The increase in the spread of “ Meal Kits” malware , such as the Parallax RAT , has led to an increase in attacks using Trojans.
Attackers have malicious Excel with DLLs containing RATs and distribute them through legitimate repositories. Additionally, “Meal Kits” of malware are reportedly available, such as the recent DiscordRAT 2.0. Most of these threats are distributed via email, and some attackers target cybercriminals with malware.
Parallax Rising
According to HP’s report, Parallax RAT has seen a significant increase in its popularity as a malicious payload. A campaign was detected where Parallax RAT performs a “Jekyll and Hyde” attack, with two threats that are triggered when a user opens an invoice. One malicious one opens the file, while the other executes the malware from behind the scenes, making the attack more difficult. While Arnold Osipov, a malware researcher at Morphisec, does not directly confirm the specific increase reported by HP, he notes that RATs in general are a growing threat in 2023.
See also: Huawei, Honor and Vivo smartphones detect Google app as TrojanSMS-PA malware
Increasing RATs Attacks
Remote Access Trojan (RAT) attacks have increased, with many reports of RATs such as Remcos and Houdini. There has been an increase in malicious Microsoft Office files containing the Remcos RAT, while the Houdini campaign hides the Vjw0rm JavaScript malware. It is worth noting that these threats may decrease as Microsoft plans to remove VBScript. However, cyberattacks continue to evolve in new directions.
What we predict for the future is that attackers will shift from VBScript malware and possibly even JavaScript malware to formats that will continue to be supported by Windows . Examples of these are PowerShell and Bash . In addition, we predict that attackers will focus more on using innovative techniques to evade user security measures using the coded languages
Source: darkreading.com
