mniraq - Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) has detected a sophisticated, multi-stage cyber campaign targeting individual users and organizations by hiding previously unknown malware inside torrent files of popular cinematic movies.
Researchers identified hundreds of victims in various countries worldwide, including organizations in business, government, IT, consulting, retail, and transportation sectors. Attackers exploited a breach in a public archive site used for storing torrent files to distribute the malware.
The campaign is designed as a multi-stage framework. It begins with a malicious loader capable of detecting isolated testing environments used by antivirus software, helping it evade detection and bypass security checks.
Once activated, the malware deploys additional modules that allow it to maintain persistence within the system and bypass the User Account Control (UAC) in Windows to secretly gain administrator privileges. This grants the attackers full remote control over the infected devices.
