Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new variant of an emerging botnet called P2PInfect that’s capable of targeting routers and IoT devices.
The latest version, per Cado Security Labs, is compiled for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages (MIPS) architecture, broadening its capabilities and reach.
P2PInfect, a Rust-based malware, was first disclosed back in July 2023, targeting unpatched Redis instances by exploiting a critical Lua sandbox escape vulnerability (CVE-2022-0543, CVSS score: 10.0) for initial access.
One of the notable evasion methods used is a check to determine if it’s being analyzed and, if so, terminate itself, as well as an attempt to disable Linux core dumps, which are files automatically generated by the kernel after a process crashes unexpectedly.
The MIPS variant also includes an embedded 64-bit Windows DLL module for Redis that allows for the execution of shell commands on a compromised system.
“Not only is this an interesting development in that it demonstrates a widening of scope for the developers behind P2PInfect (more supported processor architectures equals more nodes in the botnet itself), but the MIPS32 sample includes some notable defense evasion techniques,” Cado said.
Source: https://thehackernews.com/
