Introduction

We discovered an installer downloaded from the official website of MonPass, a major certification authority (CA) in Mongolia in East Asia that was backdoored with Cobalt Strike binaries. We immediately notified MonPass on 22 April 2021 of our findings and encouraged them to address their compromised server and notify those who downloaded the backdoored client.

We have confirmed with MonPass that they have taken steps to address these issues and are now presenting our analysis.

Our analysis beginning in April 2021 indicates that a public web server hosted by MonPass was breached potentially eight separate times: we found eight different webshells and backdoors on this server. We also found that the MonPass client available for download from 8 February 2021 until 3 March 2021 was backdoored. 

This research provides analysis of relevant backdoored installers and other samples that we found occurring in the wild. Also during our investigation we observed relevant research from NTT Ltd so some technical details or IoCs may overlap.

All the samples are highly similar and share the same pdb path:

C:\Users\test\Desktop\fishmaster\x64\Release\fishmaster.pdb and the string: Bidenhappyhappyhappy.

Technical details

The malicious installer is an unsigned PE file. It starts by downloading the legitimate version of the installer from the MonPass official website. This legitimate version is dropped to the C:\Users\Public\ folder and executed under a new process. This guarantees that the installer behaves as expected, meaning that a regular user is unlikely to notice anything suspicious.

Additional similar installers were also found in the wild, with SHA256 hashes:  e2596f015378234d9308549f08bcdca8eadbf69e488355cddc9c2425f77b7535 and f21a9c69bfca6f0633ba1e669e5cf86bd8fc55b2529cd9b064ff9e2e129525e8.

The attackers decided to use steganography to transfer shellcode to their victims. On execution, the malware downloads a bitmap image file from http://download.google-images[.]ml:8880/download/37.bmp as shown in figure 2. 

The download is performed slightly unusually in two HTTP requests. The first request uses the HEAD method to retrieve the Content-Length, followed by a second GET request to actually download the image. After the picture is downloaded, the malware extracts the encrypted payload as follows. The hidden data is expected to be up to 0x76C bytes. Starting with the 3rd byte in image data it copies each 4th byte. The resulting data represents an ASCII string of hexadecimal characters which is later decoded into their respective binary values. These bytes are then XOR decrypted using the hardcoded key miat_mg, resulting in a Cobalt-Strike beacon.

We have seen multiple versions of this backdoored installer, each with slightly modified decryptors. 

In version (f21a9c69bfca6f0633ba1e669e5cf86bd8fc55b2529cd9b064ff9e2e129525e8) the XOR decryption was stripped.

In the version (e2596f015378234d9308549f08bcdca8eadbf69e488355cddc9c2425f77b7535) basic anti-analysis tricks were stripped. In Figure 3, you can see different time stamps and the same rich headers.

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In the backdoored installer we also observed some basic anti-analysis techniques used in an attempt to avoid detection. In particular, we observed checks for the number of processors using the GetSystemInfo function, the amount of physical memory using the GlobalMemoryStatusEx function and the disk capacity using the IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY IOCTL call. If any of the obtained values are suspiciously low, the malware terminates immediately.

One of the samples (9834945A07CF20A0BE1D70A8F7C2AA8A90E625FA86E744E539B5FE3676EF14A9) used a different known technique to execute shellcode. First it is decoded from a list of UUIDs with UuidFromStringA API, then it is executed using EnumSystemLanguageGroupsA.

After we found a backdoored installer in one of our customers,  we commenced hunting for additional samples in VT and in our user-base, to determine if there were more backdoored installers observed in the wild. In VT we found some interesting hits:

We analyzed the sample and found out that the sample was very similar to infected installers found in our customers. The sample contained anti-analysis techniques using the same XOR decryption and also contained similar C2 server addresses (hxxp://download.google-images.ml:8880/download/x37.bmp) as observed in previous backdoored installers. The sample also contained references to the link (hxxps://webplus-cn-hongkong-s-5faf81e0d937f14c9ddbe5a0.oss-cn-hongkong.aliyuncs[.]com/Silverlight_ins.exe) and the file path C:\users\public\Silverlight_ins.exe; however these did not appear to be in use. The sample name is also unusual –  Browser_plugin (8).exe – we speculate that this may be a test sample uploaded by the actor. 

In VT we saw another hash (4a43fa8a3305c2a17f6a383fb68f02515f589ba112c6e95f570ce421cc690910) again with the name Browser_plugin.exe. According to VT this sample has been downloaded from hxxps://jquery-code.ml/Download/Browser_Plugin.exe. It was downloading a PDF from hxxp://37.61.205.212:8880/dow/Aili.pdf PDF file Aili.pdf.

Afterwards it has the similar functionalities as previously mentioned samples from VT. That means it was downloading and decrypting Cobalt strike beacon from hxxp://micsoftin.us:2086/dow/83.bmp

In our database we again found the similar sample but with the name Browser_plugin (1).exe. This sample was downloaded from hxxp://37.61.205.212:8880/download/Browers_plugin.exe, we saw it on Feb 4, 2021. It doesn’t install any legitimate software, it just shows a MessageBox. It contains C&C address (hxxp://download.google-images.ml:8880/downloa/37.bmp), (Note: there is a typo in the directory name: downloa). 

Compromised Web server content

On the breached web server, where you were able to download backdoored installer we found two executables DNS.exe (456b69628caa3edf828f4ba987223812cbe5bbf91e6bbf167e21bef25de7c9d2) and again Browser_plugin.exe (5cebdb91c7fc3abac1248deea6ed6b87fde621d0d407923de7e1365ce13d6dbe). 

DNS.exe

It downloads from (hxxp://download.google-images.ml:8880/download/DNSs.bat) C&C server bat file, that is saved in C:\users\public\DNS.bat. It contains this script:

In the second part of the instance, it contains the similar functionality and the same address of C&C server as the backdoored installer that we mentioned earlier. 

Browser_plugin.exe

(5cebdb91c7fc3abac1248deea6ed6b87fde621d0d407923de7e1365ce13d6dbe)

This sample is very similar to this one (4a43fa8a3305c2a17f6a383fb68f02515f589ba112c6e95f570ce421cc690910) with the same address of C&C server, but it doesn’t download any additional document. 

C&C server analysis

We checked the malicious web server hxxps://jquery-code.ml, from where (4A43FA8A3305C2A17F6A383FB68F02515F589BA112C6E95F570CE421CC690910) Browser_plugin.exe has been downloading. The malicious web server looks identical to the legitimate one https://code.jquery.com/ the difference is the certificate. The legitimate server https://code.jquery.com is signed by Sectigo Limited while the malicious server is signed by Cloudflare, Inc.

Conclusion

This blog post outlines our findings regarding the MonPass client backdoored with Cobalt Strike. 

In our research we found additional variants on VirusTotal in addition to those we found on the compromised MonPass web server. 

In our analysis of the compromised client and variants, we’ve shown that the malware was using steganography to decrypt Cobalt Strike beacon. 

At this time, we’re not able to make attribution of these attacks with an appropriate level of confidence. However it’s clear that the attackers clearly intended to spread malware to users in Mongolia by compromising a trustworthy source, which in this case is a CA in Mongolia.

Most importantly, anyone that has downloaded the MonPass client between 8 February 2021 until 3 March 2021 should take steps to look for and remove the client and the backdoor it installed. 

I would like to thank Jan Rubín for helping me with this research.

Timeline of communication:

• March 24. 2021 – Discovered backdoored installer
• April 8. 2021 – Initial contact with Monpass through MN CERT/CC providing findings.
• April 20. 2021 – MonPass shared a forensic image of an infected web server with Avast Threat Labs.
• April 22. 2021 – Avast provided information about the incident and findings from the forensics image in a call with MonPass and MN CERT/CC.
• May 3. 2021 – Avast followed up with MonPass in email. No response.
• May 10. 2021 – Avast sent additional follow up email.
• June 4, 2021 – MonPass replied asking for information already provided on April 22, 2021.
• June 14. 2021 – Follow up from Avast to MonPass, no response
• June 29, 2021 – Final email to MonPass indicating our plans to publish with a draft of the blog for feedback.
• June 29, 2021 – Information from MonPass indicating they’ve resolved the issues and notified affected customers.
• July 1, 2021 – Blog published.

Indicators of Compromise (IoC)

•  Repository: https://github.com/avast/ioc/tree/master/MpIncident
•  List of SHA-256: https://github.com/avast/ioc/blob/master/MpIncident/samples.sha256

Timeline of compilation timestamps: