New KONNI Campaign References North Korean Missile Capabilities

This blog was authored by Paul Rascagneres

Executive Summary

We recently wrote about the KONNI Remote Access Trojan (RAT) which has been distributed by a small number of campaigns over the past 3 years. We have identified a new distribution campaign which took place on 4th July. The malware used in this campaign has similar features to that distributed earlier in 2017 with the following changes:

A new decoy document copy/pasted from an article published on the 3rd of July by Yonhap News Agency in Korea;

The dropper includes a 64 bit version of KONNI;

A new CC infrastructure consisting of a climbing club website.

North Korea conducted a test missile launch on 3rd July. This campaign appears to be directly related to the launch and the ensuing discussion of North Korean missile technology. This is consistent with previous KONNI distribution campaigns which have also frequently mentioned North Korea.