GoKawiilA malvertising campaign on the Bing search service is pushing a fake Claude desktop app installer hosted on a legitimate Claude.ai domain to deliver the SectopRAT malware.
At least 29 organizations were compromised between July 21-22 during the malicious operation, which researchers call FakeAgent.
The attacker uses a malicious Claude Artifact hosted on Claude’s legitimate domain, which is a common tactic that has been used
The attackers used a malicious Claude Artifact hosted on Claude’s legitimate domain, a tactic that has been used at the beginning of the year to push macOS malware via ClickFix lures.
Researchers at managed security company Huntress found that the malicious Claude Artifact, downloaded 7,100 times before Anthropic removed it, directed visitors to websites that hosted a fake installer named ClaudeDesktop.exe.
Phishing page hosted as a Claude artifact
Source: Huntress
However, the file is a legitimate JetBrains Chromium component that sideloads a malicious DLL (libcef.dll) to deliver the SectopRAT remote access trojan with info-stealing capabilities.
Persistence on the system is achieved through another executable named DockerDesktop.exe, which installs a scheduled task.
Huntress says that the various loaders and staging components used in the infection chain feature anti-analysis mechanisms, including VMProtect packing, shader timing checks, GPU and VRAM checks, and virtual machine (VM) detection.
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