Short version:
- Malware got onto Windows PC.
- From the compromised machine, spying on credentials is trivial.
That’s it. All the analysis about how they inject some code into some browser and communicate with their server is a smoke screen.
Our most favourite OS is blatantly insecure.
Mac browser too apparently.
It’s really hard to defend against the human angle. I’ve seen senior management wire $1mil+ to a scammer by emailing the wire info, including PIN. 🤦♂️
Yes, this is human failure and it’s also human to fail.
Principally, this can work on any OS with gullible users. I blame Microsoft-Entreprise-IT partly because it’s an easy target and partly because dumb users are their fault due the multiple layers of obfuscation built into the products/setups.
If you have a Google password and an Apple password, they are clearly both vulnerable to phishing attacks. But you would never use any of those with Amazon because clearly you learned the use unique passwords. Also, how often do Google or Apple ask for your password? Maybe, once when you setup a device, are once per day (if you have your sessions expire). Reasonable. Not the most secure setup, we can do better than passwords, but most people somehow manage.
Now enter corporate IT. Here we have “password sync” (shudder). Here we have Azure AD / Entra ID / M365, which are okay products, deployed in companies that never wanted anything in the cloud. Now you get emails from “Word” asking for your most important password. Depending on the configuration, you may be constantly nagged by 2FA requests.
Also, no one explains anything the the users, including the CEO. The “new” Windows and office just appeared. People startet entering passwords in places that never needed a password before.
This makes phishing effective.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Judging by the evidence to hand, it appears the Windows malware DanaBot, or something related or connected to it, infects victims’ PCs – typically from spam emails and other means – and then waits for the user to visit their bank website.
The script is fairly smart: it communicates with a remote command-and-control (C2) server, and removes itself from the DOM tree – deletes itself from the login page, basically – once it’s done its thing, which makes it tricky to detect and analyze.
These include injecting a prompt for the user’s phone number or two-factor authentication token, which the miscreants can use with the intercepted username and password to access the victim’s bank account and steal their cash.
“This sophisticated threat showcases advanced capabilities, particularly in executing man-in-the-browser attacks with its dynamic communication, web injection methods and the ability to adapt based on server instructions and current page state,” Langus warned.
PS: AT&T Alien Labs this week drilled into information-stealing malware dubbed JaskaGO, which is written in Go and said to pose “a severe threat to both Windows and macOS operating systems.”
The code uses multiple techniques to persist on an infected computer, and can siphon data including login credentials stored by browsers and attack cryptocurrency wallets.
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