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Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
1 CVE Mallory has correlated with this family across public research and vendor advisories. Each row links to the full Mallory page for that vulnerability.
The attackers exploited CVE-2017-0199 in order to download and execute a malicious HTA document inside of Microsoft Office.
1 distinct threat actor attributed by public researchers. Open in Mallory to see the full evidence chain and overlapping campaigns.
During this campaign, the attackers used 2 different malicious binaries: PoohMilk and Freenki. PoohMilk exists only to launch Freenki.
10 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
In May 2017, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 identified a limited spear phishing campaign targeting various individuals across the world. The threat actor leveraged the CVE-2017-0199 Microsoft Word Office/WordPad Remote Code Execution Vulnerability with carefully crafted decoy content customized for each target recipient.
Our research showed that the spear phishing emails came from multiple compromised email accounts tied to a legitimate domain in North East Asia. We believe that the threat actor hijacked an existing, legitimate in-progress conversation and posed as the legitimate senders to send malicious spear phishing emails to the recipients.
Then using the Windows API ShellExecuteW() and a hard-coded argument ‘abai’, the malware executes the decoded payload.
The C2 server responds with a Base64 encoded PowerShell script which in turn downloads two fake image files that contain embedded PE binaries and a JavaScript file which extracts the embedded PE binaries onto the victim host.
After a successful exploitation, it sets persistence in the registry with the appropriate command line argument to execute the second stage payload... HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ key name: runsample key value: "[CURRENT_EXECUTION_PATH] help"
After a successful exploitation, it sets persistence in the registry with the appropriate command line argument to execute the second stage payload... HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ key name: runsample key value: "[CURRENT_EXECUTION_PATH] help"
16 indicators attributed across vendor reports, sandbox runs, and researcher write-ups. Full values are available in Mallory.
IPs, domains, and DNS infrastructure linked to this family.
File hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) from samples and reports.
Other indicator types observed in public reporting.
2 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
Used in Group 123's May 2017 FreeMilk campaign against non-Korean financial institutions. PoohMilk establishes Freenki's persistence through the current user's Windows Run registry key, configuring execution with the 'help' argument. It also follows temporary-file and shortcut references to locate a ZIP archive, extract an RTF decoy and display it using WordPad. The delivery chain exploits CVE-2017-0199 in an Office document and uses HTA and script stages.
First-stage loader that sets registry persistence for the next-stage payload, typically Freenki. It also parses temporary files, searches for ZIP/LNK files, extracts contents to temp files, and executes them.
Match every observed IP, domain, and hash against your live telemetry.
Named campaigns wielding this family, with evidence pinned to each claim.
CVEs this family uses for access and lateral movement.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Every documented technique, ranked by evidence weight.
Reddit, Mastodon, and CTI community discussion around this family.