Rewterz Threat Alert – Chinese APT group targets India and Hong Kong

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

Considering the ongoing tensions between India and China, as well as the new security laws over Hong Kong, we believe this new campaign is operated by a Chinese state-sponsored actor. this may be a Chinese APT group that has been active since at least 2014. The ampaign was most likely carried out through spear phishing emails. The .rar file (Mail security check.rar)

The document uses template injection to download a remote template from the following URL

The downloaded template uses the dynamic data exchange (DDE) protocol to execute malicious commands, which are encoded within the document’s content

Another variant from the attack used by the Chinese APT group in this campaign focused on issues happening in Hong Kong. The file was embedded within an archive file named “Boris Johnson Pledges to Admit 3 Million From Hong Kong to U.K.rar”.

The dropped executable (ff.exe) is a new variant of a loader called MgBot that drops and loads the final payload. This loader pretends to be a Realtek Audio Manager tool. The loader starts its process by escalating privilege through a UAC bypass using the CMSTPLUA COM interface.

MgBot uses several anti-analysis and anti-virtualization techniques. The code is self modifying which means it alters its code sections during runtime. 

Impact

• Information theft
• Exposure of sensitive data

Indicators of Compromise

MD5

• 95cf51cedb966cc79ffe717750d30cbe
• d93ef3ebe8111bd941d13af97a6acf1a
• 47de25430afb6e456e714153eb994897
• bbdbc36ba66f114263c5319c08d3fa99

SHA-256

• 1e81fb62cb57a3231642f66fee3e10d28a7c81637e4d6a03515f5b95654da585
• 5b0c93a70032d80c1f5f61e586edde6360ad07b697021a83ed75481385f9f51f
• b5304a0836baf1db8909128028793d12bd418ff78c69dc6f9d014cadede28b77
• 99aee7ae27476f057ef3131bb371a276f77a526bb1419bfab79a5fac0582b76a
• 2a5890aca37a83ca02c78f00f8056e20d9b73f0532007b270dbf99d5ade59e2a
• ecf63a9430a95c34f85c4a261691d23f5ac7993f9ac64b0a652110659995fc03
• 07bb016c3fde6b777be4b43f293cacde2d3aae0d4e4caa15e7c66835e506964f
• 3a04c1bdce61d76ff1a4e1fd0c13da1975b04a6a08c27afdd5ce5c601d99a45b
• 855af291da8120a48b374708ef38393e7c944a8393880ef51352ce44e9648fd8
• 8ab344a1901d8129d99681ce33a76f7c64fd95c314ac7459c4b1527c3d968bb4
• fc885b50892fe0c27f797ba6670012cd3bbd5dc66f0eb8fdd1b5fca9f1ea98cc
• 2310f3d779acdb4881b5014f4e57dd65b4d6638fd011ac73e90df729b58ae1e0
• 3b93bc1e0c73c70bc8f314f2f11a91cf5912dab4c3d34b185bd3f5e7dd0c0790
• 1e9c91e4125c60e5cc5c4c6ef8cbb94d7313e20b830a1e380d5d84b8592a7bb6
• 5f7f87db34340ec83314313ec40333aebe6381ef00b69d032570749d4cedee46

SHA1

• 60850cac35ea71a116136654dd60f9569051beb2
• bfacb101650db2630e7c405030086bf8cd1e9132
• 4f6ca65a5f4535b8c161b8ecf212921c3f4f52e8
• fd7640e2952c12ab1e931f7fb822e60ca9c09044

URL

• http[:]//flash[.]governmentmm[.]com/

Remediation

• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Search for IOCs in your environment.