Industry Intel

Girl Scouts and OpenText empower future leaders of tomorrow with cyber resilience

The transition to a digital-first world enables us to connect, work and live in a realm where information is available at our fingertips. The children of today will be working in an environment of tomorrow that is shaped by hyperconnectivity. Operating in this...

World Backup Day reminds us all just how precious our data is

Think of all the important files sitting on your computer right now. If your computer crashed tomorrow, would you be able to retrieve your important files? Would your business suffer as a result? As more and more of our daily activities incorporate digital and online...

3 Reasons We Forget Small & Midsized Businesses are Major Targets for Ransomware

The ransomware attacks that make headlines and steer conversations among cybersecurity professionals usually involve major ransoms, huge corporations and notorious hacking groups. Kia Motors, Accenture, Acer, JBS…these companies were some of the largest to be...

How Ransomware Sneaks In

Ransomware has officially made the mainstream. Dramatic headlines announce the latest attacks and news outlets highlight the staggeringly high ransoms businesses pay to retrieve their stolen data. And it’s no wonder why – ransomware attacks are on the rise and the...

An MSP and SMB guide to disaster preparation, recovery and remediation

Introduction It’s important for a business to be prepared with an exercised business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan plan before its hit with ransomware so that it can resume operations as quickly as possible. Key steps and solutions should be followed...

Podcast: Cyber resilience in a remote work world

The global pandemic that began to send us packing from our offices in March of last year upended our established way of working overnight. We’re still feeling the effects. Many office workers have yet to return to the office in the volumes they worked in pre-pandemic....

5 Tips to get Better Efficacy out of Your IT Security Stack

If you’re an admin, service provider, security executive, or are otherwise affiliated with the world of IT solutions, then you know that one of the biggest challenges to overcome is efficacy. Especially in terms of cybersecurity, efficacy is something of an amorphous...

How Cryptocurrency and Cybercrime Trends Influence One Another

Typically, when cryptocurrency values change, one would expect to see changes in crypto-related cybercrime. In particular, trends in Bitcoin values tend to be the bellwether you can use to predict how other currencies’ values will shift, and there are usually...

What’s the underground market’s going rate for a thousand U.S based malware infected hosts?

Jul 10, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Imagine you’re a cybercriminal that has somehow managed to infect a 1000 U.S based hosts and is looking for ways to monetize his malicious activity? He could easily start spreading spam or phishing emails, use the infected hosts as a platform for disseminating related malware attacks, or basically data mine the infected hosts for accounting data to be later on sold to fellow cybercriminals.

What if all he wanted to do is earn as much profit in the shortest possible amount of time without investing more efforts into the monetization of the infected hosts? Is the cybercrime ecosystem mature enough to offer him an alternative? Appreciate the rhetoric. The maturing cybercrime ecosystem is fully capable of offering him a high liquidity monetization approach for earning revenue by infecting hosts and spreading a specific undetectable executable pushed by the pay-per-install affiliate network that I’ll profile in this post.

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Phishing campaign targeting Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail spotted in the wild

Jul 9, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Cybercriminals are masters of multi-tasking. For instance, whenever a web server gets compromised, they will not only use its clean IP reputation to host phishing, spam and malware samples on it, they will also sell access to the shell allowing other cybercriminals the opportunity to engage in related malicious activities such as, mass scanning of remotely exploitable web application vulnerabilities.

Today, I intercepted a currently active phishing campaign that’s a good example of a popular tactic used by cybercriminal known as ‘campaign optimization’. The reason this campaign is well optimized it due to the fact that as it simultaneously targets Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Windows Hotmail email users.

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117,000 unique U.S visitors offered for malware conversion

Jul 6, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

In 2012 it’s becoming increasingly common for cybercriminals to apply basic quality assurance (QA) tactics to their campaigns. Next to QA, they also emphasize on campaign optimization strategies allowing them to harness the full potential of the malicious campaign.

Recently, I came across to an underground forum advertisement selling access to 117,000 unique U.S visitors — stats gathered over a period of 8 hours — for the purpose of redirecting them to a Black Hole web malware exploitation kit landing URL. The traffic aggregation taking place through black hat SEO (search engine optimization), is aiming to exploit a group of users known to have high purchasing power, namely, American citizens.

Are such underground market propositions offering traffic exchange deals gaining popularity, or are they just a fad? What’s the infection rate for 117,000 U.S based users redirected to a BlackHole exploits serving landing URL? Let’s find out.

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Cybercriminals launch managed SMS flooding services

Jul 2, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Mobile devices are an inseparable part of the modern cybercrime ecosystem. From ATM skimmers with SMS notification next to fake antivirus scanners for Android users, the growth of the mobile malware segment is pretty evident.

In this post I’ll profile a recently spamvertised managed SMS flooding service, in the context of E-banking fraud, and just how exactly are cybercriminals using the service as a way to evade detection of their fraudulent transactions.

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Spamvertised bogus online casino themed emails serving W32/Casonline

Jun 28, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising hundreds of thousands of emails enticing end and corporate users into clicking on links leading to bogus online casinos requiring the installation of an executable file.

This is the second bogus casino themed campaign I’ve intercepted in recent months, and the third time when I profile the distribution and infection vectors of W32/Casonline.

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Spamvertised ‘DHL Express Parcel Tracking Notification’ emails serving malware

Jun 26, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Remember the “Spamvertised ‘DHL Package delivery report’ emails serving malware” campaign profiled earlier this month?

It seems that another cybercrime gang has started impersonating DHL in an attempt to serve malware to the millions of spamvertised end and corporate users.

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Spamvertised ‘Confirm PayPal account” notifications lead to phishing sites

Jun 26, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

PayPay users, beware! Phishers have just started spamvertising hundreds of thousands of legitimately-looking PayPal themed emails, in an attempt to trick users into entering their accounting data on the fraudulent web site linked in the emails.

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Spamvertised ‘Your UPS delivery tracking’ emails serving client-side exploits and malware

Jun 25, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising millions of emails impersonating United Parcel Service (UPS) in an attempt to trick end and corporate users into clicking on exploits and malware serving links found in the malicious emails. What exploits are they using? How widespread is the campaign? Is it an isolated incident, or is the campaign linked to more malicious activity?

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‘Create a Cartoon of You” ads serving MyWebSearch toolbar

Jun 22, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

On their way to attract new users, adware providers and online marketers often come up with new and creative ideas tailored to average Internet users. These often include free screensavers, browser plugins, toolbars, and that’s just for starters.

In this post, we’ll profile the market proposition of one of these online advertisers, previously known as a vendor of adware toolbars, and discuss what has changed over the years.

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Spamvertised ‘Your Paypal Ebay.com payment’ emails serving client-side exploits and malware

Jun 15, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Remember the ‘Your Amazon.com order confirmation’ client-side exploits and malware serving campaign which I profiled earlier this week?

It appears that the gang behind it is back with another campaign, this time impersonating PayPal. For the time being, another round consisting of millions of malicious emails is circulating in the wild, enticing end and corporate users into clicking on malicious links found in the emails.

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FakeAV for Android! There you are!

Jun 15, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

By Nathan Collier

Every super hero has an arch nemesis. For a lot of Threat Researchers, including myself, Rogue Security Products, or better known as FakeAV, is theirs. Back in the day when I was primarily a PC malware fighter, FakeAV was a prevalent threat that was always coming up with new ways to infect users nearly every other day. I knew it was only a matter of time that the same malware authors would turn mobile. I am afraid those days are upon us. How could I ever forget such an identifiable logo:

“Android Security Suite Premium”… yeah, right! This spy which is being called Android.FakeSecSuit retrieves incoming sms messages, extracts the phone number and message, and then sends the stolen info off:

As you can see in the GET command from the PCAP, highlighted in blue is the phone number and message I sent to my test phone now being sent off to a site.

Now that the developers of the popular FakeAV malware have entered into the mobile world expect to to see a lot more variations of this… and if they follow the same pattern as they did in the PC world, I mean A LOT! We are seeing it in Torrents and/or alternative markets. Remember, when downloading Android apps choose them wisely and download from a trusted source. Check reviews, research the developer and verify permissions requested before downloading. And of course, scan with Webroot SecureAnywhere Mobile.

Oracle and Apple patch critical Java security vulnerabilities

Jun 14, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

In a coordinated effort Oracle and Apple recently issued a critical security update for Java.

Next to Adobe Flash, and Acrobat Reader, client-side vulnerabilities found in insecure versions of Java are among the most popular entry points for malicious attackers on the hosts of users with outdated third-party software and browser plugins.

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