www.silentpush.com Open in urlscan Pro
2606:4700:20::681a:b95  Public Scan

URL: https://www.silentpush.com/blog/google-malvertising/
Submission: On October 16 via manual from US — Scanned from DE

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"AD-VERSARIES": TRACKING NEW GOOGLE MALVERTISING AND BRAND SPOOFING CAMPAIGNS.
NEW MAAS DARKGATE LOADER, DANABOT, ICEDID AND MORE.

threat
October 17, 2023

 * Content scans show an increase in malvertising activity from Q3 2023 onwards.
 * New MaaS DarkGate variant adapted for malvertising purposes.
 * Brand impersonation TTPs used to inject infostealers, including DanaBot and
   IcedID.
 * Evidence of threat actors targeting various network tools, tech utilities and
   multimedia suites.


BACKGROUND

Let’s start with some context. From Q4 2022 through to Q1 2023, Silent Push
Threat Analysts tracked a series of malvertisment campaigns that acted as a
delivery method for several banking trojans and infostealers – including Ursnif
and Vidar – targeting a broad range of organizations and sectors.

Activity peaked between January-March 2023, before tailing off in the wake of a
concerted collaborative effort by the security industry to hunt, track and
counteract malvertisment infrastructure.

So what’s changed since then? Despite the lull in activity, our Threat Analysts
have remained on the trail of trojan/infostealer-based brand impersonation
campaigns. Our content scans have recently pinpointed a resurgence in
malvertisment activity, not limited to the attack vectors and brands discussed
in our previous blogs.

Our research shows conclusive evidence of Google ads being used to propagate
malvertisment campaigns specifically constructed to deliver a range of malicious
executables, including a new variant of the DarkGate commodity loader and two
modular banking trojans – IcedID (a.k.a. BokBot) and Danabot.

Let’s take a look at how we used Silent Push to traverse attacker
infrastructure, how the malicious code behaves and what organizations need to do
in order to counteract this latest spate of attacks.


TRACKING NEW THREATS

Our previous research focused on the use of spoofed AnyDesk domains and
crypto-related browser extensions, among other attack vectors. This time around,
threat actors have cast their nets far wider.

Here’s an up top date breakdown of the latest brands affected, gathered from our
most recent scan data repositories:



2023 malvertisment campaigns (Source – Silent Push scan data)

Threat actors have regrouped to focus on remote desktop platforms, network tools
and miscellaneous tech utilities, including multimedia suites and browsers.

From our dataset, TradingView – the popular financial charting platform –
emerges as the most heavily targeted brand throughout 2023. AnyDesk remains a
popular attack vector, comprising nearly a quarter of all malicious domains.

Silent Push is actively tracking these new domains, and all associated
infrastructure, in a dedicated malvertisment feed. Here’s a snapshot of spoofing
domains related to TradingView:



Snapshot of scam domains related to TradingView (Source: Silent Push
malvertisement feed)


GOOGLE MALVERTISING: ADVANCED IP SCANNER

Our brand impersonation scans are consistently outputting newly registered
malicious domains that are appearing as sponsored ads at the top of a Google
search.

Let’s take a look at one such brand affected by Google malvertising – the LAN
traffic analyzer Advanced IP Scanner.

We discovered a scam domain – advanced-ip-scanner[.]top – attempting to capture
traffic intended for the legitimate site advanced-ip-scanner[.]com. As you can
see, only the TLD has been changed:



Brand Impersonation scan on advanced-ip-scanner[.]com (Source: Silent Push)

advanced-ip-scanner[.]top redirects to the malicious domain shouman-acc[.]com:



advanced-ip-scanner[.]top redirecting user to shouman-acc[.]com

A quick Google search for ‘scanner IP’ returns a sponsored advertisement for
‘Advanced Scanner IP’, utilising domain that redirects to shouman-acc[.]com:



Active malvertisment on Google.com (as of 15 October 2023)



Malvertisement domain using a 302 redirect to shouman-acc[.]com

In this instance, shouman-acc[.]com acts as a delivery method for the IcedID
banking trojan, with the hash
86bcd250b70e261d29a20538ffaf9ea3b27b510f02721cc6853bda227deeb118:



IcedID hash value (Source: VirusTotal)

The content consists of ‘Free Download’ button that instigates the delivery,
with a grammatically incorrect CAPTCHA box included for crawler protection:



shouman-acc[.]com delivering IcedID trojan


DANABOT (A.K.A. BOKBOT) MALVERTISING

In July, security researchers unearthed a new variant of the
Malware-as-a-Service infostealer, DanaBot, featuring a modular subscription
model and adversary support utilities, via the Russian language ‘Exploit’ forum.

Our investigation shows evidence of threat actors adapting this new variant for
malvertising purposes, again targeting Advanced IP Scanner.

Let’s take a look at how it’s being used. In September, we observed sponsored
Google ads for ‘scanner IP download’ pointing to domains spoofing Advanced IP
Scanner:



Malvertising results for ‘scanner ip download’ on Google

A Fiddler traffic capture shows traffic redirected from google[.]com leading to
the typosquatting domain advancde-ip-scanner[.]com:



Fiddler traffic analysis of advancde-ip-scanner[.]com

As is the case with the IcedID attack, the destination domain,
advancde-ip-scanner[.]com, features a download link that injects a malicious
file with a hash value of
123b285236757f7ac0c4f2107756a0ed661c9190aad81914c54debdd3bfa00f4.

This new DanaBot version attempts to read credentials and cached browser data:



DanaBot analysis (Source: any.run)

The malware uses the following C2 IPs to exfiltrate data:

 * 172[.]86[.]121[.]218
 * 45[.]61[.]160[.]115
 * 172[.]86[.]97[.]119
 * 91[.]212[.]166[.]96

In the above case, the Google ad remained active for more than a week. We also
observed another DanaBot hash – 183276d2ea0740a8e92b3cff7abef725 – featuring the
same ad, and the same domain, using the following C2 IPs:

 * 185[.]225[.]69[.]33
 * 5[.]189[.]253[.]176
 * 5[.]189[.]253[.]131
 * 185[.]225[.]69[.]230


NEW DARKGATE VARIANT

In July of this year, our content scans started to return large datasets that
indicated a resurgence in malvertising activity. This renewed activity coincided
with the emergence of a new variant of the DarkGate loader, also observed by
other malware analysts and threat researchers throughout August.


TREESIZE SPOOFING

Among the brands targeted with DarkGate injections in our dataset is Jam
Software’s popular disk management too TreeSize Free. Here’s a domain –
jam-software[.]net – that was flagged in our malvertisement sweeps as being
malicious:



Scam TreeSize domain hosting DarkGate loader

Sandbox analysis of an executable downloaded from the above domain identifies
the hash as a DarkGate variant:



Sandbox analysis of an executable from jam-software[.]net (Source: tria.ge)


REMOTE DESKTOP SPOOFING

Threat actors have always considered network tool impersonation to be
low-hanging fruit, and this latest series of campaigns is no different.

Recent content scans have flagged up numerous domains impersonating winscp[.]net
the open source FTP, scripting and file manager utility, WinSCP

One such domain is winscphub[.]com (currently offline). Here’s a Silent Push DNS
scan for the aforementioned domain, including reputational data:

DNS and reputation data for winscphub[.]com (Source: Silent Push)

The website features a download link that delivers a DarkGate variant with
evasion and credential harvesting capabilities, with the file hash
2b6830970820af8d43ab710507ee19ca:



Spoofed WinSCP domain – winscphub[.]com


MALWARE ANALYSIS

Created in the host machine’s temporary files, the malware uses ICACLS.EXE (a
Windows command-line utility that IT admins use to change access control lists
on files and folders) to provide the malware with elevated privileges:

C:\Windows\system32\ICACLS.EXE”
“C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Temp\MW-c7688c81-6868-4efd-899f-aa889e84eda9.”
/SETINTEGRITYLEVEL (CI)(OI)HIGH

Consistent with other DarkGate variants, the dropped file also contains an
AutoIt executable and a corresponding .AU3 script in the same location:



AutoIt script (Source: tria.ge sandbox report)

To embed itself in the host machine and maintain optimal persistence levels, the
malicious executable ‘regsvr32.exe’ loads it’s DLL with a COM entry in
registries containing a CLSID (a serial number that represents a globally unique
identifier for any application component in Windows):



Persistence activity (Source: tria.ge sandbox report)

The variant also creates a shortcut file under
‘C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\’.

The malware also attempts to read the location of Putty passwords, by attempting
to locate registry paths used by the application:

 * HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Martin Prikryl\WinSCP 2\DisablePasswordStoring
 * HKCU\SOFTWARE\Martin Prikryl\WinSCP 2\Configuration\Interface\PuttyPassword
 * HKCU\SOFTWARE\Martin Prikryl\WinSCP
   2\Configuration\Interface\AutoSaveWorkspacePasswords


CONCLUSION

Our scans show a noticeable and worrying uptick in the use of sponsored Google
ads to deliver infostealing malware in the third quarter of this year, most
notably IcedID and a new version of the DarkGate loader adapted for malvertising
purposes.

Threat actors are continuing to spoof legitimate domains through Google using a
variety of TTPs, including typosquatting, the strategic placement of malicious
links and hidden redirects.

To combat such tactics, affected organizations need to adopt security protocols
that track the underlying infrastructure involved in the attack – registrars,
ASN data, nameservers etc. – rather than relying on isolated lists of IOCs that
are easily replaced by any adversary that uses them.


IOCS

 * winscphub[.]com
 * jam-software[.]net
 * advancede-ip-scanner[.]com
 * advanced-ip-scanner[.]top
 * shouman-acc[.]com
 * aptekoagraliy[.]com
 * 172[.]86[.]121[.]218
 * 45[.]61[.]160[.]115
 * 172[.]86[.]97[.]119
 * 91[.]212[.]166[.]96
 * 185[.]225[.]69[.]33
 * 5[.]189[.]253[.]176
 * 5[.]189[.]253[.]131
 * 185[.]225[.]69[.]230


USING SILENT PUSH TO COMBAT MALVERTISING

Silent Push Community Edition features many of the queries and enriched data
types that we used to track malvertising activity. Sign-up free here.

Silent Push Enterprise customers benefit from curated feeds that track
malvertising infrastructure as it’s deployed, prior to weaponization (Tags:
#seo-poisoning, #malvertising).

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