Security News > 2022 > August > New Woody RAT Malware Being Used to Target Russian Organizations

An unknown threat actor has been targeting Russian entities with a newly discovered remote access trojan called Woody RAT for at least a year as part of a spear-phishing campaign.

The advanced custom backdoor is said to be delivered via either of two methods: archive files and Microsoft Office documents leveraging the now-patched "Follina" support diagnostic tool vulnerability in Windows.

Like other implants engineered for espionage-oriented operations, Woody RAT sports a wide range of features that enables the threat actor to remotely commandeer and steal sensitive information from the infected systems.

"The earliest versions of this RAT were typically archived into a ZIP file pretending to be a document specific to a Russian group," Malwarebytes researchers Ankur Saini and Hossein Jazi said in a Wednesday report.

Besides encrypting its communications with a remote server, Woody RAT is equipped with capabilities to write arbitrary files to the machine, execute additional malware, delete files, enumerate directories, capture screenshots, and gather a list of running processes.

Malwarebytes has yet to attribute the attacks to a specific threat actor, citing a lack of solid indicators linking the campaign to a previously known group, although Chinese and North Korean nation-state collectives have targeted Russia in the past.

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https://thehackernews.com/2022/08/new-woody-rat-malware-being-used-to.html