Chinese Hackers Go After Gambling Websites
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A new Chinese APT group dubbed “DRBControl” has been involved in the targeting of online gambling and betting platforms based in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, since May 2019. This infamous hacker group is actively attacking gambling and other online betting sites in South East Asia.
DRBControl was once said to be attacking behalf of China, but now is hacking on its own interest. It’s found to be stealing source codes and database from victims rather than money. .
According to two reports published by Talent-Jump and Trend Micro, hack-attacks have been officially confirmed at gambling companies located in Southeast Asia, and also additional hacks have been identifies as coming from Europe and the Middle East. Talent-Jump and Trend Micro say hackers appear to have stolen company databases and source code, but not money, suggesting the attacks were espionage-focused, rather than cybercrime motivated.
Interestingly, the group was using two unknown backdoors, a collection of known but upgraded malware strains, and a rich set of post-exploitation tools.
Their skills are above average and they have deployed an impressive arsenal of tools to run their attacks.
Trend Micro said the group's malware and operational tactics overlap with similar tools and tactics used by Winnti and Emissary Panda, two hacking groups that have conducted attacks over the past decade in the interests of the Chinese government.
It is unclear if DRBControl is carrying out attacks on behalf of the Chinese Governmnet, but this is not thought to the case.
In August 2019, FireEye reported that some Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups are now carrying out cyber-attacks on the side, in their free time, for their own gains and interests, separate from their normal state-sponsored operations.
The recent attacks are neither complex or unique in regards to the tactics being used to infect victims and steal their data. Attacks start with a spear-phishing link sent to targets. Employees who fall for the emails and open the documents they received are infected with backdoor Trojans.
These backdoor Trojans are somewhat different from other backdoors because they heavily rely on the Dropbox file hosting and file sharing service, which they use as a command-and-control (C&C) service and as a storage medium for second-stage payloads and stolen data, hence the group's name of DRopBox Control.
Typically, the Chinese hackers will use the backdoors to download other hacking tools and malware that they'll use to move laterally through a company's network until they find databases and source code repositories from where they can steal data. The hackers have infected and kept track of around 200 computers through one Dropbox account, and another 80 through a second.
Attacks are ongoing, and the two security firms have published indicators of compromise (IOCs) in their reports that organisations can use to detect suspicious activity and malware. Between July and September 2019, DRBControl has infected hundreds of computers. It’s said to be hacked over 200 computers by using one Dropbox account and another 80 computers in another account.
The group is capable of stealing info from the clipboard, creating network traffic tunnels, scan NETBIOS servers, dump passwords and even carry a brute force attack.
These are not the first attacks on online betting and gambling sites. In 2018, cyber-security ESET reported that N. Korea hackers had attacked casinos in Central America from where they're believed to have attempted to steal funds.
Operation Blockbuster: WeLiveSecurity: Talent Jump: Trend Micro: ZDNet: TechNadu: TechDator:
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