Malware Repository: Threats and Security Measures

The hard drive contains 25 million malware pieces, posing a significant security threat.

### Exploring the VX Underground Malware Repository and Its Implications
* 💰  For a **$500 donation to VX Underground**, you can access their **extensive malware repository, research papers, and source code** to learn about computer security.
* 🕵️‍♂️  The repository mainly contains older, password-protected malware samples that can still pose a threat, especially by **overloading security systems like Windows Defender**.
* 🛡️  Threat Locker sponsors a zero-trust security approach to prevent malware attacks by assuming **applications are guilty until proven innocent**.
* 🐭  Borat rat, a malware discovered in 2022, is a versatile tool that grants remote access, includes **DoS and ransomware capabilities**, and can perform **various malicious actions**.
* 🔍  By analyzing the DLL files and source code of Borat rat in a malware sandbox like Any.Run, you can understand how it **exploits vulnerabilities to execute attacks**.
* 🐧  Linux-based web servers, such as WordPress sites, are also common targets for malware attacks, like the **c99 backdoor**.
* 🦠  Malware spreaders often use PHP's features like **base64 encoding** to hide malicious code within web servers and **execute commands on the underlying operating system**.
* 🛡️  To safely explore the VX Underground malware repository, it's crucial to **air gap the system**, use malware sandboxes like **Any.Run and Threat Locker's testing environment**, and follow **strict security practices**.

this hard drive contains 25 million pieces of malware, and this computer is about to become very, very sick. What do you mean threat service has stopped? Windows Defender is completely disabled, but I guess that's what happens when you send $500 to a faceless person named Smelly who runs a shady network that collects, develops, studies, and reverse engineers nefarious code. So why did I do that? Because if you're trying to learn about computer security, this is probably the most valuable textbook you could find. It contains their entire repository of malware samples, research papers, blog posts from security researchers, and source code. Now, of course, it's all freely available on the VX underground website, but the $500 isn't really for the content; it's a donation to ensure they can keep building this repository. Which, wait, is that actually a good thing? Well, let's talk about that. The single biggest hole in most security systems, computer or otherwise, is trust. New malware pops up every day, and defending against it is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. That is such a constant

churn of zero-day exploits and unpatched vulnerabilities. That is why today's episode sponsor, Threat Locker, uses a zero-trust approach to security. Their endpoint protection platform works by assuming that applications are guilty until they're proven innocent, meaning that users within your organization can't just accidentally open the wrong email attachment or program installer and take down the entire company from the inside. Lead to a whole bunch of really bad like, oh, I don't know. [Music] Maybe the very first thing I asked when this video got pitched to me was, isn't this thing kind of dangerous to have lying around? And the answer is yes, yes, but also no. These mostly aren't ready-to-go viruses, mostly. And while they absolutely can wreak havoc on your system if you're not careful, you don't really need to worry about doing a lock bit on yourself and encrypting your whole drive. Part of the reason for that is how things are stored. Most executables are missing the .exe file extension, so the system is far less

likely to automatically run them, and everything else is in a password-protected 7zip archive to prevent it from being automatically unpacked. Furthermore, many of these malwares are older, and the only real damage they can do to a fully updated system is by overloading Windows Defender threat detection engine. That's what caused the weird behavior that you saw before. Of course, many of them are still dangerous, and once you've got them decompressed and armed, all safety is completely out the windows, and also Mac OS and Linux. Borat rat popped up in 2022 and was referred to as a triple threat because on top of granting remote access, it also includes dods and ransomware tools. This seems like exactly the kind of thing I would want to just run. Launch Borat 7z archive in any run Windows 10 or 11, this is Linux. Yes, would you like me to show you any run? They do sandboxing. There's so much resetting and reimaging and everything in this project, a fun one, right? Oh, it's just the best.

well interesting at least right. It's interesting. It's abs absolutely interesting. It's also uh extremely scary. I mean it's not like you could single-handedly take down the whole company if you do anything irresponsible or careless. Windows 10 or 11. So we'll do windows 11 here. We'll run a public analysis. It's going to start uploading the file. We have 660 seconds to do this before it implodes. Implodes. Oh this instance just goes away in 10 11 minutes no matter what. That's correct. We're going to launch Bor at. exe. So if someone managed to execute this on your system, this is what would happen. This right here is actually the control panel for it. So this is what the hacker Sees. God it. And what I want to do right now is I'm going to go build a client for this. So I'm going to go just quickly here build alls. Yep. Yeah. We'll choose an icon here. Let's give it the Borat rat icon. Okay. So we are going to go build

exe here client.exe is going to save into the Borat folder, and then what we should be able to do. And this works 50% of the time for me, is when we open up client.exe. So this will infect this instance. This is what we would try to remotely execute on the target system, yeah. So we would try and remotely execute that. And you can see that we've done that. We've successfully infected ourselves. It's going to run a couple. It's going to run system info. exe, conhost, host name. exe just spit out absolutely everything that we want to know about this system. Here is everything about it all in just this, uh, this text file here, and this will get sent to the attacker probably as fun as it gets as in the utilities. So we can hide and show our taskbar, hide and show our desktop just to mess with people, yeah. Oh, Mouse is the best swap will swap around the left and right click, dude. We can turn off the webcam light, yep. Most webcams do work with the webcam light.

just kind of hardwired into the camera circuitry, but some of them don't. And that's where this is going to really exploit it. The other thing this is going to do is allow you to turn on their webcam light, basically activating their camera but not actually have to do any. It's just a quick way of freaking them out if they're trying to make threats at you over the phone while you, uh, try and extort them for money. Fod helper. Watch how easy it is to get admin. You can see permission right here. It says permission user over on the right side. We're going to hit fod helper. It's going to restart the client and oh, look, admin. That's it. And they haven't patched that yet. Okay, what are we running on? Yeah, 2021 second half. So this is pretty old window. That's good. That's really good that that's still unpatched on this version, but it's probably patched somewhere else. I, I've not run this for real. I'm very afraid of it, obviously.

this dashboard here, right? There's a lot of lines. Yep, I mean you could have a lot of clients, and you could just poke around in one anytime you want. What's surveillance do? Oh, surveillance just uh, just lets you watch a little bit. You can remote shell, remote screen, remote camera, go into their file manager. You can record, you can get their uh, their Network information, see what's what processes are running. Else we got here, uh, control, so you can send files to them, you can run, yep, key logger is built into every malware these days. Malware is where it gets real interesting. Oh, I just pick what malware I want. Yeah, you want to DoS somebody, you can do that, especially if you've got a lot of bots there. Uh, you can ransomware them, so if you wanted to just do a lock bit on someone, you can just ransomware them like that. There is a way in here to steal credentials for Discord. It steals the session token for Discord so that you can gain access to somebody's Discord and then start.

messaging all their friends. Start messaging their friends with your client.exe, which you've just made look like whatever program you want because that's part of the whole uh Builder. And this is old, but it's not that old. It's still active in some regards, maybe not this exact version, but clearly there's still people using it. And this kind of thing is only going to get scarier and scarier when Windows 10 reaches end of Life, dude. 'Cause so many people are going to stay on Windows 10, and it's not going to be getting security patches. Guys, patch your software. The stuff that gets patched isn't what really worries me. It's the zero days. There's so many zero days, and there's so much money in this now, especially with all of those hospitals getting Ransomware. Anyway, good luck. Practically speaking, there is no limit to what a creative attacker could do with something like Borat rat. We haven't even touched on some of the basic functionality like exfiltrating.

data popping up text messages so the attacker can communicate with the victim. But how does it do so much? Well, a big part of it is thanks to the dll files that are included. These DLLs are mostly feature plugins that are taken from a fork of DC rat called Santa rat. When you really think about it, Borat does look a bit like a dirty Wizard or a homeless Santa, but that's besides the point. The point is if we run the rat in a malware sandbox like Any.Run, which we're using here, we can get some idea of how it's executing individual exploits. Take the Fodhelper exploit, for example. How is it giving the rat administrator privileges with almost no effort whatsoever? Well, we can see that it makes some registry changes before launching FodHelper. But what registry changes is it making exactly? Searching through the VX drive, we can find the source code for it and see that it uses UAC bypass method 3 from options.dll. The source code for options.dll might be missing, but as we know it came from Santa rat, so we can

check the source code for that and see that it's modifying this key in the registry. Even if we don't have any programming knowledge, just searching our virus drive for Borat reveals several articles that summarize the threat in slightly more legible terms. How can we use this though? Well, if we're a bad actor, now we know a way to get to a command prompt window with admin privileges, and we can explain that. But if we're a good actor, we know to set up something to watch that section of the registry in order to avoid this issue. That is where today's episode sponsor, Threat Locker, comes in. If we try to run this on a protected machine, Threat Locker will block the executable not because it's a known virus, but because it's trying to execute at all. Our Threat Locker administrator account can now see it within Response Center, open it up in a virtualized testing environment to ensure that it's safe, and either keep it on the block list, add it to the allow list outright, or allow it with ring fencing just in case you're not sure.

about the application ring fencing is the act of limiting what a program can do. Like blocking it from connecting to the internet, blocking it from writing to the registry, accessing protected files, or interacting with high-risk applications like Powershell and command prompt. After all, malware can't get access to an Administrator Command Prompt if it can't open a command prompt at all. Coming back to our VX underground drive though, being able to pwn Windows not exactly a big accomplishment. Windows machines get hacked every day. What about Linux? Here's the thing, web servers usually run Linux, and there's a lot of things that are trying to target that. A WordPress server is especially susceptible to attacks like the c99 backdoor. Ooh, is it demo time? WordPress is often used by would-be web masters because it is relatively user-friendly, at least on the surface, and free to use. But not all of the plugins are free technically because of WordPress's GPL license. All der works, including plugins, are required to use GPL as well. That means that they can charge money but

they also can't stop people from sharing their code, so websites that host cracked plugins aren't usually able to be taken down by lawyers. They do, however, often serve plugins with a little something extra that might make you want to pay for plugins from the official source. They can be used to host sketchy files, they can be used to ransomware your network, and once a back door is installed, other malware can be uploaded and potentially executed. Want to show us how it works? What I've done is gone ahead and just added our back door into one of the most generic websites of all time. Yeah, this is a default theme. The way that this could be kind of replicated in the real world, other than just through infected themes or plugins, is also through mismanaged upload credentials. So, okay, if you've got user uploads, they can potentially make this happen. And this is what the back door actually looks like. So you can see that here we're going to Local Host into the themes folder, and we're just running this simple PHP file, and now we have access.

to everything wait what okay so hold on a second so my server is serving that website that's correct and you took advantage of a misconfigured upload permission setting yes. I just uploaded this file and I have this yes. so this could be used to do any number of things. let's say that your website was hosting um you know a cool mod for something or or a cool useful little application. I could go in and I could replace the file with something completely different and if they don't bother to actually check the check sum that I publish on my site although I could of course overwrite the check sum as well then they could download a completely different file execute that on their computer and boom they're infected and since everything is usually done with not the greatest encryption for PHP websites usually especially WordPress the encryption on passwords Is Not Great. you could just go in grab the database and then use I don't know your RTX 490 at home to right crack the passwords kind of like in the uh Wi-Fi.

cracking video, right? You should check out that video if you haven't seen it already. Equally scary, honestly. That's a little bit less scary than, uh, than some of these things because people can steal your Wi-Fi credentials, but this will allow them to do stuff to you from anywhere. Sure, but if they're on your network, then it's just so convenient. At least you know they're nearby, though. That's nice. That's true. Means I'm not alone now. PHP is a just-in-time programming language, so malware spreaders need to be a bit more creative than simply hiding it within a binary file. That's where things like base64 encoding and GP come into play. By converting everything into unreadable text that also fits into a single line in a code editor, they can turn 5,000 lines of backdoor code into only nine pretty lines of totally not suspicious at all gibberish. If that gibberish code gets into a publicly accessible part of a web server, either through misconfigured file upload permissions or

nefarious WordPress plugins. It can be executed by anyone who knows it's there with PHP's eval function. Nefarious code can break out of the PHP container and start executing commands directly on the operating system. Now whoa, whoa, hold on a second here, Lonus. All this seems pretty irresponsible. Are you guys really, really just trusting VX underground and plugging this drive into a live system here? The answer is no, and of course not. Even though we're not using any run here like we were with Windows, our sponsor Threat Locker would never forgive us if we just blindly gave out trust. I mean, that's the antithesis of the zero-trust model. Trusting a stranger is the number one way to get pwned. No worm or backdoor can ever match the effectiveness of a social engineering attack. So if a guy named Name Smelly tells you that the drive he gave you contains lots and lots of malware, you should probably believe him and take the necessary precautions. But what are they? Well, to start with, we set up our Linux machine to be air

gapped. Okay, to clarify, no system is completely immune, and it was only a few months ago that the popular compression library XZ was found to contain a backdoor. But desktop Linux is less likely to be attacked with simple automated malware. As for air gapping, this refers to the practice of isolating a computer from the rest of your networked machines, and it can be simulated with VLANs. But if you want to be sure, I'd recommend just unplugging it. VLAN hopping isn't a huge risk these days, but it isn't impossible. Of course, if you want to step up your safety level further, you need a malware sandbox, a virtual machine on a virtual network that is completely isolated from any other machine and that will be destroyed the moment that you no longer need it. Threat Locker has their testing environment feature that allows you to pass executables that are quarantined from your protected computers into their sandbox without any runs overly restrictive time limit or the requirement to make your sample public. Now we're using any run for

deeper Dives right now simply because it allows us to upload our samples directly. But threat Locker's Response Center is more than adequate for 99% of use cases. The two products, the sponsored one and the other one, actually complement each other really nicely to fill different sand boxing needs. Threat Locker is great for production environment work, while any run is better suited for noodling around. Shall we noodle some more? Hey, look, it's the chief noodler himself. What are we looking at now? Ooh, LockBit. Yeah, we're going to take a quick look at LockBit. So I'm told it's shocking how simple it actually is. That's in the script. This is super cool. Is this a paid version of any run? Yes, okay. Did they send that over to us? They did. Hey, shout out any run, thanks. So we're doing the same thing we did with B rat. We're going to drag it out of here, and I did not password protect this one, Tanner. Hey, if we get infected, I don't own the company. So here we've got just some

configuration things uh local discs true Network shares true yeah so I think it makes my skin crawl just thinking about something like this getting on our Network oh have I clarified that it's a ransomware well it's a ransomware if I didn't say that already so now we've got our decrypter mhm we've got password. dll so that's the decryption password here if uh if it is executed through dll. The exe version is a slightly different password but yeah it's it's essentially here's the here's the encrypter and then here's the key that you can provide to the victim in whatever form you like yeah what a lot of people have been doing lately is accepting the payment from their victims and then not decrypting so that is an option too that is a that is a whole other level of yeah so if you uh were to run lb3 exe and yeah you've now lost everything that was quick it actually looks you can set what kinds of files it looks for off the bat so you can aim for uh databases

first, if you want, which is what a lot of places have going after more of a commercial entity. Yep, see, this is the kind of thing we cover on Wow, and we talk about in the news, and we discuss. But there's a big difference between, you know, sort of talking about what's out there, and these high-profile attacks, and just seeing how simple the tools are. You want to know, I could do this, you want to know how simple some of these are. You know, the WannaCry virus, that was the one that was the ransomware that was just all over the place for several years. There it got defeated when somebody went into the source code for it, did a whole decompilation, found, found a line of code in there that kept calling one particular website address. Yeah, so they decided to buy the domain because it hadn't been registered. Apparently, that domain was just being used by WannaCry as a kill switch, so they accidentally stopped WannaCry. The guy ended up getting caught by the

FBI for credit card fraud that he did earlier in his life, and then the judge at judgment was like, n the you know what, the public good that you've done kind of outweighs whatever credit card fraud, so if you're going to commit credit card fraud, also stop the worst ransomware attacks in history. Of course, the groups that are executing ransomware attacks, be they Monocry or Lockbit or something else, aren't just using ransomware. They need to find a way to infiltrate their target's organization, spread it around, and remain undetected, and many of these tasks require some level of social engineering. So what might start as a phishing attack could then transition into a rat being planted, which can then be used to plant the ransomware. Borat rat isn't its own ransomware necessarily, but rather it's a vessel for carrying many payloads, one of which happens to be Lockbit-style ransomwares. And all of this is being accomplished by several competing groups. Um, some are simply trying to cash in, but some clearly have

other goals in mind. As there's strong evidence that many malware groups operate as part of government entities. North Korea's Lazarus group, Russia's berserk bear, and America's NSA equation group are just a few suspected examples. So is this hard drive only for researchers, or could somebody conceivably use this repository to create and spread malware, possibly in an act of state-sponsored terrorism? Don't kid yourself, this is on the blacker side of gray, and the only moral justification for its existence is that realistically the bad guys have access to this information anyway, and by shedding light on it, we're at least giving the good guys a hoping chance to counter any upcoming threats. Security through obscurity is a pipe dream, and just like we probably upset some gas station owners when we made our video on The Flipper Zero, we're probably ruffling some feathers with this one, but we feel it's a valuable conversation to start and one that we should keep on having. The last question you guys might be asking is, what are we planning to do

with the VX underground hard drive. Well, the first thing is to put a warning label on it, maybe even a bigger one than this, and then after that, I don't know. We've actually had some really cool ideas for videos in the past that have required us to intentionally infect a system, but providing real malware to us is against the policy of every white hat organization and person that we have ever interacted with. So we have struggled at times to create, for example, an infected system to bring to a shop for servicing. If you have any other ideas, we're open to them, but for now, we're going to fester on it for a little bit and seeing the kinds of threats that are not only out there but more numerous than I previously imagined. I guess we'll look into hardening our security, maybe with some help from our sponsor, Threat Locker. If you guys liked this video, why don't you check out the time we bought antivirus USB sticks from Facebook. They were, they were USB sticks, all right.

I Bought 25 Million Computer Viruses

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

The Value of a Dangerous Malware Repository

A shady network is selling access to a vast malware repository for $500, which is used for research and to ensure the repository's continuity.

The repository contains a collection of malware samples, research papers, and source code, posing potential dangers but also serving as a valuable resource for studying computer security.

A zero-trust security approach is highlighted as crucial in the constant battle against new malware, as demonstrated by Threat Locker's endpoint protection platform.

The Borat Rat Malware: Capabilities and Dangers

The Borat Rat malware is capable of remote execution and gathering extensive system information.

It also enables webcam manipulation, admin access, surveillance, and deployment of various types of malware.

The malware's potential for stealing credentials and its ongoing use raise concerns for security, especially as older software versions reach end of life.

The Impact of Malware on Systems and Servers

Malware uses DLL files from Santa rat to communicate with victims and execute exploits, such as the Fodhelper exploit to gain administrator privileges.

Threat Locker provides a solution to block and test the executable, while also offering ring fencing options for added security.

In addition to Windows, web servers running Linux, especially WordPress servers, are also targeted by malware, using cracked plugins to host malicious files and execute ransomware attacks.

The Risks of Misconfigured Upload Permissions for Websites

Uploading files to a website with misconfigured permissions can lead to malicious activity, such as replacing legitimate files with malware and stealing sensitive data like passwords.

Malware spreaders can use PHP's eval function to execute nefarious code on a web server, potentially taking control of the operating system.

To protect against these risks, it's important to implement a zero-trust model, air gap Linux machines, and use a malware sandbox for testing and isolating potentially harmful files.

LockBit ransomware is being discussed and analyzed, highlighting its simple yet impactful features and the potential consequences of its use.

The discussion also delves into the rising trend of accepting ransom payments without providing decryption, and the ease with which commercial entities can be targeted.

The conversation emphasizes the simplicity and high impact of ransomware tools, contrasting it with the high-profile nature of cyber attacks in the news.

The Role of Malware in Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware attacks often involve multiple stages, including infiltration, spreading, and remaining undetected through social engineering.

Various competing groups are behind these attacks, with some possibly operating as government entities.

The existence of a repository of malware raises questions about the potential for state-sponsored terrorism and the ethical considerations of its use, despite the intention to shed light on upcoming threats.