Researchers from Sentinel Labs have discovered a Chinese-Linked APT group, Aoqin Dragon, that has been spying on organizations for nearly a decade. Specifically targeting Southeast Asia and Australia, Aoqin Dragon has been spying on the government, education, and telecommunication organizations. Usually gaining initial access through document exploits and fake removable devices, Aoqin Dragon has also been deploying tactics such as DLL hijacking and DNS tunneling. Additionally, Aoqin Dragon has been seen to deploy a modified version of the heyoka backdoor, an open-source backdoor project. This has allowed it to bypass traditional detection methodologies that do not detect this variant.
Quiet reconnaissance campaigns such as this are ordinarily successful long-term. Sophisticated APT groups are patient and slow to move through networks or exfiltrate data, usually blending in with everyday traffic and going unseen. Extended access to organization networks leads to intellectual property theft, personal identifiable information exfiltration, and company brand reputation damage.
Aoqin Dragon’s primary initial access vector is with fake documents. Due to this, organizations should continue to deploy regular cybersecurity awareness programs to train employees on how to avoid phishing attacks and safely interact with unknown documents. Beyond that, organizations should conduct regular threat hunts to look for abnormal network traffic and connections to foreign IP addresses. Sentinel Labs has also published a comprehensive list of Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) here: Aoqin Dragon | Newly-Discovered Chinese-linked APT Has Been Quietly Spying On Organizations For 10 Years – SentinelOne
Sources
https://cyware.com/news/china-based-aoqin-dragon-spying-secretly-since-2013-9d3b5cbb
https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/aoqin-dragon-newly-discovered-chinese-linked-apt-has-been-quietly-spying-on-organizations-for-10-years/
Emotet malware has a long history. First discovered as a banking trojan in 2014, Emotet has matured into a global botnet, which has proven resilient in the face of massive law enforcement efforts. In 2021, an international task force took down the infrastructure behind Emotet.
A resurgence of Emotet was recently observed in early 2022 in Japan and, more recently, in the United States.
Emotet is often spread as reply messages in hijacked email threads, which increases the success rates of these phishing attacks. Additionally, the latest phishing attempts by Emotet campaigns have had a high success rate in evading email security filters.
The unfortunately mature business model of ransomware has led to the development of “access broker” businesses. Command and control over machines infected with Emotet have been known to be sold to ransomware gangs to be leveraged in devastating attacks. Devices infected with Emotet are also used to spread the infection through email reply messages to associates in other organizations.
User training:
Since Emotet is spread through phishing messages, user awareness training is critical in avoiding infection.
Acquire threat hunting services through a reputable cyber security vendor:
Threat hunting efforts often uncover hosts infected with multiple malware variants.
Sources
https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/emotet-banking-trojan-resurfaces-email-security
https://www.jpcert.or.jp/english/at/2022/at220006.html
https://www.wired.com/story/emotet-botnet-takedown/
Dr. Joakim Kennedy of the Blackberry Research & Intelligence Team reports finding a new Linux malware variant that infects all running processes and leverages this to evade detection. Kennedy has dubbed this malware “Symbiote”, due to its parasite-like activity.
Because of its rootkit behavior, Symbiote has proven exceedingly difficult to detect using live system analysis.
According to Kennedy’s research, Symbiote’s objectives are credential stealing and “providing remote access for the attacker .”Once an attacker has remote access to a system inside a corporate network, lateral movement to other hosts can be expected. Attacks such as this often result in devastating ransomware events.
To maximize the chance of detection, Kennedy recommends ensuring that EDR binaries are statically linked so that they cannot be altered or spoofed by infected processes. Inquire with your EDR vendor or experts at GreyCastle Security for advice.
Network Security Monitoring (NSM) is an effective tool in detecting rootkit behavior, as malware is unable to control packet flow outside of the infected host. NSM is an excellent way to address gaps left in EDR deployments, finding rogue or misconfigured hosts, and detecting a myriad of anomalous behaviors.
Sources
https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2022/06/symbiote-a-new-nearly-impossible-to-detect-linux-threat
As an update to our June 3rd Threat Intelligence regarding the Atlassian Confluence vulnerability (CVE-2022-26134): cybercriminals affiliated with both AvosLocker and Cerber2021 ransomware have been actively targeting unpatched Confluence servers.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability on unpatched servers continues to occur, with AvosLocker reportedly infecting organizations in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Additionally, reports of Cerber2021 (aka “CerberImposter”) ransomware attacks via successfully exploiting this vulnerability have increased along with AvosLocker.
These increased reports of ransomware infections coincide with the last week’s widespread release of proof-of-concept exploit code for CVE-2022-26134 (see graphic below).
Atlassian strongly recommends upgrading to a fixed version of Confluence. However, if an upgrade is not feasible, organizations should consider the workaround outlined by Atlassian here.
Sources
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/confluence-servers-hacked-to-deploy-avoslocker-cerber2021-ransomware/
https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/confluence-security-advisory-2022-06-02-1130377146.html#:~:text=download%20centre.-,Mitigation,-If%20you%20are
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