# WAV audio files are now being used to hide malicious code



## P4-630 (Oct 21, 2019)

_Steganography malware trend moving from PNG and JPG to WAV files. 






Two reports published in the last few months show that malware operators are experimenting with using WAV audio files to hide malicious code. 

The technique is known as steganography -- the art of hiding information in plain sight, in another data medium. 

In the software field, steganography -- also referred to as stego -- is used to describe the process of hiding files or text in another file, of a different format. For example, hiding plain text inside an image's binary format.

Using steganography has been popular with malware operators for more than a decade. Malware authors don't use steganography to breach or infect systems, but rather as a transfer method. Steganography allows files hiding malicious code to bypass security software that whitelists non-executable file formats (such as multimedia files).

All previous instances where malware used steganography revolved around using image file formats, such as PNG or JEPG.

The novelty in the two recently-published reports is the use of WAV audio files, not seen abused in malware operations until this year.

*THE TWO REPORTS*
The first of these two new malware campaigns abusing WAV files was reported back in June. Symantec security researchers said they spotted a Russian cyber-espionage group known as Waterbug (or Turla) using WAV files to hide and transfer malicious code from their server to already-infected victims.


The second malware campaign was spotted this month by BlackBerry Cylance. In a report published today and shared with ZDNet last week, Cylance said it saw something similar to what Symantec saw a few months before.

But while the Symantec report described a nation-state cyber-espionage operation, Cylance said they saw the WAV steganography technique being abused in a run-of-the-mill crypto-mining malware operation.

Cylance said this particular threat actor was hiding DLLs inside WAV audio files. Malware already-present on the infected host would download and read the WAV file, extract the DLL bit by bit, and then run it, installing a cryptocurrency miner application named XMRrig.

Josh Lemos, VP of Research and Intelligence at BlackBerry Cylance, told ZDNet in an email yesterday that this malware strain using WAV steganography was spotted on both Windows desktop and server instances.

*THE COMMODITIZATION OF STEGANOGRAPHY*
Furthermore, Lemos also told us that this also appears to be the first time a crypto-mining malware strain was seen using abused steganography, regardless if it was a PNG, JPEG, or WAV file.

This shows that your mundane crypto-mining malware authors are growing in sophistication, as they learn from other operations.

"The use of stego techniques requires an in-depth understanding of the target file format," Lemos told ZDNet. "It is generally used by sophisticated threat actors that want to remain undetected for a long period of time.

"Developing a stego technique takes time, and several blogs have detailed how threat actors such as OceanLotus or Turla implemented payload hiding," Lemos added.

"These publications make it possible for other threat actors to grasp the technique and use it as they see fit."

In other words, the act of documenting and studying steganography comes with a snowball effect that also commoditizes the technique for lower-skilled malware operations.

But while Symantec and Cylance's work on documenting WAV-based steganography might help other malware operators, WAV, PNG, and JPG files aren't the only file formats that can be abused.

"Stego can be used with any file format as long as the attacker adheres to the structure and constraints of the format so that any modifications performed on the targeted file do not break its integrity," Lemos told.

In other words, defending against steganography by blocking vulnerable file formats is not the correct solution, as companies would end up blocking the downloading of many popular formats, like JPEG, PNG, BMP, WAV, GIF, WebP, TIFF, and loads more; wreaking havoc in internal networks and making it impossible to navigate the modern internet.

A proper way of dealing with steganography is... not dealing with it at all. Since stego is only used as a data transfer method, companies should be focusing on detecting the point of entry/infection of the malware that abuses stegonagraphy, or the execution of the unauthorized code spawned by the stego-laced files._









						WAV audio files are now being used to hide malicious code
					

Steganography malware trend moving from PNG and JPG to WAV files.




					www.zdnet.com


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## W1zzard (Oct 21, 2019)

replace "code" with "data" everywhere. Code = executable program code, which this is not.


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## Aquinus (Oct 21, 2019)

You still need an application that knows how to decode this stuff in these files which means the malware has to end up on the box as a binary and not as some weird bit of embedded data in a file. Embedding code into a WAV doesn't make it executable like @W1zzard said, so you still need another piece of software that will take that "malicious code" and execute it which still leaves you in the same position you were in without encoding data into another non-executable format; getting a binary or arbitrary code to *run* on the target machine.


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## W1zzard (Oct 21, 2019)

Could be a lost in translation thing though, in German "code" [encryption] == "encoded data / encoding"


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## Bill_Bright (Oct 21, 2019)

Is this really a "new" threat?


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## R-T-B (Oct 21, 2019)

Bill_Bright said:


> Is this really a "new" threat?



Sort of?  It's just a new way to hide managing viral code from researchers and hosts.

Didn't work for long though obviously.  My immediate question with something like this is "how long did they do it unnoticed?"


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## dorsetknob (Oct 21, 2019)

Bill_Bright said:


> Is this really a "new" threat?


No as far as i remember there was a Spate of WMF files containing malicious code years ago (favorite type of file was porn and they hijacked your Browser).


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## Bill_Bright (Oct 21, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> My immediate question with something like this is "how long did they do it unnoticed?"


I just remember hearing about steganography being used to hide and distribute malware several years ago in image files. It just seems odd to me that using .wav files would be something "new". 

But yeah, I agree. "How long did they do it unnoticed?" is a concern.

But to me, the greater question is, "_How long have researchers known about it before they decided to report it?_" I note what irritates me almost more than hackers stealing our personal information is it may be months after the company discovered the hack before they let their customers know their information was stolen.   



dorsetknob said:


> No as far as i remember there was a Spate of WMF files containing malicious code years ago (favorite type of file was porn and they hijacked your Browser).


Yeah, that sound familiar too.


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## R-T-B (Oct 21, 2019)

Bill_Bright said:


> Yeah, that sound familiar too.



Different than this though.  This is control code hosted online in innocent looking files.  You don't just get infected by opening a .wav in this case.  If you didn't have recieving malware looking for whatever on your end, it'd play as an innocent .wav and nothing would happen.

Most likely, I'd guess they hid it by doing some clever bit modulation/demodulation in the sound file as... sound. You could basically be a pretend analog modem bitstream playing back in a wave file and download a virus to a quite literally "listening" program... it'd be bizzare but it'd work.  It'd even be faster than 56K by virtue of fidelty.  It'd sound like the old dial up days to anyone who played it.

Heck, now that I've described it, I kinda wanna try this now.  It's really clever.  Useless for anything but hiding stuff, and of course being used completely unethically here, but clever all the same.

It reminds me of a program I wrote for DVHS VCR's many moons ago, that backed up data to VHS tapes via firewire. Stored around 20GBs per 120 minute tape in straight video MPEG-bit->Video modulation (and yes, it took 120mins, so a little less than 3MB/s bitrate) . Useless now, but pretty cool then. The tape also had to be SVHS or better though (expensive), so probably was always useless really.

I just wish clever things weren't thought up by bad guys.  That always irritates me.  Why couldn't *I* have thought of this, first?

I totally want to make this just so when the FBI finally gets around to investigating me for frog-related treason, they find my secret encrypted audio files, "cooerce" the key out me, study the suspicious modem static under intense science, only to discover my modulation scheme and decode a picture of an innocent giraffe doing fun innocent giraffe things.

At that point, they'd realize how useless I really am, and probably let me go before they found the frogbomb.

Rejoice, all ye faithful.

EDIT:  Ok, maybe I got a bit carried away there.  Humor me I've had a bad day.  There is no frogbomb...  or not yet, anyways.  Pray it never comes to that.


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## ShrimpBrime (Oct 21, 2019)

Hmm. updated Malwarebytes. All good now, no worries.... lol.


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## Bill_Bright (Oct 21, 2019)

That's good but me? I wasn't worried before this news.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 21, 2019)

I knew that Dave Mathews CD was spying on me!


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## Space Lynx (Oct 21, 2019)

good thing I only use .flac



ShrimpBrime said:


> Hmm. updated Malwarebytes. All good now, no worries.... lol.



yep i have a lifetime license for malwarebytes. its good stuff.


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## R-T-B (Oct 22, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> good thing I only use .flac



You wouldn't be the one opening the wav.  It's for remote command execution.  You'd have to already have malware on your machine to have it even look up a innocent looking (to hosts) wav file to ask for botnet commands.



lynx29 said:


> yep i have a lifetime license for malwarebytes. its good stuff.



Still, if you got this, I think you got a handle on it.


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## Space Lynx (Oct 22, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> You wouldn't be the one opening the wav.  It's for remote command execution.  You'd have to already have malware on your machine to have it even look up a innocent looking (to hosts) wav file to ask for botnet commands.
> Still, if you got this, I think you got a handle on it.



ah ok. yeah and I have also TinyWall as my firewall set to max mode, so anything trying to connect to the internet requires permission. so even if malwarebytes fails, it will have a hard time getting around that I think.


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## GlacierNine (Oct 23, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> I knew that Dave Mathews CD was spying on me!


It actually is... or was, if you bought it in 2004/5 - 



> Sony also uses SunnComm MediaMax DRM software on some of its releases, including the Foo Fighters and the Dave Matthews Band. MediaMax does not conceal itself with a rootkit, but one researcher has concluded “it does behave in several ways that are characteristic of spyware” by: installing software without meaningful consent or notification; including either no means of uninstalling the software or an uninstaller that claims to remove the entire program but does not; and transmitting information about user activities to SunnComm despite statements to the contrary in the end user license agreement (EULA) and on SunnComm’s web site. The researcher noted that when a MediaMax-protected CD is inserted into a computer running Windows, the program displays an EULA, but that before the EULA appears MediaMax installs around a dozen files of over 12 MB in size. Finally, researchers have warned that the web-based XCP uninstaller offered by Sony represents a “far greater security risk than even the original Sony rootkit.”








						Sony Music CD Woes, Continued | Casetext
					






					casetext.com


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## somethinggeneric (Oct 27, 2019)

Good god, you mean all those songs I've downloaded off of Limewire could have viruses in them?


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