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DOCUMENT IS OFFERED WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
Command Five Pty Ltd
ABN: 49 149 576 670
http://www.commandfive.com
PAGE 13 OF 13
COPYRIGHT
COMMAND FIVE PTY LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SK Hack by an
Advanced Persistent Threat
Command Five Pty Ltd
September 2011
ABSTRACT
This document summarises the July 2011 intrusion into SK
Communications which culminated in the theft of the personal
information of up to 35 million people. It describes the use of a trojaned
software update to gain access to the target network, in effect turning a
security practice into a vulnerability. It also describes the use of a
legitimate company to host tools used in the intrusion. Links between
this intrusion and other malicious activity are identified and valuable
insights are provided for network defenders. Technical details of
malicious software and infrastructure are also provided.
WARNING
This paper discusses malicious activity and
identifies Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, domain
names, and websites that may contain malicious
content. For safety reasons these locations should
not be accessed, scanned, probed, or otherwise
interacted with unless their trustworthiness can be
verified.
SK HACK
On 28 July 2011 SK Communications announced it
had been the subject of a hack which resulted in the
theft of the personal details of up to 35 million of its
users. The compromised details were those of
CyWorld and Nate users, as stored in SK
Communications
user databases. CyWorld 1 is South
Korea
s largest social networking site and Nate is a
popular South Korean web portal. Both services are
owned by SK Communications. (Sung
jin, 2011)
1CyWorld has also expanded to China, Japan, the United States,
Taiwan, Vietnam and Europe. (SK Communications)
The sophistication of the attack along with the
period of time over which it was planned, and
conducted, indicate that this attack was likely to
have been undertaken by an Advanced Persistent
Threat2.
Between 18 and 25 July 2011 the attackers 3
infected over 60 SK Communications computers and
used them to gain access to the user databases. The
attackers infected these computers by first
compromising a server, belonging to a South Korean
software company, used to deliver software updates
to customers (including SK Communications). The
attackers modified the server so that the SK
Communications computers would receive a
trojaned 4 update file when they conducted their
routine checks for software updates. (Moon
young,
2011) (ESTsoft, 2011)
2 For a definition of the term
Advanced Persistent Threat
refer to
the Command Five paper
Advanced Persistent Threats: A Decade
in Review
(Command Five Pty Ltd, 2011).
3 The term
attackers
is used in this paper to describe both the
hackers and anyone to whom they were reporting.
4 A trojan is a document or program which appears harmless but
performs malicious activity when opened or run.
PAGE 1 OF 24
COPYRIGHT
COMMAND FIVE PTY LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Such routine updates (commonly known as
patches
) are a good security practice as they often
include fixes for security weaknesses identified in
the software. Without software updates the SK
Communications computers would have been
vulnerable to several other attacks including a
significant one which was made public in June
20115. The security of software updates is usually
trusted implicitly and the exploitation of this trust
relationship could go undetected by many targets, as
it did for some time by SK Communications.
Between 18 and 25 July the attackers conducted
command and control and monitoring activities on
the infected computers. This involved the upload of
tools, conveniently stored on the website of a
Taiwanese publishing company the attackers had
earlier hacked. Then on 26 July 2011, the attackers,
having done the necessary groundwork, proceeded
to hack the Nate and CyWorld user databases 6.
(Birdman, 2011) (Moon