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* New 'Karakurt' hacking group focuses on data theft and extortion
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NEW 'KARAKURT' HACKING GROUP FOCUSES ON DATA THEFT AND EXTORTION
By
BILL TOULAS
* December 10, 2021
* 06:00 AM
* 0
A sophisticated cybercrime group who has been quietly working from the shadows
has had its tactics and procedures exposed by researchers who tracked recent
cyberattacks conducted by the hackers.
The hacking group calls itself 'Karakurt' and is a financially motivated threat
actor that has ramped up its cyber-attacks in Q3 2021.
The first signs of Karakurt activity were identified in June 2021, with the
registration of two domains and the creation of a Twitter handle.
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Karakurt activity timeline
Source: Accenture
The actors focus almost exclusively on data exfiltration and extortion and are
not using ransomware to lock their victims' files.
The report on Karakurt comes from researchers at Accenture Security, who managed
to track the group's "living off the land" tactics, toolset, and intrusion
techniques.
The threat group claims to have compromised over 40 victims between September
and November 2021 and has posted downloadable stolen file packs on its sites.
Karakurt website advertising stolen files
Source: Accenture
Roughly 95% of these victims are based in North America, while the rest are
European entities. Karakurt isn't focused on a particular industry, so the
victimology appears random.
Karakurt victims by sector
Source: Accenture
ENTRY, ESCALATION, AND EXFILTRATION
The actor primarily uses VPN credentials to gain initial access to a victim's
network, either by sourcing them from sellers or phishing them themselves.
The persistence is established by dropping the widely abused Cobalt Strike
remote access tool, although, in recent attacks, Karakurt switched to using
AnyDesk.
With Cobalt Strike beacons becoming more aggressively detected by security
software, AnyDesk has become increasingly popular among threat actors, such as
the Conti ransomware gang.
Next, the actor steals additional credentials belonging to administrators by
employing Mimikatz and uses them for undetectable privilege escalation.
"In one intrusion, Accenture Security also observed the threat group avoiding
the use of common post-exploitation tools or commodity malware in favor of
credential access," explained the report by Accenture.
"This approach enabled it to evade detection and bypass security tools such as
common endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions."
For the exfiltration of the data, Karakurt uses 7zip and WinZip to compress the
files and then sends everything to Mega.io via Rclone or FileZilla.
ENCRYPTION-LESS ATTACKS
While these attacks appear less damaging compared to ransomware infections that
encrypt data and wipe backups, they can still be quite detrimental.
Threatening publishing stolen files can bring a company to its knees even if its
operational status is left unruffled, with less overhead involved in conducting
attacks.
For this reason, new hacking groups like SnapMC are focusing solely on data
exfiltration and extortion as their threat model.
However, paying a ransom doesn't guarantee that threat actors will wipe stolen
data or that it won't be sold to others, so it is never wise to pay a ransom
solely to prevent a data breach.
Instead, organizations should focus on defense, prevention, and detection
measures to keep these threats off their networks.
RELATED ARTICLES:
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Italian celebs' data exposed in ransomware attack on SIAE
SnapMC hackers skip file encryption and just steal your files
Malicious Notepad++ installers push StrongPity malware
Emotet now drops Cobalt Strike, fast forwards ransomware attacks
* AnyDesk
* Cobalt Strike
* Data Exfiltration
* Extortion
* Hackers
* Karakurt
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*
BILL TOULAS
Bill Toulas is a technology writer and infosec news reporter with over a decade
of experience working on various online publications. An open source advocate
and Linux enthusiast, is currently finding pleasure in following hacks, malware
campaigns, and data breach incidents, as well as by exploring the intricate ways
through which tech is swiftly transforming our lives.
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