Actionable threat hunting with Threat Intelligence (I) Hunting malicious desktop files

This analysis explores the detection of malicious .desktop files used by threat actors to infect Linux systems. It explains the structure of these files and how they are manipulated to obfuscate malicious content. The report details the execution process of these files, which often involve opening PDF files from Google Drive as a distraction while downloading malware. Various threat hunting techniques are presented, including searching for specific processes, command lines, and file contents. The article provides several Google Threat Intelligence queries for identifying suspicious .desktop files and related malicious activities. It also includes a list of recently discovered samples potentially linked to a campaign reported by Zscaler. Author: AlienVault

Related Tags:
google threat intelligence

kde

desktop files

xfce

threat hunting

T1566.001

British Indian Ocean Territory

T1059.004

Obfuscation

Associated Indicators:
EF2056A6724AD654E3C36234863AB34B9E0E6FA3E6F31340682C37DC2C5CB32E

B6170FD0A1A75E043CD412300DB4C67A351F71A6

EB35BE47387605BA194E5422C5F1E99E6968AF65

E099572FE108BFBA526730DCF87D953C74DCBA0D

8D61CE3651EB070C8CDB76A334A16E53AD865572

040711B2E577FCDBA8DC130F72475935893E8471

1814730CB451B930573C6A52F047301BFF0B84D1

5C71C683FF55530C73477E0FF47A1899

70A0792640BBCAE03627DE25DE3EE42F