Expert Reaction On Go Is Becoming The Language Of Choice For Criminals To Design Malware

By   ISBuzz Team
Writer , Information Security Buzz | Mar 02, 2021 02:34 am PST

It has been reported the number of malware strains coded in the Go programming language has seen a sharp increase of around 2,000% over the last few years since 2017, cybersecurity firm Intezer said in a report published this week. The company’s findings highlight and confirm a general trend in the malware ecosystem, where malware authors have slowly moved away from C and C++ to Go, a programming language developed and launched by Google in 2007.

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Natalie Page
Natalie Page , Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
March 2, 2021 10:35 am

<p>Malware authors adopting uncommon programming languages such a Go, to write and distribute their strains is not a tactic new amongst nation-state actors and malware operators alike.</p> <p> </p> <p>Utilising rare code such as Go, is an attractive and lucrative tactic due to the much higher potential success rate the techniques can provide. Currently Golang produce’s a much lower detection rate against security software when compared with popular malware code languages such as C &amp; Python, C++.</p> <p> </p> <p>What also makes this technique extremely attractive to an adversary, is the ease at which the same code can be utilised across multiple platforms for targeting against Windows, Mac, and Linux.</p> <p> </p> <p>It is particularly concerning to see sophisticated threat groups such as Fancy Bear, adopting this tactic to create Golang versions of their already extremely successful tooling such as Zebrocy.</p>

Last edited 3 years ago by Natalie Page

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