{"id":281339,"date":"2026-06-25T04:54:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T08:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke-in-clickfix-and-modelorat-campaigns\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T08:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T12:00:09","slug":"new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke-in-clickfix-and-modelorat-campaigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke-in-clickfix-and-modelorat-campaigns\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mistic Backdoor Linked to KongTuke in ClickFix and ModeloRAT Campaigns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke.html\">New Mistic Backdoor Linked to KongTuke in ClickFix and ModeloRAT Campaigns<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke.html\">https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-25 04:54:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"thehackernews.com\">thehackernews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"p-author\">\ue804<span class=\"author\">Ravie Lakshmanan<\/span>\ue802<span class=\"author\">Jun 25, 2026<\/span><\/span><span class=\"p-tags\">Initial Access Broker \/ Ransomware<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A new, stealthy backdoor named Mistic has been deployed as part of suspected financially motivated attacks aimed at multiple organizations spanning insurance, education, IT, and professional services sectors since April 2026.<\/p>\n<p>According to Symantec and Carbon Black&#8217;s Threat Hunter Team, the backdoor, also tracked as MLTBackdoor, is said to be linked to an initial access broker (IAB) named KongTuke (aka 404 TDS, Chaya_002, LandUpdate808, TAG-124, and Woodgnat), and dropped along with ModeloRAT, a Python remote access trojan (RAT) previously attributed to the group.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The backdoor runs payloads in memory with no file written to disk and includes a kill switch that lets it delete itself, which are features consistent with an operator seeking long-term, low-visibility access,&#8221; Broadcom&#8217;s cybersecurity teams said in a report shared with The Hacker News.<\/p>\n<p>ModeloRAT was first flagged by Huntress in January 2026 in connection with a variant of a ClickFix campaign dubbed CrashFix, in which the KongTuke actors used a malicious Google Chrome extension masquerading as an ad blocker to intentionally crash a victim&#8217;s web browser and trick them into running arbitrary commands under the pretext of running a security scan.<\/p>\n<p>The malware was also distributed in a different ClickFix campaign that involved running commands carrying out a Domain Name System (DNS) lookup to retrieve the next-stage payload, with Microsoft noting that the attack chain uses DNS as a &#8220;lightweight staging or signaling channel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mistic&#8217;s use of ClickFix as a delivery vector was highlighted by Zscaler ThreatLabz earlier this month, attributing the activity to a ransomware-related threat actor to establish a foothold for lateral movement.<\/p>\n<p>The latest findings from Broadcom show that the malware relies on DLL side-loading techniques, using trusted Microsoft endpoint security tooling (&#8220;MpExtMs.exe&#8221;) to blend in and avoid raising red flags&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Mistic Backdoor Linked to KongTuke in ClickFix and ModeloRAT Campaigns https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/new-mistic-backdoor-linked-to-kongtuke.html Publish Date: 2026-06-25&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":281341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhC1-4l_iOC19z96Q7C7O_dZSKwEvMnMLhHyb7kpt2rpOzQmn3gKpz6_BaZmSpzgvyhTJf8BBQmBTx0Nvymxk1vfO5O5bE0nNGbYPHAcb5F8ZF_WjTyQe4AXSK71q6fESS9i5Rdpcfzt6ULab7eo21OZKRCYlqwU7G97mF4-AeVVANlT4YIbigdYxUJkwfy\/s1600\/clickattack.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24,35,32,34],"class_list":["post-281339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity","tag-hacker","tag-malware","tag-threat-actor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281342,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281339\/revisions\/281342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}