HP Inc. released its new Quarterly Threat Insights Report, providing analysis of real-world attacks against customers worldwide. The report found that 29% of malware captured was previously unknown – due to the widespread use of packers and obfuscation techniques by attackers seeking to evade detection. 88% of malware was delivered by email into users’ inboxes, in many cases having bypassed gateway filters. It took 8.8 days, on average, for threats to become known by hash to antivirus engines – giving hackers over a week’s ‘head-start’ to further their campaigns.
The report provides a unique glimpse into the behavior of malware in the wild, as – unlike other endpoint security tools, which aim to prevent or intervene in an attack – HP Sure Click lets malware run, tricking malware into executing, while capturing a full infection chain within isolated, micro-virtual machines. This hardware-enforced approach to security renders malware harmless and keeps customers safe.
Notable threats isolated by HP Sure Click included:
- Web Browser exploits leading to FickerStealer: A malware campaign that relied on misspelled domains of popular instant messaging services. Visitors were redirected to RigEK landing pages that attempted to exploit web browser and plugin vulnerabilities to infect visitors’ PCs with information-stealing malware called FickerStealer.
- Delivery-themed lures tempting users into letting the RATs in: A new Office malware builder called APOMacroSploit was used to target victims in delivery-themed spam campaigns, tricking them into opening weaponized XLS attachments, ultimately leading to the BitRAT remote access Trojan being deployed on their computers.
- The return of ZLoader:An increase in ZLoader banking Trojan activity, using a combination of techniques – including Word documents masquerading as pharmaceutical invoices that run malicious macros only after the document has been closed.
- The art of misdirection through DOSfuscation:Emotet’s final burst of activity before its takedown in January 2021 saw its operators modify the downloader using DOSfuscation techniques to make its obfuscation more complex. The downloader also generated an error message when opened, helping to avoid suspicion from users when the malicious documents didn’t behave as expected.
- Email thread hijacking of government targets:HP Sure Click stopped email thread hijacking attacks against government organizations in Central America, where stolen email data was used to craft convincing phishing lures to distribute Emotet.Other key findings in the report include:
- Trojans made up 66% of malware samples analyzed, driven largely by malicious spam campaigns distributing Dridex malware, which a recent HP blogflagged as having increased in prevalence by 239%.
- 88% of malware detected was delivered via email – with the most common lures being fake invoice attachments – while web downloads were responsible for the remaining 12%.
- The most common type of malicious attachments were: documents (31%), archive files (28%), spreadsheets (19%) and executable files (17%).
- Malicious executables rose by 12%, with CVE-2017-11882 – a memory corruption flaw in Microsoft Office’s Equation Editor – accounting for nearly three-quarters of the exploits isolated by HP Sure Click.
- A 12% growth in malware that exploits CVE-2017-0199, which is commonly used to run malicious scripts to deploy malware when a user opens an Office document.
“Work-from-home and Hybrid work is part of the new normal, and as more people work remotely, we need to ensure that we prioritise data security,” said Christian Edmond Reyes, Philippines Managing Director, HP Inc.
For more information on how you can optimize your learning and working experiences from home and remote work sites, please visit the official HP flagship store at Lazada and Shopee or visit HP.com.
