De Secure List: The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X (02/03/2016)

Saludos nuevamente.

Sí, así mismo, es correcto el titular. ¿Se acuerdan de Hacking Team, la empresa italiana dedicada a crear y comercializar herramientas de hacking y administración remota que fue hackeada el pasado 5 de junio de 2015? 400GB de datos dumpeados en Inet (yo vi algunos de sus códigos, de lo poquito que pude ver). Bueno, los tipos vuelven de nuevo a las andadas.

Ayer recibo un correo de la lista de distribución de Secure List con la noticia. Muchos sitios ya se han hecho eco de ella. Acá se la reproduzco:

The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X

By Dmitry Bestuzhev, Thiago Marques on March 2, 2016. 2:59 pm

Last week, Patrick Wardle published a nice analysis of a new Backdoor and Dropper used by HackingTeam, which is apparently alive and well. Since HackingTeam implants are built on-demand for each target, we wanted to take a closer look: to see how it works and what its functionality reveals about the possible interest of the attackers behind this latest Backdoor.

Encryption key

The main Backdoor component receives its payload instructions from an encrypted Json configuration file. In order to decrypt the configuration file, we began by using known keys, but none of them were able to decrypt the file. Upon checking the binary file we were able to identify that the function used to encode the file is still AES 128, so we started to look for a new encryption key. We located the initialization of the encryption routine, where the key is passed as an argument.

The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X

By following this code we were able to find the new key used to encrypt the configuration file.

The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X

As you can see, the key is 32 bytes long, so just the first 16 bytes are used as the key. By using this key on our script we successfully decrypted the configuration file, which turns out to be a Json format file carrying instructions on how that particular Backdoor needs to operate on the target’s OS X machine:

The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X

What does the implant do?
    • It takes screenshots
    • It synchronizes with or reports stolen information to a Linode server located in the UK, but only when connected to Wi-Fi and using a specific Internet channel bandwidth defined by the Json configuration file:

The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X

  • It steals information on locally-installed applications, address book entries, calendar events and calls. OS X allows iPhone users to make such calls straight from the desktop when both are connected to the same Wi-Fi network and trusted.
  • It spies on the victim by enabling frontal camera video recording, audio recording using the embedded microphone, sniffing local chats and stealing data from the clipboard.
  • It also steals emails, SMS and MMS messages from the victim, which are also available on the OS X desktop when an iPhone is paired.

The return of HackingTeam with new implants for OS X

Among other functionalities it also spies on the geolocation of the victim.

It’s interesting to note that the Json file says that the start date of the operation is October 16 (Friday), 2015. This indicates that this is a fresh HackingTeam Backdoor implant.

For some reason the attacker was not interested in any emails sent to or from the target before that date but only from then on.

Kaspersky Lab detects the above-mentioned Backdoor implants as Backdoor.OSX.Morcut.u and its dropper as Trojan-Dropper.OSX.Morcut.d

Reference samples hashes:

0eb73f2225886fd5624815cd5d523d08
e2b81bed4472087dca00bee18acbce04

Command and control servers:

212.71.254.212

Acerca de Hector Suarez Planas

Es Licenciado en Ciencia de la Computación (3 de julio de 2002). Ha sido Administrador de Red en varias organizaciones, Programador y Analista de Sistemas. Actualmente se desempeña como Administrador de Red del Telecentro Tele Turquino de Santiago de Cuba. Tiene experiencia con sistemas Windows y GNU/Linux, Infraestructura de Redes (Cisco, AlliedTelesis, Netgear y HP ProCurve, Vyatta/VyOS), Servidores tanto físicos como virtuales (plataformas VMWare, Proxmox VE y Xen), Sistemas de Seguridad Informática (Snort/Suricata IDS, appliances AlienVault OSSIM), programador (Delphi, C++ Builder, Perl [poco], Python [algo]), entre otras cosas. Actualmente estoy incursionando en todo lo que tiene relación con Cloud Computing (OpenStack) y Centros de Datos. :-)
Esta entrada fue publicada en Apple, Generales, Hacking, Hacking Team, MacOS X, Secure List, Seguridad. Guarda el enlace permanente.

Deja un comentario

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *