Anomali Cyber Watch: KilllSomeOne Folders Invisible in Windows, Everything APIs Abuse Speeds Up Ransomware,  APT38 Experiments with Delivery Vectors and Backdoors

The various threat intelligence stories in this iteration of the Anomali Cyber Watch discuss the following topics: APT, China, Cryptocurrency, Data leak, Iran, North Korea, Phishing, Ransomware, and USB malware. The IOCs related to these stories are attached to Anomali Cyber Watch and can be used to check your logs for potential malicious activity.



Figure 1 - IOC Summary Charts. These charts summarize the IOCs attached to this magazine and provide a glimpse of the threats discussed.



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Chinese PlugX Malware Hidden in Your USB Devices?



(published: January 26, 2023)



Palo Alto researchers analyzed a PlugX malware variant (KilllSomeOne) that spreads via USB devices such as floppy, thumb, or flash drives. The variant is used by a technically-skilled group, possibly by the Black Basta ransomware. The actors use special shortcuts, folder icons and settings to make folders impersonating disks and a recycle bin directory. They also name certain folders with the 00A0 (no-break space) Unicode character thus hindering Windows Explorer and the command shell from displaying the folder and all the files inside it.Analyst Comment: Several behavior detections could be used to spot similar PlugX malware variants: DLL side loading, adding registry persistence, and payload execution with rundll32.exe. Incidents responders can check USB devices for the presence of no-break space as a folder name.MITRE ATT&CK: [MITRE ATT&CK] T1091 - Replication Through Removable Media | [MITRE ATT&CK] T1559.001 - Inter-Process Communication: Component Object Model | anomali cyber watch killlsomeone folders invisible windows everything abuse speeds ransomware apt38 experiments delivery vectors backdoors