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                                      Netskope Threat Coverage: 2020 Tokyo Olympics Wiper Malware

                                      Jul 29 2021

                                      Summary

                                      Major sporting events, like the World Cup or the Olympics, are usually targets of cybercriminals that take advantage of the event’s popularity. During the 2018 World Cup, for example, an infected document disguised as a “game prediction” delivered malware that stole sensitive data from its victims, including keystrokes and screenshots.

                                      A new malware threat emerged just before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony, able to damage an infected system by wiping its files. The malware disguises itself as a PDF document containing information about cyber attacks associated with the Tokyo Olympics. The wiper component deletes documents created using Ichitaro, a popular word processor in Japan. This wiper is much simpler than “Olympic Destroyer”, which was used to target the 2018 Winter Olympics.

                                      Threat 

                                      The file was circulated under the name “【至急】東京オリンピック開催に伴うサイバー攻撃等発生に関する被害報告について”, which translates into “[Urgent] About damage reports regarding the occurrence of cyber attacks, etc. associated with the Tokyo Olympics”.

                                      Screennshot of malware name
                                      Malware name

                                      The file is packed with UPX and was apparently compiled on “2021-07-19” at “22:52:05”, and although this information can’t be 100% reliable, this date is just one day before its first public appearance.

                                      Screenshot showing details about the malware executable
                                      Details about the malware executable

                                      The developer included a lot of anti-analysis and anti-debugging techniques. The first one is a simple trick that detects if the file is being executed in a sandbox by using the APIs GetTickCount64 and Sleep.

                                      First, the malware gets the current timestamp with GetTicketCount64 and then sleeps for 16 seconds. Then, it calls GetTicketCount64 again and checks how much time the code really took in the Sleep function. If the time is below 16 seconds, the malware exits since it’s likely that the Sleep function was bypassed by a sandbox environment.

                                      Screenshot of common anti-analysis technique
                                      Common anti-analysis technique

                                      If the sandbox environment wasn’t detected at this point, the malware checks if there are any analysis tools by listing all the processes running in the OS and comparing against known tools, such as “wireshark.exe” or “idaq64.exe”.

                                      The strings related to these processes are all encrypted inside the binary, and can be easily decrypted using a simple bitwise operation:

                                      Screenshot decrypting a string from the wiper using Python
                                      Decrypting a string from the wiper using Python

                                      Using the same logic, we’ve created a script to extract and decrypt all the strings automatically, revealing important behavior from the malware:

                                      Screenshot of the decrypted strings from the malware
                                      Some of the decrypted strings from the malware

                                      Another interesting technique this malware uses to check if it’s being debugged is by verifying breakpoints. For those not familiar with what happens “under the hood” when you create a software breakpoint, in summary, the debugger replaces the bytecode where you want to break with the one-byte instruction int3, which is represented by the opcode 0xCC. Therefore, when the processor finds this instruction, the program stops, and the control is transferred back to the debugger, which replaces the instruction again with the original byte.

                                      Thus, this malware checks for the presence of the int3 instruction in the entry point of certain functions, by comparing the byte with 0xCC.

                                      Screenshot of malware searching for software breakpoints
                                      Malware searching for software breakpoints

                                      We also found verifications for other instructions aside from int3, such as call and jmp, demonstrating that the developer went even further to verify modifications in the original code.

                                      Later, the malware also checks if the process is being debugged through the APIs IsDebuggerPresent and CheckRemoteDebuggerPresent

                                      Also, the threat verifies if the environment is running under a virtual machine by checking the I/O port implemented by VMware hypervisor.

                                      Screenshot showing malware checking if the process is running under VMware.
                                      Malware checking if the process is running under VMware.

                                      If any sandbox, virtual machine, or analysis tools are detected, the malware calls a function that executes a command line that deletes itself.

                                      cmd.exe /C ping 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 3000 > Nul & Del /f /q "C:/Users/username/Desktop/wiper.exe"
                                      Screenshot showing malware deleting itself after detecting a memory breakpoint
                                      Malware deleting itself after detecting a memory breakpoint

                                      Despite all these anti-analysis and anti-debugging tricks, the only goal of the malware is to run a sequence of commands that searches and deletes files with specific extensions:

                                      • .csv
                                      • .doc
                                      • .docm
                                      • .docx
                                      • .dot
                                      • .dotm
                                      • .dotx
                                      • .exe
                                      • .jtd
                                      • .jtdc
                                      • .jtt
                                      • .jttc
                                      • .log
                                      • .pdf
                                      • .ppt
                                      • .pptm
                                      • .pptx
                                      • .txt
                                      • .xls
                                      • .xlsm
                                      • .xlsx
                                      Screenshot of commands executed by the malware to delete files
                                      Commands executed by the malware to delete files

                                      While these commands are being executed, the malware also tries to execute the “curl” program to request a pornographic website, likely to deceive forensic analysis in the machine.

                                      Protection

                                      Netskope Threat Labs is actively monitoring this campaign and has ensured coverage for all known threat indicators and payloads. 

                                      • Netskope Threat Protection
                                        • Trojan.GenericKD.46658860
                                        • Trojan.GenericKD.37252721
                                        • Trojan.GenericKD.46666779
                                        • Gen:Variant.Razy.861585
                                      • Netskope Advanced Threat Protection provides proactive coverage against this threat.
                                        • Gen.Malware.Detect.By.StHeur indicates a sample that was detected using static analysis
                                        • Gen.Malware.Detect.By.Sandbox indicates a sample that was detected by our cloud sandbox

                                      Sample Hashes

                                      Namesha256
                                      wiper.exefb80dab592c5b2a1dcaaf69981c6d4ee7dbf6c1f25247e2ab648d4d0dc115a97
                                      wiper_unpacked.exe295d0aa4bf13befebafd7f5717e7e4b3b41a2de5ef5123ee699d38745f39ca4f
                                      wiper2.exec58940e47f74769b425de431fd74357c8de0cf9f979d82d37cdcf42fcaaeac32
                                      wiper2_unpacked.exe6cba7258c6316e08d6defc32c341e6cfcfd96672fd92bd627ce73eaf795b8bd2

                                      A full list of sample hashes, decrypted strings, Yara rule, and a tool to extract and decrypt the strings from an Olympics Wiper sample is available in our Git repo.

                                      author image
                                      Gustavo Palazolo
                                      Gustavo Palazolo is an expert in malware analysis, reverse engineering and security research, working many years in projects related to electronic fraud protection.
                                      Gustavo Palazolo is an expert in malware analysis, reverse engineering and security research, working many years in projects related to electronic fraud protection.

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