Headline
Chinese Hackers Hiding Malware in Windows Logo
By Waqas Going by the name of Witchetty; the hacker group is targeting countries in Africa and the Middle East. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Chinese Hackers Hiding Malware in Windows Logo
The threat hunter team at Broadcom’s Symantec has issued an advisory, revealing that a Chinese cyberespionage group, also known as Witchetty and LookingFrog, is targeting entities in Africa and the Middle East using an updated toolset.
The group was first discovered in April 2022 by ESET. Its activities are characterized by using a first-stage backdoor (X4) and a second-stage payload (LookBack).
Advisory Reveals Attack Tactics of Witchetty
According to Symantec’s report, Witchetty is associated with a Chinese APT group Cicada, aka Stone Panda, and APT10, while its connection with TA410 is also being reported. This group was previously linked to targeted attacks against US energy firms.
The group is continuously evolving its toolset. It currently uses a steganographic technique for hiding a backdoor (Backdoor.Stegmap) in the MS Windows logo and targets governments in the Middle East.
Although not new, this is a rare technique where malware is hidden inside an image. The trojan can perform various functions, including removing and creating directories, manipulating files, launching/terminating processes, running/downloading executables, enumerating and killing processes, and stealing documents. It can also create, read, and delete registry keys.
Earlier this year, Cicada was targeting Japanese entities, but now it seems to have expanded its target list to diverse regions, including North America, Asia, and Europe.
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Attack Details
The infection chain entails using a DLL loader to fetch the GitHub bitmap file, a Microsoft Windows logo with malicious code hidden inside. This technique of hiding the payload helps the attackers host it on trusted, free services such as GitHub.
Witchetty targeted two Middle Eastern countries’ governments between February and September 2022, as well as an African country’s stock exchange. The group exploited the ProxyShell and ProxyLogon vulnerabilities, tracked as:
- CVE-2021-31207
- CVE-2021-34473
- CVE-2021-34523
- CVE-2021-26855
- CVE-2021-27065
According to Broadcom’s blog post, attackers install web shells on publicly exposed servers before stealing credentials and achieving lateral movement across the network.
They also installed malware on computers in an attempt to steal credentials via memory dumps, deploying web shells and backdoors, execution of commands, backdoor deployment, and installing custom tools. This tactic allows it an opportunity to infiltrate organizational networks and custom tools with other living-off-the-land tactics lets it maintain a long-term persistence in targeted organizations.
“Witchetty has demonstrated the ability to continually refine and refresh its toolset in order to compromise targets of interest.”
Symantec
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I am a UK-based cybersecurity journalist with a passion for covering the latest happenings in cyber security and tech world. I am also into gaming, reading and investigative journalism
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Update August 25, 2021: Microsoft strongly recommends that you update your servers with the most recent security updates available. CVE-2021-34473 (ProxyShell) CVE-2021-34523 (ProxyShell) CVE-2021-33766 Today is Update Tuesday – our commitment to provide a predictable monthly schedule to release updates and provide the latest protection to our customers. Update Tuesday is a monthly cycle when Microsoft releases patches for vulnerabilities that we have found proactively or that have been disclosed to us through our security partnerships under a coordinated vulnerability disclosure.
This guidance will help customers address threats taking advantage of the recently disclosed Microsoft Exchange Server on-premises vulnerabilities CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26858, CVE-2021-26857, and CVE-2021-27065, which are being exploited. We strongly urge customers to immediately update systems. Failing to address these vulnerabilities can result in compromise of your on-premises Exchange Server and, potentially, other parts of your internal network.
We have been actively working with customers through our customer support teams, third-party hosters, and partner network to help them secure their environments and respond to associated threats from the recent Exchange Server on-premises attacks. Based on these engagements we realized that there was a need for a simple, easy to use, automated solution that would meet the needs of customers using both current and out-of-support versions of on-premises Exchange Server.
Update March 15, 2021: If you have not yet patched, and have not applied the mitigations referenced below, a one-click tool, the Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool is now our recommended path to mitigate until you can patch. Microsoft previously blogged our strong recommendation that customers upgrade their on-premises Exchange environments to the latest supported version.
Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2021-26412, CVE-2021-26854, CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, CVE-2021-27078.
On March 2nd, we released several security updates for Microsoft Exchange Server to address vulnerabilities that are being used in ongoing attacks. Due to the critical nature of these vulnerabilities, we recommend that customers protect their organizations by applying the patches immediately to affected systems. The vulnerabilities affect Exchange Server versions 2013, 2016, and 2019, while Exchange Server 2010 is also being updated for defense-in-depth purposes.