Threats Affecting Chile

Beginning in August 2025, a sophisticated intrusion was discovered where attackers used log poisoning techniques to deploy a web shell on vulnerable phpMyAdmin panels. The threat actors exploited misconfigured web applications to plant China Chopper web shells, controlled via AntSword, before deploying Nezha, an open-source monitoring tool, to facilitate remote command execution. This led to the deployment of Ghost RAT on compromised systems. Analysis revealed over 100 compromised machines, predominantly located in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The attackers demonstrated technical proficiency through multi-stage operations, utilizing AWS and VPS infrastructure, with indicators pointing to China-nexus threat actors. The campaign highlights increasing abuse of legitimate publicly available tools to achieve malicious objectives while maintaining plausible deniability.

MediumMalwareUnited StatesAngolaArgentina+46#phpmyadmin#gh0st rat#china-nexus

A phishing campaign targeting Chile continues to evolve with significant infrastructure expansion. Security researchers identified 99 new domains impersonating the legitimate PasasteSinTAG portal, with 22 domains confirmed active and 77 registered but not yet activated. The active domains utilize various top-level domains including .click, .cfd, .cyou, .mom, .best, .rest, .top, .help, .sbs, .icu, .life, .xyz, .buzz, .casa, and .pics. The infrastructure is hosted across seven IP addresses. This campaign represents an ongoing threat to Chilean users through brand impersonation tactics, with threat actors maintaining a large reserve of dormant domains for future rotation.

MediumCampaignChile#brand impersonation#credential harvesting#pasastesintag