GhostAdmin

Posted: January 18, 2017

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:

Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.

Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.

Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.

Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.

% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.

Threat Level:	6/10
Infected PCs:	5

First Seen:	January 18, 2017
Last Seen:	May 13, 2020
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

GhostAdmin is an updated version of CrimeScene, a family of backdoor Trojans that incorporate infected PCs into botnets so that con artists can collect information from them. Although GhostAdmin's 'robot network' still is new, the Trojan includes a diverse range of attack features for exfiltrating data or giving remote attackers control over a PC. Since this Trojan shows no symptoms to the PC user, you should use appropriate security software to identify and eliminate GhostAdmin without trying to find its files or system changes yourself.

A New Ghost Banking on Small Businesses

Tried-and-true families of threatening software often resurrect themselves for threat authors needing to reuse their code. Although the CrimeScene botnet has been out of cyber security headlines for some time, new threat actors are reapplying the backdoor Trojan's principles in their updated version, GhostAdmin. Verifiable victims of this Trojan number at under a dozen, and include such entities as lottery companies and an Internet cafe.

While many botnets leverage their capabilities towards fake advertising traffic or spam, GhostAdmin's payload emphasizes collecting data from the systems it compromises. These attacks run by the threat actor issuing text commands in an IRC channel, while the Trojan uploads the collected information to an FTP server. Some of the features that malware analysts find worthy of emphasizing include:

GhostAdmin may function as a keylogger that records your keyboard input into a log file.
GhostAdmin may download and run additional files, potentially letting a threat actor install other threats.
GhostAdmin may delete files or folders arbitrarily.
GhostAdmin may take screenshots to gather visual data not susceptible to capture by other means.
GhostAdmin may record audio data for a specified number of seconds.
GhostAdmin may enable or disable the mouse or keyboard at will.

This list is only a select handful of the over two dozen commands that the backdoor Trojan supports.

A Haunting Your PC can Do Without

As spyware, GhostAdmin is a well-designed botnet that doesn't leave obvious clues of its installation and includes features for covering its tracks, such as self-termination or removing its log files. Malware experts also find current samples of GhostAdmin mislabeling their components to resemble the Windows files such as taskhost.exe. Under normal circumstances, PC users shouldn't expect to be able to detect GhostAdmin's attacks by eye.

For now, the GhostAdmin botnet is focusing on collecting information from business entities, with hundreds of gigabytes containing contact and identity data already verifiable as having been transferred into the con artists' hands. Methods of compromising such networks often exploit spam e-mails, although other methods, such as brute-forcing RDP passwords, aren't unknown. Update your anti-malware products before scanning suspicious files to detect or remove GhostAdmin, which is showing unusually high rates of evading current threat database standards.

If the business sector is lucky, GhostAdmin may stay a small, focused family that doesn't expand its operations much further than they already are. However, since many backdoor Trojan botnets climb to millions of compromised PCs, the safe bet, unfortunately, lies in the other direction.

Technical Details

File System Modifications

Tutorials: If you wish to learn how to remove malware components manually, you can read the tutorials on how to find malware, kill unwanted processes, remove malicious DLLs and delete other harmful files. Always be sure to back up your PC before making any changes.

The following files were created in the system:

file.exe

File name: file.exe
Size: 118.78 KB (118784 bytes)
MD5: 80efaf603cbc72e855457fc727b281af
Detection count: 9
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: March 13, 2017

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