New DarkGate Variant Uses a New Loading Approach
By Leandro Fróes
Published: 2023-11-01 · Archived: 2026-04-05 22:28:49 UTC
Summary
In the past month, the Netskope Threat Labs team observed a considerable increase of SharePoint usage to deliver
malware caused by an attack campaign abusing Microsoft Teams and SharePoint to deliver a malware named
DarkGate.
DarkGate (also known as MehCrypter) is a malware that was first reported by enSilo (now Fortinet) in 2018 and
has been used in multiple campaigns in the past months. Since its recent update announcement in an underground
forum, several campaigns have been conducted to deliver the malware using different methods, such as phishing
and SEO poisoning.
DarkGate appeals to many attackers because of its broad feature set, which includes HVNC, keylogging,
information stealing, and downloading and executing other payloads. DarkGate can be used as a starting point for
bigger attacks, including Ransomware infections.
Netskope Threat Labs recently identified a new DarkGate variant delivered via MSI using a loading approach
based on Cobalt Strike Beacon’s default shellcode stub. Correlating the analyzed samples with findings from other
researchers, we could determine that this is part of a new version of the DarkGate malware. Let’s take a closer
look:
Infection analysis
The infection starts via a fake invoice email delivering a PDF document to the victim. The PDF file contains a
DocuSign template that is used as an attempt to lure the user to open a document to be reviewed:
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Example of the malicious document sent to the victim
Once the user clicks on the fake document a CAB file is downloaded. The CAB file contains an internet shortcut
that once executed downloads an MSI file to the infected machine:
Internet shortcut leading to the MSI download
Once the user executes the MSI file a whole chain of loading mechanisms starts using the files presented in
another CAB file inside the MSI:
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CAB file content
Stage 1 – DLL Side-Loading
The chain starts via the execution of the windbg.exe binary present in the CAB file. The DLL side-loading
technique is used here in order to execute a fake version of the dbgeng.dll DLL file. Since windbg.exe imports
functions from dbgeng.dll, this DLL will be included in its import table, causing the Windows loader to map the
DLL into windbg.exe’s address space and then execute the DllMain function:
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View of Windbg.exe dependencies in the Import Table using DIE
The dbgeng.dll is written in the Delphi programming language and has the internal name of SideLoader.dll, a
common name observed in several DarkGate DLLs. It also contains export functions required for different
binaries, such as windbg.exe and KeyScramblerLogon.exe, which was also observed being abused to side-load
malicious DLLs. 
In the KeyScramblerLogon.exe case, the side-loaded DLL is named KeyScramblerIE.dll and that is also written in
Delphi. The loading methods and decoding algorithm are slightly different from the version presented in this blog,
which abuses the WinDbg binary.
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General overview and Export Table view from the fake dbgeng.dll
Upon execution of its DllMain function dbgeng.dll reads the content of a file named data.bin, present in the same
directory, and decodes it using a custom base64 approach using the
“zLAxuU0kQKf3sWE7ePRO2imyg9GSpVoYC6rhlX48ZHnvjJDBNFtMd1I5acwbqT+=” alphabet. This
approach is the same used in other variants of DarkGate.
The decoded content results in a PE file (also written in Delphi) with a shellcode at the end of the file. The
execution flow will then be redirected to the base address (first byte of the DOS header) of the decoded file.
The DOS Header bytes of this file contains a tiny snippet that is responsible for calculating the base address of the
current decoded file, adding the RVA of the decoded shellcode to the base address and then calling it via a “call
eax” instruction:
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Example of the execution being redirected to the decoded file DOS Header using x64dbg
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Call to the decoded shellcode entry
The technique employed here is very similar to the Cobalt Strike Beacon’s default shellcode stub, which is usually
employed to call the Beacon’s ReflectiveLoader export function.
The called shellcode then prepares the file to be executed performing actions such as resolving its Import Address
Table. The LoadLibraryA and GetProcAddress Windows API functions are resolved by hash using the CRC32
algorithm and then used to resolve the IAT.
The execution flow is then transferred to the stage 2 entry point:
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Stage 2 file entrypoint
Stage 2 – Another Delphi loader
The actions performed by this stage is very similar to the first one. The difference here is that the file read and
decoded is the data2.bin file. Also, instead of being decoded all at once the malware first tries to find the
occurrence of the “splitres” string in the file and then splits it in two parts. After the malware obtains the two parts
it decodes both using the same custom base64 approach.
The first decoded part results in the AutoIt.exe binary and the second part is an AutoIt script that will be named
script.au3. The use of AutoIt files is a well-known approach used by DarkGate actors.
A directory named “tmpa” is created under “C:\”, both files are written to it, and then the CreateProcessA function
is called to execute the AutoIt script using AutoIt.exe:
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C:\tmpa directory content
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AutoIt.exe being used to run the script.au3 script
Stage 3 – The AutoIt script
The executed AutoIt script is responsible for constructing a PE file and executing it via the same DOS header
approach. The DOS header shellcode is executed by using a callback function passed to the EnumWindows API
function. 
Once we decode the AutoIt script, we can see the commands responsible for the loading process are encoded in
hexadecimal. The decoded commands were added as comments in the screenshot below to demonstrate the
mentioned actions:
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AutoIt script content with the important commands commented
Once the callback function is called, the same loading process occurs and the loader shellcode transfers the
execution to another Delphi binary. The small difference in this case is that instead of going directly to the DOS
header snippet, the callback function first goes to a kind of gate that would jump to the DOS header:
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DOS Header snippet transferring the execution to the loader shellcode
Stage 4 – Again a Delphi loader
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Decoded Delphi file overview
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Stage 4 entrypoint
Like the stage 2 payload, this payload will also look for a specific pattern in a file, but instead of an external file it
searches in the script.au3 script content. It looks for the “AU3!EA06” string (a known AutoIt script signature).
Usually this signature would be in the beginning of the file but in this case there’s another occurrence in the file.
Once this string is found, the first 8 bytes next to the signature will be collected and saved for usage later:
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Occurrence of the AutoIt signature followed by a 8 bytes key value
The content next to the saved 8 bytes buffer is read and a multi-byte XOR operation is performed against it using
the buffer as a XOR key. The result of this operation is the DarkGate final payload:
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Multi-byte operation resulting in the final Darkgate payload
During the investigation we observed different XOR keys used for different payloads. The following is a list of
some of the obtained keys:
SHA256 XOR key
1fb6b8bed3a67ee4225f852c3d90fd2b629f2541ab431b4bd4d9d9f5bbd2c4b7 vJDAbKIz
567d828dab1022eda84f90592d6d95e331e0f2696e79ed7d86ddc095bb2efdc8
99f25de5cc5614f4efd967db0dae50f20e2acbae9e98920aff3d98638b9ca1f1
de3f49e68c45db2f31d1cc1d10ff09f8cfce302b92a1f5361c8f34c3d78544e5
ELkMtLfA
68952e8c311d1573b62d02c60a189e8c248530d4584eef1c7f0ff5ee20d730ab RmDbBDsf
d4e766f81e567039c44ccca90ef192a7f063c1783224ee4be3e3d7786980e236 xfNwSUCl
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SHA256 XOR key
5e94aa172460e74293db106a98327778ae2d32c6ce6592857a1ec0c581543572 tCFMLSBD
Exactly like the other stages, the execution flow will be transferred to the decoded file DOS header which will call
the loader shellcode entry, and then the shellcode will call the DarkGate payload entry point:
DarkGate final payload entrypoint
The following is an example of the configuration extracted from the DarkGate payload:
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DarkGate configuration example
In order to facilitate the final DarkGate payload extraction Netskope Threat Labs created a script to automate this
process.
Netskope Detection
Netskope Threat Protection
Win32.Trojan.TurtleLoader
Win32.Trojan.DarkGate
Netskope Advanced Threat Protection provides proactive coverage against this threat.
Gen.Malware.Detect.By.StHeur indicates a sample that was detected using static analysis
Gen.Malware.Detect.By.Sandbox indicates a sample that was detected by our cloud sandbox
Conclusions
Although DarkGate is a threat created years ago it has been very active recently. Several campaigns involving
different delivery and loading methods have been used, as well as new malware features being added, which
requires a lot of action from the security community. Netskope Threat Labs will continue to track how the
DarkGate malware evolves and its TTP.
IOCs
All the IOCs related to this campaign, scripts, and the Yara rules can be found in our GitHub repository.
Source: https://www.netskope.com/jp/blog/new-darkgate-variant-uses-a-new-loading-approach
https://www.netskope.com/jp/blog/new-darkgate-variant-uses-a-new-loading-approach
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