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A Song of Intel and Fancy

A case study tracking adversary infrastructure through SSL certificate use featuring Fancy Bear/APT28/Sofacy.

A long time ago, in a galaxy… No. Stop. We’re not doing that anymore. Instead, we’re pivoting to Game of Thrones, or A Song of Ice and Fire for you bookworms, because the fantastical realm provides great material we can relate to cybersecurity.

This research builds off our previous work using SSL certificates and splash pages to proactively identify Fancy Bear infrastructure. We identified a SSL certificate subject string that Fancy Bear has used consistently since 2016, which further illuminates their infrastructure and registration tactics. Our hope is that in addition to the indicators themselves, our readers will apply these techniques to their research on other adversaries.

We’ll walk through the process of how we conducted this research, which used ThreatConnect, Censys, Farsight Security Passive DNS, RiskIQ, and DomainTools. To date, this line of research has identified 47 IPs, 46 domains, 33 registrant email addresses, and 47 SSL certificates shared in ThreatConnect in Incident 20180209C: “C=GB, ST=London, L=London, O=Security, OU=IT” Certificate Infrastructure. It also underscores consistent Fancy Bear tactics including:

  • Use of small or boutique hosting service providers such as Domains4Bitcoins, ITitch, and NJALLA.
  • Minimizing the reuse of email addresses to register domains.
  • Regular use of email domains sapo[.]pt, mail[.]com, centrum[.]cz, and cock[.]li or privacy protection services.
  • Domain registration and SSL certificate creation times that are consistent with an actor operating in Moscow.

The Watchers in the Night

Everybody thinks they are House Stark material, but we would assert cybersecurity personnel are more like the sworn members of the Night’s Watch. You are the watchers on the firewall, the sword in the dark web, and the shield that guards the networks of your organization.

If we’re being honest, the ThreatConnect Research team and cyber threat intelligence analysts at large, are most like… wait for it… Samwell Tarly (none of us harbors the delusion of being Jon Snow). Tarly is dedicated to aggregating and analyzing intelligence on threats beyond the wall — the Night King and his White Walkers — to better understand how the Night’s Watch can react to them and proactively address them.

 

 

Looking for Adversary Infrastructure Using a Common SSL Certificate Subject String

In our recent efforts to proactively address Fancy Bear, we reviewed SSL certificate information in Censys for domains and IPs using a “Coming soon” splash page consistent with previously identified Fancy Bear infrastructure. We found the same subject field used repeatedly — “C=GB, ST=London, L=London, O=Security, OU=IT, CN=(domain name)” — as shown below for space-delivery[.]com and webversionact[.]org.

 


Censys SSL certificate information showing consistent use of subject string.

 

This subject line indicates a SSL certificate likely created using OpenSSL, where the creator assigns values for the country (C), state (ST), location (L), organization (O), organizational unit (OU), and common name (CN). It is important to note that the common name is intended to reflect the domain name where the SSL certificate is being used, but in our research we found several instances where this domain name was misspelled or altogether different from the domain where it was used. More on that later.

 

Radiating out: how common is that subject string?

Next, we needed to get an idea of how widely this string is used and what other infrastructure is using similar SSL certificates to gain insight into more possible Fancy Bear infrastructure. Again using Censys, we found 47 certificates that have the same SSL string. In Censys we also queried for IP addresses that host a server using a SSL certificate with that string. The latter provides a view of active infrastructure, while the former can be used to find both historical and active infrastructure.

Censys certificate search results for identified subject string.

 

Careful though: other individuals could easily use OpenSSL to create certificates with the same subject fields; this alone is not sufficient to identify Fancy Bear. Using ThreatConnect’s Analyze function we saw that at least 23 of the specified common names have been associated with Fancy Bear attacks. Many of the remaining domains have also been identified through our ongoing research into name servers that Fancy Bear uses. This increases our confidence in assessing that SSL certificates with that subject string probably are associated with Fancy Bear activity.

 

ThreatConnect Analyze results showing indicators that already have information in ThreatConnect.

 

Stitching together certificates, IP addresses, and the right domains

Censys SSL certificate information for 46ce0b05f302e0d855e9cc751100299345466581.

 

At least 39 of the certificates identified in the previous query are no longer in use, but we used RiskIQ to search for the SHA-1 hash and identified the IP addresses that previously hosted a server using that certificate. For example, searching for the previously used SSL certificate 46ce0b05f302e0d855e9cc751100299345466581, we saw that it was used at the IP 191.101.31.96.

 

RiskIQ SSL certificate information for 46ce0b05f302e0d855e9cc751100299345466581.

 

Reviewing this IP address in ThreatConnect using our integration with Farsight DNSDB, we saw that this IP address hosted the domain remsupport[.]org. This is a notable finding as well because the domain does not correspond to the ecitcom[.]net that was specified in the common name field in the certificate subject, so we took an extra step to make sure we matched up the right certificate to the right domain.

 

ThreatConnect’s Farsight Security Passive DNS integration results for 191.101.31.96.

 

Conducting this same process for all of the SSL certificates, we came up with the following list sorted by the SSL certificate’s create date/time:

SSL Certificate SHA-1 IP Hosting Certificate SSL Certificate Create Date/Time Domain Hosted At IP or Common Name in SSL Certificate
62e1045ae816b5f44cb43ab52ecb8e4534b63147 87.121.52.162 2/20/18 12:19 webversionact[.]org
1e185ee8ac3c3eafcc2b4d842ed5711b9c62a305 151.80.74.170 2/8/18 7:57 mdcrewonline[.]com
43df735cfea482ffc27252ae08c94f359c499f69 151.80.74.167 1/31/18 11:52 cdnverify[.]net
9d73605a130c377909fe463bc68ac83f73c04a46 146.185.253.131 1/23/18 11:28 nomartung[.]org
fcc696070de34157a02c46aa765c3c7969677fea 179.43.160.184 12/21/17 15:55 europehistoricalmuseum[.]com
126e9d0cf80badf7810859fc116267d40ed1c58b 92.222.136.105 12/21/17 8:34 supservermgr[.]com
9153efa5001c67fdce4bb861f8758cd90b072901 89.34.111.160 10/30/17 13:44 satellitedeluxpanorama[.]com
739e8cc0519aeeb8dd1417e45f9577bd394684f0 185.216.35.26 10/30/17 10:41 webviewres[.]net
ffd3a351d6d438405a917af66634091673bbd96b 149.255.35.6

149.255.35.7

10/30/17 9:43 vermasterss[.]com
89bba1abb0078ffab8dbf2cfa85697b147d8223d 89.37.226.105 10/27/17 7:46 funnymems[.]com
3f17cbb5792e6b9ff8607b23bbc8ad40c735819c 185.86.148.57 10/20/17 10:21 space-delivery[.]com
6860d7aabef2f2382476d9a350c225956bf351c7 23.227.196.21 10/17/17 8:51 travelbern[.]com
b86f517d347e53b3b7116682d7f36a3b77fa8bdf 10/16/17 8:41 space-delivery[.]com
46330eac674b27a4f34ba6864a74bfef59998e5c 146.185.253.132 10/4/17 11:46 myinvestgroup[.]com
551a8e0b504fa19e643dae39002bd0b91a5cfa7e 176.223.111.10 10/2/17 14:29 nanetsdeb[.]com
2a71f7ed0de7b89f4a10d329227898edcd3af6ce 87.120.37.25 9/29/17 13:52 nanetsdeb[.]com
b99346a7f7809578330e4763329209c2381d2f95 176.223.165.217 9/29/17 11:48 fastphotobucket[.]com
ea3198f2ef8685a6f8a1303a55fdb7062a6f30b0 185.86.148.212 7/12/17 13:05 rapidfileuploader[.]org
b64268d418592d481e13ed6aa4dc233b9dbd486d 7/7/17 7:39 viters[.]org
9aa7508f1be201120511b1a4bc91e653c82df924 89.33.246.117 6/28/17 12:57 mvtband[.]net
d514a2a79a0e1a046846963797319fe8e00cdbeb 89.44.103.18 4/13/17 7:43 spelns[.]com
2e53a96a63c8cc17f2824bcdf7c93d64dad45170 95.215.45.43 4/3/17 13:14 wmdmediacodecs[.]com
b07d766664cfa183dba3ee32ab35ed32c7f501c2 95.215.47.226 3/29/17 10:09 acrobatportable[.]com
f9abac0f831e9ea43727a02810ebd6969e8e5951 173.243.112.202 2/3/17 9:06 lgemon[.]org
37ab57a30ffd3826a24acd2b3b596d7bf160960c 91.108.68.171 1/31/17 8:41 lowprt[.]org
1f2a652a68f9ae6a241aed55d80597222d6c2b21 103.41.177.44 1/13/17 9:16 evbrax[.]org
bd4255444ba646796c16e967ec0aa1dd95a7a0f2 195.12.50.163 1/13/17 7:22 wsusconnect[.]com
09ab2ae3ff9f175c18786656194a81be5d6ff732 89.42.212.141 12/21/16 9:35 gtranm[.]com
010e271b2c860caba78475f02edcd30d7a896383 146.0.43.98 12/15/16 9:57 reportscanprotecting[.]org
513587ce94be7d70b1f6661f22758ec6fd591d11 185.156.173.70 11/30/16 8:03 runvercheck[.]com
8dc11f57d69a5583b196c28a9cf816e10a3fa327 95.215.47.162 11/30/16 7:47 noticermk[.]com
46ce0b05f302e0d855e9cc751100299345466581 191.101.31.96 11/30/16 7:35 remsupport[.]org
edb4339cdfa0b43d8ef5fb49cc9fdcbbbf2208be 86.105.1.121 11/25/16 7:30 globaltechresearch[.]org
0153d822178cd0f0725a9a1438d5b2a49edfe71a 87.236.215.134 11/17/16 6:09
d1a1d61806513cde9b2f8d817a55cc16384f490f 89.45.67.26 11/11/16 9:35 applecloudupdate[.]com
9d54194ba9140c148b8b3eb900dfb7b11ec155e2 86.105.1.13 11/10/16 8:00 joshel[.]com
9baf76a0a3a4ce78d3c2ce04e64cae0ea604c7aa 89.45.67.20 10/31/16 9:20 akamaisoftupdate[.]com
7dcf45941d734b4c42c9a1f90d57e1c816610dff 62.113.232.197 10/26/16 7:57 ppcodecs[.]com
3bc30b4ff457d10651688140b0844fd0d17f4a64 176.223.111.237

46.102.152.132

10/24/16 8:22 appservicegroup[.]com
c201e616fe90ae2592c34de03611748510aba143 179.43.128.75 9/13/16 5:33 dateosx[.]com
f6ac5bd6aa52d96d8d413157fbfd1a6be7f65cb7 86.105.18.146 9/9/16 13:27 dowssys[.]com
5be56e0660a001a12c8ef250ff86369c50ca73a8 87.236.215.21 8/18/16 12:32 microsoftstoreservice[.]com
ea8e4e7882a116ed43db4e5218efb2fd3ba2d116 191.96.249.31 7/20/16 6:56 microsoftdccenter[.]com
c3b7df9d2a4eb05d399c336eec4c6ff0688596bd 95.215.44.247 7/12/16 6:12 mvsband[.]com
c5ec8bb4bb5842930da935e13b9bee604e3b6182 95.215.44.240 7/8/16 7:54 dvsservice[.]com
f65d9f8f385cf384cee24a6d04df600d575dd5f6 51.254.76.54 7/8/16 7:09 akamaitechupdate[.]com
7d5eaecc2c6865a1f846d03b6d3e0b649a36c2c1 185.86.148.14 6/1/16 7:35

adobeupdatetechnology[.]com

Once that we had a list of the domains, we further enriched this information by identifying the WHOIS information for these domains. Doing so provided historical information on how these domains were registered.

 

 

Gathering Intelligence: Layering on WHOIS Data

To do so, we used some capabilities and integrations from our friends at DomainTools. Specifically, we were looking to identify registrant email addresses, name servers/hosting providers, and creation timestamps. We started by doing a DomainTools Iris search for the domains listed above.

DomainTools Iris search for identified domains.

 

This provided the current WHOIS information for those domains. However, some of the domains have been taken over since they were operational or the WHOIS has otherwise changed since it was registered for use in operations. For any domains where we thought this was the case, we reviewed the WHOIS history in our DomainTools Spaces app to identify the original registration information that corresponds to the timeframe in which the domain was operational.

ThreatConnect’s DomainTools Spaces App WHOIS history for adobeupdatetechnology[.]com.

 

Ultimately, we identified the below registration information for these domains.

 

Domain Original Registrant Original Nameserver Create Date Create Time
webversionact[.]org Private registration NS-CANADA.TOPDNS.COM 2/14/18 7:44:16
cdnverify[.]net declan.jefferson@sapo[.]pt ns1.ititch.com 1/31/18 7:58:54
nomartung[.]org Private registration NS-CANADA.TOPDNS.COM 1/17/18 3:10:21
mdcrewonline[.]com htomary@cock[.]li stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 12/21/17 13:19:00
supservermgr[.]com Private registration NS-CANADA.TOPDNS.COM 12/21/17 7:58:00
europehistoricalmuseum[.]com Private registration ns1.bulletdns.net 10/26/17 2:22:36
vermasterss[.]com reynoso89@cock[.]li stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 10/25/17 8:24:14
webviewres[.]net Private registration ns1.njal.la 10/25/17 8:23:14
funnymems[.]com Private registration ns1.njal.la 10/24/17 11:11:37
satellitedeluxpanorama[.]com Private registration ns1.njal.la 10/20/17 11:25:22
space-delivery[.]com elbertnagel@cock[.]li ns1.ipstates.net 10/9/17 9:22:13
nanetsdeb[.]com gabrielromao@sapo[.]pt ns1.ititch.com 9/29/17 5:53:25
fastphotobucket[.]com Private registration 1-you.njalla.no 9/28/17 14:13:26
myinvestgroup[.]com loisoji@firemail[.]cc ns1.ipstates.net 9/28/17 9:27:23
travelbern[.]com k0koth@sapo[.]pt stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 9/12/17 11:00:44
rapidfileuploader[.]org Private registration NS-CANADA.TOPDNS.COM 7/11/17 13:27:47
viters[.]org Private registration ns1.nemohosts.com 7/6/17 13:08:10
mvtband[.]net Private registration stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 6/27/17 8:57:22
wmdmediacodecs[.]com istakav@cock[.]li stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 3/31/17 12:18:37
spelns[.]com Private registration ns1.nemohosts.com 3/22/17 18:28:42
lgemon[.]org ezgune@cock[.]li STVL113289.MERCURY.OBOX-DNS.COM 1/31/17 11:43:39
lowprt[.]org avramberkovic@centrum[.]cz NS4.ITITCH.COM 1/20/17 12:48:37
acrobatportable[.]com jul_marian@centrum[.]cz stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 1/12/17 9:23:47
evbrax[.]org kern82@gmx[.]net ns1.ititch.com 1/10/17 8:48:43
gtranm[.]com wee7_nim@centrum[.]cz stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 12/14/16 8:54:26
reportscanprotecting[.]org abor.g.s@europe[.]com ns1.carbon2u.com 12/3/16 9:43:29
runvercheck[.]com cauel-mino@centrum[.]cz stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 11/25/16 12:11:35
remsupport[.]org ja.philip@centrum[.]cz stvl113289.earth.obox-dns.com 11/25/16 11:08:16
noticermk[.]com frfdccr42@centrum[.]cz ns1.ititch.com 11/24/16 12:45:47
globaltechresearch[.]org morata_al@mail[.]com ns1.carbon2u.com 11/21/16 11:23:40
joshel[.]com germsuz86@centrum[.]cz ns1.ititch.com 11/9/16 14:18:09
applecloudupdate[.]com ll1kllan@engineer[.]com ns1.carbon2u.com 11/4/16 1:09:13
akamaisoftupdate[.]com mahuudd@centrum[.]cz ns1.carbon2u.com 10/27/16 13:23:20
wsusconnect[.]com laurent1983@mail[.]com ns1.ititch.com 10/27/16 11:22:42
apptaskserver[.]com partanencomp@mail[.]com ns1.ititch.com 10/22/16 11:26:00
appservicegroup[.]com olivier_servgr@mail[.]com ns1.carbon2u.com 10/19/16 8:27:30
ppcodecs[.]com chpiost8n@post[.]com ns1.carbon2u.com 10/19/16 7:36:39
dateosx[.]com milimil0702@mail[.]com ns1.carbon2u.com 9/13/16 10:12:31
dowssys[.]com adam_corbett@mail[.]com ns1.ititch.com 9/8/16 12:38:29
mvsband[.]com iflatley@openmailbox[.]org 1a7ea920.bitcoin-dns.hosting 8/24/16 13:38:02
microsoftstoreservice[.]com craft030795@mail[.]com ns1.ititch.com 8/19/16 8:47:21
microsoftdccenter[.]com Private registration ns1.ititch.com 7/20/16 12:51:42
dvsservice[.]net pirlo.vasces@mail[.]com 1a7ea920.bitcoin-dns.hosting 7/11/16 9:48:23
dvsservice[.]com fernando2011@post[.]com 1a7ea920.bitcoin-dns.hosting 7/5/16 14:55:25
akamaitechupdate[.]com guiromolly@mail[.]com 1a7ea920.bitcoin-dns.hosting 6/21/16 7:49:25
adobeupdatetechnology[.]com best.cameron@mail[.]com 1a7ea920.bitcoin-dns.hosting 5/30/16 14:24:25

 

We have shared this information, including the domains, IPs, and email addresses, with our Common Community in Incident 20180209C: “C=GB, ST=London, L=London, O=Security, OU=IT” Certificate Infrastructure.

 

Assessing Tactics

There are Fancy Bear tactics that we can glean and proactively exploit to identify their activity going forward in addition to monitoring for new domains/IPs that use the aforementioned SSL certificate subject string.

Hosting Service Providers/Name Servers
The domains’ original name servers helps identify the hosting service providers that the actors used to procure the infrastructure. These include several providers that we’ve previously called out, such as Domains4Bitcoins, ITitch, Nemohosts, Carbon2u and NJALLA. We can proactively monitor for newly registered domains using these name servers and with other consistencies to Fancy Bear to potentially identify their infrastructure before it is used in operations.

Email Addresses

We used DomainTools Reverse WHOIS to search for any additional domains registered using the email addresses above. As it turns out, only one of the email addresses — iflatley@openmailbox[.]org — registered a second domain (rndversion[.]net). This minimal reuse of email addresses suggests an operational security (opsec) effort to deter efforts to trace out their infrastructure based on known registrants.

DomainTools Reverse WHOIS results for iflatley@openmailbox[.]org.

 

While some of the domains were registered using privacy protection services, for those that aren’t we see the consistent use of sapo[.]pt, cock[.]li, centrum[.]cz, and mail[.]com. For those email domains that are less common, like cock[.]li, we can create a Track in ThreatConnect that will alert us to any new domains registered using that email domain.

 

Creating a Track in ThreatConnect.

Opsec Mistakes

When reviewing the SSL certificates, we identified several possible opsec mistakes that would either arouse suspicion or allow defenders to trace out some of their infrastructure. As we mentioned earlier, the common name in the SSL certificate field is intended to correspond to the domain name where it is being used; however, for ten of the identified certificates, that wasn’t the case. In some cases, the domain name was misspelled, like the below certificate for cdnverify[.]net. This mistake would be a red flag for defenders looking to verify the legitimacy of encountered domains based on their SSL certificate.

Censys SSL certificate information for 43df735cfea482ffc27252ae08c94f359c499f69.

 

In other certificates, a completely different common name was used, as was the case for the aforementioned ecitcom[.]net. It turns out that ecitcom[.]net was the specified common name for five of the certificates listed above. When we search Censys for other certificates using that common name, we find four more certificates that were created from February 2016 to September 2016. This helps us identify the additional infrastructure 51.254.158[.]57, dowstem[.]com, 87.236.215.5, 185.61.149.24, and 80.83.115.187. Researchers can exploit mistakes like these to expand their understanding of adversary infrastructure.

 

Creation Timestamps

Finally, we can make use of the creation timestamps for the identified certificates and domains. As the chart below shows, a large majority of the certificates and domains were registered between 0600 and 1400 GMT. This is consistent with a 0900 to 1700 standard work day in Moscow. While not definitive — other countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Western Africa are in the same timezone — in conjunction with the previous associations to Fancy Bear this finding increases our confidence in the attribution to Fancy Bear.

 

Chart showing the number of domains and SSL certificates that were created by hour relative to Moscow’s time zone (MSK).

 

The registration and certificate creation times is of limited use to identify additional Fancy Bear domains proactively – especially for a single indicator – but the consistency of the data set over time has value for defenders and researchers.

 

Conclusion: To the Citadel!

We are sometimes asked why we share out these findings publicly, the argument being that we are revealing research methodologies that Fancy Bear can now incorporate into their opsec and avoid in future operations. That’s a fair concern, but in response we argue that by publicizing these findings and methodologies, we are hoping to show our readers ways to research not only Fancy Bear, but the other Night Kings that keep them up at night.

 

Additionally, as we’ve stated before, in publicly outing or sharing these indicators and tactics, organizations can ultimately increase the actors’ costs and push them to spend more time and resources on procuring infrastructure. The more this is done, the better. Eventually, you might get to the point where you become a factor in the actor’s decision making or cost benefit analysis.

Samwell Tarley’s main source of intelligence, Castle Black’s library, ultimately proves to be insufficient for determining how to best the Night King. He then travels to the Citadel, a huge library of intelligence consolidated from a variety of sources, in hopes of garnering knowledge that will help defend the realm. For threat intelligence researchers and cybersecurity personnel, ThreatConnect acts as a metaphorical Citadel, consolidating, aggregating, and analyzing intelligence from a range of internal and external sources. However, whereas the maesters at the Citadel seem unencumbered by what happens outside of Oldtown, ThreatConnect gives users the ability to actually act on the intelligence they receive and integrate with the defensive tools they have in place to mitigate their threats. If you want to learn more, check out our platform.

 

ThreatConnect Dashboard showing users recent intelligence from our Citadel on Fancy Bear.

About the Author

ThreatConnect

By operationalizing threat and cyber risk intelligence, The ThreatConnect Platform changes the security operations battlefield, giving your team the advantage over the attackers. It enables you to maximize the efficacy and value of your threat intelligence and human knowledge, leveraging the native machine intelligence in the ThreatConnect Platform. Your team will maximize their impact, efficiency, and collaboration to become a proactive force in protecting the enterprise. Learn more at www.threatconnect.com.