What is Pony?
Pony malware (S0453), also known as Fareit, is an infostealer used by cybercriminals for credential theft. Its primary targets are login credentials and financial data.
As a password stealer, Pony can harvest data from a wide range of sources, including email clients, browsers, and FTP clients. It also collects browser history and cookies, and has the ability to download additional malware onto an infected system.
How to Defend Against Pony?
Defending against Pony malware requires preventing its initial infection and detecting its data exfiltration.
- Be cautious with email attachments and links, as phishing is a primary delivery vector for this infostealer.
- Keep all operating systems and software patched to limit the vulnerabilities that can be exploited for initial access.
- Deploy endpoint detection and antivirus solution to identify and block the malware’s execution and its information-stealing behaviors.
- Use network detection (NDR) with integrated threat intelligence to spot and block the exfiltration of stolen data to C2 servers.
