Researchers from security firm ProofPoint said Parasite HTTP was a professionally coded modular remote administration tool for Windows written in C. It had no dependencies apart from the operating system itself.
They said the malware had an impressive number of techniques for sandbox detection, anti-debugging, anti-emulation and other protections.
Uptil now, the malware had only been observed in a single email campaign with the intended recipients being in the IT, healthcare and retail industries.
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A Word document used to spread Parasite HTTP.
Parasite HTTP was being advertised on an underground forum, Proofpoint said. The plugins advertised were for:
- User management;
- Browser password recovery;
- FTP password recovery;
- IM password recovery;
- Email password recovery;
- Windows licence keys recovery;
- Hidden VNC; and
- Reverse Socks5 proxy.
"Threat actors and malware authors continuously innovate in their efforts to evade defences and improve infection rates," Proofpoint said.
"Parasite HTTP provides numerous examples of state-of-the-art techniques used to avoid detection in sandboxes and via automated anti-malware systems.
"For consumers, organisations, and defenders, this represents the latest escalation in an ongoing malware arms race that extends even to commodity malware like Parasite.
"While we have currently only observed Parasite HTTP in a small campaign, we expect to see features like those used in Parasite continue to propagate across other malware variants."
Screenshots: courtesy Proofpoint
