Rewterz Threat Alert – Kimsuky APT Group – Active IOCs

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

Kimsuky is a North Korean nation-state actor that has been active since 2012. It primarily targets South Korean government agencies and conducts espionage activities against targets in the United States and Japan. Kimsuky has dropped a custom backdoor which they are calling Gold Dragon. Kimsuky deploys Gold Dragon, a second-stage backdoor, after a file-less PowerShell-deploying first-stage attack is dropped. 

This group has the ability to put up phishing infrastructure that can effectively imitate well-known websites and fool users into entering their passwords. Kimsuky APT is also known by the names Thallium, Black Banshee, and Velvet Chollima. KISA (Korean Internet & Security Agency) published a full investigation of Kimsuky’s phishing infrastructure and TTPs used to attack South Korea in December 2020. To get Initial Access to victim networks, Kimsuky’s threat actors use a variety of spear phishing and social engineering techniques. This group is responsible for the 2014 Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise, and other major campaigns like Operation Kabar Cobra(2019).

Impact

• Information theft and espionage
• Exposure of sensitive data

Indicators of Compromise

MD5

• 357ef37979b02b08120895ae5175eb0a

SHA-256

• e59f0aa13e2da2a0cd5c07e882014d9b37927b9bd9a493f83c2bcb103e5a739c

SHA-1

• eac7472c61013ee22225299bd2e34177bda83179

URL

• http[:]//asssambly[.]mywebcommunity[.]org/file/upload/list[.]php?query=1

Remediation

• Always be suspicious about emails sent by unknown senders.
• Never click on links/attachments sent by unknown senders.
• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Search for IOCs in your environment.