HURRICANE PANDA is a China-based threat actor active since 2013, known for targeting technology and telecom sectors using China Chopper webshells.
Analyst brief
HURRICANE PANDA is a China-based threat actor active since at least 2013, primarily targeting large enterprises in the technology and telecommunications sectors. Their preferred initial access and persistence method is deploying the 'China Chopper' webshell through SQL injection or WebDAV vulnerabilities. This lightweight webshell provides full command execution and file upload/download capabilities to the attackers. Defenders should focus on detecting and patching web application vulnerabilities, monitoring for the presence of small obfuscated webshell files, and identifying anomalous C2 traffic patterns indicative of remote command execution.
HURRICANE PANDA
unknown
We have investigated their intrusions since 2013 and have been battling them nonstop over the last year at several large telecommunications and technology companies. The determination of this China-based adversary is truly impressive: they are like a dog with a bone.
HURRICANE PANDA's preferred initial vector of compromise and persistence is a China Chopper webshell – a tiny and easily obfuscated 70 byte text file that consists of an ‘eval()’ command, which is then used to provide full command execution and file upload/download capabilities to the attackers. This script is typically uploaded to a web server via a SQL injection or WebDAV vulnerability, which is often trivial to uncover in a company with a large external web presence.
Once inside, the adversary immediately moves on to execution of a credential theft tool such as Mimikatz (repacked to avoid AV detection). If they are lucky to have caught an administrator who might be logged into that web server at the time, they will have gained domain administrator credentials and can now roam your network at will via ‘net use’ and ‘wmic’ commands executed through the webshell terminal.