THE PERMANENT THREAT: ANALYZING AETERNUM'S BLOCKCHAIN-BASED C2 OPERATIONS AND COMPROMISES

Summary from the TLDR InfoSec newsletter

Aeternum is a sophisticated malware loader that utilizes Polygon blockchain smart contracts over JSON-RPC to fetch encrypted command-and-control instructions. After decrypting these commands, the malware downloads secondary payloads from GitHub, including the XWorm RAT and XMRig miners, while a related Python variant specifically targets over 60 cryptocurrency wallets and browser extensions. Aeternum ultimately relies on hardcoded Telegram bot APIs for data exfiltration. Defenders should hunt for anomalous Telegram API traffic and outbound JSON-RPC calls originating from non-browser processes.