More than 200 systems infected by new Chinese APT 'FunnyDream'

guest · Nov 17, 2020

More than 200 systems infected by new Chinese APT 'FunnyDream'
New Chinese APT discovered targeting Southeast Asian governments
November 17, 2020
https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-than-200-systems-infected-by-new-chinese-apt-funnydream/

A new Chinese state-sponsored hacking group (also known as an APT) has infected more than 200 systems across Southeast Asia with malware over the past two years.

The malware infections are part of a widespread cyber-espionage campaign carried out by a group named FunnyDream, according to a new report published today by security firm Bitdefender.
The attacks have primarily targeted Southeast Asian governments.

Both Bitdefender and Kaspersky said the group is still active even today and appears to be primarily interested in cyber-espionage, concentrating on stealing sensitive documents from infected hosts, with a special focus on national security and industrial espionage.
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SIMILAR ATTACKS DATING BACK TO 2018
Per Bitdefender, most of these attacks have followed a simple pattern and combined three malware payloads — Chinoxy, PCShare, and FunnyDream (malware after which the group was named).

FunnyDream was deployed with the help of PCShare, and was the most potent and feature-rich of the three, had more advanced persistence and communication capabilities, and was used for data gathering and exfiltration.

"Even looking at the tool usage timeline we can see that threat actors started by deploying a series of tools meant for quick and covert data exploration and exfiltration, and later decided to bring on a full toolkit, specifically the FunnyDream toolkit, for prolonged surveillance capabilities," Liviu Arsene, Global Cybersecurity Researcher at Bitdefender, told ZDNet.
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Bitdefender: A Detailed Timeline of a Chinese APT Espionage Attack Targeting South Eastern Asian Government Institutions

Bitdefender researchers have recently investigated a complex and targeted espionage attack on potential government sector victims in South East Asia, carried out by a sophisticated Chinese APT group. The operation dates back to late 2018, with current forensic evidence following the attack timeline up to 2020.

While the incident has been mentioned by other security researchers, Bitdefender’s investigation focuses on offering a detailed timeline of the attack by piecing all the forensic evidence together and creating a case study example.
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More than 200 systems infected by new Chinese APT 'FunnyDream'

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