Ransomware Is Not a “Malware Problem” – It's a Criminal Business Model

Posted on by Ryan Olson

Today Unit 42 published our latest paper on ransomware, which has quickly become one of the greatest cyberthreats facing organizations around the world. As a business model, ransomware has proven to be highly effective in generating revenue for cybercriminals in addition to causing significant operational impact to affected organizations. It is largely victim agnostic, spanning the globe and affecting all major industry verticals. Small organizations, large enterprises, individual home users – all are potential targets.

Ransomware has existed in various forms for decades; but, in the last three years, criminals have perfected the key components of these attacks. This has led to an explosion of new malware families, which make the technique work, and drawn new actors into participating in these lucrative schemes.

To execute a successful ransomware attack, an adversary must be able to do the following: Continue reading "Ransomware Is Not a “Malware Problem” – It's a Criminal Business Model"

KRBanker Targets South Korea Through Adware and Exploit Kits

Posted on by Vicky Ray

Online banking services have been a prime target of cyber criminals for many years and attacks continue to grow. Targeting online banking users and stealing their credentials has yielded huge profits for the criminals behind these campaigns. Unit 42 has been tracking "KRBanker" AKA 'Blackmoon', since late last year. This campaign specifically targets banks of the Republic of Korea. On April 23, researchers at Fortinet published a blog describing the functionalities of the recent 'Blackmoon' campaign. Our objective in this blog is to share additional details on the distribution of the KRBanker or Blackmoon malware campaign and indicators of KRBanker samples.

Early variants of this campaign started surfacing in late September 2015. Though the number of KRBanker infection attempts was relatively low in 2015, we have noticed a gradual increase in the number of sessions since the start of 2016, and identified close to 2,000 unique samples of KRBanker and 200+ pharming server addresses in the last 6 months. Continue reading "KRBanker Targets South Korea Through Adware and Exploit Kits"

Bucbi Ransomware Is Back With a Ukrainian Makeover

Posted on by Josh Grunzweig

The Bucbi ransomware family, which dates back to early 2014, has received a significant update. In a recently observed attack, we also noted new tactics used to infect systems. The malware has historically been delivered via an HTTP download, most likely via an exploit kit or phishing email. However, in recent weeks, Palo Alto Networks researchers have observed attackers brute-forcing RDP accounts on Internet-facing Windows servers to deliver their malware. Additionally, the malware itself has been modified to no longer require an Internet connection.

Recent ransom notes left on infected systems identify the malware as belonging to the “Ukrainian Right Sector,” a far-right Ukrainian nationalist political party with paramilitary operations that opposes Russia but operate outside of the Ukrainian government’s authority. However, there are a number of Russian identifiers in the recent attacks. Consequently, it is unclear if the claims of responsibility by the “Ukrainian Right Sector” are accurate, and if so, what the reason behind and significance of the Russian identifiers. Continue reading "Bucbi Ransomware Is Back With a Ukrainian Makeover"

AutoFocus Lenz: Taking the Blue (Team) Pill

Posted on by Jeff White

The Palo Alto Networks AutoFocus threat intelligence services accelerates analysis and response workflows for unique, targeted attacks. The services further make an immense set of threat intelligence available via the AutoFocus API, which can enrich existing security systems or workflows. Today, security teams can easily build scripts on top of this data using the AutoFocus Python Client Library (af_lenz.py) script, providing an even simpler way to extract and automate actionable information from AutoFocus, which can be used to respond or proactively take action, against security threats.

The AutoFocus Lenz script builds on top of the Python client library by providing a set of outputs that enable rapid extraction of relevant information that can be used for operational intelligence, or further research, by performing various analytical tasks for you.

To demonstrate some of the scenarios where this tool may be helpful, we’ve put together a short video showing it in action. Continue reading "AutoFocus Lenz: Taking the Blue (Team) Pill"

Prince of Persia: Infy Malware Active In Decade of Targeted Attacks

Posted on by Tomer Bar

Attack campaigns that have very limited scope often remain hidden for years. If only a few malware samples are deployed, it’s less likely that security industry researchers will identify and connect them together.

In May 2015, Palo Alto Networks WildFire detected two e-mails carrying malicious documents from a genuine and compromised Israeli Gmail account, sent to an Israeli industrial organization. One e-mail carried a Microsoft PowerPoint file named “thanks.pps” (VirusTotal), the other a Microsoft Word document named “request.docx”.

Around the same time, WildFire also captured an e-mail containing a Word document (“hello.docx”) with an identical hash as the earlier Word document, this time sent to a U.S. Government recipient. Continue reading "Prince of Persia: Infy Malware Active In Decade of Targeted Attacks"

Afraidgate: Major Exploit Kit Campaign Swaps Locky Ransomware for CryptXXX

Posted on by Brad Duncan

In mid-April 2016, a campaign using Nuclear Exploit Kit (EK) to distribute Locky ransomware switched to using the Angler EK to install CryptXXX ransomware. This campaign uses gates registered through FreeDNS at afraid.org. We are calling this the Afraidgate campaign. Although we continue to see Locky distributed through malicious spam, we have not noticed Locky from EK traffic since mid-April.

An Evolving Campaign

In March 2016, we observed Nuclear EK from the Afraidgate campaign spreading Locky ransomware. A consistent gate pattern in the infection chain pointed to the same campaign using Neutrino EK the previous month. Now this campaign points to Angler EK. Also with the change in EKs, the malware has switched from Locky to CryptXXX. Both of these malware families employ the ransomware business model, in which they encrypt a user’s files and demand a ransom in return for the decryption keys. The following chart illustrates the changes in this particular campaign: Continue reading "Afraidgate: Major Exploit Kit Campaign Swaps Locky Ransomware for CryptXXX"

2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR): Insights from Unit 42

Posted on by Ryan Olson

The ninth annual edition of Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) has just been released, and Palo Alto Networks is proud to have contributed data and analysis to help make the report as comprehensive as possible. Palo Alto Networks is committed to sharing threat intelligence across the security industry, exposing the evolving nature of threats, in order for organizations to better protect themselves.

This year we extracted a massive dataset from the AutoFocus threat intelligence service on over 38 million sessions carrying over 2.7 million unique malware samples. We worked with the Verizon team to add context to these samples with AutoFocus tag data, illuminating what campaign or family they were associated with. Continue reading "2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR): Insights from Unit 42"

New Poison Ivy RAT Variant Targets Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists

Posted on by Micah Yates

Malware writers have always sought to develop feature-rich, easy to use tools that are also somewhat hard to detect via both host- and network-based detection systems.  For many years, one of the go-to families of malware used by both less-skilled and advanced actors has been the Poison Ivy (aka PIVY) RAT. Poison Ivy has a convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for managing compromised hosts and provides easy access to a rich suite of post-compromise tools. It is no surprise it’s now being used against pro-democracy organizations and supporters in Hong Kong that have long been a target of advanced attack campaigns.

Despite its simplicity and prevalence, detection rates for both AV and IDS systems has always been surprisingly low for Poison Ivy.  Possibly for these reasons, since the mid-2000s threat actors have frequently used Poison Ivy to establish beachheads within target organizations, although this occurs much less frequently today than in years past. Since the last public release of version 2.3.2 in 2008, new variants of the tool have been relatively rare, especially versions which modify the core communication protocols.

Unit 42 observed a new version of Poison Ivy which uses the popular search order hijacking, a/k/a “DLL Sideloading,” technique frequently seen in malware such as PlugX. The Poison Ivy builder has an output format option of either PE file or shellcode, and in this case the backdoor was built as shellcode and then obfuscated to help prevent detection.  While analyzing the sample, we also observed a modified network communication protocol which will be discussed in this blog. Continue reading "New Poison Ivy RAT Variant Targets Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists"

Python-Based PWOBot Targets European Organizations

Posted on by Josh Grunzweig

We have discovered a malware family named ‘PWOBot’ that is fairly unique because it is written entirely in Python, and compiled via PyInstaller to generate a Microsoft Windows executable. The malware has been witnessed affecting a number of Europe-based organizations, particularly in Poland. Additionally, the malware is delivered via a popular Polish file-sharing web service.

The malware itself provides a wealth of functionality, including the ability to download and execute files, execute Python code, log keystrokes, spawn a HTTP server, and mine digital currency via the victim’s CPUs and GPUs.

There are at least 12 variants of PWOBot, and the malware has been observed in attacks dating back to late 2013. More recent attacks have been observed affecting organizations between mid-to-late 2015. Continue reading "Python-Based PWOBot Targets European Organizations"

Click-Fraud Ramdo Malware Family Continues to Plague Users

Posted on by Josh Grunzweig

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Ramdo is a family of malware that performs fraudulent website ‘clicks.’ Ramdo malware activity first surfaced in late 2013 and has since continued to infect machines worldwide, primarily through the use of exploit kits. In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into the technical aspects of the Ramdo malware itself, providing insight into how the malware functions, as well as techniques on how analysts can reverse-engineer this particular threat.

This research is a joint effort from Unit 42 and Dell Secureworks Counter Threat Unit. For more information about the Ramdo threat, please also refer to the published blog post from Dell Secureworks CTU.

For the remainder of this blog post, we will be dealing with the following sample, which first surfaced on January 22, 2016. Continue reading "Click-Fraud Ramdo Malware Family Continues to Plague Users"

Ransomware: Locky, TeslaCrypt, Other Malware Families Use New Tool To Evade Detection

Posted on by Jeff White

Today we identified a new tool actively being used by the Locky ransomware family to evade detection and potentially infect endpoints. Unit 42 identified slight changes in Locky detonations through the AutoFocus threat intelligence service, correlating global data to discover a new tool being used to pack multiple ransomware families. Adversaries are constantly seeking new techniques to bypass security controls, and based on data from AutoFocus, this represents a widespread update to their tradecraft.

In our analysis, multiple malware samples stood out due to what seemed like obfuscated API calls coming from a dictionary of embedded terms to resolve system functions and hide their true capabilities from commonly used static analysis tools. Continue reading "Ransomware: Locky, TeslaCrypt, Other Malware Families Use New Tool To Evade Detection"

Don’t Be an April Fool: Inside a Common Phone Scam

Posted on by Robert Falcone

One of our team members on Unit 42 recently received a phone call from a scammer, and today being April Fool's Day we decided to write about how we played along with the scammer to learn about his operation.

Unit 42 analyst Robert received a phone call from a Tech Support scammer who told him his system was compromised and was seen performing illegal activities. The scam relied solely on social engineering, which is a technique to manipulate a victim into doing something or to give up information, but in this case was intended to get Robert to pay the scammer for unneeded system protection services. Social engineering is used in a majority of cyber crime and espionage attacks, albeit in this scam it was conducted over the phone and not via e-mail or social networking.

This blog, in Robert's voice, recounts the story of this unsolicited call and provides a glimpse into this scam operation. We intend this story to be light reading for security professionals, but hope that it provides awareness for less technical folks into the social engineering techniques used in these types of scams. Continue reading "Don’t Be an April Fool: Inside a Common Phone Scam"

How the EITest Campaign's Path to Angler EK Evolved Over Time

Posted on by Brad Duncan

In October 2014, Malwarebytes identified a campaign based on thousands of compromised websites that kicked off an infection chain to Angler exploit kit (EK). It was named "EITest" campaign, because "EITest" was a variable consistently found in injected scripts across all of the compromised websites. Malwarebytes noted some changes in this campaign in 2015 and 2016.

Like others in the cybersecurity threat research community, we have been tracking the EITest campaign. This blog post focuses on network traffic and how indicators have changed over time. Continue reading "How the EITest Campaign's Path to Angler EK Evolved Over Time"

ProjectM: Link Found Between Pakistani Actor and Operation Transparent Tribe

Posted on by Robert Falcone

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Unit 42 is currently researching an attack campaign that targets government and military personnel of India. This attack appears to overlap with the Operation Transparent Tribe and Operation C-Major campaigns that targeted Indian embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan, as well as the Indian military.

We are tracking the group of actors involved in this campaign as ‘ProjectM.’ During our research, we found a linkage between the infrastructure used by ProjectM and an individual from Pakistan. We cannot definitively confirm this individual is involved with this attack campaign, but the evidence that we will discuss in this blog post suggests that it is highly likely that this individual has some involvement with the threat group.

This blog post highlights the trail of evidence individuals leave on the Internet when they are not careful about disguising their identity. All of the information collected about this actor is public and accessible through open source research. Continue reading "ProjectM: Link Found Between Pakistani Actor and Operation Transparent Tribe"

Palo Alto Networks Researchers Discover Critical IE Vulnerabilities

Posted on by ryanolson

Palo Alto Networks researchers Tongbo Luo and Hui Gao were credited with the discoveries of new critical Microsoft vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer (IE) versions 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 on affected Windows clients. These vulnerabilities are documented in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS15-106 and MS15-112. Continue reading "Palo Alto Networks Researchers Discover Critical IE Vulnerabilities"

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