To smuggle the backdoor onto a targeted machine, the group uses a two-stage attack whereby a dropper package first gains a foothold on the system and sets the stage for the backdoor itself. This process involves some trickery commonly associated with targeted operations of this kind.
Since being founded in 2003, the Italian spyware vendor Hacking Team gained notoriety for selling surveillance tools to governments and their agencies across the world. The capabilities of its flagship product, the Remote Control System (RCS), include extracting files from a targeted device, intercepting emails and instant messaging, as well as remotely activating a device’s webcam and microphone.
The recent rise in cryptocurrency scams appearing on the Android platform in disguise has shown that such incidents are not exclusive to PCs and also highlight the importance of knowing what to look out for so you do not unintentionally take part.
The Internet of Things (IoT) can be a network of connected convenience but this should not come at the expense of safeguarding your privacy and the personal data that connected devices collect and share.
Ransomware in 2017 saw users and businesses across the globe trying to cope with campaigns such as Petya and WannaCryptor. Not to be outdone, Android ransomware had a year full of innovative infiltration and rougher extortion as highlighted by the latest ESET research whitepaper.
ESET research has found that the ransomware FriedEx, also known as BitPaymer, is actually the work of the notorious gang responsible for the Dridex banking trojan.
To help malware analysts and security researchers overcome FinFisher’s advanced anti-disassembly obfuscation and virtualization features, ESET researchers have framed some clever tricks into a whitepaper, “ESET’s guide to deobfuscating and devirtualizing FinFisher”.
In order to establish persistence on the system, the installer tampers with the operating system’s registry. It also creates an administrative account that allows remote access.
Over the past few years the Sednit group has used various techniques to deploy their various components on targets computers. The attack usually starts with an email containing either a malicious link or malicious attachment.
We still don’t have a solid scientific theory of memes; nonetheless, they already allow us to understand why certain things happen the way they do. Memes are “alive”; they reproduce, mutate, and evolve according to Darwinian laws.
Besides delivering the promised functionalities, the malicious apps can display fake notifications and login forms seemingly coming from legitimate banking applications, harvest credentials entered into the fake forms, as well as intercept text messages to bypass SMS-based 2-factor authentication.
As we reported in September, in campaigns we detected in two different countries, man-in-the-middle attacks had been used to spread FinFisher, with the “man” in both cases most likely operating at the ISP level.
Wauchos is an extensible bot that allows its owner to create and use custom plugins. However, there are some plugins that are widely available and that are used by many different botnets.
For a user, it can be difficult to figure out whether an app is malicious. First off it is always good only to install applications from the Google Play store, since most malware is still mainly spread through alternative stores.
In all the cases we investigated, the final payload was a mobile banking trojan. Once installed, it behaves like a typical malicious app of this kind: it may present the user with fake login forms to steal credentials or credit card details.
In 2014, ESET researchers wrote a blog post about an OpenSSH backdoor and credential stealer called Linux/Ebury In 2017, the team found a new Ebury sample.
A new ransomware outbreak today has hit some major infrastructure in Ukraine including Kiev metro. Here are some details about this new variant of Petya.
With all the hype around cryptocurrencies, cybercriminals are trying to grab whatever new opportunity they can – be it hijacking users’ computing power to mine cryptocurrencies via browsers or by compromising unpatched machines, or various scam schemes utilizing phishing websites and fake apps.
Our researchers noticed that the makers of the Elmedia Player software have been distributing a version of their app trojanized with the OSX/Proton malware.
DoubleLocker can change the device’s PIN, preventing victims from accessing their devices, and also encrypts the data it finds in them - a combination that has not been seen previously in the Android ecosystem.
