In the third week of March 2018, through FireEye’s Dynamic Threat Intelligence, FireEye discovered malicious macro-based Microsoft Word documents distributing SANNY malware to multiple governments worldwide. Each malicious document lure was crafted in regard to relevant regional geopolitical issues. FireEye has tracked the SANNY malware family since 2012 and believes that it is unique to a group focused on Korean Peninsula issues. This group has consistently targeted diplomatic entities worldwide, primarily using lure documents written in English and Russian.
As part of these recently observed attacks, the threat actor has made significant changes to their usual malware delivery method. The attack is now carried out in multiple stages, with each stage being downloaded from the attacker’s server. Command line evasion techniques, the capability to infect systems running Windows 10, and use of recent User Account Control (UAC) bypass techniques have also been added.
