The most remarkable findings
In December, SolarWinds, a well-known IT managed services provider, fell victim to a sophisticated supply-chain attack. The company’s Orion IT, a solution for monitoring and managing customers’ IT infrastructure, was compromised. This resulted in the deployment of a custom backdoor, named Sunburst, on the networks of more than 18,000 SolarWinds customers, including many large corporations and government bodies, in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In our initial report on Sunburst, we examined the method used by the malware to communicate with its C2 (command-and-control) server and the protocol used to upgrade victims for further exploitation. Further investigation of the Sunburst backdoor revealed several features that overlap with a previously identified backdoor known as Kazuar, a .NET backdoor first reported in 2017 and tentatively linked to the Turla APT group. The shared features between Sunburst and Kazuar include the victim UID generation algorithm, code similarities in the initial sleep algorithm and the extensive usage of the FNV1a hash to obfuscate string comparisons. There are several possibilities: Sunburst may have been developed by the same group as Kazuar; the developers of Sunburst may have adopted some ideas or code from Kazuar; both groups obtained their malware from the same source; some Kazuar developers moved to another team, taking knowledge and tools with them; or the developers of Sunburst introduced these links as a form of false flag. Hopefully, further analysis will make things clearer.
On March 2, Microsoft reported a new APT actor named HAFNIUM, exploiting four zero-days in Exchange Server in what they called “limited and targeted attacks”. At the time, Microsoft claimed that, in addition to HAFNIUM, several other actors were exploiting them as well. In parallel, Volexity also reported the same Exchange zero-days being in use in early 2021. According to Volexity’s telemetry, some of the exploits in use are shared across several actors, besides the one Microsoft designates as HAFNIUM. Kaspersky telemetry revealed a spike in exploitation attempts for these vulnerabilities following the public disclosure and patch from Microsoft. During the first week of March, we identified approximately 1,400 unique servers that had been targeted, in which one or more of these vulnerabilities were used to obtain initial access. Prior to the posts, on February 28, we identified related exploitation on less than a dozen Exchange systems; we also found more than a dozen Exchange artefacts indicating exploitation uploaded to multi-scanner services. According to our telemetry, most exploitation attempts were observed for servers in Europe and the United States. Some of the servers were targeted multiple times by what appear to be different threat actors (based on the command execution patterns), suggesting the exploits are now available to multiple groups.
We have also discovered a campaign active since mid-March targeting governmental entities in the Russian Federation, using the aforementioned Exchange zero-day exploits. This campaign made use of a previously unknown malware family we dubbed FourteenHi. Further investigation revealed traces of activity involving variants of this malware dating back a year. We also found some overlaps in these sets of activities with HAFNIUM in terms of infrastructure and TTPs as well as the use of ShadowPad malware during the same timeframe.
For APT breakdown by countries / actors, read the full report here on securelist.
Report Summary
While the TTPs of some threat actors remain consistent over time, relying heavily on social engineering as a means of gaining a foothold in a target organization or compromising an individual’s device, others refresh their toolsets and extend the scope of their activities. Our regular quarterly reviews are intended to highlight the key developments of APT groups.
Here are the main trends that we’ve seen in Q1 2021:
- Perhaps the most predominant attack we researched in this quarter was the SolarWinds attack. SolarWinds showed once again how successful a supply-chain attack can be, especially where attackers go the extra mile to remain hidden and maintain persistence in a target network. The scope of this attack is still being investigated as more zero-day flaws are discovered in SolarWinds products.
- Another critical wave of attacks was the exploitation of Microsoft Exchange zero-day vulnerabilities by multiple threat actors. We recently discovered another campaign using these exploits with different targeting, possibly related to the same cluster of activities already reported.
- Lazarus group’s bold campaign targeting security researchers worldwide also utilized zero-day vulnerabilities in browsers to compromise their targets. Their campaigns used themes centered on the use of zero-days to lure relevant researchers, possibly in an attempt to steal vulnerability research.
As always, we would note that our reports are the product of our visibility into the threat landscape. However, it should be borne in mind that, while we strive to continually improve, there is always the possibility that other sophisticated attacks may fly under our radar.
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2021-04-28 12:14
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