Five Ruby Malware Threats to Be Aware of

Photo by Michael Geiger on Unsplash 

Access to the internet is considered by many to be a basic human right. The internet, for all its benefits, however, has created a security nightmare in the digital world. In the year 2021, cybercrimes cost businesses $6 trillion and this worrisome trend is predicted to reach over $10 trillion by 2025. Guarding your digital assets is now a compulsory activity rather than an afterthought.Access to the internet is considered by many to be a basic human right now. The internet, for all its benefits, however, has created a security nightmare in the digital world. In the year 2021, cybercrimes cost businesses $6 trillion and this worrisome trend is predicted to reach over $10 trillion by 2025. Guarding your digital assets is now a compulsory activity rather than an afterthought.

The decision to code with a specific language is one that predisposes your solution to some particular malware. In this article, you will be learning about 5 top malwares that every Ruby programmer should be aware of. You need to have programming experience using Ruby to understand and implement the content of this article properly.

Top 5 Ruby Malwares

There is arguably an infinite number of malwares floating around the internet with more coming out of the woodwork as malignant actors constantly innovate around cybersecurity strategies and implementations. Guarding against all forms of malware is a very tough ask. However, identifying the more commonly encountered malware and guarding against them can be equally effective.

In this article, you’ll be learning about the top five most common, destructive Ruby malware you need to keep an eye out for. Protecting yourself and your organization from malware can be as simple as avoiding some packages. In other cases, it can involve leveraging cybersecurity solutions in automatedly combating malware and protecting your digital infrastructure round the clock.

Ruby Interpreter Malware

While most of the programming world has made the pivot from low-level programming languages to high-level programming languages, it’s still worth remembering that the high-level programming languages we leverage today were built atop low-level programming languages. And all of these languages are still traceable and compiled into the machine language of 1s and 0s.

The Ruby interpreter malware is one that uses the Ruby interpreter to create and allocate resources to a malware program. Most times, this operation is able to fly under the radar, undetected by antiviruses, and can cause lags in system performance (depending on how much of the system’s resources are being consumed by the malware).

This interpreter malware is also capable of listening on TCP ports and can intercept information and act as a spyware. One major cause of concern is that the interpreter malware is able to deceive static and dynamic analyzers that exist to detect abnormalities before and after a program is run, which means prevention is rather difficult.

RubyGems Malware

RubyGems is a package manager that is home to a lot of packages that contribute to the supply chain of many applications that leverage the Ruby programming language. Steps have been taken to curb RubyGems exploitation. However, it’s important to be aware of how RubyGems malware takes shape.

A lot of Bitcoin miners have leveraged typosquatting attacks, tricking developers into downloading packages with similar names in order to carry out cryptojacking. These attacks can range from using system resources for mining cryptocurrency to being as malignant as to steal cryptocurrency wallet credentials. You’re advised to review this list of compromised packages before adding dependencies to your application.

Black Ruby Malware

Black Ruby malware is a unique one. It’s one of the first publicly known malwares that combines cryptomining and ransomware into one application. It typically works by masking itself as one of the most trusted applications on a Microsoft OS: Windows Defender. When it installs, it begins to take up resources and computing power gradually.

Black Ruby malware comes with an instruction that requires the victim to pay $650 worth of Bitcoin (within a limited period of time) to a Bitcoin wallet. Failure to do this will result in continuous use of the victim’s computing memory to mine cryptocurrency. An individual can consider replacing the computer system if it’s a low-end device. However, companies do not have the luxury of this option due to the financial implication and typically choose the lesser of the two evils, which is paying the attacker.

Black Ruby 2 Malware 

Black Ruby 2 is a more dangerous iteration of its predecessor. Where its predecessor makes use of a two-pronged strategy that either leverages the victim’s computing power or makes the victim pay, Black Ruby 2 goes a step further and increasingly encrypts the files on the victim’s computer.

The victim is made to pay $650 to a Bitcoin wallet or watch as the infected computer is unable to access previously accessible files and resources due to Black Ruby 2’s encryption on the infected resources. The impact of this attack may be trivial to an individual, but on a company’s computer containing sensitive information, the impact can be ghastly and affect company operations.

Ruby Rest-Client Malware

Rest-Client is a popular package used across multiple programming languages that enables developers to perform HTTP requests that facilitate CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations. It’s easy to perceive Rest-Client as a package that helps developers carry out the core functionality of web2.0.

Rest-Client package 1.6.13 on Ruby Gems was found to have been infected with malware that was retrieving code from pastebin.com and stealing usernames, and passwords (among other sensitive information) and sending these details to mironanoru.zzz.com.ua. While this package version has been removed, it’s important to keep an eye out, because if it can happen once, it can happen again. 

Conclusion

Malware comes from different sources and with different strategies. It’s important that you don’t get too comfortable with any supply chain resources that your applications interact with as hackers and malignant cryptominers are constantly trying to compromise popular dependencies that they know developers have blind faith in. It’s important to verify dependencies before trusting them and using them.

While it’s understandable that there’s only so much verification that can be done before development and/or managing an application becomes slower, it can be helpful to leverage tools that help with regularly scanning your packages like Mend Supply Chain Defender to prevent a situation where you consume resources that harm your application and your company.