ATK120

Presumed Origin: Unknown < Back

Alias: Cobalt Lyceum, HEXANE

ATK120 (aka: Lyceum, Hexane) threat group targets organizations in sectors of strategic national importance, including oil and gas and possibly telecommunications. LYCEUM may have been active as early as April 2018. Domain registrations suggest that a campaign in mid-2018 focused on South African targets. In May 2019, the threat group launched a campaign against oil and gas organizations in the Middle East. This campaign followed a sharp uptick in development and testing of their toolkit against a public multi-vendor malware scanning service in February 2019. Its target core is very similar to that of the APT Xenotime (ATK91), and some similarities can be found with Magnallium and Chrysene. No definitive links can be established. 

 

REFERENCES

Target sector

  • Energy

Target countries

  • Kuwait
  • South Africa

Attack pattern

  • T1043 - Commonly Used Port
  • T1053 - Scheduled Task
  • T1056 - Input Capture
  • T1071 - Standard Application Layer Protocol
  • T1076 - Remote Desktop Protocol
  • T1078 - Valid Accounts
  • T1081 - Credentials in Files
  • T1086 - PowerShell
  • T1087 - Account Discovery
  • T1110 - Brute Force
  • T1140 - Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information
  • T1193 - Spearphishing Attachment

Motivation

  • Sabotage

Malwares

  • DanBot
  • DanDrop

Vulnerabilities