An up to date model of a classy backdoor framework known as MATA has been utilized in assaults geared toward over a dozen Japanese European firms within the oil and gasoline sector and protection trade as a part of a cyber espionage operation that came about between August 2022 and Could 2023.
“The actors behind the assault used spear-phishing mails to focus on a number of victims, some had been contaminated with Home windows executable malware by downloading recordsdata by an web browser,” Kaspersky stated in a brand new exhaustive report revealed this week.
“Every phishing doc accommodates an exterior hyperlink to fetch a distant web page containing a CVE-2021-26411 exploit.”
CVE-2021-26411 (CVSS rating: 8.8) refers to a reminiscence corruption vulnerability in Web Explorer that might be triggered to execute arbitrary code by tricking a sufferer into visiting a specifically crafted website. It was beforehand exploited by the Lazarus Group in early 2021 to focus on safety researchers.
The cross-platform MATA framework was first documented by the Russian cybersecurity firm in July 2020, linking it to the prolific North Korean state-sponsored crew in assaults concentrating on varied sectors in Poland, Germany, Turkey, Korea, Japan, and India since April 2018.
Using a revamped model of MATA to strike protection contractors was beforehand disclosed by Kaspersky in July 2023, though attribution to the Lazarus Group stays tenuous at greatest as a result of presence of methods utilized by 5 Eyes APT actors akin to Purple Lambert, Magenta Lambert, and Inexperienced Lambert.
That stated, a majority of the malicious Microsoft Phrase paperwork created by the attackers characteristic a Korean font known as Malgun Gothic, suggesting that the developer is both accustomed to Korean or works in a Korean surroundings.
Russian cybersecurity firm Constructive Applied sciences, which shared particulars of the identical framework late final month, is monitoring the operators underneath the moniker Darkish River.
“The group’s most important instrument, the MataDoor backdoor, has a modular structure, with a fancy, completely designed system of community transports and versatile choices for communication between the backdoor operator and an contaminated machine,” safety researchers Denis Kuvshinov and Maxim Andreev stated.
“The code evaluation means that the builders invested appreciable sources into the instrument.”
The newest assault chains start with the actor sending spear-phishing paperwork to targets, in some instances by impersonating authentic workers, indicating prior reconnaissance and in depth preparation. These paperwork embody a hyperlink to an HTML web page that embeds an exploit for CVE-2021-26411.
A profitable compromise results in the execution of a loader that, in flip, retrieves a Validator module from a distant server to ship system info and obtain and add recordsdata to and from the command-and-control (C2) server.
The Validator can be designed to fetch MataDoor, which, in response to Kasperksy, is MATA technology 4 that is outfitted to run a variety of instructions able to gathering delicate info from compromised programs.
The assaults are additional characterised by way of stealer malware to seize content material from clipboard, document keystrokes, take screenshots, and siphon passwords and cookies from the Home windows Credential Supervisor and Web Explorer.
One other noteworthy instrument is a USB propagation module that enables for sending instructions to the contaminated system by way of detachable media, seemingly enabling the menace actors to infiltrate air-gapped networks. Additionally employed is an exploit known as CallbackHell to raise privileges and bypass endpoint safety merchandise in order to attain their objectives with out attracting consideration.
Kaspersky stated it additionally found a brand new MATA variant, dubbed MATA technology 5 or MATAv5, that is “fully rewritten from scratch” and “reveals a sophisticated and complicated structure making use of loadable and embedded modules and plugins.”
“The malware leverages inter-process communication (IPC) channels internally and employs a various vary of instructions, enabling it to determine proxy chains throughout varied protocols – additionally inside the sufferer’s surroundings,” the corporate added.
In whole, the MATA framework and its cocktail of plugins incorporate help for over 100 instructions pertaining to info gathering, occasion monitoring, course of administration, file administration, community reconnaissance, and proxy performance.
“The actor demonstrated excessive capabilities of navigating by and leveraging safety options deployed within the sufferer’s surroundings,” Kaspersky stated.
“Attackers used many methods to cover their exercise: rootkits and weak drivers, disguising recordsdata as authentic functions, utilizing ports open for communication between functions, multi-level encryption of recordsdata and community exercise of malware, [and] setting lengthy wait occasions between connections to regulate servers.”