Morphisec Cyber Security Blog

Today Adobe disclosed a new Flash zero-day, releasing a patch for the critical vulnerability in an out-of-band update. Successful exploitation gives attackers the ability to execute arbitrary code on the targeted machine, and eventually assume full system control. Morphisec customers are already protected from attacks exploiting this vulnerability.

Note: This post was updated 11-30-18 with details of a new intercepted attack. See technical description below.

Over the past three days, Morphisec Labs researchers have discovered a widespread cyber campaign hitting multiple targets. Morphisec researchers dubbed the campaign “Pied Piper”as it delivers various Remote Access Trojan (RAT) payloads via phishing, across multiple countries.

This blog was co-authored by Alon Groisman.

It seems like the rumors of FIN7’s decline have been hasty. Just a few months after the well-publicized indictment of three high-ranking members in August, Morphisec has identified a new FIN7 campaign that appears to be targeting the restaurant industry.

Over the past year, Morphisec and several other endpoint protection companies have been tracking a resurgence in activity from the Cobalt Group. Cobalt is one of the most notorious cybercrime operations, with attacks against more than 100 banks across 40 countries

The Fallout exploit kit, named for its similarities to the once notorious Nuclear exploit kit, already shows signs of reaching the levels of popularity of its namesake. Since its discovery by security researchers at the end of August, Fallout has been seen distributing the SmokeLoader trojan, GandCrab ransomware, CoalaBot, various potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) and, most recently, a new ransomware strain called SAVEfiles.

Fileless malware is a type of a malicious code execution technique that operates completely within process memory; no files are dropped onto the disk. Without any artifacts on the hard drive to detect, these attacks easily evade most security solutions.

July has been a busy month for the distributors of GandCrab ransomware. After about two months with no major update, the cybercrime gang behind GandCrab released version 4, and a few days later, version 4.1. The primary delivery method is via compromised WordPress websites, which have been hijacked to include fake crack application pages, which in turn redirect to the GandCrab executable. Other distribution methods are Exploit Kits (EK) and malicious email campaigns.

A new highly sophisticated botnet incorporating numerous malicious, evasive techniques is quickly spreading its tentacles. Dubbed MyloBot, the botnet uses an usually complex chain attack and combines multiple anti-analysis techniques to make it more difficult to detect the payload and harder to analyze by security researchers. Initial research published by Deep Instinct points out that everything on the victim’s end takes place in memory, while the main business logic of the botnet is executed in an external process using code injection. This makes it even harder to detect and trace.

Adobe disclosed that a Flash zero-day was being exploited in targeted attacks against Windows users. The critical vulnerability was discovered and independently reported by several security firms. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows arbitrary code execution which can ultimately lead to an attacker assuming full system control.

After more than four years with no weaponized exploits for Adobe Acrobat Reader, researchers at ESET identified a weaponized PDF that allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted machine and eventually assume full system control. The PDF exploits two previously unknown vulnerabilities, Acrobat Reader vulnerability CVE-2018-4990 and a privilege escalation vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, CVE-2018-8120.

Adobe Reader has a built-in sandbox feature that usually makes exploitation difficult. By combining vulnerabilities, this attack achieves code execution and then bypasses the sandbox protection to fully compromise the targeted system.