Description

CTM360 reports an ongoing global malware campaign abusing trusted services such as Google Groups to distribute credential-stealing malware. Threat actors infiltrate industry-specific discussion forums and post convincing technical content referencing network issues, authentication errors, or configuration problems. Within these discussions, they embed malicious download links disguised as legitimate software packages (e.g., “Download {Organization_Name} for Windows 10”). To evade detection, attackers use URL shorteners and Google-hosted redirectors via Docs and Drive that detect the victim’s operating system before delivering tailored payloads. Over 4,000 malicious Google Groups and 3,500 Google-hosted URLs have been identified as part of this infrastructure. For Windows users, victims receive a password-protected compressed archive hosted on attacker-controlled file-sharing platforms. The archive expands to approximately 950MB, although the malicious executable inside is only about 33MB. The file is padded with null bytes to bypass antivirus file-size scanning thresholds and disrupt static analysis. Once executed, the malware reassembles segmented binaries, launches an AutoIt-compiled executable, and decrypts a memory-resident payload consistent with Lumma Stealer. Capabilities include browser credential theft, session cookie harvesting, shell command execution, and HTTP POST-based exfiltration to C2 infrastructure such as healgeni[.]live, using multipart/form-data to mask stolen content. Linux users are redirected to a trojanized Chromium-based browser called Ninja Browser, presented as a privacy-focused browser. Analysis reveals it installs malicious extensions silently and establishes persistence via scheduled tasks that poll attacker servers daily and install updates without user interaction. A built-in extension named “NinjaBrowserMonetisation” injects scripts, manipulates cookies and tabs, tracks users via unique identifiers, and stores data externally using heavily obfuscated JavaScript. The browser defaults to a suspicious Russian-based search engine (“X-Finder”) and connects to domains such as ninja-browser[.]com and nbdownload[.]space, indicating infrastructure designed for long-term compromise and potential future payload deployment.