A previously undocumented Chinese-speaking threat actor named SneakyChef has been linked to an espionage campaign targeting government entities across Asia and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) with a malware called SugarGh0st since August 2023. According to Cisco Talos researchers, SneakyChef uses lures that are scanned documents of government agencies, primarily from Ministries of Foreign Affairs or embassies, to distribute the malware. Initial activities of this hacking group were highlighted in November 2023, focusing on South Korea and Uzbekistan, and later expanded to include U.S. organizations involved in artificial intelligence.
The cybersecurity firm Proofpoint has also tracked this group under the name UNK_SweetSpecter, noting attacks on U.S. academia, private industry, and government services. The campaign, also known as Operation Diplomatic Specter by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, has been ongoing since at least late 2022. Recent observations by Talos indicate the campaign has widened to target various government entities across Angola, India, Latvia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan using spear-phishing campaigns with lure documents.
SneakyChef’s attack methodology includes using Windows Shortcut (LNK) files embedded in RAR archives to deliver SugarGh0st malware. They also employ self-extracting RAR archives (SFX) that launch Visual Basic Scripts (VBS) to execute the malware, displaying decoy files to the victim. Notably, attacks against Angola utilized a new remote access trojan called SpiceRAT, which uses similar spear-phishing techniques with documents from a Russian-language newspaper in Turkmenistan and employs DLL side-loading techniques for infection.
SpiceRAT has two infection chains: one using an LNK file in a RAR archive and another using an HTML Application (HTA) to drop a Windows batch script. These scripts launch executables and sideload malicious DLLs to load SpiceRAT, which captures the list of running processes to avoid detection and increases the attack surface on the victim’s network. The campaign demonstrates a sophisticated approach to espionage, leveraging various techniques to infiltrate and manipulate government networks.
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