Beware of Coronavirus-themed Attack that Attacks Windows Computer to Install’s Lokibot Malware

A new campaign observed using COVID-19/Coronavirus-themed email appears to be coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) delivers the infamous Lokibot malware.

The emails include a compressed file and the compression used is ARJ, which is used for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives.

The compressed file is with the extension “Doc.zip.arj“, when decompressing in 7-zip the payload file “DOC.pdf.exe“, a method to trick the users hoping it is not an executable one.

The campaign was observed by Fortinet, once the executable (“COVID_19- WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CDC_DOC.pdf.exe“) is opened the victim machine gets infected with the Lokibot malware.

Lokibot malware was first observed in the year 2015, it is designed to steal information from the infected machine.

It collects information and credentials from multiple applications, such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Thunderbird, FTP, and SFTP applications.

The malware was also sold in underground hacking forums, it was initially advertised as an information stealer and keylogger, later it continues to enhance its capabilities.

Recently it was distributed using a powerful code injection technique to evade the detection, anti-analysis technique and disable the security tools that run in the target victims’ computer.

According to Fortiguard telemetry, the campaign found to be active since March 27 and it attacks the following countries.

“The Top 10 sites targeted by this campaign: Turkey (29%), Portugal (19%), Germany (12%), Austria (10%), and the United States (10%) top the list, with Belgium, Puerto Rico, Italy, Canada, and Spain rounding out the top 10 with less than one percent each.”