Rewterz Threat Alert – Confucious APT Targeting Victims in Pakistan and Kashmir

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

Some surveillance tools are being used by the advanced persistent threat group (APT) Confucius, which first appeared in 2013 as a state-sponsored, pro-India actor primarily pursuing Pakistani and other South Asian targets. Targets of these tools include personnel linked to Pakistan’s military, nuclear authorities, and Indian election officials in Kashmir. Hornbill and SunBird have sophisticated capabilities to exfiltrate SMS, encrypted messaging app content, and geolocation, among other types of sensitive information.

SunBird has been disguised as applications that include:

• Security services, such as the fictional “Google Security Framework”
• Apps tied to specific locations (“Kashmir News”) or activities (“Falconry Connect” and “Mania Soccer”)
• Islam-related applications (“Quran Majeed”).

The majority of applications appear to target Muslim individuals.

The operators behind Hornbill are extremely interested in a user’s WhatsApp communications. In addition to exfiltrating message content and sender information of messages, Hornbill records WhatsApp calls by detecting an active call by abusing Android’s accessibility services. The exploitation of Android’s accessibility services in this manner is a trend in Android surveillanceware. This enables the threat actor to avoid the need for privilege escalation on a device.

Some notable targets included an individual who applied for a position at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, individuals with numerous contacts in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), as well as officers responsible for electoral rolls (Booth Level Officers) located in the Pulwama district of Kashmir.

Hornbill application icons impersonate various chat and system applications.

Impact

• Data Exfiltration
• Access to Personal Information
• Privilege Escalation
• Code Execution

Indicators of Compromise

Domain Name

• cucuchat[.]com
• pieupdate[.]online
• samaatv[.]online
• tea-time[.]link

Hostname

• wixten[.]000webhostapp[.]com
• sunshinereal[.]000webhostapp[.]com
• global134[.]000webhostapp[.]com
• data10[.]000webhostapp[.]com
• chatk[.]goldenbirdcoin[.]com
• msoffice[.]user-assist[.]site
• syncronize[.]3utilities[.]com

MD5

• 6b906764a35508a7fd266cdd512e46b1
• 7707871515e16c8e8461ced7af1cacdd
• 912141bb5b4020c2cc75a77c37928a3b
• 915f528202b036dc5d660f44c187f121
• 9f54962d644966cfad560cb606aeade2
• e13134c8411557ce9c9e58d57b855a62

SHA-256

• fc0c90044b94b080f307c16494369a0796ac1d4e74e7912ba79c15cca241801c
• 2f5fc653550b0b5d093427263b26892e3468e125686eb41206319c7060212c40
• 07277c9f33d0ae873c2be3742669594acc18c7aa93ecadb8b2ce9b870baceb2f
• b9b5a9fa0ad7f802899e82e103a6c2c699c09390b1a79ae2b357cacc68f1ca8e
• 4500851dad1ac87165fc938fe5034983c10423f800bbc2661741f39e43ab8c8d

SHA1

• 01a91eb4cf0a8cfd048d98d3006e7b39a3d61f81
• 03d199cff2be8667932933d1bcb6bb58d364545a
• 07f1b2d8b34ce31296f6f5fe336ebae90293119e
• 0cc49097778372fdf1ba2143e31a8f235342f9c9
• 15e18ac163275bdcf8e391a90127db5206ab4fdd
• 1f1bab3c5a60275384083ef9e2a5b9fe6c194a35
• 257bb82955818c1b3e2fc9581475c3d71df489e6
• 27cabf2a24a87324f922becd5ae2dcf7bf4ae4bd
• 2ecb5b88b12ba44cfce2f51df7f16fbd4754aea2
• 2fd402c23f6827c049b92af19d4815c03cde407f
• 3372458b73d3d5c3957a75dfe6cff62c5cd3cd4f
• 41268c45dc2453469ea8a0a0c615bdb562d1d9de
• 665d23eda84cd008ccde013bde6a836976bcc4fc
• 6779ebdd14113ce304172b078d859684248ee114
• 6b75e6df7744a232a350658ad06e9574483a0b8b
• 6bb91b2b97f08eb116982a5039d859ada94c37fd
• 704579a14a2ee80c89ad12019e19e50eb27dffea
• 77867ddb68b68a340ccdb79bd9d46281d5956fa5
• 8ae67888befb4f01f216d94f07051fc047150ceb
• 9b10e71f3d38e73d3637bf14d93404175bf4c276
• 9b684cff07f98083bdb085cb846929ebca2c3df1
• a0ed91b759a0015145ab301a3bba8f6cd868b394
• a38931d68b26f04a94241f2155bcbf465b3fa99a
• a4161cfe2d6146566094ee979ea893cd2fe3ae72
• a5224bf9444736970dc357da3b309ad089aa7912
• a6128100cd9c505e12af16a163d4fea35c42808a
• ae1cd2a583082eeb540c567a051135d5147e97db
• afdc1db55e84e868e8ecdb3489309e1e19453779
• b6b239ccef57a261a254f5167357dc9096618939
• b847ffa3d097c9eb1ddfc0dd3133582988fde885
• be524a5a42b4b3f48f5571311f9be683024b6939
• c504cef5e0e04b15d21388e6f9cc2c320071d50b
• df5188225ab6de0a6e71635e997c4473c02d6527
• e01729e5ceb827318e5198a24a12ae6d6bbc4ab3
• e3cd30bbc7e9e0b8c4275c4d2b8ac876a7fc9b9b
• fc2929a021ca1e83f0d87ca9c9c85df0057373e5
• fde11af0c9ede7ad1f2b4e8bd6d55c1ef90eff72
• 2a943b5868de4facf52d4f4c1b63f83eacd882a2
• 8c30786f4f2de4fb3d9ca8ad8a542a078d3e3ff7
• bcbf14769495126763ca3b73c486b38e0a87116a
• f44d327b2d8109f9b2b5cfcf7fdc725f37dee803
• 6fd4d5523c008f62bda8212f048cb15098fcefe0

Remediation

• Block the threat indicators at their respective controls.
• Do not install untrusted android applications from any source.
• Be careful when granting permissions to android applications and services.