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Based on our analysis, financial organizations in Turkey were targeted via spear phishing emails containing a malicious Microsoft Word document | ['T1598.002'] |
Figure 2: Excerpt of an APT33 malicious .hta file We assess APT33 used a built-in phishing module within the publicly available ALFA TEaM Shell (aka ALFASHELL) to send hundreds of spear phishing emails to targeted individuals in 2016 | ['T1598.002'] |
The spear phishing emails and attached malicious macro documents typically have geopolitical themes | ['T1598.002'] |
The attackers used spear phishing emails combined with malicious HWP documents created using Hancom Hangul Office Suite | ['T1598.002'] |
We suspect the attacker was trying to generate sympathy by reminding the reader that Munchon and the province it is in, Kangwon, were part of a unified province that included South Korea's Gangwon-do prior to the division of Korea in 1945.A second email contained a story about a person called 'Ewing Kim' who was looking for help:The email's attachments are two different HWP documents, both leveraging same vulnerability (CVE-2013-0808) | ['T1598.002'] |
This campaign began with a handful of spear phishing emails to South Korean targets and containing malicious attachments | ['T1598.002'] |
Another interesting characteristic of the malicious documents is that the metadata associated with the document files themselves also matches that found in many of the malicious documents that were previously being used to spread Remcos.Figure 3: Document metadataAdditionally, the creation and modification dates associated with these documents are shortly after we released a detailed analysis of Remcos distribution campaigns that were being observed throughout 2018 | ['T1598.002'] |
In May 2016, we published a blog detailing a spear phishing campaign targeting banks in the Middle East region that used macro-enabled attachments to distribute POWBAT malware | ['T1598.002'] |
Analysis APT34 sent a malicious .rtf file (MD5: a0e6933f4e0497269620f44a083b2ed4) as an attachment in a malicious spear phishing email sent to the victim organization | ['T1598.002'] |
This attack diverged from previous attacks we observed from this group as it involved spear-phishing emails sent to targeted organizations with password protected RAR archive attachments that contained malicious Excel Web Query files (.iqy) | ['T1598.002'] |
In this instance a spear phishing email was used containing a lure designed to socially engineer and entice the victim to executing a malicious attachment | ['T1598.002'] |
In contrast to the two samples used in these attacks, this one did not use a PE attachment, and instead used a Microsoft Word document containing a malicious macro as the delivery vehicle | ['T1598.002'] |
The email contained an attachment named Seminar-Invitation.doc, which is a malicious Microsoft Word document we track as ThreeDollars | ['T1598.002'] |
Zebrocy is delivered primarily via phishing attacks that contain malicious Microsoft Office documents with macros as well as simple executable file attachments | ['T1598.002'] |
Malicious Document Decoy Document The attack starts with a spear-phishing email containing the HWP document named "미북 정상회담 전망 및 대비.hwp" (Prospects for US-North Korea Summit .hwp) | ['T1598.002'] |
Delivery TG-3390 conducts SWCs or sends spearphishing emails with ZIP archive attachments | ['T1598.002'] |
The case we found arrived through a targeted email that contained a document file (in docx format). | ['T1598.002'] |
APT32 likely used COVID-19-themed malicious attachments against Chinese speaking targets. | ['T1598.002'] |
Once the password (delivered in the body of the email) is entered, the users are presented with a document that will request users to enable the malicious macro, as shown in Figure 3 | ['T1204'] |
Successful execution of the macro within the malicious document results in the installation of APT28’s signature GAMEFISH malware | ['T1204'] |
Once the user enables macros, the macro will perform the following actions: Displays decoy content Checks for the existence of a file at %APPDATA%\wscript.exe If %APPDATA%\wscript.exe does not exist, the macro converts an embedded hex-encoded string into bytes and saves this data to the %APPDATA%\wscript.exe | ['T1204'] |
None of the known documents contain a lure image or message to instruct the recipient to click the Enable Content button necessary to run the macro, as seen in Figure 1 | ['T1204'] |
Figure 1: Malicious FIN7 lure asking victim to double click to unlock contents The malicious LNK launches “mshta.exe” with the following arguments passed to it: vbscript:Execute("On Error Resume Next:set w=GetObject(,""Word.Application""):execute w.ActiveDocument.Shapes(2).TextFrame.TextRange.Text:close") The script in the argument combines all the textbox contents in the document and executes them, as seen in Figure 2 | ['T1204'] |
Malicious processes are marked red (click image to enlarge): The following malicious files are dropped and run: C:\ProgramData\{2ED05C38-D464-4188-BC7F-F6915DE8D764}\OFFLINE\9A189DFE\C7B7C186\main.vbs dcac79d7dc4365c6d742a49244e81fd0 C:\Users\Public\Libraries\RecordedTV\DnE.ps1 7fe0cb5edc11861bc4313a6b04aeedb2 C:\Users\Public\Libraries\RecordedTV\DnS.ps1 3920c11797ed7d489ca2a40201c66dd4 “C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe” /create /F /sc minute /mo 3 /tn “GoogleUpdateTasksMachineUI” /tr C:\Users\Public\Libraries\RecordedTV\backup.vbs 7528c387f853d96420cf7e20f2ad1d32 Command and control server is located in the following domain: tecsupport[.]in A detailed analysis of the malware is provided in two posts by Palo Alto networks and in a post by FireEye, which wrote about previous campaigns by this threat agent | ['T1204'] |
This document was a decoy aimed to entice the user to open malicious documents embedded further down the pageThe actor embedded two additional links and the document urged the user to click on these links for more information about New Year's activities in North Korea | ['T1204'] |
Email attacks often use “click-worthy” or interesting topics to convince users to click links or open attachments that could lead to various threats | ['T1204'] |
Users are advised to avoid opening attachments and click links on unsolicited emails | ['T1204'] |
These Honeybee documents did not contain any specific lures, rather variations of a “not compatible” message attempting to convince the user to enable content | ['T1204'] |
Additionally, a small number of campaigns over this same period also made use of various file-sharing platforms like Dropbox for hosting the malicious documents rather than directly attaching them to the messages themselves.Figure 2: Example malicious Excel documentSimilar to the technique described in our previous blog about Remcos, the contents of the documents have been intentionally made to appear as if they are blurry, with the user being prompted to enable editing to have a clearer view of the contents | ['T1204'] |
By default, Excel does not allow the download of data from the remote server, but will ask for the user’s consent by presenting the dialog box in Figure 2: Figure 2 Excel security notice for .iqy files By enabling this data connection, the user allows Excel to obtain content from the URL in the .iqy file | ['T1204'] |
The document also contained a lure image, similar to ones commonly found in malicious macro documents which ask the user to click on “Enable Content” as seen in Figure 2 | ['T1204'] |
Message 3: Headers Received: by mailcenter.support Sender Mercator Institute for China Studies <publications@mericcs.org> Subject Authoritarian advance Responding to Chinas growing political influence in Europe Body Content and images included within the e-mail body were a direct copy of the following MERICS report: https://www.merics.org/sites/default/files/2018-02/GPPi_MERICS_Authoritarian_Advance_2018_1.pdf Notes The hyperlinked text Click here to download the report within the e-mail body lead to a malicious RTF document located at the URL hxxp://www.mericcs.org/GPPi_MERICS_Authoritarian_Advance_2018_1Q.doc | ['T1204'] |
By doing so, the main content of the macro itself (Figure 2) can be kept relatively simple, and the malicious’ codes small footprint can help enable evasion of automated detection mechanisms based on macro content | ['T1204'] |
In March, we came across an email with a malware attachment that used the Gamaredon group’s tactics. | ['T1204'] |
Once a user has double-clicked the embedded image, the form executes a VB setup script | ['T1204'] |
The threat actors also took additional steps to replace some variable strings in the more recent samples, likely in an attempt to avoid signature-based detection from Yara rules. Once the document was opened, it prompted the user to enable the macro titled "BlackWater.bas". | ['T1204'] |
The version used here is version 4.1 digitally signed by Notepad++, as shown in Figure 5 | ['T1553.002'] |
By using this technique, the malware is able to leverage itself from a signed and verified legitimate Windows OS process, or, alternatively, if aswrundll.exe or unins000.exe exists, a signed and verified security product process | ['T1553.002'] |
FIN7 has consistently utilized legally purchased code signing certificates to sign their CARBANAK payloads | ['T1553.002'] |
In these websites they hosted malware that was digitally signed with a valid, likely stolen code signing certificate Based on VirusTotal uploads, malicious documents content, and known victims – other targeted organisations are located in Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon | ['T1553.002'] |
Digitally signed malware The entire bundle (VPN client and malware) was digitally signed with a valid code signing certificate issued by Symantec to AI Squared, a legitimate software company that develops accessibility software: Thumbprint: F340C0D841F9D99DBC289151C13391000366631C Serial number: 45 E4 7F 56 0B 01 B6 4E 68 39 5E 5D 79 2F 2E 09 Another Helminth sample, 1c23b3f11f933d98febfd5a92eb5c715, was signed with a different AI Squared code signing certificate: Thumbprint: 92B8C0872BACDC226B9CE4D783D5CCAD61C6158A Serial number:62 E0 44 E7 37 24 61 2D 79 4B 93 AF 97 46 13 48 This suggest that the attackers had got a hold of an Ai Squared signing key, potentially after compromising their network | ['T1553.002'] |
They combine reconnaissance of GPO (Group Policy Object management for execution) with digitally-signed malware to avoid detection or blocking during their infection phases | ['T1553.002'] |
Stolen code signing certificates used to sign malware | ['T1553.002'] |
Many of this APT’s components are signed with phony Intel and AMD digital certificates | ['T1553.002'] |
Based upon the instructional guide and the provided tools, this package appears consistent with the methodologies FireEye outlined in their research on how these attacks were executed, including specific details such as the use of ICAP via a proxy passthrough, in this case specifically squid, and using certbot to create a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate | ['T1573'] |
The backdoor's infrequent beaconing, traffic obfuscation, extensive encryption and use of geographically local, legitimate websites for command and control (C2) make identification of its network traffic difficult | ['T1573'] |
Encrypting communications using AES and RSA public key cryptography 5 | ['T1573'] |
Figure 12 and Figure 13 show the RSA keys used in FELIXROOT, and Figure 14 shows the AES encryption parameters | ['T1573'] |
Figure 19. Scrambling ‘Mac OSX 10.12’ Encryption The scrambled byte sequence is passed onto the constructor of the class Packet::Packet, which creates a random AES256 key and encrypts the buffer with this key | ['T1573'] |
It first grabs an encrypted blob stored away in a global variable and pulls out 381 bytes of this encrypted data: The standard win32 api CryptDecrypt uses rc4 to decrypt this blob into a hardcoded c2, url path, and url parameters listed below with a simple 140-bit key “\x8B\xFF\x55\x8B\xEC\x83\xEC\x50\xA1\x84\x18\x03\x68\x33\xC9\x66\xF7\x45\x10\xE8\x1F\x89\x45\xFC\x8B\x45\x14\x56″ | ['T1573'] |
These appeared to be hosted on either Linode or Google Cloud, with a preference for using the ASN AS63949 | ['T1102'] |
Command and Control Infrastructure: Compromised servers, messaging platforms, and cloud service providers to avoid detection | ['T1102'] |
In addition, multiple APT40 command and control (C2) domains were initially registered by China based domain resellers and had Whois records with Chinese location information, suggesting a China based infrastructure procurement process | ['T1102'] |
Some APT40 malware tools can evade typical network detectiona by leveraging legitimate websites, such as GitHub, Google, and Pastebin for initial C2 communications | ['T1102'] |
This RAT communicates with 5.189.145.248, a command and control (C2) IP address that this group has used previously with other malware, including DarkComet and NJRAT | ['T1102'] |
BRONZE UNION appears to use a combination of self-registered IP addresses and commercial VPN services in its command and control (C2) and operational infrastructure | ['T1102'] |
LOWBALL abuses the Dropbox cloud storage service for command and control (CnC) | ['T1102'] |
The attack is part of a trend where threat groups hide malicious activity by communicating with legitimate web services such as social networking and cloud storage sites to foil detection efforts.[2][3] A Cyber Campaign Likely Intended to Monitor Hong Kong Media During a Period of Crisis The threat group has previously used newsworthy events as lures to deliver malware.[4] They have largely targeted organizations involved in financial, economic and trade policy, typically using publicly available RATs such as Poison Ivy, as well some non-public backdoors.[5] The group started targeting Hong Kong media companies, probably in response to political and economic challenges in Hong Kong and China | ['T1102'] |
Firstly, the Trojan will use the following regular expression to determine if the C2 server wishes to cancel the C2 communications: 216.58.192.174|2a00:1450:4001:81a::200e|2200::|download.microsoft.com|ntservicepack.microsoft.com|windowsupdate.microsoft.com|update.microsoft.com Additionally, the RogueRobin Trojan uses the regular expressions in Table 3 to confirm that the DNS response contains the appropriate data for it to extract information from | ['T1102'] |
The string is formatted as “<domain list>|<minimum query size>|<maximum query size>|<hasGarbage>|<sleepPerRequest>|<maximum requests>|<query types>|<hibridMode>|<current query mode>” ^slp Sets the sleep and jitter values ^exit Exits the Trojan Table 5 Commands available within the C# variant of RogueRobin Using Google Drive for C2 A command that was not available in the original PowerShell variant of RogueRobin but is available with the new C# variant is the x_mode | ['T1102'] |
This command is particularly interesting as it enables an alternative command and control channel that uses the Google Drive API | ['T1102'] |
To use Google Drive, the x_mode command received from the C2 server via DNS tunneling will be followed by a newline-delimited list of settings needed to interact with the Google Drive account | ['T1102'] |
Figure 4 x_mode command and new line delimited settings As seen in Figure 4, the settings are stored in variables seen in Table 6, which are used to authenticate to the actor-controlled Google account before uploading and downloading files from Google Drive | ['T1102'] |
Figure 6 Hardcoded Google Drive URL used in RogueRobin sample When the modification_time for the first file changes, the Trojan downloads the contents from the first file uploaded to the Google Drive | ['T1102'] |
To get a job from the Google Drive account, the Trojan starts by creating a string that has the following structure with each element within the subdomain subjected to the number to character substitution from Table 4: c<unique identifier><job identifier padded with ‘0’ to make three digits><sequence number>c.<C2 domain> The Trojan will then obtain an OAUTH access token to the Google Drive in the same manner as before when obtaining the unique identifier | ['T1102'] |
Lastly, the new variant of RogueRobin is capable of using the Google Drive cloud service for its C2 channel, suggesting that DarkHydrus may be shifting to abusing legitimate cloud services for their infrastructure | ['T1102'] |
The Delphi variant of Cannon does not use legitimate web-based email services for its C2 communications, instead opting to use email accounts at an actor owned domain, ambcomission[.]com | ['T1102'] |
Then pastebin.com, github.com, mailimg.com, upload.cat, dev-point.com and pomf.cat were used as channels for the different malware stages before achieving a full RAT implementation, which then communicates with the corresponding C2 server | ['T1102'] |
However, the attacks different stages were hosted on a variety of free sites such as Mailimg, Github, Pastebin, dev-point.co, a.pomf.cat, and upload.cat | ['T1102'] |
The command index table and command handler address table. Implant Capabilities Based on the responses received from the control server, the malware can carry out the following malicious tasks: Recursively generate a list of files in a directory and send to the control server Terminate a specific process | ['T1102'] |
The actor has the following demonstrated capabilities:To include exploits (for Hangul and Microsoft Office) in its workflows.To modify its campaigns by splitting the payload in to multiple stages To use compromised web servers or legitimate cloud based platforms | ['T1102'] |
Here is a list of the platforms used by this variant: Twitter, Yandex and Mediafire | ['T1102'] |
The majority of documents used the name “gerry knight” for the author field in the document metadata, and the embedded macros largely used direct IP connections to command and control (C2) servers rather than using domain names | ['T1102'] |
This tactic uses public web services to host content that contains encoded commands that are decoded by the malware | ['T1102'] |
This can be seen in the following images taken from hxxp:// feeds.rapidfeeds[.]com/88604/, which is one of the dead drop resolvers we encountered in this sample: Figure 7 Dead drop resolver used by BADNEWS In order to decrypt this data, the authors have included additional steps from previous versions | ['T1102'] |
Some of the targeted apps were: Whatsapp YouTube Video Downloader Google Update Instagram Hack Wifi AirDroid WifiHacker Facebook Photoshop SkyTV Hotstar Trump Dash PokemonGo With many more to come | ['T1102'] |
Receiving C2 instructions from user profiles created by the adversary on legitimate websites/forums such as Github and Microsoft's TechNet portal | ['T1102'] |
An increasingly popular tactic by threat actors is to use legitimate hosting services like Google Cloud or CloudFlare for their payload and C2 infrastructure, making it much more difficult to safely block IPs | ['T1102'] |
Hidden Content The primary command and control location used in this campaign is hosted on a blog on blogspot[.]com, which enables the threat actors to hide their malicious content behind a legitimate service | ['T1102'] |
In some cases, the encoded PowerShell commands were used to download and execute content hosted on the paste site hxxps://pastebin[.]com | ['T1102'] |
five threads are for forwarding collected data to four cloud services (Box, Dropbox, Pcloud and Yandex). When uploading stolen data to a cloud service | ['T1102'] |
Additional tools were recovered during the incident, including a network scanning/enumeration tool, the archiving tool WinRAR and a bespoke Microsoft SharePoint enumeration and data dumping tool, known as 'spwebmember' | ['T1018'] |
Once inside the network of a hospitality company, APT28 sought out machines that controlled both guest and internal Wi-Fi networks. No guest credentials were observed being stolen at the compromised hotels; however, in a separate incident that occurred in Fall 2016, APT28 gained initial access to a victim’s network via credentials likely stolen from a hotel Wi-Fi network. Upon gaining access to the machines connected to corporate and guest Wi-Fi networks, APT28 deployed Responder | ['T1018'] |
At a high-level, their targeting of financial organizations and subsequent heists have followed the same general pattern: Information Gathering: Conducted research into an organization’s personnel and targeted third party vendors with likely access to SWIFT transaction systems to understand the mechanics of SWIFT transactions on victim networks (Please note: The systems in question are those used by the victim to conduct SWIFT transactions | ['T1018'] |
Host enumeration and lateral movement After gaining an initial foothold in a compromised environment, the threat actors quickly identify and explore accessible systems | ['T1018'] |
In one example, BRONZE UNION actors leveraged initial web shell access on Internet-facing systems to conduct internal reconnaissance, including domain enumeration and network state, via ipconfig, net use, net user, and net view commands | ['T1018'] |
This technique allows them to map network resources and make lateral movements inside the network, landing in the perfect machine to match the attacker’s interest | ['T1018'] |
APT15 was also observed using Mimikatz to dump credentials and generate Kerberos golden tickets | ['T1003'] |
During privilege escalation, freely available tools such as Mimikatz and Ncrack have been observed, in addition to legitimate tools such as Windows Credential Editor and ProcDump | ['T1003'] |
APT40 leverages custom credential theft utilities such as HOMEFRY, a password dumper/cracker used alongside the AIRBREAK and BADFLICK backdoors | ['T1003'] |
The datasets included: Stolen credentials Potential systems to login to using stolen credentials Deployed webshell URLs Backdoor tools Command and control server component of backdoor tools Script to perform DNS hijacking Documents identifying specific individual operators Screenshots of OilRig operational systems We analyzed each type of dataset other than the documents containing detailed information on alleged OilRig operators and they remain consistent with previously observed OilRig tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) | ['T1003'] |
In total, nearly 13,000 sets of credentials are included in the data dump | ['T1003'] |
It appears to us that one organization had its entire Active Directory dumped out, making up most of the credentials we found in the data dump | ['T1003'] |
Assuming the lists of credentials are valid, the mass collection confirms our hypothesis that the OilRig group maintains a heavy emphasis on credential based attacks along with the other types of attacks they deploy | ['T1003'] |
When entered, these credentials are then sent to the C2 server, which allows DarkHydrus to collect the user account credentials | ['T1003'] |
Credential Harvesting Attack On June 24, 2018, Unit 42 observed DarkHydrus carrying out a credential harvesting attack on an educational institution in the Middle East | ['T1003'] |
Figure 2 Employee survey displayed after credential theft The November 2017 document displays a password handover document after credential theft occurs, as seen in Figure 3 | ['T1003'] |
Figure 3 Password handover form displayed after credential theft The infrastructure used in these credential harvesting attacks used the domain 0utl00k[.]net, which at the time of the attacks resolved to 107.175.150[.]113 and 195.154.41[.]150 | ['T1003'] |
Figure 6 Authentication dialog box with fake credentials entered On the C2 server, we observed Phishery receiving the inbound request and capturing the credentials, as seen in Figure 7 | ['T1003'] |
The malware accepts up to two arguments at the command line: one to display cleartext credentials for each login session, and a second to display cleartext credentials, NTLM hashes, and malware version for each login session | ['T1003'] |