Security News > 2021 > July > New MosaicLoader malware targets software pirates via online ads
An ongoing worldwide campaign is pushing new malware dubbed MosaicLoader advertising camouflaged as cracked software via search engine results to infect wannabe software pirates' systems.
MosaicLoader is a malware downloader designed by its creators to deploy more second-stage payloads on infected systems, as Bitdefender researchers revealed in a report published today and shared with BleepingComputer last week.
"We named it MosaicLoader because of the intricate internal structure that aims to confuse malware analysts and prevent reverse-engineering," Janos Gergo Szeles, Senior Security Researcher at Bitdefender, revealed.
After being deployed on a victim's system, MosaicLoader downloads additional malware ranging from cryptocurrency miners and cookie stealers to Remote Access Trojans and backdoors using "a complex chain of processes."
Bitdefender collected and analyzed multiple malware samples delivered by MosaicLoader via a malware sprayer that downloads further payloads from attacker-controlled domains hosting lists of URLs hosting malware.
"The best way to defend against MosaicLoader is to avoid downloading cracked software from any source," Szeles concluded.