McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research (ATR) today released research that uncovers previously undiscovered information on how Operation North Star evaluated its prospective victims and launched attacks on organizations in Australia, India, Israel and Russia, including defense contractors based in India and Russia.
McAfee’s initial research into Operation North Star revealed a campaign that used social media sites, spearphishing and weaponized documents to target employees working for organizations in the defense sector. This early analysis focused on the adversary’s initial intrusion vectors, the first stages of how an implant was installed, and how it interacted with the Command and Control (C2) server.
By deepening its investigation into the inner workings of North Star’s C2, McAfee ATR can now provide a unique view into not only the technology and tactics the adversary used to stealthily execute his attacks but also the kinds of victims he targeted.
The latest research probed into the campaign’s backend infrastructure to establish greater perspective into how the adversary targeted and assessed his victims for continued exploitation, and how he used a previously unknown implant called Torisma to execute this exploitation.
McAfee’s findings ultimately provide a unique view into a persistent cyber espionage campaign targeting high value individuals in possession of high value defense sector intellectual property and other confidential information.
VECTORS & INFRASTRUCTURE
Most analysis of cyber campaigns is typically reliant upon the dissection of malware and the telemetry of cyber defenses that have come into contact with those campaigns. McAfee’s analysis of Operation North Star complemented these elements by dissecting the C2 infrastructure that operated the campaign. In doing so, we gained a holistic view of its operations that is rarely available to threat researchers.
Attackers often send out many spearphishing emails to many potential targets rather than precisely targeting the highest value individuals. Once the victim opens a message and infects himself, the malware will try to fully exploit his system. But this broad, less precise approach of infecting many is “noisy” in that it is likely to be identified if these infections are happening at scale across an organization (let alone around the world). Cyber defenses will eventually be able to recognize and stop it.
In the case of Operation North Star, the attackers researched their specific target victims, developed customized content to lure them, engaged them directly via LinkedIn mail conversations, and sent them sophisticated attachments that infected them in a novel way using a template injection tactic.
The campaign used legitimate job recruitment content from popular U.S. defense contractor websites to lure specific victims into opening malicious spear phishing email attachments. Notably, the attackers compromised and used legitimate web domains hosted in the U.S. and Italy to host their command and control capabilities. These otherwise benign domains belonged to organizations in a wide variety of fields, from an apparel manufacturer, to an auction house, to a printing company, to an IT training firm.
Using these domains to conduct C2 operations likely allowed them to bypass some organizations’ security measures because most organizations do not block trusted websites.
The first stage implant was delivered by DOTM files which, once established on a victim’s system, gathered information on that system such as disk information, free disk space information, computer name and logged in username and process information. It would then use a set of logic to evaluate the victim system data sent back by this initial implant to determine whether to install a second-stage implant called Torisma. All the while, it operated to achieve its objectives while minimizing the risk of detection and discovery.
General process flow and component relationship
Torisma is a previously undiscovered, custom-developed, second-stage implant focused on specialized monitoring of high value victims’ systems. Once installed, it would execute custom shellcode and run a custom set of actions depending on the victim systems’ profiles. The actions included active monitoring of the systems and execution of payloads based on observed events. For instance, it would monitor for an increase in the number of logical drives and Remote Desktop Sessions (RDS).
What is clear is that the campaign’s objective was to establish a long-term, persistent espionage campaign focused on specific individuals in possession of strategically valuable technology from key countries around the world.
VICTIMS & IMPACT
McAfee’s early analysis of Operation North Star’s spearphishing messages were written in Korean and exhibited mentions of topics specific to South Korean politics and diplomacy. But our latest analysis of North Star’s C2 log files enabled us to identify targets beyond South Korea:
- Two IP addresses in two Israeli ISP address spaces
- IP addresses in Australian ISP space
- IP address in Russian ISP address space
- India-based defense contractor
- Russian defense contractor
The campaign’s technologies and tactics—the installation of data gathering and system monitoring implants—suggests that the adversary is in a position to remain persistent, conduct surveillance on and exfiltrate sensitive data from its defense sector victims.
The detailed job descriptions used to lure victims and the selective use of the Torisma implant suggest that the attackers were pursuing very specific intellectual property and other confidential information from very specific defense technology providers. Less valuable victims were sidelined to be monitored silently over an extended period of time until they become more valuable.
VILLAINS & IMPLICATIONS
McAfee cannot independently attribute Operation North Star to a particular hacking group. McAfee has established that the code used in the spearphishing attachments is almost identical to that used by a 2019 Hidden Cobra campaign targeting Indian defense and aerospace companies. This could indicate that either Hidden Cobra is behind Operation North Star or another group is copying the group’s known and established technology and tactics. But sound, accurate attribution requires that technical analysis of such attacks be complemented by information from traditional intelligence sources available only to government agencies.
McAfee’s findings do suggest that the actors behind the campaign were more sophisticated than they initially appeared in our early analysis. They were focused and deliberate in what they meant to achieve and more disciplined and patient in their execution to avoid detection.
Please see our full report entitled “Operation North Star: Behind the Scenes” for a detailed review of ATR’s analysis of the campaign.
Also, please read our McAfee Defender’s blog to learn more about how you can build an adaptable security architecture against the Operation North Star campaign and others like it.
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