https://www.backbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/website_backbox_text_black.png00adminhttps://www.backbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/website_backbox_text_black.pngadmin2026-04-24 13:06:422026-04-24 13:06:42Why Cybersecurity Must Rethink Defense in the Age of Autonomous Agents
Eighty-five percent of enterprises are running AI agent pilots, but only 5% have moved those agents into production. In an exclusive interview at RSA Conference 2026, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said that the gap comes down to one thing: trust — and that closing it separates market dominance from bankruptcy. He also disclosed a mandate that will reshape Cisco’s 90,000-person engineering organization.
The problem is not rogue agents. The problem is the absence of a trust architecture.
The trust deficit behind a 5% production rate
A recent Cisco survey of major enterprise customers found that 85% have AI agent pilot programs underway. Only 5% moved those agents into production. That 80-point gap defines the security problem the entire industry is trying to close. It is not closing.
“The biggest impediment to scaled adoption in enterprises for business-critical tasks is establishing a sufficient amount of trust,” Patel told VentureBeat. “Delegating versus trusted delegating of tasks to agents. The difference between those two, one leads to bankruptcy and the other leads to market dominance.”
He compared agents to teenagers. “They’re supremely intelligent, but they have no fear of consequence. They’re pretty immature. And they can be easily sidetracked or influenced,” Patel said. “What you have to do is make sure that you have guardrails around them and you need some parenting on the agents.”
The comparison carries weight because it captures the precise failure mode security teams face. Three years ago, a chatbot that gave the wrong answer was an embarrassment. An agent that takes the wrong action can trigger an irreversible outcome. Patel pointed to a case he cited in his keynote where an AI coding agent deleted a live production database during a code freeze, tried to cover its tracks with fake data, and then apologized. “An apology is not a guardrail,” Patel said in his keynote blog. The shift from information risk to action risk is the core reason the pilot-to-production gap persists.
Defense Claw and the open-source speed play with Nvidia
Cisco’s response to the trust deficit at RSAC 2026 spanned three categories: protecting agents from the world, protecting the world from agents, and detecting and responding at machine speed. The product announcements included AI Defense Explorer Edition (a free, self-service red teaming tool), the Agent Runtime SDK for embedding policy enforcement into agent workflows at build time, and the LLM Security Leaderboard for evaluating model resilience against adversarial attacks.
The open-source strategy moved faster than any of those. Nvidia launched OpenShell, a secure container for open-source agent frameworks, at GTC the week before RSAC. Cisco packaged its Skills Scanner, MCP Scanner, AI Bill of Materials tool, and CodeGuard into a single open-source framework called Defense Claw and hooked it into OpenShell within 48 hours.
“Every single time you actually activate an agent in an Open Shell container, you can now automatically instantiate all the security services that we have built through Defense Claw,” Patel told VentureBeat. The integration means security enforcement activates at container launch without manual configuration. That speed matters because the alternative is asking developers to bolt on security after the agent is already running.
That 48-hour turnaround was not an anomaly. Patel said several of the Defense Claw capabilities Cisco launched were built in a week. “You couldn’t have built it in longer than a week because Open Shell came out last week,” he said.
A six-to-nine-month product lead and an information asymmetry on top of it
Patel made a competitive claim worth examining. “Product wise, we might be six to nine months ahead of most of the market,” he told VentureBeat. He added a second layer: “We also have an asymmetric information advantage of, I’d say, three to six months on everyone because, you know, we, by virtue of being in the ecosystem with all the model companies. We’re seeing what’s coming down the pipe.” The 48-hour Defense Claw sprint supports the speed claim, though the lead margin is Cisco’s own characterization; no independent benchmarks were provided.
Cisco also extended zero trust to the agentic workforce through new Duo IAM and Secure Access capabilities, giving every agent time-bound, task-specific permissions. On the SOC side, Splunk announced Exposure Analytics for continuous risk scoring, Detection Studio for streamlined detection engineering, and Federated Search for investigating across distributed data environments.
The zero-human-code engineering mandate
AI Defense, the product Cisco launched a year before RSAC 2026, is now 100% built with AI. Zero lines of human-written code. By the end of 2026, half a dozen Cisco products will reach the same milestone. By the end of calendar year 2027, Patel’s goal is 70% of Cisco’s products built entirely by AI.
“Just process that for a second and go: a $60 billion company is gonna have 70% of the products that are gonna have no human lines of code,” Patel told VentureBeat. “The concept of a legacy company no longer exists.”
He connected that mandate to a cultural shift inside the engineering organization. “There’s gonna be two kinds of people: ones that code with AI and ones that don’t work at Cisco,” Patel said. That was not debated. “Changing 30,000 people to change the way that they work at the very core of what they do in engineering cannot happen if you just make it a democratic process. It has to be something that’s driven from the top down.”
Five moats for the agentic era, and what CISOs can verify today
Patel laid out five strategic advantages that will separate winning enterprises from failing ones. VentureBeat mapped each moat against actions security teams can begin verifying today.
Moat
Patel’s claim
What CISOs can verify today
What to validate next
Sustained speed
“Operating with extreme levels of obsession for speed for a durable length of time” creates compounding value
Measure deployment velocity from pilot to production. Track how long agent governance reviews take.
Pair speed metrics with telemetry coverage. Fast deployment without observability creates blind acceleration.
Trust and delegation
Trusted delegation separates market dominance from bankruptcy
Audit delegation chains. Flag agent-to-agent handoffs with no human approval.
Agent-to-agent trust verification is the next primitive the industry needs. OAuth, SAML, and MCP do not yet cover it.
Token efficiency
Higher output per token creates a strategic advantage
Monitor token consumption per workflow. Benchmark cost-per-action across agent deployments.
Token efficiency metrics exist. Token security metrics (what the token accessed, what it changed) are the next build.
Human judgment
“Just because you can code it doesn’t mean you should.”
Track decision points where agents defer to humans vs. act autonomously.
Invest in logging that distinguishes agent-initiated from human-initiated actions. Most configurations cannot yet.
AI dexterity
“10x to 20x to 50x productivity differential” between AI-fluent and non-fluent workers
Measure the adoption rates of AI coding tools across security engineering teams.
Pair dexterity training with governance training. One without the other compounds the risk.
The telemetry layer the industry is still building
Patel’s framework operates at the identity and policy layer. The next layer down, telemetry, is where the verification happens. “It looks indistinguishable if an agent runs your web browser versus if you run your browser,” CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview at RSAC 2026. Distinguishing the two requires walking the process tree, tracing whether Chrome was launched by a human from the desktop or spawned by an agent in the background. Most enterprise logging configurations cannot make that distinction yet.
A CEO’s AI agent rewrote the company’s security policy. Not because it was compromised. Because it wanted to fix a problem, lacked permissions, and removed the restriction itself. Every identity check passed. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz disclosed that incident and a second one at his RSAC keynote, both at Fortune 50 companies. In the second, a 100-agent Slack swarm delegated a code fix between agents without human approval.
Both incidents were caught by accident
Etay Maor, VP of Threat Intelligence at Cato Networks, told VentureBeat in a separate exclusive interview at RSAC 2026 that enterprises abandoned basic security principles when deploying agents. Maor ran a live Censys scan during the interview and counted nearly 500,000 internet-facing agent framework instances. The week before: 230,000. Doubling in seven days.
Patel acknowledged the delegation risk in the interview. “The agent takes the wrong action and worse yet, some of those actions might be critical actions that are not reversible,” he said. Cisco’s Duo IAM and MCP gateway enforce policy at the identity layer. Zaitsev’s work operates at the kinetic layer: tracking what the agent did after the identity check passed. Security teams need both. Identity without telemetry is a locked door with no camera. Telemetry without identity is footage with no suspect.
Token generation as the currency for national competitiveness
Patel sees the infrastructure layer as decisive. “Every country and every company in the world is gonna wanna make sure that they can generate their own tokens,” he told VentureBeat. “Token generation becomes the currency for success in the future.” Cisco’s play is to provide the most secure and efficient technology for generating tokens at scale, with Nvidia supplying the GPU layer. The 48-hour Defense Claw integration demonstrated what that partnership produces under pressure.
Security director action plan
VentureBeat identified five steps security teams can take to begin building toward Patel’s framework today:
Audit the pilot-to-production gap. Cisco’s own survey found 85% of enterprises piloting, 5% in production. Mapping the specific trust deficits keeping agents stuck is the starting point — the answer is rarely the technology. Governance, identity, and delegation controls are what’s missing. Patel’s trusted delegation framework is designed to close that gap.
Test Defense Claw and AI Defense Explorer Edition. Both are free. Red-team your agent workflows before they reach production. Test the workflow, not just the model.
Map delegation chains end-to-end. Flag every agent-to-agent handoff with no human approval. This is the “parenting” Patel described. No product fully automates it yet. Do it manually, every week.
Establish agent behavioral baselines. Before any agent reaches production, define what normal looks like: API call patterns, data access frequency, systems touched, and hours of activity. Without a baseline, the observability that Patel’s moats require has nothing to compare against.
Close the telemetry gap in your logging configuration. Verify that your SIEM can distinguish agent-initiated actions from human-initiated actions. If it cannot, the identity layer alone will not catch the incidents Kurtz described at RSAC. Patel built the identity layer. The telemetry layer completes it.
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Need better stock visibility and smoother fulfillment? Here are the best inventory management software options we’ve tested including Odoo, Square, and Katana.
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French police arrest HexDex hacker, a 20-year-old suspect accused of mass data theft and leaks targeting government, sports groups, and firms.
Hackread – Cybersecurity News, Data Breaches, AI and More – Read More
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A new phishing campaign targeting Brazilian users demonstrates how modern financial malware has evolved from simple credential theft into full-scale, operator-driven fraud platforms. Disguised as a judicial summons, this campaign leverages social engineering, multi-stage malware delivery, and real-time remote access capabilities to compromise victims and actively assist attackers in financial theft.
For organizations, the implications extend beyond individual users. Employees accessing corporate systems, financial platforms, or crypto wallets from infected endpoints can unintentionally expose business-critical assets. The malware’s ability to stream screens, execute commands, and harvest credentials in real time makes it particularly dangerous for finance teams, executives, and organizations operating in or with Brazil.
This is not just phishing. It’s a live intrusion channel into financial workflows. Technical analysis below.
Attack Overview
The malware at the heart of this campaign, agenteV2, functions as a full interactive backdoor. Once installed, it streams the victim’s screen to the attacker in real time, enabling live, operator-assisted financial fraud. A human operator watches the victim’s desktop session as it happens, waiting for a banking portal to open, and then takes direct control.
The malware targets credentials and sessions at seven major Brazilian financial institutions — Itaú, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica Federal, Bradesco, Santander, Inter, and Stone — as well as five major cryptocurrency wallet extensions. It also probes host systems for the presence of specialized Brazilian anti-fraud software (Diebold Warsaw, GbPlugin), indicating deliberate, well-researched targeting of the Brazilian financial ecosystem.
Executive Summary
1. This Is Live Financial Fraud, Not Passive Credential Theft.
Business perspective: agenteV2 establishes a persistent WebSocket backdoor with live screen streaming and a remote shell. The attacker watches the victim’s screen in real time and acts manually the moment a banking session opens. Financial losses can occur within minutes of infection, before any traditional alert fires.
Deploy ANY.RUN Interactive Sandbox to detonate suspicious email attachments in a live, controlled environment before they reach employee inboxes.
2. The Lure Is Convincing Enough to Fool Security-Aware Staff.
Business perspective: The phishing email impersonates a Brazilian federal court using a case number format indistinguishable from authentic CNJ court references. Even employees trained to spot phishing are likely to treat a realistic judicial summons as a high-priority communication requiring immediate action.
Use ANY.RUN Threat Intelligence Lookup to check suspicious email sender domains, embedded URLs, and attachment hashes instantly against a continuously updated threat intelligence database. A 10-second lookup is sufficient to surface this campaign’s known indicators.
3. The Malware Survives Reboots, IT Maintenance, and Password Resets.
Business perspective: Three separate persistence mechanisms — two Scheduled Tasks at maximum privilege and a Registry Run key — ensure the malware remains operational across reboots, routine IT maintenance, and even password changes.
ANY.RUN Threat Intelligence Feeds deliver structured IOCs directly into your SIEM and EDR for automated hunting across your entire endpoint fleet. Any host matching these indicators should be treated as actively compromised and isolated immediately.
4. Blocking the Known C2 IP Is Not Enough.
Business perspective: The malware reads its command-and-control server address from a public Pastebin page. The attacker can silently rotate to a new IP by editing a single page — without redeploying, recompiling, or redelivering any malware. IP blocklists become stale within hours of a C2 rotation.
Replace IP-based blocking with behavior-based detection. The agenteV2 TLS client fingerprint (JA3 hash)) is stable across infrastructure rotations and can be deployed as a detection rule in your IDS/NDR/EDR.
5. Traditional AV Will Not Catch This: Behavioral Analysis Is Required.
Business perspective: The core stealer DLL is compiled from Python to native machine code with Nuitka — no bytecode is extractable and standard decompilers do not apply. Files are disguised with legitimate names (wifi_driver.exe, msedge04.exe) and the payload executes entirely in memory before touching disk.
Behavioral sandbox analysis is the only reliable pre-execution detection method for Nuitka-compiled threats. The YARA rule in this report (Win_Stealer_AgenteV2_Nuitka) is deployable via ANY.RUN TI infrastructure for automated variant detection.
Impact Area
Assessment
Financial Impact
Real-time operator-assisted fraud + credential theft targeting major Brazilian banks and crypto wallets
Scope
Brazilian users judicial lure suggests broad targeting, not spearphishing
Persistence
Triple persistence (Registry Run + two Scheduled Tasks /rl highest)
C2 Resilience
Pastebin dead-drop resolver enables rapid IP rotation without redeployment
This attack was fully analyzed in ANY.RUN’s Interactive Sandbox, which provided full visibility into the multi-stage infection chain, process trees, network connections, API traces, and registry modifications in a live, controllable Windows 11 environment.
The threat actor operates a well-structured infrastructure spanning phishing delivery, staged payload distribution, a Pastebin-based dead-drop resolver, and a dedicated C2 server hosted on a bulletproof VPS provider in Germany.
The final payload, internally named agenteV2, is a Python-based interactive Banking Trojan and Information Stealer whose core logic (agenteV2_historico_detect.dll) is compiled with Nuitka into native machine code.
Close blind spots and reduce breach risks in your company.
Integrate ANY.RUN’s sandbox for early threat detection.
It is not a passive fire-and-forget stealer — it establishes a persistent WebSocket backdoor (uws://) enabling live screen streaming (PIL + mss), an interactive remote shell (subprocess.Popen dispatched via CMD:SHELL: parsing), and real-time operator control over the victim session. Persistence is achieved via Registry Run key and Scheduled Tasks (/rl highest), and a Pastebin dead-drop resolver enables rapid C2 rotation without redeployment.
1. Initial Artifact Analysis
1.1 Email lure (.eml)
The campaign is delivered via email impersonating an official judicial summons from the Tribunal de Justiça do Distrito Federal (TJDF), referencing a fabricated civil conciliation hearing (case number 2194839-33.2026.8.07.1876). The case number format matches the authentic Brazilian CNJ numbering standard, increasing credibility.
Phishing email: PDF with password prompt and fake error message with download link for VBS
Property
Value
Filename
INTIMACAO JUDICIAL – Designacao de Conciliacao – Diegovolt – 2194839-33.2026.8.07.1876.eml
MIME Type
message/rfc822 (SMTP mail, ASCII text, CRLF line terminators)
The PDF attachment requires a password to open a technique to bypass email gateway sandboxes that cannot interact with password-protected documents. Upon ‘failing’ to open, the PDF instructs the victim to download a VBS file via a ‘click here’ link, attributing the error to a missing software component. This two-step friction is deliberate: it filters unengaged recipients and increases commitment of those who proceed.
2. Infection Chain
The full process tree and infection chain graph are visible in the sandbox detonation: WScript.exe → cmd.exe → schtasks + wifi_driver.exe execution flow:
Malware process tree in the sandbox analysis
The processes include malware delivery, payload delivery, persistence establishment, and more:
Phase
Description
Delivery
Phishing email with judicial lure. Password-protected PDF attachment. Victim instructed to download VBS via embedded link.
Initial Execution
Victim manually executes 0124_INTMACAO_.vbs from Downloads folder. WScript.exe invoked.
Gate Contact
VBS contacts odaracani.online/index.php?id=3df947b3 (unique victim ID). GET returns 200; POST triggers 302 redirect.
Payload Landing
Redirected to nuevaprodeciencia.club/br77b/ redirect chain via cert.php → cord.php → download.php → arquivos/download.php?id_*.
Payload Download
VBS uses MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0 + ADODB.Stream to download reiniciar.exe (~6.4 MB) and wifi_driver.exe (~12.6 MB, served as msedge04.exe).
Installation
Payloads written to C:Program Files (x86)Wi-fi masquerading as Wi-Fi driver components.
Persistence
Two Scheduled Tasks created via cmd.exe: RunAsAdmin_AutoUpdate and RunAsAdmin_Executar both /sc onlogon /rl highest.
UAC Bypass
VBS re-executes with arguments /elevated /fromtask to gain elevated privileges without a UAC prompt.
Initial Beacon
VBS calls IWshShell3.Run() on nuevaprodeciencia.club/br77b/iayjaskyeiagds.php first checkin triggered directly from loader.
C2 Resolution
wifi_driver.exe (container) loads agenteV2_historico_detect.dll, which reads Pastebin dead-drop (pastebin.com/raw/0RmxqY57) to resolve real C2: 38.242.246.176:8443.
C2 Beaconing
agenteV2 beacons to C2 every ~60 seconds over TLS/8443. 524 bytes sent / ~1 KB received per cycle. Stealer module active.
3. Stage 1 VBScript Loader (0124_INTMACAO_.vbs)
3.1. Runtime Behavior (API Trace)
The following sequence was reconstructed from the ANY.RUN script API trace, showing the exact execution order of COM object calls:
ANY.RUN VBScript API call trace
Phase 1 reiniciar.exe download and persistence (~13 seconds post-execution):
wifi_driver.exe is executed twice before Sleep(3000) retry mechanism to ensure process startup;
The server-side filename is msedge04.exe; it is saved locally as wifi_driver.exe deliberate renaming at download time;
The initial C2 beacon is fired by the VBS loader itself via IWshShell3.Run, before the payload’s own beaconing loop begins.
3.2. Obfuscation & Payload Decoding Mechanism
The VBS loader implements a multi-layer obfuscation pipeline that decodes and executes a secondary payload entirely in memory. Despite its apparent complexity, the mechanism is fully deterministic and reversible — all decoding logic, keys, and transformations are self-contained in the script, with no external dependencies or dynamic key generation.
The two on-disk forms confirm runtime deobfuscation:
The ~8.4x expansion factor is explained by the encoding pipeline described below.
The encoded payload is stored as a large string built via repeated concatenation:
tEXXKcvxSM = tEXXKcvxSM & "<chunk>"
This pattern avoids signature-based detection of long static strings, prevents straightforward extraction, and obscures the actual payload size. It is a common technique in commodity VBS loaders.
Encoded VBScript Snippet
Three transformation functions are applied in sequence before the payload is executed:
Function
Technique
Security Value
AqBVqmjYfY (x3)
Triple Base64 decode via MSXML2.DOMDocument (bin.base64)
Low — trivially reversible
YnrbBGjUXH
Hexadecimal decode — Chr(CInt(“&H” & Mid(h, i, 2)))
Step 1 — Triple Base64 Decoding. The function AqBVqmjYfY wraps the MSXML2.DOMDocument COM object to perform Base64 decoding. It is called three consecutive times, nesting the calls:
b = AqBVqmjYfY(AqBVqmjYfY(AqBVqmjYfY(b)))
Triple-encoding increases entropy and defeats naive single-pass decoders, but provides no cryptographic security — each layer is independently and trivially reversible.
Step 2 — Hexadecimal Decoding. The function YnrbBGjUXH converts the Base64-decoded output from a hex-encoded byte stream into raw bytes:
Chr(CInt("&H" & Mid(h, i, 2)))
This confirms the intermediate payload is stored as a hex string, adding one further layer of visual obfuscation over the Base64 output.
Step 3 — Custom Byte Transformation (Pseudo-Encryption). The function obmFYHGTeJ is the core obfuscation layer. It applies a Vigenere-like modular subtraction cipher using a hardcoded array of multiple keys:
keys = Array("xsTqWN3wxwsA", "Bydpez94dTlZ", ...)
For each byte, the routine iterates through all keys in reverse order and applies:
ch = (ch - keyByte + 256) Mod 256
This is similar to a repeated-key XOR/Vigenere cipher. It is not cryptographically secure — the keys are hardcoded in the script, the transformation is deterministic, and the decoding pipeline is fully reproducible offline. The critical weakness is that all key material is embedded in the script itself.
After the three-stage decoding, the final payload is executed directly in memory without writing any intermediate artifact to disk:
Execute obmFYHGTeJ(tEXXKcvxSM)
This fileless execution pattern means the next stage never touches the filesystem in decoded form, evading file-based AV scanning. The decoded payload can be recovered by inserting a logging hook at the Execute call or by running the decoding pipeline offline with the extracted keys.
Obfuscation Technique
Effectiveness
Notes
Triple Base64
Low
Three independent reversible layers — no key material required
Hex encoding
Low
Simple Chr/Mid conversion — standard textbook technique
Custom byte transform
Low-Medium
Vigenere-like cipher with good structural complexity
Hardcoded key array
Critical weakness
All keys embedded in script — full offline decryption possible
String concatenation
Low
Defeats naive string grep but not dynamic analysis
In-memory execution
Medium
Evades file-based AV; recoverable via memory dump or hook
Overall assessment: the obfuscation chain is consistent with the use of publicly available VBS templates or tutorials. The layered approach demonstrates awareness of basic detection mechanisms but no understanding of cryptographic security. The presence of hardcoded keys and deterministic transformations makes full offline payload recovery straightforward for any analyst with access to the script.
4. Stage 2 Payload Architecture
The payload follows a two-component architecture: a lightweight container executable (wifi_driver.exe) and the actual malicious module (agenteV2_historico_detect.dll). These roles must not be confused only the DLL contains malicious logic.
Component
File
Size
Role
Container / Bootloader
wifi_driver.exe
~12.6 MB
Onefile bundle extracts Python runtime + DLL, then loads and executes the stealer DLL
wifi_driver.exe is a self-contained onefile bundle (PyInstaller or Nuitka container mode). It contains no malicious logic of its own. Its sole purpose is to:
Extract the full Python 3.13 runtime environment to a temporary directory (Temponefile_<PID>_<timestamp>);
Extract all required .pyd extensions and native DLLs alongside the runtime;
Load and execute agenteV2_historico_detect.dll the actual payload;
wifi_driver.exe is a self-contained onefile bundle (PyInstaller or Nuitka container mode). It contains no malicious logic of its own. Its sole purpose is to:
Extract the full Python 3.13 runtime environment to a temporary directory (Temponefile_<PID>_<timestamp>);
Extract all required .pyd extensions and native DLLs alongside the runtime;
Load and execute agenteV2_historico_detect.dll the actual payload;
Clean up the extraction directory on exit.
Reverse engineering path for wifi_driver.exe:
If PyInstaller: use pyinstxtractor.py to unpack the bundle → locate main.pyc (or file named after the executable) → decompile with pycdc to recover readable Python source;
If Nuitka container mode: the bootstrap code is minimal C focus effort on the extracted DLL, not the container;
The container itself is not the analytical target it is merely the delivery mechanism for the DLL.
Extracted runtime components dropped to Temponefile_<PID> by wifi_driver.exe:
File
Size
Purpose
python313.dll
6 MB
Python 3.13 interpreter main runtime
python3.dll
72 KB
Python stable ABI shim
vcruntime140.dll
118 KB
MSVC runtime (C++ support)
libcrypto-3.dll
5 MB
OpenSSL crypto TLS for C2 comms
libssl-3.dll
776 KB
OpenSSL TLS encrypted C2 channel
sqlite3.dll
2 MB
SQLite engine reading browser credential DBs
_sqlite3.pyd
128 KB
Python SQLite bindings
PIL/_imaging.pyd
2 MB
Pillow core screen capture
PIL/_imagingcms.pyd
264 KB
Pillow CMS image processing
psutil/_psutil_windows.pyd
69 KB
Process enumeration kill browsers before DB access, anti-VM checks
_wmi.pyd
39 KB
WMI bindings system fingerprinting (UUID, hostname, OS version)
_ssl.pyd
178 KB
Python SSL bindings HTTPS for C2/Pastebin
certifi/cacert.pem
266 KB
Trusted CA bundle validates Pastebin and C2 TLS certs
charset_normalizer/*.pyd
22 KB
Text encoding detection handles multi-encoding victim data
agenteV2_historico_detect.dll confirming Nuitka compilation, native PE DLL, no extractable bytecode
This DLL is the analytical target it contains all malicious logic. The original Python source was compiled with Nuitka (Python → C++ → native machine code), producing a monolithic 27 MB PE DLL with no extractable bytecode. pyinstxtractor and uncompyle6 do not apply here.
None not extractable; full native RE required (IDA Pro / Ghidra)
RE Difficulty
High ~90% of code is Nuitka boilerplate + CPython internals; malicious logic is a small fraction
Classification
Interactive Banking Trojan + Information Stealer not a passive exfiltrator
Name (internal)
agenteV2 ‘V2’ implies prior version in circulation; active development confirmed
OpSec quality
Poor verbose debug strings, original variable/function names, and cleartext URLs left intact
Despite robust Nuitka compilation, the threat actor failed to strip debug symbols, variable names, and cleartext strings from the binary exposing the full execution flow via static .rdata analysis. This is a recurring pattern in Brazilian malware: technically capable packaging decisions paired with poor operational security discipline.
Core Capabilities (Reconstructed from Static + Dynamic Analysis):
The malware does not hardcode the C2 address. It queries a Pastebin URL to dynamically retrieve the active C2 IP and port, enabling infrastructure rotation without redeployment:
Unlike typical stealers that perform a single HTTP POST exfiltration and terminate, agenteV2 establishes a persistent WebSocket connection (uws:// scheme) to the C2. This architecture enables real-time, bidirectional communication making it function as a full interactive backdoor rather than a passive stealer:
Continuous screen capture stream using PIL (Pillow) and mss libraries frames encoded as JPEG and streamed live to the operator;
Interactive remote shell via CMD:SHELL: command prefix commands dispatched through subprocess.Popen, output returned over the WebSocket;
Real-time telemetry: live operator visibility into the victim’s desktop session.
This design is optimized for manual, real-time financial fraud. The operator can watch the victim’s screen, interact with open banking sessions, and issue commands on the fly.
IDA Pro / strings uws:// WebSocket scheme string, CMD:SHELL: command prefix, subprocess.Popen references in .rdata
4.2. Evasive Browser Credential Harvesting
The stealer targets all Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera) across all user profiles. To bypass the SQLite file lock maintained by running browsers, it uses shutil.copyfile to duplicate the target database files into %TEMP% before executing SQL SELECT queries:
Target files: Login Data, Cookies, History
Method: shutil.copyfile(src, %TEMP%<random>) → sqlite3.connect(copy) → SELECT * FROM logins
String (.rdata)
Address
Capability
Varre todos os perfis de navegadores e busca Inter/Stone no disco
0x18129845A
Scans all browser profiles for Inter and Stone bank data
clonando o banco para ler mesmo se aberto
0x181298976D
Explicit DB cloning to bypass file lock while browser is running
4.3. Security Controls & Anti-Fraud Enumeration
The malware proactively profiles the host for regional anti-fraud and endpoint protection solutions before proceeding with credential theft a strong indicator of deliberate LATAM targeting:
Diebold Warsaw (Warsaw Security Module) disk path queries for this widely-deployed Brazilian banking security plugin;
GbPlugin disk path queries for this browser security plugin used by major Brazilian banks.
Detection of these solutions likely influences the malware’s behavior (evasion, delayed execution, or alternate attack paths).
Diebold Warsaw and GbPlugin path references used for security controls enumeration
4.4. Analyst Assessment
agenteV2 is not a passive, fire-and-forget stealer. It is a purpose-built interactive agent designed for real-time manual financial fraud in the Brazilian market. The WebSocket architecture, live screen streaming, and remote shell capability are consistent with an operator-assisted attack flow: the threat actor watches the victim’s screen in real time, waits for a banking session to open, and interacts directly.
The Nuitka compilation demonstrates meaningful anti-analysis effort; however, the failure to strip debug strings, variable names, and cleartext URLs reveals the full implementation to any analyst with access to the binary a significant OpSec failure that partially undermines the obfuscation investment.
4.5. Persistence Mechanisms
The payload establishes a third persistence layer independently of the VBS loader:
Note: the Registry Run value points to a .py file in %TEMP% this assumes either Python is installed and registered as a handler for .py files on the victim machine, or represents an implementation error by the threat actor (a common characteristic of amateur-but-functional malware). The name ‘MonitorSystem’ is social engineering for any victim who opens regedit.
ANY.RUN Registry modification event: HKCURunMonitorSystem key creation by wifi_driver.exe process
5. Stage 3 C2 Communication
5.1. Dead-Drop Resolver via Pastebin
agenteV2 does not hardcode the C2 IP. Instead, it implements a Pastebin-based dead-drop resolver allowing the threat actor to rotate C2 infrastructure without recompiling or redelivering the malware:
Browser pastebin.com/raw/0RmxqY57 raw content showing plaintext C2 address: 38.242.246.176 8443
The resolver (documented in DLL strings as ‘Busca IP e Porta Base do Pastebin. Retorna (ip, port) ou None’) parses the Pastebin content to extract the IP and port as a tuple, with explicit error handling for fetch failures and malformed content.
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (Cloudflare/Pastebin proxy not C2 fingerprint)
The JA3 hash (a48c0d5f95b1ef98f560f324fd275da1) can be used as a network detection rule it will match agenteV2’s TLS ClientHello regardless of C2 IP rotation.
6. Threat Actor Infrastructure
Shodan 38.242.246.176: Hestia Control Panel on port 8083, open ports list, hostname vmi3003111.contaboserver.net, nginx banner
6.1. Infrastructure Map
Role
Asset
Details
Phishing Gate / Tracker
odaracani[.]online
Per-victim unique ID tracking (?id=3df947b3). POST → 302 redirect to payload server. IP: 69.49.241.120
25, 465, 587 strongly suggests phishing emails dispatched from this same VPS
The Hestia Control Panel on port 8083 indicates the threat actor self-manages this server rather than using a hosting reseller. The presence of active SMTP ports alongside the C2 port strongly suggests this VPS serves as an all-in-one campaign platform: phishing email dispatch, payload hosting management, and C2 handling.
Threat Actor Assessment
Campaign Characteristics
Exclusively targeting Brazilian users Portuguese lure, CNJ court number format, Brazilian bank/fintech targeting, and enumeration of LATAM-specific anti-fraud tools (Diebold Warsaw, GbPlugin);
Judicial summons lure is a well-established social engineering technique in Brazil exploits fear of legal consequences to reduce victim scrutiny;
Per-victim unique tracking ID (?id=3df947b3) demonstrates the actor actively monitors individual infection progress;
WebSocket persistent backdoor with live screen streaming points to operator-assisted, manual fraud the threat actor watches victims’ screens in real time and waits for banking sessions to open;
Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA on payload server deliberate anti-sandbox and anti-researcher measure;
Multi-step redirect chain before payload delivery adds anti-scraping friction;
‘agenteV2’ naming implies active development a prior version (v1) likely exists or circulated previously;
Nuitka compilation of the core DLL represents a meaningful step above typical Brazilian stealer tradecraft; however, the failure to strip debug strings, variable names, and cleartext URLs is a significant OpSec failure that partially negates the obfuscation investment.
Infrastructure Assessment
Two-tier delivery infrastructure (69[.]49.241[.]120 for phishing/payload, 38[.]242.246[.]176 for C2) separation reduces single-point takedown impact;
Pastebin dead-drop resolver is the primary C2 resilience mechanism actor can rotate C2 IPs by editing a single Pastebin page without touching deployed malware;
Active SMTP ports on C2 VPS strongly suggest self-hosted phishing email dispatch from the same server;
Hestia Control Panel indicates actor self-manages the VPS not a reseller customer;
Contabo GmbH (AS51167) is a known bulletproof-tolerant provider frequently abused by threat actors for affordable pricing and slow abuse response;
Implementation inconsistency (Registry Run value pointing to .py file) suggests the actor has strong Python development skills but limited operational security maturity.
Detection & Response Recommendations
1. Immediate Blocking
Block domains odaracani[.]online and nuevaprodeciencia[.]club at DNS/proxy/firewall;
Block IPs 69[.]49.241[.]120 and 38[.]242.246[.]176 at perimeter;
Add JA3 hash a48c0d5f95b1ef98f560f324fd275da1 as a network detection rule (IDS/NDR/EDR);
Block or alert on access to pastebin[.]com/raw/0RmxqY57 and request takedown of the page;
Deploy Suricata SIDs listed in section 6.6.
2. SIEM Detection Rules
Alert: WScript.exe spawning cmd.exe with ‘schtasks’ + ‘/rl highest’ in command line;
Alert: Any process writing PE files to C:Program Files (x86)Wi-fi;
Alert: Scheduled Task creation with /rl highest by non-SYSTEM processes (Event ID 4698);
Alert: HKCURun key creation by non-installer processes;
Alert: ADODB.Stream + MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP instantiated in the same WScript.exe process;
Alert: Outbound TLS connections to port 8443 from non-browser processes.
Isolate affected host from network immediately upon detection;
Collect full memory dump of wifi_driver.exe and reiniciar.exe processes before terminating;
Hash all files in C:Program Files (x86)Wi-fi and compare against IOCs in section 6.1;
Assume all browser-saved credentials are compromised reset all banking, email, and crypto account passwords;
Review outbound TLS/8443 traffic in network logs for the past 30 days to assess exfiltration window;
Check browser extension integrity stealer may have modified or added extensions.
5. Threat Intelligence: TI Feeds & TI Lookup
Proactive intelligence on this campaign and similar threats can be operationalized using ANY.RUN’s Threat Intelligence suite:
ANY.RUN TI Lookup: Query all IOCs from this report (domains, IPs, file hashes, JA3 fingerprints) directly in TI Lookup to retrieve correlated sandbox verdicts, associated samples, C2 infrastructure mappings, and MITRE ATT&CK tagging across the ANY.RUN corpus. TI Lookup returns structured, analyst-ready context including first-seen/last-seen timestamps, related tasks, and artifact relationships — dramatically accelerating triage.
ANY.RUN TI Feeds: Subscribe to structured IOC feeds to push indicators from this campaign — and the broader Brazilian banking stealer ecosystem — directly into your SIEM, SOAR, EDR, or firewall. Feeds are updated continuously as new samples are analyzed in the sandbox, providing near-real-time coverage of emerging infrastructure and payload variants.
YARA Rules in TI Feeds: The Win_Stealer_AgenteV2_Nuitka YARA rule (section 9.3) can be deployed via ANY.RUN’s TI infrastructure to automatically flag new samples matching the Nuitka agenteV2 pattern as they surface in the wild.
Proactive Monitoring: Use TI Lookup to monitor the Pastebin dead-drop URL (pastebin.com/raw/0RmxqY57) and C2 IP (38.242.246.176) for updates — if the threat actor rotates infrastructure, ANY.RUN’s correlated sandbox data will surface the new indicators before they reach victim endpoints.
The Business Case for ANY.RUN Enterprise
Security decision-makers evaluating their defensive posture against threats like agenteV2 face three compounding problems: the attack surface is broad (any employee in Brazil is a potential victim), the time-to-fraud is measured in minutes (not days), and the attacker’s tooling actively resists the tools most organizations currently deploy. The question is not whether a more capable threat intelligence and analysis platform is needed. It is whether the cost of that platform is lower than the cost of a single successful fraud event.
Based on the capabilities demonstrated in this campaign, the answer is unambiguous. A single successful agenteV2 infection gives an attacker live visibility into an employee’s banking session, the ability to issue commands through a remote shell, and persistence that survives the endpoint until it is explicitly cleaned. The financial exposure from a single operator-assisted fraud event, combined with the credential exfiltration across all browser profiles, will in most cases far exceed the annual cost of enterprise-grade behavioral analysis and threat intelligence.
ANY.RUN Enterprise Suit addresses each failure mode this campaign is designed to exploit:
Before infection: Interactive Sandbox detonates suspicious email attachments, including password-protected PDFs, with analyst interaction in a fully instrumented Windows environment. The complete 11-stage attack chain surfaces in minutes, before any production endpoint is touched.
During triage: TI Lookup delivers instant, correlated intelligence on every IOC in this report (domains, IPs, file hashes, JA3 fingerprints) with MITRE ATT&CK mapping, first/last seen timestamps, and linked sandbox analyses. Triage that takes an analyst hours without context takes seconds with TI Lookup.
At scale and speed: TI Feeds push structured, continuously updated IOC streams directly into your SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and firewall, converting sandbox findings into blocking and detection rules automatically, across your entire environment, without analyst intervention per indicator.
Against evasion: Behavioral analysis in ANY.RUN’s sandbox is not defeated by Nuitka compilation, in-memory execution, or filename masquerading. It observes what the malware does, not what it looks like, making it structurally resistant to the obfuscation techniques this campaign relies on.
Against infrastructure rotation: The JA3 TLS fingerprint and behavioral YARA rule in this report remain valid even after the threat actor rotates their C2 IP. ANY.RUN’s TI infrastructure ensures these durable detection signals are operationalized immediately, not after the next campaign wave.
The agenteV2 operators have invested meaningfully in their tooling. The organizations they target deserve to match that investment — with a platform built for the reality of modern, operator-assisted financial fraud rather than the commodity threats of five years ago.
Conclusion
This campaign is a vivid reminder that phishing has outgrown its old role as a simple delivery mechanism. It now acts as a gateway to interactive, real-time financial compromise, where attackers don’t just steal data, they participate in the victim’s actions like an invisible co-pilot with bad intentions.
For businesses, the risk is no longer limited to credential leakage. When malware enables live screen monitoring, remote command execution, and direct interaction with financial sessions, the impact shifts to immediate financial loss, operational disruption, and reputational damage. Finance teams, executives, and any employees handling sensitive transactions become prime targets.
Defending against this class of threats requires more than static detection. Organizations need visibility into behavior, speed in investigation, and context for decision-making.
This is where a combined approach becomes critical:
Interactive Sandbox analysis helps teams understand exactly how a threat behaves before it spreads.
TI Lookup provides instant context, turning isolated indicators into actionable insight.
Together, these capabilities transform security from reactive firefighting into controlled, informed response.
In a landscape where attackers operate in real time, businesses must do the same.
About ANY.RUN
ANY.RUN, a leading provider of interactive malware analysis and threat intelligence solutions, helps security teams investigate threats faster and with greater clarity across modern enterprise environments.
It allows teams to safely execute suspicious files and URLs, observe real behavior in an Interactive Sandbox, enrich indicators with immediate context through TI Lookup, and monitor emerging malicious infrastructure using Threat Intelligence Feeds. Together, these capabilities help reduce investigation uncertainty, accelerate triage, and limit unnecessary escalations across the SOC.
ANY.RUN is trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide and meets enterprise security and compliance expectations. It is SOC 2 Type II certified, demonstrating its commitment to protecting customer data and maintaining strong security controls.
SQLite DB cloning of Chrome/Edge Login Data + Cookies all browser profiles
T1113
Screen Capture
Collection
—
PIL + mss libraries continuous JPEG frame streaming over WebSocket to operator
T1059.001
Command & Scripting: PowerShell/Shell
Execution
.001
Remote shell via CMD:SHELL: prefix parsed from WebSocket dispatched through subprocess.Popen
T1571
Non-Standard Port
C2
—
WebSocket C2 (uws://) over port 8443 non-standard port for WebSocket traffic
T1012
Query Registry
Discovery
—
84,457 registry reads observed in sandbox
T1082
System Information Discovery
Discovery
—
psutil + WMI: hostname, UUID, OS version, process list
T1083
File and Directory Discovery
Discovery
—
Scans all browser profiles across all user directories
T1057
Process Discovery
Discovery
—
psutil enumerates running processes terminates browsers before DB file access
T1518.001
Security Software Discovery
Discovery
.001
Queries disk paths for Diebold Warsaw and GbPlugin anti-fraud solutions
T1102.001
Web Service: Dead Drop Resolver
C2
.001
pastebin.com/raw/0RmxqY57 resolves to real C2 IP:port
T1071.001
App Layer Protocol: WebSocket
C2
.001
Persistent uws:// WebSocket connection to 38.242.246.176:8443 bidirectional real-time C2
FAQ
Who is targeted by this campaign?
This campaign targets Brazilian individuals and organizations — anyone who might receive what appears to be an official court summons. The lure is broad (civil conciliation hearing, not targeted spearphishing), meaning any employee in Brazil could be a victim.
My organization doesn’t do banking in Brazil. Should we still care?
Yes. The stealer harvests all browser-saved credentials — not just banking ones — across all Chromium-based browser profiles. Corporate credentials stored in browser password managers (email, SaaS platforms, VPNs, internal portals) are all at risk. Additionally, the malware installs a full remote shell, meaning a successful infection grants the attacker persistent, elevated access to the corporate endpoint regardless of banking activity.
How quickly can an attacker conduct financial fraud after initial infection?
Very quickly. The malware begins beaconing to C2 within approximately 30 seconds of the VBS file being executed. Once the operator’s WebSocket session is established, they can view the victim’s screen in real time. If a banking session is already open in the browser, fraud could occur within minutes. The operator is not automated — they are watching and waiting, which means they will time their intervention to maximize impact (e.g., during an active funds transfer).
We blocked the C2 IP (38.242.246.176). Are we protected?
Partially. Blocking the known C2 IP prevents beaconing to the current infrastructure, but the Pastebin dead-drop resolver means the attacker can rotate to a new IP simply by editing a public Pastebin page — without touching any already-deployed malware. Blocking the specific Pastebin URL (pastebin.com/raw/0RmxqY57) and monitoring for TLS connections to port 8443 from non-browser processes provides more durable protection. The JA3 fingerprint (a48c0d5f95b1ef98f560f324fd275da1) is particularly valuable as it will detect agenteV2’s TLS handshake regardless of IP rotation.
How can ANY.RUN help us detect, investigate, and respond to this threat?
ANY.RUN’s Interactive Sandbox was used to conduct the full dynamic analysis in this report — providing complete visibility into the infection chain, process trees, API traces, network connections, and registry modifications. For ongoing defense: TI Lookup lets analysts query all IOCs from this report for correlated intelligence; TI Feeds push live indicators into your SIEM/SOAR/EDR for automated blocking; and the YARA rule in section 9.3 can be deployed to automatically detect new agenteV2 variants. The Enterprise suite combines all these capabilities in a unified platform designed for security teams that need to investigate and respond at scale.
https://www.backbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/website_backbox_text_black.png00adminhttps://www.backbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/website_backbox_text_black.pngadmin2026-04-24 11:06:432026-04-24 11:06:43Inside agenteV2: How Brazilian Attackers Use Fake Court Summons to Steal Banking Credentials in Real Time
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“A server-side
https://www.backbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/website_backbox_text_black.png00adminhttps://www.backbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/website_backbox_text_black.pngadmin2026-04-24 09:06:532026-04-24 09:06:53Bitwarden NPM Package Hit in Supply Chain Attack