Chinese Hackers Target Taiwan and US NGO with MgBot Malware

Organizations in Taiwan and a U.S. non-governmental organization (NGO) based in China have been targeted by a Beijing-affiliated state-sponsored hacking group called Daggerfly using an upgraded set of malware tools.

The campaign is a sign that the group “also engages in internal espionage,” Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom, said in a new report published today. “In the attack on this organization, the attackers exploited a vulnerability in an Apache HTTP server to deliver their MgBot malware.”

Daggerfly, also known by the names Bronze Highland and Evasive Panda, was previously observed using the MgBot modular malware framework in connection with an intelligence-gathering mission aimed at telecom service providers in Africa. It’s known to be operational since 2012.

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“Daggerfly appears to be capable of responding to exposure by quickly updating its toolset to continue its espionage activities with minimal disruption,” the company noted.

The latest set of attacks are characterized by the use of a new malware family based on MgBot as well as an improved version of a known Apple macOS malware called MACMA, which was first exposed by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) in November 2021 as distributed via watering hole attacks targeting internet users in Hong Kong by abusing security flaws in the Safari browser.

The development marks the first time the malware strain, which is capable of harvesting sensitive information and executing arbitrary commands, has been explicitly linked to a particular hacking group.

“The actors behind macOS.MACMA at least were reusing code from ELF/Android developers and possibly could have also been targeting Android phones with malware as well,” SentinelOne noted in a subsequent analysis at the time.

MACMA’s connections to Daggerly also stem from source code overlaps between the malware and Mgbot, and the fact that it connects to a command-and-control (C2) server (103.243.212[.]98) that has also been used by a MgBot dropper.

Another new malware in its arsenal is Nightdoor (aka NetMM and Suzafk), an implant that uses Google Drive API for C2 and has been utilized in watering hole attacks aimed at Tibetan users since at least September 2023. Details of the activity were first documented by ESET earlier this March.

“The group can create versions of its tools targeting most major operating system platform,” Symantec said, adding it has “seen evidence of the ability to trojanize Android APKs, SMS interception tools, DNS request interception tools, and even malware families targeting Solaris OS.”

The development comes as China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) claimed Volt Typhoon – which has been attributed by the Five Eyes nations as a China-nexus espionage group – to be an invention of the U.S. intelligence agencies, describing it as a misinformation campaign.

“Although its main targets are U.S. congress and American people, it also attempt[s] to defame China, sow discords [sic] between China and other countries, contain China’s development, and rob Chinese companies,” the CVERC asserted in a recent report.

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