Rewterz Threat Alert – PatchWork APT Group Targeting Pakistan – Active IOCs

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

Indian threat actor Patchwork has been active since December 2015 and frequently uses spear phishing to strike Pakistan. PatchWork, (also known as Mahabusa, White Elephant, hangOver, VICEROY TIGER, The Dropping Elephant) is an APT that mainly conducts cyber-espionage activities against its targets. The group aims to steal sensitive information. In early July 2020, the Microstep Intelligence Bureau monitored a targeted attack with the help of the “New Coronary Pneumonia” hot event. 

In its most recent campaign, which ran from late November to early December 2021, Patchwork dropped a variation of the BADNEWS (Ragnatela) Remote Administration Trojan using malicious RTF files (RAT).

This APT group uses virtual computers and VPNs to create, distribute, and monitor their targets. Patchwork is less advanced than its Russian and North Korean rivals, along with certain other East Asian APTs. This APT has targeted the Government of Pakistan, and the Ministry of defense in its phishing campaign with a maldoc named “Office Memorandum F .No.6(10)R-I-2009-435-2022 .zip”.

Recently, this APT’s BADNEWS Trojan sample that detects the Pakistan time zone is hosted on a hacked website and employs a stolen digital signature.

Impact

• Information Theft
• Unauthorized Remote Access

Indicators of Compromise

Domain Name

• bingoplant.live

MD5

• 61968f25ace9464a0f9fffc6d87ffdcf
• 636ce29c9b4265fe8255459d33db99c8

SHA-256

• 79bde77f2295dbf272b4138db3b42a8e40e67201da5f7a70de1600c15ebfc81e
• 2be095b201379123f11fd66b382aee0ca9542e3061fa129bc53c1eddd9b895c3

SHA-1

• 69565769c206c4b3daf1251e5f2ff82017fdb8b8
• 7f70f78730a1d147d845e3af88bc4417510d1f4e

Remediation

• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Search for Indicators of compromise (IOCs) in your environment utilizing your respective security controls
• Do not download documents attached in emails from unknown sources and strictly refrain from enabling macros when the source isn’t reliable.
• Do not enable macros for untrusted files.