- Chrome zero-day exploit to assault Russian establishments utilizing Dante adware
- Dante, linked to Memento Labs, lets you escape from the sandbox and steal recordsdata
- Commercial adware is usually bought to regimes that focus on dissidents and journalists.
According to specialists, a high-severity vulnerability in Google Chrome was being abused as a zero-day, to assault Russian media retailers, authorities organizations, and academic and monetary establishments.
Cybersecurity researchers at Kaspersky Lab stated they used business malware known as Dante as a part of what they known as Operation ForumTroll in March 2025.
During the investigation, the group noticed that an 8.3/10 (excessive) “mishandling” vulnerability was being exploited within the Chrome browser, permitting distant attackers to carry out a sandbox escape by way of a malicious file, stealing delicate recordsdata from the underlying system.
Dante adware
The malware used on this assault was later recognized as Dante, a business adware supposedly developed by an organization known as Memento Labs.
This firm is the successor to Hacking Team, an Italian firm that was acquired after struggling a cyberattack in 2015, when confidential recordsdata have been leaked to the general public revealing that Hacking Team was promoting its instruments to authoritarian regimes and varied authorities establishments.
The firm was acquired in 2019 by InTheCyberGroup, which used it as a base to determine Memento Labs, which in 2023 reportedly introduced Dante adware on the ISS World Middle East and Africa convention.
Commercial adware corporations aren’t precisely new, however they’re usually frowned upon.
Many promote their companies as assist towards terrorism, cyber espionage and varied clandestine actions, however in actuality many are promoting their companies to authoritarian regimes. These governments then use the malware to assault high-profile political opponents, dissidents, journalists, overseas diplomats, and related people.
Perhaps the very best instance is the Israeli group NSO, which was blacklisted by the United States in 2021 for creating and supplying adware that overseas governments used to “maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers,” which was thought-about opposite to the nationwide safety and overseas coverage pursuits of the United States.
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