Raspberry Robin: A global USB malware campaign providing access to ransomware operators

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Logo credit: RedCanary

Ever since it first appeared in late 2021, the Raspberry Robin malware campaign has been propagating globally. A number of threat intelligence reports by vendors such as RedCanary (who named it) and Microsoft (who track it as DEV-0856/Storm-0856) have covered the malware campaign in great detail. 

In fact, the list of blogs I do recommend to read to catch up on this threat are as follows:

The blogs above will provide the technical details such as how the malware works, the commands it runs, the processes it uses, and what its C2 communications look like.

The main aim of this blog is to share with readers the summarized details, my thoughts and findings, and what it has been like tracking Raspberry Robin since it first emerged and continues to spread. It's a fascinating campaign that has taught me a lot about emerging and advanced cybercriminal operations work. Additional IOCs and detection opportunities are available at the end of this blog.

What's so special about RaspberryRobin?

"What should I care? It's just another USB malware right?" Wrong... it leads to ransomware.

This USB malware is not like your usual VBS self-copying low grade stuff, it is more like the BadUSB campaigns from a few years ago that was reportedly linked to FIN7 and led to BlackMatter or REvil ransomare. Microsoft's report on Raspberry Robin was the first to reveal that RaspberryRobin is also leading to multiple other top-tier malware loaders such as SocGholish, IcedID, Bumblebee, and Truebot, which are all well-known ransomware precursor families. 

Raspberry Robin has shown itself to be an emerging player in the big game hunting ransomware ecosystem. USB malware has proven to be an old, yet still effective method to establish an initial foothold inside target environments.

But how does it spread?

Details about how the Raspberry Robin malware actually gets on to the USBs are a little hazy, but the malware has virally spread. In October 2022, Microsoft reported "that nearly 3,000 devices in almost 1,000 organizations" saw "at least one Raspberry Robin payload-related alert in the last 30 days."

In September 2022, Deutsche Telekom CERT tweeted about how they observed the malware in Hungary, Germany, Russia, and India. All these Raspberry Robin cases involved a user clicking on a malicious shortcut (LNK) file when the USB was plugged in. Most interestingly, Deutsche Telekom CERT found that all the affected users reported to "have used the USB stick for printing in print/copy stores". This was a fairly strong indication that something has happened to these printers at the print/copy stores that ended up with them potentially being one of the main sources of USB infecting malware, at different countries around the world.

We got some further clarification from Microsoft, when they identified a previously undisclosed .NET spreader DLL that was responsible for creating the Raspberry Robin LNK files on external USB drives. This .NET spreader DLL was also distributed by another related and previously undisclosed malware family dubbed Fauppod.

Microsoft, however, did not mention the usage of printers or print/copy stores to aid distribution of the USB malware. Others in the CTI community though, particularly those in CuratedIntel, did share with me that they also observed printers being the source of infected USBs as well, which is in line with Deutsche Telekom CERT's findings. Some researchers speculate that the Raspberry Robin operators may have targeted vulnerable printers exposed on the Internet (as there's not shortage of those) or perhaps there was some unreported supply chain attack. The full extent of how these printers are getting infected and spreading the Raspberry Robin LNK files is still yet to be revealed.

Detection Opportunities: Infection Chain

The full infection chain of Raspberry Robin has been explained well many vendors over the last year and it has not changed much since it first emerged. The reports mentioned above, particularly by Cisco and Cybereason, as well as the original RedCanary blog, are all worth making notes from to detect and stop this threat.

From reading all these reports, I found that the most simple way to detect Raspberry Robin using Splunk SPL log searching rules specifically was the following:

  • 1) FileName=cmd.exe AND LinkName IN ("*D:\\USB*", ".lnk")
  • 2) CommandLine=msiexec AND CommandLine=*:8080*
The logic behind the first SPL rule is that Raspberry Robin LNK files often are designed for the "D:\" drive (which is for USBs) and includes the letters "USB" in the filename. The logic behind the second SPL rule is that Raspberry Robin LNK files all use msiexec to begin C2 communications and always connect via port 8080 (HTTP proxy). These two rules aim to catch the commands related to the malware when an unsuspecting user clicks the LNK file when an infected USB drive is plugged in.

While Raspberry Robin is known for taking more 'exotic' actions, such as using odbcconf.exe or fodhelper.exe, it ultimately comes back to using launching binaries via either rundll32.exe or regsvr32.exe, like a lot of other malware.

Detection Opportunities: The Botnet

The C2 network is made up of compromised Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, namely network attached storage (NAS) systems with hijacked DNS settings. The majority of Raspberry Robin C2 servers are QNAP or Acrobox systems exposed to the internet. The image below is a common sight when you're investigating Raspberry Robin. These are some IOCs I came across earlier in April 2023 and also tweeted.


There will usually be a compromise QNAP NAS with dozens of LNK files communicating with it and dozens of short 4 or 5 character length domains (see examples in the IOCs section). The SSL certificate is also often *.myqnapcloud[.]com or *.acrobox[.]net. Feel free to follow along on on VirusTotal (here) and Shodan (here) too.

Indicators of Compromise

For my threat research with the Equinix Threat Analysis Center (ETAC), I did my own investigation into Raspberry Robin USB malware submissions to VirusTotal using the YARA Live Hunt feature. I created a simple YARA rule (available below via a GitHub Gist) using all the C2 domains I could find related to Raspberry Robin, which was around 270. Then any time a user submitted a sample to VirusTotal with any of the C2 domains embedded, I would get an email alert. Doing this all through April 2023, it uncovered all the samples of Raspberry Robin listed on the table below. 

By checking the submitter IDs and countries where the samples were uploaded from, I could then create the map that is the title image of this blog. In less than one month, the USB malware was detected around the world, from APAC, to EMEA, to AMER. A truly global malware campaign to keep an eye on.

First Seen Indicator - SHA256 FileName Embedded Domain
1-May-23 8cc69700d007da11ee29a37d9accd87be1e9b16c49e8d8015b4cc237de803e24 q0[.]wf
30-Apr-23 de62ea5d304259d153101e488449afb51f536a2c65082f929d298939de129355 ag.a m0[.]yt
30-Apr-23 1c8b93c05c58886a9edbf2818a2cc6bcc06f003b8919f76f7c0af6a9602bea35 sq.jpg 4aw[.]ro
30-Apr-23 912553b71902cc38fe00b59c137b177b46851de18c19445d58110c77bf8ef2a3 by.ffa 0j[.]wf
29-Apr-23 20f0c9fb11408d6bc2633aa9c453a10ff679974f9815d1fcd86f0e32afb9d8ca j1n[.]me
28-Apr-23 82a9dcff810ad5c7d2e6877105e19b83da81f789a1d34c5a496757770b5f3fdd 3h[.]wf
28-Apr-23 2775df615c2afade82072bdb28550009edbdf3c5823bcf555f140b5148c7a449 frddq.ico 5g7[.]at
27-Apr-23 cfaca73578c02db9745981e10530552842e27b784de51698816436a2196b4117 osz.nd fnx[.]wf
27-Apr-23 cfb3c6f18f4b3da1f12fc1b8d465daa92dad5a5ecd478dd58b33366a5c0733a1 aqgvw.ico vs[.]gy
27-Apr-23 3fd2478c7b9f2c19bc3c4a16d09f68ff74594d7115ec0909a4a0f45e9f0e1624 qjm.bmp i0[.]wf
27-Apr-23 27bfaeda1d7ee28552343a960255a73b5df69b607462d3c43bd1438b86343972 3z[.]nu
26-Apr-23 e39500904172d1c47d74aef5b3dc063cce480a3ed1da2a0ae108049bd42ed3a7 zfl.cfg zjc[.]bz
26-Apr-23 9f81327ecf7b0ed1ee26e247a6cb424a5773c110a8e590f9f70a18d25ae974ae bzrsd.q bcomb[.]net
26-Apr-23 5ea3c6000a02790cf983e41729b77102e255bc8e4cc009722c09a17d56d5e253 sggr.s jzm[.]pw
26-Apr-23 1004549b93d8bc1828c26647ed45a88c245cb5ebe1326dd496070c492e294d39 vszkn.sav 5g7[.]at
25-Apr-23 1ebe7d09e26f07d272a64278e0ae8fc1ba6b512dcf41035b5ece54d43d3198e2 wycz.lnk w0[.]pm
25-Apr-23 0a1c697e4d8bb227fe4c7f854a80e6c0dbda9f3e36c319339255bd05dc54844c pcv.kqn w0[.]pm
25-Apr-23 29615895e321580dd4ee81072f13c64ec61465ca6fc26eb155b31404f7556193 osz.nd h0[.]pm
25-Apr-23 fce6cf771ff163d943938ff42e8863c143c817ebcbdfa4140b64c1a4d4133301 xac.bmp 4xq[.]nl
24-Apr-23 4c0700588d9481b0bf6a554a08ec0698a71f8ca86b07cd727784db22669e1f4a mwgq[.]net
24-Apr-23 71bb34d64d68e5f53edb2c31125ba4a3e41806c7bd254eb061c5985b06e937c6 soxxg.png 0j[.]wf
24-Apr-23 7c6a000344c06ae53b82f7b28e0589cfb0bf3c1b5bec8db40eecba60f0d8d470 phi.bmp 5v0[.]nl
22-Apr-23 183312f1f8c16fd308bf118eb4c6ef472a022d7d11b80f8ade7061cc4924c6ec 3h[.]wf
22-Apr-23 10b0b4d885884394459031f989fa722366152a9e08189c61cf62543fb2368c04 4xq[.]nl
22-Apr-23 10a370e6d7c78b21cebc1261f01b38c1f866001ea0db3bc9962b0acd7aef1a59 qjm.bmp li1iv[.]com
21-Apr-23 ec1c8664d22bb000fd241dfee83719922ef06652bf882f7367b9c5471d96f71d o7car[.]com
21-Apr-23 7575e400b71d1cb4609d1aeea977f6a2faa5f9bdc4b385581a2a9e47a5e7be34 qjm.bmp 4j[.]pm
20-Apr-23 6268485f4f755d3dd6bc62de14837e5e8eb9d76ff9237da3e9c61f8b937cef26 qjm.bmp 6qo[.]at
20-Apr-23 3472bf25ab439812521d186fae3de49b75ad7dd98972a69b4be345449056000a ynyl.gt q0[.]pm
19-Apr-23 e8c44a1f7188c6a685c2a81fcca6909ba5c13175bfc800a629d664f8a9580cc9 qjm.chk 6w[.]re
19-Apr-23 d26e14a8b41ecb99e9b3ed19a80d5034bd31f5ce678aa0ad9bd5927f94283ac2 qlmhc.kll 8t[.]pm
19-Apr-23 be72d3c6a59830cb29baf6d4b3eec230a55724b20f24e42d30087c26eef07b32 petgz.zyn qji6[.]com
18-Apr-23 dae94d3bbcbb661a50cad43cad488ac90e2a1e4643a338aedfb431e2a3b8eba0 qjm.bmp 5v0[.]nl
18-Apr-23 744c2a1cd50555fdecd24fc03eb16286a4ceb2efd46c4b0291ae4808861883ca xphfk.sav 7d[.]rs
18-Apr-23 a26e6e9c2a804cad9bf392841e5e02beee3e58ccbb6bc3848cb0981cfab00ccb gzqo.q eznb[.]net

Raspberry Robin C2 Domain YARA Rule

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