Security News > 2023 > September > Iranian hackers backdoor 34 orgs with new Sponsor malware
A nation-state threat actor known as 'Charming Kitten' has been observed deploying a previously unknown backdoor malware named 'Sponsor' against 34 companies around the globe.
One of the notable features of the Sponsor backdoor is that it hides its otherwise innocuous configuration files on the victim's disk so they can be discreetly deployed by malicious batch scripts, successfully evading detection.
Before deploying the Sponsor backdoor, the final payload seen in these attacks, the hackers drop batch files on specific file paths on the host machine, which writes the required configuration files.
Sponsor is a C++ backdoor that creates a service upon launch as instructed by the configuration file, which also contains encrypted command and control server addresses, C2 contacting intervals, and the RC4 decryption key.
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