Wednesday, May 21, 2025
HomeComputer SecurityBeware of Coronavirus-themed Attack that Attacks Windows Computer to Install's Lokibot Malware

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

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

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.

Coronavirus-themed Attack

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.

- Advertisement - Google News
Coronavirus-themed
Themed attack

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.

Executable

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.”

Coronavirus-themed

In a recent attack campaign, Lokibot trojan malware impersonates as a popular game launcher to trick users into executing malware on their machines.

Gurubaran
Gurubaran
Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

Latest articles

Hackers Target Mobile Users Using PWA JavaScript to Bypass Browser Security

A sophisticated new injection campaign has been uncovered, targeting mobile users through malicious third-party...

Docker Zombie Malware Infects Containers for Crypto Mining and Self-Replication

A novel malware campaign targeting containerized infrastructures has emerged, exploiting insecurely exposed Docker APIs...

Hackers Masquerade as Organizations to Steal Payroll Logins and Redirect Payments from Employees

ReliaQuest, hackers have deployed a cunning search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning scheme to orchestrate...

PupkinStealer Exploits Web Browser Passwords and App Tokens to Exfiltrate Data Through Telegram

A newly identified .NET-based information-stealing malware, dubbed PupkinStealer (also known as PumpkinStealer in some...

Resilience at Scale

Why Application Security is Non-Negotiable

The resilience of your digital infrastructure directly impacts your ability to scale. And yet, application security remains a critical weak link for most organizations.

Application Security is no longer just a defensive play—it’s the cornerstone of cyber resilience and sustainable growth. In this webinar, Karthik Krishnamoorthy (CTO of Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface), will share how AI-powered application security can help organizations build resilience by

Discussion points


Protecting at internet scale using AI and behavioral-based DDoS & bot mitigation.
Autonomously discovering external assets and remediating vulnerabilities within 72 hours, enabling secure, confident scaling.
Ensuring 100% application availability through platforms architected for failure resilience.
Eliminating silos with real-time correlation between attack surface and active threats for rapid, accurate mitigation

More like this

Docker Zombie Malware Infects Containers for Crypto Mining and Self-Replication

A novel malware campaign targeting containerized infrastructures has emerged, exploiting insecurely exposed Docker APIs...

Hackers Masquerade as Organizations to Steal Payroll Logins and Redirect Payments from Employees

ReliaQuest, hackers have deployed a cunning search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning scheme to orchestrate...

PupkinStealer Exploits Web Browser Passwords and App Tokens to Exfiltrate Data Through Telegram

A newly identified .NET-based information-stealing malware, dubbed PupkinStealer (also known as PumpkinStealer in some...