Security agency: Hackers are using Obsidian to spread the PHANTOMPULSE Trojan

The security research organization Elastic Security Labs has disclosed a new social engineering attack targeting personnel in the finance and cryptocurrency industries. The attackers impersonate venture capital firms on LinkedIn and Telegram, tricking targets into opening an Obsidian note repository that contains a built-in malicious payload, thereby deploying a previously unrecorded Windows remote access Trojan called PHANTOMPULSE.

This attack does not exploit any software vulnerabilities but instead abuses the Shell Commands plugin of Obsidian to automatically execute malicious code when the note repository is opened. On the macOS side, it uses an obfuscated AppleScript launcher in conjunction with a Telegram channel as a backup command and control server, while on the Windows side, it leverages Ethereum transaction data to achieve blockchain-based C2 address resolution.