DarkHydrus – Malicious Hackers Group using Open-source Phishing Tool to Steal Credentials

Newly discovered cyber espionage group DarkHydrus carrying out credential harvest attack on government entities and educational institutions in the Middle East. DarkHydrus used the open-source Phishery tool to carry out the targeted attacks.

Palo Alto observed the ongoing spear-phishing email campaign with the subject “Project Offer” that contains malicious word documents as an attachment.

DarkHydrus Campaign

When the user opens the malicious word document present in the phishing email it attempts to load a template from a remote server and pops-up an authentication dialog box and ask the user to input the login credentials.

The authentication prompt connected with the domain [“<redacted>. 0utl00k[.]net“] which is the C&C server for the cyber espionage group DarkHydrus. Attackers use 0utl00k[.]net which resembles the Microsoft’s legitimate “outlook.com” to make the user less suspicious.

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Once user enter’s the credentials in the dialog box it will be sent to attackers C&C server and the dialog box will go away and open’s an empty document.

Palo Alto researchers also found another two malicious word documents using the domain 0utl00k[.]net that is associated with September and November 2017 campaigns. Both of the campaigns appear particularly targeting an organization.

Out of the three malicious Word documents, two of the documents created using Phishery tool which provides the ability to install inject the URL into a .docx Word document and hosting a C&C server.

DarkHydrus carrying out all the credential harvesting attacks that use weaponized Word documents created through Phishery tool and continues to target the government and educational institutions.

IoC

Samples

d393349a4ad00902e3d415b622cf27987a0170a786ca3a1f991a521bff645318
9eac37a5c675cd1750cd50b01fc05085ce0092a19ba97026292a60b11b45bf49
0b1d5e17443f0896c959d22fa15dadcae5ab083a35b3ff6cb48c7f967649ec82

C&C Server IP and Domain

0utl00k[.]net
107.175.150[.]113
195.154.41[.]150

How to stay safe

1. Have a unique Email address.
2. Do not open any attachments without proper validation.
3. Don’t open emails voluntary emails.
4. Use Spam filters & Antispam gateways.
5. Never respond to any spam emails.

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