Prophet Spider is a well-known Initial Access Broker (IAB) group. Prophet Spider's tradecraft continues to grow while exploiting known web-server vulnerabilities such as Log4j and Citrix.
A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability(CVE-2021-22941) affecting Citrix ShareFile Storage Zones Controller, was used by Prophet Spider to attack a Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) web server. The attacker took advantage of the flaw to launch a WebShell that allowed the download of further tools.
Prophet Spider also exploits known Log4j vulnerabilities in VMware Horizon (CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2021-45046, CVE-2021-44832). Prophet Spider most typically used encoded PowerShell instructions to download a second-stage payload to the targeted PCs after exploiting the vulnerabilities. The specifics of that payload are determined by the attacker’s motivations and aims, such as crypto mining, ransomware, and extortion.