Rewterz Threat Alert – Advanced Attack Tools Target Non-patched Systems to Distribute Cryptocurrency Miners

Severity

Medium

Analysis Summary

A new cyber attack campaign targets organizations around the world to spread a cryptocurrency miner for monetary purposes. The vector of this campaign is a variant of Vools (Trojan.Win32.VOOLS.SMAL01), which is an EternalBlue-based backdoor used to deliver cryptocurrency miners and other malware.

Analysts found that all of the compromised machines were running outdated versions of Microsoft Windows OS so they were still vulnerable to already patched vulnerabilities.

Many other tools were also found in the infected systems, mainly the password dumping tool Mimikatz and Equation group tools. The final payload deployed on compromised systems is a cryptocurrency miner. Researchers also found that compromised systems appear to be on internal segments of compromised networks.

The retrieved sample seems to be an installer which sends an HTTP request to the following server:
log.boreye[.]com/ipc.html?mac={MAC address}&ip={IP address}&host={host}&tick=6min&c=error_33

Another common thing among compromised machines is that there was a file located in the main Windows folder of all the infected machines:
C:\Windows\NetworkDistribution\Diagnostics.txt. The file extension .txt is meant to avoid detection. The file actually is a ZIP archive file that contains several files (the Equation toolkit components).

All these files are variants of the open-source XMRig (Monero) miner.

The usernames used are very similar and all of them use the same password, which means the threat actor is the same. The miner always uses the name dllhostex.exe. Furthermore, the binary is always located either in the “system32” or in the “SysWOW64” folder of the infected Windows machine, depending on the miner variant.
Roughly 83% of affected computers were running Windows Server 2003 SP2. (outdated)
South Asian countries like China, India and Vietnam are among the top targets and the targeted industries include education, communication and media, banking, manufacturing, and technology.

Impact

• Financial Loss
• Credential Theft
• Information Disclosure

Indicators of Compromise

URLs

• miniast[.]com
• tenchier[.]com
• boreye[.]com
• pilutce[.]com

Malware Hash (MD5/SHA1/SH256)

• ca7db2d555e67ba1f4560e68d5bc5b09 
• 95786b6c28bf8dba7bbfeeba9e1ec27a 
• 6dc722c9844e61427a47a2759a8fbec0 
• 24f18c1c0f6df20f3c3e56eea5462e00 
• f830f3004d4637f7ad9c61719a301d18 
• 5138bcdab5d4282aed717ad1aa6de3d4 
• 1263f5d06fd1859a4b3924c850bbf96c 
• 291ae5d31b83ac269e9c0bb9025ee098 
• 9fa4dbd6bbff6e96f54039a93dae8f22 
• 297c855681a872f80aada938f60ef33a 
• 928e86560d1e5a4765fdb8562a265f41 
• 740e94f902e4d364615eb10a00c3ff31 
• 5a7de0c6a03b02da8dea170c1e8259f5 
• 7715e7b35ccf6a2d3ad0df6baff37abd 
• 62fa403ff17613d0c42f793a41ada4a9 
• 50462805c6843cff49378c5c3f3b4557 
• 5910ad6f2d82357f4a97240f77376bea 
• 0e02555ede71bc6c724f9f924320e020 
• f7d7778f4bc5878abb4189557d1e4472 
• c0f1f909331dbaab57dc6345e925ee6c 
• 81a07515af6f2663b7bcfb2eec407af7 
• a3cc9566f6f9f23a03a87b778b6f2a6e 
• 830cf47825cce3b24ad80d5e80113aee 
• a013bc89f72c0c343a32adb6d6a2342e 
• 56da116d25207847797fe5f8b085c1b1 
• 120dafffdb96a6032ba1e22056c26738 
• be97f6bb2c385eaaa780661381c485ec 
• 0cf2f1207d9fd85573f6c0e7f9e7d6a9 
• f5a7b1f998390241f5c10cbddfe88647 
• 9f34a7aa58700746bf20dc153c61e21d 
• c61b2dfc2a87a5d73882f1a9b0437887 
• 5bcfdaa021a6f47283d50fbf509843e9 
• 268f7cc5ffc830238fc55984aca4fc39 
• 35e65bd53c04a71c487c9f2660824efc 
• dc932f52466f4cca3e246a3016ce988e 
• d9356b4e0df28ff65ba22f9a69f1e150 
• c694d4999f5a99cba82638c2dfbb3a95 
• 0dd098c63e35d68cd99d9bbc798391b5 

Remediation

• Block the threat indicators at respective controls.
• Keep all systems up-to-date and patched against all known vulnerabilities.