A new campaign leveraging an exploit kit has been observed abusing an Internet Explorer flaw patched by Microsoft last year to deliver the RedLine Stealer trojan.
“When executed, RedLine Stealer performs recon against the target system (including username, hardware, browsers installed, anti-virus software) and then exfiltrates data (including passwords, saved credit cards, crypto wallets, VPN logins) to a remote command and control server,” Bitdefender said in a new report shared with The Hacker News.
Most of the infections are located in Brazil and Germany, followed by the U.S., Egypt, Canada, China, and Poland, among others.
Exploit kits or exploit packs are comprehensive tools that contain a collection of exploits designed to take advantage of vulnerabilities in commonly-used software by scanning infected systems for different kinds of flaws and deploying additional malware.
The primary infection method used by attackers to distribute exploit kits, in this case, the Rig Exploit Kit, is through compromised websites that, when visited, drop the exploit code to ultimately send the RedLine Stealer payload to carry out follow-on attacks.
The flaw in question is CVE-2021-26411 (CVSS score: 8.8), a memory corruption vulnerability impacting Internet Explorer that has been previously weaponized by North Korea-linked threat actors. It was addressed by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for March 2021.
“The RedLine Stealer sample delivered by RIG EK comes packed in multiple encryption layers […] to avoid detection,” the Romanian cybersecurity firm noted, with the unpacking of the malware progressing through as many as six stages. Read more:https://bit.ly/3xZ6x5z
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