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:

  • ISC Releases Security Advisories for Multiple Versions of BIND 9

    January 27, 2023

    The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) has released security advisories that address vulnerabilities affecting multiple versions of the ISC’s Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) 9. A remote attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to potentially cause denial-of-service conditions and system failures. Read more… Source: U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency  

  • Mitigating RBAC-Based Privilege Escalation in Popular Kubernetes Platforms

    January 27, 2023

    Prisma Cloud and Unit 42 recently released a report examining the use of powerful credentials in popular Kubernetes platforms, which found most platforms install privileged infrastructure components that could be abused for privilege escalation. Unit 42 happy to share that, as of today, all platforms mentioned in their report have addressed built-in node-to-admin privilege escalation. ...

  • Ukraine: Sandworm hackers hit news agency with 5 data wipers

    January 27, 2023

    The Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) found a cocktail of five different data-wiping malware strains deployed on the network of the country’s national news agency (Ukrinform) on January 17th. “As of January 27, 2023, 5 samples of malicious programs (scripts) were detected, the functionality of which is aimed at violating the integrity and availability of ...

  • Iranian and Russian hackers targeting politicians and journalists, warn UK officials

    January 26, 2023

    Iranian and Russian hackers are targeting British politicians and journalists with espionage attacks, officials have warned. The National Cyber Security Centre has issued a fresh alert about increasing attempts to steal information from specific groups and individuals. Read more… Source: BBC News  

  • Months after NSA disclosed Microsoft cert bug, datacenters remain unpatched

    January 26, 2023

    Most Windows-powered datacenter systems and applications remain vulnerable to a spoofing bug in CryptoAPI that was disclosed by the NSA and the UK National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and patched by Microsoft last year, according to Akamai’s researchers. CryptoAPI helps developers secure Windows-based apps using cryptography; the API can be used, for instance, to validate certificates ...

  • New Mimic Ransomware Abuses Everything APIs for its Encryption Process

    January 26, 2023

    Trend Micro researchers discovered a new ransomware that abuses the APIs of a legitimate tool called Everything, a Windows filename search engine developed by Voidtools that offers quick searching and real-time updates for minimal resource usage. This ransomware (which Trend Micro researchers named Mimic based on a string we found in its binaries), was first ...