{
  "family": "shiotob",
  "sample_count": 47,
  "category": "trojan",
  "description": "Trojan:Win32/Shiotob (also known as Urlzone or Bebloh) is a highly advanced, stealthy banking trojan that gained notoriety for its pioneering use of real-time balance manipulation to actively conceal its financial theft from the victim.<br><br><b>Understanding Shiotob (Urlzone)</b><br>To the victim, a Shiotob infection is completely invisible—even when they check their bank account balance. For threat intelligence analysts, Shiotob represents a significant evolution in banking malware. Older trojans would steal funds, but the victim would see the missing money immediately upon logging in. Shiotob utilizes advanced Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) techniques not just to steal credentials, but to dynamically rewrite the HTML of the bank's webpage in real-time, displaying a fake, un-altered account balance to the user while the funds are secretly siphoned off in the background.<br><br><b>Execution and Evasion Strategies</b><br>Shiotob is typically distributed via targeted spearphishing or exploit kits. Upon execution, its primary goal is deep stealth. It utilizes rootkit functionality to hide its files, registry keys, and network connections (`T1564.001`). It injects its core payload directly into the browser process (`iexplore.exe`, `firefox.exe`, `chrome.exe`) (`T1055`). Once injected, it hooks core networking APIs (`T1185`). When the user logs into a targeted bank, Shiotob intercepts the incoming HTTP traffic. It checks the real balance, initiates a fraudulent wire transfer to a money mule, and then seamlessly rewrites the HTML displayed on the victim's screen to hide the transaction and show the expected, pre-theft balance.<br><br><b>Indicators of Compromise & Impact</b><br>The impact is severe, prolonged financial fraud, as the victim may not realize they have been robbed until they receive a physical bank statement. EDR platforms are critical, as standard AV often misses the rootkit. EDR will flag the aggressive hooking of browser APIs (`NtWriteVirtualMemory`, `NtResumeThread`). Network logs will reveal encrypted POST requests to Shiotob C2 domains, transmitting stolen credentials or receiving updated web injects. Memory forensics is essential to extract the unhooked payload.",
  "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.",
  "aliases": [],
  "enrichment_level": "expert-seo",
  "faq": [],
  "faq_count": 0,
  "mitre_attack": [
    "T1564.001",
    "T1071.001",
    "T1055",
    "T1112",
    "T1185"
  ],
  "cisa_advisory": null,
  "last_updated": "2026-06-09",
  "mitre_attack_detail": [
    {
      "id": "T1185",
      "name": "Browser Session Hijacking",
      "tactic": "Collection"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1564.001",
      "name": "Hide Artifacts: Hidden Files and Directories",
      "tactic": "Defense Evasion"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1055",
      "name": "Process Injection",
      "tactic": "Defense Evasion"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1112",
      "name": "Modify Registry",
      "tactic": "Defense Evasion"
    },
    {
      "id": "T1071.001",
      "name": "Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocols",
      "tactic": "Command and Control"
    }
  ],
  "containment_steps": [
    "Instantly isolate the endpoint from the network to halt the active Man-in-the-Browser interception and prevent further financial data exfiltration.",
    "Do NOT trust any web session initiated from the infected machine; Shiotob actively alters the HTML presented to the user.",
    "Assume all financial portals accessed from the machine are compromised; initiate mandatory password resets and contact relevant banking institutions immediately.",
    "Due to the rootkit capabilities, formatting the hard drive and rebuilding the OS is the only guaranteed method of eradication."
  ],
  "what_to_avoid": [
    "Do not rely on the victim's online bank statement to determine if funds were stolen; the malware actively falsifies this display.",
    "Avoid relying solely on basic AV removal tools; they frequently fail to eradicate the underlying rootkit persistence mechanism."
  ],
  "target_industries": [
    "Global / Opportunistic"
  ],
  "motivation": "Opportunistic",
  "threat_actors": [
    "Unknown / Cybercriminal"
  ],
  "target_geographies": [
    "Global"
  ]
}