29-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: 1185
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:
Hackers are trying to gain remote access to Ukrainian government and military systems leveraging Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) configuration files, disguised as popular network and security services. Ukrainian cyber defenders say their investigation revealed meticulous planning that began in August and is aimed at a wider geography.
A new wave of malicious phishing emails targeted at key sectors in Ukraine has been observed by the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA). Hackers are attempting to exploit the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to gain unauthorized access.
This campaign taps into the popularity of Amazon and Microsoft services, luring targets with promises of integration and the adoption of “Zero Trust Architecture” (ZTA). Attached to these phishing emails are RDP configuration files, and if opened, they allow attackers to connect to a remote server controlled by cybercriminals.
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
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
In mid-April 2024, researchers found compromised sites containing an inject leading to an iframe on pley[.]es. This iframe was shown as an overlay error message claiming that a faulty browser update needed to be fixed. Researchers dubbed this activity cluster ClickFix.
The error message asked the victim to open “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” (which will open an UAC prompt) and then right-click to paste the code. If this was done, PowerShell would run another remote PowerShell script that would download and run an executable, eventually leading to Vidar Stealer. However, just a few days later, after discovery, the payload domain used in the PowerShell was taken offline. Thus, despite the error being displayed on compromised websites, it could not lead to an infection.
After a few days of this semi-functional state, 15 May 2024, the custom content of the iframe was replaced with the ClearFake inject. It is still serving this inject in early June 2024. As the pley[.]es domain itself seems to be compromised, it’s unclear if these two activity sets – ClearFake and ClickFix – started to work with each other, or if the ClearFake actor re-compromised the iframe, replacing the code with its own content.
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".
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
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
We took action against a previously unreported hacking group from Iran that targeted or spoofed companies in multiple industries around the world. This included energy companies in Saudi Arabia, Canada, Italy, and Russia; the information technology industry in India and United Arab Emirates; the maritime logistics industry in UAE, Iceland, Norway, Saudi Arabia, US, Israel, and India; telecommunications companies in Saudi Arabia and UAE; and the semiconductor industry in Israel, US, and Germany. This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation while obfuscating who’s behind it. This group used similar TTPs to another threat actor dubbed Tortoiseshell that we reported on last year, but in this case we saw different targeting, technical infrastructure, and distinct malware. Meta
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
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.)
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 | 8 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 1100 | command and control, delivery | dns, ftp, http, tcp, tls, udp | 2024-10-26 |
| Balada | 9 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 115 | command and control, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-25 |
| ClickFix | 3 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 34 | command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-22 |
| Fake Browser | 22 | delivery, exploitation | http, dns, tls | 1067 | command and control, delivery, exploitation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-26 |
| Lumma | 63 | command and control, actions on objectives | dns, tls, http | 2357 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-26 |
| RAT Generic | 6 | command and control | tcp | 161 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls, udp | 2024-10-26 |
| SocGholish | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 1057 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, exploitation, reconnaissance | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-10-22 |
| TA455 | 12 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 533 | command and control, installation | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-26 |
| TA4903 | 3 | delivery | dns, tls, http | 1186 | delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-22 |
| TA582 | 12 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 347 | command and control | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-24 |
| Trojan Agent | 2 | command and control | http | 600 | actions on objectives, command and control, delivery, installation | dns, http, ip, smtp, tcp, tcp-pkt, tcp-stream, tls, udp | 2024-10-26 |
| UAC-0215 | 338 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 338 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 2024-10-24 |
| Unknown APT | 3 | command and control | dns, tls, http | 110 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tls | 2024-10-26 |
| XWorm | 58 | command and control | tcp-pkt | 1695 | command and control, delivery | dns, http, tcp, tcp-pkt, tls | 2024-10-26 |
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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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