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upstart writes:

Stealthy Raspberry Robin Worm Is Spreading Malware Via USB Drives:

[...] Threat intelligence group Red Canary is tracking a worm that it calls Raspberry Robin, and it's definitely malware, but the question of "why" is still, in fact, a big question. [...].

In the age of the Internet, most malware spreads through the web, and Raspberry Robin does indeed make use of the internet to download critical files, however, it actually seems to spread via infected USB drives. Using Windows' autoplay functionality, it executes a .LNK file, which is a link shortcut. From there, it starts the Windows command interpreter and uses the Microsoft Installer, msiexec.exe, to download a malicious DLL that it then installs to the system. The purpose of this isn't entirely clear yet, but it seems to be for persistence.

After that, the system makes numerous attempts to connect to remote hosts, usually TOR exit nodes. The thing is, it's not actually clear what it is doing or why, and furthermore, Red Canary doesn't don't know who is infecting the systems where Raspberry Robin is found. Said systems include machines inside the networks of various manufacturing and technology companies.

As described in the related Red Canary blog post, after a USB drive is inserted the UserAssist registry entry is updated and records execution of a ROT13-ciphered value referencing a LNK file on the USB drive with malicious code. As a somewhat ignorant Windows person I have to ask: wasn't this autorun-like feature "fixed" 20 years ago?

Original Submission