FBI, Department of Homeland Security Issue Warning About a North Korean Trojan Malware Variant

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FBI, Department of Homeland Security Issue Warning About a North Korean Trojan Malware Variant

By CircleID Reporter
April 12, 2019, 9:18 pm PDT Views: 10,859 Add Comment

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week issued a malware analysis report on Trojan malware variants linked to the North Korean government. This malware variant has been named HOPLIGHT. DHS and FBI are distributing a Malware Analysis Report (MAR) to assist in network defense and reduction of exposure to North Korean government malicious cyber activity which it called HIDDEN COBRA.

— MAR provides analysis of nine malicious executable files: “Seven of these files are proxy applications that mask traffic between the malware and the remote operators. The proxies have the ability to generate fake TLS handshake sessions using valid public SSL certificates, disguising network connections with remote malicious actors. One file contains a public SSL certificate and the payload of the file appears to be encoded with a password or key. The remaining file does not contain any of the public SSL certificates, but attempts outbound connections and drops four files. The dropped files primarily contain IP addresses and SSL certificates.”

— Users or administrators are urged to flag activity associated with the malware and “report the activity to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) or the FBI Cyber Watch (CyWatch), and give the activity the highest priority for enhanced mitigation.”

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By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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