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Research Roundup: Mustang Panda and Fancy Bear

Howdy, and welcome to the ThreatConnect Research Roundup, a collection of recent findings by our Research Team and items from open source publications that have resulted in Observations of related indicators across ThreatConnect’s CAL™ (Collective Analytics Layer).

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In this edition, we cover:

  • Mustang Panda PlugX
  • Fancy Bear
  • Emotet
  • Prometei

Roundup Highlight: Mustang Panda

Our highlight in this Roundup is Incident 20200728A: File Matching YARA Rule Associated to Mustang Panda PlugX. File d92a74ec57e53d449e0f0d4053f8adb6e1bb6ca339284e1e0045d416fcd022a6 was identified via a YARA rule as a Mustang Panda PlugX binary.

The embedded config contains the following Command and Control locations which have been associated with this Incident:

185.239.226(.)65:80
185.239.226(.)65:443

Probable connection to Mustang Panda is due to the similarity in the PlugX samples when compared to the details found at:

https://insights.oem.avira.com/new-wave-of-plugx-targets-hong-kong/
https://lab52.io/blog/mustang-panda-recent-activity-dll-sideloading-trojans-with-temporal-c2-servers/

Similar traits include:

  • The same config decryption key was used: “123456789”
  • The binary is obfuscated using a 10 byte XOR key.
  • The use of shell code in the MZ header

File d92a74ec57e53d449e0f0d4053f8adb6e1bb6ca339284e1e0045d416fcd022a6 was decrypted from File 27ea939f41712a8655dc2dc0bce7d32a85e73a341e52b811b109befc043e762a.

ThreatConnect Research Team Intelligence: Items recently created or updated in the ThreatConnect Common Community by our Research Team.

 

Technical Blogs and Reports Incidents with Active and Observed Indicators: Incidents associated to one or more Indicators with an Active status and at least one global Observation across the ThreatConnect community. These analytics are provided by ThreatConnect’s CAL™ (Collective Analytics Layer).

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