A vulnerability within the DanaBot malware operation launched in June 2022 replace led to the identification, indictment, and dismantling of their operations in a latest legislation enforcement motion.
DanaBot is a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform lively from 2018 by way of 2025, used for banking fraud, credential theft, distant entry, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults.
Zscaler’s ThreatLabz researchers who found the vulnerability, dubbed ‘DanaBleed,’ clarify {that a} reminiscence leak allowed them to realize a deep peak into the malware’s inner operations and the folks behind it.
Leveraging the flaw to gather worthwhile intelligence on the cybercriminals enabled a global legislation enforcement motion named ‘Operation Endgame‘ to take DanaBot infrastructure offline and indict 16 members of the risk group.
DanaBleed
The DanaBleed flaw was launched in June 2022 with DataBot model 2380, which added a brand new command and management (C2) protocol.
A weak point within the new protocol’s logic was within the mechanism that generated the C2 server’s responses to shoppers, which was supposed to incorporate randomly generated padding bytes however did not initialize newly allotted reminiscence for these.
Zscaler researchers collected and analyzed a lot of C2 responses that, as a result of reminiscence leak bug, contained leftover knowledge fragments from the server’s reminiscence.
This publicity is analogous to the HeartBleed drawback found in 2014, impacting the ever present OpenSSL software program.
Because of DanaBleed, a broad array of personal knowledge was uncovered to the researchers over time, together with:
- Menace actor particulars (usernames, IP addresses)
- Backend infrastructure (C2 server IPs/domains)
- Sufferer knowledge (IP addresses, credentials, exfiltrated information)
- Malware changelogs
- Personal cryptographic keys
- SQL queries and debug logs
- HTML and net interface snippets from the C2 dashboard
For over three years, DanaBot operated in a compromised mode with out its builders or shoppers ever realizing they had been being uncovered to safety researchers.
This allowed focused legislation enforcement motion when sufficient knowledge had been collected.
Supply: Zscaler
Though DanaBot’s core workforce in Russia was merely indicted and never arrested, the seizure of essential C2 servers, 650 domains, and practically $4,000,000 in cryptocurrency has successfully neutralized the risk for now.
It isn’t unlikely that the risk actors try to return to cybercrime operations sooner or later, however diminished belief from the hackers’ group will probably be a big impediment for them.
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