A cyber espionage group previously linked to China has been using a recently patched .NET vulnerability in attacks aimed at organizations in the United States, including a shipbuilding company and a university research center with ties to the military.
The threat actor, known for its use of a remote access trojan (RAT) named NanHaiShu, has been active since at least 2014. In the past years, it has targeted various U.S. and Western European organizations with ties to the maritime sector, including naval defense contractors and research institutions.
A report published last year by F-Secure detailed attacks launched by the group against the participants of a Permanent Court of Arbitration case focusing on a dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea.
F-Secure did not directly attribute the attacks to the Chinese government, but researchers found several pieces of evidence suggesting that the NanHaiShu malware had Chinese origins.
The latest round of attacks attributed to this group were observed by researchers at Proofpoint in mid-September. Experts noticed that the attacker sent spear-phishing emails to a U.S. shipbuilding company and a U.S. university research center with ties to the military.
The emails carried documents designed to exploit CVE-2017-8759, a .NET vulnerability patched by Microsoft just days before the attacks were launched. At the time when Microsoft released fixes, the flaw had already been exploited by a Middle Eastern threat actor to deliver spyware.
Proofpoint has also seen attacks launched by the cyber espionage group in early August. These attacks exploited CVE-2017-0199, an Office vulnerability that had also been exploited in attacks when Microsoft released a patch for it back in April.
The attacks targeted several defense contractors and they involved malicious Microsoft Publisher files, PowerPoint presentations, and domains set up to mimic ones belonging to an important provider of military ships and submarines. Researchers from other companies also analyzed these attacks and some pointed out that many of the targets were in South Korea.
In addition to NanHaiShu, the attackers have used a backdoor dubbed “Orz,” which has been spotted in both old attacks and ones launched in August 2017, loaders such as SeDLL and MockDLL, and the Cobalt Strike penetration testing tool.
In some cases, researchers noticed that the attackers used one organization’s compromised email accounts to send malicious attachments to others in the same industry. The hackers also used hijacked servers for command and control (C&C).
“The tools, techniques, and targets consistently connect their work, particular given their attention to naval and maritime defense interests and use of custom backdoors,” Proofpoint researchers said in a blog post. “While defense contractors and academic research centers with military ties should always be cognizant of the potential for cyberattacks, organizations fitting their targeting profiles should be especially wary of legitimate-looking but unsolicited emails from outside entities.”
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