16-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: 947
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:
The malware is equipped with an extensive array of commands from its Command and Control (C&C) server. JaskaGO can persist in different methods in infected system. Users face a heightened risk of data compromise as the malware excels at exfiltrating valuable information, ranging from browser credentials to cryptocurrency wallet details and other sensitive user files. AT&T
In computing, a Trojan horse (or simply trojan) is any malware which misleads users of its true intent. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive Trojan Horse that led to the fall of the city of Troy.
Trojans are generally spread by some form of social engineering, for example where a user is duped into executing an email attachment disguised to appear not suspicious, (e.g., a routine form to be filled in), or by clicking on some fake advertisement on social media or anywhere else. Although their payload can be anything, many modern forms act as a backdoor, contacting a controller which can then have unauthorized access to the affected computer. Trojans may allow an attacker to access users' personal information such as banking information, passwords, or personal identity. It can also delete a user's files or infect other devices connected to the network. Ransomware attacks are often carried out using a trojan.
BlackRain - anyrun |
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. Flashpoint
Doina Loader - anyrun | Doina Loader - abusech | Doina Loader - Microsoft |
Blister is a loader that loads a payload embedded inside it and in the past was observed with activity linked to Evil Corp. Foxit
Blister Loader - Malpedia | Blister Loader - Microsoft |
The following detections were updated this past week with changes to kill chain phase(s) or MITRE ATT&CK tactic(s)/technique(s):
Magic Hound is an Iranian-sponsored threat group that conducts long term, resource-intensive cyber espionage operations, likely on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They have targeted U.S. and Middle Eastern government and military personnel, academics, journalists, and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), via complex social engineering campaigns since at least 2014. MITRE
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
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
FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has primarily targeted the U.S. retail, restaurant, and hospitality sectors since mid-2015. They often use point-of-sale malware. A portion of FIN7 was run out of a front company called Combi Security. FIN7 is sometimes referred to as Carbanak Group, but these appear to be two groups using the same Carbanak malware and are therefore tracked separately. 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".
Jupyter is the name of malware that functions ad information stealer that has capabilities of a backdoor Trojan. It can be used to steal sensitive information from certain browsers, infect computers with additional malware, execute PowerShell scripts, commands, and hollow processes. If there is any reason to think that Jupyter is already installed on the operating system, then it should be uninstalled immediately Jupyter
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
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
In the world of cybersecurity, a backdoor refers to any method by which authorized and unauthorized users are able to get around normal security measures and gain high level user access (aka root access) on a computer system, network, or software application. Once they're in, cybercriminals can use a backdoor to steal personal and financial data, install additional malware, and hijack devices. [Malwarebytes] (https://www.malwarebytes.com/backdoor/)
Check Point Research identified an ongoing surveillance operation targeting a Southeast Asian government. The attackers use spear-phishing to gain initial access and leverage old Microsoft Office vulnerabilities together with the chain of in-memory loaders to attempt and install a previously unknown backdoor on victim’s machines. Checkpoint
It leverages compromised websites and performs some of the most creative fingerprinting checks we’ve seen, before delivering its payload (NetSupport RAT). Malwarebytes
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
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
Teal Kurma, a Türkiye-nexus threat actor, was highly active between 2018 and 2020 before seemingly disappearing from open source reporting.3, 4 At the time of this heightened activity, the threat actor was involved in conducting large scale and prolonged Domain Name Server (DNS) hijacking attacks. DNS hijacking is when a threat actor manipulates how DNS queries are resolved, resulting in users being redirected to malicious websites. Since then, Teal Kurma has altered its tactics to include additional tools, which are still in use at present, to achieve its espionage focused actions on objectives. PwC
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
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 | ||
| APT35 | 20 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 529 | command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, http, tcp, tls, udp | 2024-01-11 |
| Amadey | 7 | command and control | http | 25 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | http | 2024-01-13 |
| BlackRain | 2 | command and control | http | 2 | command and control | http | 2024-01-12 |
| Blister Loader | 25 | command and control | http | 25 | command and control | http | 2024-01-12 |
| Doina Loader | 3 | command and control | http | 7 | command and control | http | 2024-01-12 |
| Epsilon Stealer | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 6 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-12 |
| FIN7 | 18 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 158 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tls | 2024-01-11 |
| Fake Browser | 20 | exploitation | dns, tls, http | 242 | delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-12 |
| JaskaGO | 1 | actions on objectives | tcp | 1 | actions on objectives | tcp | 2024-01-12 |
| Jupyter | 1 | command and control | http | 10 | command and control | http, tls | 2024-01-13 |
| Keitaro | 9 | exploitation | dns, tls, http | 277 | command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-12 |
| Kimsuky | 17 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 341 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, ftp-data, http, tcp, tls | 2024-01-12 |
| Lumma | 26 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 104 | actions on objectives, command and control, installation | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-13 |
| Mirai | 25 | command and control | dns, tls, tcp-pkt, http | 289 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-13 |
| Screenshotter | 1 | command and control | http | 4 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | http | 2024-01-12 |
| SharpPanda | 4 | command and control | http, dns, tls | 14 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-09 |
| SocGholish | 9 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 884 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-13 |
| Stealer and Exfiltration | 3 | command and control, actions on objectives | http | 418 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation, installation | dns, ftp, http, smtp, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-01-12 |
| TA4903 | 30 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 608 | delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-09 |
| TA582 | 3 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 29 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-09 |
| Teal Kurma | 1 | command and control | http | 40 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-01-11 |
| Trojan Agent | 2 | command and control | http | 441 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, ip, smtp, tcp, tcp-pkt, tcp-stream, tls, udp | 2024-01-09 |
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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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