Mars’ new infostealer is being distributed via OpenOffice ads on Google

The new Mars infostealer is still gaining popularity in the hacker community, and analysts are already marking the first large-scale campaigns using it.

Mars is a redesigned version of the Oski malware, which was discontinued in 2020. The malware is highly capable of stealing information and attacks a very wide range of applications, including popular browsers, two-factor authentication plugins, as well as many extensions and wallets for working with cryptocurrencies.

Mars also collects and sends to its operators the following information about the victim’s system:

1. IP address and country;
2. path to EXE file;
3. local time and time zone;
4. system language;
5. language keyboard layout;
6. laptop or desktop;
7. processor model;
8. computer name;
9. username;
10. computer name in the domain;
11. machine identifier;
12. GUID;
13. installed programs and their versions.

Mars Admin

Advertised on many hacking forums for between $140 and $160 for a lifetime license, Mars has grown rather slowly until recently, but it looks like the recent shutdown of Raccoon Stealer has forced hackers to look for alternatives and take a look at Mars. It got to the point that the authors of the malware wrote that they could barely cope with the influx of new customers.

Most often, this malware is distributed through spam emails containing an executable file in an archive, a download link, or a malicious document. However, sometimes Mars is also distributed through fraudulent sites. One of these campaigns, which is definitely getting bigger after the influx of customers, was discovered by experts at Morphisec. According to them, the malware uses Google Ads to bring clone sites of the open source OpenOffice to the top positions in search results in Canada.

The OpenOffice installer on such a fake site is a Mars executable packaged with the Babadeda cryptor or the Autoit bootloader.

Interestingly, shortly after the release of Mars, a hacked version of the malware with instructions appeared, which has serious flaws. In particular, it prescribes to set up full access (777) to the entire project, including the directory with the logs of the victims.

The logs are a ZIP file containing data stolen by the malware from users and uploaded to the C&C server. The inaccuracy in the instructions has led to the fact that attackers misconfigure their environment, revealing important information to the whole world.

The researchers found that, as part of the campaign mentioned above, the stolen information included browser autofill data, browser extension data, bank card information, IP address, country code and time zone.

Since the malware operator who followed the instructions infected himself with a copy of Mars (apparently during debugging), his personal data was also disclosed. This miscalculation allowed Morphisec experts to link the attacks to the Russian-speaking user, finding his GitLab accounts, stolen credentials used to pay for Google Ads, and more.

The Morphisec Labs team reports that in total they were able to identify more than 50 infected domain users who compromised their companies’ domain passwords. The vast majority of victims are students, educators and content creators who were looking for legitimate apps but got malware instead.

Let me remind you that we also talked about the fact that Password-stealing malware infected more than 100,000 users via the Google Play Store, and also that SharkBot Android Trojan Steals Cryptocurrency and Hacks Bank Accounts.