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Severity
High
Analysis Summary
APT28 is one of Russia's longest-running APTs and its operations date back to at least 2007. The group supports Russia in its strategic operations against the U.S., countries of the former Soviet Union, Europe, and now Asia. These attacks mostly involve cyber crimes against the defense and military of targeted countries. To support Russia's national interests, APT28 compromises the targeted country's operation, steals its data, and then leaks it to its government. Going by the aliases Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, Tsar Team, STRONTIUM, and Sofacy Group, APT28 performs their attacks using a spoofed website and phishing emails containing malicious links.
In Feb 2022, APT 28 (allegedly) attacked Eastern European countries using Empire and Invoke-Obfuscation. The MSHTML Remote Code Execution vulnerability, CVE-2021-40444, was used by their threat actors.
The recent phishing campaign uses JavaScript & "ms-search" to deploy custom MASEPIE, STEELHOOK, OCEAN MAP, as well as OpenSSH to target Ukrainian and Polish organizations.
The use of PowerShell scripts in cyberattacks is not uncommon. Malicious actors often employ PowerShell to execute various activities, including reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. By using PowerShell, attackers can leverage the functionality and privileges provided by the Windows operating system to perform their malicious actions.
Impact
- Information Theft
- Data Exfiltration
- Exposure of Sensitive Data
Indicators of Compromise
IP
- 172.114.170.18
MD5
- f4f49add47255042b8cc66fa23361aa1
SHA-256
- 6954b6930afed2602e15400e38408883d2b94a2c643ff3070ccd7f87b043061d
SHA1
- f2f2a3dd49cb725baa40178816f3e2d90d7a577f
Remediation
- Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
- Search for Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) in your environment utilizing your respective security controls.
- Ensure that general security policies are employed including implementing strong passwords, correct configurations, and proper administration security policies.
- Emails from unknown senders should always be treated with caution.
- Never open links or attachments from unknown senders.