Fareitvb

Overview

PWS:Win32/Fareitvb is a specific variant of the infamous **Fareit** (also known as **Pony**) infostealer family, notable for being rewritten or wrapped in Visual Basic (VB). Historically, Fareit is one of the most prolific credential stealers and botnet loaders in existence. It was frequently utilized by advanced threat groups to harvest FTP credentials, email passwords, and cryptocurrency wallets, and was notoriously used to drop the massive Gameover Zeus banking trojan.

Understanding the Fareit/Pony Threat
To an end-user, the infection is typically invisible. The malware executes rapidly, steals data, and often deletes itself. For a security operations center (SOC), a Fareitvb detection is a critical emergency. It means all passwords, session cookies, and VPN credentials stored on that machine are compromised, providing attackers with immediate, authenticated access to the corporate network.

Execution and Harvesting Mechanics
Fareitvb is typically distributed via weaponized spam campaigns containing malicious Office documents or ZIP files (`T1566`). The Visual Basic wrapper is often used as a packing layer to obfuscate the core malicious logic from static antivirus signatures (`T1027`). Upon execution (`T1204.002`), the malware targets a vast array of software. It extracts stored credentials from over 100 different applications, including all major web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) (`T1555.003`), FTP clients (FileZilla, WinSCP), email clients (Outlook, Thunderbird), and cryptocurrency wallets (`T1552.001`). It archives this data and exfiltrates it to a C2 server via HTTP POST requests (`T1041`). Finally, it often acts as a downloader (`T1105`), pulling down secondary, high-severity payloads before terminating.

Indicators of Compromise & Impact
The primary impact is the total compromise of all credentials stored on the endpoint and the potential for immediate lateral movement by the attackers. Host-based IoCs include EDR alerts for rapid, sequential file access of multiple SQLite databases (`Login Data`) across browser directories. Network IoCs include a sudden, short burst of outbound HTTP traffic to an unknown IP address or compromised domain, followed immediately by a secondary download.

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

Observed techniques used by this family, mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework:

Tactical Mitigations

Based on the techniques used by this family, consider the following defensive strategies:

• T1105: Implement network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) and host-based firewalls to block unauthorized inbound or outbound file transfers.

Generated Detections (Boilerplate)

These YARA and Sigma rules are auto-generated based on the family name and aliases. They must be heavily tuned before deployment in a production environment.

YARA Rule

rule MALWARE_WIN_FAREITVB {
    meta:
        description = "Detects Fareitvb (trojan)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
        date = "2026-07-06"
    strings:
        $s1 = "fareitvb" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: Suspicious Fareitvb Activity
id: 1e226b5e355cb70ea4e37f48736c085a
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the fareitvb malware family.
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
        CommandLine|contains:
            - "*fareitvb*"
    condition: selection
level: medium

Containment & Response Steps

Ordered checklist for responders. Adapt to your environment and engage professional support for active incidents.

1. Assume all credentials, session cookies, and VPN tokens stored on the compromised endpoint have been stolen by the adversary.
2. Immediately force a password reset for all corporate accounts associated with the user, and revoke all active session tokens.
3. Isolate the endpoint and deploy EDR to determine if Fareitvb successfully downloaded a secondary payload (like a banking trojan or ransomware) before being detected.
4. Reimage the infected machine completely, as infostealers often leave persistent backdoors.

What to Avoid

Common mistakes during response to this family that can destroy evidence, spread the infection, or worsen recovery.

1. Do not allow the user back onto the corporate network simply by changing their password; the stolen session cookies can bypass MFA.
2. Avoid assuming the threat is gone because the AV deleted the initial executable; Fareit is a 'grab-and-go' threat that finishes its theft in seconds.

References & External Analysis

• Search "fareitvb" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Families (Category: trojan)

Explore other malware families in the same category:

• Genericrxby
• Delphi
• Poscardstealer
• Injeber
• Polip

Machine-readable

Get this profile as JSON: https://jordanricky1604-ship-it.github.io/malware-families-catalog/api/fareitvb.json

Ecosystem & Interactive Environments

This profile is part of the Malware Families Catalog, a public dataset of 2,899 malware families. The catalog is also published across our ecosystem: Hugging Face, Kaggle, Zenodo, Replit, StackBlitz, CodeSandbox, and CodePen.