When the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Defense (DoD) all work together on something, you know the subject is serious.
And when any subject comes up relating to cybersecurity and China, "serious" is the name of the game.
It's called Taidoor, and it's a malware strain used specifically by the Chinese government.
A recent CISA Malware Analysis Report (with contributions from the FBI and DoD) outlines this new malware variant.
Here's how Taidoor works inside a device:
"Malicious binaries identified as a x86 and x64 version of Taidoor were submitted for analysis. Taidoor is installed on a target's system as a service dynamic link library (DLL) and is comprised of two files. The first file is a loader, which is started as a service. The loader decrypts the second file, and executes it in memory, which is the main Remote Access Trojan (RAT)."
And according to the FBI, Taidoor has another feature: staying power.
"Chinese government actors are using malware variants in conjunction with proxy servers to maintain a presence on victim networks and to further network exploitation."
Check out the complete report here.
How should you defend yourself or your organization from this new malware threat?
CISA includes some mitigation best practices in the report: