Threat Lab

The general availability of DIY malware generating tools continues to contribute to the growth of the ‘malware-infected hosts as anonymization stepping stones‘ Socks4/Socks5/HTTP type of services, with new market entrants entering this largely commoditized market segment on a daily basis. Thanks to the virtually non-attributable campaigns that could be launched through the use of malware-infected hosts, the cybercrime underground continues to seek innovative and efficient ways to integrate the inventories of these services within the market leading fraudulent/malicious campaigns managing/launching tools and platforms.

Let’s take a peek at one of the most recently launched services offering automatic access to hundreds of malware-infected hosts to be used as anonymization stepping stones.

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For years, cybercriminals have been abusing a rather popular, personally identifiable practice, namely, the activation of an online account for a particular service through SMS. Relying on the basic logic that a potential service user would not abuse its ToS (Terms of Service) for fraudulent or malicious purposes. Now that it associates a mobile with the account, the service continues ignoring the fact the SIM cards can be obtained by providing fake IDs, resulting in the increased probability for direct abuse of the service in a fraudulent/malicious fashion.

What are cybercriminals up to in terms of anonymous SIM cards these days? Differentiating their UVP (unique value proposition) by offering what they refer to as “VIP service” with a “personal approach” for each new client. In this post, I’ll discuss a newly launched service offering anonymous SIM cards to be used for the activation of various services requiring SMS-based activation, and emphasize on its unique UVP.

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Opportunistic 419 advance fee scammers are currently using CNN.com’s “Email This” feature to spamvertise Syrian Crysis themed emails, in an attempt to successfully bypass anti-spam filters. Ultimately tricking users into interacting with these fraudulent emails. The emails are just the tip of the iceberg in an ongoing attempt by multiple cybercrime gangs, looking to take advantage of the geopolitical situation (event-based social engineering attack) for fraudulent purposes, who continue spamming tens of thousands of emails impersonating internationally recognized agencies, on their way to socially engineer users into believing the legitimacy of these emails.

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In a series of blog posts, we’ve been profiling the tactics and DIY tools of novice cybercriminals, whose malicious campaigns tend to largely rely on social engineering techniques, on their way to trick users into thinking that they’ve been exposed to a legitimate Java applet window. These very same malicious Java applets, continue representing a popular infection vector among novice cybercriminals, who remain the primary customers of the DIY tools/attack platforms that we’ve been profiling.

In this post, I’ll discuss a popular service, that’s exclusively offering hosting services for malicious Java applets.

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The idea of controlling multiple, high-bandwidth empowered servers for launching DDoS attacks, compared to, for instance, controlling hundreds of thousands of malware-infected hosts, has always tempted cybercriminals to ‘innovate’ and seek pragmatic ‘solutions’ in order to achieve this particular objective.

Among the most recent high profile example utilizing this server-based DDoS attack tactic is Operation Ababil, or Izz ad-Din al-Qassam a.k.a Qassam Cyber Fighters attacks against major U.S financial institutions, where the use of high-bandwidth servers was utilized by the attackers. This indicates that wishful thinking often tends to materialize.

In this post, we’ll take a peek inside what appears to be a command and control PHP script in its early stages of development, which is capable of integrating multiple (compromised) servers for the purpose of launching distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) taking advantage of their bandwidth.

More details:

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Over the last couple of days, we’ve intercepted a rather interesting fraudulent approach that’s not just successfully hitting the inboxes of users internationally, but is also popping up as an event on their Android Calendar apps.

How is this possible? Fairly simple.

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Back in June, 2013, we offered a peek inside a DIY Android .apk decompiler/injector that was not only capable of ‘binding’ malicious Android malware to virtually any legitimate app, but also, was developed to work exclusively with a publicly obtainable Android-based trojan horse.

In this post, I’ll profile a similar, recently released cybercrime-friendly Windows-based tool that’s capable of generating malicious ‘sensitive information stealing’ Android .apk apps, emphasize on its core features, and most importantly, discuss in depth the implications this type of tool could have on the overall state of the Android malware market.

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