Russia-linked Turla APT allegedly used two new backdoors, named Lunar malware and LunarMail, to target European government agencies.
ESET researchers discovered two previously unknown backdoors named LunarWeb and LunarMail that were exploited to breach European ministry of foreign affairs.
The two backdoors are designed to carry out a long-term compromise in the target network, data exfiltration, and maintaining control over compromised systems.
The two backdoors compromised a European ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) and its diplomatic missions abroad. The experts speculate the Lunar toolset has been employed since at least 2020. ESET attributes the two backdoors to Russia-linked APT group Turla, with medium confidence.
The Turla APT group (aka Snake, Uroburos, Waterbug, Venomous Bear and KRYPTON) has been active since at least 2004 targeting diplomatic and government organizations and private businesses in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, North and South America, and former Soviet bloc nations.
The exact method of initial access in the compromises observed by ESET is still unclear. However, evidence suggests possible spear-phishing and exploitation of misconfigured Zabbix network and application monitoring software. The researchers noticed a LunarWeb component mimicking Zabbix logs and a backdoor command retrieving Zabbix agent configuration. The experts also spotted spear-phishing messages, including a weaponized Word document installing a LunarMail backdoor.
“LunarWeb, deployed on servers, uses HTTP(S) for its C&C communications and mimics legitimate requests, while LunarMail, deployed on workstations, is persisted as an Outlook add-in and uses email messages for its C&C communications.” reads the report published by ESET.
LunarWeb uses multiple persistence methods, including creating Group Policy extensions, replacing System DLL, and deploying as part of legitimate software.
ESET reported that the execution chain starts with a loader they tracked as LunarLoader. It uses the RC4 symmetric key cipher to decrypt the payloads.
Once the Lunar backdoor has compromised a system, it waits for commands from the C2 server. The cyberspies also used stolen credentials for lateral movement.
LunarWeb can also execute shell and PowerShell commands, gather system information, run Lua code, and exfiltrate data in AES-256 encrypted form.
“Our current investigation began with the detection of a loader decrypting and running a payload, from an external file, on an unidentified server. This led us to the discovery of a previously unknown backdoor, which we named LunarWeb. Subsequently, we detected a similar chain with LunarWeb deployed at a diplomatic institution of a European MFA. Notably, the attacker also included a second backdoor – which we named LunarMail – that uses a different method for command and control (C&C) communications.” continues the report. “During another attack, we observed simultaneous deployments of a chain with LunarWeb at three diplomatic institutions of this MFA in the Middle East, occurring within minutes of each other. The attacker probably had prior access to the domain controller of the MFA and utilized it for lateral movement to machines of related institutions in the same network.”
LunarMail is deployed on workstations with Microsoft Outlook, using an email-based communication system (Outlook Messaging API (MAPI)) to evade detection in environments where HTTPS traffic is monitored. The backdoor communicates with the C2 server via email attachments, often hidden in .PNG images. LunarMail can create processes, take screenshots, write files, and execute Lua scripts, allowing it to run shell and PowerShell commands indirectly.
“We observed varying degrees of sophistication in the compromises; for example, the careful installation on the compromised server to avoid scanning by security software contrasted with coding errors and different coding styles (which are not the scope of this blogpost) in the backdoors. This suggests multiple individuals were likely involved in the development and operation of these tools.” concludes the report. “Although the described compromises are more recent, our findings show that these backdoors evaded detection for a more extended period and have been in use since at least 2020, based on artifacts found in the Lunar toolset.”
Symantec warns of a new Linux backdoor used by the North Korea-linked Kimsuky APT in a recent campaign against organizations in South Korea.
Symantec researchers observed the North Korea-linked group Kimsuky using a new Linux backdoor dubbed Gomir. The malware is a version of the GoBear backdoor which was delivered in a recent campaign by Kimsuky via Trojanized software installation packages.
Kimsuky cyberespionage group (aka Springtail, ARCHIPELAGO, Black Banshee, Thallium, Velvet Chollima, APT43) was first spotted by Kaspersky researcher in 2013. The APT group mainly targets think tanks and organizations in South Korea, other victims were in the United States, Europe, and Russia.
In 2023 the state-sponsored group focused on nuclear agendas between China and North Korea, relevant to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Gomir and GoBear share a great portion of their code.
Researchers from South Korean security firm S2W first uncovered the compaign in February 2024, the threat actors were observed delivering a new malware family named Troll Stealer using Trojanized software installation packages. Troll Stealer supports multiple stealing capabilities, it allows operators to gather files, screenshots, browser data, and system information. The malicious code is written in Go, and researchers noticed that Troll Stealer contained a large amount of code overlap with earlier Kimsuky malware.
Troll Stealer can also copy the GPKI (Government Public Key Infrastructure) folder on infected computers. GPKI is the public key infrastructure schema for South Korean government personnel and state organizations, suggesting that government agencies were among the targeted by state-sponsored hackers.
The malware was distributed inside the installation packages for TrustPKI and NX_PRNMAN, software developed by SGA Solutions. Victims downloaded the packages from a page that was redirected from a specific website.
Symantec also discovered that Troll Stealer was also delivered in Trojanized Installation packages for Wizvera VeraPort.
The WIZVERA VeraPort integration installation program is used to manage additional security software (e.g., browser plug-ins, security software, identity verification software, etc.) that is requested to visit particular government and banking domains. WIZVERA VeraPort is used to digitally sign and verify downloads.
“Troll Stealer appears to be related to another recently discovered Go-based backdoor named GoBear. Both threats are signed with a legitimate certificate issued to “D2innovation Co.,LTD”. GoBear also contains similar function names to an older Springtail backdoor known as BetaSeed, which was written in C++, suggesting that both threats have a common origin.” reads the report published by Symantec.
When executed, the malware checks the group ID value to determine if it is running as group 0 (group is associated with the superuser or administrative privileges) on the Linux machine, and then copies itself to /var/log/syslogd to maintain persistence persistence.
It creates a systemd service named ‘syslogd’ and starts it, then deletes the original executable and terminates the initial process. The backdoor also attempts to configure a crontab command to run on system reboot by creating a helper file (‘cron.txt’) in the current directory. If the crontab list is successfully updated, the malware deletes the helper file without any command-line parameters before executing it.
The Gomir backdoor periodically communicates with its C2 via HTTP POST requests to http://216.189.159[.]34/mir/index.php
The malicious code pools the commands to execute, and the researchers observed it supporting multiple commands. including:
Operation
Description
01
Pauses communication with the C&C server for an arbitrary time duration.
02
Executes an arbitrary string as a shell command (“[shell]” “-c” “[arbitrary_string]”). The shell used is specified by the environment variable “SHELL”, if present. Otherwise, a fallback shell is configured by operation 10 below.
03
Reports the current working directory.
04
Changes the current working directory and reports the working directory’s new pathname.
05
Probes arbitrary network endpoints for TCP connectivity.
06
Terminates its own process. This stops the backdoor.
07
Reports the executable pathname of its own process (the backdoor executable).
08
Collects statistics about an arbitrary directory tree and reports: total number of subdirectories, total number of files, total size of files
09
Reports the configuration details of the affected computer: hostname, username, CPU, RAM, network interfaces, listing each interface name, MAC, IP, and IPv6 address
10
Configures a fallback shell to use when executing the shell command in operation 02. Initial configuration value is “/bin/sh”.
11
Configures a codepage to use when interpreting output from the shell command in operation 02.
12
Pauses communication with the C&C server until an arbitrary datetime.
13
Responds with the message “Not implemented on Linux!” (hardcoded).
14
Starts a reverse proxy by connecting to an arbitrary control endpoint. The communication with the control endpoint is encrypted using the SSL protocol and uses messages consistent with https://github.com/kost/revsocks.git, where the backdoor acts as a proxy client. This allows the remote attacker to initiate connections to arbitrary endpoints on the victim network.
15
Reports the control endpoints of the reverse proxy.
30
Creates an arbitrary file on the affected computer.
31
Exfiltrates an arbitrary file from the affected computer.
Gomir and GoBear Windows backdoor supports almost the same commands.
The latest Kimsuky campaign highlights that North Korean espionage actors increasingly favor software installation packages and updates as infection vectors. The experts noticed a shift to software supply chain attacks through trojanized software installers and fake software installers. A prominent example is the 3CX supply chain attack, stemming from the earlier X_Trader attack.
“This latest Springtail campaign provides further evidence that software installation packages and updates are now among the most favored infection vectors for North Korean espionage actors.” concludes the report. “Springtail, meanwhile, has focused on Trojanized software installers hosted on third-party sites requiring their installation or masquerading as official apps. The software targeted appears to have been carefully chosen to maximize the chances of infecting its intended South Korean-based targets.”
The report also provides indicators of compromise for artifacts employed in the latest campaign, including the Troll Stealer, Gomir, and the GoBear dropper.
A previously unknown China-linked threat actor dubbed ‘Unfading Sea Haze’ has been targeting military and government entities since 2018.
Bitdefender researchers discovered a previously unknown China-linked threat actor dubbed ‘Unfading Sea Haze’ that has been targeting military and government entities since 2018. The threat group focuses on entities in countries in the South China Sea, experts noticed TTP overlap with operations attributed to APT41.
Bitdefender identified a troubling trend, attackers repeatedly regained access to compromised systems, highlighting vulnerabilities such as poor credential hygiene and inadequate patching practices.
Unfading Sea Haze remained undetected for over five years, despite extensive artifact cross-referencing and public report analysis, no traces of their prior activities were found.
Unfading Sea Haze’s targets confirms an alignment with Chinese interests. The group utilized various variants of the Gh0st RAT, commonly associated with Chinese actors.
A notable technique involved running JScript code through SharpJSHandler, similar to a feature in the “funnyswitch” backdoor linked to APT41. Both methods involve loading .NET assemblies and executing JScript code, suggesting shared coding practices among Chinese threat actors.
However, these findings indicate a sophisticated threat actor possibly connected to the Chinese cyber landscape.
The researchers cannot determine the initial method used by Unfading Sea Haze to infiltrate victim systems because the initial breach happened over six years ago, making hard to recover forensic evidence.
However, the researchers determined that one of methods used by the threat actors to regaining access to the target organizations are spear-phishing emails. The messages use specially crafted archives containing LNK files disguised as regular documents. When clicked, the LNK files would execute malicious commands. The experts observed multiple spear-phishing attempts between March and May 2023.
Some of the email attachment names used in the attacks are:
SUMMARIZE SPECIAL ORDERS FOR PROMOTIONS CY2023
Data
Doc
Startechup_fINAL
The payload employed in the attacks is a backdoor named SerialPktdoor, however, in March 2024, the researchers observed the threat actors using a new initial access archive files. These archives mimicked the installation process of Microsoft Defender or exploited current US political issues.
The backdoor runs PowerShell scripts and performs operations on files and directories.
“These LNK files execute a PowerShell command line” reads the report. “This is a clever example of a fileless attack that exploits a legitimate tool: MSBuild.exe. MSBuild, short for Microsoft Build Engine, is a powerful tool for automating the software build process on Windows. MSBuild reads a project file, which specifies the location of all source code components, the order of assembly, and any necessary build tools.”
The threat actors maintain persistence through scheduled tasks, in order to avoid detection attackers used task names impersonating legitimate Windows files. The files are combined with DLL sideloading to execute a malicious payload.
Attackers also manipulate local Administrator accounts to maintain persistence, they were spotted enabling the disabled local Administrator account, followed by resetting its password.
Unfading Sea Haze has notably begun using Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools, particularly ITarian RMM, since at least September 2022 to compromise targets’ networks. This approach represents a significant shift from typical nation-state tactics. Additionally, experts collected evidence that they may have established persistence on web servers, such as Windows IIS and Apache httpd, likely using web shells or malicious modules. However, the exact persistence mechanisms remain unclear due to insufficient forensic data.
The Chinese threat actor has developed a sophisticated collection of custom malware and hacking tools. Since at least 2018, they used SilentGh0st, TranslucentGh0st, and three variants of the .NET agent SharpJSHandler supported by Ps2dllLoader. In 2023, they replaced Ps2dllLoader with a new mechanism using msbuild.exe and C# payloads from a remote SMB share. The attackers also replaced fully featured Gh0stRat variants to more modular, plugin-based versions called FluffyGh0st, InsidiousGh0st (available in C++, C#, and Go), and EtherealGh0st.
“One of the payloads delivered by Ps2dllLoader is SharpJSHandler.” reads the report. “SharpJSHandler operates by listening for HTTP requests. Upon receiving a request, it executes the encoded JavaScript code using the Microsoft.JScript library.
Our investigation also uncovered two additional variations that utilize cloud storage services for communication instead of direct HTTP requests. We have found variations for DropBox and for OneDrive. In this case, SharpJSHandler retrieves the payload periodically from a DropBox/OneDrive account, executes it, and uploads the resulting output back to the same location.
These cloud-based communication methods present a potential challenge for detection as they avoid traditional web shell communication channels.”
The threat actors used both custom malware and off-the-shelf tools to gather sensitive data from victim machines.
One of the malware used for data collection is a keylogger called xkeylog, they also used a web browser data stealer, a tool to monitor the presence of portable devices, and a custom tool named DustyExfilTool.
The attackers are also able to target messaging applications like Telegram and Viber. They first terminate the processes for these apps (telegram.exe and viber.exe), then use rar.exe to archive the application data.
“The Unfading Sea Haze threat actor group has demonstrated a sophisticated approach to cyberattacks. Their custom malware arsenal, including the Gh0st RAT family and Ps2dllLoader, showcases a focus on flexibility and evasion techniques.” concludes the report. “The observed shift towards modularity, dynamic elements, and in-memory execution highlights their efforts to bypass traditional security measures. Attackers are constantly adapting their tactics, necessitating a layered security approach.”
Tinexta Cyber’s Zlab Malware Team uncovered a backdoor known as KeyPlug employed in attacks against several Italian industries
During an extensive investigation, Tinexta Cyber’s Zlab Malware Team uncovered a backdoor known as KeyPlug, which hit for months a variety of Italian industries. This backdoor is attributed to the arsenal of APT41,a group whose origin is tied to China.
APT41, known also as Amoeba, BARIUM, BRONZE ATLAS, BRONZE EXPORT, Blackfly, Brass Typhoon, Earth Baku, G0044, G0096, Grayfly, HOODOO, LEAD, Red Kelpie, TA415, WICKED PANDA e WICKED SPIDER originated from China (with possible ties to the government), it’s known for its complex campaigns and variety of targeted sectors, their motivation varies from exfiltration of sensible data to financial gain.
The backdoor has been developed to target both Windows and Linux operative systems and using different protocols to communicate which depend on the configuration of the malware sample itself.
Tinexta Cyber’s team has analyzed both variants for Windows and Linux, showing common elements that makes the threat capable of remaining resilient inside attacked systems, nonetheless, implants of perimetral defense were present, such as Firewalls, NIDS and EDR employed on every endpoint.
The first malware sample is an implant attacking the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The infection doesn’t directly start from the implant itself but from another component working as a loader written in the .NET framework. This loader is designed to decrypt another file simulating an icon type file. The decryption is through AES, a well-known symmetric encryption algorithm, with keys stored directly in the sample itself.
Once all decryption operations are completed, the new payload, with SHA256 hash 399bf858d435e26b1487fe5554ff10d85191d81c7ac004d4d9e268c9e042f7bf, can be analyzed. Delving deeper into that malware sample, it is possible to detect a direct correspondence with malware structure with Mandiant’s report “Does This Look Infected? A Summary of APT41 Targeting U.S. State Governments”. In this specific case, the XOR key is 0x59.
The Linux version of the Keyplug malware, however, is slightly more complex and appears to use VMProtect. During static analysis, many strings related to the UPX packer were detected, but the automatic decompression routine did not work. This variant is designed to decode the payload code during execution, and once this is complete, it relaunches using the syscall fork. This method interrupts the analyst’s control flow, making malware analysis more difficult.
Pivoting cyber intelligence information in the cybersecurity community, a potential link has emerged between the APT41 group and the Chinese company I-Soon. On Feb. 16, a large amount of sensitive data from China’s Ministry of Public Security was exposed and then spread on GitHub and Twitter, generating great excitement in the cybersecurity community.
In addition, Hector is a possible RAT (Remote Administration Tool) if not KeyPlug itself, among the arsenal of APT41 uncovered through the I-SOON leak, according to which it can be employed on both Windows and Linux, and uses the WSS protocol. WSS (WebSocket Secure) is a network protocol used to establish a secure WebSocket connection between a client and a server. It is the encrypted version of the WS (WebSocket) protocol and relies on TLS (Transport Layer Security) to provide security, similar to how HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP. However, this type of protocol is not widely adopted by attackers for malware threats, making, therefore, the attribution narrow toward this type of threat.
A connection between the APT41 group and the ISOON data leak incident can be hypothesized. The advanced techniques used and the wide range of sectors targeted coincide with APT41’s typical modus operandi, suggesting a possible connection to this cyber espionage campaign. Deepening the investigation of the ISOON data leak, especially about the tools and methodologies employed, could offer further insight into the involvement of APT41 or similar groups.
“APT41, has always been distinguished by its sophistication and ability to conduct global cyber espionage operations. One of the tools it has used and continues to use is KEYPLUG, a modular backdoor capable of evading major detection systems has offered the attacker the ability to be silent within compromised systems for months.” Luigi Martire, Technical Leader at Tinexta Cyber told Security Affairs. The risks associated with industrial espionage carried out by groups such as APT41 are significant. Their operations can aim to steal intellectual property, trade secrets, and sensitive information that could confer illicit competitive advantages. Companies operating in technologically advanced or strategic industries are particularly vulnerable, and the consequences of such attacks can include large economic losses, reputational damage, and compromised national security”
The MITRE Corporation revealed that threat actors behind the December 2023 attacks created rogue virtual machines (VMs) within its environment.
The MITRE Corporation has provided a new update about the December 2023 attack. In April 2024, MITRE disclosed a security breach in one of its research and prototyping networks. The security team at the organization promptly launched an investigation, logged out the threat actor, and engaged third-party forensics Incident Response teams to conduct independent analysis in collaboration with internal experts.
MITRE spotted the foreign nation-state threat actor probing its Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE), used for research and prototyping. The organization immediately started mitigation actions which included taking NERVE offline. The investigation is still ongoing to determine the extent of information involved.
The organization notified authorities and affected parties and is working to restore operational alternatives for collaboration.
Despite MITRE diligently following industry best practices, implementing vendor recommendations, and complying with government guidance to strengthen, update, and fortify its Ivanti system, they overlooked the lateral movement into their VMware infrastructure.
The organization said that the core enterprise network or partners’ systems were not affected by this incident.
According to the new update, threat actors exploited zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) and created rogue virtual machines (VMs) within the organization’s VMware environment.
“The adversary created their own rogue VMs within the VMware environment, leveraging compromised vCenter Server access. They wrote and deployed a JSP web shell (BEEFLUSH) under the vCenter Server’s Tomcat server to execute a Python-based tunneling tool, facilitating SSH connections between adversary-created VMs and the ESXi hypervisor infrastructure.” reads the latest update. “By deploying rogue VMs, adversaries can evade detection by hiding their activities from centralized management interfaces like vCenter. This allows them to maintain control over compromised systems while minimizing the risk of discovery.”
The attackers deployed rogue virtual machines (VMs) to evade detection by hiding their activities from centralized management interfaces like vCenter. This tactic allows them to control the compromised systems while minimizing the risk of discovery.
On January 7, 3034, the adversary accessed VMs and deployed malicious payloads, including the BRICKSTORM backdoor and a web shell tracked as BEEFLUSH, enabling persistent access and arbitrary command execution.
The hackers relied on SSH manipulation and script execution to maintain control over the compromised systems. Mitre noted attackers exploiting a default VMware account to list drives and generate new VMs, one of which was removed on the same day. BRICKSTORM was discovered in directories with local persistence setups, communicating with designated C2 domains. BEEFLUSH interacted with internal IP addresses, executing dubious scripts and commands from the vCenter server’s /tmp directory
In the following days, the threat actors deployed additional payloads on the target infrastrcuture, including the WIREFIRE (aka GIFTEDVISITOR) web shell, and the BUSHWALK webshell for data exfiltration.
The threat actors exploited a default VMware account, VPXUSER, to make API calls for enumerating drives. They bypassed detection by deploying rogue VMs directly onto hypervisors, using SFTP to write files and executing them with /bin/vmx. These operations were invisible to the Center and the ESXi web interface. The rogue VMs included the BRICKSTORM backdoor and persistence mechanisms, configured with dual network interfaces for communication with both the Internet/C2 and core administrative subnets.
“Simply using the hypervisor management interface to manage VMs is often insufficient and can be pointless when it comes to dealing with rogue VMs.” continues the update. “This is because rogue VMs operate outside the standard management processes and do not adhere to established security policies, making them difficult to detect and manage through the GUI alone. Instead, one needs special tools or techniques to identify and mitigate the risks associated with rogue VMs effectively.”
MITRE shared two scripts, Invoke-HiddenVMQuery and VirtualGHOST, that allow admins to identify and mitigate potential threats within the VMware environment. The first script, developed by MITRE, Invoke-HiddenVMQuery is written in PowerShell and serves to detect malicious activities. It scans for anomalous invocations of the /bin/vmx binary within rc.local.d scripts.
“As adversaries continue to evolve their tactics and techniques, it is imperative for organizations to remain vigilant and adaptive in defending against cyber threats. By understanding and countering their new adversary behaviors, we can bolster our defenses and safeguard critical assets against future intrusions.” MITRE concludes.
A previously undocumented APT group tracked as LilacSquid targeted organizations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia since at least 2021.
Cisco Talos researchers reported that a previously undocumented APT group, tracked as LilacSquid, conducted a data theft campaign since at least 2021.
The attacks targeted entities in multiple industries, including organizations in information technology and industrial sectors in the United States, organizations in the energy sector in Europe, and the pharmaceutical sector in Asia.
Threat actors were observed using the open-source remote management tool MeshAgent and a customized version of QuasarRAT malware tracked by Talos as PurpleInk.
PurpleInk is the primary implant in post-exploitation activity in attacks aimed at vulnerable application servers.
The attackers exploited vulnerabilities in Internet-facing application servers and compromised remote desktop protocol (RDP) credentials to deploy a variety of open-source tools, including MeshAgent and Secure Socket Funneling (SSF), alongside customized malware, such as “PurpleInk,” and “InkBox” and “InkLoader loaders.” The Secure Socket Funneling (SSF) tool allows attackers to proxy and tunnel multiple sockets through a secure TLS tunnel.
The threat actors aim to establish long-term access to compromised victims’ organizations to steal sensitive data.
The researchers pointed out that LilacSquid’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) overlap with North Korea-linked APT groups such as Andariel and Lazarus. The Andariel APT group has been reported using MeshAgent for post-compromise access, while Lazarus extensively uses SOCKs proxy and tunneling tools along with custom malware to maintain persistence and data exfiltration. LilacSquid similarly uses SSF and other malware to create tunnels to their remote servers.
InkLoader is .NET-based loader designed to run a hardcoded executable or command. It supports persistence mechanism and was spotted deploying PurpleInk.
LilacSquid uses InkLoader in conjunction with PurpleInk when they can create and maintain remote desktop (RDP) sessions using stolen credentials. After a successful RDP login, attackers downloaded InkLoader and PurpleInk, copied to specific directories, and InkLoader is registered as a service. The service is used to launch the InkLoader, which in turn deploys PurpleInk.
PurpleInk is actively developed since 2021, it relies on a configuration file to obtain information such as the command and control (C2) server’s address and port, which is typically base64-decoded and decrypted.
PurpleInk is heavily obfuscated and versatile, the malware supports multiple RAT capabilities including:
Enumerating processes and sending details to the C2.
Terminating specified processes.
Running new applications.
Gathering drive information.
Enumerating directories and obtaining file details.
Reading and exfiltrating specified files.
Replacing or appending content to specified files.
Talos also observed the APT using a custom tool called InkBox to deploy PurpleInk prior to InkLoader.
“InkBox is a malware loader that will read from a hardcoded file path on disk and decrypt its contents. The decrypted content is another executable assembly that is then run by invoking its Entry Point within the InkBox process.” reads the analysis published by Talos.
Russia-linked threat actor FlyingYeti is targeting Ukraine with a phishing campaign to deliver the PowerShell malware COOKBOX.
Cloudflare researchers discovered phishing campaign conducted by a Russia-linked threat actor FlyingYeti (aka UAC-0149) targeting Ukraine. The experts published a report to describe real-time effort to disrupt and delay this threat activity.
At the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Ukraine implemented a moratorium on evictions and termination of utility services for unpaid debt. The moratorium ended in January 2024, leading to significant debt liability and increased financial stress for Ukrainian citizens. The FlyingYeti campaign exploited this anxiety by using debt-themed lures to trick targets into opening malicious links embedded in the messages. Upon opening the files, the PowerShell malware COOKBOX infects the target system, allowing the attackers to deploy additional payloads and gain control over the victim’s system.
The threat actors exploited the WinRAR vulnerability CVE-2023-38831 to infect targets with malware.
Cloudflare states that FlyingYeti’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are similar to the ones detailed by Ukraine CERT while analyzing UAC-0149 cluster.
UAC-0149 targeted Ukrainian defense entities with COOKBOX malware since at least the fall of 2023.
“The threat actor uses dynamic DNS (DDNS) for their infrastructure and leverages cloud-based platforms for hosting malicious content and for malware command and control (C2).” reads the report published by Cloudflare. “Our investigation of FlyingYeti TTPs suggests this is likely a Russia-aligned threat group. The actor appears to primarily focus on targeting Ukrainian military entities.”
Threat actors targeted users with a spoofed version of the Kyiv Komunalka communal housing site (https://www.komunalka.ua), hosted on an actor-controlled GitHub page (hxxps[:]//komunalka[.]github[.]io). Komunalka is a payment processor for utilities and other services in the Kyiv region.
FlyingYeti likely directed targets to this page via phishing emails or encrypted Signal messages. On the spoofed site, a large green button prompted users to download a document named “Рахунок.docx” (“Invoice.docx”), which instead downloaded a malicious archive titled “Заборгованість по ЖКП.rar” (“Debt for housing and utility services.rar”).
Once the RAR file is opened, the CVE-2023-38831 exploit triggers the execution of the COOKBOX malware.
The RAR archive contains multiple files, including one with the Unicode character “U+201F,” which appears as whitespace on Windows systems. This character can hide file extensions by adding excessive whitespace, making a malicious CMD file (“Рахунок на оплату.pdf[unicode character U+201F].cmd”) look like a PDF document. The archive also includes a benign PDF with the same name minus the Unicode character. Upon opening the archive, the directory name also matches the benign PDF name. This naming overlap exploits the WinRAR vulnerability CVE-2023-38831, causing the malicious CMD to execute when the target attempts to open the benign PDF.
“The CMD file contains the Flying Yeti PowerShell malware known as COOKBOX. The malware is designed to persist on a host, serving as a foothold in the infected device. Once installed, this variant of COOKBOX will make requests to the DDNS domain postdock[.]serveftp[.]com for C2, awaiting PowerShell cmdlets that the malware will subsequently run.” continues the report. “Alongside COOKBOX, several decoy documents are opened, which contain hidden tracking links using the Canary Tokens service.”
The report also provide recommendations and Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
Russia-linked APT28 used the HeadLace malware and credential-harvesting web pages in attacks against networks across Europe.
Researchers at Insikt Group observed Russian GRU’s unit APT28 targeting networks across Europe with information-stealer Headlace and credential-harvesting web pages. The experts observed the APT deploying Headlace in three distinct phases from April to December 2023, respectively, using phishing, compromised internet services, and living off the land binaries. The credential harvesting pages were designed to target Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, European transportation infrastructures, and an Azerbaijani think tank. The credential harvesting pages created by the group can defeat two-factor authentication and CAPTCHA challenges by relaying requests between legitimate services and compromised Ubiquiti routers.
In some attackers, threat actors created specially-crafted web pages on Mocky that interact with a Python script running on compromised Ubiquiti routers to exfiltrate the provided credentials.
The compromise of networks associated with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and European railway systems could allow attackers to gather intelligence to influence battlefield tactics and broader military strategies. Additionally, their interest in the Azerbaijan Center for Economic and Social Development indicates a potential agenda to understand and possibly influence regional policies.
Insikt Group speculates the operation is aimed at influencing regional and military dynamics.
The group operates out of military unity 26165 of the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS).
The attack chain used in the attacks detailed by Insikt Group has seven distinct infrastructure stages to filter out sandboxes, incompatible operating systems, and non-targeted countries. Victims who failed these checks downloaded a benign file and were redirected to Microsoft’s web portal, msn.com. Those who passed the checks downloaded a malicious Windows BAT script, which connected to a free API service to execute successive shell commands.
In December 2023, researchers from Proofpoint and IBM detailed a new wave of APT spear-phishing attacks relying on multiple lure content to deliver Headlace malware. The campaigns targeted at least thirteen separate nations.
“Upon analyzing Headlace geofencing scripts and countries targeted by credential harvesting campaigns from 2022 onwards, Insikt Group identified that thirteen separate countries were targeted by BlueDelta. As expected, Ukraine topped the list, accounting for 40% of the activity.” reads the report published by the Insikt Group. “Türkiye might seem like an unexpected target with 10%, but it’s important to note that it was singled out only by Headlace geofencing, unlike Ukraine, Poland, and Azerbaijan, which were targeted through both Headlace geofencing and credential harvesting.”
Researchers call on organizations within government, military, defense, and related sectors, to bolster cybersecurity measures: prioritizing the detection of sophisticated phishing attempts, restricting access to non-essential internet services, and enhancing surveillance of critical network infrastructure.
Ukraine CERT-UA warned of cyber attacks targeting defense forces with SPECTR malware as part of a cyber espionage campaign dubbed SickSync.
The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) warned of cyber espionage campaign targeting defense forces in the country. The Ukrainian CERT attributes the attack to the threat actor UAC-0020 which employed a malware called SPECTR as part of the campaign tracked as SickSync.
The threat actor UAC-0020, aka Vermin, operates under the control of the law enforcement agencies of the temporarily occupied Luhansk.
The SPECTR malware has been active since at least 2019, it allows operators to steal sensitive data and files from the infected computer, it relies on the standard synchronization functionality of the legitimate SyncThing software.
Threat actors sent out spear-phishing messages with an attachment in the form of a password-protected archive named “turrel.fop.vovchok.rar”.
The archive contains another archive, named RARSFX archive (“turrel.fop.ovchok.sfx.rar.scr”) that contains the “Wowchok.pdf” decoy file, the “sync.exe” EXE installer created using InnoSetup, and the BAT file ” run_user.bat” used for initial startup.
The UA-CERT states that the “sync.exe” file contains the legitimate SyncThing components and SPECTR malware files, including additional libraries and scripts. Attackers modified the standard files of the SyncThing software to change the names of directories, scheduled tasks, disable the functionality of displaying messages to the user, etc.
The SPECTR information stealer can capture screenshots every 10 seconds, collect files, extract data from removable USB drives, and steal credentials from web browsers and applications like Element, Signal, Skype, and Telegram.
“It should be noted that the stolen information is copied to subfolders in the directory %APPDATA%\sync\Slave_Sync\, after which, using the standard synchronization functionality of the legitimate program SyncThing , the contents of these directories get to the attacker’s computer, which ensures data exfiltration.” reads the report from the CERT-UA. “From the point of view of network indicators (in case of confidence in not using the mentioned technology is authorized), taking into account the establishment of a peer-to-peer connection, among other things, we recommend paying attention to signs of interaction with the SyncThing infrastructure: *.syncthing.net.”
The report also includes indicators of cyber threats.
Morphisec researchers observed a threat actor, tracked as Sticky Werewolf, targeting entities in Russia and Belarus.
Sticky Werewolf is a threat actor that was first spotted in April 2023, initially targeting public organizations in Russia and Belarus. The group has expanded its operations to various sectors, including a pharmaceutical company and a Russian research institute specializing in microbiology and vaccine development.
In their latest campaign, Sticky Werewolf targeted the aviation industry with emails supposedly from the First Deputy General Director of AO OKB Kristall, a Moscow-based company involved in aircraft and spacecraft production and maintenance. Previously, the group used phishing emails with links to malicious files. In the latest campaign, the threat actor used archive files containing LNK files that pointed to a payload stored on WebDAV servers.
After executing the binary hosted on a WebDAV server, an obfuscated Windows batch script is launched. The script runs an AutoIt script that ultimately injects the final payload.
“In previous campaigns, the infection chain began with phishing emails containing a link to download a malicious file from platforms like gofile.io. However, in their latest campaign, the infection method has changed.” reads the analysis published by Morphisec. “The initial email includes an archive attachment; when the recipient extracts the archive, they find LNK and decoy files. These LNK files point to an executable hosted on a WebDAV server. Once executed, this initiates a Batch script, which then launches an AutoIt script that ultimately injects the final payload.”
The archive includes a decoy PDF File and two LNK Files Masquerading as DOCX Documents named Повестка совещания.docx.lnk (Meeting agenda) and Список рассылки.docx.lnk (Mailing list) respectively.
The threat actor used phishing messages allegedly sent by the First Deputy General Director and Executive Director of AO OKB Kristall. The recipients are individuals from the aerospace and defense sector who are invited to a video conference on future cooperation. The messages use a password-protected archive containing a malicious payload.
The payloads employed by the threat actors include commodity RATs or stealers. Recently, Sticky Werewolf was spotted using Rhadamanthys Stealer and Ozone RAT in their campaigns. In previous attacks the group also deployed MetaStealer, DarkTrack, and NetWire.
“These malwares enable extensive espionage and data exfiltration. While there is no definitive evidence of Sticky Werewolf’s national origin, the geopolitical context suggests possible links to a pro-Ukrainian cyberespionage group or hacktivists, though this attribution remains uncertain.” concludes the report that also includes Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
Chinese cyberespionage group Velvet Ant was spotted using custom malware to target F5 BIG-IP appliances to breach target networks.
In late 2023, Sygnia researchers responded to an incident suffered by a large organization that they attributed to a China-linked threat actor tracked as ‘Velvet Ant.’
The cyberspies deployed custom malware on F5 BIG-IP appliances to gain persistent access to the internal network of the target organization and steal sensitive data.
The investigation revealed that the threat actor had been present in the organization’s on-premises network for about three years, aiming to maintain access for espionage purposes. They achieved persistence by establishing multiple footholds within the company’s environment. One method used was exploiting a legacy F5 BIG-IP appliance exposed to the internet, which served as an internal Command and Control (C&C). When one foothold was discovered and remediated, the threat actor quickly adapted and pivoted to another. This demonstrated their agility and deep understanding of the target’s network infrastructure.
The investigation revealed that the Chinese hackers had been present in the organization’s on-premises network for about three years. They achieved persistence by establishing multiple footholds within the company’s environment. One method used was exploiting a legacy internet-facing F5 BIG-IP appliance, which was also used by attackers as an internal Command and Control (C&C). After the researchers discovered and remediated one foothold, the APT group quickly pivoted to another. This demonstrated their agility and deep understanding of the target’s network infrastructure.
“The compromised organization had two F5 BIG-IP appliances which provided services such as firewall, WAF, load balancing and local traffic management. These appliances were directly exposed to the internet, and both of which were compromised. Both F5 appliances were running an outdated, vulnerable, operating system. The threat actor may have leveraged one of the vulnerabilities to gain remote access to the appliances.” reads the analysis published by Sygnia. “As a result, a backdoor hidden within the F5 appliance can evade detection from traditional log monitoring solutions.”
Once the attackers had compromised the F5 BIG-IP appliances, they gained access to internal file servers and deployed the PlugX RAT. The PlugX RAT was used by multiple Chinese APT groups in cyberespionage campaigns over the years.
Forensic analysis of the F5 appliances revealed that the Velvet Ant group also used the following malware in their attacks:
VELVETSTING – a tool that connects to the threat actor’s C&C once an hour, searching commands to execute. Once the tool received a command, it was executed via ‘csh’ (Unix C shell).
VELVETTAP – a tool with the ability to capture network packets.
SAMRID – identified as ‘EarthWorm’, an open-source SOCKS proxy tunneller available on GitHub. The tool was utilized in the past by multiple China-linked APT groups, including ‘Volt Typhoon’, ‘APT27’ and ‘Gelsemium’.
ESRDE – a tool with similar capabilities to that of ‘VELVETSTING’, but with minor differences, such as using bash instead of ‘csh’.
Researchers provided the following recommendations for organizations to mitigate attacks of groups like Velvet Ant:
Limit outbound internet traffic.
Limit lateral movement throughout the network.
Enhance security hardening of legacy servers.
Mitigate credential harvesting.
Protect public-facing devices.
The report also includes indicators of compromise for the attack analyzed by the researchers.
A China-linked cyber espionage group has compromised telecom operators in an Asian country since at least 2021.
The Symantec Threat Hunter Team reported that an alleged China-linked APT group has infiltrated several telecom operators in a single, unnamed, Asian country at least since 2021.
The threat actors used tools associated with Chinese espionage groups, they planted multiple backdoors on the networks of targeted companies to steal credentials.
“The attacks have been underway since at least 2021, with evidence to suggest that some of this activity may even date as far back as 2020. Virtually all of the organizations targeted were telecoms operators, with the addition of a services company that serves the telecoms sector and a university in another Asian country.” reads the report published by Broadcom Symantec Threat Hunter Team.
Evidence collected by the experts suggests that the cluster activity may have been active since 2020.
In a recent espionage campaign, the attackers employed custom malware associated with several Chinese APT groups. Some of the malware used by the threat actors are:
Coolclient: A backdoor linked to the Fireant group (also known as Mustang Panda or Earth Preta). It logs keystrokes, manages files, and communicates with a C2 server. This campaign used a version of VLC Media Player (disguised as googleupdate.exe) to sideload a Coolclient loader, which then reads and executes encrypted payloads.
Quickheal: A backdoor associated with the Needleminer group (also known as RedFoxtrot or Nomad Panda). The variant used by the attackers in recent attacks was a 32-bit DLL that communicated with a hardcoded C&C server using a custom protocol mimicking SSL traffic.
Rainyday: A backdoor, linked to the Firefly group (also known as Naikon), was used in a recent espionage campaign.
In addition to utilizing custom backdoors. the cyber espionage group also employed a range of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to compromise their targets. They deployed custom keylogging malware, port scanning tools, credential theft through the dumping of registry hives, a publicly available tool known as Responder that acts as a Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) NetBIOS Name Service (NBT-NS) and multicast DNS (mDNS) poisoner, and enabling RDP.
“Tools used in this campaign have strong associations with multiple Chinese groups and at least three of the custom backdoors deployed are believed to be used exclusively by Chinese espionage actors.” concludes the report.” “The nature of the link between the actors involved in the current campaign remains unclear. Possibilities include, but are not limited to:
Attacks by multiple actors, acting independently of one another.
A single actor using tools and/or personnel acquired from or shared by other groups.
Multiple actors collaborating in a single campaign.
The ultimate motive of the intrusion campaign remains unclear.”
French information security agency ANSSI reported that Russia-linked threat actor Nobelium is behind a series of cyber attacks that targeted French diplomatic entities.
The French information security agency ANSSI reported that Russia-linked APT Nobelium targeted French diplomatic entities. Despite the French agency linked the attacks to the cyberespionage group Nobelium (aka APT29, SVR group, Cozy Bear, Midnight Blizzard, BlueBravo, and The Dukes), ANSSI differentiates these groups into separate threat clusters, including a group named Dark Halo, which was responsible for the 2020 SolarWinds attack.
October 2020, used against high-value targets, most likely for espionage purposes. Western diplomatic entities, such as embassies and Ministries of Foreign Affairs, account for the majority of known victims of Nobelium. However, several IT companies have also reported that they have been targeted by Nobelium’s operators in late 2023 and 2024.
The report published by ANSSI is based upon elements collected by the French agency, evidence shared by its national partners (known as C4 members), and publicly available reports. The document warns of phishing campaigns conducted by Nobelium against French public and diplomatic entities aiming at gathering strategic intelligence.
“Nobelium is characterized by the use of specific codes, tactics, technics and procedures. Most of Nobelium campaigns against diplomatic entities use compromised legitimate email accounts belonging to diplomatic staff, and conduct phishing campaigns against diplomatic institutions, embassies and consulates.” reads the report published by ANSSI. “These activities are also publicly described as a campaign called “Diplomatic Orbiter”.”
Attackers forge lure documents to target diplomatic staff, attempting to deliver their custom loaders to drop public post-exploitation tools such as Cobalt Strike or Brute Ratel C4. The tools allows attackers to access the victim’s network, perform lateral movements, drop additional payloads, maintain persistence, and exfiltrate valuable intelligence.
The agency confirmed that several IT companies have also reported being targeted by Nobelium in late 2023 and 2024.
“French public organisations have been targeted several times by phishing emails sent from foreign institutions previously compromised by Nobelium’s operators.” continues the report. “From February to May 2021, Nobelium operators conducted several phishing campaigns3 exploiting compromised email accounts belonging to the French Ministry of Culture and the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ANCT), sending an attachment called “Strategic Review”.”
In March 2022, a European embassy in South Africa received a phishing email that impersonated a French embassy, announcing the closure after a terrorist attack. The attackers sent the email from a compromised account of a French diplomat. In April and May 2022, Nobelium phishing messages reached dozens of email addresses from the French Ministry of Foreign Affair. Threat actors used themes like the closure of a Ukrainian embassy or a meeting with a Portuguese ambassador.
In May 2023, Nobelium targeted several European embassies in Kyiv, including the French embassy, with a phishing campaign involving an email about a “Diplomatic car for sale.” The ANSSI also reported a failed attempt to compromise the French Embassy in Romania.
“ANSSI has observed a high level of activities linked to Nobelium against the recent backdrop of geopolitical tensions, especially in Europe, in relation to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Nobelium’s activities against government and diplomatic entities represent a national security concern and endanger French and European diplomatic interests. The targeting of IT and cybersecurity entities for espionage purposes by Nobelium operators potentially strengthens their offensive capabilities and the threat they represent.” concludes the report that also provides indicators of compromise. “Nobelium’s techniques, tactics, and procedures remain mainly constant over time.”
The unauthorized access to the IT infrastructure of the company occurred on June 26, threat actors used the credentials of a standard employee account within its IT environment.
Upon detecting the suspicious activity by this account, the company immediately started the incident response measures.
“A comprehensive taskforce consisting of TeamViewer’s security team together with globally leading cyber security experts has worked 24/7 on investigating the incident with all means available. We are in constant exchange with additional threat intelligence providers and relevant authorities to inform the investigation.” reads the statement published by the company.
“Current findings of the investigation point to an attack on Wednesday, June 26, tied to credentials of a standard employee account within our Corporate IT environment. Based on continuous security monitoring, our teams identified suspicious behavior of this account and immediately put incident response measures into action. Together with our external incident response support, we currently attribute this activity to the threat actor known as APT29 / Midnight Blizzard. Based on current findings of the investigation, the attack was contained within the Corporate IT environment and there is no evidence that the threat actor gained access to our product environment or customer data.”
An update published by TeamViewer states that findings confirmed that the attack on its infrastructure was limited to its internal corporate IT environment and did not affect the product environment, connectivity platform, or any customer data.
The popular Ars Technica reporter Dan Goodin reported that an alert issued by security firm NCC Group reports a “significant compromise of the TeamViewer remote access and support platform by an APT group.”
In May 2019, the German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed that the German software company behind TeamViewer was compromised in 2016 by Chinese hackers.
According to the media outlet, Chinese state-sponsored hackers used the Winnti trojan malware to infect the systems of the Company.
The Winnti group was first spotted by Kaspersky in 2013, according to the researchers, the nation-state actor has been active since at least 2007.
The gang is financially-motivated and was mostly involved in cyber espionage campaigns. The hackers were known for targeting companies in the online gaming industry, the majority of the victims are located in Southeast Asia.
The Winnti cyberespionage group is known for its ability in targeting supply chains of legitimate software to spread malware.
According to the company, it was targeted by the hackers in autumn 2016, when its experts detected suspicious activities were quickly blocked them to prevent major damages.
TeamViewer spokesperson revealed that the company investigated the attempts of intrusion, but did not find any evidence of exposure for customer data and sensitive data.
Der Spiegel pointed out that TeamViewer did not disclose the security breach to the public.
“In autumn 2016, TeamViewer was target of a cyber-attack. Our systems detected the suspicious activities in time to prevent any major damage. An expert team of internal and external cyber security researchers, working together closely with the responsible authorities, successfully fended off the attack and with all available means of IT forensics found no evidence that customer data or other sensitive information had been stolen, that customer computer systems had been infected or that the TeamViewer source code had been manipulated, stolen or misused in any other way.” said company spokesman.
“Out of an abundance of caution, TeamViewer conducted a comprehensive audit of its security architecture and IT infrastructure subsequently and further strengthened it with appropriate measures.”
At the time the company published a statement to exclude it was breached by hackers:
“Göppingen/Germany, May 23, 2016. A recent article warns, “TeamViewer users have had their bank accounts emptied by hackers gaining full-system access”. TeamViewer is appalled by any criminal activity; however, the source of the problem, according to our research, is careless use, not a potential security breach on TeamViewer’s side.” wrote the company.
Only in 2019, the company admitted it was breached in 2016.
Cisco fixed an actively exploited NX-OS zero-day, the flaw was exploited to install previously unknown malware as root on vulnerable switches.
Cisco addressed an NX-OS zero-day, tracked as CVE-2024-20399 (CVSS score of 6.0), that the China-linked group Velvet Ant exploited to deploy previously unknown malware as root on vulnerable switches.
The flaw resides in the CLI of Cisco NX-OS Software, an authenticated, local attacker can exploit the flaw to execute arbitrary commands as root on the underlying operating system of an affected device.
“This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of arguments that are passed to specific configuration CLI commands. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by including crafted input as the argument of an affected configuration CLI command.” reads the advisory published by Cisco. “A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system with the privileges of root.”
The IT giant pointed out that only attackers with Administrator credentials can successfully exploit this vulnerability on a Cisco NX-OS device.
In April 2024, researchers reported to the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) that the issue was actively exploited in the wild.
Cybersecurity firm Sygnia observed the attacks on April 2024 and reported them to Cisco.
“Sygnia identified that CVE-2024-20399 was exploited in the wild by a China-nexus threat group as a ‘zero-day’ and shared the details of the vulnerability with Cisco. By exploiting this vulnerability, a threat group – dubbed ‘Velvet Ant’ – successfully executed commands on the underlying operating system of Cisco Nexus devices.” reads the report published by Sygnia. “This exploitation led to the execution of a previously unknown custom malware that allowed the threat group to remotely connect to compromised Cisco Nexus devices, upload additional files, and execute code on the devices.“
The vulnerability impacts the following devices:
MDS 9000 Series Multilayer Switches (CSCwj97007)
Nexus 3000 Series Switches (CSCwj97009)
Nexus 5500 Platform Switches (CSCwj97011)
Nexus 5600 Platform Switches (CSCwj97011)
Nexus 6000 Series Switches (CSCwj97011)
Nexus 7000 Series Switches (CSCwj94682) *
Nexus 9000 Series Switches in standalone NX-OS mode (CSCwj97009)
Cisco recommends customers monitor the use of credentials for the administrative users network-admin and vdc-admin.
Cisco provides the Cisco Software Checker to help customers determine if their devices are vulnerable to this flaw.
In late 2023, Sygnia researchers responded to an incident suffered by a large organization that they attributed to the same China-linked threat actor ‘Velvet Ant.’
The cyberspies deployed custom malware on F5 BIG-IP appliances to gain persistent access to the internal network of the target organization and steal sensitive data.
Multiple cybersecurity agencies released a joint advisory warning about a China-linked group APT40 ‘s capability to rapidly exploit disclosed security flaws.
Cybersecurity agencies from Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the U.K., and the U.S. released a joint advisory warning about the China-linked group APT40 (aka TEMP.Periscope, TEMP.Jumper, Bronze Mohawk, Gingham Typhoon, ISLANDDREAMS, Kryptonite Panda, Red Ladon, TA423, and Leviathan) and its capability to rapidly exploit disclosed flaws
The China-linked group was able to exploit vulnerabilities within hours or days of the public disclosure.
APT40 has previously targeted organizations in countries like Australia and the United States. The group is able to rapidly adapt vulnerability proofs of concept (POCs) for their operations. They identify new exploits in widely used public software, such as Log4J, Atlassian Confluence, and Microsoft Exchange, to target the associated infrastructure.
“APT 40 has previously targeted organizations in various countries, including Australia and the United States. Notably, APT 40 possesses the ability to quickly transform and adapt vulnerability proofs of concept (POCs) for targeting, reconnaissance, and exploitation operations.” reads the advisory. “APT 40 identifies new exploits within widely used public software such as Log4J, Atlassian Confluence and Microsoft Exchange to target the infrastructure of the associated vulnerability.“
In July 2021, the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) indicted four members of the cyber espionage group APT40 (aka TEMP.Periscope, TEMP.Jumper, and Leviathan) for hacking tens of government organizations, private businesses and universities around the world between 2011 and 2018.
The APT40 group has been active since at least 2013, it is focused on targeting countries important to the country’s Belt and Road Initiative (i.e. Cambodia, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom).
The group appears to be focused on supporting the naval modernization efforts of the Government of Beijing. Threat actors target engineering, transportation, and defense sectors, experts observed a specific interest in maritime technologies.
The cyberspies also targeted research centres and universities involved in naval research with the intent to access advanced technology to push the growth of the Chinese naval industry. The list of victims of the APT40 group also includes organizations with operations in Southeast Asia or involved in South China Sea disputes.
Three of the defendants are said to be officers in a provincial arm of the MSS and one was an employee of a front company that was used to obfuscate the government’s role in the hacking campaigns.
“APT40 regularly conducts reconnaissance against networks of interest, including networks in the authoring agencies’ countries, looking for opportunities to compromise its targets. This regular reconnaissance postures the group to identify vulnerable, end-of-life or no longer maintained devices on networks of interest, and to rapidly deploy exploits. APT40 continues to find success exploiting vulnerabilities from as early as 2017.” continues the joint advisory. “APT40 rapidly exploits newly public vulnerabilities in widely used software such as Log4J (CVE-2021-44228), Atlassian Confluence (CVE-2021-31207, CVE-2021-26084) and Microsoft Exchange (CVE-2021-31207, CVE-2021-34523, CVE-2021-34473). ASD’s ACSC and the authoring agencies expect the group to continue using POCs for new high-profile vulnerabilities within hours or days of public release.”
APT40 use to exploit vulnerable public-facing infrastructure over other hacking techniques like phishing. They prioritize obtaining valid credentials for subsequent activities. The group often relies on web shells to maintain persistence early in an intrusion. Persistence is established early in an intrusion, making it likely to be observed in all cases, regardless of the level of compromise or further actions taken.
In the past, the APT40 was observed using compromised Australian websites as C2 servers, however he recently evolved this technique.
“APT40 has embraced the global trend of using compromised devices, including small-office/home-office (SOHO) devices, as operational infrastructure and last-hop redirectors [T1584.008] for its operations in Australia. This has enabled the authoring agencies to better characterize and track this group’s movements.” continues the report.
Many of the compromised SOHO devices are end-of-life or unpatched that can be easily hacked using N-day exploits. Compromised SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) devices provide attackers with a platform to launch attacks by mimicking legitimate traffic.
The report provides details about Tactics, Techniques, and Procesured associated by the the group and detection and mitigation recommendations.
Void Banshee APT group exploited the Windows zero-day CVE-2024-38112 to execute code via the disabled Internet Explorer.
An APT group tracked as Void Banshee was spotted exploiting the Windows zero-day CVE-2024-38112 (CVSS score of 7.5) to execute code through the disabled Internet Explorer.
The vulnerability is a Windows MSHTML Platform Spoofing Vulnerability. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to take additional actions before exploitation to prepare the target environment. An attacker can trigger the issue by sending the victim a malicious file that the victim would have to execute.
Trend Micro researchers discovered that the flaw was actively exploited in the wild in May and reported it to Microsoft which addressed the zero-day with the July 2024 Patch Tuesday security updates.
Void Banshee was observed exploiting the CVE-2024-38112 flaw to drop the Atlantida info-stealer on the victims’ machines. The malware allows operators to gather system information and steal sensitive data, such as passwords and cookies, from multiple applications.
In the group’s attack chain, Void Banshee attempts to trick victims into opening zip archives containing malicious files disguised as book PDFs. The archives are disseminated in cloud-sharing websites, Discord servers, and online libraries, and other means. The APT group focuses on North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
“This zero-day attack is a prime example of how unsupported Windows relics are an overlooked attack surface that can still be exploited by threat actors to infect unsuspecting users with ransomware, backdoors, or as a conduit for other kinds of malware.” states Trend Micro.
Void Banshee exploited the disabled Internet Explorer process to run HTML Application (HTA) files using specially crafted .URL files with the MHTML protocol handler and the x-usc! directive. This technique resembles the exploitation of CVE-2021-40444, another MSHTML flaw that was exploited in zero-day attacks. The experts warn that this attack method is very concerning because Internet Explorer no longer receives updates or security fixes.
“In this attack, CVE-2024-38112 was used as a zero-day to redirect a victim by opening and using the system-disabled IE to a compromised website which hosted a malicious HTML Application (HTA)” states the report. “In the URL parameter of the internet shortcut file, we can see that Void Banshee specifically crafted this URL string using the MHTML protocol handler along with the x-usc! directive. This logic string opens the URL target in the native Internet Explorer through the iexplore.exe process.”
Attackers used the internet shortcut file to direct the victims to an attacker-controlled domain where an HTML file downloads the HTA stage of the infection chain. The researchers noticed that Void Banshee uses this HTML file to control the window view size of Internet Explorer, hiding browser information and hiding the download of the next infection stage from the victim.
By default, IE prompts users to open or save the HTML application, but the APT group disguised the HTA file as a PDF by adding spaces to the file extension. Upon running the HTA file, a series of scripts is executed, along with the LoadToBadXml .NET trojan loader, the Donut shellcode, and the Atlantida stealer.
“In this campaign, we have observed that even though users may no longer be able to access IE, threat actors can still exploit lingering Windows relics like IE on their machine to infect users and organizations with ransomware, backdoors, or as a proxy to execute other strains of malware.” Trend Micro concludes. “The ability of APT groups like Void Banshee to exploit disabled services such as IE poses a significant threat to organizations worldwide. Since services such as IE have a large attack surface and no longer receive patches, it represents a serious security concern to Windows users.”
China-linked APT group Daggerfly (aka Evasive Panda, Bronze Highland) Evasive Panda has been spotted using an updated version of the macOS backdoor Macma.
The China-linked APT group Daggerfly (aka Evasive Panda or Bronze Highland) has significantly updated its malware arsenal, adding a new malware family based on the MgBot framework and an updated Macma macOS backdoor.
“The Daggerfly (aka Evasive Panda, Bronze Highland) espionage group has extensively updated its toolset, introducing several new versions of its malware, most likely in response to exposure of older variants.” reads the report. “The new tooling was deployed in a number of recent attacks against organizations in Taiwan and a U.S. NGO based in China, which indicates the group also engages in internal espionage. In the attack on this organization, the attackers exploited a vulnerability in an Apache HTTP server to deliver their MgBot malware.“
The APT group was spotted using the malware families in attacks against Taiwanese organizations and a U.S. NGO in China. The attackers exploited an Apache HTTP server vulnerability to deliver their MgBot malware.
Daggerfly has been active for at least a decade, the group is known for the use of the custom MgBot malware framework. In 2023, Symantec identified a Daggerfly intrusion at an African telecom operator, using new MgBot plugins. This highlights the group’s ongoing evolution in cyber espionage tactics.
The Macma macOS backdoor was first detailed by Google in 2021 and has been used since at least 2019. At the time of discovery, threat actors employed the malware in watering hole attacks involving compromised websites in Hong Kong. The watering hole attacks used exploits for iOS and macOS devices. Attackers exploited the privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2021-30869 to install Macma on macOS devices.
Macma is a modular backdoor that supports multiple functionalities, including device fingerprinting, executing commands, screen capture, keylogging, audio capture, uploading and downloading files.
Although Macma was widely used in cyber operations carried out by nation-state actors, it was not linked to a particular group. However, Symantec has found evidence to suggest that it is part of the Daggerfly toolkit. Two variants of the Macma backdoor C2 server (103.243.212[.]98) that was also used by an MgBot dropper.
In addition to this shared infrastructure, Macma and other malware in the Daggerfly’s arsenal, including Mgbot all contain code from a single, shared library or framework. Elements of this library have been used to build Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android threats. The functionality provided by this library includes:
Threading and synchronization primitives
Event notifications and timers
Data marshaling
Platform-independent abstractions (e.g. time)
The new variants used by Daggerfly implement the following additions/improvements:
New logic to collect a file’s system listing, with the new code based on Tree, a publicly available Linux/Unix utility.
Modified code in the AudioRecorderHelper feature
Additional parametrisation
Additional debug logging
Addition of a new file (param2.ini) to set options to adjust screenshot size and aspect ratio
The experts also observed another malware, tracked as Suzafk (aka ‘NetMM’, Nightdoor), in the group toolkit that ESET researchers linked to Evasive Panda in March.
“Suzafk is a multi-staged backdoor capable of using TCP or OneDrive for C&C. The malware contained the following configuration, indicating the functionality to connect to OneDrive is in development or present in other variants of the malware.” continues the report.
The backdoor includes the code from the al-khaser project, a public code repository developed to avoid detection by detecting virtual machines, sandboxes, and malware analysis environments.
The malware can also execute commands for network and system monitoring, such as ‘ipconfig,’ ‘systeminfo,’ ‘tasklist,’ and ‘netstat.’
“The [Daggerfly] group can create versions of its tools targeting most major operating system platforms.” concludes the report. “In addition to the tools documented here, Symantec has seen evidence of the ability to Trojanize Android APKs, SMS interception tools, DNS request interception tools, and even malware families targeting Solaris OS. Daggerfly appears to be capable of responding to exposure by quickly updating its toolset to continue its espionage activities with minimal disruption.”
Belarus-linked APT group GhostWriter targeted Ukrainian organizations with a malware family known as PicassoLoader, used to deliver various malicious payloads.
The Ukrainian Government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) reported a surge in activity associated with the APT group UAC-0057 (aka GhostWriter) group between July 12 and 18, 2024. Threat actors distributed documents containing macros designed to deploy the PICASSOLOADER malware on victim computers, which then delivered the post-exploitation tool Cobalt Strike Beacon.
The attackers used bait documents related to local government reform (USAID/DAI “HOVERLA” project), taxation, and financial-economic metrics (“oborona.rar,” “66_oborona_PURGED.xls,” “trix.xls,” “equipment_survey_regions_.xls,” “accounts.xls,” “spreadsheet.xls,” “attachment.xls,” “Податок_2024.xls”).
“Based on this, it can be inferred that UAC-0057 might have targeted both project office specialists and their counterparts among the employees of relevant local government bodies in Ukraine.” reads the report published by CERT-UA.
The campaign was likely part of a broader cyber espionage activity against the Ukrainian government.
In November 2021, Mandiant Threat Intelligence researchers linked the Ghostwriter disinformation campaign (aka UNC1151) to the government of Belarus.
In August 2020, security experts from FireEye uncovered a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting NATO by spreading fake news content on compromised news websites.
According to FireEye, the campaign tracked as GhostWriter, has been ongoing since at least March 2017 and is aligned with Russian security interests.
Unlike other disinformation campaigns, GhostWriter doesn’t spread through social networks, instead, threat actors behind this campaign abused compromised content management systems (CMS) of news websites or spoofed email accounts to disseminate fake news.
The operators behind Ghostwriter targeted Belarusian entities before the 2020 elections, some of the individuals (representatives of the Belarusian opposition) targeted by the nation-state actor were later arrested by the Belarusian government.
China-linked group APT41 breached a Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute using ShadowPad and Cobalt Strike.
Cisco Talos researchers reported that the China-linked group compromised a Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute. The experts attributed the attack with medium confidence to the APT41 group.
The campaign started as early as July 2023 and threat actors delivered the ShadowPad malware, Cobalt Strike, and other post-exploitation tools.
The sample of ShadowPad malware employed in this campaign exploited an outdated vulnerable version of Microsoft Office IME binary as a loader. The loader in turn loads the customized second-stage loader for launching the payload.
“Cisco Talos assesses with medium confidence that this campaign is carried out by APT41, alleged by the U.S. government to be comprised of Chinese nationals. This assessment is based primarily on overlaps in tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), infrastructure and malware families used exclusively by Chinese APT groups.” reads the report published by Cisco Talos. “Talos’ analyses of the malware loaders used in this attack reveal that these are ShadowPad loaders. However, Talos has been unable to retrieve the final ShadowPad payloads used by the attackers.”
ShadowPad is a modular remote access trojan (RAT) sold exclusively to Chinese hacking groups. It has been publicly linked to APT41, a group believed to operate from Chengdu, China, and has also been used by other Chinese groups such as Mustang Panda and the Tonto Team.
The researchers were not able to determine the initial attack vector. The attackers compromised three hosts in the targeted environment and exfiltrated some documents from the network.
Attackers used a web shell to maintain persistence and drop additional payloads like ShadowPad and Cobalt Strike.
The attackers used a unique Cobalt Strike loader written in GoLang to bypass Windows Defender’s detection. This loader, derived from an anti-AV tool called CS-Avoid-Killing found on GitHub and written in Simplified Chinese, is promoted in various Chinese hacking forums and tutorials. The presence of Simplified Chinese file and directory paths suggests that the threat actors who created the loader are proficient in the language.
Attackers were also observed running PowerShell commands to execute scripts used to run the ShadowPad malware directly in memory and fetch Cobalt Strike malware from C2 server.
“During our investigation of this campaign, we encountered two distinct iterations of ShadowPad. While both iterations utilized the same sideloading technique, they each exploited different vulnerable legitimate binaries to initiate the ShadowPad loader.” continues the report. “The initial variant of the ShadowPad loader had been previously discussed in 2020, and some vendors had referred to it as ‘ScatterBee’. Its technical structure and the names of its multiple components have remained consistent with earlier reports. The more recent variant of the ShadowPad loader targeted an outdated and susceptible version of the Microsoft Office IME imecmnt.exe binary, which is over 13 years old.”
Talos also discovered that APT41 created a custom loader to inject a proof-of-concept for CVE-2018-0824 directly into memory. The threat actors used a remote code execution vulnerability to achieve local privilege escalation.
“During the compromise the threat actor attempts to exploit CVE-2018-0824, with a tool called UnmarshalPwn, which we will detail in the sections below.” continues the report. “The malicious actor is careful, in an attempt to avoid detection, during its activity executes “quser” which, when using RDP allows it to see who else is logged on the system. Hence the actor can stop its activity if any other use is on the system. Cisco Talos also noticed that once the backdoors are deployed the malicious actor will delete the webshell and guest account that allowed the initial access.”
By analyzing artifacts from this campaign, the researchers identified samples and infrastructure potentially used by the same threat actors in different campaigns. Sharing these findings could help the community to make connections and enhance further investigations.
Talos released Indicators of Compromise for this campaign on their GitHub repository.
South Korea’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) reported that North Korea-linked hackers hijacked VPN software updates to deploy malware.
South Korea’s national security and intelligence agencies, including the National Intelligence Service, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Police Agency, the Military Intelligence Command, and the Cyber Operations Command, have issued a joint cybersecurity advisory to warn that North Korea-linked hackers exploited VPN software update to install malware on target networks.
According to the South Korean authorities, the government of Pyongyang’s goal is to steal intellectual property and trade secrets from the South.
North Korea-linked actors hacking groups are targeting South Korea’s construction and machinery industries. The advisory provides details on the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by the attackers, as well as indicators of compromise (IoCs) for these attacks.
“Following the official announcement of the “Local Development 20×10 Policy” by Kim Jong-un at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly on January 15 this year, North Korea has been pushing for the construction of modern industrial plants in 20 cities and counties annually. North Korean hacking organizations are also intensifying their efforts to support this policy.” reads the advisory. “It is suspected that North Korean hackers are stealing data from South Korea’s construction, machinery, and urban development sectors to support their industrial plant construction and local development plans.”
The North Korean APT groups Kimsuky and Andariel, both linked to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, are the main hacking groups involved. Their simultaneous and targeted attacks on specific sectors are considered unusual and experts highlighted that they necessitate careful preparation.
In January 2024, the Kimsuky APT group was spotted distributing malware through the website of a construction industry association in South Korea. The malware was concealed within security authentication software used during website login. The attack aimed at infecting PCs belonging to personnel from local governments, public institutions, and construction companies who accessed the site. This attack combined a “supply chain attack,” which involved tampering with legitimate distribution channels, with a “watering hole attack,” targeting websites frequently visited by construction and design professionals.
“When the tampered security authentication software installation file is executed, malware in the form of a DLL is run in the %APPDATA% directory, along with legitimate programs. This malware operates in the background to steal information, making it difficult for users to notice malicious activities. The malware, written in Go, is identified by some security firms as ‘TrollAgent’.” reads the advisory. “The malware has functionalities to collect system information, capture user screens, and gather information stored in browsers (credentials, cookies, bookmarks, history). It can also steal GPKI certificates, SSH keys, Sticky Notes, and FileZilla information from the infected PC.”
Another case detailed by the researchers took place in April 2024, when the Andariel hacking group exploited vulnerabilities in domestic VPN and server security software to distribute remote control malware, DoraRAT, to construction and machinery companies. The attackers manipulated the VPN client-server communication protocol to disguise malicious update files as legitimate ones. The compromised VPN client mistakenly accepted these files, leading to the execution of DoraRAT.
“The remote control malware (DoraRAT) used in the attack was simple and lightweight, focusing on basic functions like file upload/download and command execution. It was distributed using a watering hole technique, which increased its exposure. Unlike more sophisticated APT malware, DoraRAT had minimal functionality. Additionally, a file-stealing variant was identified, capable of exfiltrating large files related to machinery and equipment design.” continues the joint advisory. “Andariel also exploited vulnerabilities in server security products, demonstrating a trend of targeting IT management software for mass infections due to their high-level access and control.”
Below are the mitigations provided by North Korean authorities:
Organizations managing websites in sectors like construction and machinery should seek security assessments from relevant institutions if needed.
Ongoing security training for all organizational members, including IT and security staff, is crucial.
Keep operating systems and applications up-to-date, and use updated antivirus software with real-time detection.
Implement strict approval policies for software distribution to prevent vulnerabilities in automated deployment.
Stay informed about government cybersecurity advisories and act promptly on manufacturer recommendations.
Refer to guidelines for software supply chain security and software development security provided by national authorities.
A China-linked APT, tracked as StormBamboo, compromised an internet service provider (ISP) to poison software update mechanisms with malware.
Volexity researchers reported that a China-linked APT group, tracked as StormBamboo (aka Evasive Panda, Daggerfly, and StormCloud), successfully compromised an undisclosed internet service provider (ISP) in order to poison DNS responses for target organizations.
The threat actors targeted insecure software update mechanisms to install malware on macOS and Windows victim machines.
In mid-2023, Volexity discovered multiple malware infections affecting macOS and Windows systems within victim organizations. The company linked the attacks to StormBamboo APT group. Upon investigating the incidents, the researchers determined that a DNS poisoning attack at the ISP level caused the infection. The attackers altered DNS responses for domains related to software updates to deploy multiple malware families, including MACMA and POCOSTICK (MGBot). The attacker’s methods resemble those of DriftingBamboo, suggesting a possible connection between the two threat actors.
Daggerfly has been active for at least a decade, the group is known for the use of the custom MgBot malware framework. In 2023, Symantec identified a Daggerfly intrusion at an African telecom operator, using new MgBot plugins. This highlights the group’s ongoing evolution in cyber espionage tactics.
The Macma macOS backdoor was first detailed by Google in 2021 and has been used since at least 2019. At the time of discovery, threat actors employed the malware in watering hole attacks involving compromised websites in Hong Kong. The watering hole attacks used exploits for iOS and macOS devices. Attackers exploited the privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2021-30869 to install Macma on macOS devices.
Macma is a modular backdoor that supports multiple functionalities, including device fingerprinting, executing commands, screen capture, keylogging, audio capture, uploading and downloading files.
Although Macma was widely used in cyber operations carried out by nation-state actors, it was not linked to a particular group.
“During one incident investigated by Volexity, it was discovered that StormBamboo poisoned DNS requests to deploy malware via an HTTP automatic update mechanism and poison responses for legitimate hostnames that were used as second-stage, command-and-control (C2) servers.” reads the report published by Volexity. “The DNS records were poisoned to resolve to an attacker-controlled server in Hong Kong at IP address 103.96.130[.]107. Initially, Volexity suspected the initial victim organization’s firewall may have been compromised. However, further investigation revealed the DNS poisoning was not performed within the target infrastructure, but further upstream at the ISP level.”
Volexity promptly alerted the ISP, which then investigated key traffic-routing devices on their network. After rebooting and taking parts of the network offline, the DNS poisoning stopped. The researchers were not able to identify a specific compromised device, however updating or deactivating various infrastructure components effectively ended the malicious activity.
“The logic behind the abuse of automatic updates is the same for all the applications: the legitimate application performs an HTTP request to retrieve a text-based file (the format varies) containing the latest application version and a link to the installer.” continues the report. “Since the attacker has control of the DNS responses for any given DNS name, they abuse this design, redirecting the HTTP request to a C2 server they control hosting a forged text file and a malicious installer. The AiTM workflow is shown below.”
StormBamboo targeted various software vendors with insecure update mechanisms, using complex methods to deploy malware. For example, they targeted 5KPlayer’s update process for the “youtube-dl” dependency to deliver a backdoored installer from their C2 servers. Once compromised systems, the attackers installed a malicious Google Chrome extension called ReloadText to steal browser cookies and email data.
“The incident described in this blog post confirms the supposition made by ESET concerning the infection vector for the POCOSTICK malware. The attacker can intercept DNS requests and poison them with malicious IP addresses, and then use this technique to abuse automatic update mechanisms that use HTTP rather than HTTPS.” concludes the report. “This method is similar to the attack vector Volexity previously observed being used by DriftingBamboo following the 0-day exploitation of Sophos Firewalls.”
Cybersecurity analysts have uncovered critical details about the North Korean advanced persistent threat (APT) group Kimsuky, which has been targeting universities as part of its global espionage operations.
Kimsuky, active since at least 2012, primarily targets South Korean think tanks and government entities, though its reach extends to the US, the UK and other European nations. The group specializes in sophisticated phishing campaigns, often posing as academics or journalists to infiltrate networks and steal sensitive information.
Recent Findings and Tactics
According to a new advisory published by Resilience today, its analysts capitalized on Kimsuky’s operational security mistakes, which led to the collection of source code, login credentials and other crucial data.
The data revealed that Kimsuky has been phishing university staff, researchers and professors, aiming to access and exfiltrate valuable research and intelligence. Once inside university networks, the group was observed stealing information critical for North Korea, particularly given the country’s limited scientific community.
The group’s actions align with the objectives of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), North Korea’s primary foreign intelligence agency.
Historically, Kimsuky has been linked to attempts to steal sensitive data, including nuclear research, healthcare innovations and pharmaceutical secrets. There is also evidence suggesting that Kimsuky engages in financially motivated cybercrime, potentially as a means to fund its espionage activities.
Resilience’s new findings shed light on Kimsuky’s methods, particularly its use of phishing pages that mimic legitimate university login portals. By altering the code of these pages, Kimsuky can capture the credentials of unsuspecting victims. Notably, the group has targeted institutions such as Dongduk University, Korea University and Yonsei University.
The operation also highlighted Kimsuky’s use of a custom tool called “SendMail,” which was deployed to send phishing emails using compromised email accounts. These emails were carefully crafted to deceive recipients into providing their login information, furthering Kimsuky’s espionage efforts.
According to Resilience, the breadth and depth of Kimsuky’s tactics underscore the persistent and evolving threat posed by state-backed cyber groups.
Recommendations for Organizations
To tackle this threat, the security firm recommended leveraging phish-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA), such as FIDO-compliant hardware tokens or push-based mobile applications.
Additionally, users should always double-check that the URL they are logging into matches the page they expect to be on, as some password managers can assist with this automatically.
Finally, organizations are encouraged to review and test Breach and Attack Simulation packages that simulate Kimsuky activity to better prepare for potential attacks.
A new self-spreading worm named ‘CMoon,’ capable of stealing account credentials and other data, has been distributed in Russia since early July 2024 via a compromised gas supply company website.
According to Kaspersky researchers who discovered the campaign, CMoon can perform a broad range of functions, including loading additional payloads, snapping screenshots, and launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Judging from the distribution channel the threat actors used, their targeting scope is focused on high-value targets rather than random internet users, which indicates a sophisticated operation.
Distribution mechanism
Kaspersky says the infection chain begins when users click on links to regulatory documents (docx, .xlsx, .rtf, and .pdf) found on various pages of a company’s website that provides gasification and gas supply services to a Russian city.
The threat actors replaced the document links with links to malicious executables, which were also hosted on the site and delivered to the victims as self-extracting archives containing the original document and the CMoon payload, named after the original link.
“We have not seen other vectors of distribution of this malware, so we believe that the attack is aimed only at visitors to the particular site,” reports Kaspersky.
After the gas firm was notified of this compromise, the malicious files and links were removed from its website on July 25, 2024.
However, due to CMoon’s self-propagation mechanisms, its distribution may continue autonomously.
CMoon is a .NET worm that copies itself to a newly created folder named after the antivirus software it detected on the compromised device or one resembling a system folder if no AVs are detected.
The worm creates a shortcut on the Windows Startup directory to ensure it runs on system startup, securing persistence between reboots.
To avoid raising suspicions during manual user checks, it alters its files’ creation and modification dates to May 22, 2013.
The worm monitors for newly connected USB drives, and when any are hooked up on the infected machine, it replaces all files except for ‘LNKs’ and ‘EXEs’ with shortcuts to its executable.
CMoon also looks for interesting files stored on the USB drives and temporarily stores them in hidden directories (‘.intelligence’ and ‘.usb’) before these are exfiltrated to the attacker’s server.
CMoon features standard info-stealer functionality, targeting cryptocurrency wallets, data stored in web browsers, messenger apps, FTP and SSH clients, and document files in the USB or user folders that contain the text strings ‘secret,’ ‘service,’ or ‘password.’
An interesting and somewhat unusual feature is the targeting of files that might contain account credentials such as .pfx, .p12, .kdb, .kdbx, .lastpass, .psafe3, .pem, .key, .private, .asc, .gpg, .ovpn, and .log files.
Targeted directories and data Source: Kaspersky
The malware can also download and execute additional payloads, capture screenshots of the breached device, and initiate DDoS attacks on specified targets.
Stolen files and system information are packaged and sent to an external server, where they are decrypted (RC4) and verified for their integrity using an MD5 hash.
Generating the data package for exfiltration Source: Kaspersky
Kaspersky leaves open the possibility of more sites outside its current visibility distributing CMoon, so vigilance is advised.
No matter how targeted this campaign may be, the fact that the worm spreads autonomously means it could reach unintended systems and create the conditions for opportunistic attacks.
CISA and the FBI confirmed today that the Royal ransomware rebranded to BlackSuit and has demanded over $500 million from victims since it emerged more than two years ago.
This new information was shared as an update to a joint advisory published in March 2023, which says the BlackSuit gang has been active since September 2022.
However, this private group is believed to be a direct successor of the notorious Conti cybercrime syndicate and started as Quantum ransomware in January 2022.
While they initially used other gangs’ encryptors (like ALPHV/BlackCat), likely to avoid drawing unwanted attention, they deployed their own Zeon encryptor soon after and rebranded to Royal in September 2022.
After attacking the City of Dallas, Texas, in June 2023, the Royal ransomware operation began testing a new encryptor called BlackSuit amid rebranding rumors. Since then, they have been operating under the BlackSuit name, and Royal Ransomware attacks have stopped altogether.
“BlackSuit ransomware is the evolution of the ransomware previously identified as Royal ransomware, which was used from approximately September 2022 through June 2023. BlackSuit shares numerous coding similarities with Royal ransomware and has exhibited improved capabilities,” the FBI and CISA confirmed in a Wednesday update to their original advisory.
“Ransom demands have typically ranged from approximately $1 million to $10 million USD, with payment demanded in Bitcoin. BlackSuit actors have demanded over $500 million USD in total and the largest individual ransom demand was $60 million.”
In March 2023 and a subsequent November 2023 advisory update, the two agencies shared indicators of compromise and a list of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to help defenders block the gang’s attempts to deploy ransomware on their networks.
CISA and the FBI also linked the BlackSuit gang to attacks against over 350 organizations since September 2022 and at least $275 million in ransom demands.
The joint advisory was first issued after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) security team revealed in December 2022 that the ransomware operation was behind multiple attacks targeting healthcare organizations across the United States.
Most recently, multiple sources told BleepingComputer that the BlackSuit ransomware gang was behind a massive CDK Global IT outage that disrupted operations at over 15,000 car dealerships across North America.
This widespread outage after last month’s attack forced CDK to shut down its IT systems and data centers to contain the incident and car dealerships to switch to pen and paper, making it impossible for buyers to purchase cars or receive service for already-bought vehicles.
On Tuesday, IT and phone systems at McLaren Health Care hospitals were disrupted following an attack linked to the INC Ransom ransomware operation.
McLaren is a non-profit healthcare system with annual revenues of over $6.5 billion, which operates a network of 13 hospitals across Michigan supported by a team of 640 physicians. It also has over 28,000 employees and works with 113,000 network providers throughout Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.
“While McLaren Health Care continues to investigate a disruption to our information technology system, we want to ensure our teams are as prepared as possible to care for patients when they arrive,” a statement on the health system’s website reads.
“Patients with scheduled appointments should plan to attend those appointments unless they are contacted by a member of our care team.
McLaren hinted the hospitals had lost access to patient information databases when advising patients to bring detailed information about their current medications to appointments, including physician orders and printed results of recent lab tests. The health system also said it may have to reschedule some appointments and non-emergent or elective procedures “out of an abundance of caution.”
“We understand this situation may be frustrating to our patients – and to our team members – and we deeply and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” McLaren added. “We kindly ask for your patience while our caregivers and support teams work as diligently as ever to provide our communities the care they need and deserve.”
Even though McLaren has yet to disclose the nature of the incident, employees at McLaren Bay Region Hospital in Bay City have shared a ransom note warning that the hospital’s systems have been encrypted and stolen data will be published on INC RANSOM ransomware gang’s leak site if a ransom is not paid.
INC Ransom is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that surfaced in July 2023 and has since targeted organizations in both the public and private sectors.
In May, a threat actor known as “salfetka” claimed to be selling source code of INC Ransom’s Windows and Linux/ESXi encrypter versions for $300,000 on the Exploit and XSS hacking forums.
Two months later, in July, malware analysts stated that the source code might have been purchased by a newly emerged ransomware group called Lynx ransomware. However, this could also be a rebranding effort, potentially allowing INC RANSOM to continue operations with less scrutiny from law enforcement.
BleepingComputer did an analysis of strings between the new Lynx ransomware encryptors and recent INC encryptors, and other than small changes, can confirm they are mostly the same.
INC vs. Lynx ransomware string comparison (BleepingComputer)
In November 2023, McLaren notified almost 2.2 million people of a data breach that exposed their personal and health information between late July and August 2023.
Compromised data included names, Social Security numbers, health insurance and physician information, as well as Medicare/Medicaid, prescription/medication, and diagnostic results and treatment information.
The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed the July 2023 attack behind the data breach on October 4.
A Facebook malvertising campaign targets users searching for AI image editing tools and steals their credentials by tricking them into installing fake apps that mimic legitimate software.
The attackers exploit the popularity of AI-driven image-generation tools by creating malicious websites that closely resemble legitimate services and trick potential victims into infecting themselves with information stealer malware, as Trend Micro researchers who analyzed the campaign found.
The attacks start with phishing messages sent to Facebook page owners or administrators, which will send them to fake account protection pages designed to trick them into providing their login information.
After stealing their credentials, the threat actors hijack their accounts, take control of their pages, publish malicious social media posts, and promote them via paid advertising.
“We discovered a malvertising campaign involving a threat actor that steals social media pages (typically related to photography), changing their names to make them seem connected to popular AI photo editors,” said Trend Micro threat researcher Jaromir Horejsi.
“The threat actor then creates malicious posts with links to fake websites made to resemble the actual website of the legitimate photo editor. To increase traffic, the perpetrator then boosts the malicious posts via paid ads.”
Fake AI photo editor website (Trend Micro)
Facebook users who click the URL promoted in the malicious ad are sent to a fake web page impersonating legitimate AI photo editing and generating software, where they are prompted to download and install a software package.
However, instead of AI image editing software, the victims install the legitimate ITarian remote desktop tool configured to launch a downloader that automatically deploys the Lumma Stealer malware.
The malware then quietly infiltrates their system, allowing the attackers to collect and exfiltrate sensitive information like credentials, cryptocurrency wallet files, browser data, and password manager databases.
This data is later sold to other cybercriminals or used by the attackers to compromise the victims’ online accounts, steal their money, and promote further scams.
Attack flow (Trend Micro)
“Users should enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all social media accounts to add an extra layer of protection against unauthorized access,” Horejsi advised.
“Organizations should educate their employees on the dangers of phishing attacks and how to recognize suspicious messages and links. Users should always verify the legitimacy of links, especially those asking for personal information or login credentials.”
In April, a similar Facebook malvertising campaign promoted a malicious page impersonating Midjourney to target almost 1.2 million users with the Rilide Stealer Chrome browser extension.
As platform engineering continues to grow in popularity inside enterprises, an all-new training curriculum is being launched that will provide one of the first platform engineering certifications in the industry.
The training and certification, offered by the global platform engineering developer’s community PlatformEngineering.org, will begin on Aug. 6 and include two courses and a certification exam that will help IT administrators gain new skills in this burgeoning field.
The courses include an eight-week Platform Engineering Fundamentals class and an MVP (Minimum Viable Platform) to IDP (Internal Development Platform) course, followed by a certification exam combining platform engineering theory with hands-on tasks. Each of the courses will be held for eight to 10 weeks with live, interactive, online meetup sessions taught by platform engineering experts and some of the top platform architects in the industry, according to the group. The live nature of the courses will provide instant feedback, back-and-forth Q&As and an up-to-the-minute feel for the instruction. The live sessions are expected to run for up to 2.5 hours per class module.
“The number-one question from the community is ‘How do I become a platform engineer?’” Luca Galante, the lead instructor and vice president of product and growth for platform engineering vendor, Humanitec, told The New Stack. “So, we wanted to create a resource for IT admins [based on] the three or four years of really good content we have under our belt.”
ngrok is a secure unified ingress platform for developers. It combines reverse proxy, firewall, API gateway and global load balancing to deliver apps and APIs. Over 5 million developers use ngrok for testing webhooks and previewing apps, including the world’s top technology brands.
The certification course will be a combination of theory and hands-on internal developer platform building. The first course, the fundamentals instruction, is ready to go for the students and includes eight weekly modules on topics from an introduction to platform engineering to how to build an internal developer platform. Other modules include getting started with reference architectures, designing golden paths for developers, finding the right abstractions, infrastructure platform engineering, how to build minimum viable platforms and selling your minimum viable platforms to key stakeholders inside enterprises.
The second course is still being developed, but it will go beyond the basics to teach full rollout strategies and adoption paths across multiple workflows and teams, according to the group.
The fundamentals course is priced at $2,149, but registrants can use the code EARLYBIRD20 when registering to drop the price by 20% to $1,720. Once the development of the second course is completed, Galante said he expects that a special bundle price will be available for the combined courses and the exam for the students in the program.
The curriculum is being built to ensure that students who successfully complete the courses and exam will be able to demonstrate an elevated level of understanding and knowledge of platform engineering, from its theory to firsthand skills and expertise.
By using one of these custom, standardized internal developer platforms (IDPs) and tools inside a company, developers are freed to do their core work activities, rather than spending valuable time searching for applications they need to create and test their code. These IDPs provide developers with the best code-building tools in an easy-to-use environment built to provide automation, standardization and flexibility for busy application developers.
Who Is Interested in Platform Engineering?
Many of the first students coming into the new certification program are individuals who want to learn the skills and fundamentals for their own edification, said Galante. “They are DevOps engineers or some junior engineers that want to have these skills. But we are already seeing teams purchasing the course. And we are getting applicants from large companies where they have systems administrators or IT admins who they want to upskill to become platform engineers or upskill their existing platform team to educate them around best practices.”
The guest lecturers who will participate in the courses include experts like Manuel Pais, co-author of the book, Team Topologies, and Ajay Chankramath, former head of platform engineering at the technology consultancy Thoughtworks.
An Enrollee Shares Why He Is Taking the Certification Course
Giovanny Velez, a platform engineering technical lead for a cloud-based applications vendor in Colombia, told The New Stack that he is taking the certification coursework to gain more experience and understanding of this still-emerging technology from a reliable and knowledgeable source.
“This platform engineering course and certification will significantly boost my professional growth and career prospects and will validate my expertise, increasing my credibility and making me a stronger candidate for advanced roles,” Velez wrote in an email. “It will open new career opportunities and potentially accelerate my path to senior positions.”
Velez said the courses will also teach him industry best practices and innovative tools that will improve his problem-solving abilities and help him stay current with the latest trends in platform engineering. “This knowledge is essential in our team as we are starting to implement the practice, and it helps us to streamline the process,” he said.
Velez, who is paying for the course himself, said he learned of the program after seeing announcements on the PlatformEngineering.org webpage and in its Slack channel.
“The program will also provide valuable networking opportunities, connecting me with other professionals in the field,” he said. “These connections can lead to knowledge sharing and future collaborations. Overall, I think that I will be more prepared to tackle the challenges of modern, cloud native environments and deliver increased value in my role. I see this field growing constantly and I see more job offers in the market.”
As lead for his company’s recently formed platform engineering team, Velez said the company is working to establish communication channels and that he will share his experiences with the course at his company “so the rest of the teams know what we will be doing and how.”
Analyst Reactions to Platform Engineering Training
Two analysts contacted by The New Stack said they believe that platform engineering training and certifications are a smart move for enterprises.
“Training is always smart, particularly if it is done by a company that offers related products and services because they will be up to date on the kind of unique, new and changing problems that IT is dealing with,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group.
Enderle said he often hears from IT managers that employees are learning on the job rather than getting advanced training, which is creating huge deployment and operational problems.
“They need training like this to reduce those problems,” he added. “Learning on the job or from some obsolete lesson plan continues to be problematic. I recommend training from current practitioners so that those learning can hit the ground running and become immediately able to do the job right. It makes for better implementations, and it makes employees more valuable and less likely to get laid off.”
Another analyst, Dan Olds, CEO of Olds Research, agrees.
“The concept of platform engineering is what the hyperscale organizations — think Amazon, Google, and Meta — pioneered to allow them to efficiently operate at vast scale,” said Olds. “The idea behind it is to have a specific set of development tools — and only that set — which pays dividends when it comes to scalability, reliability, support and troubleshooting, to name a few. This is something that is catching on with other large organizations that have lots of applications in flight all the time as it simplifies the development, deployment and support functions.”
Such an approach simplifies the overall application development/deployment and life-cycle management processes for companies, said Olds. “In many organizations today, developers are able to pick and choose from a huge slate of development tools, which can lead to problems down the road when it comes to deployment, troubleshooting and the inevitable changes — unless those functions are performed by the engineer or engineers who actually developed the app. Standardizing development tools ensures that everyone is using the same size building blocks and understands how they fit together.”
Olds said he recommends that enterprise IT shops should investigate platform engineering, along with their counterparts in a company’s business units.
“I can see where this approach would increase the speed of application development and result in smoother deployments,” he said. But at the same time, while this holistic platform engineering approach can be beneficial for organizations, a potential problem could be getting all developers on board with it.
“I think that it might be a hard sell to some developers,” said Olds. “They are experts at the set of tools they use and have reasons why they do not use alternatives. It might take some work to get them out of their comfort zones and get them on board with this new approach.”
China-linked advanced persistent threat group APT41 appears to have compromised a government-affiliated institute in Taiwan that conducts research on advanced computing and associated technologies.
The intrusion began in July 2023, with the threat actor gaining initial access to the victim environment via undetermined means. Since then, it has deployed multiple malware tools, including the well-known ShadowPad remote access Trojan (RAT), the Cobalt Strike post compromise tool, and a custom loader for injecting malware using a 2018 Windows remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2018-0824).
APT41 is an attribution that several vendors use to track a loose collective of China-nexus threat groups that have been engaged in a broad range of cyber espionage and financially motivated cyberattacks around the world, going back to 2012. Members of the group such as Wicked Panda, Winnti, Barium, and SuckFly have plundered and pillaged trade secrets, intellectual property, and other sensitive data from organizations in the US and multiple other countries in recent years.
Most recently, Mandiant reported observing members of the group targeting global shipping and logistics companies and organizations in the technology, entertainment, and automotive sectors. The US government indicted several members of the Chengdu-based APT41 in 2020, though that has done little slow it down.
Academic Research: A Valuable Cyber Target
Researchers at Cisco Talos discovered the intrusion when investigating abnormal activity involving attempts to download and execute PowerShell scripts in the Taiwan research institute’s network environment last year.
“The nature of research-and-development work carried out by the entity makes it a valuable target for threat actors dedicated to obtaining proprietary and sensitive technologies of interest to them,” Talos researchers Joey Chen, Ashley Shen, and Vitor Ventura said in a report this week. Over the course of the intrusion, APT41 actors broke into three systems in the target environment and stole at least some documents from there, they said.
ShadowPad is malware that researchers first discovered embedded in the source code of NetSarang Computer’s Xmanager server management software back in 2017. That supply chain attack impacted several NetSarang customers in the APAC region. Initially, researchers believed that APT41 was the sole user of the backdoor. Over the years however, they have identified multiple groups — all of them China-linked — that have used the RAT in numerous cyber-espionage campaigns and software supply chain attacks.
With the attack on the Taiwanese research institute, APT41 used two different ShadowPad iterations — one that leveraged a previously known packing mechanism called “ScatterBee,” and another that used an outdated and vulnerable version of Microsoft Input Method Editors (IME), the Cisco Talos researchers said.
ShadowPad & Cobalt Strike Anchor Espionage Effort
The attackers used ShadowPad to run commands for mapping out the victim network, collecting data on hosts, and trying to find other exploitable systems on the same network. Cisco Talos also found the APT harvesting passwords and user credentials stored in Web browsers from the compromised environment, using tools such as Mimikatz and WebBrowserPassView.
“From the environment the actor executes several commands, including using ‘net,’ ‘whoami,’ ‘quser,’ ‘ipconfig,’ ‘netstat,’ and ‘dir’ commands to obtain information on user accounts, directory structure, and network configurations from the compromised systems,” the researchers said. “In addition, we also observed query to the registry key to get the current state of software inventory collection on the system.”
As part of their attack chain, the threat actors also deployed the Cobalt Strike post compromise tool on the victim network using a loader they cloned from a GitHub project. It’s designed to evade antivirus detection tools.
“It’s important to highlight that this Cobalt Strike beacon shellcode used steganography to hide in a picture and executed by this loader,” the researchers said. “In other words, its download, decryption, and execution routines all happen in runtime in memory.”
A Fortune 50 company paid $75 million to its cyberattackers earlier this year, greatly exceeding any other confirmed ransom payment in history. The beneficiary of the payout is an outfit called Dark Angels. And Dark Angels isn’t just effective — in some ways, the gang turns so much of what we thought we knew about ransomware on its head.
Sure, there have been other big amounts forked over in the past: In 2021, Illinois-based CNA Financial was reported to have paid a then unprecedented $40 million ransom in order to restore its systems after a ransomware attack (the company never confirmed that figure). Later that year, the meat manufacturer JBS admitted to paying $11 million to end a disruption affecting its factories. Caesars Palace last year paid $15 million to make its ransomware disruption problems go away.
But those figures pale in comparison against the $75 million in equivalent Bitcoin paid by the aforementioned large organization, which Zscaler chose to keep anonymous in its 2024 annual ransomware report, where the payout was first recorded. The dollar amount has also been corroborated by Chainalysis.
Meet the Dark Angels
Dark Angels first appeared in the wild in May 2022. Ever since, its specialty has been defeating fewer but higher-value targets than its ransomware brethren. Past victims have included multiple S&P 500 companies spread across varied industries: healthcare, government, finance, education, manufacturing, telecommunications, and more.
For example, there was its headline-grabbing attack on the megalith Johnson Controls International (JCI) last year. It breached the company’s VMware ESXi hypervisors, freezing them with Ragnar Locker and stealing a reported 27 terabytes worth of data. The ransom demand: $51 million. It’s unclear how Johnson Controls responded but, considering its $27 million-plus cleanup effort, it’s likely that the company did not cave.
$27 million would have been the second-largest ransom payment in recorded history at the time (after the reported CNA payment). But there’s evidence to suggest that this wasn’t just some outlandish negotiating tactic — that Dark Angels has good reason to think it can pull off that kind of haul.
Dark Angels Does Ransomware Differently
Forget everything you know about ransomware, and you’ll start to understand Dark Angels.
Against the grain, the group does not operate a ransomware-as-a-service business. Nor does it have its own malware strain — it prefers to borrow encryptors like Ragnar Locker and Babuk.
Its success instead comes down to three primary factors. First: the extra care it can take by attacking fewer, higher-yielding targets.
Second is its ability to exfiltrate gobs of sensitive data. As Brett Stone-Gross, senior director of threat intelligence at Zscaler explains, “If you look at a lot of these other ransomware groups, their affiliates are stealing maybe a few hundred gigabytes of data. Sometimes even less than 100 gigabytes of data. They usually top out around, maybe, one terabyte or so. In contrast, Dark Angels are stealing tens of terabytes of data.”
In that, Dark Angels differs only in degree, not in kind. Where it really separates itself from other groups is in its subtlety. Its leak site isn’t flashy. It doesn’t make grand pronouncements about its latest victims. Besides the obvious operational security benefits to stealth (it’s largely escaped media scrutiny in recent years, despite pulling off major breaches), its aversion to the limelight also helps it earn larger returns on investment.
For example, the group often avoids encrypting victims’ data, with the express purpose of allowing them to continue to operate without disruption. This seems to defy common wisdom. Surely the threat of downtime and media scrutiny are effective tools to get victims to pay up?
“You would think that, but the results say otherwise,” Stone-Gross suggests.
Dark Angels makes paying one’s ransom easy and quiet — an attractive prospect for companies that just want to put their breaches behind them. And avoiding business disruption is mutually beneficial: Without the steep bills associated with downtime, companies have more money to pay Dark Angels.
Can Dark Angels’ Wings Be Clipped?
In its report, Zscaler predicted “that other ransomware groups will take note of Dark Angels’ success and may adopt similar tactics, focusing on high value targets and increasing the significance of data theft to maximize their financial gains.”
If that should come to pass, companies will face much steeper, yet more compelling ransom demands. Luckily, Dark Angels’ approach has an Achilles’ heel.
“If it’s a terabyte of data, [a hacker] can probably complete that transfer in several days. But when you’re talking terabytes — you know, tens of terabytes of data — now you’re talking weeks,” Stone-Gross notes. So, companies that can catch Dark Angels in the act may be able to stop them before it’s too late.
