BACKSWING - Pulling a BADRABBIT Out of a Hat[html]
Executive Summary
On Oct. 24, 2017, coordinated strategic web compromises started to
distribute BADRABBIT ransomware to unwitting users. FireEye appliances
detected the download attempts and blocked our user base from
infection. During our investigation into the activity, FireEye
identified a direct overlap between BADRABBIT redirect sites and sites
hosting a profiler we’ve been tracking as BACKSWING. We’ve identified
51 sites hosting BACKSWING and four confirmed to drop BADRABBIT.
Throughout 2017, we observed two versions of BACKSWING and saw a
significant increase in May with an apparent focus on compromising
Ukrainian website. The pattern of deployment raises the possibility of
a strategic sponsor with specific regional interests and suggest a
motivation other than financial gain. Given that many domains are
still compromised with BACKSWING, we anticipate that there is a risk
that they will be used for future attacks.
Incident Background
Beginning on Oct. 24 at 08:00 UTC, FireEye detected and blocked
attempts to infect multiple clients with a drive-by download
masquerading as a Flash Update (install_flash_player.exe) that
delivered a wormable variant of ransomware. Users were redirected to
the infected site from multiple legitimate sites (e.g.
http://www.mediaport[.]ua/sites/default/files/page-main.js)
simultaneously, indicating a coordinated and widespread strategic web
compromise campaign.
FireEye network devices blocked infection attempts at over a dozen
victims primarily in Germany, Japan, and the U.S. until Oct. 24 at
15:00 UTC, when the infection attempts ceased and attacker
infrastructure – both 1dnscontrol[.]com and the legitimate websites
containing the rogue code – were taken offline.
BACKSWING Framework Likely Connected to BADRABBIT Activity
Strategic web compromises can have a significant amount of
collateral targeting. It is common for threat actors to pair a
strategic web compromise with profiling malware to target systems with
specific application versions or victims. FireEye observed that
BACKSWING,
