Skip to main content

Modified TrickBot Trojan can now Steal Windows Active Directory Credentials


TrickBot trojan, a strain of malware that has been around affecting users since 2016 - is now evolved to steal Windows Active Directory credentials. Today, in the cybersecurity ecosystem it is considered as one of the top threats abusing businesses, experts estimate that TrickBot is responsible for compromising more than 250 million email accounts till date. Earlier, TrickBot went a step further while targeting Windows 10 users by disabling Windows defender onto their systems rather than just bypassing the protection. Fundamentally, TrickBot is a banking Trojan and is generally deployed through spearphishing emails like invoices mailed to the accounts department. Typically, it is attached as infected Microsoft Excel or Word documents. The malware can be spread across an organization in a number of ways, one of them is via exploiting vulnerabilities in a protocol called SMB which makes the process of sharing and accessing files on other systems easy for Windows computers.

First identified by Sandor Nemes, a security researcher from Virus Total, this new module of TrickBot dubbed as "ADII" further amplifies the threat it possesses for security, it steals Windows Active Directory information by executing a set of commands.

An Active Directory database is being created and stored into the default C:\Windows\NTDS folder on the domain controller, a server here is acting as the domain controller. Now, all the information including passwords, computers, users, and groups of Windows Active Directory are saved in a file by the name "ntds.dit" in the database. As all the aforementioned information is sensitive in nature, Windows resort to a BootKey that is located in the system component of the Registry and encrypts the information with the help of it. Admins who are responsible for database maintenance use a special tool known as "ntdsutil" to work with that database. Reportedly, standard file operations cannot access the BootKey.

How TrickBot Goes About Stealing Active Directory Credentials?


Administrators use the command "install from media", also known as "ifm", to create a dump of Active Directory. The command leads to the creation of an installation media for setting up new Domain Controllers. The new module "ADII" exploits the ifm command to produce a copy of the Windows Active Directory database; after the database is dumped into the %Temp% folder, the bot collects the information and transfers it to the admin. The collected data can be effective in infecting more systems in the same network and could also be employed by various other malware in search of similar vulnerabilities.


source https://www.ehackingnews.com/2020/01/modified-trickbot-trojan-can-now-steal.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betting and Gambling Websites under Cyberattack from Chinese Hackers

Since last year's summers, Chinese hackers have been targeting South Asian companies that own online gambling and betting websites. The gambling companies in South Asia have confirmed the hacks, whereas rumors of cyberattacks on betting websites have also emerged from Europe, and the Middle East, however, the rumors are yet to confirm, says the reports of cybersecurity group Trend Micro and Talent-Jump. Cybersecurity experts claim that no money was stolen in these hacks against the gambling websites. However, hackers have stolen source codes and databases. The motive of the attack was not a cybercrime, but rather espionage intended attack to gain intelligence. According to the experts, a group named ' DRBControl ' is responsible for the cyberattack. According to the reports of Trend Micro, the hacking techniques used in this particular cyberattack incident is similar to methods done by Emissary Panda and Winnti. All of these hacking groups are from China that has launc
5 comments
Read more

Provider Volia reported to the cyber police about the intense cyberattacks on the server

Cable provider Volia appealed to the Cyber Police on the fact of fixing a DDoS attack on the Kharkov servers of the company, which has been ongoing since May 31. "For three days, from May 31 to today, the Volia infrastructure in Kharkov is subjected to cyberattacks. At first, they were carried out only on subscriber subsystems, later they switched to telecommunications infrastructure. As a result, more than 100,000 subscribers experienced problems using the Internet, IPTV, multi-screen platform, and digital TV," said the company. In total, the complete lack of access to Volia's services, according to the provider, lasted 12 minutes on May 31, 45 minutes on June 1. There was also an attack on the website volia.com, but it was managed to neutralize. "DDoS attacks were massive and well-organized. The type of attack is UDP flood and channel capacity overflow with the traffic of more than 200 GB. UDP is a protocol used for online streaming services - streaming, te
Post a Comment
Read more

Information security experts have warned Russians about bonus card fraud schemes.

Fraudsters several thousand times tried to illegally take advantage of discount bonuses of Russians in 2019. Some attackers gained access to customers' personal accounts, and then bought the products using bonuses, said Alexey Sizov, head of the anti-fraud department of the Application Security Systems Center at Jet Infosystems. According to him, a fraudster can register a personal account on a card that was issued to another person. The victim will accumulate points without knowing about the existence of his profile, and the attacker will write off bonuses, said Sizov. The expert added that this is mainly done by novice scammers. According to him, loyalty programs are poorly protected, unlike banking operations. He said that they are estimated at 50 billion rubles ($760 milliard) for the 30 largest retailers. Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Business Russia Trade Committee, said that in 2019, the number of bonus and discount thefts "increased significantly."
Post a Comment
Read more