{
	"id": "88499ca5-7ebc-4d84-8583-be2d1ba5c26a",
	"created_at": "2026-04-06T00:15:17.871236Z",
	"updated_at": "2026-04-10T03:21:34.857339Z",
	"deleted_at": null,
	"sha1_hash": "66df7612e65ad00c0cc6ad83d3166b49de6b2ca3",
	"title": "Kelihos Spreads via USB Drives",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
	"file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_size": 104574,
	"plain_text": "Kelihos Spreads via USB Drives\r\nBy Ionut Arghire\r\nPublished: 2017-02-06 · Archived: 2026-04-05 20:06:08 UTC\r\nKelihos, the malware behind one of the longest standing botnets out there, was recently observed spreading\r\nvia infected thumb drives, researchers have discovered.\r\nThe Kelihos botnet has been around for many years, and even survived takedown attempts over half a decade ago.\r\nLast year, the botnet’s activity ramped up as tens of thousands of new bots were added to it. Kelihos was being\r\nused for the distribution of MarsJoke, Wildfire, and Troldesh ransomware and various Trojans, including Panda\r\nZeus, Nymain and Kronos.\r\nThe botnet is being rented as part of the “spam as a service” business model and continues to be geo-targeting\r\nusers. The latest campaign targeted users in Canada with links to web pages of Tangerine Bank phish websites,\r\nwhile distributing a link to the Ecstasy website to recipients with “.kz” email addresses, Arsh Arora, malware\r\nanalyst and Ph.D. researcher at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, discovered.\r\nThe emails contain a webpage that attempts to trick the user into clicking a button with the subject line of\r\n“TANGERINE online account has been suspended” (where Tangerine is the Internet/telephone base bank formerly\r\nknown as ING Direct). An HTML version of the page is displayed to the potential victims, encouraging them to\r\nclick on a “Learn More” button, which would take them to a phishing site, in an attempt to steal their credentials\r\nby requesting them to verify their information.\r\nThe geo-tagging of addresses ending with “.kz” is something new for the Kelihos botnet, the security researcher\r\nnotes. The spam message, which featured a subject line in Russian, was directing users to an adult site\r\n(www[dot]almatinki[dot]com).\r\nThe most interesting part of the attack, however, is the fact that the removable drives attached to the compromised\r\nmachines would be infected with a copy of the original Kelihos binary. The security researcher says that the\r\nmalware was written to a thumb drive connected to the virtual machine that was infected as part of the new\r\ncampaign.\r\nAdvertisement. Scroll to continue reading.\r\nhttps://www.securityweek.com/kelihos-spreads-usb-drives\r\nPage 1 of 2\n\nSaved on the thumb drive under the name of “porn.exe,” the executable is hidden from the user, the same as a few\r\nshortcuts that were not present on the removable device before. The file, the security researcher says, is the\r\nKelihos botnet.\r\nThe researcher also discovered that the Create File function was linked to the dropped executable. The malware\r\nattempts to open several files with CreateFile and, if it fails, it then reverts to creating the .exe file, after which it\r\nwrites the malicious binary to this file. Next, the malware creates shortcuts for the hidden directories and\r\nexecutables.\r\n“An Autorun.inf is not created to run this file, however, a shortcut to the file with the command\r\nC:WINDOWSsystem32cmd.exe F/c ‘start %cd%porn.exe’ can be found on the drive, as well as shortcut to several\r\nother hidden directories on the drive (not malicious),” the security researcher says.\r\nWhen the executable runs, it behaves just like a normal Kelihos would, though the researcher says that they\r\nweren’t yet able to infect a new drive with the botnet, meaning that further investigation is required to reveal the\r\nspecific mechanism the malware uses for infection, especially with the executable seemingly identical to the\r\noriginal binary.\r\nRelated: Kelihos Botnet Triples in Size Overnight\r\nSource: https://www.securityweek.com/kelihos-spreads-usb-drives\r\nhttps://www.securityweek.com/kelihos-spreads-usb-drives\r\nPage 2 of 2",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
	"sources": [
		"ETDA"
	],
	"references": [
		"https://www.securityweek.com/kelihos-spreads-usb-drives"
	],
	"report_names": [
		"kelihos-spreads-usb-drives"
	],
	"threat_actors": [],
	"ts_created_at": 1775434517,
	"ts_updated_at": 1775791294,
	"ts_creation_date": 0,
	"ts_modification_date": 0,
	"files": {
		"pdf": "https://archive.orkl.eu/66df7612e65ad00c0cc6ad83d3166b49de6b2ca3.pdf",
		"text": "https://archive.orkl.eu/66df7612e65ad00c0cc6ad83d3166b49de6b2ca3.txt",
		"img": "https://archive.orkl.eu/66df7612e65ad00c0cc6ad83d3166b49de6b2ca3.jpg"
	}
}