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Announcements
 1. 

Event
Think Like an Attacker: Understanding Cybercriminals & Nation-State Threat Actor
| Nov 16 Virtual Event <REGISTER NOW>
PreviousNext

Attacks/Breaches

3 MIN READ

News



UNKILLABLE? QAKBOT INFECTIONS FLY ON EVEN AFTER ITS HIGH-PROFILE RAID

A literal seven-nation (cyber) army wasn't enough to hold back the famous
initial access broker (IAB) for long — it's been chugging along, spreading
ransomware, despite a massive takedown in August.
Nate Nelson
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
October 05, 2023
Source: Daniel Ladd via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


The Qakbot (aka Qbot) first-stage malware operation is still kicking, even after
the "Operation Duck Hunt" raid by law enforcement eviscerated its infrastructure
a few weeks ago. It was recently seen distributing the Ransom Knight ransomware
and the Remcos backdoor remote access Trojan (RAT) via phishing emails.



Evidently, a massive takedown of Qakbot's botnet infrastructure in August,
involving law enforcement from seven different countries, wasn't enough to even
temporarily kill the notorious initial access broker (IAB). According to a new
report from Cisco Talos, a ransomware campaign that began before the raid is
still ongoing, yet again proving how difficult it is to take out a major threat
actor.

"A lot of people thought that it would not take a lot of time before Qakbot was
back, and we've shown that," says Guilherme Venere, threat researcher for Cisco
Talos. "They were never really inactive. They were still running campaigns at
the same time that the requisite infrastructure was taken down."


QAKBOT STILL AT IT POST-TAKEDOWN

On Aug. 29, law enforcement authorities from the US (the FBI), UK, France,
Germany, Romania, Latvia, and the Netherlands teamed up against the operators
behind Qakbot, "cutting it off at the knees." Specifically, authorities
identified and accessed 700,000 infected computers, redirecting them to
FBI-controlled servers, where they automatically downloaded Qakbot uninstallers.
Additionally, authorities seized $8.6 million of Qakbot's illicitly obtained
funds.



But in the face of all that, a Qakbot campaign that began earlier in August kept
chugging along.



In fact, the group has been distributing phishing emails in English, Italian,
and German, containing .ZIP archives with two primary components.

First, there are shell link (.LNK) files masquerading as financial documents.
For example, "Pay-Invoices-29-August.pdf.lnk" and "bank transfer request.lnk."
These files download an executable from a remote IP address, containing the
Ransom Knight ransomware. Ransom Knight is a newer version of the
ransomware-as-a-service malware "Cyclops," updated back in May.

Besides the ransomware, the .ZIPs also contain Excel Add-In (XLL) files hiding
the Remcos backdoor, enabling persistent access to targeted machines even after
the deployment of ransomware.



It's unclear yet how many organizations have been targeted in this campaign, and
whether any have suffered damages as a result.


CAN LAW ENFORCEMENT EVER ELIMINATE THREAT ACTORS?

In recent years, US and international law enforcement has stepped up efforts to
curb major cybercrime outfits, whether by taking down infrastructure, seizing
crypto, fully arresting group members IRL, or any combination therein. The
long-term results are mixed.

In certain cases, police have done serious, irreversible harm to these groups.
For instance, where once it sat atop the world of ransomware, Hive is now a
memory of the past, thanks to the FBI and Department of Justice.

But seemingly in more cases, authorities have had limited success. The Emotet
botnet survived a coordinated takedown effort, as did the Trickbot botnet. Even
the Conti group recouped after being shut down by authorities, at least to some
degree.

"It's difficult to take them down unless you arrest the original actors behind
the group," Venere says. "In this case, there was no arrest made of anyone
behind the Qakbot infrastructure. So they are still there. They still have
access to the source code for the malware. They can still develop new variants,
and they have the infrastructure to distribute it."

All of the law enforcement effort isn't necessarily a waste, though. "The FBI
had a huge impact on the group's infrastructure, and their financial structure,
and now they have to rebuild it. Sometimes, this kind of thing makes it not
worth the time to rebuild infrastructure," he says.

"So it might have an impact in the end," he concludes, "because it will make it
so expensive for them to rebuild this stuff."

Threat IntelligenceEndpoint
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