Recently, Mandiant became aware of an APT41 intrusion where the malicious actor deployed a combination of ANTSWORD and BLUEBEAM web shells for persistence.
These web shells were identified on a Tomcat Apache Manager server and active since at least 2023. APT41 utilized these web shells to execute certutil.exe to download the DUSTPAN dropper to stealthily load BEACON. As the APT41 intrusion progressed, the group escalated its tactics by deploying the DUSTTRAP dropper. Upon execution, DUSTTRAP would decrypt a malicious payload and execute it in memory, leaving minimal forensic traces.
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Source: Mandiant
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