Cyber Threat Report: 'North Korea Cyber Group Conducts Global Espionage Campaign to Advance Regime’s Military and Nuclear Programs'

This cybersecurity advisory from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its partners, highlights the cyber espionage activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) 3rd Bureau. The advisory focuses on a state-sponsored cyber group known as Andariel, which targets defense, aerospace, nuclear, and engineering entities to obtain sensitive and classified technical information. The group has been observed funding its espionage activities through ransomware operations including against U.S. healthcare entities. The advisory outlines the group's methods, including exploiting known software vulnerabilities, using phishing techniques, and deploying custom malware implants and remote access tools. The advisory emphasizes the importance of critical infrastructure organizations applying timely patches for vulnerabilities, protecting web servers from web shells, monitoring endpoints for malicious activities, and strengthening authentication and remote access protections. It provides specific recommendations for mitigating risks, such as deploying endpoint agents, blocking unnecessary outbound connections, and segmenting networks to prevent lateral movement from compromised web servers. Finally, the advisory includes detailed technical information on the MITRE ATT&CK tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by Andariel and associated indicators of compromise (IoCs).

Audit

Perform audits or scans of systems, permissions, insecure software, insecure configurations, etc. to identify potential weaknesses.

Pre-compromise

This category is used for any applicable mitigation activities that apply to techniques occurring before an adversary gains Initial Access, such as Reconnaissance and Resource Development techniques.

Network Intrusion Prevention

Use intrusion detection signatures to block traffic at network boundaries.

Restrict File and Directory Permissions

Restrict access by setting directory and file permissions that are not specific to users or privileged accounts.

Filter Network Traffic

Use network appliances to filter ingress or egress traffic and perform protocol-based filtering. Configure software on endpoints to filter network traffic.

User Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts.

Data Loss Prevention

Use a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy to categorize sensitive data, identify data formats indicative of personal identifiable information (PII), and restrict exfiltration of sensitive data.(Citation: PurpleSec Data Loss Prevention)

Network Segmentation

Architect sections of the network to isolate critical systems, functions, or resources. Use physical and logical segmentation to prevent access to potentially sensitive systems and information. Use a DMZ to contain any internet-facing services...

Disable or Remove Feature or Program

Remove or deny access to unnecessary and potentially vulnerable software to prevent abuse by adversaries.

Multi-factor Authentication

Use two or more pieces of evidence to authenticate to a system; such as username and password in addition to a token from a physical smart card or token generator.

Privileged Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to privileged accounts, including SYSTEM and root.

Password Policies

Set and enforce secure password policies for accounts.

Limit Access to Resource Over Network

Prevent access to file shares, remote access to systems, unnecessary services. Mechanisms to limit access may include use of network concentrators, RDP gateways, etc.

Privileged Process Integrity

Protect processes with high privileges that can be used to interact with critical system components through use of protected process light, anti-process injection defenses, or other process integrity enforcement measures.

Operating System Configuration

Make configuration changes related to the operating system or a common feature of the operating system that result in system hardening against techniques.

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Use capabilities to prevent suspicious behavior patterns from occurring on endpoint systems. This could include suspicious process, file, API call, etc. behavior.

User Training

Train users to be aware of access or manipulation attempts by an adversary to reduce the risk of successful spearphishing, social engineering, and other techniques that involve user interaction.

Active Directory Configuration

Configure Active Directory to prevent use of certain techniques; use SID Filtering, etc.

Encrypt Sensitive Information

Protect sensitive information with strong encryption.

Credential Access Protection

Use capabilities to prevent successful credential access by adversaries; including blocking forms of credential dumping.

Application Isolation and Sandboxing

Restrict execution of code to a virtual environment on or in transit to an endpoint system.

Exploit Protection

Use capabilities to detect and block conditions that may lead to or be indicative of a software exploit occurring.

Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scanning is used to find potentially exploitable software vulnerabilities to remediate them.

Update Software

Perform regular software updates to mitigate exploitation risk.

Restrict Web-Based Content

Restrict use of certain websites, block downloads/attachments, block Javascript, restrict browser extensions, etc.

Antivirus/Antimalware

Use signatures or heuristics to detect malicious software.

SSL/TLS Inspection

Break and inspect SSL/TLS sessions to look at encrypted web traffic for adversary activity.

Execution Prevention

Block execution of code on a system through application control, and/or script blocking.

Code Signing

Enforce binary and application integrity with digital signature verification to prevent untrusted code from executing.