IDATLOADER (aka HIJACKLOADER, GHOSTPULSE) has become prevalent in 2024, using advanced and new techniques such as BPL Sideloading, which Kroll reported on in June. Kroll observes IDATLOADER distributing malware such as ASYNCRAT, PURESTEALER, REMCOS, STEALC and what some might describe as a recent epidemic in LUMMASTEALER infections.

Alongside an explosion in the popularity of large language models (LLMs) across many industries, there has also been an increase in the level of trust granted to these models. Whereas LLMs were once perceived as simple, friendly chatbots that could respond to basic questions or pull useful resources from the web based on user input, many have now been granted the ability to perform actions, anywhere from sending an email to deploying code. This is referred to as agency.

The Kroll Security Operations Center (SOC) has recently detected and remediated a trend of incidents that involved socially engineering a victim into pasting a PowerShell script into the “Run” command window to begin a compromise. These incidents have typically begun with the victim user attempting to find “YouTube to mp3” converters, or similar, then being redirected to the malicious webpages.