FinSpy: unseen findings
FinSpy, also known as FinFisher or Wingbird, is an infamous surveillance toolset. Kaspersky has been tracking deployments of this spyware since 2011. Historically, its Windows implant was distributed through a single-stage installer. This version was detected and researched several times up to 2018. Since that year, we observed a decreasing detection rate of FinSpy for Windows. While the nature of this anomaly remained unknown, we began detecting some suspicious installers of legitimate applications, backdoored with a relatively small obfuscated downloader. We were unable to cluster those packages until the middle of 2019 when we found a host that served these installers among FinSpy Mobile implants for Android. Over the course of our investigation, we found out that the backdoored installers are nothing more than first stage implants that are used to download and deploy further payloads before the actual FinSpy Trojan.
Apart from the Trojanized installers, we also observed infections involving usage of a UEFI or MBR bootkit. While the MBR infection has been known since at least 2014, details on the UEFI bootkit are publicly revealed in this article for the first time.
We decided to share some of our unseen findings about the actual state of FinSpy implants. We will cover not only the version for Windows, but also the Linux and macOS versions, since they have a lot of internal structure and code similarities.
The full details of this research, as well as future updates on FinSpy, are available to customers of the APT reporting service through our Threat Intelligence Portal.
https://securelist.com/finspy-unseen-findings/104322/
#FinSpy #FinFisher #Wingbird #surveillance #malware #trojan
FinSpy, also known as FinFisher or Wingbird, is an infamous surveillance toolset. Kaspersky has been tracking deployments of this spyware since 2011. Historically, its Windows implant was distributed through a single-stage installer. This version was detected and researched several times up to 2018. Since that year, we observed a decreasing detection rate of FinSpy for Windows. While the nature of this anomaly remained unknown, we began detecting some suspicious installers of legitimate applications, backdoored with a relatively small obfuscated downloader. We were unable to cluster those packages until the middle of 2019 when we found a host that served these installers among FinSpy Mobile implants for Android. Over the course of our investigation, we found out that the backdoored installers are nothing more than first stage implants that are used to download and deploy further payloads before the actual FinSpy Trojan.
Apart from the Trojanized installers, we also observed infections involving usage of a UEFI or MBR bootkit. While the MBR infection has been known since at least 2014, details on the UEFI bootkit are publicly revealed in this article for the first time.
We decided to share some of our unseen findings about the actual state of FinSpy implants. We will cover not only the version for Windows, but also the Linux and macOS versions, since they have a lot of internal structure and code similarities.
The full details of this research, as well as future updates on FinSpy, are available to customers of the APT reporting service through our Threat Intelligence Portal.
https://securelist.com/finspy-unseen-findings/104322/
#FinSpy #FinFisher #Wingbird #surveillance #malware #trojan
Securelist
FinSpy: unseen findings
FinSpy, also known as FinFisher or Wingbird, is an infamous surveillance toolset that has been tracking since 2011. We decided to share our unseen findings about the actual state of FinSpy implants.
This new Linux malware is 'almost impossible' to detect
Symbiote is parasitic malware that provides rootkit-level functionality
A joint research effort has led to the discovery of Symbiote, a new form of Linux malware that is "almost impossible" to detect.
Symbiote has several interesting features. For example, the malware uses Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) hooking, a function designed to hide malicious traffic on an infected machine. BPF is also used by malware developed by the Equation Group.
The malware is pre-loaded before other shared objects, allowing it to hook specific functions – including libc and libpcap – to hide its presence. Other files associated with Symbiote are also concealed and its network entries are continually scrubbed.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-new-linux-malware-is-almost-impossible-to-detect/
#linux #symbiote #malware
Symbiote is parasitic malware that provides rootkit-level functionality
A joint research effort has led to the discovery of Symbiote, a new form of Linux malware that is "almost impossible" to detect.
Symbiote has several interesting features. For example, the malware uses Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) hooking, a function designed to hide malicious traffic on an infected machine. BPF is also used by malware developed by the Equation Group.
The malware is pre-loaded before other shared objects, allowing it to hook specific functions – including libc and libpcap – to hide its presence. Other files associated with Symbiote are also concealed and its network entries are continually scrubbed.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-new-linux-malware-is-almost-impossible-to-detect/
#linux #symbiote #malware
ZDNET
This new Linux malware is 'almost impossible' to detect
Symbiote is parasitic malware that provides rootkit-level functionality.