{"id":1955,"date":"2025-04-28T06:32:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T06:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2025-04-28T06:32:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T06:32:35","slug":"earth-kurma-targets-southeast-asia-with-rootkits-and-cloud-based-data-theft-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zero.redgem.net\/?p=1955","title":{"rendered":"Earth Kurma Targets Southeast Asia With Rootkits and Cloud-Based Data Theft Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Security Update News<\/h2>\n<h3>Update Information<\/h3>\n<table style=\"width:100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Title<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">Earth Kurma Targets Southeast Asia With Rootkits and Cloud-Based Data Theft Tools<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Update ID<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">THN:010F61F445B18ED36CA24B8F6348D893<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Type<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">thn<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Published<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">2025-04-28T09:07:00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Last Updated<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">2025-04-28T09:07:40<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<h3>Security Impact<\/h3>\n<table style=\"width:100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">CVSS Score<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">0.0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Severity<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; color: #666666; font-weight: bold;\">NONE<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Attack Vector<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<h3>Affected CVEs<\/h3>\n<div style=\" padding: 15px; border: 1px solid #ddd; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<ul style=\"margin: 0; padding-left: 20px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Update Details<\/h3>\n<div style=\"; padding: 15px; border-left: 4px solid #4CAF50; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n![Rootkits and Cloud-Based Data T](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>Government and telecommunications sectors in Southeast Asia have become the target of a &#8220;sophisticated&#8221; campaign undertaken by a new advanced persistent threat (APT) group called **Earth Kurma** since June 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The attacks, per Trend Micro, have leveraged custom malware, rootkits, and cloud storage services for data exfiltration. The Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia are among the prominent targets.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This campaign poses a high business risk due to targeted espionage, credential theft, persistent foothold established through kernel-level rootkits, and data exfiltration via trusted cloud platforms,&#8221; security researchers Nick Dai and Sunny Lu said in an analysis published last week.<\/p>\n<p>The threat actor&#8217;s activities date back to November 2020, with the intrusions primarily relying on services like Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive to siphon sensitive data using tools like TESDAT and SIMPOBOXSPY.<\/p>\n<p>Two other noteworthy malware families in its arsenal include rootkits such as KRNRAT and Moriya, the latter of which has been observed previously in attacks aimed at high-profile organizations in Asia and Africa as part of an espionage campaign dubbed TunnelSnake.<\/p>\n<p>![Cybersecurity](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>Trend Micro also said that SIMPOBOXSPY and the exfiltration script used in the attacks share overlaps with another APT group codenamed ToddyCat. However, a definitive attribution remains inconclusive.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s currently not known as to how the threat actors gain initial access to target environments. The initial foothold is then abused to scan and conduct lateral movement using a variety of tools like NBTSCAN, Ladon, FRPC, WMIHACKER, and ICMPinger. Also deployed is a keylogger referred to as KMLOG to harvest credentials.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that the use of the open-source Ladon framework has been previously attributed to a China-linked hacking group called TA428 (aka Vicious Panda).<\/p>\n<p>Persistence on the hosts is accomplished by three different loader strains referred to as DUNLOADER, TESDAT, and DMLOADER, which are capable of loading next-stage payloads into memory and executing them. These consist of Cobalt Strike Beacons, rootkits like KRNRAT and Moriya, as well as data exfiltration malware.<\/p>\n<p>![](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>What distinguishes these attacks is the use of living-off-the-land (LotL) techniques to install the rootkits, where hackers employ legitimate system tools and features, in this case, syssetup.dll, rather than introducing easily detectable malware.<\/p>\n<p>While Moriya is engineered to inspect incoming TCP packets for a malicious payload and inject shellcode into a newly spawned &#8220;svchost.exe&#8221; process, KRNRAT is an amalgamation of five different open-source projects with capabilities such as process manipulation, file hiding, shellcode execution, traffic concealment, and command-and-control (C2) communication.<\/p>\n<p>KRNRAT, like Moriya, is also designed to load a user-mode agent the rootkit and inject it into &#8220;svchost.exe.&#8221; The user-mode agent serves as a backdoor to retrieve a follow-on payload from the C2 server. <\/p>\n<p>![Cybersecurity](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Before exfiltrating the files, several commands executed by the loader TESDAT collected specific document files with the following extensions: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, and .pptx,&#8221; the researchers said. &#8220;The documents are first placed into a newly created folder named &#8220;tmp,&#8221; which is then archived using WinRAR with a specific password.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One of the bespoke tools used for data exfiltration is SIMPOBOXSPY, which can upload the RAR archive to Dropbox with a specific access token. According to a Kasperksy report from October 2023, the generic DropBox uploader is &#8220;probably not exclusively used by ToddyCat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>ODRIZ, another program used for the same purpose, uploads the collected information to OneDrive by specifying the OneDrive refresh token as an input parameter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Earth Kurma remains highly active, continuing to target countries around Southeast Asia,&#8221; Trend Micro said. &#8220;They have the capability to adapt to victim environments and maintain a stealthy presence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They can also reuse the same code base from previously identified campaigns to customize their toolsets, sometimes even utilizing the victim&#8217;s infrastructure to achieve their goals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter _\uf099_ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2025\/04\/earth-kurma-targets-southeast-asia-with.html\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"display: inline-block; color: white; padding: 10px 20px; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 4px;\">View Advisory Details<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Security Update News Update Information Title Earth Kurma Targets Southeast Asia With Rootkits and Cloud-Based Data Theft Tools Update ID THN:010F61F445B18ED36CA24B8F6348D893 Type thn Published 2025-04-28T09:07:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,8,34,12,13,33,7,11,43,5],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category_news","tag-cve","tag-cvss","tag-cvss-00","tag-exploit","tag-news","tag-none","tag-security","tag-tapic","tag-thn","tag-vulnerability"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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