Gootkit | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Gootkit malware is prominently going after healthcare and finance organizations in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, according to new findings from Cybereason. The cybersecurity firm said it investigated a Gootkit incident in December 2022 that adopted a new method of deployment, with the actors abusing the foothold to deliver  Cobalt Strike  and  SystemBC  for post-exploitation. "The threat actor displayed fast-moving behaviors, quickly heading to control the network it infected, and getting elevated privileges in less than four hours," Cybereason  said  in an analysis published February 8, 2023. Gootkit, also called Gootloader, is exclusively attributed to a threat actor tracked by Mandiant as UNC2565. Starting its life in 2014 as a banking trojan, the malware has since morphed into a loader capable of delivering next-stage payloads. The shift in tactics was  first uncovered  by Sophos in March 2021. Gootloader takes the form of heavily-o...

The threat actors associated with the Gootkit malware have made "notable changes" to their toolset, adding new components and obfuscations to their infection chains. Google-owned Mandiant is  monitoring  the activity cluster under the moniker  UNC2565 , noting that the usage of the malware is "exclusive to this group." Gootkit , also called Gootloader, is spread through compromised websites that victims are tricked into visiting when searching for business-related documents like agreements and contracts via a technique called search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning. The purported documents take the form of ZIP archives that harbor the JavaScript malware, which, when launched, paves the way for additional payloads such as  Cobalt Strike Beacon , FONELAUNCH, and SNOWCONE. FONELAUNCH is a .NET-based loader designed to load an encoded payload into memory, whereas SNOWCONE is a downloader that's tasked with retrieving next-stage payloads, typically  IcedID ,...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

A recent wave of Gootkit malware loader attacks has targeted the Australian healthcare sector by leveraging legitimate tools like VLC Media Player. Gootkit , also called Gootloader, is  known  to  employ  search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics (aka spamdexing) for initial access. It typically works by compromising and abusing legitimate infrastructure and seeding those sites with common keywords. Like other malware of its kind, Gootkit is capable of stealing data from the browser, performing adversary-in-the-browser (AitB) attacks, keylogging, taking screenshots, and other malicious actions. Trend Micro's  new findings  reveal that the keywords "hospital," "health," "medical," and "enterprise agreement" have been paired with various city names in Australia, marking the malware's expansion beyond accounting and law firms. The starting point of the cyber assault is to direct users searching for the same keywords to an infe...

The operators of the Gootkit access-as-a-service ( AaaS ) malware have resurfaced with updated techniques to compromise unsuspecting victims. "In the past, Gootkit used freeware installers to mask malicious files; now it uses legal documents to trick users into downloading these files," Trend Micro researchers Buddy Tancio and Jed Valderama  said  in a write-up last week. The findings build on a previous report from eSentire, which  disclosed  in January of widespread attacks aimed at employees of accounting and law firms to deploy malware on infected systems. Gootkit is part of the proliferating underground ecosystem of access brokers, who are known to provide other malicious actors a pathway into corporate networks for a price, paving the way for actual damaging attacks such as ransomware. The loader utilizes malicious search engine results, a technique called  SEO poisoning , to lure unsuspecting users into visiting compromised websites hosting malware...