Severity
High
Analysis Summary
Kimsuky is a North Korean nation-state actor that has been active since 2012. It primarily targets South Korean government agencies and conducts espionage activities against targets in the United States and Japan. Kimsuky has dropped a custom backdoor which they are calling Gold Dragon. Kimsuky deploys Gold Dragon, a second-stage backdoor, after a file-less PowerShell-deploying first-stage attack is dropped.
This group has the ability to put up phishing infrastructure that can effectively imitate well-known websites and fool users into entering their passwords. Kimsuky APT is also known by the names Thallium, Black Banshee, and Velvet Chollima. KISA (Korean Internet & Security Agency) published a full investigation of Kimsuky’s phishing infrastructure and TTPs used to attack South Korea in December 2020. To get Initial Access to victim networks, Kimsuky’s threat actors use a variety of spear phishing and social engineering techniques. This group is responsible for the 2014 Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise, and other major campaigns like Operation Kabar Cobra(2019).
Impact
- Information theft and espionage
- Exposure of sensitive data
Indicators of Compromise
MD5
- d6730f10a839d128e94b5aa05d9fb1ec
SHA-256
- 2c20ac485fd55bd1a5c4b75c5ba521e5b19912325737617178dfcb5a4e408aef
SHA-1
- c58965837f7925c5e4e5e2c71db3311b52610286
Remediation
- Block all threat indicators at their respective controls.
- Search for IOCs in your environment.
- Always be suspicious about emails sent by unknown senders..