Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

Takedown of GitHub Repositories Disrupts RedLine Malware Operations

Four GitHub repositories used by RedLine stealer control panels were suspended, disrupting the malware’s operations.

The RedLine information stealer’s operations have been disrupted after the takedown of GitHub repositories used by the malware’s control panels, cybersecurity firm ESET reports.

A piece of commodity malware active since at least early 2020, the RedLine stealer is written in .NET and packs broad data exfiltration capabilities.

The malware targets system information, cookies and other browser data, login credentials for various applications and services, credit card information, and crypto wallets.

Available under the stealer-as-a-service business model, RedLine was seen being offered by 23 of 34 Russian-speaking groups that were distributing infostealers last year. Each of the groups had an average of 200 members.

RedLine is sold on underground forums and Telegram channels. Affiliates purchase access to an all-in-one control panel that acts as a command-and-control (C&C) server, allowing them to generate new samples and to manage stolen information.

Recently, threat actors were seen distributing the information stealer via the PureCrypter downloader, fake Adobe Acrobat Sign signature requests, and malicious Microsoft OneNote documents.

Working together with SaaS platform provider Flare, ESET discovered that RedLine’s control panels use GitHub repositories as dead-drop resolvers.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

The security researchers identified four such repositories and alerted the Microsoft-owned code collaboration platform. GitHub suspended the repositories, thus disrupting RedLine stealer’s operations.

“No fallback channels were observed. The removal of these repositories should break authentication for panels currently in use. While this doesn’t affect the actual back-end servers, it will force the RedLine operators to distribute new panels to their customers,” ESET says.

Stealer-as-a-service is one of the top three crime-as-a-service categories likely to be prevalent in 2023, along with ransomware-as-a-service and victims-as-a-service.

Related: ‘Sys01 Stealer’ Malware Targeting Government Employees

Related: Multi-Purpose Botnet and Infostealer ‘Aurora’ Rising to Fame

Related: Microsoft Build Engine Abused for Fileless Malware Delivery

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Malware & Threats

Threat actors are increasingly abusing Microsoft OneNote documents to deliver malware in both targeted and spray-and-pray campaigns.

Malware & Threats

Unpatched and unprotected VMware ESXi servers worldwide have been targeted in a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerability patched in 2021.

Malware & Threats

A vulnerability affecting IBM’s Aspera Faspex file transfer solution, tracked as CVE-2022-47986, has been exploited in attacks.

Cybercrime

The recent ransomware attack targeting Rackspace was conducted by a cybercrime group named Play using a new exploitation method, the cloud company revealed this...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...