BlackByte 2.0 Ransomware Infiltrate, Encrypt, and Extort in Just 5 Days

 Ransomware attacks are a major problem for organizations everywhere, and the severity of this problem continues to intensify.

Recently, Microsoft's Incident Response team investigated the BlackByte 2.0 ransomware attacks and exposed these cyber strikes' terrifying velocity and damaging nature.

The findings indicate that hackers can complete the entire attack process, from gaining initial access to causing significant damage, in just five days. They waste no time infiltrating systems, encrypting important data, and demanding a ransom to release it.

This shortened timeline poses a significant challenge for organizations trying to protect themselves against these harmful operations.

BlackByte ransomware is used in the final stage of the attack, using an 8-digit number key to encrypt the data.

To carry out these attacks, hackers use a powerful combination of tools and techniques. The investigation revealed that they take advantage of unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers—an approach that has proven highly successful. By exploiting this vulnerability, they gain initial access to the target networks and set the stage for their malicious activities.

The ransomware further employs process hollowing and antivirus evasion strategies to guarantee successful encryption and circumvent detection.

Furthermore, web shells equip them with remote access and control, enabling them to maintain a presence within the compromised systems.

The report also highlighted the deployment of Cobalt Strike beacons, which facilitate command and control operations. These sophisticated tools give attackers a wide range of skills, making it more difficult for organizations to defend against them.

Alongside these tactics, the investigation uncovered several other troubling practices cybercriminals use. They utilize "living-off-the-land" tools to blend in with legitimate processes and escape detection.

The ransomware modifies volume shadow copies on infected machines to prevent data recovery through system restore points. The attackers also deploy specially-crafted backdoors, ensuring continued access for the attackers even after the initial compromise.

The disturbing upsurge in ransomware attacks requires immediate action from organizations worldwide. In response to these findings, Microsoft has provided some practical recommendations.

Organizations are primarily urged to implement robust patch management procedures, ensuring they timely apply critical security updates. Enabling tamper protection is another essential step, as it strengthens security solutions against malicious attempts to disable or bypass them.

Tonto Team Uses Anti-Malware File to Launch Attacks on South Korean Institutions

 South Korean education, construction, diplomatic, and political institutions are at the receiving end of new attacks perpetrated by a China-aligned threat actor known as the Tonto Team.

"Recent cases have revealed that the group is using a file related to anti-malware products to ultimately execute their malicious attacks," the AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC)  in a report published this week.

Tonto Team, active since at least 2009, has a track record of targeting various sectors across Asia and Eastern Europe. Earlier this year, the group was attributed to an unsuccessful phishing attack on cybersecurity company Group-IB.

The attack sequence discovered by ASEC starts with a Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (.CHM) file that executes a binary file to side-load a malicious DLL file (slc.dll) and launch ReVBShell, an open source VBScript backdoor also put to use by another Chinese threat actor called Tick.

ReVBShell is subsequently leveraged to download a second executable, a legitimate Avast software configuration file (wsc_proxy.exe), to side-load a second rogue DLL (wsc.dll), ultimately leading to the deployment of the Bisonal remote access trojan.

"The Tonto Team is constantly evolving through various means such as using normal software for more elaborate attacks," ASEC said.

The use of CHM files as a distribution vector for malware is not limited to Chinese threat actors alone. Similar attack chains have been adopted by a North Korean nation-state group known as ScarCruft in attacks aimed at its southern counterpart to backdoor targeted hosts.

The adversary, also known as APT37, Reaper, and Ricochet Chollima, has since also utilized LNK files to distribute the RokRAT malware, which is capable of collecting user credentials and downloading additional payloads.

Severe Android and Novi Survey Vulnerabilities Under Active Exploitation

 The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added two vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

The two flaws are listed below -

• CVE-2023-20963 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Android Framework Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
• CVE-2023-29492 (CVSS score: TBD) - Novi Survey Insecure Deserialization Vulnerability

"Android Framework contains an unspecified vulnerability that allows for privilege escalation after updating an app to a higher Target SDK with no additional execution privileges needed," CISA said in an advisory for CVE-2023-20963.

Google, in its monthly Android Security Bulletin for March 2023, acknowledged "there are indications that CVE-2023-20963 may be under limited, targeted exploitation."

The development comes as tech news site Ars Technica disclosed late last month that Android apps digitally signed by China's e-commerce company Pinduoduo weaponized the flaw to seize control of the devices and steal sensitive data, citing analysis from mobile security firm Lookout.

Chief among the capabilities of the malware-laced app includes inflating the number of Pinduoduo daily active users and monthly active users, uninstalling rival apps, accessing notifications and location information, and preventing itself from being uninstalled.

CNN, in a follow-up report published at the start of the month, said an analysis of the 6.49.0 version of the app revealed code designed to achieve privilege escalation and even track user activity on other shopping apps.

The exploits allowed the malicious app to access users' contacts, calendars, and photo albums without their consent and requested a "large number of permissions beyond the normal functions of a shopping app," the news channel said.

It's worth pointing out that Google suspended Pinduoduo's official app from the Play Store in March, citing malware identified in "off-Play versions" of the software.

That said, it's still not clear how these APK files were signed with the same key used to sign the legitimate Pinduoduo app. This either point to a key leak, the work of a rogue insider, a compromise of Pinduoduo's build pipeline, or a deliberate attempt by the Chinese company to distribute malware.

The second vulnerability added to the KEV catalog relates to an insecure deserialization vulnerability in Novi Survey software that allows remote attackers to execute code on the server in the context of the service account.

The issue, which impacts Novi Survey versions prior to 8.9.43676, was addressed by the Boston-based provider earlier this week on April 10, 2023. It's currently not known how the flaw is being abused in real-world attacks.

To counter the risks posed by the vulnerabilities, Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies in the U.S. are advised to apply necessary patches by May 4, 2023.

Russia-Linked Hackers Launches Espionage Attacks on Foreign Diplomatic Entities

 The Russia-linked APT29 (aka Cozy Bear) threat actor has been attributed to an ongoing cyber espionage campaign targeting foreign ministries and diplomatic entities located in NATO member states, the European Union, and Africa.

According to Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service and the CERT Polska team, the observed activity shares tactical overlaps with a cluster tracked by Microsoft as Nobelium, which is known for its high-profile attack on SolarWinds in 2020.

Nobelium's operations have been attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), an organization that's tasked with protecting "individuals, society, and the state from foreign threats."

That said, the campaign represents an evolution of the Kremlin-backed hacking group's tactics, indicating persistent attempts at improving its cyber weaponry to infiltrate victim systems for intelligence gathering.

"New tools were used at the same time and independently of each other, or replacing those whose effectiveness had declined, allowing the actor to maintain a continuous, high operational tempo," the agencies said.

The attacks commence with spear-phishing emails impersonating European embassies that aim to entice targeted diplomats into opening malware-laced attachments under the guise of an invitation or a meeting.

Embedded within the PDF attachment is a booby-trapped URL that leads to the deployment of an HTML dropper called EnvyScout (aka ROOTSAW), which is then used as a conduit to deliver three previously unknown strains SNOWYAMBER, HALFRIG, and QUARTERRIG.

SNOWYAMBER, also referred to as GraphicalNeutrino by Recorded Future, leverages the Notion note-taking service for command-and-control (C2) and downloading additional payloads such as Brute Ratel.

QUARTERRIG also functions as a downloader capable of retrieving an executable from an actor-controlled server. HALFRIG, on the other hand, acts as a loader to launch the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation toolkit contained within it.

It's worth noting that the disclosure dovetails with recent findings from BlackBerry, which detailed a Nobelium campaign targeting European Union countries, with a specific emphasis on agencies that are "aiding Ukrainian citizens fleeing the country, and providing help to the government of Ukraine."

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Urgent: Microsoft Issues Patches for 97 Flaws, Including Active Ransomware Exploit

 It's the second Tuesday of the month, and Microsoft has released another set of security updates to fix a total of 97 flaws impacting its software, one of which has been actively exploited in ransomware attacks in the wild.

Seven of the 97 bugs are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. Interestingly, 45 of the shortcomings are remote code execution flaws, followed by 20 elevations of privilege vulnerabilities. The updates also follow fixes for 26 vulnerabilities in its Edge browser that were released over the past month.

The security flaw that's come under active exploitation is CVE-2023-28252 (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation bug in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver.

"An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," Microsoft said in an advisory, crediting researchers Boris Larin, Genwei Jiang, and Quan Jin for reporting the issue.

CVE-2023-28252 is the fourth privilege escalation flaw in the CLFS component that has come under active abuse in the past year alone after CVE-2022-24521, CVE-2022-37969, and CVE-2023-23376 (CVSS scores: 7.8). At least 32 vulnerabilities have been identified in CLFS since 2018.

According to Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, the vulnerability has been weaponized by a cybercrime group to deploy Nokoyawa ransomware against small and medium-sized businesses in the Middle East, North America, and Asia.

"CVE-2023-28252 is an out-of-bounds write (increment) vulnerability that can be exploited when the system attempts to extend the metadata block," Larin said. "The vulnerability gets triggered by the manipulation of the base log file."

In light of the ongoing exploitation of the flaw, CISA has added the Windows zero-day to its catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV), ordering Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to secure their systems by May 2, 2023.

Also patched are critical remote code execution flaws impacting DHCP Server Service, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol, Raw Image Extension, Windows Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, Windows Pragmatic General Multicast, and Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ).

The MSMQ bug tracked as CVE-2023-21554 (CVSS score: 9.8) and dubbed QueueJumper by Check Point, could lead to unauthorized code execution and take over a server by sending a specially crafted malicious MSMQ packet to an MSMQ server.

"The CVE-2023-21554 vulnerability allows an attacker to potentially execute code remotely and without authorization by reaching the TCP port 1801," Check Point researcher Haifei Li said. "In other words, an attacker could gain control of the process through just one packet to the 1801/tcp port with the exploit, triggering the vulnerability."

Two other flaws discovered in MSMQ, CVE-2023-21769, and CVE-2023-28302 (CVSS scores: 7.5), could be exploited to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition such as a service crash and Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

Microsoft has also updated its advisory for CVE-2013-3900, a 10-year-old WinVerifyTrust signature validation vulnerability, to include the following Server Core installation versions -

• Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 2
• Windows Server 2008 for x65-based Systems Service Pack 2
• Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems Service 1
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019, and
• Windows Server 2022

The development comes as North Korea-linked threat actors have been observed leveraging the flaw to incorporate encrypted shellcode into legitimate libraries without invalidating the Microsoft-issued signature.

Microsoft Issues Guidance for BlackLotus Bootkit Attacks#

In tandem with the update, the tech giant also issued guidance for CVE-2022-21894 (aka Baton Drop), a now-fixed Secure Boot bypass flaw that has been exploited by threat actors using a nascent Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) bootkit called BlackLotus to establish persistence on a host.

Some indicators of compromise (IoCs) include recently created and locked bootloader files in the EFI system partition (ESP), event logs associated with the stoppage of Microsoft Defender Antivirus, presence of the staging directory ESP:/system32/, and modifications to the registry key HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\HypervisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity.

"UEFI bootkits are particularly dangerous as they run at computer startup, prior to the operating system loading, and therefore can interfere with or deactivate various operating system (OS) security mechanisms," the Microsoft Incident Response team said.

Microsoft further recommends that compromised devices be removed from the network and examined for evidence of follow-on activity, reformat or restore the machines from a known clean backup that includes the EFI partition, maintain credential hygiene, and enforce the principle of least privilege (PoLP).

Software Patches from Other Vendors#

In addition to Microsoft, security updates have also been released by other vendors in the last few weeks to rectify several vulnerabilities, including —

• Adobe
• AMD
• Android
• Apache Projects
• Apple
• Arm
• Aruba Networks
• Cisco
• Citrix
• CODESYS
• Dell
• Drupal
• F5
• Fortinet
• GitLab
• Google Chrome
• HP
• IBM
• Jenkins
• Juniper Networks
• Lenovo
• Linux distributions Debian, Oracle Linux, Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu
• MediaTek
• Mozilla Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird
• NETGEAR
• NVIDIA
• Palo Alto Networks
• Qualcomm
• Samba
• Samsung
• SAP
• Schneider Electric
• Siemens
• SonicWall, and
• Sophos

Israel-based Spyware Firm QuaDream Targets High-Risk iPhones with Zero-Click Exploit

 Threat actors using hacking tools from an Israeli surveillance ware vendor named QuaDream targeted at least five members of civil society in North America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

According to findings from a group of researchers from the Citizen Lab, the spyware campaign was directed against journalists, political opposition figures, and an NGO worker in 2021. The names of the victims were not disclosed.

It's also suspected that the company abused a zero-click exploit dubbed ENDOFDAYS in iOS 14 to deploy spyware as a zero-day in version 14.4 and 14.4.2. There is no evidence that the exploit has been used after March 2021.

ENDOFDAYS "appears to make use of invisible iCloud calendar invitations sent from the spyware's operator to victims," the researchers said, adding the .ics files contain invites to two backdated and overlapping events so as to not alert the users.

The attacks are suspected to have leveraged a quirk in iOS 14 that any iCloud calendar invitation with a backdated time received by phone is automatically processed and added to the users' calendar without any notification or prompt.

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence team is tracking QuaDream as DEV-0196, describing it as a private-sector offensive actor (PSOA). While the cyber mercenary company is not directly involved in targeting, it is known to sell its "exploitation services and malware" to government customers, the tech giant assessed with high confidence.

The malware, named KingsPawn, contains a monitor agent and the primary malware agent, both of which are Mach-O files written in Objective-C and Go, respectively.

While the monitor agent is responsible for reducing the forensic footprint of the malware to evade detection, the main agent comes with capabilities to gather device information, cellular and Wi-Fi data, harvest files, access camera in the background, access location, call logs, and iOS Keychain, and even generate an iCloud time-based one-time password (TOTP).

Other samples support recording audio from phone calls and the microphone, running queries in SQL databases, and cleaning up forensic trails, such as deleting all calendar events from two years prior to the current time. The data is exfiltrated via HTTPS POST requests.

Internet scans carried out by the Citizen Lab reveal that QuaDream's customers operated 600 servers from several countries around the world between late 2021 and early 2023, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Ghana, Israel, Mexico, Singapore, the U.A.E., and Uzbekistan.

Despite attempts made by the spyware to cover its tracks, the interdisciplinary laboratory said it was able to uncover unspecified traces of what it calls the "Ectoplasm Factor" that could be used to track QuaDream's toolset in the future.

This is not the first time QuaDream has attracted attention. In February 2022, Reuters reported that the company weaponized the FORCEDENTRY zero-click exploit in iMessage to deploy a spyware solution named REIGN.

Then in December 2022, Meta disclosed that it took down a network of 250 fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram controlled by QuaDream to infect Android and iOS devices and exfiltrate personal data.

If anything, the development is yet another indication that despite the notoriety attracted by NSO Group, commercial spyware firms continue to fly under the radar and develop sophisticated spyware products for use by government clients.

"Until the out-of-control proliferation of commercial spyware is successfully curtailed through systemic government regulations, the number of abuse cases is likely to continue to grow, fueled both by companies with recognizable names, as well as others still operating in the shadows," the Citizen Lab said.

Calling the growth of mercenary spyware companies a threat to democracy and human rights, Microsoft said combating such offensive actors requires a "collective effort" and a "multistakeholder collaboration."

"Moreover, it is only a matter of time before the use of the tools and technologies they sell spread even further," Amy Hogan-Burney, the company's associate general counsel for cybersecurity policy and protection, said.

"This poses a real risk to human rights online, but also to the security and stability of the broader online environment. The services they offer require cyber mercenaries to stockpile vulnerabilities and search for new ways to access networks without authorization."

Newly Discovered "By-Design" Flaw in Microsoft Azure Could Expose Storage Accounts to Hackers

 A "by-design flaw" uncovered in Microsoft Azure could be exploited by attackers to gain access to storage accounts, move laterally in the environment, and even execute remote code.

"It is possible to abuse and leverage Microsoft Storage Accounts by manipulating Azure Functions to steal access-tokens of higher privilege identities, move laterally, potentially access critical business assets, and execute remote code (RCE)," Orca said.

The exploitation path that underpins this attack is a mechanism called Shared Key authorization, which is enabled by default on storage accounts.

According to Microsoft, Azure generates two 512-bit storage account access keys when creating a storage account. These keys can be used to authorize access to data via Shared Key authorization, or via SAS tokens that are signed with the shared key.

"Storage account access keys provide full access to the configuration of a storage account, as well as the data," Microsoft notes in its documentation. "Access to the shared key grants a user full access to a storage account's configuration and its data."

The cloud security firm said these access tokens can be stolen by manipulating Azure Functions, potentially enabling a threat actor with access to an account with a Storage Account Contributor role to escalate privileges and take over systems.

Specifically, should a managed identity be used to invoke the Function app, it could be abused to execute any command. This, in turn, is made possible owing to the fact that a dedicated storage account is created when deploying an Azure Function app.

"Once an attacker locates the storage account of a Function app that is assigned with a strong managed identity, it can run code on its behalf and as a result acquire a subscription privilege escalation (PE)," Orca researcher Roi Nisimi said.

In other words, by exfiltrating the access token of the Azure Function app's assigned managed identity to a remote server, a threat actor can elevate privileges, move laterally, access new resources, and execute a reverse shell on virtual machines.

"By overriding function files in storage accounts, an attacker can steal and exfiltrate a higher-privileged identity and use it to move laterally, exploit and compromise victims' most valuable crown jewels," Nisimi explained.

As mitigations, it's recommended that organizations consider disabling Azure Shared Key authorization and using Azure Active Directory authentication instead. In a coordinated disclosure, Microsoft said it "plans to update how Functions client tools work with storage accounts."

"This includes changes to better support scenarios using the identity. After identity-based connections for AzureWebJobsStorage are generally available and the new experiences are validated, identity will become the default mode for AzureWebJobsStorage, which is intended to move away from shared key authorization," the tech giant further added.