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| Src | Date (GMT) | Titre | Description | Tags | Stories | Notes |
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2022-08-18 08:00:00 | Ukraine and the fragility of agriculture security (lien direct) |  By Joe Marshall.The war in Ukraine has had far-reaching global implications and one of the most immediate effects felt will be on the global supply chain for food. This war-induced fragility has exposed the weaknesses of how we feed ourselves globally. Ransomware cartels and other adversaries are well aware of this and are actively exploiting that fragility. For the past six years, Cisco Talos has been actively involved in assisting public and private institutions in Ukraine to defend themselves against state-sponsored actors. Our involvement stretches the gamut from commercial to critical infrastructure, to election security. Our presence has afforded us unique opportunities and observations about cybersecurity in a macro and micro way. Ukraine has been a frequent victim of state-sponsored cyber attacks aimed at critical infrastructures like power and transportation. Talos is proud to stand with our partners in Ukraine and help defend their critical networks and help users there maintain access to necessary services. Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, those threats have escalated to kinetic attacks that are wreaking havoc on a critical element of our world: agriculture and our global food supply chain. Even worse is the implications this war will have for future cyber attacks, as fragility is considered a lucrative element in deciding victimology by threat actors like ransomware cartels. To truly grasp the implications of the war in Ukraine, we have to examine how vital Ukrainian agriculture feeds the world, the current state of affairs, and what this means for the global cybersecurity posture to protect agricultural assets. Where there is weakness, there is opportunityRansomware cartels and their affiliates are actively targeting the agricultural industry. Moreover, these actors have done their homework and are targeting agricultural companies during the two times of the year where they cannot suffer disruptions: planting and harvesting. Per the published FBI PIN Alert: “Cyber actors may perceive cooperatives as lucrative targets with a willingness to pay due to the time-sensitive role they play in agricultural production.” This is far from unusual for these adversaries - they are shrewd and calculating, and understand their victims' weaknesses and industries. H |
Ransomware Threat Guideline Cloud | NotPetya Uber APT 37 APT 32 APT 28 APT 10 APT 21 Guam | |
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2022-08-06 10:46:21 | CISO workshop slides (lien direct) | A glossy, nicely-constructed and detailed PowerPoint slide deck by Microsoft Security caught my beady this morning. The title 'CISO Workshop: Security Program and Strategy' with 'Your Name Here' suggests it might be a template for use in a workshop/course bringing CISOs up to speed on the governance, strategic and architectural aspects of information security, but in fact given the amount of technical detail, it appears to be aimed at informing IT/technology managers about IT or cybersecurity, specifically. Maybe it is intended for newly-appointed CISOs or more junior managers who aspire to be CISOs, helping them clamber up the pyramid (slide 87 of 142): | Malware Vulnerability Threat Patching Guideline Medical Cloud | Uber APT 38 APT 37 APT 28 APT 19 APT 15 APT 10 APT 34 Guam | |
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2022-08-02 15:17:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Velvet Chollima Steals Emails from Browsers, Austrian Mercenary Leverages Zero-Days, China-Sponsored Group Uses CosmicStrand UEFI Firmware Rootkit, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, Cyber mercenaries, Phishing, Rootkits, Spyware, and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
SharpTongue Deploys Clever Mail-Stealing Browser Extension “SHARPEXT”
(published: July 28, 2022)
Volexity researchers discovered SharpExt, a new malicious browser app used by the North-Korea sponsored Velvet Chollima (Kimsuky, SharpTongue, Thallium) group. SharpExt inspects and exfiltrates data from a victim's webmail (AOL or Gmail) account as they browse it. Velvet Chollima continues to add new features to the app, the latest known version (3.0) supports three browsers: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Whale, the latter almost exclusively used in South Korea. Following the initial compromise, Velvet Chollima deploy SharpExt and to avoid warning the victim they manually exfiltrate settings files to change the settings and generate a valid "super_mac" security check value. They also hide the newly opened DevTools window and any other warning windows such as a warning regarding extensions running in developer mode.
Analyst Comment: Velvet Chollima is known for its tactic of deploying malicious browser extensions, but in the past it was concentrating on stealing credentials instead of emails. The group continues aggressive cyberespionage campaigns exfiltrating military and industrial technologies from Europe, South Korea, and the US. Network defenders should monitor for suspicious instances of PowerShell execution, as well as for traffic to and from known Velvet Chollima infrastructure (available in Anomali Match).
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Browser Extensions - T1176 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Email Collection - T1114 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Command and Scripting Interpreter - T1059 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Hide Artifacts - T1564
Tags: SharpExt, Velvet Chollima, Kimsuky, SharpTongue, Thallium, APT, North Korea, source-country:KP, South Korea, target-country:KR, USA, target-country:US, target-region:Europe, AOL, Gmail, Edge, Chrome, Whale, PowerShell, VBS, Browser extension
Untangling KNOTWEED: European Private-Sector Offensive Actor Using 0-Day Exploits
(published: July 27, 2022)
Microsoft researchers detail activity of DSIRF, Austrian private-sector offensive actor (PSOA). In 2021, this actor, tracked as Knotweed, used four Windows and Adobe 0-day exploits. In 2022, DSIRF was exploiting another Adobe Reader vulnerability, CVE-2022-22047, which was patched in July 2022. DSIRF attacks rely on their malware toolset called Subzero. The initial downloader shellcode is executed from either the exploit chains or malicious Excel documents. It downloads a JPG image file with extra encrypted data, extracts, decrypts and loads to the memory the Corelump memory-only infostealer. For persistence, Corelump creates trojanized copies of legitimate Windows DLLs that se |
Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Patching Guideline Cloud | APT 37 APT 28 | |
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2022-04-26 16:24:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Gamaredon Delivers Four Pterodos At Once, Known-Plaintext Attack on Yanlouwang Encryption, North-Korea Targets Blockchain Industry, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, CatalanGate, Cloud, Cryptocurrency, Information stealers, Ransomware, and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
SocGholish and Zloader – From Fake Updates and Installers to Owning Your Systems
(published: April 25, 2022)
Cybereason researchers have compared trending attacks involving SocGholish and Zloader malware. Both infection chains begin with social engineering and malicious downloads masquerading as legitimate software, and both lead to data theft and possible ransomware installation. SocGholish attacks rely on drive-by downloads followed by user execution of purported browser installer or browser update. The SocGholish JavaScript payload is obfuscated using random variable names and string manipulation. The attacker domain names are written in reverse order with the individual string characters being put at the odd index positions. Zloader infection starts by masquerading as a popular application such as TeamViewer. Zloader acts as information stealer, backdoor, and downloader. Active since 2016, Zloader actively evolves and has acquired detection evasion capabilities, such as excluding its processes from Windows Defender and using living-off-the-land (LotL) executables.
Analyst Comment: All applications should be carefully researched prior to installing on a personal or work machine. Applications that request additional permissions upon installation should be carefully vetted prior to allowing permissions. Additionally, all applications, especially free versions, should only be downloaded from trusted vendors.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Drive-by Compromise - T1189 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] User Execution - T1204 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Command and Scripting Interpreter - T1059 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Windows Management Instrumentation - T1047 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Masquerading - T1036 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Process Injection - T1055 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Signed Binary Proxy Execution - T1218 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Credentials from Password Stores - T1555 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets - T1558 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Steal Web Session Cookie - T1539 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Unsecured Credentials - T1552 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Remote System Discovery - T1018 | [MITRE ATT&CK] System Owner/User Discovery - T1033 | |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Medical | Uber APT 38 APT 28 | |
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2022-04-19 15:00:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: RaidForums Seized, Sandworm Attacks Ukrainian Power Stations, North Korea Steals Chemical Secrets, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, China, Cyberespionage, North Korea, Spearphishing, Russia, Ukraine, and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
Lazarus Targets Chemical Sector
(published: April 14, 2022)
In January 2022, Symantec researchers discovered a new wave of Operation Dream Job. This operation, attributed to the North Korea-sponsored group Lazarus, utilizes fake job offers via professional social media and email communications. With the new wave of attacks, Operation Dream Job switched from targeting the defense, government, and engineering sectors to targeting South Korean organizations operating within the chemical sector. A targeted user executes an HTM file sent via a link. The HTM file is copied to a DLL file to be injected into the legitimate system management software. It downloads and executes the final backdoor: a trojanized version of the Tukaani project LZMA Utils library (XZ Utils) with a malicious export added (AppMgmt). After the initial access, the attackers gain persistence via scheduled tasks, move laterally, and collect credentials and sensitive information.
Analyst Comment: Organizations should train their users to recognize social engineering attacks including those posing as “dream job” proposals. Organizations facing cyberespionage threats should implement a defense-in-depth approach: layering of security mechanisms, redundancy, fail-safe defense processes.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Scheduled Task - T1053 | [MITRE ATT&CK] User Execution - T1204 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Windows Management Instrumentation - T1047 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Process Injection - T1055 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Valid Accounts - T1078 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Signed Binary Proxy Execution - T1218 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Credentials from Password Stores - T1555
Tags: Lazarus, Operation Dream Job, North Korea, source-country:KP, South Korea, target-country:KR, APT, HTM, CPL, Chemical sector, Espionage, Supply chain, IT sector
Old Gremlins, New Methods
(published: April 14, 2022)
Group-IB researchers have released their analysis of threat actor OldGremlin’s new March 2022 campaign. OldGremlin favored phishing as an initial infection vector, crafting intricate phishing emails that target Russian industries. The threat actors utilized the current war between Russia and Ukraine to add a sense of legitimacy to their emails, with claims that users needed to click a link to register for a new credit card, as current ones would be rendered useless by incoming sanctions. The link leads users to a malicious Microsoft Office document stored within Dropbox. When macros are enabled, the threat actor’s new, custom backdoor, TinyFluff, a new version of their old TinyNode |
Ransomware Spam Malware Vulnerability Threat Guideline Medical | APT 38 APT 28 | |
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2022-02-25 00:05:00 | Anomali Threat Research Provides Russian Cyber Activity Dashboard (lien direct) | Russian government-sponsored threat actors recently increased their malicious activities[1], which are aligned with Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian retaliation for ongoing economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed by many other countries poses a significant risk of further escalation in the cyber sphere. Russian government-sponsored groups are dangerous cyber-actors that are well-resourced and relentless in their attacks, which include espionage, attacks on critical infrastructure, data destruction, and other malicious activities.
To assist our customers, Anomali has released a dashboard focused on Russian-origin actors and Russian cyber activity for ThreatStream users, titled “Russian Cyber Activity.”
The Anomali Threat Research team preconfigured this custom dashboard to provide immediate access and visibility into all known Russian government-related indicators of compromise (IOCs) made available through commercial and open-source threat feeds that users manage on Anomali ThreatStream.
Russian Cyber Activity is focused on seven threat actor groups: Six groups are well-known Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) groups: Berserk Bear, Cozy Bear (APT29), Fancy Bear (APT28), Gamaredon (Primitive Bear), Turla (Venomous Bear), and Voodoo Bear (Sandworm).
Additionally, we’ve included Evil Corp (Dridex, Indrik Spider) group. Although typically financially motivated, its leader is known to work for Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) and has conducted cyber operations on behalf of the Russian government.[2]
Anomali customers using ThreatStream, Match, and Lens are able to immediately detect any IOCs present in their environments and quickly consume threat bulletins containing machine-readable IOCs. This enables analysts to quickly operationalize threat intelligence across their security infrastructures, as well as communicate to all stakeholders if and how they have been impacted.
Anomali recently added thematic dashboards that respond to significant global events as part of ongoing product enhancements that further automate and speed essential tasks performed by threat intelligence and security operations analysts. In addition to Russian Cyber Activity, ThreatStream customers currently have access to multiple dashboards announced as part of our recent quarterly product release.
Customers can easily integrate the Russian Cyber Activity dashboard, among others, in the “+ Add Dashboard” tab in the ThreatStream console:
Endnotes
[1] “Attack on Ukrainian Government Websites Linked to GRU Hackers,” Bellingcat Investigation Team, accessed February 24, 2022, published February 23, 2022, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/23/attack-on-ukrainian-government-websites-linked-to-russian-gru-hackers/; Joe Tidy “Ukraine crisis: 'Wiper' discovered in latest cyber-attacks,” BBC News, accessed February 24, 2022, published February 24, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60500618.
[2] “Treasury Sanctions Evil Corp, the Russia-Based Cybercriminal Group Behind Dridex Malware,” The U.S. Department of the Treasury, accessed February 24, 2022, published December 5, 2019, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm845. |
Threat Guideline | APT 29 APT 29 APT 28 | |
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2022-01-25 16:00:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: MoonBounce, AccessPress, QR Code Scams and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, Linux Malware, Supply-Chain Attacks, Malspam, Phishing, and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
FBI Warns Of Malicious QR Codes Used To Steal Your Money
(published: January 23, 2022)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently released a notice that malicious QR codes have been found in the wild. These codes, when scanned, will redirect the victim to a site where they are prompted to enter personal and payment details. The site will then harvest these credentials for cybercriminals to commit fraud and empty bank accounts. This threat vector has been seen in Germany as of December 2021.
Analyst Comment: Always be sure to check that emails have been sent from a legitimate source, and that any financial details or method of payment is done through the website. While QR codes are useful and being used by businesses more often, it is easy for cybercriminals to perform this kind of scam. If scanning a physical QR code, ensure the code has not been replaced with a sticker placed on top of the original code. Check the final URL to make sure it is the intended site and looks authentic.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566
Tags: EU & UK, Banking and Finance
MoonBounce: The Dark Side Of UEFI Firmware
(published: January 20, 2022)
Kaspersky has reported that in September 2021, a bootloader malware infection had been discovered that embeds itself into UEFI firmware. The malware patches existing UEFI drivers and resides in the SPI flash memory located on the motherboard. This means that it will persist even if the hard drive is replaced. Code snippets and IP addresses link the activity to APT41, a group that is operated by a group of Chinese-speaking individuals. MoonBounce is highly sophisticated and very difficult to detect.
Analyst Comment: Systems should be configured to take advantage of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) hardware security chips to secure their systems' boot image and firmware, where available. Secure boot is also a viable option to mitigate against attacks that would patch, reconfigure, or flash existing UEFI firmware to implant malicious code.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Pre-OS Boot - T1542 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Obfuscation - T1001 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Encoding - T1132 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploitation of Remote Services - T1210 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Remote Services - T1021 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Shared Modules - T1129 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Hijack Execution Flow - T1574 | |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline | APT 41 APT 28 | |
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2022-01-19 22:45:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Russia-Sponsored Cyber Threats, China-Based Earth Lusca Active in Cyberespionage and Cybertheft, BlueNoroff Hunts Cryptocurrency-Related Businesses, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, China, HTTP Stack, Malspam, North Korea, Phishing, Russia and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
Earth Lusca Employs Sophisticated Infrastructure, Varied Tools and Techniques
(published: January 17, 2022)
The Earth Lusca threat group is part of the Winnti cluster. It is one of different Chinese groups that share aspects of their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) including the use of Winnti malware. Earth Lusca were active throughout 2021 committing both cyberespionage operations against government-connected organizations and financially-motivated intrusions targeting gambling and cryptocurrency-related sectors. For intrusion, the group tries different ways in including: spearphishing, watering hole attacks, and exploiting publicly facing servers. Cobalt Strike is one of the group’s preferred post-exploitation tools. It is followed by the use of the BioPass RAT, the Doraemon backdoor, the FunnySwitch backdoor, ShadowPad, and Winnti. The group employs two separate infrastructure clusters, first one is rented Vultr VPS servers used for command-and-control (C2), second one is compromised web servers used to scan for vulnerabilities, tunnel traffic, and Cobalt Strike C2.
Analyst Comment: Earth Lusca often relies on tried-and-true techniques that can be stopped by security best practices, such as avoiding clicking on suspicious email/website links and or reacting on random banners urging to update important public-facing applications. Don’t be tricked to download Adobe Flash update, it was discontinued at the end of December 2020. Administrators should keep their important public-facing applications (such as Microsoft Exchange and Oracle GlassFish Server) updated.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Drive-by Compromise - T1189 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Command and Scripting Interpreter - T1059 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Scheduled Task - T1053 | [MITRE ATT&CK] System Services - T1569 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Windows Management Instrumentation - T1047 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Account Manipulation - T1098 | [MITRE ATT&CK] BITS Jobs - T1197 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Create Account - T1136 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Create or Modify System Process - T1543 | [MITRE ATT&CK] External Remote Services - T1133 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Hijack Execution Flow |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Patching Guideline | APT 41 APT 38 APT 29 APT 28 APT 28 | |
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2021-12-21 16:57:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: \'PseudoManuscrypt\' Mass Spyware Campaign Targets 35K Systems, APT31 Intrusion Set Campaign: Description, Countermeasures and Code, State-sponsored hackers abuse Slack API to steal (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT31, Magecart, Hancitor, Pakdoor, Lazarus, and Vulnerabilities CVE-2021-21551.. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
NSW Government Casual Recruiter Suffers Ransomware Hit
(published: December 17, 2021)
Finite Recruitment suffered a ransomware attack during the month of October 2021, resulting in the exfiltration of some data. Their incident responders (IR) identified the ransomware as Conti, a fast encrypting ransomware commonly attributed to the cybercriminal group Wizard Spider. The exfiltrated data was published on the dark web, however the firm remains fully operational, and affected customers are being informed.
Analyst Comment: Always check to see if there is a decryptor available for the ransomware before considering payment. Enforce a strong backup policy to ensure that data is recoverable in the event of encryption or loss.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Scheduled Transfer - T1029
Tags: Conti, Wizard Spider, Ransomware, Banking and Finance
Phorpiex botnet is back with a new Twizt: Hijacking Hundreds of crypto transactions
(published: December 16, 2021)
Check Point Research has uncovered a new variant of the Phorpiex botnet named Twizt. Historically, Phorpiex utilized sextortion, ransomware delivery, and cryptocurrency clipping. Twizt however, appears to be primarily focused on stealing cryptocurrency and have stolen half a million dollars since November 2020 in the form of Bitcoin, Ether and ERC20 tokens.The botnet features departure from it’s traditional command and control (C2) infrastructure, opting for peer-to-peer (P2P) communications between infected hosts, eliminating the need for C2 communication as each host can fulfill that role.
Analyst Comment: Bots within a P2P network need to communicate regularly with other bots to receive and share commands. If the infected bots are on a private network, private IP addresses will be used. Therefore, careful monitoring of network traffic will reveal suspicious activity, and a spike in network resource usage as opposed to the detection of C2 IP addresses.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Encoding - T1132 | [MITRE ATT&CK] File and Directory Discovery - T1083 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Clipboard Data - T1115
Tags: Phorpiex, Twizt, Russia, Banking and Finance, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin
‘PseudoManuscrypt’ Mass Spyware Campaign Targets 35K Systems
(published: December 16, 2021)
Kaspersky researchers have documented a spyware that has targeted 195 countries as of December 2021. The spyware, named PseudoManuscrypt, was developed and deployed by Lazarus Group |
Ransomware Malware Vulnerability Threat Guideline Medical | APT 41 APT 38 APT 28 APT 31 | |
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2021-10-12 17:41:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Aerospace and Telecoms Targeted by Iranian MalKamak Group, Cozy Bear Refocuses on Cyberespionage, Wicked Panda is Traced by Malleable C2 Profiles, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, Data leak, Ransomware, Phishing, and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
Russian Cyberattacks Pose Greater Risk to Governments and Other Insights from Our Annual Report
(published: October 7, 2021)
Approximately 58% of all nation-state attacks observed by Microsoft between July 2020 and June 2021 have been attributed to the Russian-sponsored threat groups, specifically to Cozy Bear (APT29, Nobelium) associated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The United States, Ukraine, and the UK were the top three targeted by them. Russian Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors increased their effectiveness from a 21% successful compromise rate to a 32% rate comparing year to year. They achieve it by starting an attack with supply-chain compromise, utilizing effective tools such as web shells, and increasing their skills with the cloud environment targeting. Russian APTs are increasingly targeting government agencies for intelligence gathering, which jumped from 3% of their targets a year ago to 53% – largely agencies involved in foreign policy, national security, or defense. Following Russia by the number of APT cyberattacks were North Korea (23%), Iran (11%), and China (8%).
Analyst Comment: As the collection of intrusions for potential disruption operations via critical infrastructure attacks became too risky for Russia, it refocused back to gaining access to and harvesting intelligence. The scale and growing effectiveness of the cyberespionage requires a defence-in-depth approach and tools such as Anomali Match that provide real-time forensics capability to identify potential breaches and known actor attributions.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Supply Chain Compromise - T1195 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Server Software Component - T1505 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Brute Force - T1110
Tags: Fancy Bear, APT28, APT29, The Dukes, Strontium, Nobelium, Energetic Bear, Cozy Bear, Government, APT, Russia, SVR, China, North Korea, USA, UK, Ukraine, Iran
Ransomware in the CIS
(published: October 7, 2021)
Many prominent ransomware groups have members located in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - and they avoid targeting this region. Still, businesses in the CIS are under the risk of being targeted by dozens of lesser-known ransomware groups. Researchers from Kaspersky Labs have published a report detailing nine business-oriented ransomware trojans that were most active in the CIS in the first half of 2021. These ransomware families are BigBobRoss (TheDMR), Cryakl (CryLock), CryptConsole, Crysis (Dharma), Fonix (XINOF), Limbozar (VoidCrypt), Phobos (Eking), Thanos (Hakbit), and XMRLocker. The oldest, Cryakl, has been around since April 2014, and the newest, XMRLocker, was first detected in August 2020. Most of them were mainly distributed via the cracking of Remote Deskto |
Ransomware Malware Tool Threat Guideline Prediction | APT 41 APT 41 APT 39 APT 29 APT 29 APT 28 | |
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2021-07-20 15:00:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: China Blamed for Microsoft Exchange Attacks, Israeli Cyber Surveillance Companies Help Oppressive Governments, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: China, APT, Espionage, Ransomware, Targeted Campaigns, DLL Side-Loading, and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
UK and Allies Accuse China for a Pervasive Pattern of Hacking, Breaching Microsoft Exchange Servers
(published: July 19, 2021)
On July 19th, 2021, the US, the UK, and other global allies jointly accused China in a pattern of aggressive malicious cyber activity. First, they confirmed that Chinese state-backed actors (previously identified under the group name Hafnium) were responsible for gaining access to computer networks around the world via Microsoft Exchange servers. The attacks took place in early 2021, affecting over a quarter of a million servers worldwide. Additionally, APT31 (Judgement Panda) and APT40 (Kryptonite Panda) were attributed to Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has indicted four APT40 members, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) shared indicators of compromise of the historic APT40 activity.
Analyst Comment: Network defense-in-depth and adherence to information security best practices can assist organizations in reducing the risk. Pay special attention to the patch and vulnerability management, protecting credentials, and continuing network hygiene and monitoring. When possible, enforce the principle of least privilege, use segmentation and strict access control measures for critical data. Organisations can use Anomali Match to perform real time forensic analysis for tracking such attacks.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Drive-by Compromise - T1189 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] External Remote Services - T1133 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Server Software Component - T1505 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploitation of Remote Services - T1210
Tags: Hafnium, Judgement Panda, APT31, TEMP.Jumper, APT40, Kryptonite Panda, Zirconium, Leviathan, TEMP.Periscope, Microsoft Exchange, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-27065, CVE-2021-26858, Government, EU, UK, North America, China
NSO’s Spyware Sold to Authoritarian Regimes Used to Target Activists, Politicians and Journalists
(published: July 18, 2021)
Israeli surveillance company NSO Group supposedly sells spyware to vetted governments bodies to fight crime and terrorism. New research discovered NSO’s tools being used against non-criminal actors, pro-democracy activists and journalists investigating corruption, political opponents and government critics, diplomats, etc. In some cases, the timeline of this surveillance coincided with journalists' arrests and even murders. The main penetration tool used by NSO is malware Pegasus that targets both iPho |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Studies Guideline Industrial | APT 41 APT 40 APT 28 APT 31 | |
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2021-07-06 10:00:00 | Lazarus campaign TTPs and evolution (lien direct) |
Executive summary
AT&T Alien Labs™ has observed new activity that has been attributed to the Lazarus adversary group potentially targeting engineering job candidates and/or employees in classified engineering roles within the U.S. and Europe. This assessment is based on malicious documents believed to have been delivered by Lazarus during the last few months (spring 2021). However, historical analysis shows the lures used in this campaign to be in line with others used to target these groups.
The purpose of this blog is to share the new technical intelligence and provide detection options for defenders. Alien Labs will continue to report on any noteworthy changes.
Key Takeaways:
Lazarus has been identified targeting defense contractors with malicious documents.
There is a high emphasis on renaming system utilities (Certutil and Explorer) to obfuscate the adversary’s activities (T1036.003).
Background
Since 2009, the known tools and capabilities believed to have been used by the Lazarus Group include DDoS botnets, keyloggers, remote access tools (RATs), and drive wiper malware. The most publicly documented malware and tools used by the group actors include Destover, Duuzer, and Hangman.
Analysis
Several documents identified from May to June 2021 by Twitter users were identified as being linked to the Lazarus group. Documents observed in previous campaigns lured victims with job opportunities for Boeing and BAE systems. These new documents include:
Rheinmetall_job_requirements.doc: identified by ESET Research.
General_motors_cars.doc: identified by Twitter user @1nternaut.
Airbus_job_opportunity_confidential.doc: identified by 360CoreSec.
The documents attempted to impersonate new defense contractors and engineering companies like Airbus, General Motors (GM), and Rheinmetall. All of these documents contain macro malware, which has been developed and improved during the course of this campaign and from one target to another. The core techniques for the three malicious documents are the same, but the attackers attempted to reduce the potential detections and increase the faculties of the macros.
First iteration: Rheinmetall
The first two documents from early May 2021 were related to a German Engineering company focused on the defense and automotive industries, Rheinmetall. The second malicious document appears to include more elaborate content, which may have resulted in the documents going unnoticed by victims.
The Macro has base64 encoded files, which are extracted and decoded during execution. Some of the files are split inside the Macro and are not combined until the time of decoding. One of the most distinctive characteristics of this Macro is how it evades detections of a MZ header encoded in base64 (TVoA, TVpB, TVpQ, TVqA, TVqQ or TVro), by separating the first two characters from the rest of the content, as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Concealing of MZ header, as captured by Alien Labs.
The rest of the content is kept together in lines of 64 characters, and because of this, YARA rules can be used to detect other, typical executable content encoded in base64 aside of the MZ header. In this case, up to nine different YARA rules alerted to suspicious encoded strings in our Alien Labs analysis, like VirtualProtect, GetProcAddress, IsDe |
Malware Threat Guideline Medical | APT 38 APT 28 | |
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2021-06-08 15:00:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: TeamTNT Actively Enumerating Cloud Environments to Infiltrate Organizations, Necro Python Bots Adds New Tricks, US Seizes Domains Used by APT29 and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, APT29, FluBot, Necro Python, RoyalRoad, SharpPanda, TeaBot and Vulnerabilities. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.
Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.
Trending Cyber News and Threat Intelligence
TeamTNT Actively Enumerating Cloud Environments to Infiltrate Organizations
(published: June 4, 2021)
Researchers at Palo Alto have identified a malware repo belonging to TeamTNT, the prominent cloud focused threat group. The repo shows the expansion of TeamTNTs abilities, and includes scripts for scraping SSH keys, AWS IAM credentials and searching for config files that contain credentials. In addition to AWS credentials, TeamTNT are now also searching for Google Cloud credentials, which is the first instance of the group expanding to GCP.
Analyst Comment: Any internal only cloud assets & SSH/Privileged access for customer facing cloud infrastructure should only be accessible via company VPN. This ensures attackers don’t get any admin access from over the internet even if keys or credentials are compromised. Customers should monitor compromised credentials in public leaks & reset the passwords immediately for those accounts.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Permission Groups Discovery - T1069
Tags: AWS, Cloud, Credential Harvesting, cryptojacking, Google Cloud, IAM, scraping, TeamTnT, Black-T, Peirates
Necro Python Bots Adds New Tricks
(published: June 3, 2021)
Researchers at Talos have identified updated functionality in the Necro Python bot. The core functionality is the same with a focus on Monero mining, however exploits to the latest vulnerabilities have been added. The main payloads are XMRig, traffic sniffing and DDoS attacks. Targeting small and home office routers, the bot uses python to support multiple platforms.
Analyst Comment: Users should ensure they always apply the latest patches as the bot is looking to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities. Users need to change default passwords for home routers to ensure potential malware on your personal devices don’t spread to your corporate devices through router takeover.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Scripting - T1064 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Obfuscated Files or Information - T1027 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Process Injection - T1055 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Input Capture - T1056 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Remote Access Tools - T1219
Tags: Bot, botnet, Exploit, Monero, Necro Python, Python, Vulnerabilities, XMRig
New SkinnyBoy Ma |
Ransomware Malware Vulnerability Threat Patching Guideline | APT 29 APT 28 | |
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2019-07-25 13:00:00 | Can you trust threat intelligence from threat sharing communities? | AT&T ThreatTraq (lien direct) | Every week the AT&T Chief Security Office produces a series called ThreatTraq with helpful information and news commentary for InfoSec practitioners and researchers. I really enjoy them; you can subscribe to the Youtube channel to stay updated. This is a transcript of a recent feature on ThreatTraq. The video features Jaime Blasco, VP and Chief Scientist, AlienVault, Stan Nurilov, Lead Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, and Joe Harten, Director Technical Security. Stan: Jaime. I think you have a very interesting topic today about threat intelligence. Jaime: Yes, we want to talk about how threat intelligence is critical for threat detection and incident response, but then when this threat intelligence and the threat actors try to match those indicators and that information that is being shared, it can actually be bad for companies. So we are going to share some of the experiences we have had with managing the Open Threat Exchange (OTX) - one of the biggest threat sharing communities out there. Stan: Jaime mentioned that they have so many threat indicators and so much threat intelligence as part of OTX, the platform. Jaime: We know attackers monitor these platforms and are adjusting tactics and techniques and probably the infrastructure based on public reaction to cyber security companies sharing their activities in blog posts and other reporting. An example is in September 2017, we saw APT28, and it became harder to track because we were using some of the infrastructure and some of the techniques that were publicly known. And another cyber security company published content about that and then APT28 became much more difficult to track. The other example is APT1. If you remember the APT1 report in 2013 that Mandiant published, that made the group basically disappear from the face of earth, right? We didn't see them for a while and then they changed the infrastructure and they changed a lot of the tools that they were using, and then they came back in 2014. So we can see that that threat actor disappeared for a while, changed and rebuilt, and then they came back. We also know that attackers can try to publish false information in this platform, so that's why it's important that not only those platforms are automated, but also there are human analysts that can verify that information. Joe: It seems like you have to have a process of validating the intelligence, right? I think part of it is you don't want to take this intelligence at face value without having some expertise of your own that asks, is this valid? Is this a false positive? Is this planted by the adversary in order to throw off the scent? I think it's one of those things where you can't automatically trust - threat intelligence. You have to do some of your own diligence to validate the intelligence, make sure it makes sense, make sure it's still fresh, it's still good. This is something we're working on internally - creating those other layers to validate and create better value of our threat intelligence. Jaime: The other issue I wanted to bring to the table is what we call false flag operations - that's when an adversary or a threat actor studies another threat actor and tries to emulate their behavior. So when companies try to do at | Malware Threat Studies Guideline | APT 38 APT 28 APT 1 | |
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2019-04-12 14:14:05 | APT28 and Upcoming Elections: evidence of possible interference (lien direct) | In mid-March, a suspicious Office document referencing the Ukraine elections appeared in the wild, is it related to APT28 and upcoming elections? Introduction In mid-March, a suspicious Office document referencing the Ukraine elections appeared in the wild. This file was uncommon, it seemed carefully prepared and was speaking about who is leading in the elections […] | Guideline | APT 28 | |
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2017-05-04 17:18:00 | OAuth Worm Targeting Google Users - You Need to Watch Cloud Services (lien direct) |
Yesterday, many people received an e-mail from someone they knew and trusted asking them to open a "Google Doc.” The email looked, felt, and smelled like the real thing—an email that Google normally sends whenever a share request is made. However, the email contained a button that mimicked a link to open a document in Google Docs.
When users clicked on the button, they were prompted to give “Google Docs” permission to read / send email, manage their email, and access their contact lists.
In reality, this was a malicious application registered by the attackers. And, in fact, is one of the most well-crafted phishing attempts in the last year.
By clicking on the ALLOW button, users authorized the malicious application to perform actions on their behalf. The users’ browsers were redirected to one of the malicious servers set up by the attackers, for example:
https://googledocs[.]docscloud[.]win/g.php.
The AlienVault Labs Security Research Team detected the activity, and while the attack was still in progress, we created a Pulse in the Open Threat Exchange (OTX) with all the indicators of the infrastructure the attackers used (mainly the domains they used in redirection).
In addition, several OTX users jumped in and shared more malicious infrastructure in a matter of minutes!
This helped get the indicators out immediately to the 30,000+ people that follow the AlienVault OTX account. Kudos to the OTX members who jumped in and delivered this valuable information so quickly to the community!
Sign up to OTX to join the 53,000+ users who already benefit from this free service >
Going back to the attack–when the user was redirected to one of the servers after allowing the malicious application to perform those actions, it was served with the JavaScript code that contained the self-replication / worm functionality.
First, the malicious JavaScript would get access to the contact list (first 1000 entries):
The code parsed the names and email addresses of those contacts and then prioritize addresses from gmail.com, avoiding addresses containing the words “google”, “keeper” and “unty”.
Once the list of potential victims was crafted, the code sent the same email to them as well, thus propagating the attack:
When sending the email, the attackers also decided to BCC the address hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh[at]mailinator[.]com -, presumably to monitor progress or collect the list of victims.
Impact
Luckily, Google reacted to this quickly, and the malicious applications were shut down in about an hour after the start of the campaign. Cloudflare, which the attackers used in front of the malicious infrastructure, took down that part of the attack infrastructure quickly, too.
It is important to mentio |
Guideline | Yahoo APT 28 | |
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2017-05-03 16:49:00 | Alien Eye in the Sky – 5th May 2017 (lien direct) |
It’s been a busy week with ups and downs in the world of security. But even when things get shaken up like a Michael Bay movie, we keep our eye on what matters the most.
That Google Phish
There was a lot of buzz as many people received phishing emails disguised as invitations to open a Google Doc. By authorising it, users unwittingly gave access to their emails to attackers.
The size and scale of the attack was reminiscent of the viruses of days gone by, such as Melissa.
While Google has worked to close the flaw, it doesn't help those users that have clicked on the link.
If you have clicked on the link, then you need to follow these steps:
Go to google account permissions page and remove access for the fake app
Change passwords on Google and any other sites that may have been using the same password.
Enable two factor / two step verification (like needing an SMS code in order to log on).
Some are suggesting that given the similarities between this fresh phishing scam and the past activity of the DNC hackers, known as APT28, the Google phishers could be the allegedly Kremlin-backed crew. But to Jaime Blasco, chief scientist at security company AlienVault, that's unlikely: "I don't believe they are behind this though because this is way too widespread. Many people/organizations have received similar attempts so this is probably something massive and less targeted." - Full article
Threat post article
Smaller nations hacking skills
As the joke goes, on the internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog. Technology has done a great job in balancing the shift of power into the hands of the many. Now, with modest budgets and technology, startups can challenge well-established brands.
But that also means small nations can build cyber capabilities that match those of much larger nations.
We knew the U.S. and Russia were hacking powers, but Ethiopia and Pakistan?
GDPR
While a lot of European companies are looking to the future wondering what GDPR will bring, the Register looked back and retrospectively estimated what regulator fines on data loss would have been last year had GDPR been implemented.
Where last year British companies were fined £880,500; under GDPR regulation that sum could have been £69 million.
Register Story
Gartner predicts GDPR flouters will be in the majority
Google cloud will be ready for GDPR in May 2018
It’s just Metadata
It's why many governments have pushed for mandatory metadata retention laws, and have been successful. Because in the minds of many, it's only metadata.
Troy Hunt wrote a good article on why Australia just showed the world the problem with mandatory data retention
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Guideline | APT 28 | |
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2016-10-21 13:57:00 | Alien Eye In the Sky 21st October 2016 (lien direct) |
We’ve got the week’s news covered for you.
In This Week's Episode
Nation State Threat Attribution
Mercedes autonomous cars
Stephen Hawking on AI
Banks failing to report hacks
Indian Bank debit card breach
Other Stories of Interest
Female speakers for your tech event
How hackers handle stolen login data
DFIR and Threat Hunting
The real reason shops want you to sign up for e-receipts
Intelligence Oversight and How It Can Fail
Salesforce’s M&A Target List Excluded Twitter
Poor and/or reused passwords lead to Chinese spam flood on iMessage
Threat report En Route with Sendit
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Guideline | APT 28 |
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