Headline
Hackers Weaponize Windows Flaw to Deploy Crypto-Siphoning Phemedrone Stealer
Threat actors have been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows to deploy an open-source information stealer called Phemedrone Stealer. “Phemedrone targets web browsers and data from cryptocurrency wallets and messaging apps such as Telegram, Steam, and Discord,” Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Simon Zuckerbraun said. “It also
Cryptocurrency / Windows Security
Threat actors have been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows to deploy an open-source information stealer called Phemedrone Stealer.
“Phemedrone targets web browsers and data from cryptocurrency wallets and messaging apps such as Telegram, Steam, and Discord,” Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Simon Zuckerbraun said.
“It also takes screenshots and gathers system information regarding hardware, location, and operating system details. The stolen data is then sent to the attackers via Telegram or their command-and-control (C&C) server.”
The attacks leverage CVE-2023-36025 (CVSS score: 8.8), a security bypass vulnerability in Windows SmartScreen, that could be exploited by tricking a user into clicking on a specially crafted Internet Shortcut (.URL) or a hyperlink pointing to an Internet Shortcut file.
The actively-exploited shortcoming was addressed by Microsoft as part of its November 2023 Patch Tuesday updates.
The infection process involves the threat actor hosting malicious Internet Shortcut files on Discord or cloud services like FileTransfer.io, with the links also masked using URL shorteners such as Short URL.
The execution of the booby-trapped .URL file allows it to connect to an actor-controlled server and execute a control panel (.CPL) file in a manner that circumvents Windows Defender SmartScreen by taking advantage of CVE-2023-36025.
“When the malicious .CPL file is executed through the Windows Control Panel process binary, it in turn calls rundll32.exe to execute the DLL,” the researchers said. “This malicious DLL acts as a loader that then calls on Windows PowerShell to download and execute the next stage of the attack, hosted on GitHub.”
The follow-on payload is a PowerShell loader (“DATA3.txt”) that acts as a launchpad for Donut, an open-source shellcode loader that decrypts and executes Phemedrone Stealer.
Written in C#, Phemedrone Stealer is actively maintained by its developers on GitHub and Telegram, facilitating the theft of sensitive information from compromised systems.
The development is once again a sign that threat actors are getting increasingly flexible and quickly adapting their attack chains to capitalize on newly disclosed exploits and inflict maximum damage.
“Despite having been patched, threat actors continue to find ways to exploit CVE-2023-36025 and evade Windows Defender SmartScreen protections to infect users with a plethora of malware types, including ransomware and stealers like Phemedrone Stealer,” the researchers said.
Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.
Related news
Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to address a total of 90 security flaws, including 10 zero-days, of which six have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 90 bugs, seven are rated Critical, 79 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. This is also in addition to 36 vulnerabilities that the tech giant resolved in its Edge browser since last month. The Patch Tuesday
Microsoft Corp. today pushed software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks.
Threat actors are leveraging bogus Facebook job advertisements as a lure to trick prospective targets into installing a new Windows-based stealer malware codenamed Ov3r_Stealer. "This malware is designed to steal credentials and crypto wallets and send those to a Telegram channel that the threat actor monitors," Trustwave SpiderLabs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Ov3r_Stealer
The threat actors behind the Mispadu banking Trojan have become the latest to exploit a now-patched Windows SmartScreen security bypass flaw to compromise users in Mexico. The attacks entail a new variant of the malware that was first observed in 2019, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a report published last week. Propagated via phishing mails, Mispadu is a Delphi-based information stealer
By Waqas The new variant of Mispadu Stealer was discovered by Palo Alto's Unit 42 researchers while investigating the Windows Defender SmartScreen vulnerability. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Mispadu Stealer’s New Variant Targets Browser Data of Mexican Users
Hello everyone! It has been 3 months since the last episode. I spent most of this time improving my Vulristics project. So in this episode, let’s take a look at what’s been done. Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239139 Also, let’s take a look at the Microsoft Patch Tuesdays vulnerabilities, Linux Patch Wednesdays vulnerabilities and […]
By Deeba Ahmed Attackers Leveraging Windows Vulnerability in Phemedrone Malware Campaign for Enhanced Stealth. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Windows Defender SmartScreen Vulnerability Exploited with Phemedrone Stealer
A new phishing campaign is leveraging decoy Microsoft Word documents as bait to deliver a backdoor written in the Nim programming language. "Malware written in uncommon programming languages puts the security community at a disadvantage as researchers and reverse engineers' unfamiliarity can hamper their investigation," Netskope researchers Ghanashyam Satpathy and Jan Michael Alcantara
Microsoft has patched a total of 63 vulnerabilities this Patch Tuesday. Make sure you update as soon as you can.
Microsoft has released fixes to address 63 security bugs in its software for the month of November 2023, including three vulnerabilities that have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 63 flaws, three are rated Critical, 56 are rated Important, and four are rated Moderate in severity. Two of them have been listed as publicly known at the time of the release. The updates are in
Microsoft today released updates to fix more than five dozen security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software, including three "zero day" vulnerabilities that Microsoft warns are already being exploited in active attacks.
In all, this set of vulnerabilities Microsoft patched includes 57 vulnerabilities, 54 of which are considered “important.”
Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability