A new variant of remote access trojan called
Bandook has been observed being propagated via phishing attacks with an aim to infiltrate Windows machines, underscoring the continuous evolution of the malware.
Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, which identified the activity in October 2023, said the malware is distributed via a PDF file that embeds a link to a password-protected .7z archive.
"After the victim extracts the malware with the password in the PDF file, the malware injects its payload into msinfo32.exe," security researcher Pei Han Liao
said.
The starting point of the latest attack sequence is an injector component that's designed to decrypt and load the payload into
msinfo32.exe, a legitimate Windows binary that gathers system information to diagnose computer issues.