Industry Intel

Have you ever received a blank call, and no one was on the other side of the line? What about a similar blank SMS received through your mobile carrier’s Mail2SMS gateway? There’s a high probability that it was a mobile spammer who’s automatically and efficiently verifying the validity of a recently harvested database of mobile numbers, with QA (Quality Assurance) in mind. These verified databases will be later on used as the foundation for a highly successful spam/scam/malicious software disseminating campaigns, thanks to the fact that the cybercriminals behind them will no longer be shooting into the dark. How do they do that? What kind of tools do they use?

Let’s find out by profiling a Russian DIY (do it yourself) software vendor, that’s been operating since 2011, and is currently offering a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based phone number verification tool, as well as USB-modem based phone number verification application.

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A cybercriminal/gang of cybercriminals that we’ve been closely monitoring for a while now has just launched yet another spam campaign, this time impersonating the “Data Processing Service” company, in an attempt to trick its customers into interacting with the malicious emails. Once they do so, they are automatically exposed to the client-side exploits served by the Black Hole Exploit Kit.

In this post, I’ll profile their latest campaign and the dropped malware. I will also establish a direct connection between this and three other previously profiled malicious campaigns, as well as an ongoing money mule campaign, all of which appear to have been launched by the same cybercriminal/gang of cybercriminals.

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The mobile landscape has boomed in the last couple of years mostly in part because of Android devices and social networking. This has opened the door for everyone to have access to a smartphone and have the cyber world at their fingertips. Smartphones have become an extension of us, and we now have our email, banking, social networking, television and internet on the go. We live in a world of instant access.

With this excitement and convenience, we may lose track something we take serious is our privacy and security. Looming in this mobile landscape are people who want benefit from our oversight and continuous usage. read more…

Just how easy is it to generate an undetected piece of malware these days? Too easy to be true, largely thanks to the rise of managed crypting services, and the re-emergence of the DIY (do it yourself) trend within the entire cybercrime ecosystem.

With hundreds of thousands of new malware variants processed by the industry on a daily basis, it’s fairly logical to conclude that over the years, the bad guys have adapted to signature-based antivirus scanning protection mechanisms, and have achieved disturbing levels of automation and efficiency. How do they do that?

Let’s find out by profiling a recently spotted Web-based DIY malware cryptor, emphasize on the future potential of such underground projects, as well as provide MD5s of malware samples known to have been generated using it.

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On a periodic basis, cybercriminals are spamvertising malicious campaigns impersonating Verizon Wireless to tens of thousands of Verizon customers across the globe in an attempt to trick them into interacting with the fake emails. Throughout 2012, we intercepted two campaigns pretending to come from the company, followed by another campaign intercepted last month. This tactic largely relies on the life cycle of a particular campaign, intersecting with the publicly generated awareness of its maliciousness.

In this post, I’ll profile one of the most recently spamvertised campaigns impersonating Verizon Wireless. Not surprisingly, once users click on any of the links found in the malicious emails, they’re automatically exposed to the client-side exploits served by the Black Hole Exploit Kit.

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On a daily basis, largely thanks to the efficiency-centered malicious campaigns circulating in the wild, cybercriminals get access to tens of thousands of accounting credentials across multiple Web properties, and most disturbingly, online payment processing services like PayPal.

We’ve recently spotted a newly launched underground E-shop that’s exclusively selling access to hacked PayPal accounts. How much does it cost to purchase a hacked PayPal account on the underground marketplace these days? What pricing method is the cybercriminal behind the service using, and does the newly launched E-shop share any similarities with the E-shop selling access to hacked PayPal accounts that we profiled in 2012?

Is your state cyber secure? Or is it one of the most hackable? Find out in our fourth annual Cyber Hygiene Risk Index report.

Let’s take a peek inside the E-shop.

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Sample login page for the E-shop:

Sample entry page for the E-shop:

As you can see in the attached screenshot, the data is segmented in the following way: Email of the affected victim, verified/not verified account, type of account, Card confirmed or not, Bank confirmed or not, Balance, First name of the victim, the country of origin, and the actual selling price.

Screenshot of the inventory of the E-shop:

What about the prices? As you can see, accounts with virtually no assets — at least for the time being — are offered for sale at a static $3 per account. The price for accounts with a balance varies between $20-$15. It’s pretty obvious that the cybercriminal behind the E-shop is using perceived value for his pricing scheme, in the same way as another cybercriminal whose operations we profiled in 2012. Back then, he was selling access to a compromised bank account with a balance of $6,000 for $165. What we’ve got here is a decent example of how these inexperienced cybercriminals are looking for ways monetize the fraudulently obtained data as soon as possible, instead of “cashing out” the accounts by themselves, which could lead to possible risks to their OPSEC (Operational Security).

Second screenshot of the inventory of the E-shop:

The E-shop is exclusively targeting United States citizens, and currently has an inventory of 1,543 hacked PayPal accounts, followed by another 14 for the United Kingdom.

What’s particularly interesting regarding this E-shop is the fact that the cybercriminal behind it tried to come up with a value-added service, in this case a built-in Socks5 proxy checker, to be used when interacting with the hacked PayPal accounts for greater anonymity.

Sample screenshot of the built-in Socks5 proxy server checker:

These are not publicly obtainable Socks5 servers. Instead, they are compromised malware-infected hosts converted into anonymization proxies, allowing the cybercriminals who are about to “cash out” the hacked PayPal accounts to risk-forward the possibility of getting traced back to the IP of an innocent malware-infected victim.

How did the cybercriminal behind the service shape the prices for each hacked PayPal account? Pretty simple. Based on perceived value with asset liquidity in mind. Thanks to his inability/unwillingness to “cash out” the accounts by himself, launching an E-shop to monetize the fraudulently obtained financial data seems a logical development. Unlike the E-shop selling access to hacked PayPal accounts that we profiled in 2012, this one isn’t selling any other type of compromised accounting data, other than PayPal accounts.

We’ll continue monitoring the emergence of these E-shops, and post updates as soon as new developments take place.

Over the last couple of days, we’ve been monitoring a persistent attempt to infect tens of thousands of users with malware through a systematic rotation of multiple social engineering themes. What all of these campaigns have in common is the fact that they all share the same malicious infrastructure.

Let’s profile one of the most recently spamvertised campaigns, and expose the cybercriminals’ complete portfolio of malicious domains, their related name servers, dropped MD5 and its associated run time behavior.

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We’ve recently intercepted a localized — to Bulgarian — malware campaign, that’s propagating through Facebook Wall posts. Basically, a malware-infected user would unknowingly post a link+enticing message, in this case “Check it out!“, on their friend’s Walls, in an attempt to abuse their trusted relationship and provoke them to click on the malicious link. Once users click on the link, they’re exposed to the malicious software.

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Its tax season and cybercriminals are mass mailing tens of thousands of IRS (Internal Revenue Service) themed emails in an attempt  to trick users into thinking that their income tax refund has been “turned down”. Once users click on any of the links found in the malicious emails, they’re automatically exposed to the client-side exploits served by the Black Hole Exploit Kit.

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Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising two separate campaigns, impersonating Facebook Inc., in an attempt to trick its users into thinking that their Facebook account has been disabled. What these two campaigns have in common is the fact that the client-side exploits serving domains are both parked on the same IP. Once users click on any of the links found in the malicious emails, they’re exposed to the client-side exploits served by the Black Hole Exploit Kit.

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Throughout the past year, we observed an increase in the availability of malicious (DIY) tools and services that were once exclusively targeting sophisticated cybercriminals, often operating within invite-only cybercrime-friendly Web communities. This development is a clear indication that the business models behind these tools and services cannot scale, and in order to ensure a sustainable revenue stream, the cybercriminals behind them need to change their tactics – which is exactly what we’re seeing them do.

By starting to advertise these very same malicious (DIY) tools and services on publicly accessible forums, they’re proving that they’re willing to sacrifice a certain degree of OPSEC (Operational Security) for the sake of growing their business model and attracting new customers. Just like the managed SMS flooding as a service concept, which we previously profiled and discussed, there’s yet another tactic in use by cybercriminals who want to assist fellow cybercriminals in their fraudulent “cash-out schemes’ – and it’s called ‘phone ring flooding as a service’.

In this post, I’ll profile a popular, publicly advertised service, which according to its Web site, has been in operation for 3 years and has had over a thousand customers.

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Thanks to the success of multiple botnet aggregating malicious campaigns launched in the wild, cybercriminals are launching malware-infected-hosts — also known as loads — as a service type of underground market propositions, in an attempt to monetize the botnet’s infected population by selling “partitioned” access to it.

How much does it cost to buy a thousand US-based malware infected hosts? What about hosts based in the European Union? Let’s find out. In this post, I’ll profile a newly launched underground service offering access to thousands of malware-infected hosts to virtually anyone who’s willing to pay the price.

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