AsyncRAT Campaign Abuses Cloudflare Services to Hide Malware Operations

Cybercriminals distributing the AsyncRAT remote access trojan are exploiting Cloudflare’s free-tier services and TryCloudflare tunneling domains to conceal malicious infrastructure behind widely trusted platforms. By hosting WebDAV servers through Cloudflare, attackers are able to mask command-and-control activity, making detection significantly more difficult for conventional security tools that often whitelist Cloudflare traffic. 

The campaign typically begins with phishing emails that contain Dropbox links. These links deliver files using double extensions, such as .pdf.url, which are designed to mislead recipients into believing they are opening legitimate documents. When the files are opened, victims unknowingly download multi-stage scripts from TryCloudflare domains. At the same time, a genuine PDF document is displayed to reduce suspicion and delay user awareness of malicious activity. 

A notable aspect of this operation is the attackers’ use of legitimate software sources. The malware chain includes downloading official Python distributions directly from Python.org. Once installed, a full Python environment is set up on the compromised system. This environment is then leveraged to execute advanced code injection techniques, specifically targeting the Windows explorer.exe process, allowing the malware to run stealthily within a trusted system component. 

To maintain long-term access, the attackers rely on multiple persistence mecha

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