In early March, we published a study detailing several malicious campaigns that exploited the popular DeepSeek LLM as a lure. Subsequent telemetry analysis indicated that the TookPS downloader, a malware strain detailed in the article, was not limited to mimicking neural networks. We identified fraudulent websites mimic official sources for remote desktop and 3D modeling software, alongside pages offering these applications as free downloads.
Malicious websites
UltraViewer, AutoCAD, and SketchUp are common business tools. Therefore, potential victims of this campaign include both individual users and organizations.
Our telemetry also detected file names such as “Ableton.exe” and “QuickenApp.exe”, alongside malicious websites. Ableton is music production software for composition, recording, mixing, and mastering, and Quicken is a personal finance app for tracking expenses, income, debts, and investments across various accounts.
TookPS
In our report on attacks exploiting DeepSeek as a lure, we outlined the infection chain initiated by Trojan-Downloader.Win32.TookPS. Let us delve into this. Upon infiltrating a victim’s device, the downloader reaches out to its C2 server, whose domain is embedded in its code, to retrieve a PowerShell script. Different malware samples communicate with different domains. For example, the file with the MD5 hash tookps deepseek
