SYMBOLCOMMON_NAMEaka. SYNONYMS

EXOTIC LILY  (Back to overview)

aka: DEV-0413

EXOTIC LILY is a resourceful, financially motivated group whose activities appear to be closely linked with data exfiltration and deployment of human-operated ransomware such as Conti and Diavol. In early September 2021, the group has been obeserved exploiting a 0day in Microsoft MSHTML (CVE-2021-40444). Investigation lead researchers to believe that they are an Initial Access Broker (IAB) who appear to be working with the Russian cyber crime gang known as FIN12 (Mandiant, FireEye) / WIZARD SPIDER (CrowdStrike). This threat actor deploys tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that are traditionally associated with more targeted attacks, like spoofing companies and employees as a means of gaining trust of a targeted organization through email campaigns that are believed to be sent by real human operators using little-to-no automation. Additionally and rather uniquely, they leverage legitimate file-sharing services like WeTransfer, TransferNow and OneDrive to deliver the payload, namely BUMBLEEBEE and BAZARLOADER, further evading detection mechanisms. This level of human-interaction is rather unusual for cyber crime groups focused on mass scale operations.


Associated Families

There are currently no families associated with this actor.


References
2022-03-17GoogleVladislav Stolyarov, Benoit Sevens
@online{stolyarov:20220317:exposing:5f565b6, author = {Vladislav Stolyarov and Benoit Sevens}, title = {{Exposing initial access broker with ties to Conti}}, date = {2022-03-17}, organization = {Google}, url = {https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/exposing-initial-access-broker-ties-conti}, language = {English}, urldate = {2022-05-17} } Exposing initial access broker with ties to Conti
BazarBackdoor BumbleBee Conti EXOTIC LILY
2021-09-15MicrosoftMicrosoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)
@online{team:20210915:analyzing:bafe767, author = {Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team and Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)}, title = {{Analyzing attacks that exploit the CVE-2021-40444 MSHTML vulnerability}}, date = {2021-09-15}, organization = {Microsoft}, url = {https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/09/15/analyzing-attacks-that-exploit-the-mshtml-cve-2021-40444-vulnerability}, language = {English}, urldate = {2022-05-17} } Analyzing attacks that exploit the CVE-2021-40444 MSHTML vulnerability
EXOTIC LILY

Credits: MISP Project