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nication congress def con hackers on planet earth security bsides shmoocon summercon cybercrime crimeware list of cybercriminals script kiddie hacking tools exploit forensics focused operating systems payload social engineering vulnerability practice sites hackthissite zone h malware rootkit backdoor trojan horse virus worm spyware ransomware logic bomb botnet keystroke logging hids web shell rce infostealer cybersecurity domains application security cloud computing security cryptography data security digital forensics governance risk and compliance identity and access management network security ot ics security penetration test security operations threat intelligence groups anonymous chaos computer club homebrew computer club defunct legion of doom defunct lulzsec defunct masters of deception defunct red team blue team publications 2600 the hacker quarterly hacker news nuts and volts phrack v t e an infostealer is malware that scans a computer for personally identifiable information pii such as login details and financial information the information is then sent to the attacker who often sells it on a darknet market infostealers usually consist of a bot framework that allows the attacker to configure the behaviour of the infostealer and a management panel that takes the form of a server to which the infostealer sends data infostealers infiltrate devices through phishing attacks infected websites and malicious software downloads including video game mods and pirated software among other methods once downloaded the infostealers gather sensitive information about the user s device and send the data back to the server infostealers are usually distributed under the malware as a service maas model where developers allow other parties to use their infostealers for subscription fees the functionality of infostealers can vary with some focused on data harvesting while others offer remote access that allows additional malware to be executed stolen data may then be used in spearphishing campaigns for other cyber attacks such as the deployment of ransomware or to sell it for profit 1 the number of stolen data logs being sold on the russian market a cybercrime forum has increased significantly since 2022 according to kaspersky s research in mid 2023 24 of malware offered as a service are infostealers overview edit see also identity theft in cybercrime credential theft is a well known mechanism through which malicious individuals steal personal information such as usernames passwords or cookies to illegitimately gain access to a victim s online accounts and computer this crime typically unfolds in four stages with the first being the acquisition of the stolen credentials infostealers are a specific type of malware that are designed for this initial stage they usually consist of two distinct parts the bot framework and a command and control server often known as the management panel or interface 2 the bot framework includes a builder that allows the attacker to configure how the infostealer will behave on a user s computer and what kind of information it will steal the management interface usually written in traditional web development languages like php html and javascript 3 is typically hosted on the commercial cloud infrastructure 4 the management interface primarily functions as a web server to which the infostealer sends confidential information the interface also provides the attacker with information about the status of deployed infostealers and allows the attacker to control their behaviour 3 distribution and use edit infostealers are commonly distributed through the malware as a service maas model enabling individuals with varying technical knowledge to deploy these malicious programs under this smodel three distinct groups typically emerge developers malware service providers and operators developers the most technically skilled write the infostealer code malware service providers purchase licenses for the malware and offer it as a service to other cybercriminals the operators who can be developers or service providers themselves depending on their skill level use these services to perform credential theft 2 once the malware is purchased it is spread to target victim machines using various social engineering techniques phishing including spear phishing campaigns that target specific victims is commonly employed infostealers are commonly embedded in email attachments or malicious links that link to websites that perform drive by downloads 3 5 additionally they are often bundled with compromised or malicious browser extensions infected game cheating packages and pirated or otherwise compromised software 5 after the stealer is downloaded and run by a victim it communicates with the attacker s command and control servers allowing the attacker to steal information from the user s computer while most infostealers primarily target credentials some also enable attackers to remotely introduce and execute other malware such as ransomware on the victim s computer 2 6 credentials obtained from infostealer attacks are often distributed as logs or credential dumps typically shared on paste sites like pastebin where cybercriminals may offer free samples or sold in bulk on underground hacking forums often for amounts as low as us 10 7 8 buyers of these stolen credentials usually log in to assess their value particularly looking for credentials associated with financial services or linked to other credentials with similar patterns as these are especially valuable 9 high value credentials are often sold to other cybercriminals at higher prices 10 these credentials may then be used for various crimes including financial fraud 11 integrating the credentials into zombie networks and reputation boosting operations 11 or as springboards for more sophisticated attacks such as scamming businesses distributing ransomware or conducting state sponsored espionage 7 12 additionally some cybercriminals use stolen credentials for social engineering attacks impersonating the original owner to claim they have been a victim of a crime and soliciting money from the victim s contacts 13 14 many buyers of these stolen credentials take precautions to maintain access for longer periods such as changing passwords and using tor networks to obscure their locations which helps avoid detection by services that might otherwise identify and shut down the stolen credentials 13 14 features edit an infostealer s primary function is to exfiltrate sensitive information about the victim to an attacker s command and control servers the exact type of data that is exfiltrated will depend on the data stealing features enabled by the operator and the specific variant of infostealer used 15 most infostealers however do contain functionality to harvest a variety of information about the host operating system as well as system settings and user profiles some more advanced infostealers include the capability to introduce secondary malware such as remote access trojans and ransomware 3 in 2009 researchers at the symantec rapid response team released a technical analysis of the zeus infostealer one of the first infostealers to be created 16 they found that the malware automatically exfiltrated all data stored in a computer s protected storage service which was usually used by internet explorer to store passwords and tries to capture any passwords sent to the computer using the pop3 and ftp protocols in addition to this the malware allowed the researchers to define a set of configuration files to specify a list of web injections to perform on a user s computer as well as another configuration file that controlled which web urls the malware would monitor another configuration also allowed the researchers to define a set of rules that could be used to test if additional http requests contained passwords or other sensitive information 17 more recently in 2020 researchers at the eindhoven university of technology conducted a study analysing the information available for sale on the underground credential black market impaas ru as part of their study they were able to replicate the workings of a version of the azorult infostealer amongst the functions discovered by the researchers was a builder which allowed operators to define what kind of data would be stolen the researchers also found evidence of plugins that stole a user s browsing history a customisable regex based mechanism that allows the attacker to retrieve arbitrary files from a user s computer a browser password extractor module a module to extract skype history and a module to find and exfiltrate cryptocurrency wallet files 15 the researchers also found that the data most frequently stolen using the azorult infostealers and sold on the black market could be broadly categorised into three main types fingerprints cookies and resources fingerprints consisted of identifiers that were constructed by probing a variety of features made available by the browser these were not tied to a specific service but were considered to be an accurately unique identifier for a user s browsers cookies allowed buyers to hijack a victim s browser session by injecting it into a browser environment resources refer to browser related files found on a user s operating system such as password storage files 18 economics and impact edit setting up an infostealer operation has become increasingly accessible due to the proliferation of stealer as a service enterprises significantly lowering financial and technical barriers this makes it feasible for even less sophisticated cybercriminals to engage in such activities 3 in a 2023 paper researchers from the georgia institute of technology noted that the hosted stealer market is extremely mature and highly competitive with some operators offering to set up infostealers for as low as 12 19 for the service providers running these stealer operations the researchers estimated that a typical infostealer operator incurs only a few one off costs the license to use the infostealer which is obtained from a malware developer and the registration fee for the domain used to host the command and control server the primary ongoing cost incurred by these operators is the cost associated with hosting the servers based on these calculations the researchers concluded that the stealer as a service business model is extremely profitable with many operators achieving profit margins of over 90 with revenues in the high thousands of dollars 20 due to their extreme profitability and accessibility the number of cybersecurity incidents that involve infostealers has risen 7 the covid 19 post pandemic shift towards remote and hybrid work where companies give employees access to enterprise services on their home machines has been cited as one of the reasons behind the increase in the effectiveness of infostealers 7 21 in 2023 research by secureworks discovered that the number of infostealer logs or data exfiltrated from each computer increased from 2 million to 5 million logs from june 2022 to february 2023 on the russian market the biggest underground cyberforum 21 according to kaspersky s research in mid 2023 24 of malware offered as a service are infostealers 22 in 2024 infostealers were used to steal 2 1 billion credentials over 60 of the 3 2 billion credentials stolen from all organizations infostealers are heavily utilized because of their low cost with an average cost of 200 per month in 2024 23 in february 2025 it was reported by hudson rock that infostealers had compromised email accounts and credentials across multiple us government and military departments including the fbi 24 references edit citations edit vietnamese speaking hackers appear to be running global data theft operation through telegram therecord media retrieved 2025 08 08 1 2 3 avgetidis et al 2023 pp 5308 1 2 3 4 5 avgetidis et al 2023 pp 5308 5309 avgetidis et al 2023 pp 5314 5319 1 2 nurmi niemelä brumley 2023 p 1 ryan 2021 p 76 1 2 3 4 newman 2024 nurmi niemelä brumley 2023 p 2 nurmi niemelä brumley 2023 p 6 nurmi niemelä brumley 2023 p 7 1 2 nurmi niemelä brumley 2023 p 8 muncaster 2023 1 2 onaolapo mariconti stringhini 2016 p 65 70 76 1 2 bursztein et al 2014 p 353 1 2 campobasso allodi 2020 pp 1669 grammatikakis et al 2021 pp 121 nicolas chien 2009 pp 3 4 campobasso allodi 2020 pp 1669 1670 avgetidis et al 2023 p 5309 avgetidis et al 2023 p 5318 1 2 hendery 2023 lyons 2024 kapko matt 2025 03 18 infostealers fueled cyberattacks and snagged 2 1b credentials last year cyberscoop retrieved 2025 04 22 infostealing malware infections in the u s military defense sector a cybersecurity disaster in the making infostealers com hudson rock february 2025 retrieved 2025 09 16 sources edit avgetidis athanasios alrawi omar valakuzhy kevin lever charles burbage paul keromytis angelos d monrose fabian antonakakis manos 2023 beyond the gates an empirical analysis of http managed password stealers and operators usenix security 5307 5324 isbn 978 1 939133 37 3 cite journal cs1 maint periodical has isbn link bursztein elie benko borbala margolis daniel pietraszek tadek archer andy aquino allan pitsillidis andreas savage stefan 2014 11 05 handcrafted fraud and extortion manual account hijacking in the wild proceedings of the 2014 conference on internet measurement conference acm pp 347 358 doi 10 1145 2663716 2663749 isbn 978 1 4503 3213 2 campobasso michele allodi luca 2020 10 30 impersonation as a service characterizing the emerging criminal infrastructure for user impersonation at scale proceedings of the 2020 acm sigsac conference on computer and communications security acm pp 1665 1680 arxiv 2009 04344 doi 10 1145 3372297 3417892 isbn 978 1 4503 7089 9 grammatikakis konstantinos p koufos ioannis kolokotronis nicholas vassilakis costas shiaeles stavros 2021 07 26 understanding and mitigating banking trojans from zeus to emotet 2021 ieee international conference on cyber security and resilience csr ieee pp 121 128 arxiv 2109 01610 doi 10 1109 csr51186 2021 9527960 isbn 978 1 6654 0285 9 hendery simon 2023 05 17 data log thefts explode as infostealers gain popularity with cybercriminals sc magazine archived from the original on 2023 10 17 retrieved 2024 07 18 lyons jessica 29 february 2024 ransomware gangs are paying attention to infostealers so why aren t you the register archived from the original on 11 september 2024 retrieved 17 august 2024 muncaster phil 2023 02 09 new info stealer discovered as russia prepares for new offensive infosecurity magazine archived from the original on 2024 09 11 retrieved 2024 08 13 newman lily hay 29 july 2024 how infostealers pillaged the world s passwords wired issn 1059 1028 archived from the original on 2024 08 13 retrieved 2024 08 13 nicolas falliere chien eric 2009 zeus king of the bots pdf symantec archived from the original pdf on 2017 01 10 nurmi juha niemelä mikko brumley billy bob 2023 08 29 malware finances and operations a dat...