Attackers typically try to pass off malware as legitimate applications or as potentially unwanted programs that users deliberately search for and download, such as cheats or cracks. They often rely on ad and affiliate networks to deliver their creations to victims’ devices. This post examines a less conventional case: a well-known backdoor distributed under the guise of adware. The attackers may have chosen this distribution method because the adware was signed by the developer. On top of that, users often manually add these apps to exclusions, so their useful features don’t get blocked.
Some time ago, a client asked us to analyze a file with the MD5 hash c24e99f9437feacaa63766a3cde3fe3d and add it to our detection database. We initially classified it as adware, but a cursory analysis turned up suspicious network activity, which prompted us to dig deeper. It turned out the sample did far more than serve ads. In fact, its advertising functionality doesn’t even work; instead, it triggers an infection chain that delivers the ValleyRAT backdoor.
Read more…
Source: Kaspersky
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Cyber Safety Review Board Releases Unprecedented Report of its Review into Log4j Vulnerabilities and Response
July 14, 2022
WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the Cyber Safety Review Board’s (CSRB) first report, which includes 19 actionable recommendations for government and industry. The recommendations from the CSRB – an unprecedented public-private initiative that brings together government and industry leaders to review and assess significant cybersecurity events to better protect ...
- New Lilith ransomware emerges with extortion site, lists first victim
July 13, 2022
A new ransomware operation has been launched under the name ‘Lilith,’ and it has already posted its first victim on a data leak site created to support double-extortion attacks. Lilith is a C/C++ console-based ransomware discovered by JAMESWT and designed for 64-bit versions of Windows. Like most ransomware operations launching today, Lilith performs double-extortions attacks, which ...
- Uncovering a macOS App Sandbox escape vulnerability: A deep dive into CVE-2022-26706
July 13, 2022
Microsoft uncovered a vulnerability in macOS that could allow specially crafted codes to escape the App Sandbox and run unrestricted on the system. We shared these findings with Apple through Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) via Microsoft Security Vulnerability Research (MSVR) in October 2021. A fix for this vulnerability, now identified as CVE-2022-26706, was included in ...
- Transparent Tribe begins targeting education sector in latest campaign
July 13, 2022
Cisco Talos recently discovered an ongoing campaign conducted by the Transparent Tribe APT group against students at various educational institutions in India. This campaign was partially covered by another security firm, but our findings reveal more details regarding the adversary’s operations. Typically, this APT group focuses on targeting government (government employees, military personnel) and pseudo-government entities ...
- From cookie theft to BEC: Attackers use AiTM phishing sites as entry point to further financial fraud
July 12, 2022
A large-scale phishing campaign that used adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing sites stole passwords, hijacked a user’s sign-in session, and skipped the authentication process even if the user had enabled multifactor authentication (MFA). The attackers then used the stolen credentials and session cookies to access affected users’ mailboxes and perform follow-on business email compromise (BEC) campaigns against ...
- Hackers impersonate cybersecurity firms in callback phishing attacks
July 12, 2022
Hackers are impersonating well-known cybersecurity companies, such as CrowdStrike, in callback phishing emails to gain initial access to corporate networks. Most phishing campaigns embed links to landing pages that steal login credentials or emails that include malicious attachments to install malware. However, over the past year, threat actors have increasingly used “callback” phishing campaigns that impersonate well-known ...