Meme lovers beware, Hackers control malware using Memes shared on social media

In what could be alarming news for all meme lovers out re, hackers have discovered a new technique to control your system using memes posted on social media. Researchers at Trend Micro have come across a fine example of how modern techniques can be used to carry out malware activities. Researchers explain how this new piece of malware could retrieve commands from memes posted on a Twitter account run by hackers.

According to researchers, this malware named "TROJAN.MSIL.BERBOMTHUM.AA" is designed in such a way that it checks Twitter account controlled by hacker on a victim’s system. It n downlos and scans malicious meme in order to inherit secret commands.

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This Twitter account in question has alrey been suspended for greater good as we check. account was created last year and prior to its suspension, it tweeted two memes on October 25 and 26. As researchers explain, those memes provided malware with a “/print” command embedded in its metata. What it does is instructs malware to take a screenshot of infected machine.

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Once malware captures a screenshot of infected system, it would n be sent to a remote command-and-control server. dress of C&C server was obtained, courtesy of a "hard-coded" URL on Pastebin. server dress, however, points to a local, private IP dress, suggesting that malware could be in early developmental st.

Apart from “/print” command to capture screenshots, it also supports several commands from access a list of running processes to retrieving username from infected machines.

However, it should be worth pointing out that this malware is neir created r shared using tweets. Memes posted on Twitter simply delivered commands to pre-existing malware on an infected machine.