Retour 
We recently published an article about the Xbooster parasitic malware campaign that uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver the payloads and exfiltrate victims host details. This blog will detail the technical analysis of Xbooster, the different Xbooster strains, and the Monero earnings of the associated accounts.
The Xbooster Monero miner that we initially observed was delivered by a drive-by-download, http://54[.]214[.]196[.]101/afplayer/aivengo_down[.]php?clickid=820d1j6slqdhqf9f. The URL path suggests the malware distribution involved in a “pay-per-install” (PPI)/ “pay-per-click” (PPC) model. This model generates revenue for each install or click to the threat actor.
The URL delivered a file disguised as Adobe flash player named AdobeFlashPlayer__820d1j6slqdhqf9f.exe in the format AdobeFlashPlayer__<clickid number>.exe. The sample also contained a PDB path – C:\Work\Xmrig_console_explorer4\Release\aivengo.pdb
The sample contained a zip file encapsulated in the resource section as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Xbooster resource sectionThe password zip file is unzipped during runtime with a password ‘1’. This routine is shown in Figure 2.
