Microsoft stated it has banned a hacking gang known as Polonium, based in Lebanon, from utilizing the OneDrive cloud storage platform for data exfiltration and command and control while attacking and compromising Israeli firms. The internet giant's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) stated it stopped over 20 malicious OneDrive apps built by Polonium and alerted affected companies, in addition to erasing the criminal accounts created by the Lebanon-based entity.
"Across the majority of its victims, this attacker has deployed unique tools that abuse lawful cloud services for command and control (C2)." as per Microsoft's research. "POLONIUM was seen generating and using legal OneDrive accounts, then using those accounts as C2 to carry out part of the offensive operation," says the report.
POLONIUM has been seen operating on or targeting various organizations previously penetrated by the Iran-linked MuddyWater APT (aka MERCURY).
Since February 2022, the antagonistic group is thought to have breached more than 20 Israeli institutions and one intergovernmental body with operations in Lebanon. Manufacturing, IT, transportation, defense, government, agriculture, finance, and healthcare companies were among the targets of interest, with one cloud service provider hacked to target a downstream aviation company and law firm in a supply chain attack.
Unpatched Fortinet FortiOS SSL VPN servers vulnerable to CVE-2018-13379 exploits leveraging a critical path traversal weakness allowing login credentials theft appear to represent the first access vector for the vast majority of victims, according to Microsoft. In November 2020, a hacker disclosed the passwords for nearly 50,000 vulnerable Fortinet VPNs, just days after a list of CVE-2018-13379 one-line exploits was publicly disclosed.
A list of roughly 500,000 Fortinet VPN passwords supposedly harvested from susceptible devices was posted online again almost a year later. The actor's campaign chains have included the usage of proprietary tools that use genuine cloud services like OneDrive and Dropbox accounts for C2 and malicious tools named CreepyDrive and CreepyBox for its victims.
This isn't the first time Iranian threat actors have used cloud services to its advantage. Cybereason revealed in October 2021 that a group called MalKamak organized an attack campaign that use Dropbox for C2 communications to remain under the radar.
MSTIC also stated that several of the victims penetrated by Polonium had previously been targeted by another Iranian entity known as MuddyWater (aka Mercury), which the US Cyber Command has described as a "subordinate element" under MOIS. The victim overlaps support previous reports that MuddyWater is a "conglomerate" of several teams similar to Winnti (China) and the Lazarus Group (North Korea).
Customers are encouraged to implement multi-factor authentication as well as analyze and audit partner relations to minimize any superfluous permissions to combat such risks.
