Description

Google Chrome's new App-Bound Encryption is a feature designed to protect sensitive data, such as cookies and stored passwords, from malware developers. With App-Bound Encryption, introduced in Chrome version 127, these items are encrypted using a Windows service with system privileges, making it harder for malware to access them. Despite this, security researchers g0njxa and RussianPanda9xx have observed that multiple infostealer developers, including those behind MeduzaStealer, Whitesnake, Lumma Stealer, Lumar (PovertyStealer), Vidar Stealer, and StealC, have announced working bypasses for their tools. g0njxa confirmed to BleepingComputer that the latest variant of Lumma Stealer can indeed bypass the encryption feature in Chrome version 129, currently the most recent release. Testing was conducted in a sandbox environment on a Windows 10 Pro system. Meduza and Whitesnake reportedly implemented their bypass techniques over two weeks ago, with Lumma following suit last week, and Vidar and StealC achieving their bypasses this week. Initially, Lumar attempted a workaround that required admin rights, but they have since developed a method that functions with standard user privileges. Lumma Stealer developers have reassured their users that admin rights are no longer necessary to carry out cookie theft. In order to defeat this security measure, malware would need system-level privileges or the ability to inject code directly into Chrome-actions which are likely to be detected by security tools. The precise method used to bypass App-Bound Encryption remains undisclosed, though Rhadamanthys malware authors claimed it only took them 10 minutes to reverse-engineer the encryption. BleepingComputer has reached out to Google for comment on these developments but has not yet received a response.