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New Version of the Kronos Banking Trojan Discovered

Trojan discovered of new version of the Kronos

Trojan is a type of malware that is often disguised as legitimate software. Trojans can be employed by cyber-thieves and hackers trying to gain access to users’ systems. Users are typically tricked by some form of social engineering into loading and executing Trojans on their systems. Once activated, Trojans can enable cyber-criminals to spy on you, steal your sensitive data, and gain backdoor access to your system.

A new version of the Kronos banking trojan is making the rounds, according to Proofpoint security researchers, who say they’ve identified at last three campaigns spreading a revamped version of this old trojan that had its heyday back in 2014.

While initial samples appeared to be tets, real-life campaigns got off the ground in late June, when researchers started detecting malspam and exploit kits delivering this new version to users in the wild.

Campaigns targeted Germany, Japan, Poland

Proofpoint reports spotting three campaigns and one test run, targeting users of German, Japanese, and Polish banks.

Proofpoint reports an extensive code overlap between the 2018 and 2014 versions. Similarities include that the 2018 version uses the same Windows API hashing technique and hashes, the same string encryption technique, the same C&C encryption mechanism, the same C&C protocol and encryption, the same webinject format (Zeus format), and a similar C&C panel file layout.

But the two versions are not identical. The main difference is that the 2018 edition uses Tor-hosted C&C control panels.

Kronos 2018 edition could be new Osiris trojan

Researchers say that at the same time this new Kronos variant started appearing on their radar, a malware author started advertising a new banking trojan on hacking forums that he referred to as Osiris.

Proofpoint researchers did not manage to get their hands on a sample of this new Osiris malware, but they say the ad perfectly described the Kronos 2018 edition.

The biggest clue is that the author of this new trojan claims his trojan is only 350 KB in size, which is close to the (351 KB) size of an early Kronos 2018 edition sample researchers found in April. Coincidentally or not, that sample was named os.exe, presumably from Osiris, albeit not confirmed.