OnionDuke

Posted: November 14, 2014

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:	21

First Seen:	November 14, 2014
Last Seen:	October 23, 2020
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

OnionDuke is a family of backdoor Trojans that may install other threats, gather private data about your PC and enable future attacks by third parties. Named for its recent association with the Tor Browser, OnionDuke may be bundled with unrelated executable files and programs, making its installation potentially wide, albeit randomly distributed. All evidence of OnionDuke's capabilities leads malware experts to rank OnionDuke as a high-level threat, and deleting OnionDuke without any help from professional anti-malware software is heavily discouraged.

The New Layer Beneath MiniDuke Campaigns

Previously, the MiniDuke family of backdoor Trojans earned its notoriety for involvement in campaigns attacking government institutions through e-mail attachments. However, its maintainers may have moved on; new evidence has surfaced of a second family of similar Trojans using the same Web infrastructure: OnionDuke. Structurally, OnionDuke is distinct from MiniDuke, but may operate with similar payloads, including attacks such as:

Installing additional forms of threatening software, including Trojans meant to gather security-related system information (such as whether your system is protected by a firewall) or grab text from account login fields.
Communicating through a backdoor connection to a C&C server that allows third parties to browse uploaded information and issue instructions. All confirmed C&C servers so far have been hacked websites, rather than domains owned by the third parties, themselves.

OnionDuke bears its informal name for its distribution campaign exploiting Tor, an anonymity-enabling Web browser. Criminals compromising specific exit nodes caused OnionDuke to bundle with unrelated file downloads. To a lesser extent, OnionDuke also may be seen packaged in torrent-distributed archives, which are a prominent source of software piracy. Launching the compromised files installs OnionDuke automatically through a Trojan dropper component via a standardized DLL-loading technique.

There also is some circumstantial evidence that OnionDuke may be continuing in its forebears footsteps by attacking government agencies, specifically for the region of Europe. While evidence of OnionDuke's distribution only goes to 2013, version information included in OnionDuke's body causes malware experts to suspect that this Trojan family is several years older than that.

Peeling the Trojans Away from Your Privacy

Although OnionDuke has capitalized on the same privacy invasion concerns that have made Tor a popular application, there are ways of protecting your privacy and your computer simultaneously. In addition to you seeking alternative services, malware experts can recommend the use of virtual private networks (or VPNs) to encrypt your downloads, as well as scanning downloaded files before you open them. OnionDuke includes multiple components and sophisticated defenses, like most well-designed backdoor families, and removing OnionDuke always should be handled by anti-malware solutions.

OnionDuke is one of the few families to have suspected involvement in both non-targeted attacks and targeted ones. With respect to the latter, malware researchers are still uncovering evidence of its distribution routines. E-mail attachments and local network compromises are two of the most common factors in government, corporate and NGO threat campaigns, and may pertain to OnionDuke, as well.

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: 219.13 KB (219136 bytes)
MD5: 5473e29ca75d475f545fa7d9f85e564f
Detection count: 58
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: November 18, 2014

UserCache.dll

File name: UserCache.dll
Size: 126.46 KB (126464 bytes)
MD5: c8eb6040fd02d77660d19057a38ff769
Detection count: 19
File type: Dynamic link library
Mime Type: unknown/dll
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: November 18, 2014

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

Regexp file mask%LOCALAPPDATA%\Startup\kb[NUMBERS].lnk