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:

  • Egregor Ransomware Threatens ‘Mass-Media’ Release of Corporate Data

    October 2, 2020

    A freshly discovered family of ransomware called Egregor has been spotted in the wild, using a tactic of siphoning off corporate information and threatening a “mass-media” release of it before encrypting all files. Egregor is an occult term meant to signify the collective energy or force of a group of individuals, especially when the individuals are ...

  • Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Discovers 27 New Vulnerabilities Across Microsoft Products

    October 2, 2020

    Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 threat researchers have been credited with discovering 27 new vulnerabilities addressed by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), as part of its last nine months of security update releases. Vulnerabilities The Microsoft vulnerabilities discovered included 27 vulnerabilities rated “important,” including Remote Code Execution, Privilege Elevation, Information Disclosure and one Denial of Service ...

  • Researchers use ‘fingerprints’ to track Windows exploit developers

    October 2, 2020

    More to the point, Check Point security researchers Itay Cohen and Eyal Itkin were able to track 16 Windows Kernel Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) exploits to two different exploit developers known as Volodya (or BuggiCorp) and PlayBit (or luxor2008). 15 of the exploits Check Point successfully matched to a known exploit dev were created between 2015 ...

  • IPStorm botnet expands from Windows to Android, Mac, and Linux

    October 1, 2020

    IPStorm, a malware botnet that was first spotted last year targeting Windows systems, has evolved to infect other types of platforms, such as Android, Linux, and Mac devices. Furthermore, the botnet has also quadrupled in size, growing from around 3,000 infected systems in May 2019 to more than 13,500 devices this month. These latest developments put IPStorm ...

  • APT-C-23 Android Spyware Variant Snoops on WhatsApp, Telegram Messages

    September 30, 2020

    Researchers say they have uncovered a new Android spyware variant with an updated command-and-control communication strategy and extended surveillance capabilities that snoops on social media apps WhatsApp and Telegram. The malware, Android/SpyC32.A, is currently being used in active campaigns targeting victims in the Middle East. It is a new variant of an existing malware operated by ...

  • Zerologon Attacks Against Microsoft DCs Snowball in a Week

    September 29, 2020

    A spike in exploitation attempts against the Microsoft vulnerability CVE-2020-1472, known as the Zerologon bug, continues to plague businesses. That’s according to researchers from Cisco Talos, who warned that cybercriminals are redoubling their efforts to trigger the elevation-of-privilege bug in the Netlogon Remote Protocol, which was addressed in the August Microsoft Patch Tuesday report. Microsoft announced ...