[cb22] CloudDragon’s Credential Factory is Powering Up Its Espionage Activities Against All the Policymakers by Zih-Cing Liao and Yu-Tung Chang

Kimsuky is a North Korean APT possibly controlled by North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau. Based on reports from the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) and other vendors, TeamT5 identified that Kimsuky's most active group, CloudDragon, built a workflow functioning as a "Credential Factory," collecting and exploiting these massive credentials. The credential factory powers CloudDragon to start its espionage campaigns. CloudDragon's campaigns have aligned with DPRK's interests, targeting the organizations and key figures playing a role in the DPRK relationship. Our database suggested that CloudDragon has possibly infiltrated targets in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Victims include think tanks, NGOs, media agencies, educational institutes, and many individuals. CloudDragon's "Credential Factory" can be divided into three small cycles, "Daily Cycle," "Campaign Cycle," and "Post-exploit Cycle." The"Daily Cycle" can collect massive credentials and use the stolen credentials to accelerate its APT life cycle. In the "Campaign Cycle," CloudDragon develops many new malware. While we responded to CloudDragon's incidents, we found that the actor still relied on BabyShark malware. CloudDragon once used BabyShark to deploy a new browser extension malware targeting victims' browsers. Moreover, CloudDragon is also developing a shellcode-based malware, Dust. In the "Post-exploit Cycle," the actor relied on hacking tools rather than malicious backdoors. We also identified that the actor used remote desktop software to prevent detection. In this presentation, we will go through some of the most significant operations conducted by CloudDragon, and more importantly, we will provide possible scenarios of future invasions for defense and detection.Read less