{"id":229378,"date":"2026-03-30T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi-persistence-to-steal-browser-credentials\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T18:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T22:40:12","slug":"deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi-persistence-to-steal-browser-credentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi-persistence-to-steal-browser-credentials\/","title":{"rendered":"DeepLoad Malware Uses ClickFix and WMI Persistence to Steal Browser Credentials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/03\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi.html\">DeepLoad Malware Uses ClickFix and WMI Persistence to Steal Browser Credentials<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/03\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi.html\">https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/03\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-30 11:47:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"thehackernews.com\">thehackernews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"p-author\">\ue804<span class=\"author\">Ravie Lakshmanan<\/span>\ue802<span class=\"author\">Mar 30, 2026<\/span><\/span><span class=\"p-tags\">Threat Intelligence \/ Browser Security<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A new campaign has leveraged the ClickFix social engineering tactic as a way to distribute a previously undocumented malware loader referred to as <strong>DeepLoad<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It likely uses AI-assisted obfuscation and process injection to evade static scanning, while credential theft starts immediately and captures passwords and sessions even if the primary loader is blocked,&#8221; ReliaQuest researchers Thassanai McCabe and Andrew Currie said in a report shared with The Hacker News.<\/p>\n<p>The starting point of the attack chain is a ClickFix lure that tricks users into running PowerShell commands by pasting the command into the Windows Run dialog under the pretext of addressing a non-existent issue. This, in turn, uses &#8220;mshta.exe,&#8221; a legitimate Windows utility to download and run an obfuscated PowerShell loader.<\/p>\n<p>The loader, for its part, has been found to conceal its actual functionality among meaningless variable assignments, likely in an attempt to deceive security tools. It&#8217;s assessed that the threat actors relied on an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to develop the obfuscation layer.<\/p>\n<p>DeepLoad makes deliberate efforts to blend in with regular Windows activity and fly under the radar. This includes hiding the payload within an executable named &#8220;LockAppHost.exe,&#8221; a legitimate Windows process that manages the lock screen.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the malware covers up its own tracks by disabling PowerShell command history and invoking native Windows core functions directly instead of relying on PowerShell&#8217;s built-in commands to launch processes and modify memory. In doing so, it bypasses common monitoring hooks that keep tabs on PowerShell-based activity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To evade file-based detection, DeepLoad generates a secondary component on the fly by using the built-in PowerShell feature Add-Type, which compiles and runs code written in C#,&#8221; ReliaQuest said. &#8220;This produces a temporary Dynamic Link Library (DLL) file dropped into the&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/03\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DeepLoad Malware Uses ClickFix and WMI Persistence to Steal Browser Credentials https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/03\/deepload-malware-uses-clickfix-and-wmi.html Publish Date: 2026-03-30&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEj2icgdVOmzM5pZsm88HvvmzcWKRBBXvG94z4fSZMEVPzb7GDoJ_MGDckeaK2dYVEoId5bhMbBtB0bTc0xWJshdOQ-fJEUH5nPIo028Cpm1bmmR1Qlrv5M6atg6oMz0wc0hX4phKfXivitHkWqMiE_Rl7PaD0qIrGMyaq9D_QwAMm62Bw5iaMBlHvwAnIa_\/s1600\/deepload.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,35,32],"class_list":["post-229378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-hacker","tag-malware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229380,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229378\/revisions\/229380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}