BlackTech APT Attacking Network Routers to Breach Networks

Since 2010, a group of hackers known as BlackTech APT has been engaging in malicious activities. The targets of their attacks encompass a wide range of sectors, including governmental institutions, industrial facilities, technological infrastructure, media outlets, electronic systems, mobile devices, and military establishments.

In order to hide what they are doing, the group behind the attack uses custom-made malicious software, tools that can be used for both good and bad, and clever methods that take advantage of the resources that are already in a system, such as turning off routers’ data recording features.

The Japan National Police Agency (NPA) and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) showed that BlackTech could change router firmware without being caught and use routers’ domain-trust relationships to move from having international subsidiaries to having headquarters in Japan and the U.S.

Criminals in the black market keep updating their tools to avoid being caught. They also steal code-signing certificates to make their malware look like it is real.

BlackTech Malware Attack

The threat actors are known for using custom-made malware payloads and remote access tools (RATs) to get into their victims’ computers.

Their custom malware works with a number of running systems, such as Windows®, Linux®, and FreeBSD®.

Living off-the-land TTPs are used by BlackTech actors to blend in with normal network activities and operating systems. This helps them avoid being caught by endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools.

The campaign they are running now is aimed at foreign branches of American and Japanese companies.

Once they get into the internal networks of companies, they can move from those networks to those at headquarters.

The report says, “BlackTech actors take advantage of trusted network relationships between a known victim and other entities to gain more access to target networks.”

BlackTech used a variety of router names and versions from firms like Cisco and others.

In the case of Cisco routers, the bad guys hide in Embedded Event Manager (EEM) rules, which are used in Cisco IOS to set up automatic tasks that run when certain events happen.

CISA and NPA talked about moves that could be taken to stop this BlackTech bad behavior. The Agencies strongly advise network defenses to keep an eye on strange traffic, reboots, and illegal downloads of bootloaders, firmware images, and images.

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