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:

  • New Multi-Stage StopCrypt Ransomware

    March 12, 2024

    The SonicWall Capture Labs threat research team recently observed a new variant of StopCrypt ransomware. The ransomware executes its malicious activities by utilizing multi-stage shellcodes before launching a final payload that contains the file encryption code. Infection Cycle At the start of execution, it creates a string of msim32.dll on the stack, and, using LoadLibrary, loads ...

  • Is Cybersecurity The Achilles’ Heel Of The Electric Vehicle Revolution?

    March 12, 2024

    The electric vehicle (EV) sector, though nascent and in its formative years, faces numerous challenges. Recent concerns, such as “range anxiety” (a vehicle battery’s charge and ability to complete a planned journey) among consumers and incidents of vehicles losing power in cold temperatures, have contributed to a slowdown in adoption. While the trajectory of electric vehicle ...

  • Acer Philippines reports data breach in third-party vendor system

    March 12, 2024

    Acer Philippines confirmed through an official statement that a security breach occurred within a third-party vendor’s system. The vendor was responsible for managing Acer Philippines’ employee attendance data, and the breach resulted in the unauthorized access of this information. The company emphasized that this incident does not involve Acer Philippines customer databases. Customer data remains secure, ...

  • Ransomware: Attacks Continue to Rise as Operators Adapt to Disruption

    March 12, 2024

    Ransomware activity remains on an upward trend despite the number of attacks claimed by ransomware actors decreasing by slightly more than 20% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Attackers have continually refined their tactics and proven quick to respond to disruption, finding new ways to infect victims. Analysis of data from ransomware leak sites shows that ...

  • Mysterious Werewolf hits defense industry with new RingSpy backdoor

    March 12, 2024

    The criminal group gains initial access through phishing emails with a compressed executable that unleashes RingSpy, an original remote access backdoor The BI.ZONE Threat Intelligence team has detected a new campaign by Mysterious Werewolf, a cluster that has been active since at least 2023. This time, the adversaries are targeting defense enterprises. To achieve their goals, ...

  • VCURMS: A Simple and Functional Weapon

    March 12, 2024

    Recently, FortiGuard Labs uncovered a phishing campaign that entices users to download a malicious Java downloader with the intention of spreading new VCURMS and STRRAT remote access trojans (RAT). The attackers stored malware on public services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and GitHub, employing a commercial protector to avoid detection of the malware. The attacker attempts ...