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Web applications provide a wide array of utilities that are abused by malware as a replacement for traditional attacker-controlled servers. Thwarting these Web App-Engaged (WAE) malware requires rapid collaboration between incident responders and web app providers. Unfortunately, our research found that delays in this collaboration allow WAE malware to thrive. We developed Marsea, an automated malware analysis pipeline that studies WAE malware and enables rapid remediation. Given 10K malware samples, Marsea revealed 893 WAE malware in 97 families abusing 29 web apps. Our research uncovered a 226% increase in the number of WAE malware since 2020 and that malware authors are beginning to reduce their reliance on attacker-controlled servers. In fact, we found a 13.7% decrease in WAE malware relying on attacker-controlled servers. To date, we have used Marsea to collaborate with the web app providers to take down 50% of the malicious web app content.
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The Challenges of Blockchain-based Naming Systems for Malware Defenders
Successful malware campaigns often rely on the ability of infected hosts to locate and contact their command-and-control (C2) servers. Malware campaigns often use DNS domains for this purpose, but DNS domains may be taken down by the registrar that sold them. In response to this threat, malware operators have begun using blockchain-based naming systems to store C2 server names. Blockchain naming systems are a threat to malware defenders because they are not subject to a centralized authority, such as a registrar, that can take down abused domains, either voluntarily or under legal pressure. In fact, blockchains are robust against a variety of interventions that work on DNS domains, which is bad news for defenders. We analyze the ecosystem of blockchain naming systems and identify new locations for defenders to stage interventions against malware. In particular, we find that malware is obligated to use centralized or semi-centralized infrastructure to connect to blockchain naming systems and modify the records stored within. In fact, scattered interventions have already been staged against this centralized infrastructure: we present case studies of several such instances. We also present a study of how blockchain naming systems are currently abused by malware operators, and discuss the factors that would cause a blockchain naming system to become an unstoppable threat. We conclude that existing blockchain naming systems still provide opportunities for defenders to prevent malware from contacting its C2 servers.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2152644
- PAR ID:
- 10426036
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/eCrime57793.2022.10142131
