detect vulnerable Cairo code
• Printers to report information
• Taint analysis
• Data flow analysis framework
• Easy to run in Scarb projects

Installation

Precompiled binaries

Precompiled binaries are available on our releases page. If you are using Cairo compiler 1.x.x uses the binary v0.1.x otherwise if you are using the Cairo compiler 2.x.x uses v0.2.x.

Building from source

You need the Rust compiler and Cargo. Building from git:

cargo install --git https://github.com/crytic/caracal --profile release --force

Building from a local copy:

git clone https://github.com/crytic/caracal
cd caracal
cargo install --path . --profile release --force

Usage

List detectors:

caracal detectors

List printers:

caracal printers

Standalone

To use with a standalone cairo file you need to pass the path to the corelib library either with the --corelib cli option or by setting the CORELIB_PATH environment variable. Run detectors:

caracal detect path/file/to/analyze --corelib path/to/corelib/src

Run printers:

caracal print path/file/to/analyze --printer printer_to_use --corelib path/to/corelib/src

Scarb

If you have a project that uses Scarb you need to add the following in Scarb.toml:

[[target.starknet-contract]]
sierra = true

[cairo]
sierra-replace-ids = true

Then pass the path to the directory where Scarb.toml resides. Run detectors:

caracal detect path/to/dir

Run printers:

caracal print path/to/dir --printer printer_to_use

Detectors

The Cairo column represent the compiler version(s) for which the detector is valid.

Printers

• cfg: Export the CFG of each function to a .dot file
• callgraph: Export function call graph to a .dot file

How to contribute

Check the wiki on the following topics:

• How to write a detector
• How to write a printer

Limitations

• Inlined functions are not handled correctly.
• Since it's working over the SIERRA representation it's not possible to report where an error is in the source code but we can only report SIERRA instructions/what's available in a SIERRA program.

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BackupOperatorToolkit - The BackupOperatorToolkit Contains Different Techniques Allowing You To Escalate From Backup Operator To Domain Admin

The BackupOperatorToolkit contains different techniques allowing you to escalate from Backup Operator to Domain Admin.

Usage

The BackupOperatorToolkit (BOT) has 4 different mode that allows you to escalate from Backup Operator to Domain Admin.
Use "runas.exe /netonly /user:domain.dk\backupoperator powershell.exe" before running the tool.

Service Mode

The SERVICE mode creates a service on the remote host that will be executed when the host is rebooted.
The service is created by modyfing the remote registry. This is possible by passing the "REG_OPTION_BACKUP_RESTORE" value to RegOpenKeyExA and RegSetValueExA.
It is not possible to have the service executed immediately as the service control manager database "SERVICES_ACTIVE_DATABASE" is loaded into memory at boot and can only be modified with local administrator privileges, which the Backup Operator does not have.

.\BackupOperatorToolkit.exe SERVICE \\PATH\To\Service.exe \\TARGET.DOMAIN.DK SERVICENAME DISPLAYNAME DESCRIPTION

DSRM Mode

The DSRM mode will set the DsrmAdminLogonBehavior registry key found in "HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\LSA" to either 0, 1, or 2.
Setting the value to 0 will only allow the DSRM account to be used when in recovery mode.
Setting the value to 1 will allow the DSRM account to be used when the Directory Services service is stopped and the NTDS is unlocked.
Setting the value to 2 will allow the DSRM account to be used with network authentication such as WinRM.
If the DUMP mode has been used and the DSRM account has been cracked offline, set the value to 2 and log into the Domain Controller with the DSRM account which will be local administrator.

.\BackupOperatorToolkit.exe DSRM \\TARGET.DOMAIN.DK 0||1||2

DUMP Mode

The DUMP mode will dump the SAM, SYSTEM, and SECURITY hives to a local path on the remote host or upload the files to a network share.
Once the hives have been dumped you could PtH with the Domain Controller hash, crack DSRM and enable network auth, or possibly authenticate with another account found in the dumps. Accounts from other forests may be stored in these files, I'm not sure why but this has been observed on engagements with management forests. This mode is inspired by the BackupOperatorToDA project.

.\BackupOperatorToolkit.exe DUMP \\PATH\To\Dump \\TARGET.DOMAIN.DK

IFEO Mode

The IFEO (Image File Execution Options) will enable you to run an application when a specifc process is terminated.
This could grant a shell before the SERVICE mode will in case the target host is heavily utilized and rarely rebooted.
The executable will be running as a child to the WerFault.exe process.

.\BackupOperatorToolkit.exe IFEO notepad.exe \\Path\To\pwn.exe \\TARGET.DOMAIN.DK

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