Threats Feed

APT33’s Dropshot, also known as StoneDrill, is a sophisticated wiper malware targeting organizations primarily in Saudi Arabia. Dropshot uses advanced anti-emulation techniques and obfuscation to evade detection. The malware decrypts its payload from an encrypted resource and employs anti-emulation strategies, including invalid Windows API calls. It also leverages zlib for decompression. This analysis focuses on decrypting Dropshot's encrypted resource to understand its functionality. The malware's association with APT33 and similarities to the Shamoon malware underscore its threat to targeted sectors.

APT33's Dropshot malware, also known as StoneDrill, targeted organizations primarily in Saudi Arabia. Dropshot, a sophisticated wiper malware, employs advanced anti-emulation techniques and string encryption to evade detection and analysis. The malware's high entropy suggests packed or compressed data, particularly in the .rsrc section, indicating hidden malicious content. This analysis focuses on decrypting the strings within Dropshot.

The Flying Kitten group conducted extensive espionage and surveillance campaigns from 2013 to 2014. Utilizing spearphishing, social engineering, and the "Stealer" malware, they targeted high-profile individuals, security researchers, and various sectors. The campaigns involved compromised social media accounts and phishing domains to gather credentials and sensitive information. The malware recorded keystrokes, took screenshots, and collected system data, focusing on credential harvesting rather than file exfiltration. This activity impacted targets in the United States, Israel, and global academia and business sectors.

The Iranian cyber groups Flying Kitten and Rocket Kitten exhibited overlapping tactics in credential theft and spearphishing, targeting entities in sectors like media, education, and technology across the UK, US, and Iran. Utilizing domains that mimicked legitimate services, such as Google and Microsoft, they orchestrated phishing campaigns to harvest user credentials. Their operations involved shared phishing toolkits and malware, including a keylogger, with connections back to Iranian infrastructure. Despite cessation of Flying Kitten activities post-2014, their tools and tactics were resurrected by Rocket Kitten, highlighting the persistent threat posed by these actors.

A Saudi Arabian Government entity has been targeted by an innovative attack that relies on macros within malicious Word documents and leverages various scripts rather than a binary payload. The attack uses a VBScript to lower security settings within Microsoft Word and Excel and fetches data from Pastebin. A PowerShell script then communicates with the C2 server and exfiltrates data, persistently remaining undetected and continuing to collect information from the targeted system. The primary targeted sector is the Government.

Unit 42 uncovered the TwoFace webshell, a sophisticated dual-component tool used by attackers for prolonged unauthorized access within a Middle Eastern organization's network. The TwoFace webshell enabled execution of various commands and facilitated lateral movement by copying itself across servers. The intruders utilized Mimikatz to harvest credentials and orchestrated their attacks from multiple international IP addresses, suggesting a broad geographic operational footprint. Analysis revealed that the attackers maintained access since at least June 2016, using obfuscated C# code on ASP.NET servers to remain undetected and manage the webshell payload.

The Iranian threat agent CopyKittens compromised multiple Israeli websites, including the Jerusalem Post, and one Palestinian Authority website between October 2016 and January 2017. The attackers bought access to the server to gain the access, inserting a single line of Javascript into existing libraries. This enabled them to load further malicious Javascript from a domain they controlled, selectively targeting users based on their IP addresses. The malicious payload used was the BeEF Browser Exploitation Framework.

CopyKitten, a known cyber-attack group, has launched a spearphishing campaign targeting the Israeli government’s Ministry of Communications. The investigation commenced with the identification of a suspicious domain that led to multiple related domains. One such domain closely mimicked the Israeli Prime Minister's SSL VPN login page and was used to drop a malicious Word document titled "Annual Survey.docx." This document had an embedded OLE object that communicated with a C2 server, signifying a well-planned attack. The campaign appears to be part of CopyKitten's ongoing activities against Israeli interests.

The BlackBerry Cylance threat research team's report offers a comprehensive analysis of the Disttrack malware, also known as Shamoon, renowned for its devastating attacks on system master boot records. The report traces the malware's history, its resurgence, and explores its technical operations, including network management capabilities and modular architecture. It particularly highlights Disttrack's impact on Saudi Arabia's critical infrastructure, demonstrating its potential for significant damage. This abstract succinctly captures the essence of the malware's threat and operational dynamics for a general audience.

In mid-November 2016, Mandiant responded to the Shamoon 2.0 malware attack targeting organizations in the Gulf states, marking the return of the suspected Iranian hacker group "Cutting Sword of Justice." This updated version of the 2012 Shamoon malware features embedded credentials, suggesting previous targeted intrusions for credential harvesting. Shamoon 2.0 performs subnet scanning, uses domain-specific credentials for unauthorized access, modifies system registries, and schedules tasks for execution. Its payload involves overwriting system files and wiping boot records, notably shifting imagery from a burning U.S. flag to a photograph of Alan Kurdi, symbolizing a devastating critique through cyber vandalism.

Clearsky's "Thamar Reservoir" report details a sustained Iranian cyber-attack campaign targeting over 550 individuals, primarily in the Middle East. The attacks, which began in 2014, used a variety of techniques, including spear-phishing emails with malware, phone calls, and compromised websites to create fake login pages. The attackers were persistent but lacked technical sophistication and made mistakes that aided the investigation. The report concludes that the campaign's targets and methods strongly suggest Iranian state sponsorship, and links it to other known Iranian cyber operations.

This Trend Micro report details the activities of Rocket Kitten, a cyber threat group targeting Israeli and European organisations. The report focuses on two campaigns: a malware campaign using the GHOLE malware, possibly dating back to 2011, and a suspected state-sponsored operation, 'Operation Woolen-GoldFish', involving spear-phishing attacks. Analysis shows possible links to an individual using the alias "Wool3n.H4t", possibly Iranian, and highlights the group's increasing sophistication despite using relatively simple techniques such as macros. The overall aim is to inform readers of Rocket Kitten's methods and suspected politically motivated objectives, suggesting Iranian involvement.

During the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, an operation themed "protective edge" spear phishing campaign emerged, targeting Israeli entities. The Gholee malware, delivered via a malicious Excel file named ‘Operation Protective Edge.xlsb’, utilized social engineering and VBA macro execution to compromise systems. The malware featured advanced obfuscation and evasion techniques, including ASCII character encoding and debugger detection, to avoid security measures. It communicated with a server in Kuwait, using an outdated SSL certificate, suggesting sophisticated threat actors possibly linked to state-sponsored activities.

The Madi campaign is a long-running cyber espionage operation that has been active for nearly a year, targeting individuals and organizations primarily across Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, and other countries worldwide. The attackers relied on basic but effective social engineering techniques, including spearphishing emails with malicious PowerPoint slide shows and executables disguised using Right-to-Left Override (RTLO) filenames. Once executed, the Delphi-based malware enabled extensive surveillance through keylogging, screenshot capture, audio recording, and large-scale data theft. Victims included government agencies, critical infrastructure engineering firms, financial institutions, academia, and selected individuals whose communications were monitored over extended periods.