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December 16, 2019
Severity
Medium
Analysis Summary
In a resume-themed email campaign analyzed by Cofense, the Hawkeye keylogger was found being used as a first-stage downloader for a cryptocurrency miner. The email claims to have a resume attached in the form of a ZIP archive. Once opened, the ZIP archive delivers the Hawkeye Reborn V9 keylogger to the victim’s system. This keylogger is typically used to monitor systems, gather sensitive information from the machine, and exfiltrate the information to a C2 server. However, despite it not being advertised as loader, the operator behind this campaign leverages its file installation feature (normally used for establishing persistence) to download and execute a cryptocurrency miner. Specifically, it downloads an older version of the open-source CGMiner. Although the current version of CGMiner only mines Bitcoin and removed GPU/CPU mining support, the older version allows the operator to instead mine Litecoin while leveraging the CPU/GPU mining functionality. In their blog post, Cofense provides recommendations for detecting various activities taking place through the infection chain.
Impact
Exposure of sensitive information
Indicators of Compromise
MD5
- 3866532d537df4795d88f97c38c1c25a
- 4a7d5d67ce8e6a890f4a272be3f782bd
- a381ba89d294f120dd76a684bda24276
Remediation
- Block all threat indicators at your respective controls.
- Always be suspicious about emails sent by unknown senders.
- Never click on the links/attachments sent by unknown senders.