Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (GOV1772534265)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Government of Pakistan's Cyber Attack and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts Government of Pakistan Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Government of Pakistan breach identified under incident ID GOV1772534265.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Government of Pakistan's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/government-of-pakistan, the number of followers: 0, the industry type: International Affairs and the number of employees: 5274 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 837 and after the incident was 833 with a difference of -4 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Government of Pakistan and their customers.
A newly reported cybersecurity incident, "SloppyLemming Cyber Espionage Campaign Targets South Asian Governments and Critical Infrastructure", has drawn attention.
A recent report by cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf has linked the threat group SloppyLemming (also tracked as Outrider Tiger and Fishing Elephant) to a large-scale malware campaign targeting government agencies and critical infrastructure operators in Pakistan and Bangladesh be...
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Government agencies and Critical infrastructure operators, and exposing Sensitive government and critical infrastructure data.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
Overall, the incident is a reminder of why proactive monitoring and strong governance matter.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment (T1566.001) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including spear-phishing emails with malicious PDF attachments, and macro-enabled Excel documents and User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including malicious PDF attachments, and macro-enabled Excel documents. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including malicious PDF attachments, and macro-enabled Excel documents, Command and Scripting Interpreter: Windows Command Shell (T1059.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating burrowShell Backdoor...enabled command execution, and Signed Binary Proxy Execution: Rundll32 (T1218.011) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating dLL sideloading loading malicious code under guise of trusted Microsoft .NET binaries. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder (T1547.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating burrowShell Backdoor granted attackers full remote access and Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Side-Loading (T1574.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating dLL sideloading loading malicious code under guise of trusted Microsoft .NET binaries. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Side-Loading (T1574.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating dLL sideloading loading malicious code under guise of trusted Microsoft .NET binaries. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location (T1036.005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating malicious traffic disguised as legitimate Windows Update communications, Obfuscated Files or Information: Embedded Payloads (T1027.009) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including rC4 encryption to evade detection, and rust-written keylogger, Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Side-Loading (T1574.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating dLL sideloading loading malicious code under guise of trusted Microsoft .NET binaries, and Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating abused Cloudflare Workers domains to relay C2 traffic. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Input Capture: Keylogging (T1056.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating rust-based keylogger embedded in macro-enabled Excel documents. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Network Service Discovery (T1046) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating reconnaissance tools capable of port scanning and network enumeration and File and Directory Discovery (T1083) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating burrowShell Backdoor...enabled file system control. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Screen Capture (T1113) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating burrowShell Backdoor...enabled screenshot capture, Input Capture: Keylogging (T1056.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating rust-based keylogger embedded in macro-enabled Excel documents, and Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating gather sensitive data from compromised environments. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating malicious traffic disguised as legitimate Windows Update communications, Proxy: External Proxy (T1090.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including network tunneling via a SOCKS proxy, and abused Cloudflare Workers domains to relay C2 traffic, and Encrypted Channel: Symmetric Cryptography (T1573.001) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating rC4 encryption to evade detection. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including data theft, cloud-based exfiltration, and abused Cloudflare Workers domains and Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (T1567.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating abused Cloudflare Workers domains to relay C2 traffic. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Government of Pakistan Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/government-of-pakistan/incident/GOV1772534265
- Government of Pakistan CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/government-of-pakistan
- Government of Pakistan Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/gov1772534265-government-agencies-in-bangladesh-government-agencies-in-pakistan-cyber-attack-january-2025/
- Government of Pakistan CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/government-of-pakistan/history
- Government of Pakistan CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.cxodigitalpulse.com/sloppylemming-cyber-attacks-hit-government-and-infrastructure-in-pakistan-bangladesh/
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf