<story><title>Python malware on the rise</title><url>https://www.cyborgsecurity.com/python-malware-on-the-rise/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>NullInvictus</author><text>I think a lot of people will read &amp;#x27;python malware&amp;#x27; and assume packages; that&amp;#x27;s not what this is about.&lt;p&gt;A lot of exploits are two-stage. Stage one is usually the vulnerability, usually written in C given the low-level and tightly controlled instructions required. The exploit breaks security to run an executable or otherwise gain control. Stage two is usually downloading a python executable to grab the goods.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing especially sinister about the selection of Python for this case over other interpreted languages. Malware authors are just regular developers - they don&amp;#x27;t want to spend hours trying to hack together a C binary to dump a database when six lines of Python will do it. Python just runs on a lot of platforms, has a lot of mature drop-in libraries, and decent documentation. They use it for the same reason we use it.&lt;p&gt;The article just makes it sound like malware developers are using modern packaging tools to turn that two-stage exploit into a single-stage. That doesn&amp;#x27;t strike me as particularly surprising. Teams tend to gravitate towards specializing in one tool when they can. I&amp;#x27;d obviously prefer to write a bunch of python than do the same in C, when performance isn&amp;#x27;t a huge concern (It&amp;#x27;s the other guy&amp;#x27;s CPU, after all).&lt;p&gt;Just seems like a minor observation, rather than some doom trend.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vesche</author><text>Author here. Thanks for reading &amp;amp; the feedback. I&amp;#x27;ll try to unpack some of this.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A lot of exploits are two-stage. Stage one is usually the vulnerability, usually written in C given the low-level and tightly controlled instructions required. The exploit breaks security to run an executable or otherwise gain control. Stage two is usually downloading a python executable to grab the goods.&lt;p&gt;This seems like a gross oversimplification &amp;amp; commonly incorrect. Often times a &amp;quot;stage one&amp;quot; vulnerability to gain initial access would be network code written in a high level language such as Python or Ruby (see Metasploit). And an executable payload to interact with the system would be generally written in a compiled language like C or C++. My article is detailing the uncommon rise of interpreted languages (especially Python) being used over the past ~5 years as malware dropped on an endpoint in an attack.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Just seems like a minor observation, rather than some doom trend.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t say this is a minor observation or a &amp;quot;doom trend.&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d say it&amp;#x27;s a very interesting and insightful observation that is worth keeping an eye on. Malicious actors are no longer operating in a world of slow endpoints and lack of resources. They instead are operating in a world of high-speed internet, very fast endpoints, and have a rich ecosystem of open-source tools at their disposal.&lt;p&gt;I find it highly interesting that malicious code written in interpreted languages, bundled with their interpreters into an executable, are finding their way into the arsenal of high-tier malicious threat actors over the past few years. Just as the web browser is slowly eating away at the operating system, interpreted languages are slowly eating away at compiled languages in a variety of domains- including malware.</text></comment>
<story><title>Python malware on the rise</title><url>https://www.cyborgsecurity.com/python-malware-on-the-rise/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>NullInvictus</author><text>I think a lot of people will read &amp;#x27;python malware&amp;#x27; and assume packages; that&amp;#x27;s not what this is about.&lt;p&gt;A lot of exploits are two-stage. Stage one is usually the vulnerability, usually written in C given the low-level and tightly controlled instructions required. The exploit breaks security to run an executable or otherwise gain control. Stage two is usually downloading a python executable to grab the goods.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing especially sinister about the selection of Python for this case over other interpreted languages. Malware authors are just regular developers - they don&amp;#x27;t want to spend hours trying to hack together a C binary to dump a database when six lines of Python will do it. Python just runs on a lot of platforms, has a lot of mature drop-in libraries, and decent documentation. They use it for the same reason we use it.&lt;p&gt;The article just makes it sound like malware developers are using modern packaging tools to turn that two-stage exploit into a single-stage. That doesn&amp;#x27;t strike me as particularly surprising. Teams tend to gravitate towards specializing in one tool when they can. I&amp;#x27;d obviously prefer to write a bunch of python than do the same in C, when performance isn&amp;#x27;t a huge concern (It&amp;#x27;s the other guy&amp;#x27;s CPU, after all).&lt;p&gt;Just seems like a minor observation, rather than some doom trend.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>photon12</author><text>Interviewed someone last night for my podcast who has written some python malware tools, and there&amp;#x27;s enough stuff out there to where you can&amp;#x27;t exactly call it a new concept.</text></comment>