July 1, 2025
Proactive Defense: The Importance of Incident Response Planning in Cybersecurity
North Korean APT Kimsuky aka Black Banshee – Active IOCs
October 24, 2024Multiple Oracle Products Vulnerabilities
October 24, 2024North Korean APT Kimsuky aka Black Banshee – Active IOCs
October 24, 2024Multiple Oracle Products Vulnerabilities
October 24, 2024
Severity
High
Analysis Summary
APT28 is one of Russia's longest-running APTs and its operations date back to at least 2007. The group supports Russia in its strategic operations against the U.S., countries of the former Soviet Union, Europe, and now Asia. These attacks mostly involve cyber crimes against the defense and military of targeted countries. To support Russia's national interests, APT28 compromises the targeted country's operation, steals its data, and then leaks it to its government. Using the aliases Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Tsar Team, STRONTIUM, and Sofacy Group, APT28 attacks using a spoofed website and phishing emails containing malicious links.
In Feb 2022, APT 28 (allegedly) attacked Eastern European countries using Empire and Invoke-Obfuscation. The MSHTML Remote Code Execution vulnerability, CVE-2021-40444, was used by their threat actors.
The recent phishing campaign uses JavaScript & "ms-search" to deploy custom MASEPIE, STEELHOOK, OCEAN MAP, and OpenSSH to target Ukrainian and Polish organizations.
The use of PowerShell scripts in cyberattacks is not uncommon. Malicious actors often employ PowerShell to execute various activities, including reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. By using PowerShell, attackers can leverage the functionality and privileges provided by the Windows operating system to perform their malicious actions.
Impact
- Information Theft
- Data Exfiltration
- Exposure of Sensitive Data
Indicators of Compromise
Domain Name
- ukraine.html-5.me
MD5
- edeeb6bb575d972ae8d11805eaaaa681
SHA-256
- a097400e060edf1190002a30c64506da0f72f92f96ed526b01cb4c00d5df2f0c
SHA1
- 5d0b7b416194652c0f3112bd07abd9224dff1049
Remediation
- Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
- Search for Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) in your environment utilizing your respective security controls.
- Ensure that general security policies are employed including implementing strong passwords, correct configurations, and proper administration security policies.
- Emails from unknown senders should always be treated with caution.
- Never open links or attachments from unknown senders.