OilRig Deploys ALMA Communicator – DNS Tunneling Trojan
released on 2017-11-09 @ 12:24:40 AM
Unit 42 has been closely tracking the OilRig threat group since May 2016. One technique we’ve been tracking with this threat group is their use of the Clayslide delivery document as attachments to spear-phishing emails in attacks since May 2016. In our April 2017 posting OilRig Actors Provide a Glimpse into Development and Testing Efforts we showed how we observed the OilRig threat group developing and refining these Clayside delivery documents.
Recently, we observed a new version of the Clayslide delivery document used to install a new custom Trojan whose developer calls it “ALMA Communicator”. The delivery document also saved the post-exploitation credential harvesting tool known as Mimikatz, which we believe the threat actors will use to gather account credentials from the compromised system. While we do not have detailed telemetry, we have reason to believe this attack targeted an individual at a public utilities company in the Middle East.