Alleviating BlackEnergy-Enabled DDoS Attacks

BlackEnergy was originally sold as a crimeware toolkit when it first surfaced in 2007. Since then, it has undergone modifications that have made it one of advanced persistent threat (APT) actors’ go-to attack tools. Used in the Ukraine power grid attack in 2015, the malware effectively used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to hide their true goal—data stealing.¹ 

WhoisXML API and threat researcher Dancho Danchev sought to expand the current list of indicators of compromise (IoCs) for the most recent BlackEnergy attack on the State Bar of Georgia.² Findings include:

• Close to 50 IP addresses to which the domains identified as IoCs resolved
• Two unredacted email addresses used to register the domains tagged as IoCs
• More than 6,000 domains that shared the IoCs’ registrant email addresses or IP addresses, more than 100 of which were dubbed “malicious” by various malware engines

Download a sample of the threat research materials now or contact us to access the complete set of research materials.

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• [1] https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cyber-attacks/faq-blackenergy
• [2] https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/state-bar-of-georgia-reels-from-cyber-attack