Equation: The Death Star of Malware Galaxy

Download “Equation group: questions and answers” PDF

“Houston, we have a problem”

One sunny day in 2009, Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz¹ embarked on a flight to the burgeoning city of Houston to attend a prestigious international scientific conference. As a leading scientist in his field, such trips were common for Grzegorz. Over the next couple of days, Mr Brzęczyszczykiewicz exchanged business cards with other researchers and talked about  the kind of important issues such high level scientists would discuss (which is another way of saying “who knows?”).  But, all good things must come to an end; the conference finished and Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz flew back home, carrying with him many highlights from a memorable event. Sometime later, as is customary for such events, the organizers sent all the participants a CDROM carrying many beautiful pictures from the conference. As Grzegorz put the CDROM in his computer and the slideshow opened, he little suspected he had just became the victim of an almost omnipotent cyberespionage organization that had just infected his computer through the use of three exploits, two of them being zero-days.

A rendezvous with the “God” of cyberespionage

It is not known when the Equation² group began their ascent. Some of the earliest malware samples we have seen were compiled in 2002; however, their C&C was registered in August 2001. Other C&Cs used by the Equation group appear to have been registered as early as 1996, which could indicate this group has been active for almost two decades. For many years they have interacted with other powerful groups, such as the Stuxnet and Flame groups; always from a position of superiority, as they had access to exploits earlier than the others.

The #EquationAPT group is probably one of the most sophisticated cyber attack groups in the world #TheSAS2015

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Since 2001, the Equation group has been busy infecting thousands, or perhaps even tens of thousands of victims throughout the world, in the following sectors:

• Government and diplomatic institutions
• Telecoms
• Aerospace
• Energy
• Nuclear research
• Oil and gas
• Military
• Nanotechnology
• Islamic activists and scholars
• Mass media
• Transportation
• Financial institutions
• Companies developing encryption technologies

To infect their victims, the Equation group uses a powerful arsenal of “implants” (as they call their Trojans), including the following we have created names for: EQUATIONLASER, EQUATIONDRUG, DOUBLEFANTASY, TRIPLEFANTASY, FANNY and GRAYFISH. No doubt other “implants” exist which we have yet to identify and name.

The #EquationAPT group interacted with other powerful groups, such as the #Stuxnet and #Flame groups #TheSAS2015

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The group itself has many codenames for their tools and implants, including SKYHOOKCHOW, UR, KS, SF, STEALTHFIGHTER, DRINKPARSLEY, STRAITACID, LUTEUSOBSTOS, STRAITSHOOTER, DESERTWINTER and GROK. Incredible as it may seem for such an elite group, one of the developers made the unforgivable mistake  of leaving his username: “RMGREE5“, in one of the malware samples as part of his working folder: “c:\users\rmgree5\“.

Perhaps the most powerful tool in the Equation group’s arsenal is a mysterious module known only by a cryptic name: “nls_933w.dll“. It allows them to reprogram the hard drive firmware of over a dozen different hard drive brands, including Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Maxtor and IBM. This is an astonishing technical accomplishment and is testament to the group’s abilities.

Over the past years, the Equation group has performed many different attacks.  One stands out: the Fanny worm. Presumably compiled in July 2008, it was first observed and blocked by our systems in December 2008. Fanny used two zero-day exploits, which were later uncovered during the discovery of Stuxnet. To spread, it used the Stuxnet LNK exploit and USB sticks. For escalation of privilege, Fanny used a vulnerability patched by the Microsoft bulletin MS09-025, which was also used in one of the early versions of Stuxnet from 2009.

LNK exploit as used by Fanny

It’s important to point out that these two exploits were used in Fanny before they were integrated into Stuxnet, indicating that the Equation group had access to these zero-days before the Stuxnet group. The main purpose of Fanny was the mapping of air-gapped networks. For this, it used a unique USB-based command and control mechanism which allowed the attackers to pass data back and forth from air-gapped networks.

Two zero-day exploits were used by the #EquationAPT group before they were integrated into #Stuxnet #TheSAS2015

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In the coming days, we will publish more details about the Equation group malware and their attacks. The first document to be published will be a general FAQ on the group together with indicators of compromise.

By publishing this information, we hope to bring it to the attention of the ITSec community as well as independent researchers, who can extend the understanding of these attacks. The more we investigate such cyberespionage operations, we more we understand how little we actually know about them. Together, we can lift this veil and work towards a more secure (cyber-)world.

Download “Equation group: questions and answers” PDF

Indicators of compromise (“one of each”):

C&C servers (hostnames and IPs):

DoubleFantasy:

EquationLaser:

Fanny:

EquationDrug:

GrayFish:

TripleFantasy:

Equation group’s exploitation servers:

IPs hardcoded in malware configuration blocks:

Kaspersky products detection names:

• Backdoor.Win32.Laserv
• Backdoor.Win32.Laserv.b
• Exploit.Java.CVE-2012-1723.ad
• HEUR:Exploit.Java.CVE-2012-1723.gen
• HEUR:Exploit.Java.Generic
• HEUR:Trojan.Java.Generic
• HEUR:Trojan.Win32.DoubleFantasy.gen
• HEUR:Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.gen
• HEUR:Trojan.Win32.Generic
• HEUR:Trojan.Win32.GrayFish.gen
• HEUR:Trojan.Win32.TripleFantasy.gen
• Rootkit.Boot.Grayfish.a
• Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Agent.bjqt
• Trojan.Boot.Grayfish.a
• Trojan.Win32.Agent.ajkoe
• Trojan.Win32.Agent.iedc
• Trojan.Win32.Agent2.jmk
• Trojan.Win32.Diple.fzbb
• Trojan.Win32.DoubleFantasy.a
• Trojan.Win32.DoubleFantasy.gen
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.b
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.c
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.d
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.e
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.f
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.g
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.h
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.i
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.j
• Trojan.Win32.EquationDrug.k
• Trojan.Win32.EquationLaser.a
• Trojan.Win32.EquationLaser.c
• Trojan.Win32.EquationLaser.d
• Trojan.Win32.Genome.agegx
• Trojan.Win32.Genome.akyzh
• Trojan.Win32.Genome.ammqt
• Trojan.Win32.Genome.dyvi
• Trojan.Win32.Genome.ihcl
• Trojan.Win32.Patched.kc
• Trojan.Win64.EquationDrug.a
• Trojan.Win64.EquationDrug.b
• Trojan.Win64.Rozena.rpcs
• Worm.Win32.AutoRun.wzs

Yara rules:

rule apt_equation_exploitlib_mutexes {

meta:

    copyright = "Kaspersky Lab"
    description = "Rule to detect Equation group's Exploitation library"
    version = "1.0"
    last_modified = "2015-02-16"
    reference = "https://securelist.com/blog/"


strings:

    $mz="MZ"

    $a1="prkMtx" wide
    $a2="cnFormSyncExFBC" wide
    $a3="cnFormVoidFBC" wide
    $a4="cnFormSyncExFBC" 
    $a5="cnFormVoidFBC"

condition:

(($mz at 0) and any of ($a*))
}

rule apt_equation_doublefantasy_genericresource {

meta:

    copyright = "Kaspersky Lab"
    description = "Rule to detect DoubleFantasy encoded config"
    version = "1.0"
    last_modified = "2015-02-16"
    reference = "https://securelist.com/blog/"

strings:

    $mz="MZ"
    $a1={06 00 42 00 49 00 4E 00 52 00 45 00 53 00}
    $a2="yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
    $a3="002"


condition:

(($mz at 0) and all of ($a*))  and filesize < 500000
}

rule apt_equation_equationlaser_runtimeclasses {

meta:

    copyright = "Kaspersky Lab"
    description = "Rule to detect the EquationLaser malware"
    version = "1.0"
    last_modified = "2015-02-16"
    reference = "https://securelist.com/blog/"

strings:

    $a1="?a73957838_2@@YAXXZ"
    $a2="?a84884@@YAXXZ"
    $a3="?b823838_9839@@YAXXZ"
    $a4="?e747383_94@@YAXXZ"
    $a5="?e83834@@YAXXZ"
    $a6="?e929348_827@@YAXXZ"

condition:

    any of them
}

rule apt_equation_cryptotable {

meta:

    copyright = "Kaspersky Lab"
    description = "Rule to detect the crypto library used in Equation group malware"
    version = "1.0"
    last_modified = "2015-02-16"
    reference = "https://securelist.com/blog/"

strings:


    $a={37 DF E8 B6 C7 9C 0B AE 91 EF F0 3B 90 C6 80 85 5D 19 4B 45 44 12 3C E2 0D 5C 1C 7B C4 FF D6 05 17 14 4F 03 74 1E 41 DA 8F 7D DE 7E 99 F1 35 AC B8 46 93 CE 23 82 07 EB 2B D4 72 71 40 F3 B0 F7 78 D7 4C D1 55 1A 39 83 18 FA E1 9A 56 B1 96 AB A6 30 C5 5F BE 0C 50 C1}

condition:

    $a
}

¹ pseudonym, to protect the original victim’s identity >>
² the name “Equation group” was given because of their preference for sophisticated encryption schemes >>

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