The PennyWise malware family of new thieves has been classified as an active threat. The main targets of the malware are bitcoin wallets and sensitive browser data.
How does malware propagate?
The virus advertises itself on YouTube and is packaged as a free Bitcoin mining application.
Researchers have discovered over 80 videos on YouTube that have been heavily infested, with few or no viewers showing. The threat actor maintains all of these films on his YouTube account.
The promised Bitcoin mining software is purportedly contained in a password-protected ZIP file that users are convinced to download. It is actually a PennyWise.
The characteristics of the virus PennyWise
The virus makes use of multithreading to steal data more effectively.
It targets more than 30 Chrome-based browsers, more than five Mozilla-based browsers, Opera, and Microsoft Edge, and it acquires the path for a variety of browsers.
The virus then converts to Russian Standard Time by grabbing the victim’s operating system’s username, machine name, system language, and timezone.
After that, it advances to the processor and graphic driver names and stores everything in a secret folder in the AppDataLocal directory.
The virus then makes an effort to ascertain the type of environment it is operating in by employing anti-analysis and anti-detection techniques.
Additional tests are made to find out if an antivirus or sandbox is active.
What does it steal?
The virus locates browsers and takes data from them, including cookies, master passwords, encryption keys, and login information.
Additionally stolen are Telegram and Discord sessions, as well as a snapshot of the user’s screen.
A list of predetermined folders is where wallet files are taken. Additionally targeted are cryptocurrency plugins for Chrome-based browsers.
Once all of the data has been gathered, it is compressed and transferred to a server under the control of the attacker before being erased from the machine.
How can you defend yourself from this danger?
Never download software from unreliable or unconfirmed sources.
Never turn off your antivirus software to install a new programme.
The computer’s antivirus or security programme should constantly be maintained patched.
It is best to avoid keeping login information in the browser.
