#Sophos download link apk#
#Sophos download link install#
#Sophos download link registration#

More security implied than an HTTPS certificate Ransomware: What REALLY happens if you pay the crooks? In the youРІР‚в„ўve-been-fired email example we encountered here at Sophos, the purveyors of the РІР‚СљTrusted AppРІР‚Сњ turned out to be the BazarLoader malware gang.

#Sophos download link install#

Install and activate numerous unsigned apps under the imprimatur of the signed, and allewgedly trusted, top-level bundle file.

Trigger the installation via the Appinstaller.exe process, not more suspiciously via a browser.

Distribute an App Installer bundle that presented itself as a Trusted App, much like an app from the curated Microsoft Store.

Acquire a РІР‚СљtrustedРІР‚Сњ signing key and use it to sign App Installer bundles.

#Sophos download link registration#

Simply put, based on an online-and-apparently-never-used-for-real company registration that probably cost just a few pounds (and who knows whether the attackers actually paid anything for it, or simply acquired access to the company data via an earlier hack or data breach?), cybercriminals were able to: In the example above, the app signer claimed to be a accounting firm and was a registered UK business.Р”В«ut if you had chased it further than that, you would have found a company that had never really done any business, was located at an unlikely address, and was about to be deregistered anyway. Unfortunately, the signerРІР‚в„ўs name doesnРІР‚в„ўt tell you much at all, or at least it didnРІР‚в„ўt last year when we first saw this trick used for distributing РІР‚СљtrustedРІР‚Сњ malware. Note that in the screenshot above, the publisherРІР‚в„ўs name (fraudulently given as РІР‚СљAdobe Inc.РІР‚Сњ) is just a text string in the app bundle itself to РІР‚СљverifyРІР‚Сњ the signer, you need to click on the blue text Trusted App].

#Sophos download link apk#

Notably, the process insists on a digitally-signed application bundle (for bundle, think Android APK or Linux package), and therefore starts with a reassuring, if unfamiliar, popup assuring you, with a confident-looking green tick (check mark), that this is a Trusted App, apparently coded by a vendor you know: This ms-appinstaller protocol not only takes you down a very different visual path than a traditional web download, but also mirrors the sort of experience that you would only ever have seen before, if you had seen it at all, when using the Microsoft Store.

Some of us subsequently received follow-up messages telling us that we were no longer technically in trouble, for the rather dramatic reason that weРІР‚в„ўd been fired our РІР‚Сљtermination lettersРІР‚Сњ were attached, once again as a document download link.Р”В«ut the download links werenРІР‚в„ўt conventional or downloads instead, they relied on an unusual link starting ms-appinstaller://, which (on Windows, at least), triggers MicrosoftРІР‚в„ўs App Installer system to orchestrate the download process.