Cybercriminals Targeting Law Firms with GootLoader and FakeUpdates Malware

6 various law corporations had been focused in January and February 2023 as element of two disparate danger strategies distributing GootLoader and FakeUpdates (aka SocGholish) malware strains.

GootLoader, lively considering the fact that late 2020, is a to start with-phase downloader which is capable of offering a wide range of secondary payloads this sort of as Cobalt Strike and ransomware.

It notably employs look for engine optimization (Website positioning) poisoning to funnel victims browsing for enterprise-associated documents towards generate-by down load web sites that fall the JavaScript malware.

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In the campaign in depth by cybersecurity company eSentire, the threat actors are said to have compromised authentic, but susceptible, WordPress web sites and additional new site posts without the owners’ information.

“When the laptop or computer person navigates to one particular of these destructive web pages and hits the hyperlink to down load the purported company agreement, they are unknowingly downloading GootLoader,” eSentire researcher Keegan Keplinger said in January 2022.

The disclosure from eSentire is the latest in a wave of attacks that have used the Gootkit malware loader to breach targets.

GootLoader is far from the only JavaScript malware concentrating on enterprise specialists and regulation company workers. A different established of attacks have also entailed the use of SocGholish, which is a downloader capable of dropping much more executables.

The infection chain is even more significant for taking benefit of a internet site frequented by legal companies as a watering gap to distribute the malware.

Another standout component of the twin intrusion sets in the absence of ransomware deployment, in its place favoring fingers-on exercise, suggesting that the attacks could have diversified in scope to include things like espionage operations.

“Prior to 2021, email was the main infection vector utilised by opportunistic threat actors,” Keplinger said. From 2021 to 2023, browser-primarily based attacks […] have steadily been growing to contend with email as the main infection vector.”

“This has been largely thanks to GootLoader, SocGholish, SolarMarker, and the latest strategies leveraging Google Ads to float prime lookup effects.”

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