What's new arround internet
| Src | Date (GMT) | Titre | Description | Tags | Stories | Notes |
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2023-03-14 17:32:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Xenomorph Automates The Whole Fraud Chain on Android, IceFire Ransomware Started Targeting Linux, Mythic Leopard Delivers Spyware Using Romance Scam (lien direct) |
Anomali Cyber Watch: Xenomorph Automates The Whole Fraud Chain on Android, IceFire Ransomware Started Targeting Linux, Mythic Leopard Delivers Spyware Using Romance Scam, and More.
The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: Android, APT, DLL side-loading, Iran, Linux, Malvertising, Mobile, Pakistan, Ransomware, and Windows. 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
Xenomorph V3: a New Variant with ATS Targeting More Than 400 Institutions
(published: March 10, 2023)
Newer versions of the Xenomorph Android banking trojan are able to target 400 applications: cryptocurrency wallets and mobile banking from around the World with the top targeted countries being Spain, Turkey, Poland, USA, and Australia (in that order). Since February 2022, several small, testing Xenomorph campaigns have been detected. Its current version Xenomorph v3 (Xenomorph.C) is available on the Malware-as-a-Service model. This trojan version was delivered using the Zombinder binding service to bind it to a legitimate currency converter. Xenomorph v3 automatically collects and exfiltrates credentials using the ATS (Automated Transfer Systems) framework. The command-and-control traffic is blended in by abusing Discord Content Delivery Network.
Analyst Comment: Fraud chain automation makes Xenomorph v3 a dangerous malware that might significantly increase its prevalence on the threat landscape. Users should keep their mobile devices updated and avail of mobile antivirus and VPN protection services. Install only applications that you actually need, use the official store and check the app description and reviews. Organizations that publish applications for their customers are invited to use Anomali's Premium Digital Risk Protection service to discover rogue, malicious apps impersonating your brand that security teams typically do not search or monitor.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] T1417.001 - Input Capture: Keylogging | [MITRE ATT&CK] T1417.002 - Input Capture: Gui Input Capture
Tags: malware:Xenomorph, Mobile, actor:Hadoken Security Group, actor:HadokenSecurity, malware-type:Banking trojan, detection:Xenomorph.C, Malware-as-a-Service, Accessibility services, Overlay attack, Discord CDN, Cryptocurrency wallet, target-industry:Cryptocurrency, target-industry:Banking, target-country:Spain, target-country:ES, target-country:Turkey, target-country:TR, target-country:Poland, target-country:PL, target-country:USA, target-country:US, target-country:Australia, target-country:AU, malware:Zombinder, detection:Zombinder.A, Android
Cobalt Illusion Masquerades as Atlantic Council Employee
(published: March 9, 2023)
A new campaign by Iran-sponsored Charming Kitten (APT42, Cobalt Illusion, Magic Hound, Phosphorous) was detected targeting Mahsa Amini protests and researchers who document the suppression of women and minority groups i |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Conference | APT 35 ChatGPT ChatGPT APT 36 APT 42 | ★★ |
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2023-02-28 14:00:00 | CyberheistNews Vol 13 #09 [Eye Opener] Should You Click on Unsubscribe? (lien direct) |
CyberheistNews Vol 13 #09 | February 28th, 2023
[Eye Opener] Should You Click on Unsubscribe?
By Roger A. Grimes.
Some common questions we get are "Should I click on an unwanted email's 'Unsubscribe' link? Will that lead to more or less unwanted email?"
The short answer is that, in general, it is OK to click on a legitimate vendor's unsubscribe link. But if you think the email is sketchy or coming from a source you would not want to validate your email address as valid and active, or are unsure, do not take the chance, skip the unsubscribe action.
In many countries, legitimate vendors are bound by law to offer (free) unsubscribe functionality and abide by a user's preferences. For example, in the U.S., the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act states that businesses must offer clear instructions on how the recipient can remove themselves from the involved mailing list and that request must be honored within 10 days.
Note: Many countries have laws similar to the CAN-SPAM Act, although with privacy protection ranging the privacy spectrum from very little to a lot more protection. The unsubscribe feature does not have to be a URL link, but it does have to be an "internet-based way." The most popular alternative method besides a URL link is an email address to use.
In some cases, there are specific instructions you have to follow, such as put "Unsubscribe" in the subject of the email. Other times you are expected to craft your own message. Luckily, most of the time simply sending any email to the listed unsubscribe email address is enough to remove your email address from the mailing list.
[CONTINUED] at the KnowBe4 blog:https://blog.knowbe4.com/should-you-click-on-unsubscribe
[Live Demo] Ridiculously Easy Security Awareness Training and Phishing
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Join us TOMORROW, Wednesday, March 1, @ 2:00 PM (ET), for a live demo of how KnowBe4 introduces a new-school approac |
Malware Hack Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Prediction | APT 38 ChatGPT | ★★★ |
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2023-01-07 11:15:08 | CVE-2018-25070 (lien direct) | A vulnerability has been found in polterguy Phosphorus Five up to 8.2 and classified as critical. This vulnerability affects the function csv.Read of the file plugins/extras/p5.mysql/NonQuery.cs of the component CSV Import. The manipulation leads to sql injection. Upgrading to version 8.3 is able to address this issue. The name of the patch is c179a3d0703db55cfe0cb939b89593f2e7a87246. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component. VDB-217606 is the identifier assigned to this vulnerability. | Vulnerability Guideline Conference | APT 35 | |
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2022-11-22 23:47:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: URI Fragmentation Used to Stealthily Defraud Holiday Shoppers, Lazarus and BillBug Stick to Their Custom Backdoors, Z-Team Turned Ransomware into Wiper, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, Cyberespionage, Phishing, Ransomware, Signed malware, and Wipers. 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
DEV-0569 Finds New Ways to Deliver Royal Ransomware, Various Payloads
(published: November 17, 2022)
From August to October, 2022, Microsoft researchers detected new campaigns by a threat group dubbed DEV-0569. For delivery, the group alternated between delivering malicious links by abusing Google Ads for malvertising and by using contact forms on targeted organizations’ public websites. Fake installer files were hosted on typosquatted domains or legitimate repositories (GitHub, OneDrive). First stage was user-downloaded, signed MSI or VHD file (BatLoader malware), leading to second stage payloads such as BumbleBee, Gozi, Royal Ransomware, or Vidar Stealer.
Analyst Comment: DEV-0569 is a dangerous group for its abuse of legitimate services and legitimate certificates. Organizations should consider educating and limiting their users regarding software installation options. Links from alternative incoming messaging such as from contact forms should be treated as thorough as links from incoming email traffic.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] User Execution - T1204 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Ingress Tool Transfer - T1105 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Command and Scripting Interpreter - T1059 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Impair Defenses - T1562 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Encrypted for Impact - T1486
Tags: actor:DEV-0569, detection:Cobalt Strike, detection:Royal, malware-type:Ransomware, file-type:VHD, detection:NSudo, malware-type:Hacktool, detection:IcedID, Google Ads, Keitaro, Traffic distribution system, detection:Gozi, detection:BumbleBee, NirCmd, detection:BatLoader, malware-type:Loader, detection:Vidar, malware-type:Stealer, AnyDesk, GitHub, OneDrive, PowerShell, Phishing, SEO poisoning, TeamViewer, Adobe Flash Player, Zoom, Windows
Highly Sophisticated Phishing Scams Are Abusing Holiday Sentiment
(published: November 16, 2022)
From mid-September 2022, a new phishing campaign targets users in North America with holiday special pretenses. It impersonated a number of major brands including Costco, Delta Airlines, Dick's, and Sam's Club. Akamai researchers analyzed techniques that the underlying sophisticated phishing kit was using. For defense evasion and tracking, the attackers used URI fragmentation. They were placing target-specific tokens after the URL fragment identifier (a hash mark, aka HTML anchor). The value was used by a JavaScript code running on the victim’s browser to reconstruct the redirecting URL.
Analyst Comment: Evasion through URI fragmentation hides the token value from traff |
Ransomware Malware Tool Threat Guideline Medical | APT 38 | ★★★★ |
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2022-10-31 16:15:11 | CVE-2022-3374 (lien direct) | The Ocean Extra WordPress plugin before 2.0.5 unserialises the content of an imported file, which could lead to PHP object injections issues when a high privilege user import (intentionally or not) a malicious Customizer Styling file and a suitable gadget chain is present on the blog. | Guideline | APT 32 | |
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2022-10-05 15:45:00 | Bogus job offers hide trojanised open-source software (lien direct) | >Categories: NewsTags: malware Tags: ZINC Tags: microsoft Tags: infection Tags: C&C Tags: open source Tags: job offer Tags: fake Tags: LinkedIn A North Korean ZINC group is accused of creating compromised versions of KiTTY, PuTTY, TightVNC, and other popular open-source software apps (Read more...) | Guideline Medical | APT 38 | |
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2022-09-13 15:00:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Iran-Albanian Cyber Conflict, Ransomware Adopts Intermittent Encryption, DLL Side-Loading Provides Variety to PlugX Infections, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: China, Cyberespionage, Defense evasion, DDoS, Iran, Ransomware, PlugX, and Spearphishing. 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
Microsoft Investigates Iranian Attacks Against the Albanian Government
(published: September 8, 2022)
Microsoft researchers discovered that groups working under Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS, tracked as OilRig) attacked the government of Albania. The attackers started with initial intrusion in May 2021, proceeded with mailbox exfiltrations between October 2021 and January 2022, organized controlled leaks, and culminated on July 15, 2022, with disruptive ransomware and wiper attacks. This attack is probably a response to the June 2021 Predatory Sparrow’s anti-Iranian cyber operations promoting the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group largely based in Albania.
Analyst Comment: MOIS attack on Albania uses messaging and targeting similar to the previous MEK-associated attack on Iran. It tells us that Iran has chosen to engage in a form of direct and proportional retaliation as it sees it. Still, the attack and its attribution caused Albania to cut diplomatic ties with Iran and expel the country's embassy staff. Organizations should implement multifactor authentication (MFA) for mailbox access and remote connectivity. Anomali platform users advised to block known OilRig network indicators.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Encrypted for Impact - T1486 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Impair Defenses - T1562 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Indicator Removal on Host - T1070
Tags: OilRig, Helix Kitten, APT34, MOIS, Ministry of Intelligence and Security, Predatory Sparrow, Wiper, CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2019-0604, CVE-2022-28799, Government, Albania, target-country:AL, Iran, source-country:IR, DEV-0842, DEV-0861, DEV-0166, DEV-0133, Europium, APT, detection:Jason, detection:Mellona
BRONZE PRESIDENT Targets Government Officials
(published: September 8, 2022)
Secureworks researchers detected a new campaign by China-sponsored group Mustang Panda (Bronze President). In June and July 2022, the group used spearphishing to deliver the PlugX malware to government officials in Europe, the Middle East, and South America. To bypass mail-scanning antiviruses, the archived email attachment had malware embedded eight levels deep in a sequence of hidden folders named with special characters.
Analyst Comment: Many advanced attacks start with basic techniques such as unwarranted email with malicious attachment that requires the user to open it and enable macros. It is important to teach your users basic online hygiene and phishing awareness.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline | APT 27 APT 34 | |
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2022-09-09 16:09:44 | $30 Million worth of cryptocurrency stolen by Lazarus from Axie Infinity was recovered (lien direct) | >US authorities recovered more than $30 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen by the North Korea-linked Lazarus APT from Axie Infinity. A joint operation conducted by enforcement and leading organizations in the cryptocurrency industry allowed to recover more than $30 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean-linked APT group Lazarus from online video game Axie […] | Guideline | APT 38 | |
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2022-09-06 08:00:00 | Researcher Spotlight: How Asheer Malhotra looks for \'instant gratification\' in threat hunting (lien direct) | The India native has transitioned from a reverse-engineer hobbyist to a public speaker in just a few years By Jon Munshaw. Ninety percent of Asheer Malhotra's work will never see the light of day. But it's that 10 percent that keeps him motivated to keep looking for something new. The Talos Outreach researcher spends most of his days looking into potential new threats. Many times, that leads to dead ends of threats that have already been discovered and blocked or don't have any additional threads to pull on. But eventually, the “lightbulb goes off,” as he puts it, which indicates something is a new threat the wider public needs to know about. During his time at Talos, Malhotra has spent much of his time looking into cyber attacks and state-sponsored threat actors in Asia, like the Transparent Tribe group he's written about several times. “At some point, I say 'Hey, I don't think I've seen this before.' I start analyzing public disclosures, and slowly start gaining confidence and being able to craft a narrative around the motivations and tactics around a specific threat actor or malware campaign,” he said. In the case of Transparent Tribe, Malhotra's tracked their growth as a major player in the threat landscape in Asia, as they've added several remote access trojans to their arsenal, targeted high-profile government-adjacent entities in India and expanded their scope across the region. When he's not threat hunting, Malhotra also speaks to Cisco customers about the current state of cybersecurity in briefings and delivers presentations at conferences around the world (mainly virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic).  “I always try to find the latest and new stuff to talk about. … I've been honing my skills and trying to speak more confidently publicly, but the confidence is backed up with the right kind of knowledge and the threat intelligence, that's what helps me succeed,” he said. Malhotra is a native of India and spent most of his life there before coming to the U.S. for his master's degree at Mississippi State University. Mississippi was a far cry from everything else he had known up until that point, but he quickly adjusted. “That was the 'Deep South,'” he said. “So there was a culture shock, but the southern hospitality is such a real thing, and it felt very normal there.” Growing up, Malhotra always knew he wanted to work with computers, starting out as a teenager reverse-engineering exploits he'd see others talk about on the internet or just poking at smaller applications. His additional interest in politics and national security made it natural for him to combine the two and focus his research on state-sponsored actors. He enjoys continuing his research in the Indian subcontinent and sees many parallels between the state of security in India and the U.S. “Th |
Ransomware Malware Threat Guideline | APT 36 | |
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2022-08-30 15:01:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: First Real-Life Video-Spoofing Attack, MagicWeb Backdoors via Non-Standard Key Identifier, LockBit Ransomware Blames Victim for DDoSing Back, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: Authentication, DDoS, Fingerprinting, Iran, North Korea, Ransomware, and Russia. 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
LastPass Hackers Stole Source Code
(published: August 26, 2022)
In August 2022, an unidentified threat actor gained access to portions of the password management giant LastPass development environment. LastPass informed that it happened through a single compromised developer account and the attacker took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information. The company claims that this incident did not affect customer data or encrypted password vaults.
Analyst Comment: This incident doesn’t seem to have an immediate impact on LastPass users. Still, organizations relying on LastPass should raise the concern in their risk assessment since “white-box hacking” (when source code of the attacking system is known) is easier for threat actors. Organizations providing public-facing software should take maximum measures to block threat actors from their development environment and establish robust and transparent security protocols and practices with all third parties involved in their code development.
Tags: LastPass, Password manager, Data breach, Source code
Mercury Leveraging Log4j 2 Vulnerabilities in Unpatched Systems to Target Israeli
(published: August 25, 2022)
Starting in July 2022, a new campaign by Iran-sponsored group Static Kitten (Mercury, MuddyWater) was detected targeting Israeli organizations. Microsoft researchers detected that this campaign was leveraging exploitation of Log4j 2 vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-45046 and CVE-2021-44228) in SysAid applications (IT management tools). For persistence Static Kitten was dropping webshells, creating local administrator accounts, stealing credentials, and adding their tools in the startup folders and autostart extensibility point (ASEP) registry keys. Overall the group was heavily using various open-source and built-in operating system tools: eHorus remote management software, Ligolo reverse tunneling tool, Mimikatz credential theft tool, PowerShell programs, RemCom remote service, Venom proxy tool, and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
Analyst Comment: Network defenders should monitor for alerts related to web shell threats, suspicious RDP sessions, ASEP registry anomaly, and suspicious account creation. Similarly, SysAid users can monitor for webshells and abnormal processes related to SysAisServer instance. Even though Static Kitten was observed leveraging the Log4Shell vulnerabilities in the past (targeting VMware apps), most of their attacks still start with spearphishing, often from a compromised email account.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] OS Credential Dumping - T1003 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | |
Ransomware Hack Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Cloud | APT 37 APT 29 LastPass | |
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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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2022-08-16 15:06:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Ransomware Module Added to SOVA Android Trojan, Bitter APT Targets Mobile Phones with Dracarys, China-Sponsored TA428 Deploys Six Backdoors at Once, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: Android, APT, China, Cyberespionage, India, Malspam, Ransomware, Spearphishing, 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
APT-C-35: New Windows Framework Revealed
(published: August 11, 2022)
The DoNot Team (APT-C-35) are India-sponsored actors active since at least 2016. Morphisec Labs researchers discovered a new Windows framework used by the group in its campaign targeting Pakistani government and defense departments. The attack starts with a spearphishing RTF attachment. If opened in a Microsoft Office application, it downloads a malicious remote template. After the victim enables editing (macroses) a multi-stage framework deployment starts. It includes two shellcode stages followed by main DLL that, based on victim fingerprinting, downloads a custom set of additional information-stealing modules.
Analyst Comment: The described DoNot Team framework is pretty unique in its customisation, fingerprinting, and module implementation. At the same time, the general theme of spearphishing attachment that asks the targeted user to enable editing is not new and can be mitigated by anti-phishing training and Microsoft Office settings hardening.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion - T1497 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Template Injection - T1221 | [MITRE ATT&CK] User Execution - T1204 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Ingress Tool Transfer - T1105 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Obfuscated Files or Information - T1027 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information - T1140 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Scheduled Task - T1053 | [MITRE ATT&CK] System Information Discovery - T1082 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Input Capture - T1056 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Screen Capture - T1113 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data from Local System - T1005 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data from Removable Media - T1025 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data from Network Shared Drive - T1039 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Credentials from Password Stores - T1555 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Staged - T1074 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Command and Scripting Interpreter - T1059
Tags: APT-C-35, DoNot Team, APT, India, source-country:IN, Government, Military, Pakistan, target-country:PK, Windows |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Medical | APT 38 | |
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2022-08-10 09:09:07 | Meta Take Action Against Two Cyber Espionage Operations in South Africa (lien direct) | Action has been taken against two cyber espionage operations in South Africa, according to Meta. Action has been taken against Bitter APT and APT36. The announcement was made by the company last Thursday in its Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report, Second Quarter 2022. In the report, Meta’s Global Threat Intelligence Lead, Ben Ninmo, and Director of […] | Threat Guideline | APT 36 | |
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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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2022-07-27 12:22:17 | Vulnerability Spotlight: How a code re-use issue led to vulnerabilities across multiple products (lien direct) |  By Francesco Benvenuto. Recently, I was performing some research on a wireless router and noticed the following piece of code: |
Vulnerability Guideline Medical | APT 38 APT 19 | |
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2022-06-21 15:03:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: GALLIUM Expands Targeting Across Telecommunications, Government and Finance Sectors With New PingPull Tool, DragonForce Malaysia OpsPatuk / OpsIndia and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT35, CrescentImp, Follina, Gallium, Phosphorous, and Sandworm. 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
Update: The Phish Goes On - 5 Million Stolen Credentials and Counting
(published: June 16, 2022)
PIXM researchers describe an ongoing, large-scale Facebook phishing campaign. Its primary targets are Facebook Messenger mobile users and an estimated five million users lost their login credentials. The campaign evades Facebook anti-phishing protection by redirecting to a new page at a legitimate service such as amaze.co, famous.co, funnel-preview.com, or glitch.me. In June 2022, the campaign also employed the tactic of displaying legitimate shopping cart content at the final page for about two seconds before displaying the phishing content. The campaign is attributed to Colombian actor BenderCrack (Hackerasueldo) who monetizes displaying affiliate ads.
Analyst Comment: Users should check what domain is asking for login credentials before providing those. Organizations can consider monitoring their employees using Facebook as a Single Sign-On (SSO) Provider.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] User Execution - T1204
Tags: Facebook, Phishing, Facebook Messenger, Social networks, Mobile, Android, iOS, Redirect, Colombia, source-country:CO, BenderCrack, Hackerasueldo
F5 Labs Investigates MaliBot
(published: June 15, 2022)
F5 Labs researchers describe a novel Android trojan, dubbed MaliBot. Based on re-written SOVA malware code, MaliBot is maintaining its Background Service by setting itself as a launcher. Its code has some unused evasion portions for emulation environment detection and setting the malware as a hidden app. MaliBot spreads via smishing, takes control of the device and monetizes using overlays for certain Italian and Spanish banks, stealing cryptocurrency, and sometimes sending Premium SMS to paid services.
Analyst Comment: Users should be wary of following links in unexpected SMS messages. Try to avoid downloading apps from third-party websites. Be cautious with enabling accessibility options.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] System Network Configuration Discovery - T1016 | [MITRE ATT&CK] User Execution - T1204
Tags: MaliBot, Android, MFA bypass, SMS theft, Premium SMS, Smishing, Binance, Trust wallet, VNC, SOVA, Sality, Cryptocurrency, Financial, Italy, target-country:IT, Spain, target-country:ES
Extortion Gang Ransoms Shoprite, Largest Supermarket Chain in Africa
(published: June 15, 2022)
On June 10, 2022, the African largest supermarket chain operating in twelve countries, Shoprite Holdings, announced a possible cybersecurity incident. The company notified customers in E |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Conference | Yahoo APT 35 | |
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2022-06-20 11:15:08 | CVE-2021-25104 (lien direct) | The Ocean Extra WordPress plugin before 1.9.5 does not escape generated links which are then used when the OceanWP is active, leading to a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting issue | Guideline | APT 32 | |
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2022-05-03 16:31:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Time-to-Ransom Under Four Hours, Mustang Panda Spies on Russia, Ricochet Chollima Sends Goldbackdoor to Journalists, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, China, Cyberespionage, LNK files, Malspam, North Korea, Phishing, 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
A Lookback Under the TA410 Umbrella: Its Cyberespionage TTPs and Activity
(published: April 28, 2022)
ESET researchers found three different teams under China-sponsored umbrella cyberespionage group TA410, which is loosely linked to Stone Panda (APT10, Chinese Ministry of State Security). ESET named these teams FlowingFrog, JollyFrog, and LookingFrog. FlowingFrog uses the Royal Road RTF weaponizer described by Anomali in 2019. Infection has two stages: the Tendyron implant followed by a very complex FlowCloud backdoor. JollyFrog uses generic malware such as PlugX and QuasarRAT. LookingFrog’s infection stages feature the X4 backdoor followed by the LookBack backdoor. Besides using different backdoors and exiting from IP addresses located in three different districts, the three teams use similar tools and similar tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
Analyst Comment: Organizations should keep their web-facing applications such as Microsoft Exchange or SharePoint secured and updated. Educate your employees on handling suspected spearphishing attempts. Defense-in-depth (layering of security mechanisms, redundancy, fail-safe defense processes) is the best way to ensure safety from APTs, including a focus on both network and host-based security. Prevention and detection capabilities should also be in place.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Native API - T1106 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Shared Modules - T1129 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploitation for Client Execution - T1203 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Inter-Process Communication - T1559 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Windows Management Instrumentation - T1047 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Scheduled Task - T1053 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Server Software Component - T1505 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Create or Modify System Process - T1543 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Obfuscated Files or Information - T1027 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Masquerading - T1036 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Masquerading - T1036 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Rootkit - T1014 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Process Injection - T1055 | |
Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline Cloud | APT 37 APT 10 APT 10 | |
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2022-04-28 17:15:39 | CVE-2022-29413 (lien direct) | Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) leading to Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Mufeng's Hermit ????? plugin | Guideline Cloud | APT 37 | |
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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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2022-02-21 19:50:06 | Phishing Campaign Targets NFT Speculators (lien direct) |
Scams follow fashion because money follows fashion. So it's no surprise that non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which have become a hot speculative property, have drawn scam artists for phishing campaigns. They're not so much interested in the NFTs themselves as they are in the speculators' cash. OceanSea, a leading NFT marketplace, has responded to panicky tweets from users to reassure them that it's on top of rumors of “an exploit” connected to the smart contracts traders use. |
Guideline | APT 32 | |
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2022-02-15 20:01:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Mobile Malware Is On The Rise, APT Groups Are Working Together, Ransomware For The Individual, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: Mobile Malware, APTs, Ransomware, Infostealers, 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
What’s With The Shared VBA Code Between Transparent Tribe And Other Threat Actors?
(published: February 9, 2022)
A recent discovery has been made that links malicious VBA macro code between multiple groups, namely: Transparent Tribe, Donot Team, SideCopy, Operation Hangover, and SideWinder. These groups operate (or operated) out of South Asia and use a variety of techniques with phishing emails and maldocs to target government and military entities within India and Pakistan. The code is similar enough that it suggests cooperation between APT groups, despite having completely different goals/targets.
Analyst Comment: This research shows that APT groups are sharing TTPs to assist each other, regardless of motive or target. Files that request content be enabled to properly view the document are often signs of a phishing attack. If such a file is sent to you via a known and trusted sender, that individual should be contacted to verify the authenticity of the attachment prior to opening. Thus, any such file attachment sent by unknown senders should be viewed with the utmost scrutiny, and the attachments should be avoided and properly reported to appropriate personnel.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Command and Scripting Interpreter - T1059 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Phishing - T1566
Tags: Transparent Tribe, Donot, SideWinder, Asia, Military, Government
Fake Windows 11 Upgrade Installers Infect You With RedLine Malware
(published: February 9, 2022)
Due to the recent announcement of Windows 11 upgrade availability, an unknown threat actor has registered a domain to trick users into downloading an installer that contains RedLine malware. The site, "windows-upgraded[.]com", is a direct copy of a legitimate Microsoft upgrade portal. Clicking the 'Upgrade Now' button downloads a 734MB ZIP file which contains an excess of dead code; more than likely this is to increase the filesize for bypassing any antivirus scan. RedLine is a well-known infostealer, capable of taking screenshots, using C2 communications, keylogging and more.
Analyst Comment: Any official Windows update or installation files will be downloaded through the operating system directly. If offline updates are necessary, only go through Microsoft sites and subdomains. Never update Windows from a third-party site due to this type of attack.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Video Capture - T1125 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Input Capture - T1056 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exfiltration Over C2 Channel - T1041
Tags: RedLine, Windows 11, Infostealer
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Ransomware Malware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline | Uber APT 43 APT 36 APT-C-17 | |
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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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2021-08-10 17:39:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: GIGABYTE Hit By RansomEXX Ransomware, Seniors\' Data Exposed, FatalRat Analysis, and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: Chinese state hackers, Data leak, Ransomware, RAT, Botnets, 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
Actively Exploited Bug Bypasses Authentication On Millions Of Routers
(published: August 7, 2021)
The ongoing attacks were discovered by Juniper Threat Labs researchers exploiting recently discovered vulnerability CVE-2021-20090. This is a critical path traversal vulnerability in the web interfaces of routers with Arcadyan firmware that could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to bypass authentication. The total number of devices exposed to attacks likely reaches millions of routers. Researchers identified attacks originating from China and are deploying a variant of Mirai botnet on vulnerable routers.
Analyst Comment: Attackers have continuous and automated routines to look out for publicly accessible vulnerable routers and exploit them as soon as the exploit is made public. To reduce the attack surface, routers management console should only be accessible from specific public IP addresses. Also default password and other security policies should be changed to make it more secure.
Tags: CVE-2021-20090, Mirai, China
Computer Hardware Giant GIGABYTE Hit By RansomEXX Ransomware
(published: August 7, 2021)
The attack occurred late Tuesday night into Wednesday and forced the company to shut down its systems in Taiwan. The incident also affected multiple websites of the company, including its support site and portions of the Taiwanese website. Attackers have threatened to publish 112GB of stolen data which they claim to include documents under NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) from companies including Intel, AMD, American Megatrends unless a ransom is paid.
Analyst Comment: At this point no official confirmation from GIGABYTE about the attack. Also no clarity yet on potential vulnerabilities or attack vectors used to carry out this attack.
Tags: RansomEXX, Defray, Ransomware, Taiwan
Millions of Senior Citizens' Personal Data Exposed By Misconfiguration
(published: August 6, 2021)
The researchers have discovered a misconfigured Amazon S3 bucket owned by the Senior Advisor website which hosts ratings and reviews for senior care services across the US and Canada. The bucket contained more than one million files and 182 GB of data containing names, emails, phone numbers of senior citizens from North America. This exposed data was not encrypted and did not require a password or login credentials to access.
Analyst Comment: Senior citizens are at high risk of online frauds. Their personal information and context regarding appointments getting leaked can lead to targeted phishing scams.
Tags: Data Leak, Phishing, North America, AWS
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Malware Vulnerability Threat Guideline | APT 41 APT 41 APT 30 APT 27 APT 23 | |
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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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2021-06-27 11:25:36 | Security Affairs newsletter Round 320 (lien direct) | A new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter arrived! Every week the best security articles from Security Affairs free for you in your email box. If you want to also receive for free the international press subscribe here. Norway blames China-linked APT31 for 2018 government hack Poland: The leader of the PiS party blames Russia for […] | Hack Guideline | APT 31 | |
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2021-05-18 19:05:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Microsoft Azure Vulnerability Discovered, MSBuild Used to Deliver Malware, Esclation of Avaddon Ransomware and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, Android, Malware, 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
Cross-Browser Tracking Vulnerability Tracks You Via Installed Apps
(published: May 14, 2021)
A new method of fingerprinting users has been developed using any browser. Using URL schemes, certain applications can be launched from the browser. With this knowledge, an attacker can flood a client with multiple URL schemes to determine installed applications and create a fingerprint. Google Chrome has certain protections against this attack, but a workaround exists when using the built-in PDF viewer; this resets a flag used for flood protection. The only known protection against scheme flooding is to use browsers across multiple devices.
Analyst Comment: It is critical that the latest security patches be applied as soon as possible to the web browser used by your company. Vulnerabilities are discovered relatively frequently, and it is paramount to install the security patches because the vulnerabilities are often posted to open sources where any malicious actor could attempt to mimic the techniques that are described.
Tags: Scheme Flooding, Vulnerability, Chrome, Firefox, Edge
Threat Actors Use MSBuild to Deliver RATs Filelessly
(published: May 13, 2021)
Anomali Threat Research have identified a campaign in which threat actors are using MSBuild project files to deliver malware. The project files contain a payload, either Remcos RAT, RedLine, or QuasarRAT, with shellcode used to inject that payload into memory. Using this technique the malware is delivered filelessly, allowing the malware to evade detection.
Analyst Comment: Threat actors are always looking for new ways to evade detection. Users should make use of a runtime protection solution that can detect memory based attacks.
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Process Injection - T1055 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information - T1140 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Modify Registry - T1112 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Obfuscated Files or Information - T1027 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Process Injection - T1055 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Trusted Developer Utilities - T1127 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Steal Web Session Cookie - T1539 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Input Capture - T1056 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Account Discovery - T1087 | [MITRE ATT&CK] File and Directory Discovery - T1083 | |
Ransomware Malware Vulnerability Threat Guideline | APT 36 | |
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2021-04-13 15:49:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: Android Malware, Government, Middle East and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, Cobalt Group, FIN6, NetWalker, OilRig, Rocke Group, 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
Iran’s APT34 Returns with an Updated Arsenal
(published: April 8, 2021)
Check Point Research discovered evidence of a new campaign by the Iranian threat group APT34. The threat group has been actively retooling and updating its payload arsenal to try and avoid detection. They have created several different malware variants whose ultimate purpose remained the same, to gain the initial foothold on the targeted device.
Analyst Comment: Threat actors are always innovating new methods and update tools used to carry out attacks. Always practice Defense in Depth (do not rely on single security mechanisms - security measures should be layered, redundant, and failsafe).
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Command-Line Interface - T1059 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploitation of Remote Services - T1210 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Spearphishing Attachment - T1193 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Custom Cryptographic Protocol - T1024 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Web Service - T1102 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Remote File Copy - T1105 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Scripting - T1064
Tags: OilRig, APT34, DNSpionage, Lab Dookhtegan, TONEDEAF, Dookhtegan, Karkoff, DNSpionage, Government, Middle East
New Wormable Android Malware Spreads by Creating Auto-Replies to Messages in WhatsApp
(published: April 7, 2021)
Check Point Research recently discovered Android malware on Google Play hidden in a fake application that is capable of spreading itself via users’ WhatsApp messages. The malware is capable of automatically replying to victim’s incoming WhatsApp messages with a payload received from a command-and-control (C2) server. This unique method could have enabled threat actors to distribute phishing attacks, spread false information or steal credentials and data from users’ WhatsApp accounts, and more.
Analyst Comment: Users’ personal mobile has many enterprise applications installed like Multifactor Authenticator, Email Client, etc which increases the risk for the enterprise even further. Users should be wary of download links or attachments that they receive via WhatsApp or other messaging apps, even when they appear to come from trusted contacts or messaging groups. The latest security patches should be installed for both applications and the operating system.
Tags: Android, FlixOnline, WhatsApp
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Ransomware Malware Vulnerability Threat Guideline | APT 34 | |
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2021-03-17 18:03:00 | Anomali Cyber Watch: APT, Ransomware, Vulnerabilities and More (lien direct) | The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, AlientBot, Clast82, China, DearCry, RedXOR, 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
Google: This Spectre proof-of-concept shows how dangerous these attacks can be
(published: March 15, 2021)
Google has released a proof of concept (PoC) code to demonstrate the practicality of Spectre side-channel attacks against a browser's JavaScript engine to leak information from its memory. Spectre targeted the process in modern CPUs called speculative execution to leak secrets such as passwords from one site to another. While the PoC demonstrates the JavaScript Spectre attack against Chrome 88's V8 JavaScript engine on an Intel Core i7-6500U CPU on Linux, Google notes it can easily be tweaked for other CPUs, browser versions and operating systems.
Analyst Comment: As the density of microchip manufacturing continues to increase, side-channel attacks are likely to be found across many architectures and are difficult (and in some cases impossible) to remediate in software. The PoC of the practicality of performing such an attack using javascript emphasises that developers of both software and hardware be aware of these types of attacks and the means by which they can be used to invalidate existing security controls.
Tags: CVE-2017-5753
Threat Assessment: DearCry Ransomware
(published: March 12, 2021)
A new ransomware strain is being used by actors to attack unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers. Microsoft released patches for four vulnerabilities that are being exploited in the wild. The initial round of attacks included installation of web shells onto affected servers that could be used to infect additional computers. While the initial attack appears to have been done by sophisticated actors, the ease and publicity around these vulnerabilities has led to a diverse group of actors all attempting to compromise these servers.
Analyst Comment: Patch and asset management are a critical and often under-resourced aspect of defense in depth. As this particular set of vulnerabilities and attacks are against locally hosted Exchange servers, organization may want to assess whether a hosted solution may make sense from a risk standpoint
MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Encrypted - T1022 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Exploit Public-Facing Application - T1190 | [MITRE ATT&CK] File and Directory Discovery - T1083 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Email Collection - T1114 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Obfuscated Files or Information - T1027 | [MITRE ATT&CK] System Service Discovery - T1007 | [MITRE ATT&CK] Data Encrypted for Impact - T1486 | |
Ransomware Tool Vulnerability Threat Guideline | Wannacry APT 41 APT 34 | |
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2021-02-26 23:15:11 | CVE-2020-36079 (lien direct) | Zenphoto through 1.5.7 is affected by authenticated arbitrary file upload, leading to remote code execution. The attacker must navigate to the uploader plugin, check the elFinder box, and then drag and drop files into the Files(elFinder) portion of the UI. This can, for example, place a .php file in the server's uploaded/ directory. | Guideline | APT 33 | |
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2021-02-17 17:33:00 | (Déjà vu) US charges two more members of the \'Lazarus\' North Korean hacking group (lien direct) | The US DOJ described the North Korean hackers as "the world's leading bank robbers" and "a criminal syndicate with a flag." | Guideline | APT 38 | |
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2020-05-10 14:50:19 | DigitalOcean Admits Of Data Breach After Leaving Internal Document Online (lien direct) | DigitalOcean, the world's leading web hosting platform, has confirmed that it exposed customer data after it accidentally left an internal Digital Ocean document online, according to a report from The Hacker News. According to the breach notification email sent to affected customers, the data leak took place when a DigitalOcean-owned document from 2018 was unintentionally […] | Data Breach Guideline | APT 32 | |
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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 13:00:00 | Things I hearted this week 12th April 2019 (lien direct) |
Hello again to another weekly security roundup. This week, I have a slightly different spin on the roundup in that the net has been slightly widened to include broader technology topics from more than just this last week. However, all of the articles were written by ladies. With that, let’s dive straight in.
A beginner's guide to test automation
If you’re new to automated testing, you’re probably starting off with a lot of questions: How do I know which tests to automate? Why is automated testing useful for me and my team? How do I choose a tool or framework? The options for automated testing are wide open, and you may feel overwhelmed.
If so, this is a great article on how to get started.
A Beginner's Guide to Test Automation | Sticky Minds
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All roads lead to exploratory testing
When I’m faced with something to test – be it a feature in a software application or a collection of features in a release, my general preference is weighted strongly towards exploratory testing. When someone who doesn’t know a great deal about testing wants me or my team to do testing for them, I would love to educate them on why exploratory testing could be a strong part of the test strategy.
All roads lead to exploratory testing | Womentesters
While on the topic of testing
Testing Behaviours — Writing A Good Gherkin Script | Medium, Jo Mahadevan
Single-page, server-side, static… say what?
An emoji-filled learning journey about the trade-offs of different website architectures, complete with gifs, diagrams, and demo apps.
If you’ve been hanging around the internet, trying to build websites and apps, you may have heard some words in conversation like static site or server-side rendered (SSR) or single-page app (SPA).
But what do all of these words mean? How does each type of application architecture differ? What are the tradeoffs of each approach and which one should you use when building your website?
Single-Page, Server-Side, Static… say what? | Marie Chatfield
If, like me you enjoyed this post by Marie, check out some of her other posts which are great. Quick plug to Protocol-andia: Welcome to the Networking Neighborhood. A whimsical introduction to how computers talk to each other, and what exactly your requests are up to.
Strengthen your security posture: start with a cybersecurity framework
The 2017 Equifax data breach is expected to break all previous records for data breach costs, with Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, estimating the final cost to be more than $600 million.
Even non-enterprise-level organizations suffer severe consequences for data breaches. According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, mid-market companies pay more than $1 million in post-attack mitigation, and the average cost of a data breach to an SMB is $117,000 per incident. While estimates vary, approximately 60% of businesses who suffer a breach are forced to shut down business within 6 months.
It is mor |
Guideline Prediction | Equifax APT 39 | |
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2019-01-10 14:00:00 | Top 12 Blogs of 2018 (lien direct) |
Time to look back on the top AlienVault blogs of 2018! Here we go:
A North Korean Monero Cryptocurrency Miner by Chris Doman
Crypto-currencies could provide a financial lifeline to a country hit hard by sanctions. Therefore it’s not surprising that universities in North Korea have shown a clear interest in cryptocurrencies. Recently the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology invited foreign experts to lecture on crypto-currencies. The Installer we’ve analysed above may be the most recent product of their endeavours.
VLAN Hopping and Mitigation by Pam
This type of exploit allows an attacker to bypass any layer 2 restrictions built to divide hosts. With proper switch port configuration, an attacker would have to go through a router and any other layer 3 devices to access their target. However, many networks either have poor VLAN implementation or have misconfigurations which will allow for attackers to perform said exploit. In this article, I will go through the two primary methods of VLAN hopping, known as 'switched spoofing', and 'double tagging'. I will then discuss mitigation techniques.
DNS Poisoning and How To Prevent It by Jeff Thompson
The first thing to understand about DNS 'poisoning' is that the purveyors of the Internet were very much aware of the problem. Essentially, DNS requests are "cached", or stored, into a database which can be queried in almost real-time to point names like 'hotmail.com' or 'google.com' to their appropriate IP addresses. Can you imagine having to remember a string of numbers instead of a fancy name to get to your desired WWW (or GOPHER - if that's your thing) resources? 321.652.77.133 or 266.844.11.66 or even 867.53.0.9 would be very hard to remember. [Note: I have obfuscated REAL IP addresses with very fake ones here. Always trying to stay one step ahead of the AI Armageddon. Real IP addresses end with the numerical value of '255' within each octet.]
4 SIEM Use Cases That Will Dramatically Improve Your Enterprise Security by Stephen Roe
Companies both large and small must plan to protect their data. Failing to do so puts you at risk for financial trouble, legal liability, and loss of goodwill.
Make sure to deploy SIEMs to prevent such misfortunes befalling your business. If you know how to put them to use, SIEMs provide value out of the box. Here’s a quick recap on how SIEMs can benefit you with a few clicks.
Prevent SQL injection attacks by keeping an eye on the health of your systems. This will keep you ready if and when attacks do happen.
For handling watering hole intruders, SIEMs make it easy to monitor suspicious communication hinting at an attack in progress.
If you’re worried about malware infection, commun |
Malware Guideline | Wannacry APT 38 | |
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2018-10-19 13:00:00 | Things I Hearted this Week, 19th October 2018 (lien direct) |
It’s been another eventful week in the world of cyber security. So let’s just jump right into it.
NCSC has Been Busy
NCSC collaborated with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and the USA to give us a report that highlights which publicly-available tools criminals are using to aid their cyber crimes.
Joint report on publicly available hacking tools | NCSC
The agency also commented on how it keeps criminals at bay by stopping on average 10 attacks on the government per week.
NCSC also published its Annual Review 2018 - the story of the second year of operations at the National Cyber Security Centre.
Targeting Crypto Currencies
It is estimated that cryptocurrency exchanges suffered a total loss of $882 million due to targeted attacks in 2017 and in the first three quarters of 2018. According to Group-IB experts, at least 14 crypto exchanges were hacked. Five attacks have been linked to North Korean hackers from Lazarus state-sponsored group, including the infamous attack on Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, when $534 million in crypto was stolen.
Targeted attacks on crypto exchanges resulted in a loss of $882 million | HelpNet Security
Twitter Publishes Data on Iranian and Russian Troll Farms
In an attempt to try and be more proactive in dealing with misinformation campaigns, Twitter has published its Elections Integrity dataset which includes attempted manipulation, including malicious automated accounts and spam. In other words it’s attempting to out - Iranian and Russian troll farms.
Twitter’s focus is on a healthy public conversation | Twitter
In light of this, it’s worth also revisiting this article by Mustafa Al-Bassam in which he researched UK intelligence doing the same thing targeting civilians in Iran.
British Spies Used a URL Shortener to Honeypot Arab Spring Dissidents | Motherboard
Equifax Engineer Sentenced
An Equifax engineer gets eight months for earning $75,000 from insider trading. He figured out he was building a web portal for a breach involving Equifax, which turned out to be the 2017 breach, and so decided to ride the stock drop.
Equifax engineer who designed breach portal gets 8 months of house arrest for insider trading | ZDNet
Mind the Skills Gap
(ISC)2 has released its 2018 global cyber security workforce study and it looks like the cyber security skills gap has widened to 3 million.
It’s worth bearing in mind that estimating the skills gap isn’t an eas |
Guideline | Equifax APT 38 | |
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2018-08-20 16:06:46 | DeGrasse Tyson: Make Truth Great Again (lien direct) | Neil deGrasse Tyson tweets the following:I'm okay with a US Space Force. But what we need most is a Truth Force - one that defends against all enemies of accurate information, both foreign & domestic.- Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 20, 2018When people make comparisons with Orwell's "Ministry of Truth", he obtusely persists:A good start: The National Academy of Sciences, which “…provides objective, science-based advice on critical issues affecting the nation."- Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 20, 2018Given that Orwellian dystopias were the theme of this summer's DEF CON hacker conference, let's explore what's wrong with this idea.Truth vs. "Truth"I work in a corrupted industry, variously known as the "infosec" community or "cybersecurity" industry. It's a great example of how truth is corrupted into "Truth".At a recent government policy meeting, I pointed out how vendors often downplay the risk of bugs (vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers). When vendors are notified of these bugs and release a patch to fix them, they often give a risk rating. These ratings are often too low, in order to protect the corporate reputation. The representative from Oracle claimed that they didn't do that, and that indeed, they'll often overestimate the risk. Other vendors chimed in, also claiming they rated the risk higher than it really was.In a neutral world, deliberately overestimating the risk would be the same falsehood as deliberately underestimating it. But we live in a non-neutral world, where only one side is a lie, the middle is truth, and the other side is "Truth". Lying in the name of the "Truth" is somehow acceptable.Moreover, Oracle is famous for having downplayed the risk of significant bugs in the past, and is well-known in the industry as being the least trustworthy vendor as far as security of their products is concerned. Much of their policy efforts in Washington D.C. are focused on preventing their dirty laundry from being exposed. They aren't simply another vendor promoting "Truth", but a deliberately exploiting "Truth" to corrupt ends.That we should exaggerate the risks of cybersecurity, deliberately lie to people for their own good, is the uncontroversial consensus of our infosec/cybersec community. Most do it, few think this is wrong. Security is a moral imperative that justifies "Truth".The National Academy of ScientistsSo are we getting the truth or "Truth" from organizations like the National Academy of Scientists?The question here isn't global warming. That mankind's carbon emissions warms the climate is truth. We have a good understanding of how greenhouse gases work, as well as many measures of the climate showing that warming is occurring. The Arctic is steadily losing ice each summer.Instead, the question is "Global Warming", the claims made by politicians on the subject. Do politicians on the left fairly represent the truth, or are they the "Truth"?Which side is the National Academy of Sciences on? Are they committed to the truth, or (like the infosec/cybersec community) are they pursuing "Truth"? Is global warming a moral imperative that justifies playing loose with the facts?Googling "national academy of sciences climate chang | Guideline | APT 32 | |
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2018-08-09 13:00:01 | Examining Code Reuse Reveals Undiscovered Links Among North Korea\'s Malware Families (lien direct) | 
This research is a joint effort by Jay Rosenberg, senior security researcher at Intezer, and Christiaan Beek, lead scientist and senior principal engineer at McAfee. Intezer has also posted this story. Attacks from the online groups Lazarus, Silent Chollima, Group 123, Hidden Cobra, DarkSeoul, Blockbuster, Operation Troy, and 10 Days of Rain are believed to …
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Malware Guideline Medical Cloud | APT 38 APT 37 | |
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2018-08-06 13:00:00 | Black Hat 2018 will be Phenomenal! (lien direct) |
The AlienVault team is ready to meet and greet visitors at Black Hat USA 2018, August 8th and 9th at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas! Black Hat is one of the leading security industry events. The conference features the largest and most comprehensive trainings, educational sessions, networking opportunities and a two-day expo packed with exhibitors showcasing the latest in information security solutions from around the world!
Visit us at Booth #528!
Visit booth #528 located below the large, green alien head! We will be leading theater presentations twice an hour. Attendees will get a cool AlienVault collectors t-shirt, as well as a chance to win a pair of Apple® AirPods during our daily raffle. Stop by and meet the AlienVault team and learn about the recently announced endpoint detection and response capabilities now part of the USM Anywhere platform! USM Anywhere is the ONLY security solution that automates threat hunting everywhere modern threats appear: endpoints, cloud, and on-premises environments – all from one unified platform. Check out this awesome video by Javvad Malik, Community Evangelist for AlienVault, to learn more here!
Attend "From the Defender's Dilemma to the Intruder's Dilemma" Session for a chance to win a Nintendo Switch!
Join AlienVault VP of Product Marketing Sanjay Ramnath at a Black Hat speaking session. Sanjay will be speaking on Wednesday, August 8th from 10:20am-11:10am in Oceanside E on 'From the Defender's Dilemma to the Intruder's Dilemma'. We will be handing out raffle tickets before the session begins. Be sure to check out this session for the chance to win a Nintendo Switch!
Get Access to the Exclusive Security Leaders Party at Black Hat!
AlienVault is co-sponsoring one of the hottest security parties at Black Hat! Join us on Wednesday night from 8:00 - 10:00pm - guests will enjoy music, food, and a full open bar at the best venue at Mandalay Bay, Eyecandy Sound Lounge!
This will be the most talked about party of BHUSA 2018! We expect to reach capacity, so don't hesitate to get on the list now!
Event Details:
Date: Wednesday, August 8th
Time: 8:00 - 10:00 PM
Location: Eyecandy Sound Lounge, Mandalay Bay
We can’t wait to see you all at #BHUSA this week!
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Threat Guideline | APT 32 | |
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2018-04-06 12:08:04 | New Strain of ATM Jackpotting Malware Discovered (lien direct) | >A new type of ATM jackpotting malware has been discovered. Dubbed ATMJackpot, the malware appears to be still under development, and to have originated in Hong Kong. There are no current details of any deployment or use. ATMJackpot was discovered and analyzed by Netskope Threat Research Labs. It has a smaller footprint than earlier strains of jackpotting malware, but serves the same purpose: to steal money from automated teller machines (ATMs). ATM jackpotting -- also known as a logical attack -- is the use of malware to control cash dispensing from individual ATMs. The malware can be delivered locally to each ATM via a USB port, or remotely by compromising the ATM operator network. Jackpotting has become an increasing problem in recent years, originally and primarily in Europe and Asia. In 2017, Europol warned that ATM attacks were increasing. "The malware being used has evolved significantly and the scope and scale of the attacks have grown proportionately," said Steven Wilson, head of Europol's EC3 cybercrime center. The first attacks against ATMs in the U.S. were discovered in January 2018 following an alert issued by the Secret Service. In March 2018, the alleged leader of the Carbanak group was arrested in Spain. Carbanak is believed to have stolen around $1.24 million over the preceding years. Its method was to compromise the servers controlling ATM networks by spear-phishing bank employers, and then use foot soldiers (mules) to collect money dispensed from specific ATMs at specific times. It is not clear whether the ATMJackpot malware discovered by Netskope is intended to be manually installed via USB on individual ATMs, or downloaded from a compromised network. Physical installation on an ATM is not always difficult. In July 2017, IOActive described how its researchers could gain access to the Diebold Opteva ATM. It was achieved by inserting a metal rod through a speaker hole and raising a metal locking bar. From there they were able to reverse engineer software to get access to the money vault. Jackpotting malware is designed to avoid the need to physically break into the vault. It can be transferred via a USB port to the computer part of the ATM that controls the vault. Most ATMs use a version of Windows that is well understood by criminals. ATMJackpot malware first registers the windows class name 'Win' with a procedure for the malware activity. The malware then populates the options on the window and initiates a connection with the XFS manager. The XFS subsystem provides a common API to access and manipulate the ATM devices from different vendors. The malware then opens a session with the service providers and registers to monitor events. It opens a session with the cash dispenser, the card reader and the PIN pad servic | Guideline Cloud | APT 37 | |
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2018-04-03 18:30:03 | New KevDroid Android Backdoor Discovered (lien direct) | >Security researchers have discovered a new Android Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that can steal a great deal of information from infected devices. Dubbed KevDroid, the mobile threat can steal contacts, messages, and phone history, while also able to record phone calls, Talos reports. Two variants of the malware have been identified so far. One of the variants exploits CVE-2015-3636 to gain root access, but both implement the same call recording capabilities, taken from an open-source project on GitHub. Once it has infected a device, the first KevDroid variant can gather and siphon information such as installed applications, phone number, phone unique ID, location, stored contacts information, stored SMS, call logs, stored emails, and photos. | Guideline Cloud | APT 37 | |
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2018-03-22 15:30:01 | (Déjà vu) Iran-linked Hackers Adopt New Data Exfiltration Methods (lien direct) | An Iran-linked cyber-espionage group has been using new malware and data exfiltration techniques in recent attacks, security firm Nyotron has discovered. The threat actor, known as OilRig, has been active since 2015, mainly targeting United States and Middle Eastern organizations in the financial and government industries. The group has been already observed using multiple tools and adopting new exploits fast, as well as switching to new Trojans in | Guideline | APT 34 | |
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2018-02-21 15:20:05 | North Korea Cyber Threat \'More Aggressive Than China\': US Firm (lien direct) | North Korean hackers are becoming more aggressive than their Chinese counterparts, a leading US cybersecurity firm warned Tuesday, as it identified a Pyongyang-linked group as an "advanced persistent threat". | Guideline Cloud | APT 37 | |
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2017-12-15 14:00:00 | Things I Hearted This Week 15th December 2017 (lien direct) |
Continuing the trend from last week, I’ll continue trying to put a positive spin on the week’s security news.
Why? I hear you ask. Well, I’ve been mulling over the whole optimist thing, and glass half full analogy and it does work wonders. Side note, a tweet about half full / empty glasses and infosec took on a life of its own a few days ago.
But I’m reminded of the ending monologue by Morgan Freeman in “The Shawshank Redemption”, in which he starts off by saying, “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
So the thought of the week is, “Get busy securing, or get busy insecuring.” Hmm doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Will have to think of a better word – but you catch my drift. Let’s jump into this week’s interesting security bits
Mirai Mirai on the wall
I picture Brian Krebs as being a Liam Neeson type – he sees that his website is under attack by a never-before seen DDoS attack. He mutters to himself, “I don’t know who you are, but I will hunt you, I will find you, and I will blog about it until you get arrested, prosecuted, and thrown in jail.”
It so happens that this week the hackers behind the Mirai botnet and a series of DDoS attacks pled guilty.
The Hackers Behind Some of the Biggest DDoS Attacks in History Plead Guilty | Motherboard
Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty | KrebsonSecurity
Botnet Creators Who Took Down the Internet Plead Guilty | Gizmondo
Bug Laundering Bounties
Apparently, HBO negotiated with hackers. Paying them $250,000 under the guise of a bug bounty as opposed to a ransom.
Maybe in time, it will be found that HBO acted above board, maybe it was a sting operation, maybe it was a misconstrued email.
The worrying fact is that any payment exchange system can be used to launder money. However, bug bounty providers don’t (as far as I can tell) have financial services obligations. Does the bug bounty industry need more regulation (shudder)?
Leaked email shows HBO negotiating with hackers | Calgary Herald
Remember the 'Game of Thrones' leak? An Iranian hacker was charged with stealing HBO scripts to raise bitcoin | USA Today
Uber used bug bounty program to launder blackmail payment to hacker | ars Technica
Inside a low budget consumer hardware espionage implant
I’m not much of a hardware expert – actually, I’m not much of a hardware novice either. But this writeup by Mich is awesome. I didn’t even know there were so many ways to sniff, intercept and basically mess around with stuff at such small scale. It’s extremely detailed and I’ve permanently bookmarked it for future reference.
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Guideline Medical Cloud | Uber APT 38 APT 37 | |
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2017-12-12 07:55:49 | The OceanLotus MacOS Backdoor Transforms into HiddenLotus with a Slick UNICODE Trick (lien direct) | >Experts at Malwarebytes warns of a new variant of the macOS OceanLotus backdoor is using an innovative technique to avoid detection, A few years ago the bad actors realized they could use UNICODE characters that looked like English characters to lead unsuspecting victims to malicious websites. Now, they have figured out how to use a […] | Guideline | APT 32 |
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