DPRK Malware Analysis targeting security researchers
2021-01-28 • kkoha •
https://kkoha.tistory.com/entry/DPRK-Malware-Analysis-targeting-security-researchers
This Korean analysis describes DPRK-linked malware activity targeting security researchers through fake vulnerability research collaboration and an actor-controlled blog at blog.br0vvnn[.]io. The attack chain used malicious exploit PoC projects whose build process launched DLL payloads through PowerShell and rundll32, then established persistence under registry Run keys and dropped files such as C:\ProgramData\VMware\vmnat-update.bin. The payloads decrypted embedded data, loaded additional DLLs, and contacted C2 URLs including codevexillium.org, dronerc.it, transplugin.io, and fabioluciani.com paths. The source also ties similar logic to Operation North Star job-lure documents that created localdb.db and downloaded final payloads from attacker infrastructure.
Indicators of Compromise
| Type | Value | First Seen | Last Seen |
|---|---|---|---|
| HASH | a75886b016d84c3eaacaf01a3c61e04… | 2021-01-25 | 2025-11-07 |
| DOMAIN | codevexillium.org | 2021-01-25 | 2024-04-17 |
| URL | https://codevexillium.org/image… | 2021-01-25 | 2024-01-19 |
| HASH | 8ed89d14dee005ea59634aade15dba97 | 2021-01-28 | 2021-04-27 |
| HASH | 9c906c2f3bfb24883a8784a92515e63… | 2021-01-28 | 2021-04-27 |
| URL | https://www.fabioluciani.com/ae… | 2021-01-28 | 2021-02-25 |
| URL | https://www.dronerc.it/shop_tes… | 2021-01-28 | 2021-02-25 |
| HASH | e0e59bfc22876c170af65dcbf19f744… | 2021-01-28 | 2021-01-28 |
| HASH | 56018500f73e3f6cf179d3b853c27912 | 2021-01-28 | 2021-01-28 |
| HASH | f5475608c0126582081e29927424f338 | 2021-01-28 | 2021-01-28 |
| HASH | 35545d891ea9370dfef9a8a2ab1cf95d | 2021-01-26 | 2021-01-28 |
| HASH | 4c3499f3cc4a4fdc7e67417e055891c… | 2021-01-25 | 2021-01-28 |
| URL | https://www.dronerc.it/shop_tes… | 2021-01-25 | 2021-01-28 |
| URL | https://transplugin.io/upload/u… | 2021-01-25 | 2021-01-28 |
| DOMAIN | transplugin.io | 2021-01-25 | 2021-01-28 |
| DOMAIN | blog.br0vvnn.io | 2021-01-25 | 2021-01-28 |