CRITICAL

Zeus / RedLine Stealer

Interactive simulation and visual analysis of the attack vector.

01Process Injection

Zeus (and modern stealers like RedLine) inject their malicious shellcode directly into legitimate Windows processes (like explorer.exe) to evade firewall detection and hide from Task Manager.

Process Injection (Zeus Payload)

invoice.exe

PID: 4920 (Malware)

[SHELLCODE PAYLOAD]
0x4D 0x5A 0x90 0x00
0x03 0x00 0x00 0x00
...

explorer.exe

PID: 1404 (Windows GUI)

By injecting into a legitimate process like explorer.exe, the malware bypasses personal firewalls and hides from the Task Manager. The malicious invoice.exe can now terminate itself.

02Registry Persistence

To survive a system reboot, the malware adds a string value pointing to its executable in the HKCU\...\Run registry key, ensuring Windows automatically launches it upon user login.

Registry Editor

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
HKEY_CURRENT_USER
- Software
  - Microsoft
    - Windows
      - CurrentVersion
        Run
        RunOnce
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Name	Type	Data
(Default)	REG_SZ	(value not set)
OneDrive	REG_SZ	"C:\Users\Target\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\OneDrive.exe" /background

Persistence Mechanism: By adding a value to the `HKCU\...\Run` registry key, the malware ensures that its payload (`winupdate.exe`) is automatically executed every time the infected user logs into Windows.

03In-Memory Scraping

The stealer continuously scans the memory space of target applications (like Chrome or Firefox) to harvest plaintext passwords, cookies, and crypto-wallet seeds before they are encrypted for network transmission.

chrome.exe (PID: 2844)

Live Memory Analysis (RAM)

Address

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

ASCII

D3A000

8C E5 92 AB 63 1C 19 7C 43 98 B1 46 08 75 32 0C

....c..|C..F.u2.

D3A010

0D 84 BE F1 6A CF 4D FB AB EF 9A 2D 47 FC 37 79

....j.M....-G.7y

D3A020

B3 49 43 7B 01 D2 85 D7 C3 97 72 97 FD 71 A2 70

.IC{......r..q.p

D3A030

EE 79 5F B0 7D F3 B9 C3 60 9C DD 0C C2 5E 15 ED

.y_.}...`....^..

D3A040

ED A4 AE 80 A3 88 B1 14 14 4A DC 56 A5 AE D3 69

.........J.V...i

D3A050

54 EA 29 BF 95 47 7E C2 22 22 4C 35 D0 06 B0 E5

T.)..G~.""L5....

D3A060

17 FF 8F 2E D1 0B 0F 5E C0 E9 97 95 99 72 52 90

.......^.....rR.

D3A070

C5 E5 03 F5 BE B3 69 B3 2C CC 66 E3 34 93 BE D9

......i.,.f.4...

D3A080

1C D1 80 CF 55 0E 45 E5 65 40 78 EA 7D D3 EC 9C

....U.E.e@x.}...

D3A090

A4 4B 87 9B 98 23 78 29 ED AB 86 A7 39 F4 81 4C

.K...#x)....9..L

D3A0A0

E1 39 A2 A4 F2 7C 5B 12 6A 4B 61 31 8D EB 83 09

.9...|[.jKa1....

D3A0B0

30 DB 1B AC 95 6C E6 FA D1 B2 3D C5 A8 22 91 C8

0....l....=.."..

D3A0C0

F5 BF 7C 03 06 20 C9 6E CB D7 FD 2E 2D B5 31 05

..|....n....-.1.

D3A0D0

24 D0 1A B1 84 09 FC 1E 84 9C 42 7E A9 7A D7 8B

$.........B~.z..

D3A0E0

ED D2 BA E9 C9 D0 FD 12 7E 1C 01 A4 CE A4 57 37

........~.....W7