Cisco Threat Research Blog

Discovered by Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos

Overview

Cisco Talos has identified six vulnerabilities in the Antenna House Office Server Document Converter (OSDC). These vulnerabilities can be used to remotely execute code on a vulnerable system. Antenna House Office Server Document Converter is a product designed to convert Microsoft Office documents into PDF and SVG documents.

The vulnerabilities can be exploited to locally execute code, or even remotely if the product is used in batch mode by the owners. In this context, the maliciously crafted document could be automatically handled by the product, and a successful exploitation could result in full control of the vulnerable system.

The six vulnerabilities can be exploited by a specially crafted Microsoft Office document.

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Discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos

Overview

Today, Talos is releasing details of a new vulnerabilities within Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the most popular and most feature-rich PDF reader. It has a big user base, is usually a default PDF reader on systems and integrates into web browsers as a plugin for rendering PDFs. As such, tricking a user into visiting a malicious web page or sending a specially crafted email attachment can be enough to trigger these vulnerabilities.

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Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between June 29 and July 6. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, it 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 is current as of the date of publication. 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.

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Cisco Talos has been tracking a new version of Smoke Loader — a malicious application that can be used to load other malware — for the past several months following an alert from Cisco Advanced Malware Protection’s (AMP) Exploit Prevention engine. AMP successfully stopped the malware before it was able to infect the host, but further analysis showed some developments in the Smoke Loader sample resulting from this chain of malware that intrigued us. This includes one of the first uses of the PROPagate injection technique in real-world malware. Besides a report released at the end of last week describing a different RIG Exploit Kit-based campaign, we haven’t seen real-world malware using this.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between June 22 and June 29. As with previous round-ups, 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. 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.

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Today, Talos is disclosing a vulnerability in VMWare Workstation that could result in Denial of Service.  VMWare Workstation is a widely used virtualization platform designed to run alongside a normal operating system, allowing users to use both virtualized and physical systems concurrently.

TALOS-2018-0540

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This blog post was authored by Edmund Brumaghin, Earl Carter and Andrew Williams.

Executive summary

Cisco Talos has analyzed Thanatos, a ransomware variant that is being distributed via multiple malware campaigns that have been conducted over the past few months. As a result of our research, we have released a new, free decryption tool to help victims recover from this malware. Multiple versions of Thanatos have been leveraged by attackers, indicating that this is an evolving threat that continues to be actively developed by threat actors with multiple versions having been distributed in the wild. Unlike other ransomware commonly being distributed, Thanatos does not demand ransom payments to be made using a single cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Instead, it has been observed supporting ransom payments in the form of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Zcash (ZEC), Ethereum (ETH) and others.

Additionally, due to issues present within the encryption process leveraged by this ransomware, the malware authors are unable to return the data to the victim, even if he or she pays the ransom. While previous reports seem to indicate this is accidental, specific campaigns appear to demonstrate that in some cases, this is intentional on the part of the distributor. In response to this threat, Talos is releasing ThanatosDecryptor, a free decryption tool that exploits weaknesses in the design of the file encryption methodology used by Thanatos. This utility can be used by victims to regain access to their data if infected by this ransomware.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between June 1 and June 15. As with previous round-ups, 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. 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.

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Cisco Talos has been tracking a new campaign involving the FormBook malware since May 2018 that utilizes four different malicious documents in a single phishing email. FormBook is an inexpensive stealer available as “malware as a service.” This means an attacker can purchase a compiled piece of malware based on their desired parameters. This is commonplace with crimeware and stealer type malware such as FormBook. It is able to record keystrokes, steal passwords (stored locally and in web forms) and can take screenshots.

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