During recent research, Microsoft has discovered evidence of a complex interconnected malware ecosystem that is associated with the Raspberry Robin worm.
With other malware families, there are several root links to the Raspberry Robin worm were identified. Even security experts have detected that it uses alternate infection tactics as well.
Infections like these lead to a variety of complications and here below we have listed them:-
- Hands-on-keyboard attacks: When attackers are already inside your environment following a breach, a hands-on keyboard attack will occur. It is a two-sided operation; on one end it’s the cybercriminal who sits at a keyboard, while on the other side it’s your compromised network that is being accessed.
- Human-operated ransomware activity: It occurs when cybercriminals are involved in an active attack on a victim. Using this approach, an organization’s on-premises infrastructure is penetrated, privileges are elevated, and ransomware is deployed by the threat actors.
Compromised 1,000 Organizations
In the past 30 days, on more than 1000 organizations’ 3000 devices, the Raspberry Robin worm has initiated payload alerts. There have been instances where the Raspberry Robin worm has been installed on the victims’ systems with malware called FakeUpdates.
Raspberry Worm is also known as QNAP Worm, as for command-and-control, it uses the compromised QNAP storage servers. Through infected USB drives containing malicious. LNK files, Raspberry Robin spreads to other devices.
The worm will spawn a msiexec process using cmd[.]exe as soon as a USB device is attached.
In order to communicate with its C2 servers, the malware communicates with compromised Windows devices.
Raspberry Robin’s Connection
Microsoft Security Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) observed Raspberry Robin in October 2022, and it’s being used by DEV-0950, which is another actor who was also involved in the post-compromise activity.
As a result of the DEV-0950 activity, the Cobalt Strike was compromised through hands-on keyboard activity. The majority of the victims of DEV-0950 are traditionally acquired via phishing scams.
However, the operators of DEV-0950 have moved to use Raspberry Robin instead of the traditional method. The advantage of this approach is that the payloads can be delivered to existing infections and the campaigns can move to the stage of ransomware more quickly.
Other second-stage payloads have also been dropped onto compromised devices using Raspberry Robin, including the following:-
- IcedID
- Bumblebee
- Truebot
- Clop ransomware
In addition to the Raspberry Robin implant, other malware families have also been distributed in the course of the malware distribution campaign, and it’s quite common in the economy of cybercrime.
As part of its activities, DEV-0950 overlaps with the activities of the groups FIN11 and TA505 which are monitored publicly. While there has been interchangeability between the terms FIN11 and TA505, which is not unusual.
For delivering the payload, the threat actors who are behind these campaigns are paying the operators of the worm.
There have also been indications that another artifact known as Fauppod has been distributed by a cybercriminal actor dubbed DEV-0651. There are many legitimate cloud services that are being abused to distribute this malware.
Mitigations
To mitigate the impact of this threat, it is also possible for defenders to apply the following mitigation measures:-
- When mounting the drive, prevent autorun from being used and code from being executed.
- Make sure the tamper protection setting is enabled in order to protect Microsoft Defender Antivirus from being interrupted by attacks.
- It is very important to turn on cloud-delivered protection for Microsoft Defender Antivirus or your antivirus software counterpart if it supports the feature.
- The USB port should be blocked from running untrusted or unsigned processes.
- Scripts that may be obfuscated should be blocked from being executed.
- It is imperative to block executable files from running unless they fulfill all the trusted criteria.
- The local security authority subsystem of Windows should be protected against credential theft.
Also Read: Download Secure Web Filtering – Free E-book
