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
- 357ef37979b02b08120895ae5175eb0a
SHA-256
- e59f0aa13e2da2a0cd5c07e882014d9b37927b9bd9a493f83c2bcb103e5a739c
SHA-1
- eac7472c61013ee22225299bd2e34177bda83179
URL
- http[:]//asssambly[.]mywebcommunity[.]org/file/upload/list[.]php?query=1
Remediation
- Always be suspicious about emails sent by unknown senders.
- Never click on links/attachments sent by unknown senders.
- Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
- Search for IOCs in your environment.