Threat Management, Threat Management, Threat Intelligence, Malware

Russian hackers target European agency with updated DealersChoice Adobe Flash exploit tool

The aggressive Russian APT group Sofacy targeted yet another European government agency earlier this month, attempting to infect the organization with unknown malware using a crafty new variant of its Adobe Flash-based exploit platform DealersChoice.

When it was first exposed in October 2016, DealersChoice was found in spear phishing campaigns that distributed Microsoft Word documents containing embedded Adobe Flash malicious objects capable of retrieving additional malicious payloads. In a Mar. 15 blog post, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat intelligence team reports that the latest version of DealersChoice operates in much the same way, but with several intriguing new twists.

For instance, Sofacy (aka Fancy Bear, APT28, Pawn Storm, Sednit, Tsar Team, and Strontium) now attempts to avoid automated sandboxing techniques by requiring its intended victims to first manually interact with the phishing document before the Small Web Format file responsible for commencing the exploit chain actually launches. According to the researchers, this technique has never before been observed before in the wild.

In the attack against the unnamed European organization, the SWF-based loader was located near a PNG image on page three of the lure document, hidden as a tiny black box that would be easy to overlook. "The SWF runs only when the user scrolls to page three, as that is where the actor placed the SWF object," said blog post author and cyber threat intelligence analyst Robert Falcone, in an email interview with SC Media. "This is an anti-sandbox technique, as sandboxes are automated tools that try to open files to analyze them, but cannot act exactly like a human user. In this case, most sandboxes do not open documents and scroll through the pages to read the content as a human could [or] would."

But that's not where the deception ends. Sofacy also made changes to This DealersChoice Flash object code to include an ActionScript from the open-source video player f4player. In concert with this change, the DealersChoice C2 server disguises its responses as as HTTP live streaming (HLS) traffic, making it appear as if its communications are merely legitimate audio and video files.

The spear phishing document itself appeared to target an entity that would be interested in the defense industry. Its arrived with the subject line, “Defence & Security 2018 Conference Agenda” and included a DOCX file showing a conference schedule, which was lifted directly from the agenda of an actual event, the Underwater Defence & Security 2018 Conference.

The tactics observed here are commensurate with other recent Sofacy campaigns that have similarly attempted to phish worldwide government organizations, sometimes with defense-themed documentation. For example, in February Sofacy reportedly targeted foreign affairs agencies and ministries in North America and Europe with a phishing campaign using spoofed emails to that purported to offer information about upcoming defense events. And on Feb. 28, 2018, it was separately reported that Sofacy stole data from Germany's Foreign and Defense Ministries in December 2017.

While the final payload in this latest cyber assault is unknown, Unit 42 researchers noted that past DealersChoice campaigns were used to distribute the SofacyCarberp (aka Seduploader) reconnaissance malware payload.

Bradley Barth

As director of multimedia content strategy at CyberRisk Alliance, Bradley Barth develops content for online conferences, webcasts, podcasts video/multimedia projects — often serving as moderator or host. For nearly six years, he wrote and reported for SC Media as deputy editor and, before that, senior reporter. He was previously a program executive with the tech-focused PR firm Voxus. Past journalistic experience includes stints as business editor at Executive Technology, a staff writer at New York Sportscene and a freelance journalist covering travel and entertainment. In his spare time, Bradley also writes screenplays.

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