All Huntress Blog Posts

All Huntress Blog Posts

All things cybersecurity engaging and accessible - so you can stay ahead of hackers and boost your cybersecurity savviness.

Author: James Northey
Threat Research
Fake WatchGuard VPN Site Steals Credentials
Fake WatchGuard VPN Site Steals Credentials

A fake WatchGuard VPN download site steals SSL VPN credentials, then serves the real signed client. Learn how it works and how to spot it.

DarkMe Email Campaign Broadens Targeting For APT RAT
DarkMe Email Campaign Broadens Targeting For APT RAT

DarkMe, an APT-linked VB6 RAT known for using zero day exploits, turned up in two Huntress incidents stripped down to a plain .pif infostealer malware.

September 22, 2026
Akira Hits Safe Mode: Ransomware Rebooting Around EDR
Akira Hits Safe Mode: Ransomware Rebooting Around EDR

An Akira affiliate rebooted into Safe Mode to kill EDR and Defender, then Safe Mode broke their own ransomware. Here’s the full attack chain.

August 12, 2026
Codex Red: Untangling a Linux Incident With an OpenAI Twist (Part 2)
Codex Red: Untangling a Linux Incident With an OpenAI Twist (Part 2)

A developer used OpenAI’s Codex to handle suspicious Linux activity, leading to unexpected outcomes found by Huntress SOC analysts during an investigation.

Codex Red: Untangling a Linux Incident With an OpenAI Twist (Part 1)
Codex Red: Untangling a Linux Incident With an OpenAI Twist (Part 1)

A Linux user's attempt to use OpenAI's Codex to troubleshoot and respond to malicious activity on their system complicated a subsequent DFIR investigation by the Huntress SOC because the AI-generated commands were flagged as suspicious, making it difficult to distinguish legitimate user actions from the two active threat actors.

When PUPs Grow Fangs: Dragon Boss Solutions Left an Open Door on 25,000+ Endpoints
When PUPs Grow Fangs: Dragon Boss Solutions Left an Open Door on 25,000+ Endpoints

Understand a malware operation using a signed Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) from Dragon Boss Solutions LLC to silently deploy a PowerShell-based AV killer with SYSTEM privileges. The most critical finding was that the malware's primary update domain, chromsterabrowser[.]com, was unregistered, creating a supply-chain risk where anyone could've registered the domain to push ransomware or other payloads to the 23,565 compromised endpoints.

April 14, 2026
Velociraptor Misuse, Pt. II: The Eye of the Storm
Velociraptor Misuse, Pt. II: The Eye of the Storm

The threat actors from Part I weren't done. Part II tracks what happened after WSUS exploitation put a legitimate forensic tool in the wrong hands and how Huntress responded.

The Crown Prince, Nezha: A New Tool Favored by China-Nexus Threat Actors
The Crown Prince, Nezha: A New Tool Favored by China-Nexus Threat Actors

Nezha is a post-exploitation tool appearing in China-nexus intrusions, and it wasn't built for cybercrime. After Huntress published the research, someone from Mainland China reached out with context.

From Custom Scripts to Commodity RATs: A Threat Actor’s Evolution to PureRAT
From Custom Scripts to Commodity RATs: A Threat Actor’s Evolution to PureRAT

What looked like a standard Python infostealer campaign turned into something more deliberate: a threat actor pairing custom tooling with off-the-shelf PureRAT. Here's how the progression played out.

September 25, 2025