Retrohunting APT37: North Korean APT used VBA self decode technique to inject RokRat

2021-01-06 Malwarebytes

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/2021/01/retrohunting-apt37-north-korean-apt-used-vba-self-decode-technique-to-inject-rokrat/

Malwarebytes analyzed a malicious Office document, likely aimed at South Korean government-related targets, that it associates with APT37/ScarCruft based on the injected RokRat payload. The macro used a VBA self-decoding technique to unpack and execute malicious code inside Microsoft Office memory, including a VBOM bypass, mutex creation, and dynamic module injection rather than writing the decoded macro to disk. The final macro created Notepad.exe, allocated memory, wrote shellcode with WriteProcessMemory, and launched it with CreateRemoteThread. The shellcode downloaded an encrypted RokRat variant via a bit[.]ly URL redirecting to Google Drive; the RAT supports screenshot capture, system profiling, credential theft, file management, cloud-service exfiltration, and anti-analysis checks.

Indicators of Compromise

Type Value First Seen Last Seen
HASH 2a253c2aa1db3f809c86f410e4bd21f… 2021-01-06 2025-04-01
HASH a42844fc9cb7f80ca49726b3589700f… 2021-01-06 2025-04-01
HASH 3c59ad7c4426e8396369f084c35a2bd… 2021-01-06 2021-01-06
HASH c7ccd2aee0bddaf0e6c8f68edba1406… 2021-01-06 2021-01-06
HASH 676ae680967410e0f245df0b6163005… 2021-01-06 2021-01-06

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