Mandiant has observed APT29 using a stealthy backdoor that we call
POSHSPY. POSHSPY leverages two of the tools the group frequently uses:
PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). In the
investigations Mandiant has conducted, it appeared that APT29 deployed
POSHSPY as a secondary backdoor for use if they lost access to their
primary backdoors.
POSHSPY makes the most of using built-in Windows features –
so-called “living off the land” – to make an especially stealthy
backdoor. POSHSPY's use of WMI to both store and persist the backdoor
code makes it nearly invisible to anyone not familiar with the
intricacies of WMI. Its use of a PowerShell payload means that only
legitimate system processes are utilized and that the malicious code
execution can only be identified through
logging or in memory. The backdoor's infrequent beaconing, traffic
obfuscation, extensive encryption and use of geographically local,
legitimate websites for command and control (C2) make identification
of its network traffic difficult. Every aspect of POSHSPY is efficient
and covert.
Mandiant initially identified an early variant of the POSHSPY
backdoor deployed as PowerShell scripts during an incident response
engagement in 2015. Later in that same engagement, the attacker
updated the deployment of the backdoor to use WMI for storage and
persistence. Mandiant has since identified POSHSPY in several other
environments compromised by APT29 over the past two years.
We first discussed APT29’s use of this backdoor as part of our “No
Easy Breach” talk. For additional details on how we first identified
this backdoor, and the epic investigation it was part of, see the
and presentation.
WMI is an administrative framework that is built into every version
of Windows since 2000. WMI provides many administrative capabilities
on local and remote systems, including querying system information,
starting and stopping processes, and setting conditional triggers. WMI
can be accessed using a variety of tools, including the Windows WMI
Command-line (wmic.exe), or through APIs accessible to programming and
scripting languages such as PowerShell. Windows system WMI data is
stored in the WMI common information model (CIM) repository, which
consists of several files in the
WMI classes are the primary structure within WMI. WMI classes can
contain methods (code) and properties (data). Users with sufficient
system-level privileges can define custom classes or extend the
functionality of the many default classes.
WMI permanent event subscriptions can be used to trigger actions
when specified conditions are met. Attackers often use this
functionality to persist the execution of backdoors at system start
up. Subscriptions consist of three core WMI classes: a Filter, a
Consumer, and a FilterToConsumerBinding. WMI Consumers specify an
action to be performed, including executing a command, running a
script, adding an entry to a log, or sending an email. WMI Filters
define conditions that will trigger a Consumer, including system
startup, the execution of a program, the passing of a specified time
and many others. A FilterToConsumerBinding associates Consumers to
Filters. Creating a WMI permanent event subscription requires
administrative privileges on a system.
We have observed APT29 use WMI to persist a backdoor and also store
the PowerShell backdoor code. To store the code, APT29 created a new
WMI class and added a text property to it in order to store a string
value. APT29 wrote the encrypted and base64-encoded PowerShell
backdoor code into that property.
APT29 then created a WMI event subscription in order to execute the
backdoor. The subscription was configured to run a PowerShell command
that read, decrypted, and executed the backdoor code directly from the
new WMI property. This allowed them to install a persistent backdoor
without leaving any artifacts on the system’s hard drive, outside of
the WMI repository. This “fileless” backdoor methodology made the
identification of the backdoor much more difficult using standard host
analysis techniques.
The WMI component of the POSHSPY backdoor leverages a Filter to
execute the PowerShell component of the backdoor on a regular basis.
In one instance, APT29 created a Filter named
configured to execute every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday at 11:33 am local time.