Active since at least 2013, the group is said to have focused on maritime-related targets across multiple verticals.

FireEye say that it has noticed a sharp escalation in attempted intrusions targeting engineering and maritime entities connected to the South China Sea.

“The campaign is linked to a group of suspected Chinese cyber espionage actors we have tracked since 2013, dubbed TEMP.Periscope”, FireEye said.

(The group has been dubbed “Leviathan” by researchers at security company Proofpoint, who last year tracked a number of campaigns against “ high-value targets in defense and government” including targeted spearphishing emails).

“Like multiple other Chinese cyber espionage actors, TEMP.Periscope has recently re-emerged and has been observed conducting operations with a revised toolkit. Known targets of this group have been involved in the maritime industry, as well as engineering-focused entities, and include research institutes, academic organizations, and private firms in the United States,” FireEye researchers said in a blog.

Tools

In their recent spike in activity, TEMP.Periscope used a relatively large library of malware shared with multiple other suspected Chinese groups, FireEye said. These tools include:

AIRBREAK: a JavaScript-based backdoor also reported as “Orz” that retrieves commands from hidden strings in compromised webpages and actor-controlled profiles on legitimate services.

BADFLICK: a backdoor that is capable of modifying the file system, generating a reverse shell, and modifying its command and control (C2) configuration.

PHOTO: a DLL backdoor also reported publicly as “Derusbi”, capable of obtaining directory, file, and drive listing; creating a reverse shell; performing screen captures; recording video and audio; listing, terminating, and creating processes; enumerating, starting, and deleting registry keys and values; logging keystrokes, returning usernames and passwords from protected storage; and renaming, deleting, copying, moving, reading, and writing to files.

HOMEFRY: a 64-bit Windows password dumper/cracker that has previously been used in conjunction with AIRBREAK and BADFLICK backdoors. Some strings are obfuscated with XOR x56. The malware accepts up to two arguments at the command line: one to display cleartext credentials for each login session, and a second to display cleartext credentials, NTLM hashes, and malware version for each login session.

LUNCHMONEY: an uploader that can exfiltrate files to Dropbox.

MURKYTOP: a command-line reconnaissance tool. It can be used to execute files as a different user, move, and delete files locally, schedule remote AT jobs, perform host discovery on connected networks, scan for open ports on hosts in a connected network, and retrieve information about the OS, users, groups, and shares on remote hosts.

China Chopper: a simple code injection webshell that executes Microsoft .NET code within HTTP POST commands. This allows the shell to upload and download files, execute applications with web server account permissions, list directory contents, access Active Directory, access databases, and any other action allowed by the .NET runtime.

Active since at least 2013, the group is said to have focused on maritime-related targets across multiple verticals, including engineering firms, shipping and transportation, manufacturing, defense, government offices, and research universities. However, the group has also been reported as targeting professional/consulting services, high-tech industry, healthcare, and media/publishing.