Contagious Interview is a North Korea–aligned threat group active since 2023. The group conducts both cyberespionage and financially motivated operations, including the theft of cryptocurrency and user credentials. Contagious Interview targets Windows, Linux, and macOS systems, with a particular focus on individuals engaged in software development and cryptocurrency-related activities. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
54
TechniquesTop 14%
13
TacticsTop 15%
4
Tools & malware55th pct
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
Contagious Interview has used hexadecimal string encoding to hide critical JavaScript module names, function names, and C2 URLs, which are decoded dynamically at runtime.13
Contagious Interview has utilized VBS scripts to open cmd.exe and run commands to include the go_batch.bat batch file.33
Execution63 detection rules
Standing G1052
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this group touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 176 ATT&CK groups only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.
Reach
Techniques54Top 14%
86th percentile · 86% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics13Top 15%
85th percentile · 85% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tactics spanned or fewer.
Tools & malware455th pct
55th percentile · 55% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tools and malware or fewer.
Campaigns089% tie · 4 values
89% of the population shares a single value across only 4 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique4medBottom 11%
11th percentile · 89% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique0medBottom 16%
16th percentile · 84% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more atomic tests per technique.
Data comps / technique4med65% tie · 12 values
65% of the population shares a single value across only 12 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Mitigations / technique1med43% tie · 11 values
43% of the population shares a single value across only 11 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
5 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this group’s 54 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
An adversary may use legitimate desktop support and remote access software, such as Team Viewer, Go2Assist, LogMein, AmmyyAdmin, etc, to establish an interactive command and control channel to target systems within networks. (...)
Detects when AppLocker "Audit only" enforcement mode reports that an Application, DLL, Script, MSI, or Packaged-App would have been blocked if AppLocker "Enforce rules" enforcement mode was enabled.
Detects successful deletion or disabling of an AWS GuardDuty detector, possibly by an attacker trying to avoid detection of its malicious activities. (...)
Detects the Linux-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency by Axios NPM package, including payload download via curl and detached execution using nohup and python3. (...)
Detects the macOS-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency in Axios NPM Package, including AppleScript execution via osascript, payload download, permission modification, execution, and cleanup.
Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Tom U. @c_APT_ure (collection)
2017-05-12
2022-12-25
9703792d-fd9a-456d-a672-ff92efe4806a
Splunk
The following analytic detects the creation of a batch file (.bat) within the Windows system directory tree, specifically in the System32 or SysWOW64 folders. (...)