The risk actor known as Cloud Atlas has been linked to a set of spear-phishing assaults on Russian enterprises.
Targets included a Russian agro-industrial enterprise and a state-owned analysis firm, based on a report from F.A.C.C.T., a standalone cybersecurity firm shaped after Group-IB’s formal exit from Russia earlier this yr.
Cloud Atlas, lively since at the least 2014, is a cyber espionage group of unknown origin. Additionally referred to as Clear Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Purple October, the risk actor is thought for its persistent campaigns concentrating on Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Slovenia.
In December 2022, Verify Level and Constructive Applied sciences detailed multi-stage assault sequences that led to the deployment of a PowerShell-based backdoor known as PowerShower in addition to DLL payloads able to speaking with an actor-controlled server.
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The start line is a phishing message bearing a lure doc that exploits CVE-2017-11882, a six-year-old reminiscence corruption flaw in Microsoft Workplace’s Equation Editor, to kick-start the execution of malicious payloads, a way Cloud Atlas has employed as early as October 2018.
“The actor’s large spear-phishing campaigns proceed to make use of its easy however efficient strategies so as to compromise its targets,” Kaspersky famous in August 2019. “In contrast to many different intrusion units, Cloud Atlas hasn’t chosen to make use of open supply implants throughout its latest campaigns, so as to be much less discriminating.”
F.A.C.C.T. described the newest kill chain as much like the one described by Constructive Applied sciences, with profitable exploitation of CVE-2017-11882 through RTF template injection paving the way in which for shellcode that is answerable for downloading and working an obfuscated HTA file. The mails originate from standard Russian e mail companies Yandex Mail and VK’s Mail.ru.
The malicious HTML utility subsequently launches Visible Fundamental Script (VBS) information which can be in the end answerable for retrieving and executing an unknown VBS code from a distant server.
“The Cloud Atlas group has been lively for a few years, rigorously considering by way of each side of their assaults,” Constructive Applied sciences mentioned of the group final yr.
“The group’s toolkit has not modified for years—they attempt to disguise their malware from researchers through the use of one-time payload requests and validating them. The group avoids community and file assault detection instruments through the use of reputable cloud storage and well-documented software program options, specifically in Microsoft Workplace.”
The event comes as the corporate mentioned that at the least 20 organizations situated in Russia have been compromised utilizing Decoy Canine, a modified model of Pupy RAT, attributing it to a sophisticated persistent risk actor it calls Hellhounds.
The actively maintained malware, apart from permitting the adversary to remotely management the contaminated host, comes with a scriptlet designed to transmit telemetry information to an “automated” account on Mastodon with the identify “Lamir Hasabat” (@lahat) on the Mindly.Social occasion.
“After supplies on the primary model of Decoy Canine had been revealed, the malware authors went to a variety of effort to hamper its detection and evaluation each in site visitors and within the file system,” safety researchers Stanislav Pyzhov and Aleksandr Grigorian mentioned.
