Researchers observed cybercriminals selling an updated version of the KPOT stealer on underground hacking forums.

Proofpoint spotted threat actors selling KPOT v2.0 for about $100 on underground hacking forums. Around the same time, the security firm came across an email attack campaign that leveraged a fake banking transfer to trick recipients into opening what appeared to be a Microsoft Office document.

The file was actually an LCG Kit variant Rich Text Format (RTF) document that used Equation Editor exploit CVE-2017-11882 to download an intermediate downloader from a bit.ly link. This asset fetched a portion of a PowerShell script that included a base64-encoded payload for the malware.

Written in C/C++, KPOT is known for stealing data from web browsers and applications such as Chrome, Skype, Firefox and Steam, as well as taking screenshots. The sample Proofpoint spotted came with a few updates, including the ability to grab disks across the entire disk and over the network. The variant also came with a revised storage structure, new programs for collecting data in system information and the ability to collect Outlook data from the registry.

A Snapshot of KPOT Stealer Activity

KPOT has been relatively busy over the past year. In September 2018, researchers at Flashpoint discovered bad actors using a fraudulent domain to infect users of the Jaxx cryptocurrency wallet with the stealer and Clipper, a threat family known for altering infected machines’ clipboard data.

Several months later, Doctor Web found that attackers had compromised the website of a popular video editing program to hijack the download links and infect users with KPOT and a banking Trojan detected as Win32.Bolik.2.

How to Defend Against Stealer Malware

Security professionals can help defend their organizations against stealer malware like KPOT by investing in a solution that offers patch posture reporting. This type of solution can provide insight into the vulnerabilities that have received remediation measures as well as the machines that have received those patches.

Organizations should also run phishing simulation exercises to test employees’ awareness of social engineering techniques and help them learn to spot and report such attacks.