New EternalBlue Family Member Takes Aim at Asian Web Servers

Beapy is a new malware variant thats storming across China, leaving cryptominers in its wake.

A new variant of the EternalBlue exploit is hitting hundreds of businesses in China. The cyptojacking campaign, dubbed Beapy for one of the principal files used in the attack, uses email for its initial infection vector and then spreads laterally through a network, leaving a cryptominer wherever it goes.
In a
blog post
by the Security Response Attack Investigation Team at Symantec, researchers note that Beapy is continuing a tactic previously seen in the Bluwimps worm: focusing cyptominer activity at enterprise networks.
The infection chain begins with a weaponized Excel file attached to a phishing email. Once opened by the recipient, the file downloads a DoublePulsar backdoor to the computer. DoublePulsar was one of the exploits leaked in the Shadow Brokers file dump, just like EternalBlue. And this isnt the first time criminals have turned to this state-developed exploit: It was also used in 2017s WannaCry ransomware campaign.
Alan Neville, threat intelligence analyst at Symantec, says that once the bogus spreadsheet is launched, it would then download Beapy onto their machines, and then it would try to spread across the networks, either using EternalBlue or dumping network credentials. The credential dump is especially dangerous because ... essentially, once you have network credentials, you become a legitimate user, he says. That makes it very easy for the likes of Beapy to spread across networks very, very quickly, then download and install this coin-mining software.
While the Beapy campaign is not currently focused on data exfiltration, Jonathan Bensen, CISO and senior director of product management at Balbix, says its still a serious problem. Cryptojacking should not be viewed as a victimless crime, he says. Besides drastically slowing down computers and causing device degradation, Beapy, in particular, leverages open source credential stealing capabilities to aid in its spread throughout an enterprises network.
And even though Beapy isnt currently exfiltrating data, once the data is captured theres nothing to prevent the current Beapy controllers from eventually adding stolen credentials to the cryptocurrency theyre taking from the victims network.
And there is evidence that Beapy will not be limited to cryptocurrency mining. According to the Symantec report, Beapy has targeted Web servers as one of its hosts, and early versions of the software contained Mimikatz modules for credential theft. These versions targeted Apache Tomcat and Oracle WebLogic servers beginning in early February, with activity continuing to the present time.
Neville says the Beapy attack is very profitable because the file basically allows cybercriminals to be able to mine cryptocurrencies a lot faster than some of the traditional methods that weve seen in the past. Its just a coin hive, where it was embedded within browsers to be able to generate some revenue by mining cryptocurrencies within a browser just by visiting websites.
This, Neville says, lets the malware leverage the CPU itself and allows cybercriminals to mine coins much faster. The fast mining is aided by the lack of any throttle that the team has seen — Beapy and its miner will take every CPU cycle the system can make available, bringing legitimate enterprise software to a halt.
Protection from Beapy begins behind the keyboard, says Stuart Reed, vice president at Nominet. The best defense against these attacks combines education — empowering and even rewarding employees for spotting problem emails, then alerting others — with technologies to monitor the network and identify malicious activity before the damage can be done.
In addition to training, theres another critical step that organizations should take, Neville says. Its very important to have your systems patched. Any systems that arent patched against EternalBlue are vulnerable to this attack, he says.
Organizations beyond China should keep this in mind, as well. Theres nothing specific that we came across as part of our analysis that would suggest that [Beapy is] targeting specific software or systems within China, and it could definitely be utilized to spread farther, Neville says.
Related Content:
Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure a Big Target for Cryptomining Attacks
When Cryptocurrency Falls, What Happens to Cryptominers?
Cryptojackers Grow Dramatically on Enterprise Networks
10 Ways to Protect Protocols That Arent DNS

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industrys most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the
Interop agenda
here.

Last News
▸ ArcSight prepares for future at user conference post HP acquisition. ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Samsung Epic 4G: First To Use Media Hub ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Many third-party software fails security tests ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
New EternalBlue Family Member Takes Aim at Asian Web Servers