Researchers have discovered a new campaign to disperse the RedLine Stealer — a low-cost password seeker sold on underground forums — by mutating oneself with the data malware from GitHub repositories using a fake Binance NFT mystery box bots, an array of YouTube videos that take advantage of global interest in NFTs.
The enticement is the promise of a bot that will automatically purchase Binance NFT Mystery Boxes as they become available. Binance mystery boxes are collections of non-fungible token (NFT) things for users to purchase in the hopes of receiving a one-of-a-kind or uncommon item at a discounted price. Some of the NFTs obtained in such boxes can be used in online blockchain games to add unusual cosmetics or identities. However, the bot is a hoax. According to Gustavo Palazolo, a malware analyst at Netskope Threat Labs, the video descriptions on the YouTube pages encourage victims to accidentally download RedLine Stealer from a GitHub link.
In the NFT market, mystery boxes are popular because they provide individuals with the thrill of the unknown as well as the possibility of a large payout if they win a rare NFT. However, marketplaces such as Binance sell them in limited quantities, making some crates difficult to obtain before they sell out.
"We found in this attempt that the attacker is also exploiting GitHub in the threat flow, to host the payloads," Palazolo said. "RedLine Stealer was already known for manipulating YouTube videos to proliferate through false themes," Palazolo said. The advertising was spotted by Netskope in April. "While RedLine Stealer is a low-cost malware, it has several capabilities that might do considerable harm to its victims, including the loss of sensitive data," Palazolo said. This is why prospective buyers frequently use "bots" to obtain them, and it is exactly this big trend that threat actors are attempting to exploit.
The Ads were uploaded during March and April 2022, and each one includes a link to a GitHub repository that purports to host the bot but instead distributes RedLine. "BinanceNFT.bot v1.3.zip" is the name of the dropped file, which contains a program of a similar name, which is the cargo, a Visual C++ installation, and a README.txt file. Because RedLine is written in.NET, it demands the VC redistributable setup file to run, whereas the prose file contains the victim's installation instructions.
If the infected machine is found in any of the following countries, the virus does not run, according to Palazolo:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan
Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
The repository's GitHub account, "NFTSupp," began work in March 2022, according to Palazolo.
The same source also contains 15 zipped files including five different RedLine Stealer loaders. "While each of the five loaders we looked at is slightly different, they all unzip and inject RedLine Stealer in the same fashion, as we discussed earlier in this report. The oldest sample we identified was most likely created on March 11, 2022, and the newest sample was most likely compiled on April 7, 2022," he said.
These promotions, on the other hand, use rebrand.ly URLs that lead to MediaFire downloads. This operation is also spreading password-stealing trojans, according to VirusTotal.
RedLine is now available for $100 per month on a subscription basis to independent operators, and it allows for the theft of login passwords and cookies from browsers, content from chat apps, VPN keys, and cryptocurrency wallets.
Keep in mind that the validity of platforms like YouTube and GitHub doesn't really inherently imply content reliability, as these sites' upload checks and moderation systems are inadequate.
