ACH Transfer spams serve Banking Trojan (July 6, 2012)

The Dell Sonicwall UTM research team has been observing a recent increase in drive-by-download infections. These infections utilize the Blackhole Exploit and usually arrive in the form of spam masquerading as a legitimate company notification containing a malicious link.

The spam observed uses the following text and contains a malicious link:

The link takes the user to a malicious webpage that pretends to load a doc file containing further information:

The webpage contains javascript code the employs the Blackhole Exploit [Detected as Blacole.JI_2 (Exploit)]:

The exploit causes the download of a Cridex Banking Trojan variant:

The Trojan creates the following files on the filesystem:

• %APPDATA%KB00097753.exe [Detected as GAV: Banker.M_10 (Trojan)]
• %APPDATA%AB45AF71AB45AF71.DAT
• %APPDATA%AB45AF71AB45AF71.DAT.DAT

The Trojan creates the following registry key in the Windows registry to enable startup after reboot:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun KB00097753.exe “%APPDATA%KB00097753.exe”

SonicWALL Gateway AntiVirus provides protection against this threat via the following signatures:

• GAV: Banker.M_10 (Trojan)
• GAV: Blacole.JI_2 (Exploit)

Security News

The SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research Team gathers, analyzes and vets cross-vector threat information from the SonicWall Capture Threat network, consisting of global devices and resources, including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries and territories. The research team identifies, analyzes, and mitigates critical vulnerabilities and malware daily through in-depth research, which drives protection for all SonicWall customers. In addition to safeguarding networks globally, the research team supports the larger threat intelligence community by releasing weekly deep technical analyses of the most critical threats to small businesses, providing critical knowledge that defenders need to protect their networks.