Virtual Event: Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit - Watch Sessions
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

Chinese APT Group Uses Hacking Team’s Flash Player Exploit

The Adobe Flash Player exploit stolen by hackers from spyware maker Hacking Team has been leveraged by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, according to security solutions provider Volexity.

The Adobe Flash Player exploit stolen by hackers from spyware maker Hacking Team has been leveraged by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, according to security solutions provider Volexity.

One of the groups observed leveraging CVE-2015-5119, which Adobe patched on Wednesday morning, is known as Wekby, APT 18, Dynamite Panda and TG-0416. The threat group, believed to have Chinese roots, is the main suspect in last year’s attack on Community Health Systems. Attackers stole 4.5 million patient records from the organization, reportedly by exploiting the OpenSSL vulnerability dubbed Heartbleed.

According to Volexity, Wekby launched a spear phishing campaign involving emails titled “Important: Flash update” just as Adobe was getting ready to patch the Flash Player zero-day.

The emails were sent out using a spoofed Adobe email address and they contained a link apparently pointing to the official Adobe download domain. Users who clicked on the link were taken to a website set up to serve a malicious SWF file designed to exploit the Flash Player vulnerability in order to deliver a piece of malware.

The malware, in this case the Gh0st remote access Trojan (RAT), communicates with a Singapore IP address that has served as a command and control (C&C) server in many of Wekby’s attacks over the past years.

Labels spotted by researchers in the malicious SWF file suggest that Hacking Team is the source of the exploit.

Volexity says the Flash Player exploit has been leveraged in multiple APT and non-APT attacks.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Hackers leaked a total of 400GB of data stolen from Hacking Team, including surveillance software, source code and exploits. The Flash Player exploit was integrated into exploit kits before Adobe managed to patch the vulnerability. Trend Micro reported that the Flash flaw was exploited before the Hacking Team breach came to light in attacks apparently aimed at users in Korea.

As far as Wekby is concerned, Volexity is not the only security firm to analyze the group’s activities recently. ThreatStream issued a report on Monday detailing some of the evasive maneuvers used by the threat actor.

Researchers discovered that the group has been using variants of the HTTPBrowser tool that uses DNS as a covert channel for communications. Experts also noticed that the APT actor has been trying to complicate the analysis of their malware by using return-oriented programming (ROP) to control execution flow.

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Malware & Threats

Threat actors are increasingly abusing Microsoft OneNote documents to deliver malware in both targeted and spray-and-pray campaigns.

Malware & Threats

Unpatched and unprotected VMware ESXi servers worldwide have been targeted in a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerability patched in 2021.

Malware & Threats

A vulnerability affecting IBM’s Aspera Faspex file transfer solution, tracked as CVE-2022-47986, has been exploited in attacks.

Cybercrime

The recent ransomware attack targeting Rackspace was conducted by a cybercrime group named Play using a new exploitation method, the cloud company revealed this...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...