{"id":263736,"date":"2026-06-03T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new-malspam-campaign-to-deliver-desckvb-rat\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T05:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T09:40:12","slug":"google-doubleclick-abused-in-new-malspam-campaign-to-deliver-desckvb-rat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new-malspam-campaign-to-deliver-desckvb-rat\/","title":{"rendered":"Google DoubleClick Abused in New Malspam Campaign to Deliver DesckVB RAT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new.html\">Google DoubleClick Abused in New Malspam Campaign to Deliver DesckVB RAT<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new.html\">https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-03 12:29:00<\/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\">Jun 03, 2026<\/span><\/span><span class=\"p-tags\">Malware \/ Microsoft Defender<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malspam campaign that makes use of Google&#8217;s DoubleClick domain as a way to evade detection and ultimately deliver a remote access trojan (RAT) named DesckVB RAT.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Before the victim ever reaches attacker-controlled infrastructure, the lure routes through DoubleClick, a legitimate Google-owned domain that many security tools are less likely to treat as suspicious,&#8221; Huntress researchers Anna Pham and Adam Mooney said in a report shared with The Hacker News.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;From there, the victim is passed into a malspam kit that personalizes itself on the fly using the victim&#8217;s email address, dynamically pulling in company branding and location details to make the page feel convincing without requiring the operators to handcraft a lure for each target.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What makes this attack noteworthy is that it eliminates the need for having a bespoke kit for each targeted organization, thereby making these operations more scalable and cost-effective. The end goal of the campaign is to drop DesckVB RAT, a .NET-based trojan that has been active in the wild since February 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The attack begins when an unsuspecting user opens an HTML file that&#8217;s attached to a phishing email. The file triggers a meta-refresh browser redirect to a Google DoubleClick Campaign Manager click-tracking URL, from where the user is steered to another redirector, which decodes the Base64-encoded email address and leads the victim to a landing page containing a &#8220;Download PDF&#8221; button.<\/p>\n<p>Clicking the button causes the server to respond with a ZIP archive that initiates the rest of the infection chain. This is achieved by means of a JavaScript loader, whose main responsibility is to retrieve and execute a .NET RAT while flying under the radar. The script extracts and runs a PowerShell script, which then fetches a .NET loader from an external server.<\/p>\n<p>The loader acts as a stager that verifies it&#8217;s not being&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google DoubleClick Abused in New Malspam Campaign to Deliver DesckVB RAT https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2026\/06\/google-doubleclick-abused-in-new.html Publish Date: 2026-06-03&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263738,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhpQ6QXxFH4zkfeHGdcm1WXVcNXMpyJm-1dlZLbFCdp6rKDRhuwICzYaKaR-rCpn61qod6A1F98PZejZbmYuxaUXPJLXQffoaniCkqgyqR1-p7gClpj4PYibjzIDHk8_Vw4ag00EYPCM3Nz1G0Hvzuf6wBV-HzDFoSiYDEEdjPU45Bk_rIlGk9dJ_MMVuue\/s1600\/ad-malware.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24,35,32,25],"class_list":["post-263736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity","tag-hacker","tag-malware","tag-phishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263736"}],"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=263736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263740,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263736\/revisions\/263740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}