Researchers spotted a new infostealer, dubbed ‘Invicta Stealer’, being promoted by its developer on Facebook, leveraging the social media platform to connect to buyers and advertise the stealer on sale.
Interestingly, the threat actor had also created a YouTube channel to endorse the Invicta stealer. Several instances of using the Invicta stealer have been found due to its builder availability on GitHub.
Endorsement of the Invicta stealer
Increased usage rate of the Invicta stealer (Photo: Cyble)
Besides Facebook, YouTube, and GitHub, its developer offered a free stealer builder to increase its popularity and attract buyers. Some YouTube users have posted positive reviews on the platform about the info stealer.
How the Invicta stealer is sent to a user
Users are sent a spam email with an HTML page attached to it. The HTML page is designed to look like a refund invoice from GoDaddy. When the fraudulent refund HTML page is opened, a Discord page is opened which downloads another file named Invoice.zip.
The zip file contains a shortcut file named INVOICE_MT103.Ink. It requires the user to open the .lnk file which triggers a PowerShell command.
Infection chain of Invicta stealer (Photo: Cyble)
Researchers from the Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs analyzed a 64-bit GUI binary of the Invicta stealer from the wild to find out more about it. Following are the details found –
- Its SHA256 hash is 067ef14c3736f699c9f6fe24d8ecba5c9d2fc52d8bfa0166ba3695f60a0baa45.
- It has encrypted strings to hide its information.
- It uses SYSCALLS for its operations.
- It employs multithreading to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
Data stolen using Invicta stealer
Invicta stealer steals system and hardware data to know about the location of the target, their time zone, and the language on the system.
The hardware data it requires were found to be main memory size, number of CPU cores, screen resolution, hardware ID, IP address, and Geo IP data.
Invicta stealer steals the following sensitive system information:
- Computer name
- System username, time zone, and language
- Operating system version
- Names of running processes
- Hardware data
The stolen data from the Invicta stealer is combined in a text file named sys_info.txt and stored in the memory to be sent to the hackers behind the operation. After the collection of all the data from the system, it temporarily stores it in the system’s memory.
Invicta creates a compressed zip file with a random name with the hardware ID as shown below:
(Photo: Cyble)
The file is sent to the C&C server or Discord webhook which the hacker uses to create further attacks such as stealing money from their wallets, and banks, and creating more relevant phishing emails with the target’s data.
Targets of the Invicta stealer
- Discord – It is after stealing all the required information from the target, Invicta looks for the presence of the Discord application on the system to steal data from it.
- Wallets – It looks for wallets on the system. It can steal from over 25 wallets as noted in the Cyble blog. Some of them are Neon, Zcash, VERGE, WalletWasabi, Exodus, Bitcoin, Coinomi, Dogecoin, Electrum, Litecoin, and so on.
- Browsers – After looking for wallet data, the information stealer looks for browser data for credit card information, browser history, keywords, login data, etc. Over 30 browsers were noted on the Cyble blog that can be accessed by this information stealer. Some of them are Chromium, Yandex, Vivaldi, Opera Neon, 360Browser, Microsoft Edge, BraveSoftware, Google Chrome, etc.
- Steam – The gaming application Steam is accessed to steal active gaming sessions, usernames, games installed, etc.
- KeyPass password manager – This password manager that could contain passwords for websites and applications is also hacked by the Invicta stealer to gain credentials.
Loss of data and privacy
(Photo: Cyble)
The information stealer is equipped to steal most data from most locations of a system which makes it important to be detected and avoided at first glance of a phishing email. Catchy subjects such as refunds are used by hackers to make users think it is about an incoming credit.
A post made on May 13 by the seller of Invicta stealer wrote, “If we created a cheap subscription (up to $50-80 per month, compared to other stealers charging $150) which featured a web panel, would you use our product?”
“If you massively spread malware, send us a message as we have a proposition that will help you make way more money from your logs. Please don’t bother messaging us if you don’t know what you are doing, have low traffic, or don’t target cryptocurrencies,” the post further read.