Rewterz Threat Alert – PatchWork APT Targets Victims in South Asia

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

PatchWork, (also known as Mahabusa, White Elephant, hangOver, VICEROY TIGER, The Dropping Elephant) is an APT that mainly conducts cyber espionage activities against Asian countries such as China and Pakistan. 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. The delivered attack payload is named “Covid19_Guidelines.docx”, and the document title “Guidelines for Government Employees and Organizations in the wake of COVID-19 epidemic” is translated as: Guidelines for government agencies to respond to COVID-19. This attack used the new crown pneumonia hot spot to deliver spear mail. Finally, the commercial Bozok remote control Trojan was loaded through the fileless loading technology to monitor the theft. Bozok RAT is a lightweight but feature-rich remote control Trojan. The client supports multiple regional languages. This Trojan has been used by many APT organizations in targeted attacks against finance and government in history. It is worth noting that in the disclosed historical attack activity of the Indian background APT organization, this attack activity is the first time they have used the Bozok Trojan.

The malicious PE module released during the attack carried the digital signature certificate of Accelerate Technologies Ltd. The PE description information was the anti-software component program of the Indian security company Quick Heal. Based on this certificate, the extension line association can be associated with multiple white elephant APT attack components.

Impact

• Information Theft
• Unauthorized Remote Access

Indicators of Compromise

Filename

• Covid19_Guidelines[.]doc

Hostname

• altered[.]twilightparadox[.]com

MD5

• 16c01b13998e96f27bd9e3aa795da875
• ae625c151814fcb5cd4f48329285665b
• 4c79583d189207ec9f138204fbb63810
• 809ff867d2cfe803ef4ae4102283b45c
• 6423fd4c8be66e6adf95f62821b9b93c
• f85a94ef1e9c0dca48dbecb5c8399e07

SHA-256

• 2ba13a3e540229677456d1e320f682bed8e6733bf6547b89a496b8d020eea698
• 977c81bfab432eaeb119167b5342468918645636aa3dc94bdb993667c2e96693
• 66f56f29d4c23b2e79dccd3b215be7a1a352989162d48788bedc56f7ab6c7f58
• c23b098a627d1c8449fad6756007c3b2a7ae20c3e70c74bbe4154c8b1651c84e
• 21ee9bb5f2444fdf72d55109b7f823d5a5cd43d60aa1fb653764e2e5d20f2080
• dfe18346db405af2484064e80b5c0124bc80ca84d39b90e1aa5d5592c479a904

SHA1

• 0aa66138590ab69ac68711a6a50a56da537a3646
• f83ead889dc28c0a38e86d22c0447b17a8eaf486
• 3956b3ab9d278a9662085fd5b55095849979ce11
• 734807ef7b402219ab1badb5d5c1804639a465f9
• 41eee91cb9b34d98090300a7520c42526055aa13
• d7d1ee7455859901c28e0f2a991e71f9524f5af1

Source IP

• 185[.]157[.]78[.]135

URL

• http[:]//185[.]157[.]78[.]135[:]1515
• http[:]//185[.]157[.]78[.]135[:]4040

Remediation

• Block the threat indicators at their respective controls.
• Do not download files attached in untrusted emails.
• Do not enable macros for untrusted files.