Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence - April 17–21

The Good

Cyberattacks continue to grow in complexity creating overwhelming consequences. Therefore, protecting these devices against any cyber threat requires a collaborative effort from individuals, organizations, and law enforcement authorities. Keeping this aspect in view, the agencies from Five Eyes countries have issued a cybersecurity best practice guide to improve the security posture of smart city systems. Meanwhile, the EU Commission is working on new security regulations with the aim to boost defense and establish a common incident response plan across EU member states.

• The CISA, in collaboration with the NSA, the FBI, the NCSC-UK, the ACSC, the CCCS, and the NCSC-NZ, has issued guidelines on best cybersecurity practices for smart cities. It provides an overview of risks associated with ICT supply chain risks, interconnected attack surfaces, and increased use of automation in operations.
• The European Commission has published the first draft of its Cyber Solidarity Act which focuses on improving cybersecurity across EU member states and establishing a common incident response plan. The new regulations include three major areas of interest; the establishment of a European Cybersecurity Shield, the introduction of a new Cyber Emergency Mechanism, and the creation of the Cybersecurity Incident Review Mechanism.
• The HHS cybersecurity task force has updated the Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP) with three new resources to help healthcare organizations address cybersecurity risks effectively. The HICP 2023, which is based on inputs from more than 150 industry experts, includes a free educational platform to train staff on social engineering, malicious data loss, identity theft, and more.
• ESET researchers, with the help of GitHub, have temporarily disrupted the operations of RedLine Stealer. The experts managed to pull off this act as the malware used GitHub repositories as dead-drop resolvers in the control panel. ESET shared this finding with GitHub, which immediately suspended the repositories.

The Bad

Despite the positive developments, the cybersecurity space witnessed some massive data leak incidents arising due to misconfigured cloud assets. More than 8,000 poorly-secured servers were found exposing sensitive information such as login credentials, database backups, and configuration files online. On the other hand, an unprotected database belonging to the Philippine National Police had laid bare over 1.2 million records containing personal details and tax identification numbers of its employees. Researchers also warned about obsolete routers leaking corporate network information, which increases the chance of fraudulent schemes.

• A misconfigured database exposed more than 1.2 million police records on the internet. The database also included 800 GB of information on people who applied for employment in law enforcement in the Philippines, along with documents on tax identification numbers of law enforcers. It is believed that the database had been left exposed for at least six weeks.
• Network infrastructure provider CommScope confirmed suffering a ransomware attack that took place last month. Vice Society had claimed responsibility for the attack and for stealing the sensitive data of over 30,000 employees.
• Capita, a London-based corporation, admitted to a ransomware attack that may have compromised the data of some of its staff, potential customers, and vendors. Meanwhile, BlackBasta claimed responsibility for the attack and further added that it has put up for sale sensitive data stolen from the firm. This includes bank account information, addresses, and passport photos.
• Researchers indexed more than 8,000 misconfigured servers that exposed sensitive information and database backups to the public. Furthermore, over 18,000 comma-separated value files and another 2,000 SQL database files could also be accessed without any authentication. This huge volume of exposed data can be used by attackers to launch malicious attacks.
• Researchers warned that decommissioned core routers from Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet were found leaking corporate network information, including credentials, and data on applications, customers, vendors, and partners. The applications exposed in the routers included Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, Spiceworks SQL, VMWare Horizon View, and Salesforce.
• Point32Health, a New England health insurance firm, is dealing with a ransomware attack that impacted several of its systems. The firm detected the attack on April 17 after it was unable to access the systems for service members, accounts, brokers, and providers. Upon detecting the unauthorized activity, it proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat.
• Payment processing giant NCR disclosed that it was a victim of a ransomware attack that occurred last weekend. This caused a PoS outage and affected multiple companies using the service. One of the affected systems was Aloha, the payments service which is used by multiple restaurants.
• Microsoft uncovered a Remcos RAT campaign that targeted organizations dealing with tax preparation, financial services, CPA, bookkeeping, and accounting. As part of the campaign, the attackers relied on legitimate links that redirected recipients to fake tax documents sent by clients.

New Threats

Besides data leaks, a surge in the adoption of new attack tactics and techniques was also observed this week. While the MuddyWater APT was found abusing yet another legitimate tool, SimpleHelp, to bypass traditional security checks, the Play ransomware group upgraded its arsenal with two new .NET tools to improve the effectiveness of its attacks. Furthermore, a hacking tool, dubbed AuKill, came in handy for intruders deploying backdoors and ransomware in BYOVD attacks.

• The Iranian threat actor group, MuddyWater, was found abusing yet another legitimate tool, called SimpleHelp, to ensnare more victims. The tool enabled threat actors to take control of the victim’s devices and maintain persistence without being detected by traditional security tools. The tool also allowed the attackers to execute various arbitrary commands on the targeted device.
• Government agencies in the U.S. and the U.K issued a joint advisory to warn organizations about attacks targeting an old vulnerability in Cisco routers. The attacks are attributed to the Fancy Bear threat group and the flaw in question is CVE-2017-6742. It can allow unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted device by sending specially crafted SNMP packets. The attackers are exploiting the vulnerability to deploy a custom malware, named Jaguar Tooth.
• The Play ransomware group added two custom tools written in .NET to expand the effectiveness of its attacks. Named Grixba and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), these tools enable attackers to keep track of users in compromised networks and gather information about security, backup, and remote administration software.
• Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) deciphered multiple Russian threat actor groups involved in different large-scale phishing attacks. One of them is identified as FROZENLAKE, which is active since 2022. The attackers focus on targeting webmail users in Eastern Europe. Another notable adversary is FROZENBARENTS (aka Sandworm), which was engaged in attacks against organizations affiliated with the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) and other entities in the energy sector in Ukraine.
• Researchers observed a new variant of LockBit ransomware that focuses on disrupting macOS systems. While the variant is in active development, it is revealed that the malware enables threat actors to encrypt files stored on ARM-powered Macs.
• In another update, the NCSC warned about a new class of Russian adversaries that focused on performing DDoS attacks against critical entities such as airports, parliaments, and government sites. Hence the agency advised all organizations to implement recommended actions to increase the security of system administration.
• State-backed hacking groups are using a new hacking tool, dubbed AuKill, to disable EDR software on target’s systems before deploying backdoors and ransomware in BYOVD attacks. The tool uses several threads to continuously probe and disable security processes and services. So far, the tool has been used in at least three separate attacks launched by Medusa Locker and LockBit.
• A subgroup of the Phosphorous APT group has been found leveraging N-day vulnerabilities to launch low-volume phishing attacks against US critical infrastructure including seaports, energy companies, and transit systems. Among the other tactics are the use of post-compromise tools, an obscure C2 communication protocol, and a third custom implant.
• Poorly secured MS-SQL servers were found being hacked to deploy Trigona ransomware and encrypt all files. The servers were breached via brute-force attacks. After connecting to a server, the attackers deployed a malware dubbed CLR Shell in the first stage and Trigona ransomware in the last stage of the attack.
• The CISA released a new report on ICONICSTEALER, an info-stealer used in the supply chain attack against 3CX’s desktop app. The malware is designed to primarily steal sensitive data from a victim user's web browser.
• Secureworks researchers found a new wave of SEO poisoning attacks that distributed Bumblebee malware on victims’ systems. Booby-trapped versions of legitimate software were pushed in the Google search ads to trick unsuspecting users into downloading it.
• Threat actors abused Eval PHP, an abandoned WordPress plugin, to take over and backdoor websites. The plugin allowed attackers to insert malicious PHP code into pages and posts on WordPress sites. These malicious codes are executed every time the posts or the pages are opened in a browser.