6-February-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: 965
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:
ESET researchers have discovered NSPX30, a sophisticated implant used by a new China-aligned APT group, named Blackwood by ESET. Blackwood leverages adversary-in-the-middle techniques to hijack update requests from legitimate software to deliver the implant. It has carried out cyber espionage operations against individuals and companies from China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. ESET mapped the evolution of NSPX30 back to an earlier ancestor – a simple backdoor we have named Project Wood. The oldest sample found was compiled in 2005. Eset
The following detections were updated this past week with changes to kill chain phase(s) or MITRE ATT&CK tactic(s)/technique(s):
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.
AllaKore is a simple Remote Access Tool written in Delphi, first observed in 2015 but still in early stages of development. It implements the RFB protocol which uses frame buffers and thus is able to send back only the changes of screen frames to the controller, speeding up the transport and visualization control. Malpedia
Amadey is malicious software categorized as a trojan. Cyber criminals can purchase Amadey on a Russian dark web forum and then use it to perform various malicious tasks: download and install (execute) other malware, steal personal information, log keystrokes, send spam from a victim's computer, and add an infected computer to a botnet. Pcrisk
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
Adversaries may communicate using a custom command and control protocol instead of encapsulating commands/data in an existing Standard Application Layer Protocol. Implementations include mimicking well-known protocols or developing custom protocols (including raw sockets) on top of fundamental protocols provided by TCP/IP/another standard network stack.
Malware actors often try to infect/add specific code to legitimate binaries in an effort to trojanize (generate segment-padded trojans) those binaries and take advantage of allowed executable on the system.
In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format[citation needed] (ELF, formerly named Extensible Linking Format), is a common standard file format for executable files, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps. First published in the specification for the application binary interface (ABI) of the Unix operating system version named System V Release 4 (SVR4), and later in the Tool Interface Standard, it was quickly accepted among different vendors of Unix systems. In 1999, it was chosen as the standard binary file format for Unix and Unix-like systems on x86 processors by the 86open project. Wikipedia
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".
Coinminer is an unwanted malicious software which uses the victim's computational power (CPU and RAM mostly) to mine for coins (for example Monero or Zcash). The malware achieves persistence by adding one of the opensource miners on startup without the victim's consensus. Most sophisticated coin miners use timer settings or cap the CPU usage in order to remain stealthy. Malpedia
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
Kimsuky is a North Korean-based threat group that has been active since at least September 2013. The group initially focused on targeting Korean think tanks and DPRK/nuclear-related targets, expanding recently to the United States, Russia, and Europe. The group was attributed as the actor behind the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise. MITRE
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
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
Mirai (Japanese: 未来, lit. 'future') is a malware that turns networked devices running Linux into remotely controlled bots that can be used as part of a botnet in large-scale network attacks. It primarily targets online consumer devices such as IP cameras and home routers. The Mirai botnet was first found in August 2016 by MalwareMustDie, a white hat malware research group, and has been used in some of the largest and most disruptive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, including an attack on 20 September 2016 on computer security journalist Brian Krebs' web site, an attack on French web host OVH, and the October 2016 Dyn cyberattack. According to a chat log between Anna-senpai and Robert Coelho, Mirai was named after the 2011 TV anime series Mirai Nikki.
Source: Wikipedia
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. Malwarebytes
RogueRaticate/FakeSG, a newer threat, injects obfuscated JavaScript code into stage 1 websites and uses Keitaro TDS for payload delivery. ZPHP/SmartApeSG leverages asynchronous requests, while ClearFake employs base64 encoded scripts and displays lures in different languages. Infosecurity
Snake is the name of a malicious program, which is classified as a keylogger. As the classification implies, the primary functionality of this malware is keylogging. Hence, Snake infections pose a threat to the privacy/safety of all and any typed information. Pcrisk
It leverages compromised websites and performs some of the most creative fingerprinting checks we’ve seen, before delivering its payload (NetSupport RAT). Malwarebytes
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.
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
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 web shell is a shell-like interface that enables a web server to be remotely accessed, often for the purposes of cyberattacks. A web shell is unique in that a web browser is used to interact with it.
A web shell could be programmed in any programming language that is supported on a server. Web shells are most commonly written in PHP due to the widespread usage of PHP for web applications. Though Active Server Pages, ASP.NET, Python, Perl, Ruby, and Unix shell scripts are also used.
Using network monitoring tools, an attacker can find vulnerabilities that can potentially allow delivery of a web shell. These vulnerabilities are often present in applications that are run on a web server. An attacker can use a web shell to issue shell commands, perform privilege escalation on the web server, and the ability to upload, delete, download, and execute files to and from the web server.
WhiteSnake is an information-stealing malware that extracts a range of sensitive information from infected computers. The threat actors who developed WhiteSnake sell their malware on a hacker forum. This malware can be purchased for varying durations of access, with prices ranging from $120 for one month to $1500 for lifetime access. Pcrisk
WikiLoader is a sophisticated downloader with the objective of installing a second malware payload. The malware contains interesting evasion techniques and custom implementation of code designed to make detection and analysis challenging. WikiLoader was likely developed as a malware that can be rented out to select cybercriminal threat actors. Proofpoint
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 | ||
| APT28 | 1 | delivery | http | 805 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-31 |
| AllaKore | 19 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 23 | command and control | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-31 |
| Amadey | 1 | command and control | http | 26 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | http | 2024-01-31 |
| Balada | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 90 | command and control, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-02-01 |
| Command and Control | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 346 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-02-01 |
| ELF | 2 | installation | http | 84 | command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls, udp | 2024-01-31 |
| Fake Browser | 21 | exploitation | dns, tls, http | 278 | delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-02-02 |
| Generic Coinminer | 1 | command and control | http | 19 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tls | 2024-01-31 |
| Generic Loader | 6 | command and control | http | 13 | command and control, delivery | http, tcp | 2024-01-31 |
| Keitaro | 3 | exploitation | dns, tls, http | 290 | command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-02-03 |
| Kimsuky | 7 | command and control | http, dns, tls | 348 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, ftp-data, http, tcp, tls | 2024-02-03 |
| Lumma | 65 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 257 | actions on objectives, command and control, installation | dns, http, tls | 2024-02-02 |
| MetaStealer | 1 | command and control | http | 10 | command and control | http, tcp | 2024-01-30 |
| Mirai | 1 | command and control | tcp-pkt | 290 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-31 |
| NSPX30 APT | 2 | actions on objectives, command and control | udp, http | 2 | actions on objectives, command and control | udp, http | 2024-01-31 |
| RAT Generic | 2 | command and control | tcp | 99 | actions on objectives, command and control, installation | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-02-03 |
| RogueRaticate | 1 | delivery | http | 28 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-30 |
| SnakeKeylogger | 1 | command and control | http | 15 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, ftp-data, http, smtp, tls | 2024-02-03 |
| SocGholish | 6 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 893 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-30 |
| T34 Loader | 4 | command and control | http | 8 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | http | 2024-01-31 |
| TA4903 | 9 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 651 | delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-02-02 |
| TA582 | 3 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 38 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-30 |
| Trojan Agent | 7 | command and control, delivery | http | 450 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, ip, smtp, tcp, tcp-pkt, tcp-stream, tls, udp | 2024-01-31 |
| Web Shell | 3 | command and control | http | 9 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | http | 2024-02-01 |
| WhiteSnake | 2 | delivery, actions on objectives | http | 7 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | http | 2024-01-31 |
| WikiLoader | 4 | command and control, actions on objectives | dns, tls, http | 11 | actions on objectives, command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-30 |
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Stamus Networks believes in a world where defenders are heroes, and a future where those they protect remain safe. As organizations face threats from well-funded adversaries, we relentlessly pursue solutions that make the defender’s job easier and more impactful. The global leader in Suricata-based network security solutions, Stamus Networks helps enterprise security teams know more, respond sooner and mitigate their risk with insights gathered from cloud and on-premise network activity. Our Stamus Security Platform combines the best of intrusion detection (IDS), network security monitoring (NSM), and network detection and response (NDR) systems into a single solution that exposes serious and imminent threats to critical assets and empowers rapid response.
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