Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ETIKAS1769561687)
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 Kaspersky Middle East'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 Kaspersky Middle East 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 Kaspersky Middle East breach identified under incident ID ETIKAS1769561687.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Kaspersky Middle East's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kaspersky-lab-middle-east, the number of followers: 14043, the industry type: Computer and Network Security and the number of employees: 31 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 749 and after the incident was 732 with a difference of -17 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 Kaspersky Middle East and their customers.
On 21 July 2025, Middle Eastern telecommunications company disclosed Cyber Espionage and Ransomware issues under the banner "Chinese Threat Actors Exploit Zero-Day ToolShell Vulnerability in Global Cyber Espionage Campaign".
New research from Symantec reveals that China-linked threat actors exploited the recently patched ToolShell vulnerability (CVE-2025-53770) to breach a telecommunications company in the Middle East and government agencies across Africa and South America in July 2025.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting SharePoint servers, Government systems and Telecommunications infrastructure, and exposing True.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as The rapid exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities by state-backed actors underscores the need for immediate patching and proactive threat hunting, and recommending next steps like Immediately patch critical vulnerabilities like CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771, Monitor for unusual activity involving LOLBins and publicly available tools like Sliver and Revsocks and Implement network segmentation to limit lateral movement.
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 Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (95%), with evidence including exploited the recently patched ToolShell vulnerability (CVE-2025-53770), and critical flaw in on-premise SharePoint servers allowed unauthenticated remote code execution and Exploitation of Remote Services (T1210) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including toolShell vulnerability (CVE-2025-53770) allowed full system access, and related path traversal bug (CVE-2025-53771) patched simultaneously. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating exploited ToolShell vulnerability (CVE-2025-53770) for remote code execution and Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including used Certutil for file download/decode, and deployed Go-based HTTP backdoor (Zingdoor) and Rust-written malware (KrustyLoader). Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Server Software Component: Web Shell (T1505.003) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating deployed Zingdoor (Go-based HTTP backdoor) and ShadowPad (modular Trojan) and Create or Modify System Process: Windows Service (T1543.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating sliver command-and-control framework used for post-exploitation activities. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating toolShell vulnerability allowed unauthenticated remote code execution and full system access and Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Bypass User Account Control (T1548.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating used PetitPotam (CVE-2021-36942) for LSA spoofing and lateral movement. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Masquerading (T1036) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating sideloading Zingdoor via a legitimate Trend Micro binary, Indicator Removal: File Deletion (T1070.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating use of LOLBins like Certutil for evasion, and System Binary Proxy Execution (T1218) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating used living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) including Certutil, Procdump, Minidump. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory (T1003.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating used Procdump/Minidump/LsassDumper for credential harvesting and Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets: Kerberoasting (T1558.003) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating petitPotam (CVE-2021-36942) used for LSA spoofing. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified Network Service Discovery (T1046) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating used GoGo Scanner for automated network scanning and Account Discovery (T1087) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating mass scanning for vulnerable systems followed by targeted intrusions. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation of Remote Services (T1210) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating petitPotam (CVE-2021-36942) used for LSA spoofing and lateral movement and Lateral Tool Transfer (T1570) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating deployed Zingdoor, KrustyLoader, and ShadowPad across compromised networks. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating data breach involving credentials, sensitive government data, and financial data and Automated Collection (T1119) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating mass scanning and targeted intrusions for espionage. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols (T1071.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating zingdoor (Go-based HTTP backdoor) and Sliver C2 framework used and Proxy: External Proxy (T1090.002) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating used Revsocks (SOCKS5 proxy) for firewall evasion. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating data exfiltration confirmed in ransomware and espionage activities and Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (T1567.002) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating state-backed actors likely used C2 channels for exfiltration. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with moderate to high confidence (85%), with evidence including warlock ransomware deployed by Storm-2603, and data encryption confirmed in ransomware attacks and Defacement: Internal Defacement (T1491.001) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating persistent access and lateral movement within compromised networks. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Kaspersky Middle East Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/kaspersky-lab-middle-east/incident/ETIKAS1769561687
- Kaspersky Middle East CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/kaspersky-lab-middle-east
- Kaspersky Middle East Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/etikas1769561687-european-finance-company-middle-eastern-government-department-cyber-attack-june-2021/
- Kaspersky Middle East CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/kaspersky-lab-middle-east/history
- Kaspersky Middle East CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://industrialcyber.co/ransomware/china-linked-hackers-exploit-toolshell-to-hit-telecom-government-networks-globally/
- 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