Gold Dragon Widens Olympics Malware Attacks, Gains Permanent Presence on Victims’ Systems

2018-02-02 • Mcafee •

https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/gold-dragon-widens-olympics-malware-attacks-gains-permanent-presence-on-victims-systems/

McAfee ATR found Gold Dragon, Brave Prince, Ghost419, and Running Rat implants used alongside the 2018 Olympics-themed intrusion activity to establish persistence, profile victims, and enable continued data theft or follow-on access. Gold Dragon acted as a reconnaissance and downloader implant: it collected desktop, recent-file, program-folder, system, registry, and user-profile data, encrypted the results, and posted them to ink.inkboom.co.kr while also requesting next-stage payloads by computer name and username. The malware used Korean-specific tradecraft, including checking for the Hangul Word Processor process, extracting an embedded executable from an HWP file marker, and writing viso.exe into the user Startup folder for persistence. Infrastructure and overlap with earlier implants included ink.inkboom.co.kr, nid-help-pchange.atwebpages.com, and code/behavior shared with Brave Prince and Ghost419, while later activity reused hacked servers in Santiago, Chile. The activity matters because it shows the Olympics intrusion moving beyond initial PowerShell staging into durable endpoint access, victim profiling, and modular payload delivery.

Indicators of Compromise

Type Value First Seen Last Seen
DOMAIN 000webhostapp.com 2018-02-02 2026-09-18
HASH ae1b32aac4d8a35e2c62e334b794373… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH c54837d0b856205bd4ae01887aae917… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 94aa827a514d7aa70c404ec326edaaa… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 0852f2c5741997d8899a34bb95c349d… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 0ca12b78644f7e4141083dbb850acba… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH e7a542312ec718300ed9f229aaa60e5… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 5cbc07895d099ce39a3142025c557b7… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 111ab6aa14ef1f8359c59b43778b76c… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 496841be8fb9d0042180a2bccf205e1… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 2df9e274ce0e71964aca4183cec01fb… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH dee482e5f461a8e531a6a7ea4728535… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 7aa99ebc49a130f07304ed25655862a… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 2230edace3f42a5750f738f28814759… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 90eba6416f5e1b35c9bf41b4a25ac88… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 82645e88736e11321774db7a7b28bd6… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH ee7a9a7589cbbcac8b6bf1a3d9c5d1c… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 45bfa1327c2c0118c152c7192ada429… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 29431dc086499c7ee64236a365615be… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH db350bb43179f2a43a1330d82f3afeb… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 2981e1a1b3c395cee6e4b9e6c46d062… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 98ccf3a463b81a47fdf4275e228a8f2… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 7334209ace81d67babbbb37f5a0d2af… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH bf2534b2f059547967bb453d6790992… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH 9097b372f7f844c430aa8c1b217a507… 2018-02-02 2020-03-09
HASH cceb8abae023acf0db3e98f4aabfc92… 2018-02-02 2018-03-08
DOMAIN ink.inkboom.co.kr 2018-02-02 2018-02-12
DOMAIN followgho.byethost7.com 2018-02-02 2018-02-12
HASH 2a4d985b72bee59a02399ff647bbe7f… 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
URL https://minibodegaslock.cl/comp… 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
URL https://minibodegaslock.cl:443/… 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
URL http://inkdotinkboom.co.kr/host… 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
DOMAIN trydai.000webhostapp.com 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
DOMAIN eodo1.000webhostapp.com 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
DOMAIN nid-help-pchange.atwebpages.com 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
DOMAIN braveprince.com 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
DOMAIN inkdotinkboom.co.kr 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
DOMAIN minibodegaslock.cl 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
IPv4 223.194.70.136 2018-02-02 2018-02-02
IPv4 200.200.200.13 2018-02-02 2018-02-02

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