Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2020
The end of the year is always a nice time to take a look on the main developments and incidents that took place in the cyber security industry over the preceding 12 months. To review the impact these events had on organizations and individuals, and predict what they could mean for the overall evolution of the threat landscape, Kaspersky continues its series of annual Kaspersky Security Bulletin publications.
All the statistics used in the reports were obtained using Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), a distributed network that works with various anti-malware protection components. The anonymized data was collected from KSN users who agreed to provide it.
Reports
Sunburst backdoor – code overlaps with Kazuar
While looking at the Sunburst backdoor, we discovered several features that overlap with a previously identified backdoor known as Kazuar. Our observations shows that Kazuar was used together with Turla tools during multiple breaches in past years.
Lazarus covets COVID-19-related intelligence
As the COVID-19 crisis grinds on, some threat actors are trying to speed up vaccine development by any means available. We have found evidence that the Lazarus group is going after intelligence that could help these efforts by attacking entities related to COVID-19 research.
Sunburst: connecting the dots in the DNS requests
We matched private and public DNS data for the SUNBURST-malware root C2 domain with the CNAME records, to identify who was targeted for further exploitation. In total, we analyzed 1722 DNS records, leading to 1026 unique target name parts and 964 unique UIDs.
What did DeathStalker hide between two ferns?
While tracking DeathStalker’s Powersing-based activities in May 2020, we detected a previously unknown implant that leveraged DNS over HTTPS as a C2 channel, as well as parts of its delivery chain. We named this new malware “PowerPepper”.
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