In April 2022, PT Expert Security Center detected an attack on a number of Russian media and energy companies that used a malicious document called «list.docx» to extract a malicious payload packed with VMProtect. Having analyzed the network packet, we found it to be identical to the one we studied in our report on APT31 tools, suggesting that these may belong to one and the same group.…
Tag: PERSISTENCE
FortiGuard Labs has been tracking a rapidly evolving IoT malware family known as “RapperBot” since mid-June 2022. This family borrows heavily from the original Mirai source code, but what separates it from other IoT malware families is its built-in capability to brute force credentials and gain access to SSH servers instead of Telnet as implemented in Mirai.…
By Edmund Brumaghin, Azim Khodjibaev and Matt Thaxton, with contributions from Arnaud Zobec.
Executive Summary Dark Utilities, released in early 2022, is a platform that provides full-featured C2 capabilities to adversaries. It is marketed as a means to enable remote access, command execution, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and cryptocurrency mining operations on infected systems.…
Executive Summary
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This paper investigates a recent Emotet intrusion and details how the final Emotet payload is installed onto the system. The key observations are:
Obfuscated Excel macros used to download and run the Emotet loader. Emotet loader executed using regsvr32.exe. Encrypted Emotet payload embedded in loader’s .rsrc…A few months ago, we reported on an interesting site called the Chameleon Phishing Page. These websites have the capability to change their background and logo depending on the user’s domain. The phishing site is stored in IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) and after reviewing the URLs used by the attacker, we noticed an increasing number of phishing emails containing IPFS URLs as their payload. …
An analysis of three in-the-wild payloads delivered using the recently discovered Follina exploit shows how attackers can use it to achieve persistent access in victim environments and turbo-charge efforts to ‘live off the land’ and avoid detection by security monitoring tools.
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Gootkit has been known to use fileless techniques to drop Cobalt Strike and other malicious payloads. Insights from a recent attack reveal updates in its tactics.
Our in-depth analysis of what began as an unusual PowerShell script revealed intrusion sets associated with Gootkit loader. In the past, Gootkit used freeware installers to mask malicious files; now it uses legal documents to trick users into downloading these files.…
Gootloader is a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) offering that is spread through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning to distribute malicious payloads, such as IcedID. Threat actors have begun using IcedID, a former banking trojan, since it’s a stealthier option compared to Cobalt Strike.
In fact, the eSentire Threat Response Unit (TRU) team recently published a security advisory, The Popular Malware Downloader, GootLoader, Expands its Payloads Yet Again, Infecting a Law Firm with IcedID, that outlined TRU’s discovery of threat actors deploying IcedID onto a law firm’s IT environment via an employee’s computer.…
Introduction
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Rootkits are malware implants which burrow themselves in the deepest corners of the operating system. Although on paper they may seem attractive to attackers, creating them poses significant technical challenges and the slightest programming error has the potential to completely crash the victim machine. In our APT predictions for 2022, we noted that despite these risks, we expected more attackers to reach the sophistication level required to develop such tools.…
We recently discovered a zero-day vulnerability in Google Chrome (CVE-2022-2294) when it was exploited in the wild in an attempt to attack Avast users in the Middle East. Specifically, a large portion of the attacks took place in Lebanon, where journalists were among the targeted parties.…
The ASEC analysis team has been monitoring attacks that are targeting vulnerable systems. This post will discuss cases of attacks targeting vulnerable Atlassian Confluence Servers that are not patched.
Atlassian’s Confluence is a major collaboration platform used by many companies across the globe. Being a web-based platform, services such as managing projects and collaboration are mainly provided by Confluence Servers (or Confluence Data Centers).…
By Securonix Threat Labs, Threat Research: D. Iuzvyk, T. Peck, O. Kolesnikov
Last Updated: July 20, 2022
IntroductionThe Securonix Threat Research (STR) team has been observing and investigating a new attack campaign exploiting high-value targets, including Czech Republic, Poland, and other countries. The attack campaign has been tracked by STR as STIFF#BIZON.…
Executive summary
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Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Ukrainians have been under a nearly constant barrage of cyber attacks. Working jointly with Ukrainian organizations, Cisco Talos has discovered a fairly uncommon piece of malware targeting Ukraine — this time aimed at a large software development company whose software is used in various state organizations within Ukraine.…
Execution
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Upon execution of Base-Update.exe, it proceeds to download, Base64-decode, and execute another time stomped downloader written in Go from http://194.31.98.124:443/i with the arguments –a 0CyCcrhI/6B5wKE8XLOd+w==:
%TEMP%java-sdk.exe (MD5: 36ff9ec87c458d6d76b2afbd5120dfae) Downloader written in Go Base64 encoded – MD5: 2f14b3d5ab01568e2707925783f8eafe Compile time: 1970-01-01 00:00:00 C&C: 194.31.98.124:443Java-sdk.exe sets persistence for itself via setting a Run registry key.…
Lightning Framework is a new undetected Swiss Army Knife-like Linux malware that has modular plugins and the ability to install rootkits.
Year after year Linux environments increasingly become the target of malware due to continued threat actor interest in the space. Malware targeting Linux environments surged in 2021, with a large amount of innovation resulting in new malicious code, especially in ransomwares, trojans, and botnets.…
By Jim Walter & Aleksandar Milenkoski
LockBit 3.0 ransomware (aka LockBit Black) is an evolution of the prolific LockBit ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) family, which has roots that extend back to BlackMatter and related entities. After critical bugs were discovered in LockBit 2.0 in March 2022, the authors began work on updating their encryption routines and adding several new features designed to thwart researchers.…
In April 2022, ESET researchers discovered a previously unknown macOS backdoor that spies on users of the compromised Mac and exclusively uses public cloud storage services to communicate back and forth with its operators. Following analysis, we named it CloudMensis. Its capabilities clearly show that the intent of its operators is to gather information from the victims’ Macs by exfiltrating documents, keystrokes, and screen captures.…
Amadey Bot, a malware that was first discovered in 2018, is capable of stealing information and installing additional malware by receiving commands from the attacker. Like other malware strains, it has been sold in illegal forums and used by various attackers.
The ASEC analysis team previously revealed cases where Amadey was used on attacks in the ASEC blog posted in 2019 (English version unavailable).…
Over the last month a crimeware group best known as 8220 Gang has expanded their botnet to roughly 30,000 hosts globally through the use of Linux and common cloud application vulnerabilities and poorly secured configurations. In a recent campaign, the group was observed making use of a new version of the IRC botnet, PwnRig cryptocurrency miner, and its generic infection script.…
Summary
Actions to take today:
• Install fixed builds, updating all affected VMware Horizon and UAG systems to the latest versions. If updates or workarounds were not promptly applied following VMware’s release of updates for Log4Shell in December 2021, treat all affected VMware systems as compromised.…