Listen "How Hackers Used Social Media to Deploy Cobalt Strike"
Episode Synopsis
"Send me a quick text"Attackers abused phishing emails carrying shortcut files inside archives to deploy a legitimate crash-reporting executable paired with a malicious library. The library hijacked normal functions, retrieved encoded payloads hidden in GitHub, Quora, and Microsoft Tech Community profiles, and then redirected the victim system to GitHub raw content pages hosting encrypted shellcode. Once decrypted, the shellcode injected Cobalt Strike Beacon into memory, giving attackers full command-and-control inside the network.Defensive ActionsMonitor executables loading unsigned or unusual libraries.Inspect outbound traffic to trusted platforms for encoded or repetitive fetches.Detect reflective injection and executables that relaunch with hidden parameters.Harden phishing defenses with archive and shortcut file scanning.Key IOCsC2: moeodincovo[.]com/divide/mail/SUVVJRQO8QRCHosting platforms abused: GitHub repositories, Quora profiles, Microsoft Tech Community pages, Russian social networksDetection & Monitoring FocusHunt for abnormal library loads in crash-reporting or diagnostic executables.Flag repeated HTTP requests to social media or developer sites fetching encoded data.Track reflective memory injection techniques often tied to Cobalt Strike.Tools & InfrastructureLegitimate crash-reporting utility hijacked with a malicious libraryTrusted platforms (GitHub, Quora, Microsoft Tech Community) abused as staging pointsFinal payload: Cobalt Strike BeaconThanks for spending a few minutes on the CyberBrief Project. If you want to dive deeper or catch up on past episodes, head over to cyberbriefproject.buzzsprout.com. You can also find the podcast on YouTube at youtube.com/@CyberBriefProject — I’d love to see you there. And if you find these episodes valuable and want to support the project, you can do that here: buzzsprout.com/support Your support means a lot. See you in the next one, and thank you for listening.
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