A new version of the TrickBot banking Trojan continues its evolution of targeting security software in order to prevent its detection and removal. In this new version, TrickBot has set its sights on Windows Defender, which for many people is the only antivirus installed on a Windows 10 machine. TrickBot is a banking Trojan that attempts to steal online banking credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, browser information, and other credentials saved on your PC and browser. When TrickBot is executed it first starts a loader that gets the system ready by disabling Windows services and processes associated with security software and performing elevation to gain higher system privileges. When that is completed, it will load the "core" component by injecting a DLL that then downloads modules used to steal information from the computer, contains the communication layer, and perform other tasks. Prior to this version, the TrickBot loader would perform a basic targeting of Windows Defender, soon to be called Microsoft Defender. Because that wasn't enough, in a new TrickBot sample found by security researchers MalwareHunterTeam and Vitali Kremez, who reverse-engineered it, it is seen that the Trojan has added further attempts to disable Windows Defender. As you can see below, TrickBot has now added 12 additional methods to target and disable Windows Defender and Microsoft Defender APT in Windows as shown below. These methods utilize either Registry settings or the Set-MpPreference PowerShell command to set Windows Defender preferences. When TrickBot detects certain security programs installed, it will configure a debugger for that process using the Image File Execution Options Registry key. This causes the debugger to launch before the program that is executed, and if that debugger does not exist, the expected program will fail to launch. More complete details can be found on OUR FORUM.