Inside Scranos – A Cross Platform, Rootkit-Enabled Spyware Operation

Last year,
the Bitdefender Cyber Threat Intelligence Lab started analysis of a new
password- and data-stealing operation based around a rootkit driver digitally
signed with a possibly stolen certificate. The operation, partially described
in a recent article by Tencent, primarily targeted Chinese territory until
recently, when it broke out around the world.

Despite the
sophistication, this attack looks like a work in progress, with many components
in the early stage of development. Although the campaign has not reached the
magnitude of the Zacinlo adware
campaign, it is already infecting users worldwide.

We discovered that the operators of this rootkit-enabled spyware are
continuously testing new components on already-infected users and regularly
making minor improvement to old components. The various components can serve
different purposes or take different approaches to achieving their goals.  Some of the most important components shipped
with the malware can achieve the following:

• Extract cookies and steal login
  credentials from Google Chrome,
  Chromium, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Baidu
  Browser and Yandex Browser.
• Steal a user’s payment accounts
  from his Facebook, Amazon and Airbnb webpages.
• Send friend requests to other
  accounts, from the user’s Facebook account.
• Send phishing messages to the
  victim’s Facebook friends containing malicious APKs used to infect Android
  users as well.
• Steal login credentials for the
  user’s account on Steam.
• Inject JavaScript adware in Internet
  Explorer.
• Install Chrome/Opera extensions
  to inject JavaScript adware on these browsers as well.
• Exfiltrate browsing history.
• Silently display ads or muted YouTube
  videos to users via Chrome. We found some droppers that can install Chrome if
  it is not already on the victim’s computer.
• Subscribe users to YouTube video channels.
• Download and execute any
  payload.

Want to learn more? Download the full paper below: