{"id":4405,"date":"2025-05-14T06:34:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T06:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=4405"},"modified":"2025-05-14T06:34:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T06:34:41","slug":"horabot-malware-targets-6-latin-american-nations-using-invoice-themed-phishing-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zero.redgem.net\/?p=4405","title":{"rendered":"Horabot Malware Targets 6 Latin American Nations Using Invoice-Themed Phishing Emails"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Security Update News<\/h2>\n<h3>Update Information<\/h3>\n<table style=\"width:100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Title<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">Horabot Malware Targets 6 Latin American Nations Using Invoice-Themed Phishing Emails<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Update ID<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">THN:030F87F833CD87DD01ECA672F08CA3D7<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Type<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">thn<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Published<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">2025-05-14T10:40:00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Last Updated<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">2025-05-14T10:40:25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<h3>Security Impact<\/h3>\n<table style=\"width:100%; border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">CVSS Score<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">0.0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Severity<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; color: #666666; font-weight: bold;\">NONE<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th style=\"text-align: left; padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; \">Attack Vector<\/th>\n<td style=\"padding: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<h3>Affected CVEs<\/h3>\n<div style=\" padding: 15px; border: 1px solid #ddd; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n<ul style=\"margin: 0; padding-left: 20px;\">\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Update Details<\/h3>\n<div style=\"; padding: 15px; border-left: 4px solid #4CAF50; margin-bottom: 20px;\">\n![Horabot Malware](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new phishing campaign that&#8217;s being used to distribute malware called **Horabot** targeting Windows users in Latin American countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign is &#8220;using crafted emails that impersonate invoices or financial documents to trick victims into opening malicious attachments and can steal email credentials, harvest contact lists, and install banking trojans,&#8221; Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said.<\/p>\n<p>The activity, observed by the network security company in April 2025, has primarily singled out Spanish-speaking users. The attacks have also been found to send phishing messages from victims&#8217; mailboxes using Outlook COM automation, effectively propagating the malware laterally within corporate or personal networks.<\/p>\n<p>![Cybersecurity](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the threat actors behind the campaign execute various VBScript, AutoIt, and PowerShell scripts to conduct system reconnaissance, steal credentials, and drop additional payloads.<\/p>\n<p>Horabot was first documented by Cisco Talos in June 2023 as targeting Spanish-speaking users in Latin America since at least November 2020. It&#8217;s assessed that the attacks are the work of a threat actor from Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>Then last year, Trustwave SpiderLabs revealed details of another phishing campaign targeting the same region with malicious payloads which it said exhibits similarities with that of Horabot malware.<\/p>\n<p>![Horabot Malware](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>The latest set of attacks starts with a phishing email that employs invoice-themed lures to entice users into opening a ZIP archive containing a PDF document. However, in reality, the attached ZIP file contains a malicious HTML file with Base64-encoded HTML data that&#8217;s designed to reach out to a remote server and download the next-stage payload.<\/p>\n<p>The payload is another ZIP archive that contains an HTML Application (HTA) file, which is responsible for loading a script hosted on a remote server. The script then injects an external Visual Basic Script (VBScript) that performs a series of checks that cause it to terminate if Avast antivirus is installed or it&#8217;s running in a virtual environment.<\/p>\n<p>![Cybersecurity](data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8Xw8AAoMBgDTD2qgAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)<\/p>\n<p>The VBScript proceeds to collect basic system information, exfiltrate it to a remote server, and retrieves additional payloads, including an AutoIt script that unleashes the banking trojan by means of a malicious DLL and a PowerShell script that&#8217;s tasked with spreading the phishing emails after building a list of target email addresses by scanning contact data within Outlook.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The malware then proceeds to steal browser-related data from a range of targeted web browsers, including Brave, Yandex, Epic Privacy Browser, Comodo Dragon, Cent Browser, Opera, Microsoft Edge, and Google Chrome,&#8221; Lin said. &#8220;In addition to data theft, Horabot monitors the victim&#8217;s behavior and injects fake pop-up windows designed to capture sensitive user login credentials.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter _\uf099_ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2025\/05\/horabot-malware-targets-6-latin.html\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"display: inline-block; color: white; padding: 10px 20px; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 4px;\">View Advisory Details<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Security Update News Update Information Title Horabot Malware Targets 6 Latin American Nations Using Invoice-Themed Phishing Emails Update ID THN:030F87F833CD87DD01ECA672F08CA3D7 Type thn Published 2025-05-14T10:40:00 Last&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,8,34,12,13,33,7,11,43,5],"class_list":["post-4405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category_news","tag-cve","tag-cvss","tag-cvss-00","tag-exploit","tag-news","tag-none","tag-security","tag-tapic","tag-thn","tag-vulnerability"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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