The cybercrime operators behind the notorious TrickBot malware have once again upped the ante by fine-tuning its techniques by adding multiple layers of defense to slip past antimalware products.
“As part of that escalation, malware injections have been fitted with added protection to keep researchers out and get through security controls,” IBM Trusteer said in a report. “In most cases, these extra protections have been applied to injections used in the process of online banking fraud — TrickBot’s main activity since its inception after the Dyre Trojan‘s demise.”
TrickBot, which started out as a banking trojan, has evolved into a multi-purpose crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) that’s employed by a variety of actors to deliver additional payloads such as ransomware. Over 100 variations of TrickBot have been identified to date, one of which is a “Trickboot” module that can modify the UEFI firmware of a compromised device.
In the fall of 2020, Microsoft along with a handful of U.S. government agencies and private security companies teamed up to tackle the TrickBot botnet, taking down much of its infrastructure across the world in a bid to stymie its operations.
But TrickBot has proven to be impervious to takedown attempts, what with the operators quickly adjusting their techniques to propagate multi-stage malware through phishing and malspam attacks, not to mention expand their distribution channels by partnering with other affiliates like Shathak (aka TA551) to increase scale and drive profits.
images from Hacker News
Recent Comments