Cybersecurity researchers are calling consideration to a brand new subtle malware known as CoffeeLoader that is designed to obtain and execute secondary payloads.
The malware, in line with Zscaler ThreatLabz, shares behavioral similarities with one other identified malware loader often called SmokeLoader.
“The aim of the malware is to obtain and execute second-stage payloads whereas evading detection by endpoint-based safety merchandise,” Brett Stone-Gross, senior director of menace intelligence at Zscaler, mentioned in a technical write-up printed this week.
“The malware makes use of quite a few methods to bypass safety options, together with a specialised packer that makes use of the GPU, name stack spoofing, sleep obfuscation, and the usage of Home windows fibers.”
CoffeeLoader, which originated round September 2024, leverages a site technology algorithm (DGA) as a fallback mechanism in case the first command-and-control (C2) channels grow to be unreachable.
Central to the malware is a packer dubbed Armoury that executes code on a system’s GPU to complicate evaluation in digital environments. It has been so named attributable to the truth that it impersonates the official Armoury Crate utility developed by ASUS.
The an infection sequence begins with a dropper that, amongst different issues, makes an attempt to execute a DLL payload packed by Armoury (“ArmouryAIOSDK.dll” or “ArmouryA.dll”) with elevated privileges, however not earlier than trying to bypass Consumer Account Management (UAC) if the dropper doesn’t have the mandatory permissions.
The dropper can be designed to ascertain persistence on the host by way of a scheduled process that is configured to run both upon consumer logon with the very best run stage or each 10 minutes. This step is succeeded by the execution of a stager part that, in flip, masses the primary module.
“The primary module implements quite a few methods to evade detection by antivirus (AV) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDRs) together with name stack spoofing, sleep obfuscation, and leveraging Home windows Fibers,” Stone-Gross mentioned.
These strategies are able to faking a name stack to obscure the origin of a perform name and obfuscating the payload whereas it’s in a sleep state, thereby permitting it to sidestep detection by safety software program.
The final word goal of CoffeeLoader is to contact a C2 server through HTTPS with a purpose to acquire the next-stage malware. This contains instructions to inject and execute Rhadamanthys shellcode.
Zscaler mentioned it recognized various commonalities between CoffeeLoader and SmokeLoader on the supply code stage, elevating the chance that it could be the following main iteration of the latter, significantly within the aftermath of a legislation enforcement effort final yr that took down its infrastructure.
“There are additionally notable similarities between SmokeLoader and CoffeeLoader, with the previous distributing the latter, however the actual relationship between the 2 malware households will not be but clear,” the corporate mentioned.
The event comes as Seqrite Labs detailed a phishing e-mail marketing campaign to kickstart a multi-stage an infection chain that drops an information-stealing malware known as Snake Keylogger.
It additionally follows one other cluster of exercise that has focused customers participating in cryptocurrency buying and selling through Reddit posts promoting cracked variations of TradingView to trick customers into putting in stealers like Lumma and Atomic on Home windows and macOS methods.