A new phishing marketing campaign has been observed delivering remote accessibility trojans (RAT) these types of as VCURMS and STRRAT by signifies of a malicious Java-based downloader.
“The attackers stored malware on public services like Amazon Web Companies (AWS) and GitHub, utilizing a business protector to steer clear of detection of the malware,” Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Yurren Wan stated.
An unconventional facet of the marketing campaign is VCURMS’ use of a Proton Mail email tackle (“sacriliage@proton[.]me”) for speaking with a command-and-manage (C2) server.

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The attack chain commences with a phishing email that urges recipients to click on on a button to confirm payment information and facts, resulting in the obtain of a malicious JAR file (“Payment-Assistance.jar”) hosted on AWS.
Executing the JAR file leads to the retrieval of two a lot more JAR files, which are then run separately to start the twin trojans.
In addition to sending an email with the message “Hey master, I am on the internet” to the actor-controlled address, VCURMS RAT periodically checks the mailbox for emails with specific subject matter traces to extract the command to be executed from the system of the missive.
This involves jogging arbitrary instructions using cmd.exe, accumulating process details, exploring and uploading data files of curiosity, and downloading additional data stealer and keylogger modules from the exact same AWS endpoint.
The data stealer will come equipped with abilities to siphon sensitive info from applications like Discord and Steam, qualifications, cookies, and automobile-fill details from several web browsers, screenshots, and comprehensive components and network info about the compromised hosts.
VCURMS is claimed to share similarities with an additional Java-centered infostealer codenamed Impolite Stealer, which emerged in the wild late previous year. STRRAT, on the other hand, has been detected in the wild because at the very least 2020, usually propagated in the type of fraudulent JAR documents.
“STRRAT is a RAT created using Java, which has a extensive selection of capabilities, this kind of as serving as a keylogger and extracting credentials from browsers and programs,” Wan pointed out.
The disclosure comes as Darktrace discovered a novel phishing campaign that is using benefit of automatic e-mails sent from the Dropbox cloud storage provider through “no-reply@dropbox[.]com” to propagate a bogus connection mimicking the Microsoft 365 login web site.
“The email by itself contained a connection that would lead a user to a PDF file hosted on Dropbox, that was seemingly named following a lover of the firm,” the organization said. “the PDF file contained a suspicious connection to a domain that had never previously been seen on the customer’s environment, ‘mmv-security[.]best.'”
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Some components of this write-up are sourced from:
thehackernews.com