Categories
Security

Mysterious case of the broken browser

A friend of mine asked me to take a look as to why Google and Bing were inaccessible using Firefox. I dove in and realized that they were also unreachable using Internet Explorer, Chrome, and even command line ping. It became apparent that the hosts file had been hijacked. In fact, these entries were the only ones present:

87.229.126.50 www.google.com
87.229.126.51 www.bing.com

I swiftly removed them from the hosts file and both websites loaded fine. But what had put them there? With a working browser, a quick search revealed that those addresses were not legitimate and something had clearly hijacked the machine.

Knowing my friend to be an avid Malwarebytes Anti-Malware user, I checked the quarantine and found several objects. The main files appeared to be dplayx.dll and dplaysvr.exe and had several registry entries allowing them to start with the computer. I sent the files to Adam Kujawa, a Malware Intelligence Analyst working with me at Malwarebytes. Adam confirmed that this malware was responsible for the hosts file redirection.

However, a further analysis revealed a more cynical side. Adam continued by saying that “all binaries analyzed were heavily packed with custom obfuscation methods and employed anti-debugging tricks which made them a pain to get through” and that “the use of the filenames dplayx.dll and dplaysvr.exe is important because the names belong to legitimate applications and are integral parts of Direct X.”

While not new, the use of these particular filenames shows that malware authors are still trying to hide their executables behind legitimate names.

Categories
Security

Mysterious case of the executable hijack

I got a message from my friend Paul today asking for help with an infection. He was using the latest version of Firefox at the time and was positive he did not click on any odd links or downloaded anything malicious. Naturally, I advised him to run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and had him send me the log. One specific entry popped out at me.

Memory Processes Infected:
c:UsersPaulAppDataLocalojx.exe (Trojan.ExeShell.Gen) -> 3508 -> No action taken.

I picked up the phone and called Bruce Harrison, our VP of Research, and asked for an explanation. The result had shocked me. I was told that this was an executable hijack that is used with FakeAlert, a Trojan we see almost daily in our research center.

What exactly does that mean? Well, when the infection is able to penetrate your computer, it hijacks all executables to run the malicious file instead of their intended targets. For example, you try to open Skype and the malicious file starts instead.

It does this in two ways. First, it modifies each shortcut itself to point to the malware. Secondly, it modifies the .exe shell in the registry so that once again instead of starting the correct executable, it starts the malicious file.

Luckily, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware was able to patch Paul up, but we both wanted to know how this had happened. Bruce advised us to check the installed Java version. It was in fact outdated by several versions. I advised Paul to update to the latest version and he now has a healthy computer!