CISA and FBI Publish Joint Advisory on QakBot Infrastructure

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA), Identification and Disruption of QakBot Infrastructure, to help organizations detect and protect against newly identified QakBot-related activity and malware. QakBot—also known as Qbot, Quackbot, Pinkslipbot, and TA570—is responsible for thousands of malware infections globally.

Originally used as a banking trojan to steal banking credentials for account compromise, QakBot—in most cases—was delivered via phishing campaigns containing malicious attachments or links to download the malware, which would reside in memory once on the victim network. QakBot has since grown to deploy multiple types of malware, trojans, and highly-destructive ransomware variants targeting the United States and other global infrastructures, including the Election Infrastructure Subsector, Financial Services, Emergency Services, and Commercial Facilities Sectors.

CISA and FBI urge organizations to implement the recommendations contained within the joint CSA to reduce the likelihood of QakBot-related activity and promote identification of QakBot-facilitated ransomware and malware infections.