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An official website of the United States government . Here’s how you know . Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock (LockA locked padlock) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. O’Reilly of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) of the U.S. Among other things, Zhu and Zhang registered IT infrastructure that the APT10 Group used for its intrusions and engaged in illegal hacking operations. The indictment alleges that the defendants were part of a group that hacked computers in at least a dozen countries and gave China’s intelligence service access to sensitive business information,” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. It's going to take all of us working together to protect our economic security and our way of life, because the American people deserve no less. The APT10 Group used some of the same online facilities to initiate, facilitate and execute its campaigns during the conspiracy. Earlier, beginning in or about 2006, members of the APT10 Group, including Zhu and Zhang, engaged in an intrusion campaign to obtain unauthorized access to the computers and computer networks of more than 45 technology companies and U.S. To avoid antivirus detection, the malware was installed using malicious files that masqueraded as legitimate files associated with the victim computer’s operating system. Such malware enabled members of the APT10 Group to monitor victims’ computers remotely and steal user credentials | ['T1199'] |
The Iranian attacker group (APT35) and the Chinese attacker group (APT31) targeted campaign staffers’ personal emails with credential phishing emails and emails containing tracking links. As part of our wider tracking of APT31 activity, we've also seen them deploy targeted malware campaigns | ['T1598'] |
PLEAD and KIVARS, for instance, share the use of RTLO techniques to disguise their installers as documents. Both also use decoy documents to make the RTLO attack more convincing. Another similarity is the use of a small loader component to load encrypted backdoors into memory | ['T1204.002'] |
Nyetya requires user credentials to spread itself laterally via the PsExec and WMI vectors (which are detailed in the "Malware Functionality" section). Talos has identified three ways Nyetya can obtain these credentials. First, credentials can be manually passed in via a command line argument | ['T1078.003'] |
Often service accounts are members of Domain Admins (or equivalent) or a Domain Admin was recently logged on to the computer an attacker dump credentials from. Using these credentials, an attacker can gain access to a Domain Controller and get all domain credentials, including the KRBTGT account NTLM hash which is used to create Kerberos Golden Tickets | ['T1550.003'] |
Analysis of the threat actor’s indicators of compromise (IOCs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) indicates a correlation with the group known by the names, Pioneer Kitten and UNC757. This threat actor has been observed exploiting several publicly known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) dealing with Pulse Secure virtual private network (VPN), Citrix NetScaler, and F5 vulnerabilities. This threat actor used these vulnerabilities to gain initial access to targeted networks and then maintained access within the successfully exploited networks for several months using multiple means of persistence | ['T1190'] |
The touch utility sets the modification and access times of files. If any file does not exist, it is created with default permissions. This makes the utility useful to malware in two common scenarios: for creating an empty file at a given path that is later passed data, and/or for changing the timestamp on a file as a means of evasion, also known as “timestomping | ['T1222.002'] |
For the rest, we acknowledge that the subdomains used could be indicative of the target; they could also be used to go after third parties that might trust those organizations | ['T1583.001'] |
Both backdoors target Arabic-speaking users. They use code that checks if the compromised machine has the Arabic language installed | ['T1614.001', 'T1614.001'] |
Digital delivery of over 3,000 APT1 indicators, such as domain names, and MD5 hashes of malware. Thirteen (13) X.509 encryption certificates used by APT1. A set of APT1 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and detailed descriptions of over 40 malware families in APT1's arsenal of digital weapons. IOCs that can be used in conjunction with Redline™, Mandiant's free host-based investigative tool, or with Mandiant Intelligent Response® (MIR), Mandiant's commercial enterprise investigative tool | ['T1036.005'] |
Doki uses a previously undocumented method to contact its operator by abusing the Dogecoin cryptocurrency blockchain in a unique way in order to dynamically generate its C2 domain address. The malware has managed to stay under the radar for over six months despite samples being publicly available in VirusTotal | ['T1102'] |
Using job opportunities as template is the known method used by Lazarus to target its victims. The documents created by this actor are well designed and contain a large icon for a known company such as LockHeed Martin, BAE Systems, Boeing and Northrop Grumman in the template. In this campaign the actor has targeted people that are looking for job opportunities at Lockheed Martin. Targeting the defense industry and specifically Lockheed Martin is a known target for this actor | ['T1566.001'] |
Since this malicious extension is trying to pass for a legitimate Chrome plugin, Grandoreiro’s developer named it “Google Plugin” version 1.5.0. Visually, it adds a square button to the browser window instead of the “cookie” button on the original plugin | ['T1176'] |
Before writing a keystroke to the log, the malware obtains the current locale identifier using the ‘GetKeyboardLayout’ API. The retrieved value is checked against several hardcoded paths in which the low DWORD is set to 0x0429 | ['T1614.001'] |
According to the public source data, these airlines use services of the same IT service provider. To help companies detect and hunt for ColunmTK, we have provided a full list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) that we retrieved. It came to light that the cyberattack on this IT service provider affected 4,500,000 data subjects globally, including data related to Air India's customers. ColunmTK Timeline Connections with APT41 Group-IB researchers believe with moderate confidence that the ColunmTK campaign was carried out by APT41, a prolific Chinese-speaking nation-state threat actor. APT41, also known as WICKED SPIDER (PANDA), Winnti Umbrella, and BARIUM, is believed to have been engaging in state-sponsored espionage in China's interests as well as committing financially motivated cybercrimes. APT41 is known for stealing digital certificates for its cyber espionage operations. The IP address was also used to host the Cobalt Strike framework and shared an SSL certificate, b3038101fd0e8b11c519f739f12c7e9b60234d3b, with ColunmTK's IP address 185[.]118[.]166[.]66. Source: Group-IB Threat Intelligence & Attribution Another interesting domain is service[.]dns22[.]ml. In both cases, the files were used to establish persistence in the network. The files are very similar in the way they launch a DLL file as a service and create keys in the registry | ['T1543.003'] |
FireEye Intelligence has previously reported that APT33 has ties to destructive malware, and they pose a heightened risk to critical infrastructure. This risk is pronounced in the energy sector, which we consistently observe them target. That targeting aligns with Iranian national priorities for economic growth and competitive advantage, especially relating to petrochemical production | ['T1110.003'] |
Given Lazarus’ use of a wide array of tools and techniques in their operations, it’s reasonable to assume that the group will continue to use ever-evolving tactics in their malicious activities. Overall, an organization will need multilayered security strategies, as Lazarus and other similar groups are experienced cybercriminals who employ different strategies to get past organizational defenses | ['T1189'] |
After the wiping procedure, the malware tries to delete the shadow copies by running the following commands: vssadmin.exe delete shadows /all /quiet **and **C:\\Windows\\system32\\wbem\\wmic.exe shadowcopy delete. Finally, the malware enters an infinite loop where it sleeps based on the is_alive_loop_interval value from the configuration file and writes "Meteor is still alive | ['T1047'] |
As can be seen above, the script gathers OS version, a session UID and machine ID, all of which it posts to the server for processing | ['T1082'] |
According to the public source data, these airlines use services of the same IT service provider. It came to light that the cyberattack on this IT service provider affected 4,500,000 data subjects globally, including data related to Air India's customers. Compromise of Air India's network In mid-February 2021, Group-IB's Threat Intelligence & Attribution system detected infected devices that were part of Air India's computer network. It took the attackers 24 hours and 5 minutes to spread Cobalt Strike beacons to other devices in the airline's network. ColunmTK Timeline Connections with APT41 Group-IB researchers believe with moderate confidence that the ColunmTK campaign was carried out by APT41, a prolific Chinese-speaking nation-state threat actor. According to Group-IB's Threat Intelligence & Attribution system, the threat actor has been active since at least 2007. APT41 is known for stealing digital certificates for its cyber espionage operations. The IP address was also used to host the Cobalt Strike framework and shared an SSL certificate, b3038101fd0e8b11c519f739f12c7e9b60234d3b, with ColunmTK's IP address 185[.]118[.]166[.]66. The file is very similar to one used by APT41 in a different campaign described by FireEye researchers. The files are very similar in the way they launch a DLL file as a service and create keys in the registry | ['T1569.002'] |
Additionally, the attackers used a genuine code-signing certificate issued to a Cyprus-based company called Hermetica Digital Ltd | ['T1553.002'] |
We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. This is beneficial for the website, in order to make valid reports on the use of their website.Expiry: PersistentType: HTMLrc::cThis cookie is used to distinguish between humans and bots. Expiry: SessionType: HTMLKaspersky Lab2Learn more about this providertest [x2]Used to detect if the visitor has accepted the marketing category in the cookie banner. Expiry: SessionType: HTTPMarketo2Learn more about this provider__cf_bmThis cookie is used to distinguish between humans and bots. Expiry: 2 yearsType: HTTP25 Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. This can be used for marketing purposes. This is used in context with the email marketing service Marketo.com, which allows the website to target visitors via email | ['T1078'] |
Use automated methods, such as scripts, for collecting data (Automated Collection [T1119]) - Capture user input to obtain credentials and collect information (Input Capture [T1056]) - Collect local systems data from a compromised system (Data from Local System [T1005]) - Take screen captures of the desktop (Screen Capture [T1113]) - Collect data stored in the Windows clipboard from users (Clipboard Data [T1115 | ['T1005'] |
A service DLL (loaded by svchost.exe) with a ServiceMain function typically named NetSetupServiceMain - A standard non-Service DLL loaded by rundll32.exe | ['T1558.003'] |
OSX/Keydnap uses a Tor2Web proxy for command and control. An installed launch agent, icloudproc, is automatically started by the OS, and listens on 127.0.0.1:9050. As noted by ESET, the main backdoor component (icloudsyncd) uses this proxy for communication purposes: “Keydnap is using the onion.to Tor2Web proxy over HTTPS to report back to its C&C server | ['T1543.001'] |
Communication over DNS tunnel with a hardcoded domain name and DGA-generated subdomain - C2 traffic encrypted with RSA-2048 - Custom AES-encrypted storage format used to store configuration, plugins, and harvested data - Unique version number for each sample | ['T1071.004', 'T1027'] |
Volexity is seeing active in-the-wild exploitation of multiple Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities used to steal e-mail and compromise networks. In January 2021, through its Network Security Monitoring service, Volexity detected anomalous activity from two of its customers' Microsoft Exchange servers. This vulnerability is remotely exploitable and does not require authentication of any kind, nor does it require any special knowledge or access to a target environment. Additionally, Volexity is providing alternative mitigations that may be used by defenders to assist in securing their Microsoft Exchange instances. This vulnerability has been confirmed to exist within the latest version of Exchange 2016 on a fully patched Windows Server 2016 server. Volexity also confirmed the vulnerability exists in Exchange 2019 but has not tested against a fully patched version, although it believes they are vulnerable. There are two methods to download e-mail with this vulnerability, depending on the way that Microsoft Exchange has been configured. In the case where a single server is being used to provide the Exchange service, Volexity believes the attacker must know the targeted user’s domain security identifier (SID) in order to access their mailbox. Further other notable User-Agent entries tied to tools used for post-exploitation access to webshells. Network Indicators - Attacker IPs . Volexity has observed numerous IP addresses leveraged by the attackers to exploit the vulnerabilities described in this blog | ['T1190'] |
The analyzed sample of NotPetya encrypts the compromised system’s files with a 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm during runtime. The malware then writes a text file on the “C:\” drive that includes a static Bitcoin wallet location as well as unique personal installation key intended for the victim to use when making the ransom payment and the user’s Bitcoin wallet ID. NotPetya modifies the master boot record (MBR) to enable encryption of the master file table (MFT) and the original MBR, and then reboots the system. Based on the encryption methods used, it appears unlikely that the files could be restored, even if the attacker received the victim’s unique key and Bitcoin wallet ID | ['T1486'] |
The campaigns use a TrickBot downloader that is signed and uses an icon to pretend it is a Microsoft Word document. When the user double-clicks the file, they are presented with a decoy message box. To avoid suspicion, the decoy message suggests the user should update Microsoft Word or open the file from another computer | ['T1555.003'] |
To achieve privilege escalation within the environment, FIN6 utilized a named pipe impersonation technique included within the Metasploit framework that allows for SYSTEM-level privilege escalation | ['T1134'] |
It then calls the API EnumWindows() function to enumerate all windows from the victim’s system. Its EnumFunc() callback function collects all windows titles and then adds a 14H long random string prefix. One mixed windows title looks like this: “{14H long random string}+windows title”. All the mixed windows titles are added into a string list box control | ['T1010'] |
As my analysis in the previous blog showed, Agent Tesla is a spyware. It monitors and collects the victim’s keyboard inputs, system clipboard, screen shots of the victim’s screen, as well as collects credentials of a variety of installed software. So far, through my quick analysis, this version is similar to the older one | ['T1082'] |
We’ve seen the adversary staging data on a remote system or on the local system. Most of the times the data is compressed and copied at the same time. Only a handful of times the adversary copies the data first before compressing (archive collected data) and exfiltrating it. The adversary compresses and encrypts the data by using WinRAR from the command-line | ['T1124'] |
A macro in the Microsoft Word document contained the malicious code designed to download and execute additional malicious software on the infected system | ['T1566.001', 'T1566.001'] |
PACT has reverse engineered the DGA, dynamically analyzed the malware, investigated the Threat Actor’s (TA) web-based infrastructure, and consolidated the results of our analysis into the following report | ['T1070.004'] |
From September to December 2018 the RTM group sent out more than 11,000 malicious emails. The cybercriminals, however, are not going to stop there, as evidenced by the new malicious campaigns that we track as part of our ongoing threat intelligence activities. Where do we begin our search. Let's start with simple things: we will take the NTUSER.DAT registry file with the latest modification date from the user directory (C:\Users\%username%\), and extract data from it using RegRipper. In general, you do not have to stick to the Sleuth Kit at all; there are more convenient tools like FTK Imager, a free tool, which can be used not only to create forensic images, but also to examine their contents. Let's take a closer look at apg.exe and use PPEE: This looks like TeamViewer and is signed as TeamViewer, so does this mean it indeed is TeamViewer. Judging by the file's size, it has nothing to do with the original msi.dll, so it is clearly DLL Search Order Hijacking. The operating system starts searching for the necessary libraries from the current directory, which means that instead of the legitimate msi.dll, the one located in b7mg81 will be loaded. Another interesting file is TeamViewer.ini: Here is anti-forensics: according to the configuration file, our "TeamViewer" did not keep any logs, and was apparently used as a RAT (Remote Access Trojan). Well, not bad. I think what we can use the Sleuth Kit again | ['T1574.001'] |
The attackers orchestrate attacks using batch or PowerShell scripts that are executed, with the help of domain controllers, on any machine the DC can reach. The scripts retrieve the attackers’ payloads using psexec or certutil | ['T1105', 'T1569.002', 'T1059.003'] |
Note that the browser itself is not hooked. Executing the browser from any other Chrome shortcut link will start and run it normally without the malicious extension, canceling out the malware’s ability to control what the victim does | ['T1547.009'] |
The Epic backdoors are commanded by a huge network of hacked servers that deliver command and control functionality | ['T1049'] |
Capture current screen (screenshot) and save screenshot as a JPEG to "C:\ProgramData\tsc". The contents of the file are subsequently read and sent to the C2. Code to capture a screenshot as bitmap and save to file | ['T1113'] |
Sodinokibi attempts to encrypt data in a user's directory and delete shadow copy backups to make data recovery more difficult. This vulnerability is easy for attackers to exploit, as anyone with HTTP access to the WebLogic server could carry out an attack. Attackers have been making use of this exploit in the wild since at least April 17. Initial stages of the ransomware attack occurred on April 25, the day before Oracle released their update. The attackers are downloading the Sodinokibi ransomware. In this case, the attackers simply leveraged the Oracle WebLogic vulnerability, causing the affected server to download a copy of the ransomware from attacker-controlled IP addresses 188.166.74[.]218 and 45.55.211[.]79. The 188.166.74[.]218 IP address is also home to a pair of other malicious domains unrelated to this ransomware attack: arg0s-co[.]uk, which is likely a phishing domain, and projectstore[.]guru, a domain with bogus PDF-related Google search results. The other IP, 45.55.211[.]79, hosts a pair of legitimate Chilean domains, and appears to have been infected and repurposed by the attackers. The attackers were ultimately successful at encrypting a number of systems during this incident. Cisco IR Services and Talos observed the attack requests originating from 130.61.54[.]136 | ['T1105'] |
Exploits a kernel privilege escalation vulnerability to gain SYSTEM privileges using CVE-2018-8453. REvil uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for communication with its controllers | ['T1071.001'] |
The attackers dropped Visual Basic and PowerShell scripts in folders that they created under the ProgramData (a hidden folder, by default). The attackers created persistence using Windows’ registry, services and scheduled tasks. This persistence mechanism ensured that the loader scripts would execute either at startup or at predetermined intervals | ['T1053.005', 'T1547.001'] |
ESET researchers have discovered several previously undocumented post-compromise tools used by the highly active Gamaredon threat group in various malicious campaigns. One tool, a VBA macro targeting Microsoft Outlook, uses the target’s email account to send spearphishing emails to contacts in the victim’s Microsoft Office address book. We also analyzed further Gamaredon tools that have the ability to inject malicious macros and remote templates into existing Office documents | ['T1039', 'T1204.002', 'T1534', 'T1083'] |
We have identified several implants that leveraged PowerShell, VBS, JS, and dotnet for resilience and persistence. The final stage, however, is a dotnet application that takes several commands such as directory listing, screenshot, compress, upload, etc. It then creates random long string folder names in temp directories to host the collected files per category before compressing, encrypting and uploading to the C2 server | ['T1083'] |
Initially, cybercriminals used BlackEnergy custom plugins for launching DDoS attacks. BlackEnergy2 was eventually seen downloading more crimeware plugins – a custom spam plugin and a banking information stealer custom plugin. While another crimeware group continues to use BlackEnergy to launch DDoS attacks, the BE2 APT appears to have used this tool exclusively throughout 2014 at victim sites and included custom plugins and scripts of their own. To be clear, our name for this actor has been the BE2 APT, while it has been called “Sandworm Team” also | ['T1082'] |
dellLemb||> deletes the registry key \Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\notes. EXECPROGAM calls ShellExecute to run the application given in the command. NOVOLEMBRETE creates and stores data sent with the command in the registry key \Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\notes | ['T1070'] |
Check for Skype connectivity - Download and install Skype - Encoded communication with its C2 - Execute commands sent from the C2 server - Get multifactor authentication settings - Get the currently logged on user and OS version | ['T1132.001'] |
The fourth-stage wiper starts off by enumerating from A to Z, looking for fixed and remote logical drives in the system. Enumerates logical drives. For each enumeration, it performs a breadth-first search to wipe the files in the logical drive while ignoring files located in the "%HOMEDRIVE%\Windows" directory | ['T1049', 'T1082'] |
1) The infection chain used in this attack begins with a weaponized link to a Google Drive folder, obfuscated using the goo.gl link shortening service. 2) When contacted, the Google Drive link retrieves a zip file, which contains a .lnk file obfuscated as a .pdf file using the double extension trick. 3) This file requires the target to attempt to open the .lnk file, which redirects the user to a Windows Scripting Component (.wsc) file, hosted on an adversary-controlled microblogging page. MUSTANG PANDA has previously used the observed microblogging site to host malicious PowerShell scripts and Microsoft Office documents in targeted attacks on Mongolia-focused NGOs. 4) The .lnk file uses an embedded VBScript component to retrieve a decoy PDF file and a PowerShell script from the adversary-controlled web page. 6) The Cobalt Strike Beacon implant beacons to the command-and-control (C2) IP address, which is used to remotely control the implant | ['T1036.007'] |
WMIC (wmic.exe) was used to create a remote command prompt instance (cmd.exe), which then executed the PowerShell code. The PowerShell command created two variables and attempted to download and execute the payload from one of FIN8’s Command and Control (C&C) servers. This download was blocked by Bitdefender – below description is based on interpretation of variables discovered in our previous analysis of FIN8 operations | ['T1059.001', 'T1105', 'T1059.003'] |
mshlpweb.dll is a loader that uses a known token impersonation technique to elevate permissions and execute install.bat with high privileges. This process runs as a high-integrity process by default, since its set to auto-elevate within its manifest | ['T1134.002'] |
After downloading the executable payload, the secondary VBScript runs the following command on the command line (T1059) to kill any existing msiexec.exe process instances and use the ping application to sleep for two seconds before using the legitimate msiexec.exe application (T1218) to launch the downloaded PlayerVLC.msi file | ['T1105'] |
In all stages of the attack, the actor demonstrated a deep knowledge of software tools, deployments, security software and systems common in networks, and techniques frequently used by incident response teams. This knowledge is reflected in the actor’s operational decisions, from the choice of command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to the naming of scheduled tasks used to maintain persistence | ['T1053.005'] |
Once elevated, the ransomware will write a copy of a random file from System32 to the %APPDATA% directory. The newly copied file will have a random and hidden filename. This process allows for the ransomware to copy itself into the file by way of an alternate data stream (ADS | ['T1564.004'] |
The Trojan sends an email to sahro.bella7[at]post.cz with sysscr.ops as the attachment, the string SCreen within the body and a subject with the unique system identifier via SMTPS from one of three previously used accounts. If the actor wishes to download an additional payload to the compromised host, they will respond by sending emails in the following steps. 3) The actor sends an email to trala.cosh2[at]post.cz with the unique system identifier as a subject with a secondary email account and credentials in ASCII hexadecimal format within the message body. This secondary email account is unknown at this time, so we will refer to it as "secondary email account" in future steps. 4) The actor sends an email to the secondary email account with the unique system identifier as a subject with a secondary payload attached with a filename of txt. Cannon opens the email with the correct subject and decodes the hexadecimal data in the body of the message to obtain the secondary email account. 7) The actor sends an email to trala.cosh2[at]post.cz with the unique system identifier as a subject with a file path that the Cannon Trojan will use to save the secondary payload. 8) Cannon logs into the secondary email account via POP3S looking for emails with a subject that matches the unique system identifier. Cannon opens the email with the correct subject and decodes the hexadecimal data in the body of the message to obtain the file path that it will use to move the downloaded auddevc.txt file. 12) Cannon moves the downloaded file to the specified path | ['T1105'] |
Another relationship we have mentioned repeatedly is the use of the SYSCON malware family. This particular malware family was first reported in October 2017 and has been observed delivering decoy documents pertaining to North Korea. The malware is generally unsophisticated, making use of remote FTP servers for C2 communication | ['T1071.002'] |
It also conducts basic victim profiling activity, collecting the computer name, running process IDs, %TEMP% directory path and version of Internet Explorer. It communicates encoded system information to a single hard coded command and control (C2) server, using the system’s default User-Agent string. BUGJUICE is a backdoor that is executed by launching a benign file and then hijacking the search order to load a malicious dll into it. BUGJUICE defaults to TCP using a custom binary protocol to communicate with the C2, but can also use HTTP and HTTPs if directed by the C2. It has the capability to find files, enumerate drives, exfiltrate data, take screenshots and provide a reverse shell. SNUGRIDE is a backdoor that communicates with its C2 server through HTTP requests | ['T1071.001'] |
This backdoor adds the following registry entries to enable its automatic execution at every system startup | ['T1547.001', 'T1547.001'] |
Cisco Talos has discovered a new malware campaign based on a previously unknown family we're calling "PoetRAT. The droppers are Microsoft Word documents that deploy a Python-based remote access trojan (RAT). We named this malware PoetRAT due to the various references to William Shakespeare, an English poet and playwright. The RAT has all the standard features of this kind of malware, providing full control of the compromised system to the operation. For exfiltration, it uses FTP, which denotes an intention to transfer large amounts of data. The campaign shows us that the operators manually pushed additional tools when they needed them on the compromised systems. We will describe a couple of these tools. The most interesting is a tool used to monitor the hard disk and exfiltrate data automatically | ['T1056.001'] |
The batch-files appear to be used to load the Cobalt Strike beacon, but also to perform discovery commands on the compromised system | ['T1059.003'] |
The actor has distributed its dropper embedded in an archive file (외교부 가판 2021-05-07.zip) as an attachment through spearphishing emails. The archive file contains a JavaScript file (외교부 가판 2021-05-07.pdf.jse) which pretends to be a PDF file that contains two Base64 encoded blobs. The first one is the content of the decoy PDF file in Base64 format and the other one contains the AppleSeed payload also in Base64 format (encoded twice | ['T1204.002', 'T1027'] |
The Daum variants of Brave Prince gather information from the system and save it to the file PI_00.dat. The type of data this implant gathers from the victim’s system | ['T1016', 'T1012'] |
Collected files under the preliminary collection directory will be compressed using a WinRAR instance that the Ramsay Installer drops. This compressed archive will be saved within the preliminary collection directory and then generate a Ramsay container artifact | ['T1083', 'T1560.001'] |
As discussed in the delivery document analysis above, depending on the OS architecture either of the embedded KerrDown DLLs will be dropped in the victim machine. The DLL is dropped in the directory location ‘Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\’ as ‘main_background.png’. The DLL retrieves the payload from the URL, decrypts it by using DES algorithm and execute it in the memory. Therefore, it is observed that only the KerrDown DLL downloader is saved in the system and the payload directly gets executed in the memory without being written in the system. Table 1 shows the URL the downloader will attempt to download the payload from depending on the OS architecture of the victim machine | ['T1105'] |
To exploit the Log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228), the attackers chose one of the publicly available open-source JNDI Exploit Kits, since removed from GitHub due to its enormous popularity following the vulnerability emergence. There are multiple analysis papers that explain how the vulnerability can be exploited, so we will skip the details of the actual exploitation step | ['T1190'] |
List of installed antivirus products - OS version - Username - Computer name - Whether any of the following software is installed: Diebold Warsaw GAS Tecnologia (an application to protect access to online banking) Trusteer Several Latin American banking applications - Diebold Warsaw GAS Tecnologia (an application to protect access to online banking) - Trusteer - Several Latin American banking applications | ['T1518.001'] |
All further information sent to the C&C is encrypted with a public key framework, making decryption impossible. The commands from the C&C are encrypted in a simpler manner and can be decrypted if intercepted because the secret key is hardcoded in the malware | ['T1573.001'] |
HELLOKITTY is written in C++, but reimplements a significant portion of DEATHRANSOM's functionality using similar loop operations and thread pooling via QueueUserWorkItem. The code structure to enumerate network resources, logical drives, and perform file encryption is very similar. Additionally, HELLOKITTY and DEATHRANSOM share very similar functions to check for the completion status of their encryption threads before exiting | ['T1082', 'T1135'] |
In our tests, running Valak from a U.S. location on a vulnerable Windows 10 host returned a banking Trojan called IcedID as the follow-up malware. In one case, we saw both IcedID and NetSupport Manager RAT-based malware delivered as follow-up malware on a Windows 7 host from June 2020 | ['T1105'] |
AIRBREAK: a JavaScript-based backdoor also reported as “Orz” that retrieves commands from hidden strings in compromised webpages and actor controlled profiles on legitimate services. BADFLICK: a backdoor that is capable of modifying the file system, generating a reverse shell, and modifying its command and control (C2) configuration. HOMEFRY: a 64-bit Windows password dumper/cracker that has previously been used in conjunction with AIRBREAK and BADFLICK backdoors. The malware accepts up to two arguments at the command line: one to display cleartext credentials for each login session, and a second to display cleartext credentials, NTLM hashes, and malware version for each login session. MURKYTOP: a command-line reconnaissance tool | ['T1018', 'T1135', 'T1046', 'T1087.001'] |
Use of obfuscated shellcode executed via PowerShell to download a "reverse_tcp" payload from Metasploit onto victim systems | ['T1059.001'] |
At the time of writing, two VBS files have been seen pushed to the target computer by VBShower | ['T1105'] |
Another difference in the network traffic generated from the malware is that the encoded proxy information has been added in the URL query values during the C2 communication. Table 4 shows the parameters sent to C2 server from the backdoor in the newer versions | ['T1090.002'] |
Filename: impku.dat:schemas File size: 608854 bytes MD5 hash: b774f39d31c32da0f6a5fb5d0e6d2892 SHA1 hash: ae3ff39c2a7266132e0af016a48b97d565463d90 Notes: Alternate data stream (ADS) PNG file with the PowerDuke backdoor component hidden and encrypted within using Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA | ['T1564.004'] |
After the victim clicks the Enable Content button, the macro commands are executed and invoke the Windows OS process msiexec.exe. This process is the Windows Installer, a software component and application programming interface of Microsoft Windows used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software | ['T1218.007'] |
This turned out to be the best solution, as the Cobalt group set up a controlled botnet in the bank's network which was very difficult to track and even harder to stop. In october 2016 Group-IB published the report about the Cobalt group. Network penetration In all cases investigated by Group-IB, the Cobalt group used a set of spear phishing emails to gain initial access to the corporate infrastructure. For organizations that perform timely updates of their systems and adhere to strict security policies, the Cobalt group employs another method to deliver malicious code through emails with Word documents containing a malicious macro. Provision of the malware survivability The Cobalt group uses different methods to ensure malware survivability on corporate networks. Aside from that, startup is performed by loading Cobalt Strike into the main memory without saving to the file system. Bypassing network security Cobalt Strike allows users to install two types of modules: HTTP/HTTPS/DNS modules and SMB modules. Use of standard tools Cobalt Strike is publicly accessible, and can be downloaded in order to learn and create detection rules on the network. To prevent this threat, the company should configure filter rules to detect the above-mentioned tools on the corporate network. Conclusion After infecting one computer on an organization's network, the Cobalt group analyzes the programs used on it and search for critical servers and the computers from which they are accessed | ['T1046'] |
Initially, cybercriminals used BlackEnergy custom plugins for launching DDoS attacks. While another crimeware group continues to use BlackEnergy to launch DDoS attacks, the BE2 APT appears to have used this tool exclusively throughout 2014 at victim sites and included custom plugins and scripts of their own. To be clear, our name for this actor has been the BE2 APT, while it has been called “Sandworm Team” also | ['T1555.003'] |
All of the bait documents are MHTML ones with malicious macro embedded and the .doc suffix to bypass detection. Below is an example of bait document captured by 360 Threat Intelligence Center in February 2019 | ['T1059.005'] |
2) The additional commands and execution objects are executed in the machine that has been compromised in the isolated network | ['T1204.002'] |
Beacon: a backdoor that is commercially available as part of the Cobalt Strike software platform, commonly used for pen-testing network environments. The malware supports several capabilities, such as injecting and executing arbitrary code, uploading and downloading files, and executing shell commands. BLACKCOFFEE: a backdoor that obfuscates its communications as normal traffic to legitimate websites such as Github and Microsoft's Technet portal. Used by APT17 and other Chinese cyber espionage operators | ['T1102.001'] |
Sibot is a dual-purpose malware implemented in VBScript. It is designed to achieve persistence on the infected machine then download and execute a payload from a remote C2 server. The VBScript is then run via a scheduled task | ['T1053.005'] |
The initial infection vector of this campaign is a Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet with an Office macro that uses the mshta.exe Windows executable to run scripts, which are embedded in the HTML of a specially-crafted blogspot.com page. The page, 29[.]html, contains two distinct sections of scripts. The scripts create scheduled tasks and also retrieve, decode, and execute a copy of Revenge RAT | ['T1218.005'] |
BRONZE UNION has also leveraged various web shells to collect and stage data for exfiltration. In one instance, the threat actor gained remote access to a high-value system in a compromised network, ran quser.exe to identify existing RDP sessions on the device, immediately ran a command to compile a RAR archive that specified file types the threat actor did not want, and used a password to encrypt the archive | ['T1560.002', 'T1074.001', 'T1049'] |
The loaded DLL retrieves the path to the Warzone malicious file from HKCU\SOFTWARE\_rptls\Install, iterates through running processes and kills the Warzone process if it already exists. Then it runs the Warzone executable again, this time with Admin privileges | ['T1055'] |
KillDisk has a numeric parameter that denotes the number of minutes (15 being the default) it will wait before it shuts down the affected machine. To try to reboot the machine, it will try to terminate these processes | ['T1489'] |
The backdoor determines its C2 server using a Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) to construct and resolve a subdomain of avsvmcloud[.]com. The Update method is responsible for initializing cryptographic helpers for the generation of these random C2 subdomains. Subdomains are generated by concatenating a victim userId with a reversible encoding of the victims local machine domain name. The attacker likely utilizes the DGA subdomain to vary the DNS response to victims as a means to control the targeting of the malware. These subdomains are concatenated with one of the following to create the hostname to resolve | ['T1568'] |
Appendix A – PLAINTEE older variant Older variants of PLAINTEE can be identified via the unique mutex created during runtime. At least three variants of PLAINTEE have been identified to date, however, the following two samples have additional unique differences | ['T1548.002'] |
The fourth spear phishing email of the campaign was sent on January 23, 2018 to a range of targets working for Tibetan NGOs, media groups, and the CTA. The message appeared to be sent from the Director of the Tibet Museum, which is an official museum of the CTA. Attached to the email were RTF and PPSX messages that claimed to present information about the National Museum of Tibet (see Figure 5). These files contained the CVE-2017-11882 and TSSL Suite infection chain | ['T1566.001'] |
The threat actors used Windows’ scheduled task and batch scripts to execute “scr.exe” and collect additional information from hosts on the network. The tool “scr.exe” is a screenshot utility that the threat actor used to capture the screen of systems across the network. The MD5 hash of “scr.exe” matched the MD5 of ScreenUtil, as reported in the Symantec Dragonfly 2.0 report | ['T1059.003', 'T1113'] |
Finally, the script stores the encrypted payload in the Windows registry. Note that the attackers seem to use a different registry location per organization. Thus, it is not a useful indicator to detect similar intrusions | ['T1112'] |
HyperStack uses named pipes to execute remote procedure calls (RPC) from the controller to the device hosting the HyperStack client. To move laterally, the implant tries to connect to another remote device’s IPC$ share, either using a null session or default credentials. IPC$ is a share that facilitates inter-process communication (IPC) by exposing named pipes to write to or read from. If the implant’s connection to the IPC$ is successful, the implant can forward RPC commands from the controller to the remote device, and likely has the capability to copy itself onto the remote device | ['T1559', 'T1078.001'] |
At the time of discovery TEARDROP was a novel concoction: never-before-seen, possibly even tailor-made for this attack. TEARDROP runs in-memory but it does register a Windows service, which involves editing the registry | ['T1112'] |
Hooking module – hooks a hardcoded set of WinAPI and (if they exist) Mozilla DLL Hooking is used to perform web injects, sniff traffic and keyboard data and even prevent DNS resolution of certain domains. Hooking works in the following way: QakBot injects a hooking module into the appropriate process, the module finds functions from the hardcoded set and modifies the functions so they jump to custom code | ['T1055'] |
Curiously, the same private session key is also encrypted with another public key hardcoded into the body of the Trojan, regardless of the configuration. It turns out that someone who knows the private key corresponding to the public skeleton key is able to decrypt the victim’s files, even without the private key for sub_key. It seems like the Trojan developers built a loophole into the algorithm allowing them to decrypt files behind the distributors’ back | ['T1486'] |
The APT group has used web hosting credentials—stolen from victims outside of their usual targets—to host their malicious scripts and tools. Kimsuky likely obtained the credentials from the victims via spearphishing and credential harvesting scripts. On the victim domains, they have created subdomains mimicking legitimate sites and services they are spoofing, such as Google or Yahoo mail. 14] - Kimsuky has also sent benign emails to targets, which were possibly intended to build trust in advance of a follow-on email with a malicious attachment or link. Posing as South Korean reporters, Kimsuky exchanged several benign interview-themed emails with their intended target to ostensibly arrange an interview date and possibly build rapport. The APT group invited the targets to a Skype interview on the topic of inter-Korean issues and denuclearization negotiations on the Korean Peninsula. Posing as South Korean reporters, Kimsuky exchanged several benign interview-themed emails with their intended target to ostensibly arrange an interview date and possibly build rapport. After a recipient agreed to an interview, Kimsuky sent a subsequent email with a malicious document, either as an attachment or as a Google Drive link within the body. The document usually contained a variant of BabyShark malware (see the Execution section for information on BabyShark). When the date of the interview drew near, Kimsuky sent an email canceling the interview. Kimsuky tailors its spearphishing and social engineering approaches to use topics relevant to the target, such as COVID-19, the North Korean nuclear program, or media interviews | ['T1583.001'] |
In the newer attack flows we observed, we once again found valid Certum certificates were used to sign the Bandook malware executable | ['T1553.002'] |
The latter does not use libcurl anymore and now uses winhttp to perform all requests to C2. The usage of the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run registry key has a persistence mechanism that has been replaced by the creation of a service. The C2 path pattern has also changed, we have identified the following paths: ini.php, info.php and parse_ini_file.php, which are no longer random nor animal named based | ['T1547.001'] |
For the first time, the Bisonal developers decided to use a packer: MPRESS. The Bisonal string also disappears from the binary however the workflow of the malware stays the same and some features are copy/pasted from the previous Bisonal variant | ['T1027.002'] |
Throughout the spear-phishing campaign, the threat actors used email attachments to leverage legitimate Microsoft Office functions for retrieving a document from a remote server using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Note: transfer of credentials can occur even if the file is not retrieved. After obtaining a credential hash, the threat actors can use password-cracking techniques to obtain the plaintext password. With valid credentials, the threat actors are able to masquerade as authorized users in environments that use single-factor authentication | ['T1078'] |