Monday, March 7th 2022
Malware On the Prowl Using Stolen NVIDIA Code Signing Certificates
Stolen code-signing certificates of NVIDIA scored from the recent cyber-attack, are being used to develop a new breed of malware that can appear "trustworthy" to Windows PCs. The code-signing certificates leaked to the web as part of the hacker group expired in 2014 and 2018, but Windows PCs are still able to see them as being used for signing drivers. One such malware that hit anti-virus provider VirusTotal, is a variant of the Quasar RAT (remote-access trojan), signed with NVIDIA certificates. A RAT works in the background, granting remote-access to your machine to an attacking group with read-write access, who can then do anything from stealing data or holding it to ransom by encrypting it.
Source:
BleepingComputer
35 Comments on Malware On the Prowl Using Stolen NVIDIA Code Signing Certificates
docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/kernel-mode-code-signing-policy--windows-vista-and-later-
Who ever talked hardware in this thread?
What do you think the certs were being used for?
Either way this problem is not about signing drivers, but general code signature generation. In the OP there's a screenshot of Explorer's view with "Timestamp: unavailable". The interesting part is that there's no "Details" view visible because it probably would show that the signature is invalid due to missing timestamp. The last screenshot also shows failed validation.
I'm suspecting this entire news piece is PR for the group that stole NV's data going something like this: "look, we have the private keys to older code signing certificates, you probably are wondering if we have the current ones, we do, but for a price".