Earth Koshchei Coopts Red Team Tools in Complex RDP Attacks


Red teaming provides essential tools and testing methodologies for organizations to strengthen their security defenses. Cybercriminals and advanced persistent threat (APT) actors pay close attention to new methods and tools red teams develop, and they may repurpose them with a malicious intent.

In October 2024, an APT group that Trend Micro tracks as Earth Koshchei (also known as APT29 and Midnight Blizzard), likely used a rogue remote desktop protocol (RDP) attack methodology against numerous targets. This methodology was described earlier in 2022 by Black Hills Information Security in detail. The attack technique is called “rogue RDP”, which involves an RDP relay, a rogue RDP server, and a malicious RDP configuration file. A victim of this technique would give partial control of their machine to the attacker, potentially leading to data leakage and malware installation.

Read more…
Source: Trend Micro


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Windows Shortcut (LNK) Malware Strategies

    July 2, 2025

    Attackers are increasingly exploiting Windows shortcut (LNK) files for malware delivery. Palo Alto Unit 42 telemetry revealed 21,098 malicious LNK samples in 2023, which surged to 68,392 in 2024. In this article, Unit 42 researchers present an in-depth investigation of LNK malware, based on analysis of 30,000 recent samples. Windows shortcut files use the .lnk file ...

  • Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome

    July 1, 2025

    Google has released updates to Chrome stable channels to address a high severity vulnerability. CVE-2025-6554 is a “type confusion” vulnerability in the V8 JavaScript browser engine. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to perform arbitrary read/write by convincing a user to visit a malicious HTML page. Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2025-6554 exists in ...

  • Iran-linked hackers threaten to release Trump aides’ emails

    July 1, 2025

    Iran-linked hackers have threatened to disclose more emails stolen from U.S. President Donald Trump’s circle, after distributing a prior batch to the media ahead of the 2024 U.S. election. In online chats with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the ...

  • FBI: Iranian Cyber Actors May Target Vulnerable US Networks and Entities of Interest

    June 30, 2025

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3), and the National Security Agency (NSA) (hereafter referred to as the authoring agencies) strongly urge organizations to remain vigilant for potential targeted cyber activity against U.S. critical infrastructure and other U.S. entities by Iranian-affiliated cyber ...

  • International Criminal Court hit with cyber security attack

    June 30, 2025

    The International Criminal Court has been targeted by a “sophisticated” cyberattack and is taking measures to limit any damage, the global tribunal announced Monday. The ICC, which also was hit by a cyberattack in 2023, said the latest incident had been contained but did not elaborate further on the impact or possible motive. “A Court-wide impact ...

  • Konica Minolta bizhub Multifunction Printer: Pass-Back Attack Vulnerability (NOT FIXED)

    June 30, 2025

    During security testing, Rapid7 discovered that Konica Minolta bizhub 227 Multifunction printers (MFPs) were vulnerable to a pass-back attack. The affected products identified were: Konica Minolta bizhub MFPs Firmware Version: GCQ-Y3 and earlier This issue has been assigned the following CVEs: CVE-2025-6081: LDAP pass-back vulnerability The Konica Minolta bizhub Multifunction printer (MFP) is an all-in-one enterprise printer designed ...