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CrowdStrike reported that RecJS, a JavaScript-based remote access trojan, combines common crimeware delivery methods with capabilities more often associated with targeted espionage. The malware is typically installed through an NSIS package that rebuilds 7-Zip components from fragments, extracts a password-protected archive, launches the payload with wscript.exe, and establishes persistence through a Startup-folder shortcut. RecJS supports screenshot capture, command execution, configuration updates, binary download-and-execute, and detailed host profiling, while using obfuscated code and a domain generation algorithm to hinder detection and preserve command-and-control access.
The report ties RecJS distribution to at least one 2014 drive-by compromise that exploited CVE-2012-1723 against visitors to the Russian webmaster forum webmasters.ru. Although infections were geographically broad, CrowdStrike said victims were concentrated in Russia and included government, banking, education, and United Nations-related entities. The findings indicate that RecJS has been used in both wide-net and selectively valuable targeting, underscoring that malware functionality alone does not reliably distinguish commodity operations from deliberate intrusion activity.
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2 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
On 30 April 2014, visitors to the Russian webmaster forum webmasters.ru were targeted in a drive-by compromise that exploited CVE-2012-1723 to download and execute a RecJS installer named s5b_484.exe. The delivered sample used campaign ID 484, matching part of the dropper filename.
The report states that variants of the JavaScript-based RecJS malware had been distributed since at least April 2014, establishing the earliest known activity for the malware family in the source content.
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