New Cross-Platform Malware ‘Noodle RAT’ Targets Windows and Linux Systems

A formerly undocumented cross-system malware codenamed Noodle RAT has been put to use by Chinese-speaking risk actors both for espionage or cybercrime for many years.

Though this backdoor was formerly classified as a variant of Gh0st RAT and Rekoobe, Trend Micro security researcher Hara Hiroaki mentioned “this backdoor is not simply a variant of current malware, but is a new style altogether.”

Noodle RAT, which also goes by the monikers ANGRYREBEL and Nood RAT, will come in each Windows and Linux flavors, and is considered to have been put to use because at the very least July 2016.

The distant access tran Gh0st RAT initial surfaced in 2008 when a China threat team identified as the C. Rufus Security Staff made its resource code publicly readily available.

More than the many years, the malware – alongside other instruments like PlugX and ShadowPad – has grow to be a hallmark of Chinese federal government hackers, who have utilised it in numerous strategies and attacks.

The Windows variation of Noodle RAT, an in-memory modular backdoor, has been put to use by hacking crews like Iron Tiger and Calypso. Released by way of a loader due to its shellcode foundations, it supports commands to down load/upload information, operate extra kinds of malware, perform as a TCP proxy, and even delete alone.

At the very least two distinctive varieties of loaders, viz. MULTIDROP and MICROLOAD, have been noticed to day in attacks aimed at Thailand and India, respectively.

Noodle RAT’s Linux counterpart, on the other hand, has been utilized by unique cybercrime and espionage clusters joined to China, which includes Rocke and Cloud Snooper.

It’s equipped to launch a reverse shell, obtain/upload documents, agenda execution, and initiate SOCKS tunneling, with the attacks leveraging recognized security flaws in general public-struggling with programs to breach Linux servers and fall a web shell for distant access and malware shipping.

Regardless of the variances in the backdoor instructions, equally variations are explained to share identical code for command-and-command (C2) communications and use similar configuration formats.

More evaluation of Noodle RAT artifacts shows that while the malware reuses numerous plugins made use of by Gh0st RAT and some pieces of the Linux version share code overlaps with Rekoobe, the backdoor in by itself is fully new.

Trend Micro said it was also equipped to attain obtain to a management panel and builder utilised for Noodle RAT’s Linux variant with release notes created in Simplified Chinese containing aspects about bug fixes and enhancements, indicating that it truly is most likely made, managed, and offered to prospects of fascination.

This speculation is also bolstered by the I-Before long leaks previously this yr, which highlighted a huge corporate hack-for-seek the services of scene operating out of China and the operational and organizational ties involving private sector corporations and Chinese condition-sponsored cyber actors.

These kinds of tools are believed to be the consequence of a intricate provide chain within China’s cyber espionage ecosystem, in which they are sold and dispersed on a commercial foundation across the personal sector and government entities engaged in malicious condition-sponsored activities.

“Noodle RAT is probable shared (or for sale) amid Chinese-speaking teams,” Hiroaki reported. “Noodle RAT has been misclassified and underrated for decades.”

The development will come as the China-linked Mustang Panda (aka Fireant) has been connected to a spear-phishing marketing campaign concentrating on Vietnamese entities working with tax- and schooling-themed lures to provide Windows Shortcut (LNK) data files that are intended to possible deploy the PlugX malware.

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Some parts of this write-up are sourced from:
thehackernews.com