Palin hacker sentenced to one year in custody

The U.S. has continued its crackdown against North Korean IT worker scams with sanctions against the country's government weapons trading office Department 53 and its Laos-based front companies Korea Osong Shipping and Chonsurim Trading Corporation and their respective leaders, as well as China-based Liaoning China Trade Industry.

Both campaigns involved the distribution of malicious emails purporting to be invoices, purchase orders, or quotation requests with attachments, which when opened triggers a PowerShell script fetching the trojanized image and executing a .NET-based loader to launch the payloads.

Malicious emails under the guise of a U.S. government official sought to lure individuals part of the government and diplomacy sectors into joining a WhatsApp group on non-governmental initiatives for Ukraine NGOs through a shortened link that redirected to a webpage seeking a QR code scan.