A brand new investigation has unearthed practically 200 distinctive command-and-control (C2) domains related to a malware known as Raspberry Robin.
“Raspberry Robin (also referred to as Roshtyak or Storm-0856) is a fancy and evolving risk actor that gives preliminary entry dealer (IAB) providers to quite a few felony teams, a lot of which have connections to Russia,” Silent Push mentioned in a report shared with The Hacker Information.
Since its emergence in 2019, the malware has change into a conduit for numerous malicious strains like SocGholish, Dridex, LockBit, IcedID, BumbleBee, and TrueBot. It is also known as a QNAP worm owing to using compromised QNAP units to retrieve the payload.
Over time, Raspberry Robin assault chains have added a brand new distribution technique that entails downloading it through archives and Home windows Script Information despatched as attachments utilizing the messaging service Discord, to not point out buying one-day exploits to attain native privilege escalation earlier than they had been publicly disclosed.
There may be additionally some proof to counsel that the malware is obtainable to different actors as a pay-per-install (PPI) botnet to ship next-stage malware.
Moreover, Raspberry Robin infections have included a USB-based propagation mechanism that entails utilizing a compromised USB drive containing a Home windows shortcut (LNK) file disguised as a folder to activate the deployment of the malware.
The U.S. authorities has since revealed that the Russian nation-state risk actor tracked as Cadet Blizzard could have used Raspberry Robin as an preliminary entry facilitator.
Silent Push, in its newest evaluation undertaken together with Crew Cymru, discovered one IP tackle that was getting used as an information relay to attach all compromised QNAP units, finally resulting in the invention of over 180 distinctive C2 domains.
“The singular IP tackle was related by way of Tor relays, which is probably going how community operators issued new instructions and interacted with compromised units,” the corporate mentioned. “The IP used for this relay was primarily based in an E.U. nation.”
A deeper investigation of the infrastructure has revealed that the Raspberry Robin C2 domains are quick – e.g., q2[.]rs, m0[.]wf, h0[.]wf, and 2i[.]pm – and that they’re quickly rotated between compromised units and thru IPs utilizing a method known as quick flux in an effort to make it difficult to take them down.
A number of the high Raspberry Robin top-level domains (TLDs) are .wf, .pm, .re, .nz, .eu, .gy, .tw, and .cx, with domains registered utilizing area of interest registrars like Sarek Oy, 1API GmbH, NETIM, Epag[.]de, CentralNic Ltd, and Open SRS. A majority of the recognized C2 domains have title servers on a Bulgarian firm named ClouDNS.
“Raspberry Robin’s use by Russian authorities risk actors aligns with its historical past of working with numerous different severe risk actors, a lot of whom have connections to Russia,” the corporate mentioned. “These embrace LockBit, Dridex, SocGholish, DEV-0206, Evil Corp (DEV-0243), Fauppod, FIN11, Clop Gang, and Lace Tempest (TA505).”
