A new spear-phishing campaign targeting Brazil has been found delivering a banking malware called Astaroth (aka Guildma) The malware makes use of obfuscated JavaScript to slip past security guardrails. Manufacturing companies, retail firms, and government agencies are the most affected. To mitigate the risk posed by such attacks, it's recommended to enforce strong password policies, use multi-factor authentication (MFA), keep security solutions and software updated, and apply the principle of least privilege (PoLP)"Beyond stolen data, its impact extends to long-term damage to consumer trust, regulatory fines, and increased costs from business disruption and downtime as well as recovery and remediation," Trend Micro said in a new analysis.
It's important to note that a similar intrusion set that distributes the same malware has been given the name PINEAPPLE by Google's Threat Analysis Group.