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P2Pinfect Worm Now Delivering Ransomware on Redis Servers

 

Cado Security experts warned that the P2Pinfect worm is used in attacks on Redis servers to deliver ransomware and cryptocurrency mining payloads. 

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers uncovered the P2P worm P2PInfect in July 2023, which targets Redis servers running Linux and Windows operating systems. P2PInfect's ability to target Redis servers running on both Linux and Windows operating systems makes it more expandable and dangerous than other worms.

Cado Security Labs identified a new strain of the P2Pinfect botnet in December 2023, specifically targeting routers, IoT devices, and other embedded devices. This variation was built for the Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages (MIPS) architecture. The new bot includes enhanced evasion methods, the ability to evade execution in a Virtual Machine (VM) or a debugger, and anti-forensics support for Linux hosts. 

The worm is written in Rust and targets Redis instances using the Lua sandbox escape vulnerability CVE-2022-0543 (CVSS score 10.0). In September 2023, Cado Security Labs detected a 600x spike in P2Pinfect traffic since August 28. Researchers noted that the malware did not seem to have a goal other than to spread; however, a new upgrade of P2Pinfect has introduced a ransomware and crypto miner payload. 

The most recent campaign began on June 23, based on the TLS certificate used for C2 communications. The malware propagates by leveraging Redis's replication features, where nodes in a distributed cluster follow a leader/follower topology. The attackers exploited this feature by making follower nodes load arbitrary modules, allowing code execution on these nodes. P2Pinfect uses the SLAVEOF command to turn open Redis nodes into followers of a server under the control of its operator. 

“P2Pinfect is a worm, so all infected machines will scan the internet for more servers to infect with the same vector described above. P2Pinfect also features a basic SSH password sprayer, where it will try a few common passwords with a few common users, but the success of this infection vector seems to be a lot less than with Redis, likely as it is oversaturated,” Cado researchers stated. “Upon launch it drops an SSH key into the authorised key file for the current user and runs a series of commands to prevent access to the Redis instance apart from IPs belonging to existing connections.”

The war's primary binary appears to have been changed; it is now built with the Tokio async framework for Rust and includes UPX. The malware's internals have been completely unwritten; researchers discovered that the binary had been stripped and partially obfuscated to make static analysis more challenging. Previously, P2Pinfect maintained persistence by adding it to.bash_logout and running a cron job, however these methods are no longer used. Other behaviours, such as the initial setup, are unaffected.

Clipminer Botnet Made 1.7 Million Dollars From Crypto Mining

 

Threat researchers have found a large-scale operation of Clipminer, a new cryptocurrency mining virus that netted its users at least $1.7 million in transaction hijacking.

Clipminer is built on the KryptoCibule malware, according to researchers at Symantec, a Broadcom company. Both trojans are designed to steal bitcoin wallets, hijack transactions, and mine cryptocurrency on affected computers. 

Clipminer is based on the KryptoCibule malware, according to researchers at Symantec, a Broadcom company. Both trojans are designed to steal bitcoin wallets, hijack transactions, and harvest cryptocurrency on affected computers. Researchers were taken aback by the new malware because it had fast grown in size by the time it was discovered. According to the Symantec team, these operations involved 4375 bitcoin wallet addresses that received stolen monies from victims.

Downloads or pirated software, are used to spread malware; malicious clipminer botnet files are distributed over torrent sites and other pirating methods. This bitcoin miner can be installed on the machine as a WinRAR archive, which will immediately start the extraction process and launch the control panel file, leading to the download of the dynamic link library. 

The infected DLL creates registry values and installs malware in several files in the Windows directory. Those files are named after ransoms so that the profile may be hosted and the main miner's payload can be downloaded and installed afterward. The system receives identification, which is sent on to the C&C server, which then sends out a request for the payload. The malware is delivered as a 10MB file in the Program Files directory. Once the trojan has been successfully executed, scheduled actions are set up to ensure the malware's persistence. To avoid re-infecting the same host, registry modification is also performed.

According to Symantec, the first Clipminer samples began to circulate in January 2021, with malicious activity picking up in February. Ever since the malware has spread over P2P networks, torrent indexers, YouTube videos, and through game and pirated software cracks. To avoid becoming infected with Clipminer or other malware, avoid downloading software from unknown sources. Verify the entered cryptocurrency wallet address before initiating the transaction to protect yourself from a clipboard hijacker.

'InterPlanetary Storm' Botnet Now Targeting MAC and IoT Devices


First discovered in 2019, the InterPlanetary Storm malware has resurfaced with a new variant targeting Mac and Android along with Windows and Linux machines, as per the findings by researchers at IT security firm, Barracuda Networks.

The malware is known as ‘InterPlanetary Storm’ as it makes use of InterPlanetary File System (IFES) peer-to-peer (p2p) network - using a legitimate p2p network makes it difficult to identify the malicious traffic because it gets intermixed with legitimate traffic. The malware targets Windows machines and lets the attacker execute any arbitrary PowerShell code on the compromised systems.

“The malware detects the CPU architecture and running OS of its victims, and it can run on ARM-based machines, an architecture that is quite common with routers and other IoT devices,” the researchers noted.

The earlier versions of the Interplanetary Storm malware that surfaced in May 2019 compromised Windows-based devices, however, by June 2019; the botnet could also infect Linux machines. The new versions with add-on capabilities attempt to infect machines via a dictionary attack, it’s a form of brute force attack technique that involves breaking into a password-protected system by systematically guessing passwords. The most recent version detected in August is configured to infect Mac along with IoT devices like televisions running the Android OS, as per a report published on Thursday by Barracuda Networks.

In the report, Erez Turjeman, a researcher with Barracuda, says, "The malware detects the CPU architecture and running OS of its victims, and it can run on ARM-based machines, an architecture that is quite common with routers and other [internet of things] devices.” "The malware is called InterPlanetary Storm because it uses the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) p2p network and its underlying libp2p implementation," the report further notes.

"This allows infected nodes to communicate with each other directly or through other nodes (i.e., relays).”

The malware was found building a botnet that has infected approximately 13,000 devices in 84 different countries worldwide including the U.S., Brazil, Europe, and Canada. However, the majority of targets were based in Asia constituting a total of 64%. Infections found in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong amounted to a total of 59%. Russia and Ukraine constituted 8% to the total and United States and Canada did 5%. Rest, China and Sweden constituted 3% each.

Over 500 SSH Servers being Breached by FritzFrog P2P Botnet


Cyberspace has seen an unprecedented rise in modified versions of peer-to peer, also known as (P2P) threats, it might have appeared that these P2P services have been vanishing, but in reality, they have emerged even stronger in newer ways. BitTorrent and eMule are still known to be in use by attackers.

A peer-to-peer (P2P) network is an IT infrastructure in which two or more computers have agreed to share resources such as storage, bandwidth and processing power with one another. Besides file sharing, it also allows access to devices like printers without going through separate server software. A P2P network is not to be confused with client-server network that users have traditionally used in networking, here, the client does not contribute resources to the network.

Researchers at Guardicore have recently discovered a sophisticated peer-to-peer (P2P) botnet called as FritzFrog that has been actively operated since January 2020, breaching SSH servers; it’s a Golang-based modular malware that executes a worm malware written in Golang, it is multi-threaded, completely volatile, and fileless and leaves no trace on the infected system’s disk.

It has a decentralized infrastructure which distributes control among all its nodes. The network uses AES for symmetric encryption and the Diffie-Hellman protocol for key exchange in order to carry out P2P communication via an encrypted channel.

So far, more than 20 malware samples have been discovered by the researchers as FritzFrog attempted to brute force over 500 SSH servers belonging to educational institutions, governmental institutions, telecom organizations, banks, and medical centers worldwide. The campaign also targeted some well known high-education institutions in the United States and Europe, along with a railway firm.

Botnets are being leveraged by attackers for DDoS attacks and other malicious activities, as per the recent attack trend. Earlier in June this year, the Monzi malware was seen exploiting IoT devices, mainly DVRs and routers. Threat actors brought together various malware families namely Mirai, Gafgyt and IoT Reaper, to carry out a botnet capable of DDoS attacks, command or payload execution or data exfiltration.

“FritzFrog’s binary is an advanced piece of malware written in Golang. It operates completely in-memory; each node running the malware stores in its memory the whole database of targets and peers,” according to Guardicore’s report.

“FritzFrog takes advantage of the fact that many network security solutions enforce traffic only by the port and protocol. To overcome this stealth technique, process-based segmentation rules can easily prevent such threats.”

“Weak passwords are the immediate enabler of FritzFrog’s attacks. We recommend choosing strong passwords and using public key authentication, which is much safer. In addition, it is crucial to remove FritzFrog’s public key from the authorized_keys file, preventing the attackers from accessing the machine. Routers and IoT devices often expose SSH and are thus vulnerable to FritzFrog; consider changing their SSH port or completely disabling SSH access to them if the service is not in use.” The report further read.

THOR , New P2P Botnet in development and soon available for sale

 The development of new botnet THOR(a decentralized P2P botnet) is nearing completion and will soon be available for sale for $8000 on various underground hacking forums.  THOR is coded in C/C++ and developed by TheGrimReap3r.

THOR Works on Win 2000+, Win XP SP0/SP1/SP2/SP3, Win Vista SP0/SP1/SP2, Win 7 SP0/SP1  and Support x86 and x64 systems

"The botnet itself has no central command point, so it will be very difficult to shut down, also, very difficult to track where commands are coming from, because all the nodes pass them on. So there is no chance that it will be tracked down in the nearest future." Developer wrote in the HF.

THOS Uses DLL injection, IAT hooking, ring3 rootkit amongst other things to hide.It have it's own module system so you can write your own modules with our easy API system.  - Custom modules can be arranged on request for a fair price.

peer to peer communication uses 256-AES encryption with random key generation at each startup. 8192-bit RSA will be used for instruction signing(the NSA recommends 2048-bit).

The developer set the price as $8000 for the package without modules, module pricing have not been set yet due to that they are not completed. And the expected modules that you can buy will be, advanced botkiller, DDoS, formgrabber, keylogger/password stealer and mass mailer.