An Iranian superior persistent menace (APT) actor referred to as Agrius has been attributed as behind a set of knowledge wiper assaults geared toward diamond industries in South Africa, Israel, and Hong Kong.
The wiper, codenamed Fantasy by ESET, is believed to have been delivered by way of a provide chain assault concentrating on an Israeli software program suite developer as a part of a marketing campaign that started in February 2022.
Victims embody HR corporations, IT consulting firms, and a diamond wholesaler in Israel; a South African entity working within the diamond business; and a jeweller primarily based in Hong Kong.
“The Fantasy wiper is constructed on the foundations of the beforehand reported Apostle wiper however doesn’t try and masquerade as ransomware, as Apostle initially did, ESET researcher Adam Burgher disclosed in a Thursday evaluation. “As an alternative, it goes proper to work wiping knowledge.”
Apostle was first documented by SentinelOne in Could 2021 as a wiper-turned-ransomware that was deployed in harmful assaults towards Israeli targets.
Agrius, the Iran-aligned group behind the intrusions, has been lively since not less than December 2020 and leverages identified safety flaws in internet-facing functions to drop net shells which might be, in flip, used to facilitate reconnaissance, lateral motion, and the supply of final-stage payloads.
The Slovak cybersecurity firm mentioned the primary assault was detected on February 20, 2022, geared toward a South African group, when the actor deployed credential harvesting instruments.
Agrius subsequently initiated the wiping assault by way of Fantasy on March 12, 2022, earlier than hanging different firms in Israel and Hong Kong on the identical date.
Fantasy is executed by way of one other device known as Sandals, a 32-bit Home windows executable written in C#/.NET. It is mentioned to be deployed on the compromised host via a supply-chain assault utilizing the Israeli developer’s software program replace mechanism.
That is substantiated by ESET’s evaluation that each one victims are prospects of the affected software program developer and that the wiper binary follows a naming conference (“fantasy45.exe” and “fantasy35.exe”) much like that of its authentic counterpart.
The wiper, for its half, works by recursively retrieving the listing itemizing for every drive, overwriting each file in these directories with rubbish knowledge, assigning a future timestamp to the information, after which deleting them.
“That is presumably completed to make restoration and forensic evaluation harder,” Burgher defined.
In an additional try and erase all traces of the exercise, Fantasy clears all Home windows occasion logs, recursively purges all information within the system drive, overwrites the system’s Grasp Boot Document, self-deletes itself, and at last reboots the machine.
The marketing campaign, which lasted not more than three hours, was in the end unsuccessful, with ESET stating that it was in a position to block the wiper’s execution. The developer of the software program has since pushed out clear updates to plug the assaults.
The identify of the Israeli firm that fell sufferer to the provision chain assault was not disclosed by ESET, however proof factors to it being Rubinstein Software program, which markets an enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) resolution known as Fantasy that is used for jewellery inventory administration.
“Since its discovery in 2021, Agrius has been solely targeted on harmful operations,” Burgher concluded.
“To that finish, Agrius operators most likely executed a supply-chain assault by concentrating on an Israeli software program firm’s software program updating mechanisms to deploy Fantasy, its latest wiper, to victims in Israel, Hong Kong, and South Africa.”
Agrius is much from the primary menace group linked to Iran that has been noticed deploying harmful wiper malware.
The APT33 hacking group (aka Elfin, Holmium, or Refined Kitten), which is suspected of working on the behest of the Iranian authorities, is alleged to have been behind a number of assaults that used the Shamoon wiper towards targets positioned within the Center East.
Knowledge-wiping malware codenamed ZeroCleare has additionally been employed by Iran-backed menace actors tracked as APT34 (aka Oilrig or Helix Kitten) in assaults directed towards organizations from the vitality and industrial sector within the Center East.
