Quote:A recently observed variant of the KONNI malware appears tied to a remote access Trojan (RAT) previously attributed to a North Korean actor, Palo Alto Networks security researchers say.

In a report published this week, Palo Alto Networks reveals that NOKKI is related to the DOGCALL malware family, a backdoor previously attributed to the Reaper group and likely in use by this group only. The actor is known for targeting the military and defense industry within South Korea, as well as a Middle Eastern organization doing business with North Korea.

By analyzing malicious macros within Microsoft Word documents designed to drop NOKKI, the researchers discovered that the employed deobfuscation technique was also used in documents targeting individuals interested in the World Cup hosted in Russia in 2018 with the DOGCALL malware.