Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 has identified a series of phishing emails containing updated versions of the previously discussed CMSTAR malware family targeting various government entities in the country of Belarus. We first reported on CMSTAR in spear phishing attacks in spring of 2015 and later in 2016. In this latest campaign, we observed a total of 20 unique emails between June and August of this year that included two new variants of the CMSTAR Downloader. We also discovered two previously unknown payloads. These payloads contained backdoors that we have named BYEBY and PYLOT respectively.

Unit 42 has identified malware with recent compilation and distribution timestamps that has code, infrastructure, and themes overlapping with threats described previously in the Operation Blockbuster report, written by researchers at Novetta. This report details the activities from a group they named Lazarus, their tools, and the techniques they use to infiltrate computer networks. The Lazarus group is tied to the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment and the 2013 DarkSeoul attacks. This recently identified activity is targeting Korean speaking individuals, while the threat actors behind the attack likely speak both Korean and English. This blog will detail the recently discovered samples, their functionality, and their ties to the threat group behind Operation Blockbuster.

Unit 42 has been closely tracking the OilRig threat group since May 2016. One technique we’ve been tracking with this threat group is their use of the Clayslide delivery document as attachments to spear-phishing emails in attacks since May 2016. In our April 2017 posting OilRig Actors Provide a Glimpse into Development and Testing Effortswe showed how we observed the OilRig threat group developing and refining these Clayside delivery documents.

The DragonOK group has been actively launching attacks for years. We first discussed them in April 2015 when we witnessed them targeting a number of organizations in Japan. In recent months, Unit 42 has observed a number of attacks that we attribute to this group. Multiple new variants of the previously discussed sysget malware family have been observed in use by DragonOK. Sysget malware was delivered both directly via phishing emails, as well as in Rich Text Format (RTF) documents exploiting the CVE-2015-1641 vulnerability (patched in MS15-033) that in turn leveraged a very unique shellcode. Additionally, we have observed instances of the IsSpace and TidePool malware families being delivered via the same techniques. While Japan is still the most heavily targeted geographic region by this particular actor, we also observed instances where individuals or organizations in Taiwan, Tibet, and Russia also may have been targeted.

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 late February 2017, FireEye as a Service (FaaS) identified a spear phishing campaign that appeared to be targeting personnel involved with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings at various organizations. Based on multiple identified overlaps in infrastructure and the use of similar tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs), we have high confidence that this campaign is associated with the financially motivated threat group tracked by FireEye as FIN7.

FireEye recently observed a sophisticated campaign targeting individuals within the Mongolian government. Targeted individuals that enabled macros in a malicious Microsoft Word document may have been infected with Poison Ivy, a popular remote access tool (RAT) that has been used for nearly a decade for key logging, screen and video capture, file transfers, password theft, system administration, traffic relaying, and more.

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.

Cyber espionage actors, now designated by FireEye as APT32 (OceanLotus Group), are carrying out intrusions into private sector companies across multiple industries and have also targeted foreign governments, dissidents, and journalists. FireEye assesses that APT32 leverages a unique suite of fully-featured malware, in conjunction with commercially-available tools, to conduct targeted operations that are aligned with Vietnamese state interests.

“In my previous blog posts I described attack campaigns targeting Indian government organizations, and Indian Embassies and Ministry of External affairs. In this blog post I describe a new attack campaign where cyber espionage group targeted the users of Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (also called as ship builder to the nation). Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) is a Public Sector Undertaking of Government of India (Ministry of Defence) and it specializes in manufacturing warships and submarines for the Indian Navy.”

“In my previous blog posts I posted details of cyber attacks targeting Indian Ministry of External Affairs and Indian Navy’s Warship and Submarine Manufacturer. This blog post describes another attack campaign where attackers impersonated identity of Indian think tank IDSA (Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses) and sent out spear-phishing emails to target officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and possibly the officials of Indian Army.”

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.”

Iranian cyber espionage against human rights activists, academic researchers and media outlets -and the HBO hacker connection

This report describes an extensive Russia-linked phishing and disinformation campaign. It provides evidence of how documents stolen from a prominent journalist and critic of Russia was tampered with and then “leaked” to achieve specific propaganda aims. We name this technique “tainted leaks.” The report illustrates how the twin strategies of phishing and tainted leaks are sometimes used in combination to infiltrate civil society targets, and to seed mistrust and disinformation. It also illustrates how domestic considerations, specifically concerns about regime security, can motivate espionage operations, particularly those targeting civil society.

This report describes Nile Phish, an ongoing and extensive phishing campaign against Egyptian civil society.

This report reveals a campaign of reconnaissance, phishing, and malware operations that use content and domains made to mimic Chinese language news websites

IBM analysts recently unveiled a first look at how threat actors may have placed Shamoon2 malware on systems in Saudi Arabia. While researching elements in the IBM report, ASERT discovered additional malicious domains, IP addresses, and artifacts that matched preciously disclosed elements of Shamoon2.

Since June 2016, the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) has been working to accelerate adoption of DMARC, an email security standard, by providing a set of easy-to-use tools and campaigns to drive deployment. This paper investigates and measures the economic benefit from that work. Having reviewed the available data, we have chosen to focus on Business Email Compromise (BEC) because it is a rapidly growing issue, with high direct losses, and relevant data is available for analysis from multiple sources. We derive a conservative minimum bar estimate for the loss avoidance tied to GCA’s initiatives and discuss the potential scale of other benefits gained from DMARC.

This is an annual report that discusses the latest malware and hacking trends in compromised websites.

Verizon’s annual report on data breaches in 2018

This report provides a comprehensive list of all the data breaches that have occurred in the spring of 2018.