These appliances are often running older versions of BSD or CentOS and would require considerable planning to compile functional malware for them. These kinds of devices don’t support antivirus or endpoint detection and response tools (EDRs), subsequently leaving the underlying operating systems to vendors to manage.
For their long-haul remote access, UNC3524 opted to deploy QUIETEXIT on opaque network appliances within the victim environment think backdoors on SAN arrays, load balancers, and wireless access point controllers. We are sharing the tools, tactics, and procedures used by UNC3524 to help organizations hunt for and protect against their operations.Īttack Lifecycle Initial Compromise and Maintain PresenceĪfter gaining initial access by unknown means, UNC3524 deployed a novel backdoor tracked by Mandiant as QUIETEXIT, which is based on the open-source Dropbear SSH client-server software. Each time a victim environment removed their access, the group wasted no time re-compromising the environment with a variety of mechanisms, immediately restarting their data theft campaign. UNC3524 also takes persistence seriously. The high level of operational security, low malware footprint, adept evasive skills, and a large Internet of Things (IoT) device botnet set this group apart and emphasize the “advanced” in Advanced Persistent Threat.
Eyespy media install#
Part of the group’s success at achieving such a long dwell time can be credited to their choice to install backdoors on appliances within victim environments that do not support security tools, such as anti-virus or endpoint protection. On the surface, their targeting of individuals involved in corporate transactions suggests a financial motivation however, their ability to remain undetected for an order of magnitude longer than the average dwell time of 21 days in 2021, as reported in M-Trends 2022, suggests an espionage mandate. In this blog post, we introduce UNC3524, a newly discovered suspected espionage threat actor that, to date, heavily targets the emails of employees that focus on corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, and large corporate transactions. Mandiant has observed threat actors use these same tools to support their own collection requirements and to target the mailboxes of individuals in victim organizations. Most email systems, whether on-premises or in the cloud, offer programmatic methods to search and access email data across an entire organization, such as eDiscovery and the Graph API. Email messages and their attachments offer a rich source of information about an organization, stored in a centralized location for threat actors to collect.
Since December 2019, Mandiant has observed advanced threat actors increase their investment in tools to facilitate bulk email collection from victim environments, especially as it relates to their support of suspected espionage objectives.
Eyespy media free#
Create a Free Mandiant Advantage Account.
0 kommentar(er)
