While analyzing some memory dumps suspicious of being infected with a keylogger, we identified a library containing strings to interact with a virtual file system. This turned out to be a malicious loader internally named “Slingshot”. Read Full Article
We’re already used to the fact that complex cyberattacks use 0-day vulnerabilities, bypassing digital signature checks, virtual file systems, non-standard encryption algorithms and other tricks. Sometimes, however, all of this may be done in much simpler ways, as was the case in the malicious campaign that we detected a while ago – we named it ‘Microcin’ after microini, one of the malicious components used in it. Read Full Article
Today, a dangerous new trend is emerging: steganography is increasingly being used by actors creating malware and cyber-espionage tools. Most modern anti-malware solutions provide little, if any, protection from steganography, while any carrier in which a payload can be secretly carried poses a potential threat. Read Full Article
Often, virus writers don’t even bother to run encryption or mask their communications. However, you do get the occasional off-the-wall approaches that don’t fall into either of the categories. Take, for instance, the case of a Trojan that Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered in mid-March and which establishes a DNS tunnel for communication with the C&C server. Read Full Article
In September 2016, we discovered a new version of Gootkit with a characteristic and instantly recognizable feature: an extra check of the environment variable ‘crackme’ in the downloader’s body. Just as interesting was the fact that we were able to gain access to the bot’s C&C server, including its complete hierarchal tree of folders and files and their contents. Read Full Article
We have written about this banker Trojan before. It caught our attention almost as soon as it appeared because it used a fileless spreading mechanism – malicious code was not saved on the hard drive and ran in memory only. However, until now no detailed description of Lurk had been published. Read Full Article
The Emotet Trojan is a highly automated and developing, territorially-targeted bank threat. Its small size, the dispersal methods used and the modular architecture, all make Emotet a very effective weapon for the cyber-criminal. Read Full Article