A comprehensive analysis of the year's new malware

New YouTube Bot Malware Spotted Stealing User’s Sensitive Information

Italians Users Targeted By PureLogs Stealer Through Spam Campaigns

PrivateLoader is an active malware in the loader market, used by multiple threat actors to deliver various payloads, mainly information stealer. Since our previous investigation, we keep tracking the malware to map its ecosystem and delivered payloads. Starting from this tria.ge submission, we recognized a now familiar first payload, namely PrivateLoader. However, the dropped stealer was not part of our stealer growing collection, notably including RedLine or Raccoon. Eventually SEKOIA.IO realised it was a new undocumented stealer, known as RisePro. This article aims at presenting SEKOIA.IO RisePro information stealer analysis.

In this blog post we will dive into the latest Microsoft Exchange 0-day vulnerability, dubbed #ProxyNotShell, how it relates to other Exchange vulnerabilities and finally demonstrate how ProxyRelay can combined with ProxyNotShell, even with Extended Protection and IIS rewrite rules enabled.

Although Flash Player reached end of life for macOS in 2020, this has not stopped Shlayer operators from continuing to abuse it for malvertising campaigns.

While conducting routine threat hunting for macOS malware on Ad networks, I stumbled upon an unusual Shlayer sample. Upon further analysis, it became clear that this variant was different from the known Shlayer variants such as OSX/Shlayer.D, OSX/Shlayer.E, or ZShlayer. We have dubbed it OSX/Shlayer.F.

As more and more users adopt new versions of Microsoft Office, it is likely that threat actors will turn away from VBA-based malicious documents to other formats such as XLLs or rely on exploiting newly discovered vulnerabilities to launch malicious code.

We found samples of the Raspberry Robin malware spreading in telecommunications and government office systems beginning September. The main payload itself is packed with more than 10 layers for obfuscation and is capable of delivering a fake payload once it detects sandboxing and security analytics tools.

New PolyVice ransomware is likely in use by multiple threat actors building re-branded payloads with the same custom encryption scheme.

Cluster25 researchers analyzed several campaigns (also publicly reported by CERT-AGID) that used phishing emails to spread an InfoStealer malware written in .NET through an infection chain that involves Windows Shortcut (LNK) files and Batch Scripts (BAT). Taking into account the used TTPs and extracted evidence, the attacks seem perpetrated by the same adversary (internally named AUI001).

Cyble Research and Intelligence Labs analyzes multiple ransomware strains created based on leaked source code of Conti Ransomware.

Meddler-in-the-Middle (MitM) phishing attacks show how threat actors find ways to get around traditional defenses and advice.

At the end of September, GTSC reported the finding of two 0-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server, CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082. The cybersecurity community dubbed the pair of vulnerabilities ProxyNotShell.

FortiGuard Labs encountered an unreported CMS scanner and brute forcer written in the Go programming language. Read our analysis of the malware and how this active botnet scans and compromises websites.

“TargetCompany” is a type of ransomware that was first identified in June 2021. The researchers named it TargetCompany ransomware because it adds the targeted company name as a file extension to the encrypted files. In September 2022, researchers identified a TargetCompany ransomware variant targeting Microsoft SQL servers and adding the “Fargo” extension to the encrypted files. TargetCompany ransomware is also known to add a “Mallox” extension after encrypting the files.

* Check Point Research (CPR) provides under-the-hood details of its analysis of the infamous Azov Ransomware * Investigation shows that Azov is capable of modifying certain 64-bit executables to execute its own code * Azov is designed to inflict impeccable damage to the infected machine it runs on * CPR sees over 17K of Azov-related samples submitted to VirusTotal

Avast discovered a distribution point where a malware toolset is hosted, but also serves as temporary storage for the gigabytes of data being exfiltrated on a daily basis, including documents, recordings, and webmail dumps including scans of passports from Asian, American and European citizens and diplomats applying for Burmese visas, from Burmese human rights activists and Burmese government institutions.

MuddyWater, also known as Static Kitten and Mercury, is a cyber espionage group that’s most likely a subordinate element within Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Since at least 2017 MuddyWater has targeted a range of government and private organizations across sectors, including telecommunications, local government, defense, and oil and natural gas organizations, in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.

Unit 42 researchers examine several malware samples that incorporate Cobalt Strike components, and discuss some of the ways that we catch these samples by analyzing artifacts from the deltas in process memory at key points of execution. We will also discuss the evasion tactics used by these threats, and other issues that make their analysis problematic.

As we report more fully below, in the wake of Russian battlefield losses to Ukraine this fall, Moscow has intensified its multi-pronged hybrid technology approach to pressure the sources of Kyiv’s military and political support, domestic and foreign. This approach has included destructive missile and cyber strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, cyberattacks on Ukrainian and now foreign-based supply chains, and cyber-enabled influence operations[1]—intended to undermine US, EU, and NATO political support for Ukraine, and to shake the confidence and determination of Ukrainian citizens.

Years-old domains, compromised JS libraries and worldwide-localized content among tactics of this sophisticated attacker.

ViperSoftX is a multi-stage stealer that exhibits interesting hiding capabilities. Other than stealing cryptocurrencies, it also spreads the VenomSoftX browser extension, which performs man-in-the-browser attacks.

Since September 2022, Aurora malware is advertised as an infostealer and several traffers teams announced they added it to their malware toolset.

RedLine is an information stealer which operates on a MaaS (malware-as-a-service) model. This stealer is available on underground forums, and priced according to users' needs.

Cyble analyzes a new wave of ransomware attacks being led by AXLocker, Octocrypt, and Alice ransomware and how they target Discord tokens.

FortiGuard Labs provides an analysis on RapperBot focusing on comparing samples for different campaigns, including one aiming to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Read our blog to learn more about the differences observed in this campaign vs previous RapperBot and similar campaigns in the past.

In this intrusion from May 2022, the threat actors used BumbleBee as the initial access vector from a Contact Forms campaign. We have previously reported on two BumbleBee intrusions (1, 2), and this report is a continuation of a series of reports uncovering multiple TTPs seen by BumbleBee post exploitation operators. The intrusion began with the delivery of an ISO file that contained an LNK and a DLL. The threat actors leveraged BumbleBee to load a Meterpreter agent and Cobalt Strike Beacons. They then performed reconnaissance, used two different UAC bypass techniques, dumped credentials, escalated privileges using a ZeroLogon exploit, and moved laterally through the environment.

Windows ZIP extraction bug (CVE-2022-41049) lets attackers craft ZIP files, which evade warnings on attempts to execute packaged files, even if ZIP file was downloaded from the Internet.

Our deep analysis of the Worok toolset (previously described by ESET Research) reveals the final stage, hidden in a PNG file, that steals data and provides a multifunctional backdoor using the DropBox repository and API.