Fake Spectre and Meltdown patch pushes Smoke Loader malware

LASER_oneXM

Level 37
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Verified
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Well-known
Feb 4, 2016
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The Meltdown and Spectre bugs have generated a lot of media attention, and users have been urged to update their machines with fixes made available by various vendors.

While some patches have created more issues than they fixed, we came across a particular one targeted at German users that actually is malware. In fact, German authorities recently warned about phishing emails trying to take advantage of those infamous bugs.

We identified a recently registered domain that is offering an information page with various links to external resources about Meltdown and Spectre and how it affects processors. While it appears to come from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), this SSL-enabled phishing site is not affiliated with any legitimate or official government entity.



Moreover, the same fraudulent domain has a link to a ZIP archive (Intel-AMD-SecurityPatch-11-01bsi.zip) containing the so-called patch (Intel-AMD-SecurityPatch-10-1-v1.exe), which really is a piece of malware.
 

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