30-January-2024
Welcome to the weekly threat detection update report from Stamus Networks. Each week, you will receive this email with a summary of the updates.
Current Stamus Threat Intelligence (STI) release version: 959
This week, in addition to daily ruleset and IOC updates, we provided Stamus Security Platform customers with the following improved defense(s):
Note: a "method" as referenced below, is a discrete detection vector for a given threat.
The following detections were added to your Stamus Security Platform (SSP) this past week:
Free,Open-Source,Cross-platform agent and Post-exploiton tool written in Golang and C++. Github
The term info stealer is self-explanatory. This type of malware resides in an infected computer and gathers data in order to send it to the attacker. Typical targets are credentials used in online banking services, social media sites, emails, or FTP accounts.
Info stealers may use many methods of data acquisition. The most common are:
hooking browsers (and sometimes other applications) and stealing credentials that are typed by the user using web injection scripts that are adding extra fields to web forms and submitting information from them to a server owned by the attacker form grabbing (finding specific opened windows and stealing their content) keylogging stealing passwords saved in the system and cookies Modern info stealers are usually parts of botnets. Sometimes the target of attack and related events are configured remotely by the command sent from the Command and Control server (C&C). Malwarebytes
Brosql - abuse.ch | Brosql - anyrun |
The following detections were updated this past week with changes to kill chain phase(s) or MITRE ATT&CK tactic(s)/technique(s):
The Atomic macOS Stealer can steal various types of information from the victim’s machine, including keychain passwords, complete system information, files from the desktop and documents folder, and even the macOS password. The stealer is designed to target multiple browsers and can extract auto-fills, passwords, cookies, wallets, and credit card information. Specifically, AMOS can target cryptowallets such as Electrum, Binance, Exodus, Atomic, and Coinomi. Cyble
APT28 (also known as - Fancy Bear/Sofacy/Strontum) is a threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff by a July 2018 U.S. Department of Justice indictment.
This group reportedly compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016 in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. APT28 has been active since at least 2004.
APT37 is a North Korean state-sponsored cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2012. The group has targeted victims primarily in South Korea, but also in Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Nepal, China, India, Romania, Kuwait, and other parts of the Middle East. APT37 has also been linked to the following campaigns between 2016-2018: Operation Daybreak, Operation Erebus, Golden Time, Evil New Year, Are you Happy?, FreeMilk, North Korean Human Rights, and Evil New Year 2018.[1][2][3] MITRE
An estimated one million WordPress websites have been compromised during a long-lasting campaign that exploits "all known and recently discovered theme and plugin vulnerabilities" to inject a Linux backdoor that researchers named Balad Injector.
The campaign has been running since 2017 and aims mostly to redirect to fake tech support pages, fraudulent lottery wins, and push notification scams. Bleepingcomputer
Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, penetration testing tool which bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.
In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz. MITRE
Attackers are utilizing hacked web sites that promote fake browser updates to infect targets with banking trojans. In some cases, post exploitation toolkits are later executed to encrypt the compromised network with ransomware.
Between May and September 2019, FireEye has conducted multiple incident response cases where enterprise customers were infected with malware through fake browser updates.
Hacked sites would display these "fakeupdates" through JavaScript alerts that state the user is using an old version of a web browser and that they should download an offered "update" to keep the browser running "smoothly and securely".
Loaders, for the most part, have one job: grab malicious executables or payloads from an attacker-controlled server. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t more happening under the hood of some, such as a user-friendly UI, self-healing capabilities, or the equivalent of a retail shop where a botmaster can sell his bots to potential clients.
Loaders are essentially basic remote access Trojans that give an attacker the ability to remotely interact with and control a compromised computer, or bot. While traditionally lightweight (smaller than 50 KB in size) in order to bypass detection by antivirus and other security monitoring technology, loaders evolve, and their viability to cybercriminals remains.
Cyber criminals violated the law TDS (Traffic Direction System) platform Keitaro and used it to redirect them users in exploit kits RIG and Fallout in order to infect them with malicious software.
TDS platforms are designed for redirection of users in particular sites. Legitimate TDS platforms, such as Keitaro, are mainly used by individuals and companies that want to advertise services or their products. Platforms drive users to the pages that companies want, targeting specific customers and promoting an ad campaign. techbizweb
Lumma is an information stealer written in C, sold as a Malware-as-a-Service by LummaC on Russian-speaking underground forums and Telegram since at least August 2022. Lumma's capabilities are those of a classic stealer, with a focus on cryptocurrency wallets, and file grabber capabilities. Malpedia
Mustang Panda is a China-based cyber espionage threat actor that was first observed in 2017 but may have been conducting operations since at least 2014. Mustang Panda has targeted government entities, nonprofits, religious, and other non-governmental organizations in the U.S., Germany, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam, among others. MITRE
The best open source stealer.
Phemedrone Stealer is written in C# without any dependencies. Logs gate is a standalone PHP script, which you might customize whenever you want.
Features: * Stealer gathers all data in memory * No external libraries are used for Phemedrone Stealer * Stub size is ~100 kB * Works on both x32 and x64 systems * All logs get sent to an Telegram or HTTP Host * Configurable Anti CIS, Anti VM, Anti Debbuger and Mutex * Configurable File grabber file extensions and search depth * Grabbing Cookies, Passwords, Autofills and Credit cards from Chromium based browsers (using dynamic path searching) * Grabbing Cookies, Passwords and Autofills from Gecko-based browsers (using dynamic path searching) * Grabbing Telegram, Steam and Discord sessions using dynamically path searching * Grabbing sensitive Extensions from Chromium-based browsers (includes crypto-extensions and authenticators) * Grabbing most known Crypto wallets * Detailed System information which includes hardware, geolocation and OS information with a Screenshot
Remote Access Trojans are programs that provide the capability to allow covert surveillance or the ability to gain unauthorized access to a victim PC. Remote Access Trojans often mimic similar behaviors of keylogger applications by allowing the automated collection of keystrokes, usernames, passwords, screenshots, browser history, emails, chat lots, etc. Remote Access Trojans differ from keyloggers in that they provide the capability for an attacker to gain unauthorized remote access to the victim machine via specially configured communication protocols which are set up upon initial infection of the victim computer. This backdoor into the victim machine can allow an attacker unfettered access, including the ability to monitor user behavior, change computer settings, browse and copy files, utilize the bandwidth (Internet connection) for possible criminal activity, access connected systems, and more. Malwarebyte
It leverages compromised websites and performs some of the most creative fingerprinting checks we’ve seen, before delivering its payload (NetSupport RAT). Malwarebytes
An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy computer network threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals.
Such threat actors' motivations are typically political or economic. To date, every major business sector has recorded instances of attacks by advanced actors with specific goals seeking to steal, spy or disrupt. These include government, defense, financial services, legal services, industrial, telecoms, consumer goods, and many more. Some groups utilize traditional espionage vectors, including social engineering, human intelligence and infiltration to gain access to a physical location to enable network attacks. The purpose of these attacks is to place custom malicious code on one or multiple computers for specific tasks.
Source: Wikipedia
An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy computer network threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals.
Such threat actors' motivations are typically political or economic. To date, every major business sector has recorded instances of attacks by advanced actors with specific goals seeking to steal, spy or disrupt. These include government, defense, financial services, legal services, industrial, telecoms, consumer goods, and many more. Some groups utilize traditional espionage vectors, including social engineering, human intelligence and infiltration to gain access to a physical location to enable network attacks. The purpose of these attacks is to place custom malicious code on one or multiple computers for specific tasks.
Source: Wikipedia
A TOAD attack is a relatively new form of phishing attack that combines voice and email phishing techniques. Attackers aim to trick users into disclosing sensitive information over the phone, such as login credentials or financial data, by impersonating a trusted authority figure. They will get on a call with the victim, claiming to be a representative from a reputable company or organization. Then, they will follow up with an email that contains a phishing link or attachment. Proofpoint
Again, the generic nature of this detection means that the Payloads performed by this group of trojans may be highly variable, and therefore difficult to describe specifically. This group of trojans has been observed to perform any, or all, of the following actions:
redirect Web traffic
- manipulate certain Windows or third-party applications including settings or configurations
- drop or install additional malicious programs
- download and run additional malicious programs
Please note that this list is not exhaustive.
Microsoft
A dropper is a kind of Trojan that has been designed to "install" some sort of malware (virus, backdoor, etc.) to a target system. The malware code can be contained within the dropper (single-stage) in such a way as to avoid detection by virus scanners or the dropper may download the malware to the target machine once activated (two stage). Wikipedia
The following threat detection(s) were improved this past week with new or updated threat methods.
| Name of threat | New coverage | Total coverage | Last updated | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Detection methods | Kill chain phases | Protocols involved | Detection methods | Kill chain phases | Protocols involved | ||
| AMOS | 1 | command and control | http | 18 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-25 |
| APT28 | 3 | delivery | http | 804 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-27 |
| APT37 | 72 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 109 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-23 |
| Balada | 6 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 87 | command and control, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-26 |
| Brosql | 3 | actions on objectives | http | 3 | actions on objectives | http | 2024-01-24 |
| Cobalt Strike | 2 | command and control | http | 572 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, smb, tcp, tls, udp | 2024-01-25 |
| Fake Browser | 9 | exploitation | dns, tls, http | 257 | delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-25 |
| Generic Loader | 1 | command and control | http | 7 | command and control, delivery | http, tcp | 2024-01-25 |
| Keitaro | 1 | exploitation | http | 287 | command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-25 |
| Khepri | 33 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 33 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-24 |
| Lumma | 49 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 192 | actions on objectives, command and control, installation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-26 |
| Mustang Panda | 2 | command and control | http | 32 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tls | 2024-01-27 |
| Phemedrone | 2 | actions on objectives | http | 3 | actions on objectives | http | 2024-01-24 |
| RAT Generic | 15 | command and control | tcp-pkt, tcp | 97 | actions on objectives, command and control, installation | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-27 |
| SocGholish | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 887 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-24 |
| TA4903 | 7 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 642 | delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-23 |
| TA582 | 3 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 35 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-23 |
| TOAD Phishing | 6 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 323 | delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-26 |
| Trojan Agent | 2 | command and control | http | 443 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, ip, smtp, tcp, tcp-pkt, tcp-stream, tls, udp | 2024-01-25 |
| Trojan Dropper | 3 | command and control | http | 432 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tcp, tls, udp | 2024-01-25 |
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