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Gozi Trojan - king of evasion continues to avoid sophisticated detection

Written by Andreas Baumhof Monday, 08 November 2010 14:36

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The recent TrustDefender Labs report has alarmingly discovered another variant of the Gozi Trojan with a 0% detection rate. TrustDefender Labs has recently re-analysed the Trojan Gozi, (pronounced goh'-zee), which has been showing fraudulent attacks since 2007. Their research highlights how the Gozi Trojan is very professional, efficient and attacks financial institutions worldwide by managing to stay under the radar and remain undetectable. By targeting specific financial institutions (mainly business and corporate banking in the US) Gozi endeavours not to attract industry attention with this approach. While everybody is talking about Zeus, Gozi can do its dirty work.

 

During the TrustDefender Labs tests the Gozi Trojan was invisible to all leading anti-virus software, allowing it to infiltrate and attack user’s systems and browsers. The new Gozi variant has many of the same characteristics of its predecessor (researched 12 months ago) however, is showing increasing sophistication in HTML injection compared to other Trojans. Gozi perpetrators have been successfully evading signature patterns so consistently that the evolution of the Trojan has been relatively unknown. This highlights the potential risks and impacts of attacks on financial institutions, businesses and individuals whilst staying predominantly undetectable to any anti-virus software.

Online Security expert and CTO of TrustDefender, Andreas Baumhof comments; “Gozi is unbelievably good at staying under the radar from an infection point of view, but this particular sample also used SSL and HTTPS against the good guys. Typically designed to protect us, the fraudulent use of HTTPS helps them to stay virtually invisible for their C&C server connection. Alarmingly we are coming across an increasing number of Trojans that are using SSL and HTTPS to cover their tracks. The other thing that impressed us was the extensive client-side logic to circumvent even Two-Factor Authentication. Unfortunately this is becoming more common as we see similar techniques with Trojans such as Zeus, Spyeye, Carberp.”

Why should we be worried about Gozi?

  • Gozi is one of the most sophisticated Trojans out there with an impressive feature set.
  • Gozi can use encrypted HTTPS connection for its C&C server communication with a valid certificate meaning it can evade detection.
  • Traditional anti-virus software is unable to detect the Gozi Trojan
  • Gozi features an extensive client side logic (in JavaScript) to be able to work with many different banking websites and also allowing it to steal static information (such as maiden name) and also dynamic password schemes (such as Two-Factor Authentication and One-Time-Passwords). This is similar to Zeus, Spyeye, Carberp and Silon
  • Gozi enables real time account takeover that even works with Two-Factor Authentication.