[Home](https://www.fireeye.com/)  [FireEye Blogs](https://www.fireeye.com/blog.html)  [Threat Research Blog](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research.html)  Cyber Espionage is Alive and Well: APT32 and the T... # Cyber Espionage is Alive and Well: APT32 and the Threat to Global Corporations [May 14, 2017 | by Nick Carr](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research.html/category/etc/tags/fireeye-blog-authors/nick-carr) Cyber espionage actors, now designated by FireEye as APT32 (OceanLotus Group), are carrying out intrusions into private sector companies across multiple industries and have also targeted foreign governments, dissidents, and journalists. FireEye assesses that APT32 leverages a unique suite of fully-featured malware, in conjunction with commercially-available tools, to conduct targeted operations that are aligned with Vietnamese state interests. ### APT32 and FireEye’s Community Response In the course of investigations into intrusions at several corporations with business interests in Vietnam, FireEye’s Mandiant incident response consultants uncovered activity and attacker-controlled infrastructure indicative of a significant intrusion campaign. In March 2017, in response to active targeting of FireEye clients, the team [launched a Community Protection Event (CPE) – a coordinated effort between Mandiant](https://www2.fireeye.com/WEB-Community-Protection-Security-Numbers.html) ----- p p g q tools and phishing lures. This focused intelligence and detection effort led to new external victim identifications as well as providing sufficient technical evidence to link twelve prior intrusions, consolidating four previously unrelated clusters of threat actor activity into FireEye’s newest named advanced persistent threat group: APT32. ### APT32 Targeting of Private Sector Company Operations in Southeast Asia Since at least 2014, FireEye has observed APT32 targeting foreign corporations with a vested interest in Vietnam’s manufacturing, consumer products, and hospitality sectors. Furthermore, there are indications that APT32 actors are targeting peripheral network security and technology infrastructure corporations. Here is an overview of intrusions investigated by FireEye that are attributed to APT32: In 2014, a European corporation was compromised prior to constructing a manufacturing facility in Vietnam. In 2016, Vietnamese and foreign-owned corporations working in network security, technology infrastructure, banking, and media industries were targeted. In mid-2016, malware that FireEye believes to be unique to APT32 was detected on the networks of a global hospitality industry developer with plans to expand operations into Vietnam. From 2016 through 2017, two subsidiaries of U.S. and Philippine consumer products corporations, located inside Vietnam, were the target of APT32 intrusion operations. Table 1 shows a breakdown of APT32 activity, including the malware families used in each. Year Country Industry Malware Network 2014 Vietnam WINDSHIELD |Year|Country|Industry|Malware| |---|---|---|---| ----- |2015|Vietnam|Media|WINDSHIELD| |---|---|---|---| |2016|Philippines|Consumer products|KOMPROGO WINDSHIELD SOUNDBITE BEACON| |2016|Vietnam|Banking|WINDSHIELD| |2016|Philippines|Technology Infrastructure|WINDSHIELD| |2016|China|Hospitality|WINDSHIELD| |2016|Vietnam|Media|WINDSHIELD| |2016|United States|Consumer Products|WINDSHIELD PHOREAL BEACON SOUNDBITE| Table 1: APT32 Private Sector Targeting Identified by FireEye ### APT32 Interest in Political Influence and Foreign Governments In addition to focused targeting of the private sector with ties to Vietnam, APT32 has ----- j gg g y tactics consistent with APT32 operations. In 2014, APT32 leveraged a spear-phishing attachment titled “Plans to crackdown on protesters at the Embassy of Vietnam.exe," which targeted dissident activity among the Vietnamese diaspora in Southeast Asia. Also in 2014, APT32 carried out an intrusion against a Western country’s national legislature. In 2015, SkyEye Labs, the security research division of the Chinese firm Qihoo 360, [released a report detailing threat actors that were targeting Chinese public and](http://blogs.360.cn/blog/oceanlotus-apt) private entities including government agencies, research institutes, maritime agencies, sea construction, and shipping enterprises. The information included in the report indicated that the perpetrators used the same malware, overlapping infrastructure, and similar targets as APT32. In 2015 and 2016, two Vietnamese media outlets were targeted with malware that FireEye assesses to be unique to APT32. In 2017, social engineering content in lures used by the actor provided evidence that they were likely used to target members of the Vietnam diaspora in Australia as well as government employees in the Philippines. ### APT32 Tactics In their current campaign, APT32 has leveraged ActiveMime files that employ social engineering methods to entice the victim into enabling macros. Upon execution, the initialized file downloads multiple malicious payloads from remote servers. APT32 actors continue to deliver the malicious attachments via spear-phishing emails. APT32 actors designed multilingual lure documents which were tailored to specific victims. Although the files had “.doc” file extensions, the recovered phishing lures were ActiveMime “.mht” web page archives that contained text and images. These files were likely created by exporting Word documents into single file web pages. Table 2 contains a sample of recovered APT32 multilingual lure files. ActiveMime Lure Files MD5 ----- |告.doc (2017 Statistical Report on Staff Salary and Allowances)|5458a2e4d784abb1a1127263bd5006b5| |---|---| |Thong tin.doc (Information)|ce50e544430e7265a45fab5a1f31e529| |Phan Vu Tutn CV.doc|4f761095ca51bfbbf4496a4964e41d4f| |Ke hoach cuu tro nam 2017.doc (2017 Bailout Plan)|e9abe54162ba4572c770ab043f576784| |Instructions to GSIS.doc|fba089444c769700e47c6b44c362f96b| |Hoi thao truyen thong doc lap.doc (Traditional Games)|f6ee4b72d6d42d0c7be9172be2b817c1| |Giấy yêu cầu bồi thường mới 2016 - hằng.doc (New 2016 Claim Form)|aa1f85de3e4d33f31b4f78968b29f175| |Hoa don chi tiet tien no.doc (Debt Details)|5180a8d9325a417f2d8066f9226a5154| |Thu moi tham du Hoi luan.doc (Collection of Participants)|f6ee4b72d6d42d0c7be9172be2b817c1| |Danh sach nhan vien vi pham ky luat.doc (List of Employee Violations)|6baafffa7bf960dec821b627f9653e44| Nội-dung-quả ng-cá o.doc (Internal Content Advertising) 471a2e7341f2614b715dc89e803ffcac ----- The Base64 encoded ActiveMime data also contained an OLE file with malicious macros. When opened, many lure files displayed fake error messages in an attempt to trick users into launching the malicious macros. Figure 1 shows a fake Gmail-theme paired with a hexadecimal error code that encourages the recipient to enable content to resolve the error. Figure 2 displays another APT32 lure that used a convincing image of a fake Windows error message instructing the recipient to enable content to properly display document font characters. Figure 1: Example APT32 Phishing Lure – Fake Gmail Error Message ----- Figure 2: Example APT32 Phishing Lure – Fake Text Encoding Error Message APT32 operators implemented several novel techniques to track the efficacy of their phishing, monitor the distribution of their malicious documents, and establish persistence mechanisms to dynamically update backdoors injected into memory. In order to track who opened the phishing emails, viewed the links, and downloaded the attachments in real-time, APT32 used cloud-based email analytics software designed for sales organizations. In some instances, APT32 abandoned direct email attachments altogether and relied exclusively on this tracking technique with links to their ActiveMime lures hosted externally on legitimate cloud storage services. To enhance visibility into the further distribution of their phishing lures, APT32 utilized the native web page functionality of their ActiveMime documents to link to external images hosted on APT32 monitored infrastructure. Figure 3 contains an example phishing lure with HTML image tags used for additional tracking by APT32. Figure 3: Phishing Lure Containing HTML Image Tags for Additional Tracking ----- with email tracking software, APT32 was able to closely track phishing delivery, success rate, and conduct further analysis about victim organizations while monitoring the interest of security firms. Once macros were enabled on the target system, the malicious macros created two named scheduled tasks as persistence mechanisms for two backdoors on the infected system. The first named scheduled task launched an application whitelisting script protection bypass to execute a COM scriptlet that dynamically downloaded the first backdoor from APT32’s infrastructure and injected it into memory. The second named scheduled task, loaded as an XML file to falsify task attributes, ran a JavaScript code block that downloaded and launched a secondary backdoor, delivered as a multi-stage PowerShell script. In most lures, one scheduled task persisted an APT32-specific backdoor and the other scheduled task initialized a commercially-available backdoor as backup. To illustrate the complexity of these lures, Figure 4 shows the creation of persistence mechanisms for recovered APT32 lure “2017年员工工资性津贴额统计报告.doc”. Figure 4: APT32 ActiveMime Lures Create Two Named Scheduled Tasks In this example, a scheduled task named “Windows Scheduled Maintenance” was created [to run Casey Smith’s “Squiblydoo” App Whitelisting bypass every 30 minutes. While all](http://subt0x10.blogspot.com/2016/04/bypass-application-whitelisting-script.html) payloads can be dynamically updated, at the time of delivery, this task launched a COM scriptlet (“.sct” file extension) that downloaded and executed Meterpreter hosted on images.chinabytes[.]info. Meterpreter then loaded Cobalt Strike BEACON, configured to [communicate with 80.255.3[.]87 using the Safebrowsing malleable C2 profile to further](https://github.com/rsmudge/Malleable-C2-Profiles/blob/master/normal/safebrowsing.profile) bl d i ith t k t ffi A d h d l d t k d “S h d l d D f ” ----- communicate with the domains blog.panggin[.]org, share.codehao[.]net, and yii.yiihao126[.]net. Figure 5 illustrates the chain of events for a single successful APT32 phishing lure that dynamically injects two multi-stage malware frameworks into memory. ----- Figure 5: APT32 Phishing Chain of Events The impressive APT32 operations did not stop after they established a foothold in victim environments. Several Mandiant investigations revealed that, after gaining access, APT32 regularly cleared select event log entries and heavily obfuscated their PowerShell-based tools and shellcode loaders with Daniel Bohannon’s InvokeObfuscation framework. APT32 regularly used stealthy techniques to blend in with legitimate user activity: During one investigation, APT32 was observed using a privilege escalation exploit (CVE-2016-7255) masquerading as a Windows hotfix. In another investigation, APT32 compromised the McAfee ePO infrastructure to distribute their malware as a software deployment task in which all systems pulled the payload from the ePO server using the proprietary SPIPE protocol. APT32 also used hidden or non-printing characters to help visually camouflage their malware on a system. For example, APT32 installed one backdoor as a persistent service with a legitimate service name that had a Unicode no-break space character appended to it Another backdoor used an otherwise legitimate DLL filename ----- APT32 appears to have a well-resourced development capability and uses a custom suite of backdoors spanning multiple protocols. APT32 operations are characterized through deployment of signature malware payloads including WINDSHIELD, KOMPROGO, SOUNDBITE, and PHOREAL. APT32 often deploys these backdoors along with the commercially-available Cobalt Strike BEACON backdoor. APT32 may also possess [backdoor development capabilities for macOS.](https://www.alienvault.com/blogs/labs-research/oceanlotus-for-os-x-an-application-bundle-pretending-to-be-an-adobe-flash-update) The capabilities for this unique suite of malware is shown in Table 3. Malware Capabilities Command and control (C2) communications via TCP raw sockets Four configured C2s and six configured ports – randomly-chosen C2/port for communications Registry manipulation Get the current module's file name Gather system information including WINDSHIELD registry values, user name, computer name, and current code page File system interaction including directory creation, file deletion, reading, and writing files Load additional modules and execute code Terminate processes Anti-disassembly Fully-featured backdoor capable of process file and registry management |Malware|Capabilities| |---|---| |WINDSHIELD|Command and control (C2) communications via TCP raw sockets Four configured C2s and six configured ports – randomly-chosen C2/port for communications Registry manipulation Get the current module's file name Gather system information including registry values, user name, computer name, and current code page File system interaction including directory creation, file deletion, reading, and writing files Load additional modules and execute code Terminate processes Anti-disassembly| ----- |Col1|Retrieving information about the| |---|---| ||infected system| |SOUNDBITE|C2 communications via DNS Process creation File upload Shell command execution File and directory enumeration/manipulation Window enumeration Registry manipulation System information gathering| |PHOREAL|C2 communications via ICMP Reverse shell creation Filesystem manipulation Registry manipulation Process creation File upload| BEACON (Cobalt Strike) Publicly available payload that can inject and execute arbitrary code into processes Impersonating the security context of users Importing Kerberos tickets Uploading and downloading files Executing shell commands Configured with malleable C2 profiles to blend in with normal network traffic Co-deployment and interoperability ----- Table 3: APT32 Malware and Capabilities APT32 operators appear to be well-resourced and supported as they use a large set of domains and IP addresses as command and control infrastructure. The FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence MySIGHT Portal contains additional information on these backdoor families based on Mandiant investigations of APT32 intrusions. Figure 6 provides a summary of APT32 tools and techniques mapped to each stage of the attack lifecycle. Figure 6: APT32 Attack Lifecycle ### Outlook and Implications Based on incident response investigations, product detections, and intelligence observations along with additional publications on the same operators, FireEye assesses that APT32 is a cyber espionage group aligned with Vietnamese government interests. The targeting of private sector interests by APT32 is notable and FireEye believes the ----- ultimately erode the competitive advantage of targeted organizations. Furthermore, APT32 continues to threaten political activism and free speech in Southeast Asia and the public sector worldwide. Governments, journalists, and members of the Vietnam diaspora may continue to be targeted. While actors from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea remain the most active cyber espionage threats tracked and responded to by FireEye, APT32 reflects a growing host of new countries that have adopted this dynamic capability. APT32 demonstrates how accessible and impactful offensive capabilities can be with the proper investment and the flexibility to embrace newly-available tools and techniques. As more countries utilize inexpensive and efficient cyber operations, there is a need for public awareness of these threats and renewed dialogue around emerging nation-state intrusions that go beyond public sector and intelligence targets. ### APT32 Detection Figure 7 contains a Yara rule can be used to identify malicious macros associated with APT32’s phishing lures: ----- Table 4 contains a sampling of the infrastructure that FireEye has associated with APT32 C2. C2 Infrastructure 103.53.197.202 104.237.218.70 104.237.218.72 185.157.79.3 193.169.245.78 193.169.245.137 23.227.196.210 24.datatimes.org 80.255.3.87 blog.docksugs.org blog.panggin.org contay.deaftone.com check.paidprefund.org datatimes.org docksugs.org economy.bloghop.org emp.gapte.name facebook-cdn.net gap-facebook.com gl-appspot.org help.checkonl.org high.expbas.net high.vphelp.net icon.torrentart.com images.chinabytes.info imaps.qki6.com img.fanspeed.net job.supperpow.com lighpress.info menmin.strezf.com mobile.pagmobiles.info news.lighpress.info notificeva.com |C2 Infrastructure|Col2|Col3| |---|---|---| |103.53.197.202|104.237.218.70|104.237.218.72| |185.157.79.3|193.169.245.78|193.169.245.137| |23.227.196.210|24.datatimes.org|80.255.3.87| |blog.docksugs.org|blog.panggin.org|contay.deaftone.com| |check.paidprefund.org|datatimes.org|docksugs.org| |economy.bloghop.org|emp.gapte.name|facebook-cdn.net| |gap-facebook.com|gl-appspot.org|help.checkonl.org| |high.expbas.net|high.vphelp.net|icon.torrentart.com| |images.chinabytes.info|imaps.qki6.com|img.fanspeed.net| |job.supperpow.com|lighpress.info|menmin.strezf.com| ----- p g g g g seri.volveri.net ssl.zin0.com static.jg7.org syn.timeizu.net teriava.com timeizu.net tonholding.com tulationeva.com untitled.po9z.com update-flashs.com vieweva.com volveri.net vphelp.net yii.yiihao126.net zone.apize.net Table 4: Sampling of APT32 C2 Infrastructure [This entry was posted on Sun May 14 18:00 EDT 2017 and filed under Nick Carr, Attack,](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research.html/category/etc/tags/fireeye-blog-authors/nick-carr) [Malware, and APT.](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research.html/category/etc/tags/fireeye-blog-tags/malware) |seri.volveri.net|ssl.zin0.com|static.jg7.org| |---|---|---| |syn.timeizu.net|teriava.com|timeizu.net| |tonholding.com|tulationeva.com|untitled.po9z.com| |update-flashs.com|vieweva.com|volveri.net| |vphelp.net|yii.yiihao126.net|zone.apize.net| ----- ## Sign up for email updates Get information and insight on today's advanced threats from the leader in advanced threat prevention. 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