White Papers

Turla is one of the longest-known state-sponsored cyberespionage groups, with well-known victims such as the US Department of Defense in 2008. The group owns a large toolset that is generally divided into several categories: the most advanced malware is only deployed on machines that are the most interesting to the attackers. Their espionage platform is mainly used against Windows machines, but also against macOS and Linux machines with various backdoors and a rootkit.

Thanks to its strong anti-analysis measures, the FinFisher spyware has gone largely unexplored. Despite being a prominent surveillance tool, only partial analyses have been published on its more recent samples. Things were put in motion in the summer of 2017 with ESET’s analysis of FinFisher surveillance campaigns that ESET had discovered in several countries.

The world is changing in front of our eyes. Where facts, truth and honesty were once our most valuable assets, nowadays, alternative-facts, post-truths and outright lies reign. Unfortunately, the cybersecurity industry is no exception to this trend.

To get a global view of the Stantinko ecosystem, you need a lot of the pieces of the puzzle. The more we dug and tracked Stantinko, the more we could collect those pieces and put them together.

Among other things, this paper delivers a definition of ransomware is provided; ESET’s detection telemetry is used to see the current trends for this cyberthreat; and detail on the most noteworthy Android ransomware examples since 2014 is provided.