GHOSTPULSE haunts victims using defense evasion bag o' tricks
Elastic Security Labs disclosed GHOSTPULSE, a sophisticated multi-stage loader campaign distributing signed malicious MSIX packages masquerading as legitimate software (Chrome, Brave, Edge, Grammarly, WebEx). The loader employs advanced defense evasion techniques including DLL sideloading, module stomping, process doppelgänging, NTDLL direct syscalls, and heaven's gate to evade detection while delivering information stealers (SectopRAT, Rhadamanthys, Vidar, Lumma, NetSupport) to victims.