Ravie LakshmananJun 03, 2026Malware / Microsoft Defender
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new malspam campaign that makes use of Google's DoubleClick domain as a way to evade detection and ultimately deliver a remote access trojan (RAT) named DesckVB RAT.
"Before the victim ever reaches attacker-controlled infrastructure, the lure routes through DoubleClick, a legitimate Google-owned domain that many security tools are less likely to treat as suspicious," Huntress researchers Anna Pham and Adam Mooney said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
"From there, the victim is passed into a malspam kit that personalizes itself on the fly using the victim's email address, dynamically pulling in company branding and location details to make the page feel convincing without requiring the operators to handcraft a lure for each target."
What makes this attack noteworthy is that it eliminates the need for having a bespoke kit for each targeted organization, thereby making these operations more scalable and cost-effective. The end goal of the campaign is to drop DesckVB RAT, a .NET-based trojan that has been active in the wild since February 2026.
