{"id":182615,"date":"2024-02-13T09:24:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T15:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/pikabot-resurfaces-with-streamlined-code-and-deceptive-tactics"},"modified":"2024-02-13T09:24:15","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T15:24:15","slug":"pikabot-resurfaces-with-streamlined-code-and-deceptive-tactics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/pikabot-resurfaces-with-streamlined-code-and-deceptive-tactics","title":{"rendered":"PikaBot Resurfaces with Streamlined Code and Deceptive Tactics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/pikabot-resurfaces-with-streamlined-code-and-deceptive-tactics2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The threat actors behind the PikaBot malware have made significant changes to the malware in what has been described as a case of \u201cdevolution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough it appears to be in a new development cycle and testing phase, the developers have reduced the complexity of the code by removing advanced obfuscation techniques and changing the network communications,\u201d Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Nikolaos Pantazopoulos <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zscaler.com\/blogs\/security-research\/d-evolution-pikabot\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>PikaBot, <a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2023\/06\/new-mystic-stealer-malware-targets-40.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first documented<\/a> by the cybersecurity firm in May 2023, is a malware loader and a backdoor that can execute commands and inject payloads from a command-and-control (C2) server as well as allow the attacker to control the infected host.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The threat actors behind the PikaBot malware have made significant changes to the malware in what has been described as a case of \u201cdevolution.\u201d \u201cAlthough it appears to be in a new development cycle and testing phase, the developers have reduced the complexity of the code by removing advanced obfuscation techniques and changing the network [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}