The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group has been linked to an energetic marketing campaign that leverages pretend LinkedIn job gives within the cryptocurrency and journey sectors to ship malware able to infecting Home windows, macOS, and Linux working methods.
In line with cybersecurity firm Bitdefender, the rip-off begins with a message despatched on an expert social media community, engaging them with the promise of distant work, part-time flexibility, and good pay.
“As soon as the goal expresses curiosity, the ‘hiring course of’ unfolds, with the scammer requesting a CV or perhaps a private GitHub repository hyperlink,” the Romanian agency mentioned in a report shared with The Hacker Information.
“Though seemingly harmless, these requests can serve nefarious functions, corresponding to harvesting private knowledge or lending a veneer of legitimacy to the interplay.”
As soon as the requested particulars are obtained, the assault strikes to the following stage the place the menace actor, beneath the guise of a recruiter, shares a hyperlink to a GitHub or Bitbucket repository containing a minimal viable product (MVP) model of a supposed decentralized trade (DEX) mission and instructs the sufferer to test it out and supply their suggestions.
Current throughout the code is an obfuscated script that is configured to retrieve a next-stage payload from api.npoint[.]io, a cross-platform JavaScript data stealer that is able to harvesting knowledge from varied cryptocurrency pockets extensions that could be put in on the sufferer’s browser.
The stealer additionally doubles up as a loader to retrieve a Python-based backdoor accountable for monitoring clipboard content material modifications, sustaining persistent distant entry, and dropping extra malware.
At this stage, it is price noting that the ways documented by Bitdefender exhibit overlaps with a recognized assault exercise cluster dubbed Contagious Interview (aka DeceptiveDevelopment and DEV#POPPER), which is designed to drop a JavaScript stealer known as BeaverTail and Python implant known as InvisibleFerret.
The malware deployed via the Python malware is a .NET binary that may obtain and begin a TOR proxy server to speak with a command-and-control (C2) server, exfiltrate primary system data, and ship one other payload that, in flip, can siphon delicate knowledge, log keystrokes, and launch a cryptocurrency miner.
“The menace actors’ an infection chain is complicated, containing malicious software program written in a number of programming languages and utilizing a wide range of applied sciences, corresponding to multi-layered Python scripts that recursively decode and execute themselves, a JavaScript stealer that first harvests browser knowledge earlier than pivoting to additional payloads, and .NET-based stagers able to disabling security instruments, configuring a Tor proxy, and launching crypto miners,” Bitdefender mentioned.
There’s proof to counsel these efforts are fairly widespread, going by stories shared on LinkedIn and Reddit, with minor tweaks to the general assault chain. In some instances, the candidates are requested to clone a Web3 repository and run it regionally as a part of an interview course of, whereas in others they’re instructed to repair deliberately launched bugs within the code.
One of many Bitbucket repositories in query refers to a mission named “miketoken_v2.” It’s not accessible on the code internet hosting platform.
The disclosure comes a day after SentinelOne revealed that the Contagious Interview marketing campaign is getting used to ship one other malware codenamed FlexibleFerret.
