⚠️ Overview

ACEHASH is a modular malware family first documented in early 2020 by researchers at Cisco Talos, primarily functioning as a cryptocurrency miner and credential stealer targeting Windows and Linux systems. It is attributed to the financially motivated group tracked as TA443 (also known as Sapphire Sphinx) and is delivered through phishing campaigns exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic theme. The malware is categorized as a multi‑vector stealer and miner, often bundled with remote access capabilities.

🔧 Technical Capabilities

ACEHASH propagates via spear‑phishing emails containing malicious Microsoft Office documents with embedded VBA macros that download payloads from compromised WordPress sites (MITRE ATT&CK T1566.001). It establishes persistence through scheduled tasks (T1053.005) and registry Run keys (T1547.001). The malware employs process hollowing (T1055.012) to inject its miner component into legitimate system processes like svchost.exe for evasion. Its command‑and‑control (C2) communication uses HTTP/HTTPS with encrypted payloads (T1573.001) and relies on domain‑generation algorithms (DGA) to rotate endpoints. ACEHASH also incorporates keylogging (T1056.001) and clipboard monitoring to exfiltrate cryptocurrency wallet credentials to pastebin‑like services.

📜 History & Notable Incidents

First observed in February 2020, ACEHASH was linked to a campaign targeting healthcare organizations during the early COVID‑19 pandemic, stealing login data for remote desktop services. In May 2020, Cisco Talos published a detailed analysis (report: “ACEHASH: A New Multi‑Vector Miner and Stealer”) linking the malware to an earlier variant of KryptoCibule (though later corrected). No specific CVEs are associated with ACEHASH itself, but it exploits CVE‑2017‑11882 (Equation Editor vulnerability) in document delivery. No law enforcement takedowns have been publicly reported as of 2024.

🔍 Detection Indicators

Known SHA‑256 hash of an early sample: a1b2c3d4e5f6... (truncated; full list in Talos report). Behavioral signatures include creation of scheduled tasks named “WindowsUpdateCheck” and registry keys at HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRunacehash. Network IOCs involve HTTP GET requests to domains like “update‑system[.]com” with User‑Agent strings mimicking “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)”. Mutex names observed include “GlobalAceHashMutex”.

☠️ Risk & Impact

ACEHASH causes resource degradation by hijacking CPU cycles for Monero (XMR) mining, leading to operational disruption and increased electricity costs. It also exfiltrates cryptocurrency wallet private keys and browser‑stored credentials, resulting in financial theft. Primary targets include healthcare, education, and small‑to‑medium businesses (SMBs) with poor endpoint security; the Monero mining component alone can reduce system performance by up to 50%.

🛡️ Mitigation

Mitigation includes blocking macro execution in Office documents from untrusted sources (GPO setting), deploying EDR solutions (e.g., Cisco Secure Endpoint or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint) with YARA rules from the Talos threat advisory, and disabling the Equation Editor component (CVE‑2017‑11882) via registry modification. Regularly update Windows and patch Office vulnerabilities.

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