Mélofée: Researchers Uncover New Linux Malware Linked to Chinese APT Groups

An not known Chinese state-sponsored hacking group has been connected to a novel piece of malware aimed at Linux servers.

French cybersecurity organization ExaTrack, which discovered a few samples of the formerly documented malicious application that day again to early 2022, dubbed it Mélofée.

One of the artifacts is built to fall a kernel-manner rootkit that is centered on an open up resource job referred to as Reptile.

“According to the vermagic metadata, it is compiled for a kernel edition 5.10.112-108.499.amzn2.x86_64,” the business explained in a report. “The rootkit has a confined set of options, mostly installing a hook developed for hiding itself.”

Both equally the implant and the rootkit are claimed to be deployed utilizing shell commands that obtain an installer and a custom made binary offer from a remote server.

The installer usually takes the binary offer as an argument and then extracts the rootkit as perfectly as a server implant module which is presently below active progress.

Mélofée’s functions are no various from other backdoors of its type, enabling it to speak to a distant server and obtain recommendations that make it possible for it to carry out file functions, generate sockets, start a shell, and execute arbitrary instructions.

The malware’s ties to China come from infrastructure overlaps with groups this kind of as APT41 (aka Winnti) and Earth Berberoka (aka GamblingPuppet).

Earth Berberoka is the title specified to a condition-sponsored actor mainly targeting gambling sites in China considering the fact that at the very least 2020 applying multi-platform malware like HelloBot and Pupy RAT.

In accordance to Trend Micro, some samples of the Python-dependent Pupy RAT have been concealed utilizing the Reptile rootkit.

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Also identified by ExaTrack is another implant codenamed AlienReverse, which shares code similarities with Mélofée and would make use of publicly-available tools like EarthWorm and socks_proxy.

“The Mélofée implant family is an additional device in the arsenal of Chinese point out sponsored attackers, which show consistent innovation and growth,” the corporation said.

“The abilities available by Mélofée are relatively easy, but may allow adversaries to conduct their attacks underneath the radar. These implants were being not broadly noticed, demonstrating that the attackers are probably restricting its usage to high price targets.”

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Some parts of this article are sourced from:
thehackernews.com