Security Websites are buzzing with news that a new zero-day exploit against Adobe Reader and Acrobat is circulating today, causing computers to become infected with malware simply by visiting certain Web pages. While the exploit itself is worthy of note, nobody is talking about the payload it downloads: It installs a trio of files dressed up to look like Windows system files which have been digitally signed with a security certificate supposedly issued by Microsoft. The digital signature gives the casual user the impression that the two signed files — an executable and a DLL both named “LNETCPL” — are legitimate Microsoft components.
The fake certificates appear in the properties sheets of both the installer and two of the three executable payloads dropped by the installer. One giveaway is that the sheet identifies the signer as Microsoft but lacks both an email address and a time stamp. Legitimate system files digitally signed by Microsoft identify the signer as Microsoft Corporation and always have a time stamp. The bogus signatures are identified as invalid, but only when you click the Details button on the Properties Sheet’s Digital Signatures tab.
A legitimate Microsoft-signed file is issued by the “Microsoft Code Signing PCA” certificate authority, and will also display a countersignature from Verisign; The fakes have no countersignature, and appear to have been issued by “Root Agency” — a made up name for a nonexistent certificate authority the malware creators are using to generate these files. In fact, the malware creators may actually be using Microsoft’s own Certificate Creation Tool (which is supposed to be used for testing) to facilitate generating these signed files.
While we’ve seen a number of digitally signed files come through our research queue over the years, authors of Trojan horse apps rarely go to the trouble of digitally signing files in this way. It’s not clear why they would be digitally signing files, but clearly the person or people behind this are up to no good. We’ve published a new definition to remove both the installer and these payload files; Trojan-Certispaz will be available to help our customers clean up infections in our next definitions update.