BackdoorDiplomacy APT targets diplomats from Africa and the Middle East
Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →
| CVE | Vulnerability | CVSS | EPSS | Flags | Affected | Exposure | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2020-5902 | Unauthenticated RCE via path traversal in F5 BIG-IP TMUI CVE-2020-5902 is a critical, unauthenticated remote code execution flaw in the F5 BIG-IP Traffic Management User Interface (TMUI), the appliance's web management console, rooted in a directory/path traversal issue (CWE-22) in undisclosed TMUI pages. It is triggered by sending crafted HTTP(S) requests to the management interface — classically path-traversal URLs beneath the TMUI application on the management port — which lets an attacker bypass authentication, read or delete arbitrary files, and execute commands without credentials. Successful exploitation yields full control of the BIG-IP system, which attackers can use to pivot into networks the appliance fronts, maintain persistence, and deploy ransomware. Any organization running an affected F5 BIG-IP appliance or virtual edition whose TMUI is reachable, or whose management network can be reached, is exposed; F5's installed base spans large enterprises and service providers, so the footprint is broad. Exploitation is confirmed in the wild: the flaw was mass-scanned and exploited within days of its July 2020 disclosure, it is listed in CISA KEV with known ransomware use, and EPSS assigns a ~100% probability of exploitation within 30 days. Do: Patch immediately using F5's advisory K52145254 — upgrade BIG-IP to a fixed release per the vendor's version matrix, since CISA's required action is applying vendor updates. Until patched, restrict TMUI/management-interface access to trusted source IPs or a VPN (or disable TMUI if unused) and apply F5's published interim workaround. Because ransomware use is confirmed, hunt for indicators of compromise on both patched and unpatched appliances (unexpected files, webshells, modified login pages, new accounts or scheduled tasks) before treating systems as clean. | 9.8 | 100% | KEV ransomware PoC ×8 |
| mass≈100,000–300,000 internet-exposed BIG-IP TMUI endpoints, with a far larger internal installed base |
Full article480 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse
ESET researchers discovered an advanced persistent threat (APT) group, tracked as BackdoorDiplomacy, that is targeting diplomats across Africa and the Middle East.
ESET researchers spotted a new state-sponsored group, dubbed BackdoorDiplomacy, that was behind a series of cyberattacks against Ministries of Foreign Affairs aimed at numerous African countries, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The group also targeted a smaller subset of telecommunications firms in Africa and at least one charity organization in the Middle East.
According to the experts, the BackdoorDiplomacy APT group has been active since at least 2017.
The attack chain starts with exploits for vulnerable internet-exposed systems such as web servers and management interfaces for networking equipment.
In one of the attacks spotted by ESET, they observed the threat actors exploit the CVE-2020-5902 F5 BIP-IP vulnerability (CVE-2020-5902) to drop a Linux backdoor. In another attack, the APT group exploited flaws in Microsoft Exchange server to install the China Chopper backdoor. In a third attack, researchers targeted a Plesk server with poorly configured file-upload security to execute another webshell.
Once compromised a system, the threat actors leverage open-source tools for scanning the network and make a lateral movement to infect them. The attackers employed a custom backdoor, tracked by ESET as Turian, which is based on the Quarian backdoor, and in some attacks, they used open-source remote access tools to take over the system.
The attackers have been observed targeting removable media to gather sensitive data and exfiltration it.
“BackdoorDiplomacy shares commonalities with several other Asian groups.” reads the report published by ESET. “We believe this group is also linked with a group Kaspersky referred to as “CloudComputating” that was also analyzed by Sophos. Several victims were compromised via mechanisms that closely matched the Rehashed Rat and a MirageFox-APT15 campaign documented by Fortinet in 2017 and Intezer in 2018, respectively. The BackdoorDiplomacy operators made use of their specific form of DLL Search-Order Hijacking.”
The list of tools in the arsenal of the BackdoorDiplomacy group includes by the network tunnel software EarthWorm, Mimikatz, NetCat, and various tools leaked by ShadowBrokers after the hack of the US NSA, such as EternalBlue, DoublePulsar, and EternalRocks.
Most of the above tools were obfuscated with VMProtect (v1.60-2.05).
Operators employed similar tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), but in each attack used different tools, likely to make the attribution more difficult.
“BackdoorDiplomacy is a group that primarily targets diplomatic organizations in the Middle East and Africa, and less frequently, telecommunication companies.” concludes ESET. “BackdoorDiplomacy is also cross-platform group targeting both Windows and Linux systems. The Linux variant of Turian shares the same network encryption protocol characteristics and attempts to return a TTY reverse shell to the operator.”
The analysis published by ESET includes indicators of compromise (IoCs).
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