26/11/2014

Regin, an old but sophisticated cyber espionage toolkit platform

Regin, an old but sophisticated cyber espionage toolkit platform Malware

Regin is one of the latest cyber espionage toolkits targeting a range or organizations, companies and individuals around the world. This malware is very sophisticated and it can mentioned in the same breath with other cyberespionage campaigns like Duqu, Stuxnet, Flame, Uroburos (aka Snake/Turla). First reported about by Symantec[1], Regin kept itself under the radar for years.

As G DATA experts worked on this rootkit for quite a while we also gathered some data. The first Regin version we identified was used in March 2009 and the compilation date is July 2008:

paul@gdata:~/regin$ ./pescanner.py b12c7d57507286bbbe36d7acf9b34c22c96606ffd904e3c23008399a4a50c047
Meta-data
================================================================================
File:    b12c7d57507286bbbe36d7acf9b34c22c96606ffd904e3c23008399a4a50c047
Size:    12608 bytes
Type:    PE32 executable (native) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
MD5:     ffb0b9b5b610191051a7bdf0806e1e47
SHA1:    75a9af1e34dc0bb2f7fcde9d56b2503072ac35dd
ssdeep: 
Date:    0x486CBA19 [Thu Jul  3 11:38:01 2008 UTC]
EP:      0x103d4 .text 0/4

Some sources go even back to 2003 but this in unclear at this moment however we can confirm that this campaign appeared at least early 2009.

An Open Source detection tool provided by G DATA

We identified the use of an encrypted virtual file system. In the version mentioned above, the file system is a fake .evt file in %System%\config. The header of the virtual file system is always the same:

typedef struct _HEADER {
  uint16_t SectorSize;
  uint16_t MaxSectorCount;
  uint16_t MaxFileCount;
  uint8_t FileTagLength;
  uint16_t crc32custom;
}

During our analysis, the checksum was a CRC32. A generic approach to detect the infection could be a detection of the existence of a virtual file system on the infected system by checking the custom CRC32 value at the beginning of the file system.
Download the python script by simply clicking the link below this article.

regin-detect.py SHA256: 98ac51088b7d8e3c3bb8fbca112290279a4d226b3609a583a735ecdbcd0d7045
regin-detect.py MD5: 743c7e4c6577df3d7e4391f1f5af4d65

And here is the output when a virtual file system is scanned:
paul@gdata:~regin$ ./tool.py security.evt
SectorSize:  1000
MaxSectorCount:  0500
MaxFileCount:  0500
FileTagLength:  10
CRC32custom:  df979328
CRC of the file: df979328
Regin detected

Victims:

So far, victims of Regin were identified in 14 countries:

  • Algeria
  • Afghanistan
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Fiji
  • Germany
  • Iran
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Kiribati
  • Malaysia
  • Pakistan
  • Russia
  • Syria

Perhaps one of the most publicly known victims of Regin is Jean Jacques Quisquater, a well-known Belgian cryptographer. Kaspersky Lab stated this in their report which you can find at
securelist.com/blog/research/67741/regin-nation-state-ownage-of-gsm-networks/ .

Even more interesting is the fact that Regin seems to be the spyware behind the Belgacom case, a big Belgian Telecom provider hacked in 2013. Belgacom acknowledged the hack, but never provided details about the breach. Ronald Prins from Fox-IT, which helped with the forensics and investigation of the Belgacom case, confirmed on his Twitter page that Regin could possibly be the malware behind the Belgacom case.

The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media, not only connects Regin to Belgacom, but also names the European Union as potential victim in an article published on November 24th.

Conclusion:

Regin can be best described as a full cyber espionage platform where the goal was to reach complete remote control and monitoring on all possible levels. Attribution is difficult in cases like this however considering the complexity of development, we suspect that this operation is supported by a nation-state. From the information we have, we assume that it is not originating from Russia and not from China.
If you need more information please contact us at intelligence@gdata.de

Example of Regin MD5:

4b6b86c7fec1c574706cecedf44abded
b505d65721bb2453d5039a389113b566
ba7bb65634ce1e30c1e5415be3d1db1d
a3915d7e41eb51ba07a2ae5e533e0673
2c8b9d2885543d7ade3cae98225e263b
49a6d5256ff9d061c964aa62788d0519
bfbe8c3ee78750c3a520480700e440f8
d240f06e98c8d3e647cbf4d442d79475
b29ca4f22ae7b7b25f79c1d4a421139d
b269894f434657db2b15949641a67532
187044596bc1328efa0ed636d8aa4a5c
ffb0b9b5b610191051a7bdf0806e1e47
1c024e599ac055312a4ab75b3950040a
49d4a603b117355a054b844487de55d9
6662c390b2bbbd291ec7987388fc75d7
06665b96e293b23acc80451abb413e50

G DATA detects known Regin samples.
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[1] www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/regin-top-tier-espionage-tool-enables-stealthy-surveillance

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