APT41: Cyberespionage Group Targets Asian Materials Industry

The Chinese-sponsored APT41 cyberespionage group, also known as Blackfly, Barium Bronze Atlas, Double Dragon, Wicked Panda, and Wicked Spider has emerged as one of the most active threat groups since at least 2007. 

The cyber-threat group has recently been targeting two subsidiaries of a major Asian conglomerate, which apparently specializes in materials and composites. The attack follows right after another distinct campaign against the Asian material sector. 

The APT attack was seen utilizing the Winnkit backdoor, Mimikatz, and several tools for credential dumping, screen capture, process hollowing, SQL querying, memory dumping (ForkPlayground), and proxy configuration. 

In one of the instances, Symantec discovered a material research organization in Asia that was being targeted by a previously unidentified threat group named ‘Clasiopa,’ which does not seem to be linked to the APTs. 

It is believed that Clasiopa acquired access to the targeted organization by brute forcing public facing servers and using a variety of post-exploitation tools like Atharvan remote access trojan (RAT), which is a modified version of the Lilith RAT, the Thumbsender hacking tool, and a custom proxy tool. The threat actor, according to Symantec, utilized the backdoors to compile lists of files and exfiltrate them, deleted logs, set a scheduled task to list file names, and verified the IP addresses of the compromised machines in an effort to disable endpoint protections. 

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This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents

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