Article Content June 7, 2018 In March and April 2018, Volexity identified multiple spear phishing campaigns attributed to Patchwork, an Indian APT group also known as Dropping Elephant This increase in threat activity was consistent with other observations documented over the last few months in blogs by 360 Threat Intelligence Center analyzing attacks on Chinese organizations and Trend Micro noting targets in South Asia From the attacks observed by Volexity, what is most notable is that Patchwork has pivoted its targeting and has launched attacks directly against US-based think tanks Volexity has also found that, in addition to sending malware lures, the Patchwork threat actors are leveraging unique tracking links in their e-mails for the purpose of identifying which recipients opened their e-mail messages In three observed spear phishing campaigns, the threat actors leveraged domains and themes mimicking those of well-known think tank organizations in the United States The group lifted articles and themes from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) for use in their spear phishing lures and malicious Rich Text Format (RTF) documents Strangely, in one case, the threat actors also appear to have used a domain name similar to the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in a message purporting to be from CFR Each of the spear phishing attacks contained links to .doc files, which were really RTF documents that attempt to exploit CVE-2017-8570 (Composite Moniker) The threat actors appear to have leveraged publicly available exploit code that can be found on Github at the URL: https://github.com/rxwx/CVE-2017-8570 If the exploit is successful, the threat actors will attempt to drop and execute QuasarRAT Details of the malware and the associated attacks are listed below Spear Phishing Messages Each e-mail was sent from the attacker-controlled domain mailcenter.support This domain was not only used to send the phishing e-mails, but also to track which targets opened the e-mail Within each of the HTML-formatted messages, an embedded image tag is used to beacon home to the attacker’s domain, containing an unique identifier specific to the recipient <img src=3D”hxxps://www.mailcenter.support/track/<unique_32_byte_identifier>” width=3D”0″ height=3D”0″ /> While the use of e-mail recipient tracking, a linked RTF document, and a final payload (QuasarRAT variant) remained the same, certain elements differed across campaigns observed Details on each of the messages are listed below Message 1:    Headers Received: by mailcenter.support   Sender China Policy Analysis <publications@chinapolicyanalysis.org>   Subject Chinas Arctic Dream   Body Content and images included within the e-mail body were a direct copy of the following CSIS article:  https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-arctic-dream   Notes The hyperlinked text Download File of “China’s Arctic Dream” within the e-mail body lead to a malicious RTF document located at the URL  hxxp://chinapolicyanalysis.org/Chinas_Arctic_Dream.doc The fprii.net domain was used as the sender address, as well as the hosting location of the malicious RTF document The structure of the domain mimics the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), whose actual domain is fpri.net Sample Message The image below shows an example of how the spear phishing message would look to a recipient Exploitation and Malware Execution Upon opening the above attachments, the recipient will be presented with a document that is a direct copy of a blog post or report released by the think tank organization being impersonated At first glance, everything might look legitimate, but in the background the target user has likely just been infected with QuasarRAT QuasarRAT is a freely available “remote (administration|access) tool” (RAT) written in C# and distributed via Github This RAT provides a variety of functionality that makes it particularly attractive to an attacker When the malicious RTF document is opened, two things happen that allow the attacker malware to run First, the “packager trick” is leveraged in order to embed the initial QuasarRAT dropper (qrat.exe) in the malicious RTF document Its called the “packager trick” because any file embedded in an RTF file using packager will be automatically dropped to the %tmp% folder (c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp) when the RTF document is opened The contents of the malicious scriptlet file (displayed below) clearly show the threat actor executing the initial “qrat.exe” dropper from the current user’s %tmp% directory Note: The scriptlet code is an exact match to that shown on the Github page referenced earlier for CVE-2017-8570 As seen in the image above, the QuasarRAT scheduled task is named Microsoft_Security_Task and runs at 12:00 AM each day Once the task is triggered, it will then repeat every 5 minutes for 60 days When executed, microsoft_network.exe will initiate a request to freegeoip.net in order to determine the geographical location of the infected host Immediately following the request, the malware will begin to beacon over an encrypted connection to the threat actor’s command and control domain tautiaos.com (43.249.37.199) Several related samples were identified and are included in the File Indicators section below Conclusion The addition of US-based think tanks to the list of organizations in the crosshairs of Patchwork shows an increasing diversity in the geographic regions being targeted While there were a few peculiar components to some of the spear phish messages, the campaigns and themes were strategically relevant to the organizations being targeted The Patchwork threat actors also appear to have adopted a technique seen from other APT groups where they are now tracking the effectiveness of their campaigns by recording which recipients have opened the phishing message Finally, although the payload observed being delivered by Patchwork in these campaigns is a readily available open source RAT, it does allow for flexibility in interacting with compromised machines without needing to use custom malware Volexity is actively tracking this group and the infrastructure currently in use for the benefit of its network security monitoring and threat intelligence customers Filename microsoft_network.exe   File Size 846336 bytes   MD5 9e4c373003c6d8f6597f96fc3ff1f49c   SHA1 b7319a5ccf605fb2ff7760130e212728bccad323   Notes QuasarRAT file that beacons to hardcoded IP 43.249.37.199 and the domain tautiaos.com Filename Microsoft.Win32.TaskScheduler.dll   File Size 204488 bytes   MD5 6fa7fce844065ce9c605cbe713f3e170   SHA1 2f7eaad80eab3e9dcc67a003968b35c227290c69   Notes .NET Task Scheduler Managed Wrapper from https://github.com/dahall/taskschedule This is the same file described above Upon execution it will be installed under the filename crome.exe Filename mico-audio.exe, crome.exe   File Size 494592 bytes   MD5 2d8e9fb75e6e816cad38189691e9c9c8   SHA1 2b9a2d5b34b4d79fdfd6c7b861311b12d1627163   Notes QuasarRAT binary that beacons to hardcoded IP 209.58.176.201 and domain sastind-cn.org tautiaos.com 43.249.37.199 Command and control server observed from QuasarRAT malware sastind-cn.org 209.58.176.201 Command and control server observed from QuasarRAT malware ebeijingcn.live 209.58.169.91 Command and control server observed from Delphi RAT malware 
Below is an instruction that describes a task, paired with an input that provides further context. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Instruction: List the MITRE techniques contained in the text. ### Input: Article Content June 7, 2018 In March and April 2018, Volexity identified multiple spear phishing campaigns attributed to Patchwork, an Indian APT group also known as Dropping Elephant This increase in threat activity was consistent with other observations documented over the last few months in blogs by 360 Threat Intelligence Center analyzing attacks on Chinese organizations and Trend Micro noting targets in South Asia From the attacks observed by Volexity, what is most notable is that Patchwork has pivoted its targeting and has launched attacks directly against US-based think tanks Volexity has also found that, in addition to sending malware lures, the Patchwork threat actors are leveraging unique tracking links in their e-mails for the purpose of identifying which recipients opened their e-mail messages In three observed spear phishing campaigns, the threat actors leveraged domains and themes mimicking those of well-known think tank organizations in the United States The group lifted articles and themes from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) for use in their spear phishing lures and malicious Rich Text Format (RTF) documents Strangely, in one case, the threat actors also appear to have used a domain name similar to the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in a message purporting to be from CFR Each of the spear phishing attacks contained links to .doc files, which were really RTF documents that attempt to exploit CVE-2017-8570 (Composite Moniker) The threat actors appear to have leveraged publicly available exploit code that can be found on Github at the URL: https://github.com/rxwx/CVE-2017-8570 If the exploit is successful, the threat actors will attempt to drop and execute QuasarRAT Details of the malware and the associated attacks are listed below Spear Phishing Messages Each e-mail was sent from the attacker-controlled domain mailcenter.support This domain was not only used to send the phishing e-mails, but also to track which targets opened the e-mail Within each of the HTML-formatted messages, an embedded image tag is used to beacon home to the attacker’s domain, containing an unique identifier specific to the recipient <img src=3D”hxxps://www.mailcenter.support/track/<unique_32_byte_identifier>” width=3D”0″ height=3D”0″ /> While the use of e-mail recipient tracking, a linked RTF document, and a final payload (QuasarRAT variant) remained the same, certain elements differed across campaigns observed Details on each of the messages are listed below Message 1:    Headers Received: by mailcenter.support   Sender China Policy Analysis <publications@chinapolicyanalysis.org>   Subject Chinas Arctic Dream   Body Content and images included within the e-mail body were a direct copy of the following CSIS article:  https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-arctic-dream   Notes The hyperlinked text Download File of “China’s Arctic Dream” within the e-mail body lead to a malicious RTF document located at the URL  hxxp://chinapolicyanalysis.org/Chinas_Arctic_Dream.doc The fprii.net domain was used as the sender address, as well as the hosting location of the malicious RTF document The structure of the domain mimics the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), whose actual domain is fpri.net Sample Message The image below shows an example of how the spear phishing message would look to a recipient Exploitation and Malware Execution Upon opening the above attachments, the recipient will be presented with a document that is a direct copy of a blog post or report released by the think tank organization being impersonated At first glance, everything might look legitimate, but in the background the target user has likely just been infected with QuasarRAT QuasarRAT is a freely available “remote (administration|access) tool” (RAT) written in C# and distributed via Github This RAT provides a variety of functionality that makes it particularly attractive to an attacker When the malicious RTF document is opened, two things happen that allow the attacker malware to run First, the “packager trick” is leveraged in order to embed the initial QuasarRAT dropper (qrat.exe) in the malicious RTF document Its called the “packager trick” because any file embedded in an RTF file using packager will be automatically dropped to the %tmp% folder (c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp) when the RTF document is opened The contents of the malicious scriptlet file (displayed below) clearly show the threat actor executing the initial “qrat.exe” dropper from the current user’s %tmp% directory Note: The scriptlet code is an exact match to that shown on the Github page referenced earlier for CVE-2017-8570 As seen in the image above, the QuasarRAT scheduled task is named Microsoft_Security_Task and runs at 12:00 AM each day Once the task is triggered, it will then repeat every 5 minutes for 60 days When executed, microsoft_network.exe will initiate a request to freegeoip.net in order to determine the geographical location of the infected host Immediately following the request, the malware will begin to beacon over an encrypted connection to the threat actor’s command and control domain tautiaos.com (43.249.37.199) Several related samples were identified and are included in the File Indicators section below Conclusion The addition of US-based think tanks to the list of organizations in the crosshairs of Patchwork shows an increasing diversity in the geographic regions being targeted While there were a few peculiar components to some of the spear phish messages, the campaigns and themes were strategically relevant to the organizations being targeted The Patchwork threat actors also appear to have adopted a technique seen from other APT groups where they are now tracking the effectiveness of their campaigns by recording which recipients have opened the phishing message Finally, although the payload observed being delivered by Patchwork in these campaigns is a readily available open source RAT, it does allow for flexibility in interacting with compromised machines without needing to use custom malware Volexity is actively tracking this group and the infrastructure currently in use for the benefit of its network security monitoring and threat intelligence customers Filename microsoft_network.exe   File Size 846336 bytes   MD5 9e4c373003c6d8f6597f96fc3ff1f49c   SHA1 b7319a5ccf605fb2ff7760130e212728bccad323   Notes QuasarRAT file that beacons to hardcoded IP 43.249.37.199 and the domain tautiaos.com Filename Microsoft.Win32.TaskScheduler.dll   File Size 204488 bytes   MD5 6fa7fce844065ce9c605cbe713f3e170   SHA1 2f7eaad80eab3e9dcc67a003968b35c227290c69   Notes .NET Task Scheduler Managed Wrapper from https://github.com/dahall/taskschedule This is the same file described above Upon execution it will be installed under the filename crome.exe Filename mico-audio.exe, crome.exe   File Size 494592 bytes   MD5 2d8e9fb75e6e816cad38189691e9c9c8   SHA1 2b9a2d5b34b4d79fdfd6c7b861311b12d1627163   Notes QuasarRAT binary that beacons to hardcoded IP 209.58.176.201 and domain sastind-cn.org tautiaos.com 43.249.37.199 Command and control server observed from QuasarRAT malware sastind-cn.org 209.58.176.201 Command and control server observed from QuasarRAT malware ebeijingcn.live 209.58.169.91 Command and control server observed from Delphi RAT malware  ### Response: .