June 24, 2025
Proactive Defense: The Importance of Incident Response Planning in Cybersecurity
Multiple Intel Products Vulnerabilities
November 18, 2024SideWinder APT Group aka Rattlesnake – Active IOCs
November 18, 2024Multiple Intel Products Vulnerabilities
November 18, 2024SideWinder APT Group aka Rattlesnake – Active IOCs
November 18, 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
MD5
- 4495b2812d6b35fd8d1c130531151a16
- 4a2db38af38cd2b3bb1836643cd5b731
SHA-256
- ad1a495282bb10362b9244993c2f6ef63d19359251f07eb5edea9787cb064c06
- ed6a6e1bfacaa0d18f44616342463cc6702a80d24ea1b7750f0b4305dade2673
SHA1
- b46599dc9a4f8865f670f5d166ef30575a89069c
- fa0c12a6d7b73d137bcd8c31a90623a521713b52
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.