Governmental entities in the Middle East and Africa have been targeted in sustained cyber-espionage attacks employing unprecedented credential theft and Exchange email exfiltration techniques. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex Threat Research team is monitoring the attacks, dubbed CL-STA-0043, describing them as a “true advanced persistent threat.” The attacks aim to acquire highly confidential information related to politicians, military activities, and foreign affairs ministries.
The infection chain starts with exploiting vulnerabilities in on-premises Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft Exchange servers, leading to reconnaissance activities and the theft of sensitive data using sophisticated methods. The attacks, attributed to a highly capable advanced persistent threat (APT) actor suspected to be a nation-state, involve the use of novel methods for credential theft, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. The threat actor utilizes the China Chopper web shell and in-memory Visual Basic Script implant from the Exchange Server. Following a successful breach, the attacker employs reconnaissance to identify critical servers, such as domain controllers, web servers, Exchange servers, FTP servers, and SQL databases.
The actor also exploits native Windows tools, including “sticky keys” utility and Utility Manager, for privilege escalation and persistent backdoor access. Additionally, the threat actor employs various techniques, such as using network providers to export plaintext passwords, leveraging an open-source penetration testing toolset called Yasso, and exploiting Exchange Management Shell and PowerShell snap-ins for harvesting emails of interest. The level of sophistication, adaptiveness, and victimology displayed by CL-STA-0043 indicates a highly capable APT threat actor, raising suspicions of a nation-state involvement, according to Lior Rochberger, senior threat researcher at Palo Alto Networks. The attacks highlight the ongoing challenges posed by sophisticated cyber threats targeting governmental entities in the Middle East and Africa.
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