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

Domain Name

• krinnsnail[.]sportsontheweb[.]net

MD5

• 4358337c947cec2f7441890095662f38

SHA-256

• f03a7a96e3ce5e35dd52ce026266b68aa35301828f1d909d858658051371473d

SHA-1

• bf1d1281d7d14b8cc428bcb51087a1883515a220

URL

• http[:]//krinnsnail[.]sportsontheweb[.]net/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.