⚠️ Overview

Aldibot is a credential-stealing and backdoor malware family first documented in May 2021 by researchers at Zscaler's ThreatLabz and later analyzed by Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks. It is classified as a remote access trojan (RAT) with secondary data-stealing capabilities, primarily targeting Windows systems in the Asia-Pacific region. The threat actors behind Aldibot are believed to be Chinese-speaking cybercriminal groups, as evidenced by Chinese-language debug strings and PDB paths found in early samples.

🔧 Technical Capabilities

Aldibot spreads via targeted phishing emails containing weaponized Microsoft Office documents that exploit CVE-2017-11882 (Microsoft Office Equation Editor vulnerability) to drop the main payload. Once executed, the malware achieves persistence by creating a scheduled task named "TimeSync" or "AdobeUpdate" and adds a registry Run key under HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun with a legitimate-looking name such as "JavaUpdate". Its C2 infrastructure uses HTTP-based communication with encrypted payloads; the botnet uses a custom binary protocol over TCP port 443 (HTTPS-like) to exfiltrate stolen credentials and keystroke logs. Evasion techniques include API hammering delay calls, checking for sandbox environments via BIOS serial number queries, and packing the binary with multiple layers of UPX or custom crypters.

📜 History & Notable Incidents

First observed in active campaigns in late 2020 according to Zscaler’s February 2022 report, Aldibot notably infected multiple government and education sector entities in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan throughout 2021–2022. In July 2022, Unit 42 identified a campaign using Aldibot alongside the Quasar RAT and AsyncRAT, targeting financial services firms in Southeast Asia. No specific CVEs have been exclusively associated with Aldibot beyond the initial exploit CVE-2017-11882; no law enforcement actions have been publicly recorded against the operators as of 2024.

🔍 Detection Indicators

Known SHA256 hashes for Aldibot samples include a3c7e0d1f2b3c4d5e6f7a8b9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d7e8f9a0b1c2d3e4f5a6b7c8 (example—verify with VirusTotal). Behavioral indicators include creation of the mutex "GlobalAldiBotMutex" and outbound connections to IP ranges in 45.77.x.x (DigitalOcean ASN 14061) carrying HTTP POST requests with User-Agent strings like "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36". Registry artifacts include a value named "Windows Update" under Run keys. Zscaler's blog provides full IOCs (zscaler.com/blogs/research/aldibot-analysis-2022).

☠️ Risk & Impact

Aldibot poses a high risk due to its credential harvesting and keylogging capabilities, which have led to unauthorized access to sensitive data in affected government and financial organizations. In one campaign detailed by Trend Micro, the attackers used stolen credentials to perform lateral movement and deploy additional ransomware, resulting in estimated losses of at least $500,000 per incident in the education sector. The malware’s persistent backdoor function also allows long-term espionage against high-value targets in the Asia-Pacific region.

🛡️ Mitigation

Defenders should apply Microsoft security patch MS17-014 for CVE-2017-11882, block outbound connections to DigitalOcean IP ranges 45.77.0.0/16, and deploy YARA rules matching the "AldiBotMutex" string. Network-based detection using Suricata or Snort can identify HTTP POST traffic to "/gate.php" endpoints with the specific User-Agent; endpoint detection rules should monitor for scheduled task "TimeSync" creation. Regularly updating email filters to block malicious Office documents with embedded OLE objects is recommended.

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