New Miori Malware Uses Text-based Protocol to Communicate with C&C Server for Launching a DDoS Attack

A new Mirai variant dubbed Miori uses text-based protocols to establish communication with command-and-control (C&C) servers.

The Miori campaign was identified in last year December, exploiting vulnerability n the ThinkPHP programming framework.

Miori targets IoT devices and exploits them by taking advantage of the vulnerabilities and integrate them to the botnet network to launch various attacks.

Researchers consider this Miori is very similar to the Mirai Malware and Miori developed to infect vulnerable IoT devices and use them as platforms for launching a DDoS attack. 

Hate’s Researchers – Miori Campaign

The Miori campaign was observed by Trend Micro researchers used a text-based protocol to establish communication with C&C instead of a usual binary-based protocol.

When the researchers tried establishing a connection with C&C server it displays the following message and terminates the connection, which indicates that “the cybercriminals behind the variant are wary of security researchers’ usual methods.”

Further analysis revealed that the malware uses text-based protocol and the C&C server should receive a specific string to allow anyone to connect if the string doesn’t preset it shows the message and terminate the connection.

“We also discovered that it uses a protocol for receiving encrypted commands, which is not present in older variants. As it waits for these commands, it simultaneously scans for vulnerable telnets hosts to propagate,” Trend Micro reported.

Also, it contains encrypted commands that capable of launching following attacks that include UDP Flood attack, TCP Flood attack, attack termination, and process termination commands.

Like other Mirai variants, it uses XOR Encryption for encrypting configuration data and the propagation method remains the same as like other Mirai variants.

It scans for the vulnerable hosts and sends the IP details to C&C server, later the C&C server sends the malware and executes malicious scripts on the host. Also, the source code has been sold in underground forums for US$110.

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