The specialists have detected a disruptively new virus in Minerva, said to be ‘Beep.”
“Beep” is a file-less malware, meaning it does not install any files on the infected system, making it difficult to detect and remove. But how much damage can a single malware like Beep bring to your organization? Let’s dig into more details.
How does it work?
According to the researchers, Beep malware is designed to steal sensitive information from infected systems, such as passwords and other credentials. It does this by injecting malicious code into the system’s memory, allowing it to intercept data as the user enters it.
The Beep malware is typically spread through phishing emails containing malicious attachments or links. Once a user clicks on the attachment or link, the malware is downloaded and infects the system.
What is a Stealthy Beep?
“Stealthy Beep malware” refers to a variant of the Beep malware designed to be even more challenging to detect and remove from an infected system.
This variant of Beep uses several techniques to avoid detection, including anti-debugging and anti-analysis techniques.
Anti-debugging techniques are designed to prevent security researchers from analyzing the malware by making it difficult to run it in a debugger or other analysis tool.
Anti-analysis techniques are designed to prevent the automated analysis of malware by security software. For example, the malware might use encryption or obfuscation to hide its malicious code or techniques to evade sandboxing or other automated analysis tools.
According to Minerva labs: “Once we dug into this sample, we observed the use of a significant amount of evasion techniques. It seemed as if the authors of this malware were trying to implement as many anti-debugging and anti-VM (anti-sandbox) techniques as they could find. One technique involved delaying execution using the Beep API function, hence the malware’s name.”
In addition to these techniques, the stealthy Beep malware also uses advanced techniques to hide its network traffic, making it more difficult to detect and block. This includes encryption to hide communication with its command-and-control server and processes to mimic legitimate network traffic to avoid suspicion.
Evasion techniques used by Beep
Beep uses several evasion techniques to avoid detection and analysis by security software and researchers. Some of the most common evasion techniques used by Beep include:
- Anti-debugging: It uses techniques to detect if it is running in a debugger or analysis tool, and if so, it stops running or changes its behavior to avoid detection.
- Anti-VM: Beep is designed to detect if it is running in a virtual machine environment, and if so, it stops running to avoid detection and analysis.
- Code obfuscation: It uses code obfuscation techniques to make its code difficult to read and understand, making it harder for researchers to analyze its behavior.
- Network traffic obfuscation: Beep uses encryption and other techniques to hide its network traffic, making it harder for security software to detect its communication with its command-and-control server.
- Fileless malware: Beep does not install any files on the infected system, making it difficult to detect and remove.
- Dynamic behavior: The virus can change dynamically, making detecting and analyzing its activity harder.
- Polymorphism: It changes its code or behavior in response to different environments or situations, making it harder to detect and analyze.
Concluding thoughts
The evasion techniques are designed to make Beep malware more difficult to detect and analyze by security software and researchers.
To protect against Beep and other malware, it is essential to use a combination of security controls, including antivirus software, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and user education.
Keeping software up to date and patching known vulnerabilities can also help to reduce the risk of infection.
PureVPN
February 17, 2023
1 year ago
