A brand new investigation has unearthed almost 200 distinctive command-and-control (C2) domains related to a malware known as Raspberry Robin.
“Raspberry Robin (often known as Roshtyak or Storm-0856) is a posh and evolving risk actor that gives preliminary entry dealer (IAB) companies to quite a few legal 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 turn 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 the usage of compromised QNAP gadgets to retrieve the payload.
Through the years, Raspberry Robin assault chains have added a brand new distribution technique that includes downloading it by way of archives and Home windows Script Recordsdata despatched as attachments utilizing the messaging service Discord, to not point out buying one-day exploits to realize native privilege escalation earlier than they have been publicly disclosed.
There’s additionally some proof to recommend 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 integrated a USB-based propagation mechanism that includes 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 might have used Raspberry Robin as an preliminary entry facilitator.
Silent Push, in its newest evaluation undertaken together with Crew Cymru, discovered one IP handle that was getting used as an information relay to attach all compromised QNAP gadgets, finally resulting in the invention of over 180 distinctive C2 domains.
“The singular IP handle was linked by way of Tor relays, which is probably going how community operators issued new instructions and interacted with compromised gadgets,” the corporate mentioned. “The IP used for this relay was based mostly 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 gadgets 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 prime 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 identify 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 embody LockBit, Dridex, SocGholish, DEV-0206, Evil Corp (DEV-0243), Fauppod, FIN11, Clop Gang, and Lace Tempest (TA505).”
