Rewterz Threat Alert – SharpPanda APT Group – Active IOCs

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

SharpPanda, the Chinese advanced persistent (APT) threat actor that has been active since at least 2018, has reinforced its cyber warfare activities. SharpPanda APT attacks and targets Southeast Asian government users with template injection of malicious documents. The attackers use spear-phishing to gain initial access and leverage old Microsoft Office vulnerabilities together with the chain of in-memory loaders to attempt and install a previously unknown backdoor on the victim’s machines. Upon opening the document, it connects back to the hacker’s server to download the payload file.

The campaign that initiates at the beginning of 2022 starts from the distribution of malicious DOCX documents that are sent to different employees of a government entity in Southeast Asia. In some cases, the emails are spoofed to look like they were from other government-related entities. The attachments to these emails are weaponized copies of legitimate-looking official documents and use the remote template technique to pull the next stage from the attacker’s server.

Impact

• Template Injection
• Exposure of Sensitive Data

Indicators of Compromise

IP

13.236.189.80

MD5

• 09bf850be5da44a1c3629a1f62813a83

SHA-256

• 21f173a347ed111ce67e4c0f2c0bd4ee34bb7ca765da03635ca5c0df394cd7e6

SHA-1

• a4e89d1f060e4dfd5f0fd4e7ba8be96967b39ac7

Remediation

• Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
• Search for Indicators of compromise (IOCs) in your environment utilizing your respective security controls
• Maintain cyber hygiene by updating your anti-virus software and implementing a patch management lifecycle.
• Maintain Offline Backups – In a ransomware attack, the adversary will often delete or encrypt backups if they have access to them. That’s why it’s important to keep offline (preferably off-site), encrypted backups of data and test them regularly.
• Emails from unknown senders should always be treated with caution.
• Never trust or open ” links and attachments received from unknown sources/senders.
• Patch and upgrade any platforms and software timely and make it into a standard security policy. Prioritize patching known exploited vulnerabilities and zero-days.
• Along with network and system hardening, code hardening should be implemented within the organization so that their websites and software are secure. Use testing tools to detect any vulnerabilities in the deployed codes.
• Enable antivirus and anti-malware software and update signature definitions in a timely manner. Using multi-layered protection is necessary to secure vulnerable assets