BabyShark

A new hacking tool was spotted by malware researchers recently. Dubbed the BabyShark malware, this threat is believed to originate from North Korea. One of the justifications for these speculations is that there have been two other threats uncovered, which have stark similarities to the BabyShark malware and come from North Korea. They are called the KimJongRAT and STOLEN PENCIL. It appears that the hackers behind the BabyShark may be linked to the North Korean government. This deduction is based on the fact that the targets of this threat are political mainly. The BabyShark malware is targeting organizations, which are linked to the discussions of the denuclearization of North Korea, especially.

The infection vector employed by the authors of the BabyShark is spear-phishing emails, which contain an infected attachment in the shape of a Microsoft Office document. There are indications that the targets have been monitored prior to the attack because the fraudulent emails contained private information about their victims, which made them seem more believable. If the users open the attachment, they will trigger the hidden macro script, and this will initiate the BabyShark attack. To make sure the victim does not notice the threatening activities, a bogus document file also is opened. As another measure ensuring that the user stays clueless about the BabyShark threat's presence on their systems, this malware would manipulate the Windows Registry and shut down any notifications regarding the execution of VBScript (Visual Basic scripts).

BabyShark makes sure to waste no time in establishing a connection with the Command and Control server of its authors. Then, it would present the attackers with information about the infected host such as running processes, installed software, username, start-up applications, etc. The data gathered is saved in a file named 'ttmp.log.' The attackers can control the BabyShark malware and order it to execute various commands, but it is not yet known what its capabilities are.

The BabyShark malware has been active since early 2018, and it is not known when and if it will be halted.