Cisco Threat Research Blog

By Chris Neal.

Over the past several months, Cisco Talos has observed a malware campaign that utilizes websites hosting a new version of Loda, a remote access trojan (RAT) written in AutoIT.
These websites also host malicious documents that begin a multi-stage infection chain which ultimately serves a malicious MSI file. The second stage document exploits CVE-2017-11882 to download and run the MSI file, which contains Loda version 1.1.1.
This campaign appears to be targeting countries in South America and Central America, as well as the U.S.

What’s New?

Talos has observed several changes in this version of Loda. The obfuscation technique used within the AutoIT script changed to a different form of string encoding. Multiple persistence mechanisms have been employed to ensure Loda continues running on the infected host following reboots. Lastly, the new version leverages WMI to enumerate antivirus solutions running on the infected host.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Jan 31 and Feb 7. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Read More

Reference:

TRU020720 – This is a JSON file that includes the IOCs referenced in this post, as well as all hashes associated with the cluster. The list is limited to 25 hashes in this blog post. As always, please remember that all IOCs contained in this document are indicators, and that one single IOC does not indicate maliciousness. See the Read More link above for more details.

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Jan 24 and Jan 31. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Read More

Reference:

TRU01312020 – This is a JSON file that includes the IOCs referenced in this post, as well as all hashes associated with the cluster. The list is limited to 25 hashes in this blog post. As always, please remember that all IOCs contained in this document are indicators, and that one single IOC does not indicate maliciousness. See the Read More link above for more details.

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Jan 17 and Jan 24. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Read More

Reference:

TRU01242020 – This is a JSON file that includes the IOCs referenced in this post, as well as all hashes associated with the cluster. The list is limited to 25 hashes in this blog post. As always, please remember that all IOCs contained in this document are indicators, and that one single IOC does not indicate maliciousness. See the Read More link above for more details.

News Summary

• There is another large-scale cryptomining attack from an actor we are tracking as “Vivin” that has been active since at least November 2017.
• “Vivin” has consistently evolved over the past few years, despite having poor operational security and exposing key details of their campaign.

By Andrew Windsor.

Talos has identified a new threat actor, internally tracked as “Vivin,” conducting a long-term cryptomining campaign. We first began linking different samples of malware dropping illicit coin miners to the same actor in November of 2019. However, upon further investigation, Talos established a much longer timeline of activity. Observable evidence shows that Vivin has been active since at least November 2017 and is responsible for mining thousands of U.S. dollars in Monero cryptocurrency off of their infected hosts.

Vivin has shown to rotate the use of multiple cryptocurrency wallet addresses, in addition to altering the delivery chain of their payloads, over different time periods of activity. An interesting aspect of the actor’s delivery method is their use of modified pirated software as their initial attack vector before the samples move on to common “living-off-the-land” methods at later stages of the attack. Vivin makes a minimal effort to hide their actions, making poor operational security decisions such as posting the same Monero wallet address found in our observable samples on online forms and social media. Nor do they discriminate in their targeting, attempting to capitalize on general user behavior, rather than targeting, to generate as large a victim pool as possible.

Despite the market downturn for cryptocurrency values in 2018, cryptomining remained a popular attack method for malicious actors throughout 2019 and heading into 2020. Over the course of last year, Talos Incident Response observed a number of cryptomining attacks, some of which potentially involved higher coordinated cybercrime groups and collaboration between multiple different threat actors. While more sophisticated actors certainly pose a significant threat, organizations should remain cognizant of the additional threat posed by less advanced actors employing wide or unrestricted targeting. Talos has previously documented one such actor, “Panda,” illustrating their potential for long-term exploitation of their victims’ resources and their resilience from being deterred from future action. These attributes make Vivin, and other actors like them, legitimate risks to organizational resource abuse and potential data theft.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Jan 10 and Jan 17. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Read More

Reference:

TRU01172020 – This is a JSON file that includes the IOCs referenced in this post, as well as all hashes associated with the cluster. The list is limited to 25 hashes in this blog post. As always, please remember that all IOCs contained in this document are indicators, and that one single IOC does not indicate maliciousness. See the Read More link above for more details.

Today, Cisco Talos is unveiling the details of a new RAT we have identified we’re calling “JhoneRAT.” This new RAT is dropped to the victims via malicious Microsoft Office documents. The dropper, along with the Python RAT, attempts to gather information on the victim’s machine and then uses multiple cloud services: Google Drive, Twitter, ImgBB and Google Forms. The RAT attempts to download additional payloads and upload the information gathered during the reconnaissance phase. This particular RAT attempts to target a very specific set of Arabic-speaking countries. The filtering is performed by checking the keyboard layout of the infected systems. Based on the analyzed sample, JhoneRAT targets Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, Yemen, Syria, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Lebanon.

For more, read the rest on the Talos blog here.

By Edmund Brumaghin, with contributions from Dalton Schaadt.

Executive Summary

Recently, the details of a critical vulnerability affecting Citrix Application Delivery Controller and Citrix Gateway servers were publicly disclosed. This vulnerability is currently being tracked using CVE-2019-19781. A public patch has not yet been released, however, Citrix has released recommendations for steps that affected organizations can take to help mitigate the risk associated with this vulnerability. Successful exploitation of CVE-2019-19781 could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on affected systems.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Jan 3 and Jan 10. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Read More

Reference:

TRU01102020 – This is a JSON file that includes the IOCs referenced in this post, as well as all hashes associated with the cluster. The list is limited to 25 hashes in this blog post. As always, please remember that all IOCs contained in this document are indicators, and that one single IOC does not indicate maliciousness. See the Read More link above for more details.