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:

  • FBI Email Hoaxer ID’ed by the Guy He Allegedly Loves to Torment

    November 16, 2021

    Vinny Troia, the cybersecurity researcher mentioned in a fake alert gushed out to thousands of people from the FBI’s own email system on Friday night, has fingered the guy who allegedly pulled off the exploit. Troia – white hat threat hunter, cybercrime investigator and founder of security firms Night Lion Security and its rebranded version, Shadowbyte ...

  • Emotet, once the world’s most dangerous malware, is back

    November 16, 2021

    Emotet, once described as “the world’s most dangerous malware” before being taken down by a major international police operation, is apparently back – and being installed on Windows systems infected with TrickBot malware. Emotet malware provided its controllers with a backdoor into compromised machines, which could be leased out to other groups, including ransomware gangs, to ...

  • 200M Adult Cam Model, User Records Exposed in Stripchat Breach

    November 16, 2021

    A database containing the highly sensitive information on both users and models on the popular adult cam site StripChat were discovered online, left completely unprotected. The data exposure puts models and users at risk of extortion, violence and more. Stripchat is a popular site founded in 2016 and based in Cyprus that sells live access to ...

  • MosesStaff attacks organizations with encryption malware: No payment demand made

    November 16, 2021

    The MosesStaff hacking group has entered the ‘ransomware’ fray with a difference: blackmail payments are furthest from their minds. On November 15, Check Point Research (CPR) said the group began targeting organizations in Israel during September this year, joining campaigns launched by Pay2Key and BlackShadow. The focus of these operations was to deploy ransomware on their victim’s ...

  • New Rowhammer technique bypasses existing DDR4 memory defenses

    November 15, 2021

    Researchers have developed a new fuzzing-based technique called ‘Blacksmith’ that revives Rowhammer vulnerability attacks against modern DRAM devices that bypasses existing mitigations. The emergence of this new Blacksmith method demonstrates that today’s DDR4 modules are vulnerable to exploitation, allowing a variety of attacks to be conducted. Rowhammer is a security exploit that relies on the leaking of ...

  • High-Severity Intel Processor Bug Exposes Encryption Keys

    November 15, 2021

    A security vulnerability in Intel chips opens the door for encrypted file access and espionage, plus the ability to bypass copyright protection for digital content. That’s according to Positive Technologies (PT), which found that the vulnerability (CVE-2021-0146) is a debugging functionality with excessive privileges, which is not protected as it should be. The high-severity privilege-escalation issue is ...