MILKDROP

A North Korea-based hacking group has been making the headlines recently. They are known as ScarCruft or APT37 (Advanced Persistent Threat). Cybersecurity experts believe that the ScarCruft group is funded by Kim Jong-Un's government directly and is used by them to carry out hacking attacks that serve to further North Korean interests. Most of the APT37's campaigns take place in South Korea and target high-ranking individuals. The ScarCruft group has a wide range of hacking tools that keeps expanding. Among them is the MILKDROP backdoor Trojan.

MILKDROP's Capabilities

The MILKDROP Trojan does not have a particularly long list of capabilities, but it is a threat, which operates very silently. Once this backdoor Trojan has gained access to the target's system, it will gain persistence by tampering with the Windows Registry. This would enable the MILKDROP to run whenever the victim reboots their computer. Next, the threat will establish a connection with the C&C server of the ScarCruft hacking group. The MILKDROP backdoor Trojan receives commands from the attackers' C&C server. This Trojan is able to collect information about the compromised system (data concerning the hardware and software of the host) and transfer it to the server of its operators. However, the MILKDROP backdoor Trojan main purpose is to serve as a gateway for more threatening malware, which will be planted on the system additionally. Malware researchers were able to dissect this threat without any issues as the MILKDROP Trojan is not able to detect if it is being run in a sandbox environment.

The APT37 group's hacking arsenal is growing, and it appears that the North Korean government is making its money's worth. If APT37 continues improving with this pace, they may soon be at the levels of the notorious North Korean hacking group known as Lazarus.