Pernicious spam (malspam) utilizing Microsoft office records with Hancitor-based Visual Basic (VB) macros to send Pony and Vawtrak. Regardless it happens,And A report Said this one from 2016-12-19, where Hancitor/Pony/Vawtrakmalspamwas disguised as a LogMeIn account notification ,And apparently, there’s been a recent lull in Hancitor/Pony/Vawtrakmalspam
Once Vawtrak infects a PC, it is capable of logging keystrokes, taking screenshots, and hijacking webcams. It also opens a remote access backdoor that allows anyone who controls it to steal files, digital certificates, and passwords from the victim’s computer..
It’s not as common as it once was, but malicious spam that infects users with the Pony and Vawtrak malware is still making its rounds in the wild.
what is Vawtrak
Vawtrak is an information stealing malware family that is primarily used to gain unauthorised access to bank accounts through online banking websites. Machines infected by Vawtrakform part of a botnet that collectively harvests login credentials for the online accounts to awide variety of financial and other industry organisations.
These stolen credentials are used,in combination with injected code and by proxying through the victim’s machine, to initiatefraudulent transfers to bank accounts controlled by the Vawtrak botnet administrators.
Brad Duncan ,Explained this In SANS blog,
” The link from the malspam downloaded a Microsoft Word document. The document contains a malicious VB macro described has Hancitor, Chanitor or Tordal. I generally call it Hancitor. If you enable macros, the document retrieves a Pony downloader DLL. The Pony downloader then retrieves and installs Vawtrak malware. “
On 10 January, Brad Duncan of the SANS Internet Storm Center received what appeared to be a parking ticket notification.
Flow chart of the infection process. source :SANS
Infection traffic after activating macros in the Word document.
Duncan conclude in his Article ,
we often become jaded as yet another wave of malspam does the same thing it’s done before. Patterns behind such activity are often well-documented. hat attitude only encourages the criminal groups behind malspam.
For various reasons, many environments don’t follow best security practices, and they’re still vulnerable. If we discuss on-going waves of malspam in high-visibility forums like this one, more people will be aware of the threat.
