Threat actors are increasingly exploiting legitimate, commercially available packer software like BoxedApp to evade detection and distribute malware, including remote access trojans and information stealers. According to Check Point security researcher Jiri Vinopal, most malicious samples packed with BoxedApp target financial institutions and government industries. Submissions of BoxedApp-packed malware to the VirusTotal platform spiked around May 2023, with notable activity from Turkey, the U.S., Germany, France, and Russia. Among the malware distributed using BoxedApp are Agent Tesla, AsyncRAT, LockBit, NanoCore, NjRAT, Quasar RAT, Ramnit, RedLine, Remcos, and RevengeRAT. Packers, self-extracting archives designed to bundle and compress software, are increasingly repurposed by threat actors to obfuscate their payloads. BoxedApp products like BoxedApp Packer and BxILMerge provide features that help attackers deploy malware undetected. These tools enable the packing of both native and .NET PEs, complicating malware analysis and reducing detection by security software. BoxedApp-packed applications, even legitimate ones, frequently encounter significant false positive rates during scans by anti-malware engines. "Packing malicious payloads lowers detection rates, complicates analysis, and leverages advanced BoxedApp SDK capabilities without the need for custom development," Vinopal noted. The BoxedApp SDK allows the creation of custom packers, enhancing obfuscation. Additionally, malware families like Agent Tesla and LokiBot have been spread using the NSIXloader packer, which utilizes the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS). This tool compresses and scripts malware, making it appear as legitimate software and complicating analysis. Furthermore, the QiAnXin XLab team has identified another packer, Kiteshield, used by threat actors like Winnti and DarkMosquito to target Linux systems. Kiteshield encrypts and injects loader code into ELF binaries, executing them in userspace. This development underscores the growing sophistication and commodification of packer software in the cybercriminal landscape.
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