• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

 | 

Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

 | 

Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager

 | 

U.S. Sanctions Russia's Aeza Group for aiding crooks with bulletproof hosting

 | 

Qantas confirms customer data breach amid Scattered Spider attacks

 | 

CVE-2025-6554 is the fourth Chrome zero-day patched by Google in 2025

 | 

U.S. CISA adds TeleMessage TM SGNL flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

A sophisticated cyberattack hit the International Criminal Court

 | 

Esse Health data breach impacted 263,000 individuals

 | 

Europol dismantles €460M crypto scam targeting 5,000 victims worldwide

 | 

CISA and U.S. Agencies warn of ongoing Iranian cyber threats to critical infrastructure

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Citrix NetScaler flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Canada bans Hikvision over national security concerns

 | 

Denmark moves to protect personal identity from deepfakes with new copyright law

 | 

Ahold Delhaize data breach affected over 2.2 Million individuals

 | 

Facebook wants access to your camera roll for AI photo edits

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 51

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 530 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

The FBI warns that Scattered Spider is now targeting the airline sector

 | 

LapDogs: China-nexus hackers Hijack 1,000+ SOHO devices for espionage

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Cyber Crime
  • Deep Web
  • Hacking
  • Malware
  • The popularity of Dark Utilities ‘C2-as-a-Service’ rapidly increases

The popularity of Dark Utilities ‘C2-as-a-Service’ rapidly increases

Pierluigi Paganini August 05, 2022

Dark Utilities “C2-as-a-Service” is attracting a growing number of customers searching for a command-and-control for their campaigns.

The popularity of the Dark Utilities “C2-as-a-Service” is rapidly increasing, over 3,000 users are already using it as command-and-control for their campaigns.

Dark Utilities was launched in early 2022, the platform that provides full-featured C2 capabilities to its users. Dark Utilities is advertised as a platform to enable remote access, command execution, conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and cryptocurrency mining operations on infected systems.

It allows threat actors to target multiple architectures without requiring technical skills. The operators of the platform offer technical support and assistance to the customers through Discord and Telegram.

“Dark Utilities provides payloads consisting of code that is executed on victim systems, allowing them to be registered with the service and establish a command and control (C2) communications channel.” reads the analysis published by Cisco Talos researchers. “The platform currently supports Windows, Linux and Python-based payloads, allowing adversaries to target multiple architectures without requiring significant development resources.”

dark utilities platform

The platform is hosted on both clear internet and Tor network, its operators offers premium access to the platform, associated payloads and API endpoints for 9.99 euros. At the time of writing, the platform had enrolled roughly 3,000 users, which is approximately 30,000 euros in income.

The Dark Utilities platform uses Discord for user authentication, it implements a dashboard displaying platform statistics, server health status and other metrics.

Users can generate new payloads for specific operating systems and deploy them on the victim machines.

“Selecting an operating system causes the platform to generate a command string that threat actors are typically embedding into PowerShell or Bash scripts to facilitate the retrieval and execution of the payload on victim machines.” continues the report.

The researchers pointed out that payloads provided by the platform are hosted within the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), making them resilient to content moderation or law enforcement intervention.

IPFS is a distributed, peer-to-peer network, that prevent takeover from authorities. IPFS supports gateways, which operate similar to Tor2Web gateways, to allow users on the internet to access contents hosted within IPFS without requiring a client application to be installed.

Dark Utilities appears to have been designed by a threat actor that goes under the moniker Inplex-sys. 

Talos researchers believe Inplex-sys collaborated with one of the operators of a botnet service called Smart Bot, which is designed to launch spam attacks, or “raids” against the Discord and Twitch communication platforms.

“Although the Dark Utilities platform was recently established, thousands of users have already been enrolled and joined the platform. Given the amount of functionality that the platform provides and the relatively low cost of use, we expect this platform will continue to rapidly expand its user base.” concludes the report. “This will likely result in an increase in the volume of malware samples in the wild attempting to establish C2 using the platform.”

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

[adrotate banner=”9″][adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, c2-as-a-service)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]


facebook linkedin twitter

c2-as-a-service Dark Utilities Hacking hacking news information security news malware Pierluigi Paganini Security News

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 03, 2025
Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 03, 2025
Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

    Cyber Crime / July 03, 2025

    Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

    Uncategorized / July 03, 2025

    Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager

    Security / July 02, 2025

    U.S. Sanctions Russia's Aeza Group for aiding crooks with bulletproof hosting

    Cyber Crime / July 02, 2025

    Qantas confirms customer data breach amid Scattered Spider attacks

    Cyber Crime / July 02, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT