New Wave of Cyberattacks Against
Ukrainian Power Industry
ROBERT LIPOVSKY POSTED 20
JAN 2016 - 06:59PM from www.welivesecurity.com
The cyberattacks against the Ukrainian electric power
industry continue. Background information on this story can be found in our
recent publications:
Yesterday (January 19th) we discovered a new wave of these
attacks, where a number of electricity distribution companies in Ukraine were
targeted again following the power outages in December. What’s particularly
interesting is that the malware that was used this time is not BlackEnergy,
which poses further questions about the perpetrators behind the ongoing
operation. The malware is based on a freely-available open-source backdoor –
something no one would expect from an alleged state-sponsored malware operator.
Details of the cyberattacks
The attack scenario itself hasn’t changed much from what we
described in our previous blog post. The attackers sent spearphishing emails to
potential victims yesterday. The email contained an attachment with a malicious
XLS file.
Spearphishing
email from January 19, 2016
The email contains HTML content with a link to a .PNG file
located on a remote server so that the attackers will get a notification that
the email was delivered and opened by the target. We have observed the same
interesting technique used by the BlackEnergy group in the past.
HTML content of
email with PNG file on remote server
Just as interestingly, the name of
PNG file is the base64-encoded string “mail_victim’s_email”.
The malicious macro-enabled XLS file
is similar to the ones we’ve seen in previous attack waves. It tries, by social
engineering, to trick the recipient into ignoring the built-in Microsoft Office
Security Warning, thereby inadvertently executing the macro. The text in the
document, translated from Ukrainian reads: Attention! This document was
created in a newer version of Microsoft Office. Macros are needed to display
the contents of the document.
Executing the macro leads to the launch of a malicious trojan-downloader
that attempts to download and execute the final payload from a remote server.)
The server hosting the final payload
is located in Ukraine and was taken offline after a notification from CERT-UA and CyS-CERT.
We expected to see the BlackEnergy
malware as the final payload, but a different malware was used this time. The
attackers used modified versions of an open-source gcat backdoor written in the Python
programming language. The python script was converted into a stand-alone
executable using PyInstaller program.
This backdoor is able to download executables and execute
shell-commands. Other GCat backdoor functionality, such as making screenshots,
keylogging, or uploading files, was removed from the source code. The backdoor
is controlled by attackers using a GMail account, which makes it difficult to
detect such traffic in the network.
ESET security solutions detect the threat as:
VBA/TrojanDropper.Agent.EY
Win32/TrojanDownloader.Agent.CBC
Python/Agent.N
Win32/TrojanDownloader.Agent.CBC
Python/Agent.N
Thoughts and conclusions
Ever since the first blogposts following
our discovery of these cyberattacks, they have gained widespread media
attention. The reasons for that are twofold:
·
It is probably the first case where
a mass-scale electrical power outage has been caused by a malware cyberattack.
·
Mainstream media have popularly
attributed the attacks to Russia, based on claims of several security companies
that the organization using BlackEnergy, a.k.a. Sandworm, a.k.a. Quedagh, is
Russian state-sponsored.
The first point has been a subject of debate as
to whether the malware actually caused the power outage or whether it only “enabled”
it. While there is a difference in the technical aspects between the two, and
while we’re naturally interested in the smallest details when conducting
malware analysis, on a higher level, it doesn’t really matter. As a matter of
fact, it is the very essence of malicious backdoors – to grant attackers remote
access to an infected system.
The second point is even more controversial. As we have
stated before, great care should be taken before accusing a specific actor,
especially a nation state. We currently have no evidence that would indicate
who is behind these cyberattacks and to attempt attribution by simple deduction
based on the current political situation might bring us to the correct answer,
or it might not. In any case, it is speculation at best. The current discovery
suggests that the possibility of false flag operations should also be
considered.
To sum it up, the current discovery does not bring us any
closer to uncovering the origins of the attacks in Ukraine. On the contrary, it
reminds us to avoid jumping to rash conclusions.
We continue to monitor the situation
for future developments. For any inquiries or to make sample submissions
related to the subject, contact us at: threatintel@eset.com
Indicators of compromise
IP-addresses:
193.239.152.131
62.210.83.213
62.210.83.213
Malicious XLS SHA-1s:
1DD4241835BD741F8D40BE63CA14E38BBDB0A816
Executables SHA-1s:
920EB07BC8321EC6DE67D02236CF1C56A90FEA7D
BC63A99F494DE6731B7F08DD729B355341F6BF3D
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