Infostealers: a threat that is still largely (too) stealthy

In September, Britton White and PogoWasRight.org teamed up to produce an explainer and caution about infostealers that was oriented to the public. Our article, Redline: Storing Passwords in your Browser Can Ruin Your Life (But Will Make Criminals VERY Happy!) included cautions about employees who work from home and who might have their login credentials to their work environment compromised by infostealers. We also asked lawyers what employers could do about the risks posed. If you follow Britton White on LinkedIn, you will see him frequently post about login creds he has found to entities whose breaches have been in the news. Whether those creds were the ones that gave threat actors access in those specific cases is unknown, but the risk was there. Now Valéry Rieß-Marchive has published a new report with Redline research. His article (machine translated) begins: What is the secret to the insolent success of credential-stealing malware, the infostealers ? Their ability to pass through the nets of workstation protection systems (PPE), or even threat detection and response systems (EDR) – or almost! Unless it’s greed. Investigation. The Redline infostealer generates, for each compromised machine, a file named UserInformation.txt . In it, under the line “Antiviruses:” is the list of EPPs, EDRs, even firewalls installed on the PC whose identification data will have been looted. To measure the effectiveness of protections against this threat, we looked at more than 66,000 logs from the Redline infostealer – corresponding to as many PCs around the world –, broadcast free of charge on Telegram channels in the space of a month. . And the balance is bad. Read more at LeMagIT.