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:
- Meet Janeleiro: a new banking Trojan striking company, government targets
April 6, 2021
A banking Trojan striking corporate targets across Brazil has been unmasked by researchers. On Tuesday, ESET published an advisory on the malware, which has been in development since 2018. Dubbed Janeleiro, the Trojan appears to be focused on Brazil as a hunting ground and has been used in cyberattacks against corporate players in sectors including healthcare, engineering, ...
- European Commission, other EU orgs recently hit by cyber-attack
April 6, 2021
The European Commission and several other European Union organizations were hit by a cyberattack in March, according to a European Commission spokesperson. As revealed by the spokesperson, the “IT security incident” impacted multiple EU institutions, bodies, or agencies’ IT infrastructure. “We are working closely with CERT-EU, the Computer Emergency Response Team for all EU institutions, bodies and ...
- Conti Gang Demands $40M Ransom from Florida School District
April 6, 2021
The Conti Gang has demanded a $40 million ransom from a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., school district after a ransomware attack last month. Attackers stole personal information from students and teachers, disrupted the district’s networks, and caused some services to be unavailable. The incident that was discovered on March 7 at Broward County Public Schools drew limited ...
- SAP Bugs Under Active Cyberattack, Causing Widespread Compromise
April 6, 2021
Active cyberattacks on known vulnerabilities in SAP systems could lead to full control of unsecured SAP applications, researchers are warning. Adversaries are carrying out a range of attacks, according to an alert from SAP and security firm Onapsis issued Tuesday – including theft of sensitive data, financial fraud, disruption of mission-critical business processes and other operational ...
- The leap of a Cycldek-related threat actor
April 5, 2021
In the nebula of Chinese-speaking threat actors, it is quite common to see tools and methodologies being shared. One such example of this is the infamous “DLL side-loading triad”: a legitimate executable, a malicious DLL to be sideloaded by it, and an encoded payload, generally dropped from a self-extracting archive. Initially considered to be the ...
- Industrial IoT Needs to Catch Up to Consumer IoT
April 5, 2021
When it comes to cybersecurity, industrial IT—consisting mainly of operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS)—has failed to keep up with development in the enterprise IT world. That’s mostly because industries’ adoption of internet technology has been slower when compared with enterprises. It would take some time to close the gap, but concerted efforts have ...