Cyber Threat Report: 'Detailed Analysis of DarkGate'

This post on Medium by S2W presents a technical analysis of DarkGate malware and the operator behind it. According to the report, DarkGate is a backdoor malware developed since 2017 and sold as Malware-as-a-Service, gaining popularity in 2021 with continuous feature updates and detection bypasses. It enables remote code execution, data exfiltration, cryptocurrency mining, privilege escalation, and persistence management. The post states that DarkGate is mainly distributed via VBScript or MSI, using techniques like DLL Side-loading and AutoIT scripts for execution.

Exploit Protection

Use capabilities to detect and block conditions that may lead to or be indicative of a software exploit occurring.

Update Software

Perform regular software updates to mitigate exploitation risk.

Threat Intelligence Program

A threat intelligence program helps an organization generate their own threat intelligence information and track trends to inform defensive priorities to mitigate risk.

Application Isolation and Sandboxing

Restrict execution of code to a virtual environment on or in transit to an endpoint system.

Execution Prevention

Block execution of code on a system through application control, and/or script blocking.

Network Intrusion Prevention

Use intrusion detection signatures to block traffic at network boundaries.

Filter Network Traffic

Use network appliances to filter ingress or egress traffic and perform protocol-based filtering. Configure software on endpoints to filter network traffic.

Data Loss Prevention

Use a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy to categorize sensitive data, identify data formats indicative of personal identifiable information (PII), and restrict exfiltration of sensitive data.(Citation: PurpleSec Data Loss Prevention)

Restrict Web-Based Content

Restrict use of certain websites, block downloads/attachments, block Javascript, restrict browser extensions, etc.

Software Configuration

Implement configuration changes to software (other than the operating system) to mitigate security risks associated to how the software operates.

Antivirus/Antimalware

Use signatures or heuristics to detect malicious software.

User Training

Train users to be aware of access or manipulation attempts by an adversary to reduce the risk of successful spearphishing, social engineering, and other techniques that involve user interaction.

Password Policies

Set and enforce secure password policies for accounts.

Audit

Perform audits or scans of systems, permissions, insecure software, insecure configurations, etc. to identify potential weaknesses.

Privileged Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to privileged accounts, including SYSTEM and root.

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Use capabilities to prevent suspicious behavior patterns from occurring on endpoint systems. This could include suspicious process, file, API call, etc. behavior.

User Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts.

Multi-factor Authentication

Use two or more pieces of evidence to authenticate to a system; such as username and password in addition to a token from a physical smart card or token generator.