TECHDIGEST – A new SEO Campaign that uses search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning to trick users into downloading BATLOADER

Raising the alarm in its latest internet risk alert report, the National Information and Technology Development Agency (NITDA), disclosed that the SEO keyword themes used as part of the poisoning include terms like “free productivity apps installation” or “free software development tools.”

According to NITDA, with this campaign, threat actors artificially increase websites search engine ranking while hosting their malware to make them appear on top of search results.

The alert stated that this malware exploits Windows binaries to download and execute payloads adding that final payloads used during this campaign include Cobalt Strike beacons, Ursnif, SplashTop, and ATERA to establish remote access and persistence, privilege escalation, and credential harvesting with further post-exploitation frameworks after that.

To avoid being a victim, NITDA in the report stated that users should only download software directly from the application’s source, such as the official website or download repository.

It called on organisations maintain a central repository of commonly used utilities that end users can install from noting that such will help prevent the need for end-users to search for the tool on the Internet to download.

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