Malware Loader | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The loader-as-a-service (LaaS) known as FakeBat has become one of the most widespread loader malware families distributed using the drive-by download technique this year, findings from Sekoia reveal. "FakeBat primarily aims to download and execute the next-stage payload, such as IcedID , Lumma , RedLine , SmokeLoader , SectopRAT , and Ursnif ," the company said in a Tuesday analysis. Drive-by attacks entail the use of methods like search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, malvertising, and nefarious code injections into compromised sites to entice users into downloading bogus software installers or browser updates. The use of malware loaders over the past few years dovetails with the growing use of landing pages impersonating legitimate software websites by passing them off as legitimate installers. This ties into the larger aspect that phishing and social engineering remain one of the threat actors' main ways to acquire initial access. FakeBat , also known as Eu...

A new malware loader is being used by threat actors to deliver a wide range of  information stealers  such as Lumma Stealer (aka LummaC2), Vidar, RecordBreaker (aka Raccoon Stealer V2), and  Rescoms . Cybersecurity firm ESET is tracking the trojan under the name  Win/TrojanDownloader.Rugmi . "This malware is a loader with three types of components: a downloader that downloads an encrypted payload, a loader that runs the payload from internal resources, and another loader that runs the payload from an external file on the disk," the company  said  in its Threat Report H2 2023. Telemetry data gathered by the company shows that detections for the Rugmi loader spiked in October and November 2023, surging from single digit daily numbers to hundreds per day. Stealer malware is typically sold under a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model to other threat actors on a subscription basis. Lumma Stealer, for instance, is advertised in underground forums for $250 a mo...

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...

Organizations in Italy are the target of a new phishing campaign that leverages a new strain of malware called  WikiLoader  with an ultimate aim to install a banking trojan, stealer, and spyware referred to as  Ursnif  (aka Gozi). "It is a sophisticated downloader with the objective of installing a second malware payload," Proofpoint  said  in a technical report. "The malware uses multiple mechanisms to evade detection and was likely developed as a malware that can be rented out to select cybercriminal threat actors." WikiLoader is so named due to the malware making a request to Wikipedia and checking that the response has the string "The Free." The enterprise security firm said it first detected the malware in the wild on December 27, 2022, in connection with an intrusion set mounted by a threat actor it tracks as  TA544 , which is also known as Bamboo Spider and Zeus Panda. The campaigns are centered around the use of emails containing either M...

The threat actor known as  Arid Viper  has been observed using refreshed variants of its malware toolkit in its attacks targeting Palestinian entities since September 2022. Symantec, which is tracking the group under its insect-themed moniker Mantis,  said  the adversary is "going to great lengths to maintain a persistent presence on targeted networks." Also known by the names  APT-C-23 and Desert Falcon , the hacking group has been linked to attacks aimed at Palestine and the Middle East at least since 2014. Mantis has used an arsenal of homemade malware tools such as  ViperRat ,  FrozenCell  (aka VolatileVenom), and  Micropsia  to execute and conceal its campaigns across Windows, Android, and iOS platforms. The threat actors are believed to be native Arabic speakers and based in Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey, according to a  report  published by Kaspersky in February 2015. Prior public reporting has also  tied the g...

A malware-as-a-service (Maas) dubbed  Matanbuchus  has been observed spreading through phishing campaigns, ultimately dropping the Cobalt Strike post-exploitation framework on compromised machines. Matanbuchus, like other  malware loaders  such as  BazarLoader ,  Bumblebee , and  Colibri , is engineered to download and execute second-stage executables from command-and-control (C&C) servers on infected systems without detection. Available on Russian-speaking cybercrime forums for a price of $2,500 since February 2021, the malware is equipped with capabilities to launch .EXE and .DLL files in memory and run arbitrary PowerShell commands. The findings, released by threat intelligence firm Cyble last week, document the latest infection chain associated with the loader, which is linked to a threat actor who goes by the online moniker BelialDemon. "If we look historically, BelialDemon has been involved in the development of malware loaders," Unit 4...

An unidentified threat actor has been observed employing a "complex and powerful" malware loader with the ultimate objective of deploying cryptocurrency miners on compromised systems and potentially facilitating the theft of Discord tokens. "The evidence found on victim networks appears to indicate that the goal of the attacker was to install cryptocurrency mining software on victim machines," researchers from the Symantec Threat Hunter Team, part of Broadcom Software,  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This would appear to be a relatively low-reward goal for the attacker given the level of effort that would have been required to develop this sophisticated malware." This advanced piece of malware, dubbed Verblecon, is said to have been first spotted two months ago in January 2022, with the payload incorporating  polymorphic qualities  to evade signature-based detections by security software. In addition, the loader carries out further a...

Threat actors have been found using a previously undocumented JavaScript malware strain that functions as a loader to distribute an array of remote access Trojans (RATs) and information stealers. HP Threat Research dubbed the new, evasive loader "RATDispenser," with the malware responsible for deploying at least eight different malware families in 2021. Around 155 samples of this new malware have been discovered, spread across three different variants, hinting that it's under active development. "RATDispenser is used to gain an initial foothold on a system before launching secondary malware that establishes control over the compromised device," security researcher Patrick Schläpfer  said . "All the payloads were RATs, designed to steal information and give attackers control over victim devices." As with other attacks of this kind, the starting point of the infection is a phishing email containing a malicious attachment, which masquerades as a text...

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday took the wraps off a "simple yet remarkable" malware loader for malicious Windows binaries targeting Central Europe, North America and the Middle East. Codenamed " Wslink " by ESET, this previously undocumented malware stands apart from the rest in that it runs as a server and executes received modules in memory. There are no specifics available on the initial compromise vector and there are no code or operational overlaps that tie this tool to a known threat actor group. The Slovak cybersecurity firm noted that it has seen only a handful of detections in the past two years, suggesting that it could be used in highly-targeted cyber infiltrations. Wslink is designed to run as a service and can accept encrypted portal executable (PE) files from a specific IP address, which is then decrypted and loaded into memory prior to the execution. To achieve this, the client (i.e., the victim) and the server perform a handshake that in...