NosyDownloader

First seen
2021-08-15 00:00:00
Malware type
downloader
Profile updated
2026-07-07 13:16:48

Targeted industries: government-and-public-sector defense-and-aerospace

Targeted regions: country_code:us country_code:ru

Context

According to ESET Research, this malware is used by LongNosedGoblin and executes a chain of obfuscated commands passed to a spawned PowerShell process as one long command line argument, meaning that the script is not stored on disk. Every subsequent stage is encoded with base64, where the last one is additionally deflated with gzip. The second stage bypasses AMSI. In this case, NosyDownloader uses Matt Graeber’s reflection method and disabling script logging techniques made available on GitHub to bypass AMSI.

Reports & references

  • botcrawl.com — Chinese Apt Longnosedgoblin Targets Government Networks In Southeast Asia And Japan (report)
  • malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de — Ps1.Nosy Downloader (report)
  • ESET — Longnosedgoblin Tries Sniff Out Governmental Affairs Southeast Asia Japan (report)

External references