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...

An Evolution of Android Malware “My How You’ve Grown PJAPPS!” (Part 1)

Feb 17, 2012 | Threat Lab

We’ve all seen software grow. We watch as our favorite software adds on new features and becomes better at what it does. Malware writers are no different, they want their software to have more features as well as steal even more information. PJApps is a good example of this. PJApps is a Trojan that’s been around for a while causing havoc by being bundled in legitimate applications found in alternative Android markets, it is capable of opening a backdoor, stealing data and blocking sms behind the scenes. In one variant of PJApps it requests the following permissions to steal information:

INTERNET
RECEIVE_SMS
SEND_SMS
READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS
WRITE_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS
INSTALL_PACKAGES
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
READ_PHONE_STATE

Here’s some of things the older variants of PJApps stole:

-SIM Card Number
-Telephone Number
-IMSI Number

Report: 3,325% increase in malware targeting the Android OS

Feb 17, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Which is the most targeted mobile operating system?

According to the recently released 2011 Mobile Threats Report from our partners at Juniper Networks, that’s the Android OS.

Key summary points from the report:

Spamvertised “Hallmark ecard” campaign leads to malware

Feb 17, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising a “You just received a e-card form somebody” themed malware campaign, impersonating Hallmark.

More details:

Twitter adds HTTPS support by default

Feb 15, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

On Monday, Twitter announced that it’s introducing support for secure HTTPS connections to all users by default.

More details:

Report: Internet Explorer 9 leads in socially-engineered malware protection

Feb 14, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

According to a newly released report from NSS Labs, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 outperforms competing browsers in protecting against socially engineered malware.

More details:

The United Nations hacked, Team Poison claims responsibility

Feb 10, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

A well known group of hackers has penetrated the networks of the United Nations, according to a note posted on Pastebin.com.

The group claiming responsibility is Team Poison, a hacking group closely associated with the Anonymous hactivist movement. Team Poison members include TriCk, iN^SaNe, MLT,Phantom~, C0RPS3, f0rsaken, aXioM and ap0calypse.

More details:

Pharmaceutical scammers launch their own Web contest

Feb 10, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

What are pharmaceutical scammers up to? From active participation in black hat search engine optimization campaigns, to spamvertising of bogus links — including QR Codes — and compromising of web sites with high page rank in order to redirect to pharmaceutical scams, scammers are keeping themselves pretty busy in order to monetize as much web traffic as possible.

Recently, one of the most popular affiliate network for selling counterfeit pharmaceutical items launched its own Web contest.

Let’s take a look.

Researchers intercept two client-side exploits serving malware campaigns

Feb 8, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Security researchers from Webroot have intercepted two currently live client-side exploits serving malware campaigns that have already managed to infect over 20,000 PCs across the globe, primarily in the United States. Based upon detailed analysis, it can be concluded that both campaigns are launched by the same cybercriminal.

More details:

Researchers spot Citadel, a ZeuS crimeware variant

Feb 8, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Security researchers from “Tracking Cyber Crime” have spotted a new ZeuS crimeware variant, that’s based on the leaked ZeuS source code from last year.

Dubbed Citadel, the crimeware is positioned as a universal spyware system, whose modular nature allows cybercriminals to offer flexibly priced value-added services such as managed malware crypting, and managed web injects as a service.

Some of Citadel’s core features include:

A peek inside the Smoke Malware Loader

Feb 3, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

The competitive arms race between security vendors and malicious cybercriminals constantly produces new defensive mechanisms, next to new attack platforms and malicious tools aiming to efficiently exploit and infect as many people as possible.

Continuing the “A peek inside…” series, in this post I will profile yet another malware loader. This time it’s the Smoke Malware Loader.

Spamvertised ‘You have 1 lost message on Facebook’ campaign leads to pharmaceutical scams

Feb 2, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

A currently spamvertised spam campaign is redirecting users to pharmaceutical scams, in an attempt to trick them into purchasing counterfeit pharmaceutical items.

More details:

Research: Google’s reCAPTCHA under fire

Feb 1, 2012 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Who needs automated bots solving CAPTCHAs, when you have teams of low-waged humans recognizing them for pennies?

In an underground cybercrime ecosystem dominated by managed services and countless outsourcing opportunities, it’s fairly logical to assume that Google’s reCAPTCHA is under constant fire.

Just how easy is it to recognize reCAPTCHA images for malicious account registration and service abuse purposes? Let’s find out.