China-linked Emissary Panda APT group targets National Data Center in Asia
Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →
| CVE | Vulnerability | CVSS | EPSS | Flags | Affected | Exposure | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2017-11882 | Memory Corruption RCE in Microsoft Office via Legacy Equation Editor CVE-2017-11882 is a memory corruption vulnerability (CWE-119) in Microsoft Office, residing in the legacy Microsoft Equation Editor component (EQNEDT32.EXE), that allows remote code execution in the context of the current user. Attackers trigger it by persuading a user to open a crafted document, most commonly an RTF file or other Office document carrying a malicious embedded equation object, which overflows a buffer while the equation content is parsed. Successful exploitation lets the attacker run arbitrary code with the privileges of the signed-in user, a typical foothold for malware delivery and, per CISA, for ransomware operations. Any environment running affected Microsoft Office builds is exposed; the source data does not enumerate specific affected version ranges. The flaw is confirmed exploited in the wild: it was added to the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03 with known ransomware use and holds a 99.9% EPSS score (percentile 100), though the source data lists no public PoC. Do: Apply Microsoft's Office security updates (November 2017 or later) across all endpoints, prioritizing this KEV-listed flaw given its known ransomware use. On systems that cannot yet be patched, disable or unregister the legacy Equation Editor (EQNEDT32.EXE) and consider blocking or warning on RTF attachments as interim mitigations. Check for indicators of abuse such as EQNEDT32.EXE spawning unexpected child processes after document opens. | 7.8 | 100% | KEV ransomware PoC ×10 |
| masshundreds of millions of users/installations (Office is near-ubiquitous on Windows and in enterprises; the share still unpatched is unknown) |
Indicators of compromiseauto-extracted · verify before use · export allAll →
| Type | Indicator | Context |
|---|---|---|
| domain | sonypsps.com | mmand and control (C&C) server used in this campaign is bbs.sonypsps[.]com which is hosted on an IP address associated with a Ukrain |
Full article515 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse
A China-linked APT group, LuckyMouse, Emissary Panda, APT27 and Threat Group 3390, has targeted a national data center in Central Asia.
The APT group has been active since at least 2010, the crew targeted U.S. defense contractors and financial services firms worldwide.
In March 2018, security experts at Kaspersky Lab have observed an attack powered by the Chinese APT group, the experts speculate the campaign was started in the fall of 2017.
The attack hit a national data center in an unnamed country in Central Asia, according to Kaspersky, the hackers were preparing a watering hole attack. The hackers attempted to inject malicious JavaScript code into the government websites connected to the data center.
“In March 2018 we detected an ongoing campaign targeting a national data center in the Central Asia that we believe has been active since autumn 2017. The choice of target made this campaign especially significant – it meant the attackers gained access to a wide range of government resources at one fell swoop.” reads the blog post published by Kaspersky.
“We believe this access was abused, for example, by inserting malicious scripts in the country’s official websites in order to conduct watering hole attacks.”
The attackers compromised the government website to deliver either the Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF) or the ScanBox reconnaissance framework. At the time of the report, experts were not able to determine the way the hackers breached the government website.
“The websites were compromised to redirect visitors to instances of both ScanBox and BEeF. These redirects were implemented by adding two malicious scripts obfuscated by a tool similar to the Dean Edwards packer.” continues the post.
One of the hypotheses formulated by Kaspersky sees the hackers using weaponized Office documents to trigger the CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability, the same issue exploited by other APT groups like the Cobalt hacking group.
The campaign monitored by Kaspersky leveraged a RAT tracked by Kaspersky as HyperBro, the code was associated with other Chinese-speaking threat actors.
The timestamps for these modules are from December 2017 until January 2018.
The main command and control (C&C) server used in this campaign is bbs.sonypsps[.]com which is hosted on an IP address associated with a Ukrainian ISP. The IP address belongs to a MikroTik router running a firmware version 6.34.4 released in March 2016, the device with SMBv1 on board may have been hacked by the Emissary Panda hackers.
“The TTPs for this campaign are quite common for Chinese-speaking actors,” concludes Kaspersky.
“The most unusual and interesting point here is the target. A national data center is a valuable source of data that can also be abused to compromise official websites. Another interesting point is the Mikrotik router, which we believe was hacked specifically for the campaign. The reasons for this are not very clear: typically, Chinese-speaking actors don’t bother disguising their campaigns. Maybe these are the first steps in a new stealthier approach.”
Further details, including the IoCs are reported in the analysis published by Kaspersky.
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(Security Affairs – Panda Emissary, cyber espionage)
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Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://securityaffairs.com/73498/apt/emissary-panda-campaign.html