Kaspersky Securelist
APT trends report Q1 2020 (DPRK-related paragraph 2) · 2020-04-30
A Lazarus campaign outlined by the Italian security company Telsy in November 2019 allowed us to find a connection to previous activity from the group targeting cryptocurrency businesses. The malware mentioned on Telsy’s blog is a first stage downloader that has been observed since mid-2018. We found that the second stage malware is a variant of Manuscrypt, uniquely attributed to Lazarus, deploying two types of payloads. The first is a manipulated Ultra VNC program, and the second is a multi-stage backdoor. This type of multi-stage infection procedure is typical of the Lazarus group’s malware, especially when using the Manuscrypt variant. In this campaign, our telemetry indicates that the Lazarus group attacked cryptocurrency businesses in Cyprus, the US, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the campaign extended until the beginning of 2020.