The risk actor known as Cloud Atlas has been linked to a set of spear-phishing assaults on Russian enterprises.
Targets included a Russian agro-industrial enterprise and a state-owned analysis firm, in line with a report from F.A.C.C.T., a standalone cybersecurity firm fashioned after Group-IB’s formal exit from Russia earlier this 12 months.
Cloud Atlas, energetic since at the least 2014, is a cyber espionage group of unknown origin. Additionally known as Clear Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Purple October, the risk actor is thought for its persistent campaigns concentrating on Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Slovenia.
In December 2022, Examine Level and Optimistic Applied sciences detailed multi-stage assault sequences that led to the deployment of a PowerShell-based backdoor known as PowerShower in addition to DLL payloads able to speaking with an actor-controlled server.
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The start line is a phishing message bearing a lure doc that exploits CVE-2017-11882, a six-year-old reminiscence corruption flaw in Microsoft Workplace’s Equation Editor, to kick-start the execution of malicious payloads, a method Cloud Atlas has employed as early as October 2018.
“The actor’s large spear-phishing campaigns proceed to make use of its easy however efficient strategies as a way to compromise its targets,” Kaspersky famous in August 2019. “In contrast to many different intrusion units, Cloud Atlas hasn’t chosen to make use of open supply implants throughout its latest campaigns, as a way to be much less discriminating.”
F.A.C.C.T. described the most recent kill chain as much like the one described by Optimistic Applied sciences, with profitable exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 by way of RTF template injection paving the way in which for shellcode that is liable for downloading and operating an obfuscated HTA file. The mails originate from common Russian e-mail providers Yandex Mail and VK’s Mail.ru.
The malicious HTML utility subsequently launches Visible Primary Script (VBS) recordsdata which can be in the end liable for retrieving and executing an unknown VBS code from a distant server.
“The Cloud Atlas group has been energetic for a few years, rigorously considering by means of each facet of their assaults,” Optimistic Applied sciences mentioned of the group final 12 months.
“The group’s toolkit has not modified for years—they attempt to cover their malware from researchers through the use of one-time payload requests and validating them. The group avoids community and file assault detection instruments through the use of reliable cloud storage and well-documented software program options, particularly in Microsoft Workplace.”
The event comes as the corporate mentioned that at the least 20 organizations situated in Russia have been compromised utilizing Decoy Canine, a modified model of Pupy RAT, attributing it to a complicated persistent risk actor it calls Hellhounds.
The actively maintained malware, in addition to permitting the adversary to remotely management the contaminated host, comes with a scriptlet designed to transmit telemetry information to an “automated” account on Mastodon with the identify “Lamir Hasabat” (@lahat) on the Mindly.Social occasion.
“After supplies on the primary model of Decoy Canine have been revealed, the malware authors went to numerous effort to hamper its detection and evaluation each in site visitors and within the file system,” safety researchers Stanislav Pyzhov and Aleksandr Grigorian mentioned.
