by Blog Staff | Jan 25, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
For years, the DIY (do-it-yourself) trend has been evident across the entire cybercrime ecosystem.
From the early exploits generating DIY tools that set the foundations for the upcoming “malicious economies of scale” trend to emerge, to the ongoing leaks of DIY botnet and malware generating tools that were once only available to advanced attackers, it’s never been easier to enter the world of cybercrime.
In this post, I’ll profile a novice cybercriminal’s approach to entering the profitable world of ransomware.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 24, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
LinkedIn users, watch what you click on!
Over the past 24 hours, cybercriminals have launched yet another massive spam campaign, impersonating LinkedIn, in an attempt to trick its users into clicking on the malicious links found in the bogus “Invitation Notification” themed emails. Once they click on the links, users are automatically exposed to the client-side exploits served by the Black Hole Exploit Kit.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 23, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising tens of thousands of fake emails, impersonating Intuit, in an attempt to trick its customers and users into clicking on the malicious links found in the emails.
Once users click on any of the links, they’re exposed to the client-side exploits served by the latest version of the Black Hole Exploit Kit, which ultimately drops malware on the affected hosts.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 22, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
Over the past 24 hours, our sensor networks picked up an interesting website infection affecting a popular Bulgarian website for branded watches, which ultimately redirects and downloads premium rate SMS Android malware on the visiting user devices. The affected Bulgarian website is only the tip of the iceberg, based on the diversified portfolio of malicious domains known to have been launched by the same party that launched the original campaign.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 21, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
Just as we anticipated on two occasions in 2012, managed email hacking for hire services continue popping-up at publicly accessible cybercrime-friendly communities, a trend that’s largely driven by the demand for such services by unethical competition, “friends”, or current/ex-spouses.
Often pitched as “forgotten password recovery” services, they rely on social engineering, brute-forcing, and spear phishing campaigns, often leading to a successful compromise of a targeted account. Based on the number of positive vouches, the services continue receiving a steady stream off satisfied and verified customers.
In this post, I’ll profile one of the most recently advertised email hacking for hire services, specializing in hacking GMail and Yahoo! accounts, as well as email accounts using popular free Russian email service providers. How much does it cost to hack a Gmail or Yahoo! account? What about corporate email?
Let’s find out.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 18, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
How easy is it to create an undetected piece of malware these days? Too easy to be true!
With more DIY malware botnets and DIY malware generating tools continuing to leak at public cybercrime-friendly forums, today’s novice cybercriminals have access to sophisticated point’n’click malware generating tools that were once only available in the arsenal of the experienced cybercriminal.
In this post, I’ll profile a recently leaked DIY malware generating tool, discuss its core features, and emphasize on its relevance in the context of the big picture when it comes to ongoing waves of malicious activity we’ve been monitoring over the years.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 17, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
Over the past 24 hours, cybercriminals resumed spamvertising fake Vodafone MMS themed emails, in an attempt to trick the company’s customers into executing the malicious attachment found in these emails.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 16, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
Cybercriminals are currently mass mailing tens of thousands of emails, impersonating the EFTPS (Electronic Federal Tax Payment System), in an attempt to trick its users into clicking on exploits and malware serving malicious links found in the emails.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 15, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
For years, thanks to the currently mature human-driven ecosystem offering CAPTCHA-solving as a service, cybercriminals have been persistently and automatically abusing major Web properties by undermining the “chain of trust” that these properties rely on so extensively.
Still living in a world supposedly dominated by malware-infected bots, this myopia has resulted in the rise of these managed services, rendering any recent CAPTCHA “innovations” useless since they continue relying on humans – the very species that CAPTCHA is supposed to be recognizable by in the first place.
Just how easy is it to automatically register tens of thousands of bogus accounts at, let’s say, YouTube? In this post I’ll profile a recently released tool that’s relying on API keys offered by a CAPTCHA-solving services, automating the account registration process in combination with the use of malware-infected hosts as proxies.
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by Blog Staff | Jan 14, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab
Over the past week, cybercriminals have resumed spamvertising fake “ADP Immediate Notifications” in an attempt to trick users into clicking on the malicious links found in the emails. The links point to the latest version of the Black Hole Exploit Kit, and consequently, exploit CVE-2013-0422, affecting the latest version of Java.
With no fix for this vulnerability currently available, users are advised to disable Java immediately.
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