Trend Micro researchers recently identified a new ransomware family called Charon, deployed in a targeted attack observed in the Middle East’s public sector and aviation industry.
The threat actor employed a DLL sideloading technique notably similar to tactics previously documented in the Earth Baxia campaigns, which have historically targeted government sectors. The attack chain leveraged a legitimate browser-related file, Edge.exe (originally named cookie_exporter.exe), to sideload a malicious msedge.dll (SWORDLDR), which subsequently deployed the Charon ransomware payload. Analysis of the msedge.dll component revealed it was designed to load a file named DumpStack.log, which was absent from the Trend Micro initial telemetry.
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Source:Trend Micro
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