Tech
Cover-ups and Covert Operations: UNC3886 Espionage Exposed
The executable and command are components of a threat actor's attempt to hijack an SSH connection for the purposes of obtaining SSH credentials. An analysis of the executable and the attempt is provided later in this report.
Malware using trusted third parties as C2 channels
Threat actors have been observed deploying malware such as MOPSLED and RIFLESPINE, leveraging trusted third parties such as GitHub and Google Drive as C2 channels while relying on rootkits for persistence.
Mops sled
MOPSLED is a modular shellcode-based backdoor with the ability to communicate with its C2 server via a custom binary protocol over HTTP or TCP. MOPSLED's core functionality is the ability to retrieve plugins from its C2 server to extend its functionality. MOPSLED decrypts embedded and external configuration files using a custom ChaCha20 encryption algorithm.
Mandiant has observed MOPSLED being shared among other Chinese cyberespionage groups, including APT41. Mandiant has determined that MOPSLED is an evolution of CROSSWALK that can act as a network proxy.
Mandiant observed UNC3886 deploying a Linux variant identified as MOPSLED.LINUX to the vCenter servers and some of the compromised endpoints where REPTILE was already present. MOPSLED.LINUX appears to have only been used as the initial malware deployed after gaining access, as it lacks rootkit-like capabilities that would allow it to evade detection.
MOPSLED.LINUX was developed to communicate with dead drop URLs to obtain the actual C2 address. Samples associated with UNC3886 were observed making HTTP GET requests to https://cyberponke.github.[.]io/*. The response was decrypted using ChaCha20 cipher to obtain the actual C2 IP address. Subsequent communication is implemented as a custom binary protocol similar to HTTP/S.
Rifle Spine
RIFLESPINE is a cross-platform backdoor that leverages Google Drive to transfer files and execute commands. It employs the CryptoPP library to implement the AES algorithm to encrypt and decrypt data transmitted between the infected machine and the threat actor.
To instruct RIFLESPINE, the threat actor creates an encrypted file on Google Drive containing instructions for RIFLESPINE, which is then executed by the malware on the targeted endpoint. The filename must contain the MAC address of the targeted endpoint at the time of creation. The file is downloaded, and RIFLESPINE downloads it, decrypts it, and executes the instructions. The output of the execution is encrypted and saved to a temporary file, which is then uploaded back to Google Drive. The executable instructions are:
Use the get command to download a file. Use the put command to upload a file. Use settime to set the next invocation time in milliseconds. /bin/sh to execute any command.
UNC3886 deployed RIFLESPINE using the open source Google Drive CLI client. Since the malware does not contain a persistence mechanism, a systemd service file was created and used to execute the malware. Upon initial installation, the malware gathers system information and then begins communicating with the Google Drive service with the following steps:
Run gdrive with the following command to get the files associated with your target endpoint: gdrive –refresh-token
Like MOPSLED.LINUX, RIFLESPINE was only seen on a small percentage of compromised virtual machines. It is reasonable to assume that threat actors have abandoned using MOPSLED.LINUX and RIFLESPINE as backdoors, as they do not have rootkit capabilities, as predictable communication from a virtual machine server to GitHub and Google Drive services rather than a workstation may raise suspicion.
Denying access through backdoored applications
Mandiant has observed that UNC3886 relies heavily on harvesting and leveraging valid credentials for lateral movement between guest virtual machines running on compromised VMware ESXi. In the following sections, we discuss the various techniques used by threat actors to harvest and exploit valid credentials.
SSH executable with backdoor
UNC3886 was observed deploying a backdoored SSH client and daemon after gaining access to guest virtual machines, either through harvesting vpxuser credentials or by exploiting CVE-2023-20867 in conjunction with the exploitation of VMware Guest Operations to facilitate the transfer and execution of malicious files. The purpose of these malicious components was to intercept and harvest credentials in XOR-encrypted text files.
Analysis of the compromised SSH client located at /usr/bin/ssh reveals threat actor modifications to the userauth_passwd() function which manages password-based authentication. These modifications, detailed in Figure 2, introduce instructions designed to harvest SSH credentials from outgoing connections. The credentials are XORed with 0xef before being saved to the file /var/log/ldapd.
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Sources 2/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/uncovering-unc3886-espionage-operations The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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