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other attack (Figure 6) targeting Relative of political detainee Steffi |
that Guarnieri identified from Bahraini FinSpy C&C |
D; in that case, the payload was a freely-available RAT known servers [67, 68]. See Appendix A for details. We then exhaus- |
as njRAT, written by the same njq8 as the exploit-poster dis- tively scanned the Internet looking for matches to these finger- |
cussed above. However, we did not find any other evidence prints. |
suggesting njq8 |
s involvement in either attack. Gamma documentation advertises that an operator of FinSpy |
More SpyNet attacks: The domain hamas.sytes.net, can obscure the location of the C&C server (called the mas- |
which we previously saw used by two SpyNet sam- ter) by setting up a proxy known as a relay. In Spring 2013 |
ples, resolved to 67.205.79.177. Historically, we noticed FinSpy servers now issuing 302 Redirects to |
dreems.no-ip.ca also resolved to this address. An google.com. However, we noticed anomalies: for ex- |
unidentified dropper using this C&C targeted Journalist F; a ample, servers in India were redirecting to the Latvian ver- |
SpyNet attack on Relative of political detainee D also used sion of Google google.lv. We suspect that the server |
this C&C. In that latter case, the sample arrived via e-mail in India was a relay forwarding to a master in Latvia. Be- |
in a .rar attachment that contained an .scr file disguised cause the master served as a proxy for Google, we could |
as a Word document. The .scr file was a self-extracting uncover its IP address using a Google feature that prints a |
archive that decompressed and ran both the bait document user |
s IP address for the query |
IP address. |
We created an |
and the payload. The SMTP source of the e-mail was additional fingerprint based on the proxying behavior and is- |
webmail.upload.bz. sued GET /search?q=ip+address&nord=1 requests to |
Appin: In early 2013 UAE H.R. activist E forwarded nu- servers We note some interesting master locations in Table 4. |
merous documents that included a particular CVE-2012-0158 Server locations: In all, our fingerprints matched 92 dis- |
exploit for Microsoft Word. In all, these totaled 17 distinct tinct IP addresses in 35 different countries. Probing these on |
hashes of documents, and 10 distinct hashes of payloads (some 8/8/13 revealed 22 distinct addresses still responding, sited |
documents that differed in their hash downloaded the same pay- in: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, |
load). The exploits primarily downloaded instances of SpyNet Ethiopia, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macedonia, Mex- |
from upload.bz, which for the most part communicated ico, Romania, Serbia, Turkmenistan, and the United States. We |
with C&C at sn.all-google.com. This domain was also found servers responding to a number of our fingerprints, sug- |
used for C&C in other attacks, including that on Journalist C. gesting either that some servers lag in their updates, or a con- |
Two of the other CVE-2012-0158 exploits down- certed effort to vary the behavior of FinSpy servers to make |
loaded DarkComet from www.getmedia.us and detection harder. |
www.technopenta.com after posting system infor- We found: (1) 3 IP addresses in ranges registered to Gamma. |
mation to random123.site11.com. All three domains (2) Servers in 3 IP ranges explicitly registered to govern- |
match those used by an Indian cybermercenary group said ment agencies: Turkmenistan |
s Ministry of Communications, |
to be linked to Appin Security Group [66]. The former Qatar |
s State Security Bureau, and the Bulgarian Council of |
two domains hosted content other than spyware (i.e., they Ministers. (3) 3 additional IP addresses in Bahrain, all in |
may have been compromised). We alerted the owner of Batelco. (4) Servers in 7 countries with governments classified |
www.getmedia.us, who removed the payloads. as |
authoritarian regimes |
by The Economist [69]: Bahrain, |
Ethiopia, Nigeria, Qatar, Turkmenistan, UAE, Vietnam. |
Additional FinSpy samples: In parallel to our scanning, |
5 Empirical characterization we obtained 9 samples of FinSpy by writing YARA [70] rules |
for the |
malware hunting |
feature of VirusTotal Intelligence. |
The samples we received afforded us an opportunity to em- This feature sends us all newly-submitted samples that match |
pirically characterize the use of FinFisher and Hacking Team our signatures. We located a version of FinSpy that does not |
around the world, enabling us to assess their prevalence, and use the normal FinSpy handshake, but instead uses a protocol |
identify other country cases that may warrant future investiga- based on HTTP POST requests for communication with the |
tion. We analyzed the samples and the behavior of their C&C C&C server. This did not appear to be an older or newer ver- |
10 |
23rd USENIX Security Symposium |
USENIX Association |
Relay IP Relay Block Assignment Relay Country Master IP Master Block Assignment Master Country |
5.199.xxx.xxx SynWebHost Lithuania 188.219.xxx.xx Vodafone Italy |
46.23.xxx.xxx UK2 VPS.net UK 78.100.xxx.xxx State Security Building Qatar |
119.18.xxx.xxx HostGator India 81.198.xxx.xxx Statoil DSL Latvia |
180.235.xxx.xxx Asia Web Services Hong Kong 80.95.xxx.xxx T-Systems Czech Republic |
182.54.xxx.xxx GPLHost Australia 180.250.xxx.xxx PT Telekom Indonesia |
206.190.xxx.xxx WestHost USA 112.78.xxx.xxx Biznet ISP Indonesia |
206.190.xxx.xxx Softlayer USA 197.156.xxx.xxx Ethio Telecom Ethiopia |
209.59.xxx.xxx Endurance International USA 59.167.xxx.xxx Internode Australia |
209.59.xxx.xxx Endurance International USA 212.166.xxx.xxx Vodafone Spain |
Table 4: Deproxifying FinSpy (mapping initial C&C IP addresses to the masters to which they forward). |
sion of the protocol, suggesting that our scan results may not Country IPs Provider IPs |
reveal the full scope of FinSpy C&C servers. Perhaps, the United States 61 Linode 42 |
HTTP POST protocol was only delivered to a specific Gamma United Kingdom 18 NOC4Hosts 16 |
customer to meet a requirement. Italy 16 Telecom Italia 9 |
Japan 10 Maroc Telecom 7 |
Morocco 7 InfoLink 6 |
5.2 Remote Control System (RCS) |
We began by analyzing the UAE RCS sample from Ahmed and |
Table 5: Top countries and hosting providers for RCS |
6 samples obtained from VirusTotal by searching for AV re- |
servers active on 11/4/13. |
sults containing the strings |
DaVinci |
and |
RCS. |
At the time, |
several AV vendors had added detection for RCS based on a |
sample analyzed by Dr. Web [71] and the UAE RCS sample ing one of our fingerprints in 29 different countries. We sum- |
sent to Ahmed. We also similarly obtained and analyzed sam- marize the top providers and countries in Table 5. |
ples of FSBSpy [72], a piece of malware that can report system The prevalence of active servers either located in the USA or |
information, upload screenshots, and drop and execute more hosted by Linode is striking,8 and seems to indicate a pervasive |
malware, Based on these samples, we devised YARA signa- use of out-of-country web hosting and VPS services. |
tures that yielded 23 additional samples of structurally similar In addition, we found: (1) 3 IP addresses on a /28 named |
malware. |
HT public subnet |
that is registered to the CFO of Hacking |
Fingerprints: We probed the C&C servers of the RCS and Team [76]. The domain hackingteam.it resolves to an |
FSBSpy samples, and found that they responded in a distinc- address in this range. (2) An address belonging to Omantel, a |
tive way to HTTP requests, and returned distinctive SSL cer- majority-state-owned telecom in Oman. This address was un- |
tificates. reachable when we probed it; a researcher pointed us to an FS- |
BSpy sample that contained an Arabic-language bait document |
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