This report provides new intelligence by the NCSC on two tools used by the Turla group to target the UK. It contains IOCs and signatures for detection by network defenders.

Microsoft has come across an evolution of PLATINUM’s file-transfer tool, one that uses the Intel® Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) channel for communication. This channel works independently of the operating system (OS), rendering any communication over it invisible to firewall and network monitoring applications running on the host device. Until this incident, no malware had been discovered misusing the AMT SOL feature for communication.

Using data collected from the Lookout global sensor network, the Lookout research team was able to gain unique visibility into the ViperRAT malware, including 11 new, unreported applications. We also discovered and analyzed live, misconfigured malicious command and control servers (C2), from which we were able to identify how the attacker gets new, infected apps to secretly install and the types of activities they are monitoring. In addition, we uncovered the IMEIs of the targeted individuals (IMEIs will not be shared publicly for the privacy and safety of the victims) as well as the types of exfiltrated content.

In this Kingslayer post-mortem report, RSA Research describes a sophisticated software application supply chain attack that may have otherwise gone unnoticed by its targets.

This post regards the following event - “Around July last year, more than a 100 Israeli servicemen were hit by a cunning threat actor. The attack compromised their devices and exfiltrated data to the attackers’ command and control server. In addition, the compromised devices were pushed Trojan updates, which allowed the attackers to extend their capabilities. The operation remains active at the time of writing this post, with attacks reported as recently as February 2017.”

This post discusses the following event - “On October 10, 2017, Kaspersky Lab’s advanced exploit prevention systems identified a new Adobe Flash zero day exploit used in the wild against our customers. "

Researchers from the IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) team identified a missing link in the operations of a threat actor involved in recent Shamoon malware attacks against Gulf state organizations. These attacks, which occurred in November 2016 and January 2017, reportedly affected thousands of computers across multiple government and civil organizations in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in Gulf states. Shamoon is designed to destroy computer hard drives by wiping the master boot record (MBR) and data irretrievably, unlike ransomware, which holds the data hostage for a fee.

In May and June 2017, FireEye observed a phishing campaign targeting at least seven global law and investment firms. We have associated this campaign with APT19, a group that we assess is composed of freelancers, with some degree of sponsorship by the Chinese government. APT19 used three different techniques to attempt to compromise targets. In early May, the phishing lures leveraged RTF attachments that exploited the Microsoft Windows vulnerability described in CVE 2017-0199. Toward the end of May, APT19 switched to using macro-enabled Microsoft Excel (XLSM) documents. In the most recent versions, APT19 added an application whitelisting bypass to the XLSM documents. At least one observed phishing lure delivered a Cobalt Strike payload. As of the writing of this blog post, FireEye had not observed post-exploitation activity by the threat actors, so we cannot assess the goal of the campaign. We have previously observed APT19 steal data from law and investment firms for competitive economic purposes. This purpose of this blog post is to inform law firms and investment firms of this phishing campaign and provide technical indicators that their IT personnel can use for proactive hunting and detection.

This blog post offers insight into the New ICS Attack Framework “Triton”

FireEye recently detected a malicious Microsoft Office RTF document that leveraged CVE-2017-8759, a SOAP WSDL parser code injection vulnerability. This vulnerability allows a malicious actor to inject arbitrary code during the parsing of SOAP WSDL definition contents. FireEye analyzed a Microsoft Word document where attackers used the arbitrary code injection to download and execute a Visual Basic script that contained PowerShell commands. FireEye shared the details of the vulnerability with Microsoft and has been coordinating public disclosure timed with the release of a patch to address the vulnerability and security guidance, which can be found here.

This blog post takes a look at APT29 Domain Fronting with Tor.

The latest Petya-like outbreak has gathered a lot of attention from the media. However, it should be noted that this was not an isolated incident: this is the latest in a series of similar attacks in Ukraine. This blogpost reveals many details about the Diskcoder.C (aka ExPetr, PetrWrap, Petya, or NotPetya) outbreak and related information about previously unpublished attacks.

“The Turla espionage group has been targeting various institutions for many years. Recently, we found several new versions of Carbon, a second stage backdoor in the Turla group arsenal. Last year, a technical analysis of this component was made by Swiss GovCERT.ch as part of their report detailing the attack that a defense firm owned by the Swiss government, RUAG, suffered in the past. This blog post highlights the technical innovations that we found in the latest versions of Carbon we have discovered.”

In mid-November 2017, the Dragos, Inc. team discovered ICS-tailored malware deployed against at least one victim in the Middle East. The team identifies this malware as TRISIS because it targets Schneider Electric’s Triconex safety instrumented system (SIS) enabling the replacement of logic in final control elements. TRISIS is highly targeted and likely does not pose an immediate threat to other Schneider Electric customers, let alone other SIS products. Importantly, the malware leverages no inherent vulnerability in Schneider Electric products. However, this capability, methodology, and tradecraft in this very specific event may now be replicated by other adversaries and thus represents an addition to industrial asset owner and operators’ threat models.

Dragos, Inc. was notified by the Slovak anti-virus firm ESET of an ICS tailored malware on June 8th, 2017. The Dragos team was able to use this notification to find samples of the malware, identify new functionality and impact scenarios, and confirm that this was the malware employed in the December 17th, 2016 cyber-attack on the Kiev, Ukraine transmission substation which resulted in electric grid operations impact. This report serves as an industry report to inform the electric sector and security community of the potential implications of this malware and the appropriate details to have a nuanced discussion.

“In an effort to expose a common problem we see happening in the industry, Cylance® would like to shed some light on just how easy it is to fake attribution. The key factor we should focus on, as an industry, is determining HOW an attacker can take down an organization, rather than focusing only on the WHO. Once we can identify how the attack happened, we can focus on what’s really important – prevention.”

CyberX has discovered a new, large-scale cyber-reconnaissance operation targeting a broad range of targets in the Ukraine. Because it eavesdrops on sensitive conversations by remotely controlling PC microphones – in order to surreptitiously “bug” its targets – and uses Dropbox to store exfiltrated data, CyberX has named it “Operation BugDrop.”

From April 2016 until at least February 2017, attackers have been spreading malware via fake Facebook profiles and pages, breached websites, self-hosted and cloud based websites. Various artifacts indicate that the main target of this campaign is IEC – Israel Electric Company. These include domains, file names, Java package names, and Facebook activity. We dubbed this campaign “Operation Electric Powder“.

CopyKittens is a cyberespionage group that has been operating since at least 2013. In November 2015, ClearSky and Minerva Labs published1 the first public report exposing its activity. In March 2017, ClearSky published a second report2 exposing further incidents, some of which impacted the German Bundestag. In this report, Trend Micro and ClearSky expose a vast espionage apparatus spanning the entire time the group has been active. It includes recent incidents as well as older ones that have not been publicly reported; new malware; exploitation, delivery and command and control infrastructure; and the group’s modus operandi. We dubbed this activity Operation Wilted Tulip

This report provides an outline of the attacks against Polish banks based what was shared in the article, and BAE Systems’ additional findings.

Multiple Polish banks have fallen victim to malware. This post contains what information was public about the attack at the time.