Cyber Security
Ficker – New InfoStealer Malware Spread Via Russian Underground Forum to Attack Windows
Researchers uncovered a new info-stealer malware “Ficker” and is distributed via a Russian underground forum by threat actors as Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) model to attack Windows users.
Threat actors with the profile alias @ficker in the Russian underground forum have frequently been active in the underground forum related to malware distribution.
Ficker info stealer is written in Rust and it has distributed with inbuilt capabilities such as information stealing, including web browsers, credit card information, crypto-wallets, FTP clients, and other applications.
Ficker info stealer was written in Rust, and it has distributed with inbuilt capabilities such as information stealing, including web browsers, credit card information, crypto-wallets, FTP clients, and other applications.
Also, Attackers offering a web-based panel to the buyer to attack, collect, and analyzing the stolen data from the victim’s device.
Ficker Infection Process
Unlike earlier days when Ficker was distributed over Trojanized web links and compromised websites through which victims accidentally download the payload, the Current infection has been stealthy and deployed with the help of known malware downloader, Hancitor.
The initial stage of the attack starts by sending malicious spam emails where the attackers attached the weaponized Microsoft® Word document which is completely fake but posed as the real one.
Spam email content tricks victims to open it, that leads to a run of a malicious macro code that allows let Hancitor to reach out to the command and control server to receive a malicious URL containing a sample of Ficker
To avoid detection, it utilizes the evasion technique by injecting Ficker into an instance of svchost.exe on a victim’s machine and hides its activities.
svchost.exe is frequently abused by the threat actors to hide their malware in the system process to avoid detection from traditional AV scanning.
Process Flow of Ficker via Hancitor initial infection
Researchers also found that the Ficker is heavily obfuscated and prevent to run the malware into the virtual environment by deploying the multiple analysis check, also malware authors set an execution feature in the malware, so that the malware will not execute if it is running in selected countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan.
Ficker Data Stealing Process
Unlike other traditional data-stealing malware that collects the file from the disk and makes a local copy then exfiltrate the data via a C2 server. but Ficker takes another route through its instructions and sends its information directly to the operator of the malware.
Another interesting feature is that the authors of the Ficker malware added an unique feature that decrypting stolen data server-side rather than “victim-side”, that allows a great control over who is allowed to use the malware.
According to the Blackberry report “The malware also has screen-grab abilities, which allow the malware’s operator to remotely capture an image of the victim’s screen. The malware also enables file-grabbing and additional downloading capabilities once connection to its C2 is established”
Here the following data that can be stolen by the Ficker Malware:-
Chromium web browsers
Saved login credentials
Cookies
Auto-compete history
Mozilla-based web-browsers.
Saved login credentials
Cookies
Auto-complete history
Credit card information
Cryptocurrency wallets
FileZilla FTP client
WinScp FTP client
Discord login
Steam accounts
Pidgin accounts
Thunderbird accounts
Finally mawlare author can able to access the data Once information is sent back to Ficker’s C2.