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* Stealthy BLISTER malware slips in unnoticed on Windows systems
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*
STEALTHY BLISTER MALWARE SLIPS IN UNNOTICED ON WINDOWS SYSTEMS
By
IONUT ILASCU
* December 23, 2021
* 05:33 PM
* 0
Security researchers have uncovered a malicious campaign that relies on a valid
code-signing certificate to disguise malicious code as legitimate executables.
One of the payloads that the researchers called Blister, acts as a loader for
other malware and appears to be a novel threat that enjoys a low detection rate.
The threat actor behind Blister has been relying on multiple techniques to keep
their attacks under the radar, the use of code-signing certificates being only
one of their tricks.
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SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED
Whoever is behind Blister malware has been running campaigns for at least three
months, since at least September 15, security researchers from Elastic search
company found.
The threat actor used a code-signing certificate that is valid from August 23,
though. It was issued by digital identity provider Sectigo for a company called
Blist LLC with an email address from a Russian provider Mail.Ru.
source: Elastic
Using valid certificates to sign malware is an old trick that threat actors
learned years ago. Back then, they used to steal certificates from legitimate
companies. These days, threat actors request a valid cert using details of a
firm they compromised or of a front business.
In a blog post this week, Elastic says that they responsibly reported the abused
certificate to Sectigo so it could be revoked.
The researchers say that the threat actor relied on multiple techniques to keep
the attack undetected. One method was to embed Blister malware into a legitimate
library (e.g. colorui.dll).
The malware is then executed with elevated privileges via the rundll32 command.
Being signed with a valid certificate and deployed with administrator privileges
makes Blister slip past security solutions.
In the next step, Blister decodes from the resource section bootstrapping code
that is “heavily obfuscated,” Elastic researchers say. For ten minutes, the code
stays dormant, likely in an attempt to evade sandbox analysis.
It then kicks into action by decrypting embedded payloads that provide remote
access and allow lateral movement: Cobalt Strike and BitRAT - both have been
used by multiple threat actors in the past.
The malware achieves persistence with a copy in the ProgramData folder and
another posing as rundll32.exe. It is also added to the startup location, so it
launches at every boot, as a child of explorer.exe.
Elastic’s researchers found signed and unsigned versions of the Blister loader,
and both enjoyed a low detection rate with antivirus engines on VirusTotal
scanning service.
detection rate of unsigned Blister malware sample
While the objective of these attacks of the initial infection vector
remain unclear, by combining valid code-signing certs, malware embedded in
legitimate libraries, and execution of payloads in memory the threat actors
increased their chances for a successful attack.
Elastic has created a Yara rule to identify Blister activity and provides
indicators of compromise to help organizations defend against the threat.
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* Certificates
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* Malware
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*
IONUT ILASCU
Ionut Ilascu is a technology writer with a focus on all things cybersecurity.
The topics he writes about include malware, vulnerabilities, exploits and
security defenses, as well as research and innovation in information security.
His work has been published by Bitdefender, Netgear, The Security Ledger and
Softpedia.
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