Massive YouTube Campaign Targeting Over 100 Applications to Deliver Info Stealer

Threat Actors Create Phishing Websites for Mass Infection

Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs (CRIL) identified massive phishing campaigns running on YouTube as tutorials for downloading and installing cracked software, Games for free.

The video tutorial tricks the users into installing Information stealer from the link given in the video description and lures them into believing it is a crack for their desired software.

We have seen many similar campaigns in the past, downloading Pennywise and Redline stealer. In these types of campaigns, the Threat Actor (TA) usually hosts the malicious file in the free file hosting platform.

Still, in this case, the TA has created phishing pages mimicking legitimate websites that provide service to users for downloading various software, games, and other tools.

Going through the different campaigns, we identified several phishing websites mentioned in the video description. The TA has created phishing pages to increase the chances of successful infection. Also, the impact of this campaign can be calculated based on the number of views on each video posted. The maximum number of views we observed on a single video is 18k, indicating the campaign is widespread.

The below image depicts the comments in the YouTube videos. Similar comments from different YouTube videos conclude that the TA adds these to convince users to think this software is legitimate.

YouTube Campaigns Analysis:

During our research, we observed that the TA responsible for running these campaigns primarily targets people looking to get paid software for free such as games, programs, etc. To get this software for free, people usually search keywords like “software cracks,” “keygens,” etc. The search result of these keywords redirects users to these YouTube videos, guiding them to install malicious executables pretending to be the software they wanted to install.

Campaign 1

The below image depicts a website hosted on the URL: hxxps://teensoft[.]org/, which is being used by the YouTube video campaign to deliver Info stealer. The website delivers Vidar stealer malware posing as legitimate applications such as MS Office, Spotify Premium 2022, Adobe software, etc.

Campaign 2

The image below showcases a website hosted on the URL: hxxps://wh1tesoftware[.]me/, which is used by the malicious YouTube video campaign to deliver stealer malware.   

The website’s catalog contains various malicious software hosted with legitimate names, such as MS Office, CCleaner PRO, AutoCAD, and Adobe software, which are distributed to target users. Behind these names, the website delivers Vidar stealer.

Campaign 3

The below figure showcases a website hosted on the URL: hxxps://soft-exp[.]org/, which is being used by the YouTube video campaign to deliver malicious files. The website targets more than 100 applications that come under the categories of games, crack software, plugins, Roblox scripts, and cheats to lure users into installing info stealers on the user’s machine. These websites deliver RecordBreaker stealer.

Campaign 4

The figure below showcases a website hosted on the URL: hxxps://appshigha[.]com/, which is used by the malicious YouTube video campaign to deliver malicious programs.

On the website, software such as Sapphire Plugin, Twixtor Plugin, Valorant Hack, GTA Online Mod Menu, MS Office, CCleaner PRO, and AutoCAD are listed and available for download. When the users try to download the software, a payload of RecordBreaker stealer is executed silently in the background.

The below table shows the list of software targeted by the TAs to deliver stealers.

The below table shows the list of gaming software the TA claims to deliver for free to infect users.  

Valorant  Hack	GTA Online Mod Menu	Fortnite Hack	Fortnite Skin Changer	Genshin Impact Hack
Warzone Hack	Rust Hack	Spider-Man Remastered	Synapse X Hack	NBA 2K23
Marvel’s Spider-Man	F1 Manager	Saints Row	Elden Ring	Dying Light 2
Wanderer Download	Expeditions Rome	Blackwind Download	Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction	Aery – Dreamscape
Monster Hunter Rise	The Kids We Were	God of War	Weird West	Far Cry 6

The below table shows the list of ROBLOX scripts targeted by the YouTube campaign. We have mentioned only 25 targeted ROBLOX script names here.

Tatakai V.2	Project Slayers	Limited Words	PLS STEAL	Gumball Factory Tycoon
Apocalypse Rising 2	Viet Nam Piece	Mining Clicker Simulator	Your Bizarre Adventure	Legend Piece
Anime World Tower Defense	Pet Posse Script	Anime Adventures	Bid Battles	Bid Battles
Raise A Floppa	ARCH PIECE	Combat Warriors	Telekinesis	Lumber Tycoon
Decaying Winter	Anime Battle Simulator	Anime Sword Simulator	World Of Stands	Prison Life

The below table shows the list of cheats and plugins targeted.

CHEATS:

Download Kiddions Modest Menu

free-rust-hack-download

PLUGINS:

Sapphire Plugin

Twixtor Plugin

Most of the binaries hosted on these phishing sites act as either downloaders or droppers for the stealer payload. The malware infection happens in multiple stages and at the end, executes the stealer payload. These stealers mainly exfiltrate sensitive user data such as cookies, system information, login credentials, etc. to their Command and Control (C&C) server.

This exfiltrated data is referred to as Stealer Logs , which are usually sold on cybercrime marketplaces and can be leveraged by other TAs to target individuals or get into corporate networks. The phishing campaign discussed in this blog was mainly distributing Vidar and RecordBreaker stealer.

Vidar Stealer

Vidar InfoStealer is based on C/C++ programming language. The Vidar malware family, which was first identified in 2018, can steal sensitive data from the victim’s PC. This includes banking information, saved passwords, IP addresses, browser history, login credentials, and crypto wallets, which can then be transferred to the TAs Command and C&C. We witnessed in past also where TAs used delivery mechanisms such as spam mail, cracked software, keygens, etc. to distribute this malware.

RecordBreaker Stealer

RecordBreaker stealer is suspected to be a recent version of the Raccoon stealer, which was spotted in the wild in 2022. While executing, this stealer performs several GET\POST requests with Command and Control (C&C) Server. Initially, it fetches the configuration and DLLs and then exfiltrates the victim’s data to C&C using a POST request. The stealer can also deliver other malware payloads based on the configuration’s settings. The figure below shows the stealer receiving configuration file.

Conclusion

Threat Actors are constantly enhancing their techniques to deliver malicious programs. In this particular case, the TA uses YouTube channels to spread malicious payloads hosted on phishing websites. This campaign primarily leverages YouTube videos (with step-by-step tutorials) to trick users into installing malicious programs on their systems. CRIL has been observing increasing trends in social media scams of late.  

Cyble Research and Intelligence Labs’ mission is to continuously monitor and alert our audience to high-tech cyber scams and protect our clients in cyberspace by supporting them in achieving their goals.

Our Recommendations

We have listed some essential cybersecurity best practices that create the first line of control against attackers. We recommend that our readers follow the best practices given below:

• Avoid downloading pirated software from unverified sites.
• Use strong passwords and enforce multi-factor authentication wherever possible. 
• Keep updating your passwords after certain intervals.
• Use a reputed anti-virus and internet security software package on your connected devices, including PC, laptop, and mobile.  
• Refrain from opening untrusted links and email attachments without first verifying their authenticity.   
• Block URLs that could be used to spread the malware, e.g., Torrent/Warez.  
• Monitor the beacon on the network level to block data exfiltration by malware or TA.  
• Enable Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Solutions  organization wide. 

MITRE ATT&CK® Techniques

Tactic	Technique ID	Technique Name
Execution	T1204	User Execution
Defense Evasion	T1140 T1497 T1055.012	Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion Process Injection: Process Hollowing
Credential Access	T1555   T1539   T1552   T1528	Credentials from Password Stores   Steal Web Session Cookies   Unsecured Credentials   Steal Application Access Token
Collection	T1113	Screen Capture
Discovery	T1518   T1124   T1007	Software Discovery   System Time Discovery   System Service Discovery
Command and Control	T1071	Application Layer Protocol
Exfiltration	T1041	Exfiltration Over C2 Channel

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

Indicators	Indicator Type	Description
e99bebb8facdfff476c4d1163dfa85cb b04cdfb5b57b309a1d9a2e5f0bd9c01cb490854b f1e8f4fba1da25cc02d0673f8cc3962c7419d769cb139f818f8f1e4d56a891df	MD5 SHA1 SHA256	Campaign 2: Vidar Stealer
hxxp://95.217.27.240/	URL	Campaign 2: C&C
95.217.27.240	IP	Campaign 2 C&C
8e636392c37a87f6f80d94105eff13f3 efac1bb38a50284b74d5f9e90ba3909d7a998df7 65509ae4d5b04ea786423cbdee234ddca5363da3db68f49ba4fc0db16ceba799	MD5 SHA1 SHA256	Campaign 1: Vidar Stealer
hxxp://95.217.27.240/	URL	Campaign 1 C&C
hxxp://195.201.251.82:80	URL	Campaign 1 C&C
78c988133da5464c206078efe56b9191 3024b41db4386592449a7ecb19bf8acc3853d9b7 81ae14e327301b347ff43d58c2a907fb2fb94dc3e73c750bad64ab824066b34c	MD5 SHA1 SHA256	Campaign 3 RecordBreaker stealer
hxxp://91.213.50.70/Objhkcgmiub.bmp	URI	Campaign 3 Malicious URI
hxxp://51.255.211.253/	URL	Campaign 3 C&C
46b417fe39b7cf62a63b665a8caef5ea 5448de47e5e922686ed66fbc21ba6ebf830e0cc7 edcabbcc1389f1a4d2ad030c28dcb97d065027e0645faa3199f66b05505cced5	MD5 SHA1 SHA256	Campaign 4 RecordBreaker stealer
hxxp://146.70.86[.]136		Campaign 4 C&C