This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryUnit 42 researchers recently discovered a Guloader variant that contains a shellcode payload protected by anti-analysis techniques, which are meant to slow human analysts and sandboxes processing this sample. To help speed analysis for this sample and others like it, we are providing a complete Python script to deobfuscate the Guloader sample that is available on GitHub.…
The sophistication of threat actors’ DDoS strategy and tactics continues to evolve rapidly in response to improved mitigation-side efforts. Actors have complicated filtering and firewalling by bringing a more diverse set of vectors to the attack, attacking at multiple network layers at the same time and automating changes to the mix of vectors at attack time – perhaps even in response to the ongoing mitigation efforts.…
In the ASEC blog post uploaded on April 2022 (New Malware of Lazarus Threat Actor Group Exploiting INITECH Process, https://asec.ahnlab.com/en/33801/), the team discussed the fact that the Lazarus attack group had been exploiting the INITECH process to infect systems with malware.
This article aims to cover the details of the Lazarus group using the watering hole technique to hack into systems before exploiting the vulnerability of the MagicLine4NX product from Dream Security in order to additionally hack into systems in the internal network, and also using vulnerable drivers to disable anti-malware software.…
Overview
One of the previous ASEC blog posts discussed cases where attackers abused various remote control tools that are originally used for system management purposes to gain control over infected systems.[1] This post will cover cases where RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), a default service provided by baseline Windows OS, was used.…
Our honeypots caught malicious cryptocurrency miner samples targeting the cloud and containers, and its routines are reminiscent of the routines employed by cybercriminal group TeamTNT, which was said to have quit in November 2021. Our investigation shows that another threat actor group, WatchDog, might be mimicking TeamTNT’s arsenal.…
This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryRansom Cartel is ransomware as a service (RaaS) that surfaced in mid-December 2021. This ransomware performs double extortion attacks and exhibits several similarities and technical overlaps with REvil ransomware. REvil ransomware disappeared just a couple of months before Ransom Cartel surfaced and just one month after 14 of its alleged members were arrested in Russia.…
Contributions from Matt Thaxton.
Cisco Talos discovered a new attack framework including a command and control (C2) tool called “Alchimist” and a new malware “Insekt” with remote administration capabilities. The Alchimist has a web interface in Simplified Chinese with remote administration features. The attack framework is designed to target Windows, Linux and Mac machines.…This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained herein. The DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this bulletin or otherwise.…
Reconstructing Threat Actor Metrics with Pure Signal™ Recon
Introduction
IcedID (also known as BokBot) started life in early 2017 as a banking trojan that later evolved to include dropper malware capabilities. These capabilities enable IcedID to download and deploy additional malware like Cobalt Strike, with recent infections leading to Quantum ransomware.…
This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained herein. The DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this bulletin or otherwise.…
As endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions improve malware detection efficacy on Windows systems, certain state-sponsored threat actors have shifted to developing and deploying malware on systems that do not generally support EDR such as network appliances, SAN arrays, and VMware ESXi servers.
Earlier this year, Mandiant identified a novel malware ecosystem impacting VMware ESXi, Linux vCenter servers, and Windows virtual machines that enables a threat actor to take the following actions:
Maintain persistent administrative access to the hypervisor Send commands to the hypervisor that will be routed to the guest VM for execution Transfer files between the ESXi hypervisor and guest machines running beneath it Tamper with logging services on the hypervisor Execute arbitrary commands from one guest VM to another guest VM running on the same hypervisorThis malware ecosystem was initially detected when Mandiant Managed Defense identified attacker commands sourced from the legitimate VMware Tools process, vmtoolsd.exe,…
By Securonix Threat Labs, Threat Research: D. Iuzvyk, T. Peck, O. Kolesnikov
IntroductionSecuronix Threat Research team recently discovered a new covert attack campaign targeting multiple military/weapons contractor companies, including likely a strategic supplier to the F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft. The stager mostly employed the use of PowerShell and while stagers written in PowerShell are not unique, the procedures involved featured an array of interesting tactics, persistence methodology, counter-forensics and layers upon layers of obfuscation to hide its code.…
Sygnia recently investigated a Cheerscrypt ransomware attack which utilized Night Sky ransomware TTPs. Further analysis revealed that Cheerscrypt and Night Sky are both rebrands of the same threat group, dubbed ‘Emperor Dragonfly’ by Sygnia.
‘Emperor Dragonfly’ (A.K.A. DEV-0401 / BRONZE STARLIGHT) deployed open-source tools that were written by Chinese developers for Chinese users.…
This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryUnit 42 recently observed a polyglot Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) file being employed in the infection process used by the information stealer IcedID. We will show how to analyze the polyglot CHM file and the final payload so you can understand how the sample evades detection.…
Editor’s Note: The following post is an excerpt of a full report. To read the entire analysis, click here to download the report as a PDF.
This report details multiple campaigns conducted by the likely Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group TA413. The activity was identified through a combination of large-scale automated network traffic analytics and expert analysis.…
This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)
Executive SummaryCybercriminals compromise domain names to attack the owners or users of the domains directly, or use them for various nefarious endeavors, including phishing, malware distribution, and command and control (C2) operations. A special case of DNS hijacking is called domain shadowing, where attackers stealthily create malicious subdomains under compromised domain names.…
Users are advised to patch immediately: We found exploit samples abusing the Atlassian Confluence vulnerability (CVE-2022-26134) in the wild for malicious cryptocurrency mining.
We observed the active exploitation of CVE-2022-26134, an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability with a critical rating of 9.8 in the collaboration tool Atlassian Confluence.…
Українська (Ukrainian)
Cisco Talos recently identified a new, ongoing campaign attributed to the Russia-linked Gamaredon APT that infects Ukrainian users with information-stealing malware. The adversary is using phishing documents containing lures related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. LNK files, PowerShell and VBScript enable initial access, while malicious binaries are deployed in the post-infection phase.…Summary
Actions to take today to protect against ransom operations:
• Keep systems and software updated and prioritize remediating known exploited vulnerabilities.• Enforce MFA.• Make offline backups of your data.
This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is the result of an analytic effort among the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), U.S.…
This blog entry details how Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Workload Security and Trend Micro Vision One™ effectively detected and blocked the abuse of the CVE-2020-14882 WebLogic vulnerability in affected endpoints.
We have recently observed malicious actors exploiting both recently disclosed and older Oracle WebLogic Server vulnerabilities to deliver cryptocurrency-mining malware.…