APT10 hacking group targets industrial companies again

APT10 hacking group targets industrial companies again

A large-scale and persistent campaign of cyberattacks targeting organizations with ties to Japan has been identified. Symantec researchers have discovered the campaign, which uses the recently discovered ZeroLogon vulnerability, linking it to exploits against companies in the industrial, automotive, pharmaceutical and engineering sectors. The latest wave of attacks has been going on since at least mid-October 2019 and only ended last month. The target companies are all known entities, many of which have ties to Japan, which is the modus operandi of this group. APT10 was known to target Japanese companies in previous attack campaigns. "The scale and sophistication of this attack campaign indicate that it is the work of a large and well-resourced group, with Symantec, a division of Broadcom, discovering enough evidence to attribute it to Cicada (aka APT10, Stone Panda, Cloud Hopper)," the Symantec Threat Hunter team explained. "Cicada has been involved in espionage operations since 2009, and US government officials have linked the activities of APT10, which we follow as Cicada, to the Chinese government."

A variety of tactics

Symantec found that the AP10 group used a variety of tools in the campaign, including network discovery, credential theft, PowerShell scripting, and RAR archiving. The DLL download has also been used to inject a form of custom malware, dubbed "Backdoor.Hartip". Notably, APT10 has also been found to target the ZeroLogon vulnerability. Although a patch for this security breach was released in August, vulnerable devices remain at risk. Previously, attackers used the bug to spoof domain controller accounts, steal domain credentials, and compromise all Active Directory identity services. It seems that the main objective of the attackers was the theft of information. Japanese organizations in particular need to remain vigilant, especially as ATP10 clearly has significant resources to carry out further attacks. Via ZDNet