Welcome to the VB2021 conference!

LazyScripter: from Empire to double RAT

Hossein Jazi (Malwarebytes)
partner message

Ransomware prevention starts with zero

https://www.zscaler.com/solutions/security-transformation/ransomware-protection

Ransomware attacks are increasing 500% year-over-year.

Learn how Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange helps minimize exposure, damage, and risk

at every stage of a ransomware attack.

partner message

Stay ahead of threats with VirusTotal

https://www.virustotal.com/

Stay ahead of the next generation of threats and get relevant insights to solve

the most critical security challenges.

partner message

Farsight Security DNSDB® is the world's largest real-time and historical database of DNS resolutions

https://www.farsightsecurity.com/get-started-guide/

DNSDB 2.0 introduces Flexible Search support, unlocking both Regular Expressions and Globbing syntaxes for more granular and accurate search results. Get your free DNSDB API key and use it in our newly updated

web GUI, DNSDB Scout as well as your own existing environments. Contextualize everything that is DNS related with one API key - DNSDB.

partner message

We don’t just talk about sharing. We do it every day.

https://www.cyberthreatalliance.org/about-cta

Learn how to collaborate with the Cyber Threat Alliance to improve your overall cyber resilience.

We are a greater team when we work together; our collective efforts magnifies our success and

ensures that we are and remain cyber resilient.

partner message

IoT security begins with your Smart TV

https://chomar.link/smarttv

CHOMAR Smart TV Security.

Protect your Android Smart TV against malicious activities and use your IoT devices without any worries.

partner message

Looking for performance validation for your product?

https://www.virusbulletin.com/testing/

Get an edge over your competitors with Virus Bulletin’s anti-malware & email security certification

programmes, supported by 30+ years of experience. Or take advantage of our bespoke testing service

offering valuable performance feedback for R&D. Email [email protected].

partner message

Threat Intelligence and Cyber Resilience

https://vblocalhost.com/programme/#TIPS

Join the VB2021 Threat Intelligence Practitioners' Summit (TIPS), sponsored by the Cyber Threat Alliance,

and learn how investment in threat intelligence builds cyber resilience, allowing you to be more effective

when addressing today's dynamic threat landscape.

partner message

Do you like doing work that matters to you… and really frustrates the bad guys?

https://talosintelligence.com/careers

At Talos, our mission is to make the internet a safer place and fight the good fight for our customers

and users. If you think you have the expertise and attitude to help lead the world in cutting-edge security,

we’d like to talk.

partner message

Amazon Information Security - come build the future with us!

https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/team/infosec

Do you want to work on privacy and security challenges at unprecedented scale?

We have Privacy and Information Security opportunities available now across

the United States, Dublin, Ireland, and Sydney, Australia.

partner message

QI-ANXIN Technology Group Inc. Leader of New Generation Cybersecurity

https://ti.qianxin.com/marketing/vb2021/

QI-ANXIN Technology Group Inc. offers next generation enterprise-class cybersecurity products

and services to government and businesses. QI-ANXIN is the Official Cyber Security Services and

Anti-Virus Software Sponsor of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.

partner message

F5 helps find malware hiding in plain sight

https://www.f5.com/company/blog/half-the-world-s-malware-is-now-encrypted

Encrypted malware is becoming increasingly common, and daisy-chaining security devices is neither

cost-effective, nor efficient. Detecting and stopping malware doesn’t have to be overwhelming with

F5’s innovative products.

partner message

Calling all Hackers!

https://www.ise.io/careers/#op-470256-hacker-midseniorprincipal

We are hiring mid-senior-principal level hackers!

Remote option • Flex schedule • Unlimited vacation • Opportunities for research and publication

partner message

VirusTotal: Actionable crowdsourced threat intelligence

https://www.virustotal.com/

Comprehensive context and cutting-edge functionality to proactively protect from cybersecurity threats.

In February 2021 we identified a new APT group we named LazyScripter, which has been active since at least 2018. This actor has mainly used small-scale spam campaigns to distribute a variant of its loader we named KOCTOPUS, to infect its victims.

KOCTOPUS has usually been embedded in Zip or document files to weaponize the spam emails and is in one of the following formats: batch, VBScript, Reg file or executable. The batch variant of this loader has been obfuscated using a batch encryption tool.

KOCTOPUS has deployed two multi-stage open-source RATs: OCTOPUS and Koadic. As the next stage the actor usually dropped a commercially available RAT such as NjRat, LuminosityLink, Quasar, Remcos, RMS, NetWire or Adwind Rat using Koadic stager.

The primary targets of this actor are airlines and people looking for jobs. The actor has used several different lures to target airlines such as:
  • International Air Transport Association security (IATA security).

  • BSPlink update or upgrade (BSPlink is the global interface for travel agents and airlines to access the IATA Billing and Settlement Plan).

  • IATA ONE ID (ONE ID is a fairly new concept introduced by IATA for contactless identity management that leverages biometric technology).

  • User support kits for IATA users.


Beside those primary targets, we also have observed that LazyScripter has used other lures to target other victims around the world. For example, we have observed Canadian immigration, Microsoft updates, tourism (UNWTO) and bank transfer confirmations being used as spam lures.

Like most of the APTs that have taken advantage of Covid-19 to target victims during the pandemic, this actor also has spoofed a World Health Organization (WHO) email and operated several spam campaigns pretending to provide recommendations to the victim.

The actor has some similarities with known threat actors such as APT28, OilRig and MuddyWater. As an example, like APT28 and MuddyWater it has used the Koadic open-source RAT in its campaigns, and similar to OilRig it has used batch2exe to convert batch files to executables. However, it has major differences with all of these actors and consequently we decided to track it as a new actor, LazyScripter. Since the TTPs used by LazyScripter are commonly used by Middle Eastern APT groups, we believe the origin of this actor is the Middle East.

In this talk, we present an in-depth analysis of the tactics, techniques, procedures and infrastructure employed by this actor group. Also, we talk about the attribution of this actor and its similarities with other known actors such as MuddyWater, OilRig, TransparentTribe and APT28.

Got a question about this presentation? To get in touch with the speaker, contact Hossein on Twitter at @h2jazi.
Hossein Jazi
Malwarebytes

Hossein Jazi is Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at Malwarebytes. He is an active researcher whose research interests include APT tracking, malware analysis and cyber threat intelligence. Currently his focus is on tracking APT campaigns as well as developing machine-learning based models to attribute threat actors. He has been specialising in cybersecurity and APT analysis for over 10 years.