APT trends report Q2 2020 (DPRK-related paragraph 2)

Kaspersky Securelist

The Lazarus group has been a major threat actor for several years. Alongside goals like cyber-espionage and cyber-sabotage, this threat actor has targeted banks and other financial companies around the globe. The group continues to be very active. We recently observed the Lazarus group attacking a software vendor in South Korea using Bookcode, malware that we evaluate to be a Manuscrypt variant, utilizing a watering-hole attack to deliver it. Manuscrypt is one of the Lazarus group’s tools that is actively being updated and used. The group attacked the same victim twice. Almost a year prior to compromising this victim, Lazarus attempted to infect it by masquerading as a well-known security tool, but failed. We were able to construct the group’s post-exploitation activity, identifying various freeware and red-teaming tools used. Although Lazarus has recently tended to focus more on targeting the financial industry, we believe that in this campaign they were seeking to exfiltrate intellectual property. We also observed that they previously spread Bookcode using a decoy document related to a company working in the defense sector. Based on our observations, we evaluate that the Bookcode malware is being used exclusively for cyber-espionage campaigns.