Morphisec Cyber Security Blog

The Fallout exploit kit, named for its similarities to the once notorious Nuclear exploit kit, already shows signs of reaching the levels of popularity of its namesake. Since its discovery by security researchers at the end of August, Fallout has been seen distributing the SmokeLoader trojan, GandCrab ransomware, CoalaBot, various potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) and, most recently, a new ransomware strain called SAVEfiles.

Fileless malware is a type of a malicious code execution technique that operates completely within process memory; no files are dropped onto the disk. Without any artifacts on the hard drive to detect, these attacks easily evade most security solutions.

Ransomware remained a major cybersecurity threat in 2017, leaving a trail of victims across all industries, company sizes and geographical borders. Phishing emails are the top ransomware delivery mechanism and they grow in number and sophistication daily. According to IBM, the number of ransomware-infected emails increased 6,000% this year. And the days of easily spotted spelling mistakes and obvious scams are long gone. Today’s phishing attacks are clever and subtle enough to trick even security veterans. 

Packer-based malware is malware which is modified in the runtime memory using different and sophisticated compression techniques. Such malware is hard to detect by known malware scanners and anti-virus solutions. In addition, it is a cheap way for hackers to recreate new signatures for the same malware on the fly simply by changing the encryption/packing method. Packers themselves are not malware; attackers use this tactic to obfuscate the code’s real intention.

 The full report is also available as PDF. 

On December 12, 2016 Morphisec identified and monitored a new wave of sophisticated malware delivered via targeted phishing emails with malicious macro-based documents attached. The malicious documents themselves use a clever, new social engineering technique to convince the target to enable macros. Once enabled, the document calls an unknown downloader that resembles the Cerber downloader, but employs new obfuscation techniques.

The disappearance of Angler has left a gaping hole in the malware market which cybercriminals are only to happy to fill with new variants of old standbys. The latest to reemerge after a period of disuse are Locky and Dridex. A new Locky campaign spotted in the wild on June 20 is analyzed by Pierluigi Paganini on the Security Affairs site. Now a bigger and badder Dridex has reappeared, with more sophisticated evasion tactics, including a new sandbox evasion technique.