Cisco Threat Research Blog

Most users assume they are safe when surfing the web on a daily basis. But information-stealing malware can operate in the background of infected systems, looking to steal users’ passwords, track their habits online and hijack personal information.

Cisco Talos has monitored adversaries which are behind a wave of ongoing campaigns dropping well-known information-stealer like Agent Tesla, Loki-bot and others since at least January 2019. The adversaries using custom droppers, which inject the final malware into common processes on the victim machine. Once infected, the malware can steal information from many popular pieces of software, including the Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox web browsers.

The injection techniques we’re seeing in the wild are well-known and have been used for many years, but with the adversaries customizing them, traditional anti-virus systems are having a hard time detecting the embedded malware. In this post, we’ll walk through one of these campaigns in detail and how the different stages of the dropper hide the malware. Any internet user is a potential target of this malware, and if infected, has the potential to completely take away a user’s online privacy.

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Attackers’ trends tend to come and go. But one popular technique we’re seeing at this time is the use of living-off-the-land binaries — or “LoLBins”. LoLBins are used by different actors combined with fileless malware and legitimate cloud services to improve chances of staying undetected within an organisation, usually during post-exploitation attack phases.

Living-off-the-land tactics mean that attackers are using pre-installed tools to carry out their work. This makes it more difficult for defenders to detect attacks and researchers to identify the attackers behind the campaign. In the attacks we’re seeing, there are binaries supplied by the victim’s operating system that are normally used for legitimate purposes, but in these cases, are being abused by the attackers.

In this post, we will take a look at the use of LOLBins through the lense of Cisco’s product telemetry.We’ll also walk through the most frequently abused Windows system binaries and measure their usage by analyzing data from Cisco AMP for Endpoints.

You’ll also find an overview of a few recent campaigns we’ve seen using LoLBins, along with recommendations for how to detect malicious LoLBins’ activities.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Nov 1 and Nov8. 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.

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Reference:

talos.tru.json  – 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.

This blog post was authored by Nick Biasini and Edmund Brumaghin of Cisco Talos.

Executive Summary

With the U.S. presidential primaries just around the corner, even malware authors can’t help but get behind the frenzy. Cisco Talos recently discovered several malware distribution campaigns where the adversaries were utilizing the names and likenesses of several prominent political figures, chief among them U.S. President Donald Trump. We discovered a series of ransomware, screenlockers, remote access trojans (RATs) and other malicious applications that play off of Trump’s likeness, as well as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Some of the applications are designed to coerce victims into paying ransom demands, while others could be used to gain backdoor access to systems and provide attackers the ability to operate within organizational networks. In many cases, it is clear that the authors of these applications were motivated by their political beliefs, which were reflected in the software that they created. In this post, we’ll analyze several of these examples and provide a look at the types of malware they deployed.

There is a wide array of threats that adversaries are willing to deliver through any means necessary, including leveraging political themes and overtones. This is one of the reasons why organizations need to be diligent in protecting their environments through various technologies, applying best practices, and taking a thorough defense-in-depth approach when implementing various security controls. Additionally, ensure you have an employee information security education program that exposes users to the variety of lures that can be leveraged by adversaries to deliver these threats.

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Cisco Talos recently discovered a new server hosting a large stockpile of malicious files. Our analysis of these files shows that these attackers were able to obtain a deep level of access to victims’ infrastructure — all of which allowed us to identify several targets of these attacks, including one American manufacturing company. Talos notified these targets of the attack.

We found a great variety of malicious files on this server, ranging from ransomware like the DopplePaymer, to credit card capture malware like the TinyPOS, as well as some loaders that execute code delivered directly from the command and control (C2)

The data found on this server shows how malicious actors can diversify their activities to target different organizations and individuals, while still using the same infrastructure. The tools we studied paint a picture of an adversary that is resourceful and has a widespread infrastructure shared across different operations.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Oct 25 and Nov 1. 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.

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Reference:

TRU11012019  – 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.

Mobile stalkerware has all sorts of wide-ranging consequences. The creators of these types of apps can track user’s locations, see their social media usage and more. And they certainly open the door for abuse by governments hoping to spy on their citizens, parents looking to track their children or controlling spouses hoping to track every move their partners make. This class of software exists to surreptitiously get and provide this personal information, sometimes in real time.

Cisco Talos recently spotted a wave of vendors hawking this software, designed to spy on unsuspecting users. We observed apps across the globe — including activities in countries that have some of the worst human rights records — with vendors offering language- and country-specific services. In all, there were 87 vendors we discovered as part of our research, which we believes poses a serious threat to at-risk individuals. The stalkerware space is completely unregulated, and these apps are allowed to exist on many app stores for extended periods of time, with their creators even offering easy to follow tutorials online as to how to trick users into downloading these apps. This is an easily accessible, yet volatile, market.

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Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Oct 18 and Oct 25. 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:

TRU10252019 – 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.

The Gustuff banking trojan is back with new features, months after initially appearing targeting financial institutions in Australia. Cisco Talos first reported on Gustuff in April. Soon after, the actors behind Gustuff started by changing the distribution hosts and later disabled its command and control (C2) infrastructure. The actor retained control of their malware since there is a secondary admin channel based on SMS.

The latest version of Gustuff no longer contains hardcoded package names, which dramatically lowers the static footprint when compared to previous versions. On the capability side, the addition of a “poor man scripting engine” based on JavaScript provides the operator with the ability to execute scripts while using its own internal commands backed by the power of JavaScript language. This is something that is very innovative in the Android malware space.

The first version of Gustuff that we analyzed was clearly based on Marcher, another banking trojan that’s been active for several years. Now, Gustuff has lost some similarities from Marcher, displaying changes in its methodology after infection.

Today, Gustuff still relies primarily on malicious SMS messages to infect users, mainly targeting users in Australia. Although Gustuff has evolved, the best defense remains token-based two-factor authentication, such as Cisco Duo, combined with security awareness and the use of only official app stores.

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