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News



NORTH KOREA'S KIMSUKY APT KEEPS GROWING, DESPITE PUBLIC OUTING

Kim Jong Un's Swiss Army knife APT continues to spread its tendrils around the
world, showing it's not intimidated by the researchers closing in.
Nate Nelson
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
April 21, 2023
Source: Gary Tyson via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


Globally, interest has surged around North Korea's Kimsuky advanced persistent
threat group (a.k.a. APT43) and its hallmarks. Still, the group is showing no
signs of slowing down despite the scrutiny.



Kimsuky is a government-aligned threat actor whose main aim is espionage, often
(but not exclusively) in the fields of policy and nuclear weapons research. Its
targets have spanned the government, energy, pharmaceutical, and financial
sectors, and more beyond that, mostly in countries that the DPRK considers
arch-enemies: South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Kimsuky is by no means a new outfit — CISA has traced the group's activity all
the way back to 2012. Interest peaked last month thanks to a report from
cybersecurity firm Mandiant, and a Chrome extension-based campaign that led to a
joint warning from German and Korean authorities. In a blog published April 20,
VirusTotal highlighted a spike in malware lookups associated with Kimsuky, as
demonstrated in the graph below.

Volume of lookups for Kimsuky malware samples. Source: Virus Total

Many an APT has crumbled under increased scrutiny from researchers and law
enforcement. But signs show Kimsuky is unfazed.



"Usually when we publish insights they'll go 'Oh, wow, we're exposed. Time to go
underground,'" says Michael Barnhart, principal analyst at Mandiant, of typical
APTs.



In Kimsuky's case, however, "no one cares at all. We've seen zero slowdown with
this thing."


WHAT'S GOING ON WITH KIMSUKY?

Kimsuky has gone through many iterations and evolutions, including an outright
split into two subgroups. Its members are most practiced at spear phishing,
impersonating members of targeted organizations in phishing emails — often for
weeks at a time — in order to get closer to the sensitive information they're
after.

The malware they've deployed over the years, however, is far less predictable.
They've demonstrated equal capability with malicious browser extensions, remote
access Trojans, modular spyware, and more, some of it commercial and some not.

In the blog post, VirusTotal highlighted the APT's propensity for delivering
malware via .docx macros. In a few cases, though, the group utilized
CVE-2017-0199, a 7.8 high severity-rated arbitrary code execution vulnerability
in Windows and Microsoft Office.



With the recent uptick in interest around Kimsuky, VirusTotal has revealed that
most uploaded samples are coming from South Korea and the United States. This
tracks with the group's history and motives. However, it also has its tendrils
in countries one might not immediately associate with North Korean politics,
like Italy and Israel.

For example, when it comes to lookups — individuals taking an interest in the
samples — the second most volume comes from Turkey. "This may suggest that
Turkey is either a victim or a conduit of North Korean cyber attacks," according
to the blog post.

Kimsuky malware sample lookups by country. Source: VirusTotal


HOW TO DEFEND AGAINST KIMSUKY

Because Kimsuky targets organizations across countries and sectors, the range of
organizations who need to worry about them is greater than most nation-state
APTs.

"So what we've been preaching everywhere," Barnhart says, "is strength in
numbers. With all these organizations around the world, it's important that we
all talk to each other. It's important that we collaborate. No one should be
operating in a silo."

And, he emphasizes, because Kimsuky uses individuals as conduits for greater
attacks, everybody has to be on the lookout. "It's important that we all have
this baseline of: don't click on links, and use your multi-factor
authentication."

With simple safeguards against spear phishing, even North Korean hackers can be
thwarted. "From what we're seeing, it does work if you actually take the time to
follow your cyber hygiene," Barnhart notes.

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