Pirate Chick

Pirate Chick is a Trojan, which is being propagated via software bundles disguised as a legitimate VPN tool. If users fall for the trickery of Pirate Chick and either buy the supposed VPN product or just sign-up for the free three-month trial, they would give the green light to this Trojan to infiltrate their system.

When the Pirate Chick is executed, it will scan the currently running processes and check for the presence of Fiddler, Regshot, ProcessHacker, WireShot, and ImmunityDebugger – all of these are commonly used tools for malware debugging. If it detects any of these running, it will cease the attack. If Pirate Chick opts to continue the attack, it will perform a second check to see if it is already running on the computer, therefore avoiding duplicate infections and potential conflicts. Pirate Chick originates from Belarus, and once this Trojan detects that the machine it is on is located in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan, perhaps out of a sense of comradeship, it does not deploy its harmful payload.

The creators of the Pirate Chick Trojan have put a significant amount of effort into masquerading their Trojan as a legitimate VPN solution. To 'confirm' the authenticity of their creation, the authors of the Pirate Chick Trojan even present it as a tool that has certificates by ATX International Ltd. Furthermore, in an attempt to reinforce the supposed legitimacy of Pirate Chick, its creators have built a website in the shape of a splash page, with a user-friendly interface, an interactive map and well-designed imagery.

Initially, the Pirate Chick Trojan employed a keylogger, which is called AZORult, whose purpose was to collect login credentials from the victims and then transfer them to the servers of the perpetrators. Now, it would seem that Pirate Chick infects the infiltrated computers with a legitimate process explorer tool. It is not yet known what the intent behind this is, but it is being speculated that it may be used in an upcoming attack.

Users online need to stay very cautious of the software they choose to install. The fact that Pirate Chick offers a free trial 'No credit card required' should set off a red flag immediately. It is a must to have a reputable anti-malware application installed on your computer as threats like the Pirate Chick Trojan lurk all around the Web looking for their next victim.