22-October-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: 1179
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 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
Bumblebee is a custom loader written in C++ that has been used by multiple threat actors, including possible initial access brokers, to download and execute additional payloads since at least March 2022. Bumblebee has been linked to ransomware operations including Conti, Quantum, and Mountlocker and derived its name from the appearance of "bumblebee" in the user-agent. MITRE
ESET researchers have discovered several targeted campaigns against governmental institutions in Thailand, starting in 2023, where massive amounts of data have been exfiltrated. The campaigns misused legitimate file-sharing services such as Dropbox, PixelDrain, GitHub, and OneDrive in the process. Based on the findings, ESET researchers decided to track this activity cluster as the work of a separate threat actor, which ESET named CeranaKeeper. The numerous occurrences of the string “bectrl” in the code of the group’s tools inspired the name: a wordplay between the word beekeeper and the bee species Apis Cerana, or the Asian honeybee. ESET presented its findings about CeranaKeeper and the compromise in Thailand at the 2024 Virus Bulletin conference.
The threat actor behind the attacks on the Thai government, CeranaKeeper, seems particularly relentless, as the plethora of tools and techniques used by the group keeps evolving at a rapid rate. The operators write and rewrite their toolset as needed and react rather quickly to avoid detection. This group’s goal is to harvest as many files as possible and it develops specific components to that end. CeranaKeeper uses cloud and file-sharing services for exfiltration and probably relies on the fact that traffic to these popular services would mostly seem legitimate and harder to block when identified. Eset
In late November, Prevailion’s Adversarial Counterintelligence Team (PACT) identified what appeared to be a malicious javascript-based Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that uses a robust Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) to identify its Command and Control (C2) infrastructure and that utilizes novel methods for fileless persistence, on-system activity, and dynamic run-time capabilities like self-updating and recompilation. This RAT, which PACT refers to by its internal codename “DarkWatchman”, has been observed being distributed by email and represents an evolution in fileless malware techniques, as it uses the registry for nearly all temporary and permanent storage and therefore never writes anything to disk, allowing it to operate beneath or around the detection threshold of most security tools. PACT has reverse engineered the DGA, dynamically analyzed the malware, investigated the Threat Actor’s (TA) web-based infrastructure, and consolidated the results of our analysis into the following report. Prevailion
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".
It is believed that the actors behind Patchwork are the same actors behind Operation Hangover. MITRE
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
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
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
It leverages compromised websites and performs some of the most creative fingerprinting checks we’ve seen, before delivering its payload (NetSupport RAT). Malwarebytes
StrelaStealer, as its name implies, is a stealer-type malware. This malicious program specifically targets email account log-in credentials. StrelaStealer was first discovered by DCSO CyTec's researchers in November of 2022. Their findings revealed that this malicious program was distributed using spam mail targeting Spanish-speaking users. Pcrisk
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
An adversary with sophisticated levels of expertise and significant resources, allowing it through the use of multiple different attack vectors (e.g., cyber, physical, and deception), to generate opportunities to achieve its objectives which are typically to establish and extend its presence within the information technology infrastructure of organizations for purposes of continually exfiltrating information and/or to undermine or impede critical aspects of a mission, program, or organization, or place itself in a position to do so in the future; moreover, the advanced persistent threat pursues its objectives repeatedly over an extended period of time, adapting to a defender’s efforts to resist it, and with determination to maintain the level of interaction needed to execute its objectives. NIST.)
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.
During a routine threat-hunting exercise, Cyble research labs discovered a dark web post where a malware developer was advertising a powerful Windows RAT. Cyble
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 | 4 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 1092 | command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, http, tcp, tls, udp | 2024-10-19 |
| Bumblebee | 2 | command and control | tcp | 6 | command and control, delivery | http, tcp, tcp-pkt | 2024-10-17 |
| CeranaKeeper APT | 3 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 6 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-18 |
| DarkWatchman | 1 | command and control | http | 4 | command and control | http | 2024-10-16 |
| Fake Browser | 18 | exploitation | dns, tls, http | 1045 | command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-17 |
| Hangover | 2 | installation, command and control | http, tcp | 72 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tcp, tls | 2024-10-18 |
| JaskaGO | 1 | command and control | http | 4 | actions on objectives, command and control | http, tcp | 2024-10-18 |
| Kimsuky | 1 | delivery | http | 350 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, ftp-data, http, tcp, tls | 2024-10-18 |
| Lumma | 79 | actions on objectives, delivery, command and control | tls, http, dns | 2294 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-19 |
| MetaStealer | 1 | actions on objectives | tcp | 12 | actions on objectives, command and control | http, tcp | 2024-10-18 |
| RAT Generic | 2 | command and control | tcp | 155 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls, udp | 2024-10-16 |
| SocGholish | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 1054 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-10-15 |
| Strela Stealer | 1 | actions on objectives | http | 2 | actions on objectives | http | 2024-10-18 |
| TA4903 | 12 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 1183 | delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-18 |
| TA582 | 9 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 335 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-17 |
| Unknown APT | 1 | command and control | tls | 107 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-18 |
| Web Shell | 3 | actions on objectives | http | 12 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery | http | 2024-10-18 |
| XWorm | 21 | command and control | tcp-pkt | 1637 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-10-16 |
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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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